[Premium Article] Identifying Trump in the Workshop Head to Head

[forests failed you]

The article discusses various ways of approaching the Workshop on Workshop match up.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/20494_Vintage_AvantGarde_Identifying_Trump_in_the_Mishras_Workshop_HeadtoHead.html

Let me know what you think. 

Cheers

[Tha Gunslinga]

I don't like playing Welder or Metalworker because neither of them do anything when they come into play, and I prefer to minimize the number of cards like that when I'm playing Shops.  Postboard, Metalworker can be pretty explosive, but it's not game over, and Welder can be Triked or played around.  I would rather keep the deck insanely strong against non-shop decks than run cards like Welder or Metalworker.  I realize that most successful Shop decks lately have been running Metalworker, but I still prefer not to.  Leading with "Shop, Worker, go" can be fatal.

[Odd mutation]

As posted on the thread on the article:

This was a very interesting article! An indepth look at an archetype (three different lists) with matchup analysis, where the important plays/cards are named and discussed and a thought through decklist at the end. Thank you!

I prefer this way over play-by-play tournament reports, where a lot of useful information disappears in the fog of war and/or doesn't get discussed at all.

Did you consider 5-color Stax lists? And if so, why didn't you include it in your testing?

For this article I sleeved up three separate Workshop variants I felt to be representative of Workshop sub-archetypes that people might select to play at Vintage events, then played the decks in full, three-game matches against one another.

Or is this the answer to the question above?  It's going to raise some eyebrows...

Did you test your final list against a complete Vintage gauntlet yet? If so, how did it perform? If not, do you plan to?
It would make a great follow up article:"How does the list actually do in today's hostile Vintage environment?"

Thank you,

Robrecht

[forests failed you]

Thanks for the kind words!

To answer your questions directly:

Testing even three decks against each other, interpreting the data, and doing a complete write up is a very time consuming process, and I felt that adding a forth would simply have made the article too long, redundant, and would have taken too long.  I selected the three Shop variants I did simply because I felt that they were solid performers and among the more popular types of builds that people would be likely to play.  I didn't leave 5c Stax out because I don't think its a good deck, or because I thought it wasn't competitive--rather, because from my vantage point I haven't really seen a lot of people playing the deck.  Now, it is possible that it is more popular than I am perceiving, and I would certainly welcome people who have experience with 5c Stax to post in this thread and contribute that data to the conversation.

I would hypothesize that the decline in popularity probably has more to do with the fact that its need for more colored mana sources makes it more difficult to take advantage of Lodestone Golem the way that Mud decks can. It seems to me that Lodestone Golem is one of the strongest incentives to play Workshop decks in the first place, as it really leverages the advantages inherent to Workshop strategies over non-shop decks.

Secondly, I didn't do any sort of exhaustive testing of the www.dec against the Vintage Gauntlet.  The point of building that deck was ultimately a thought exercise that sought to use the data and theory I had learned about Shop mirrors to build a Shop variant that my testing suggested SHOULD exist, but didn't.  I am sure that because I didn't actually test the deck against an imaginary field, that there are a number of small tweaks that would probably improve the list--for instance, my teammates suggested playing Triskellion over Lightning Bolt in the sideboard--and I would guess that is probably correct.

There is an RIW 10 proxy tournament at RIW hobbies on Saturday December 4th, and I am strongly considering playing a tuned version of www.dec list at that event.  I would very much enjoy writing a follow up Workshop article titled:  "How I Won a Time Walk with www.dec!" 

I hope that my response answered most of your questions; if not feel free to repost or hit me up via pm.

Also, if anybody wants to chime in with results (testing or theory) about how 5c stax fits into the Workshop equation, please do.

Cheers