[FREE ARTICLE] Vintage Avant-Garde: Is Vintage Too Fast?

[forests failed you]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/23003_Vintage_AvantGarde_Is_Vintage_Too_Fast.html

Enjoy. 

[bluemage55]

Thanks for the article.

Regarding Dredge, would you consider the restriction of Serum Podwer to be a viable solution?  After all, Vintage dredge is completely oriented around getting its one-card combo, Bazaar, into the opening hand, and the loss of free mulligans for it would severely impact its viability.

[Onslaught]

I was bitching a lot about Misstep to my friend every day last week, and generally feeling pretty mopey about the fact that it exists. Then, I listened to the Steve/Kevin podcast today and felt even more depressed. Now, this article...

*sigh*

It's a very well written article, it's just such a downer!

I really despise BSC too, they should have just had the foresight to not make it indestructible. Then there would at least be a little bit of thought to choosing between BSC, Battlesphere, Sphinx, and Inkwell.

I don't mind Dredge so much, if people want to play a deck that automatically wins or loses depending on how much hate the opponent is playing then more power to them. If anything, it keeps the sideboards of blue decks from becoming too ridiculous. I also don't agree with restricting Gush, since it enables multiple strategies (control, aggro-control, combo, combo-control, etc) and isn't strictly better than the other available blue engines in every situation (Bob is on the decline but he still is the more resilient draw engine against Workshops, and Snapcaster decks seem totally viable and somewhat unlikely to run Gush themselves).

[PETER FLUGZEUG]

Dear mr. Demars
The article was well written indeed and as you have forseen, many people will disagree wih your view. I am one of them.
What you say is vintage is too fast, but all what you really lay out is that vintage decks are too good.
All in all, I still have to say: yes, i think you're whinig.
I enjoy playing against dredge. I have once lost to it in a tourney in the top8, i did win 4 leylines ironically. Since then i have never lost against it anymore. I like playing against it.
Gush is not too good but it's good against worse blue decks. Against spheres, not so hot.
Misstep is good against 1cc spells. Take a look at the super fair landstill deck that has won 3 bluebells in a row. On top of that, its good against dredge.
I agree that blightsteel was stupid though. I just don't care that much.
What we see now is: in vintage, we have more efficient but narrow answers than ever, so choose your weapon! Dont cry if you had the wrong ones. 
Sorry for the rant but i feel vintage is very very diverse and interesting to deckbuild right now.

[Troy_Costisick]

Brian,

This was not a good article.  It's not helpful nor is it healthy for the community.  Crying out for these sorts of restrictions when Vintage top8's are the most diverse they've been in three and a half years is not constructive.  I'm sorry you don't like Dredge.  I'm sorry you don't like spells that can't counter creatures.  I'm sorry you don't like a big artificat fattie that can get bounced or swordsed.  But restricting two or three pillars of the format in order to make Vintage more like Legacy is not what we need.  We need people willing to test out Magus of the Moon.  We need people willing to test Night's Whisper.  We need people willing to prefect GW Beatz.  We don't need whining that Dredge pilots have finally gotten good and that only one Gush deck made the top8 at the TMD Open.  That's not postive.  That's not helpful.

Peace,

-Troy

[Womba]

It continues to be the BIGGEST problem in Vintage IMO. No one wants to playtest or sideboard properly against Dredge....THAT"S why it keeps getting these results. If we break it down we can come to the conclusion that the hub Dredge pilots are in the NJ/NY/PA area. If you look carefully at the results of these tournaments in this area how often do you see Dredge actually winning a tournament in this area?....NOT VERY OFTEN. The players in this area have been conditioned to learn how to play against Dredge and properly use their six sideboard cards; something that more people need to do.

Looking at the two tourneys that Dredge did win, Vintage Champs and TMD Open 15, I don't know if you noticed or watched any of the games the pilots played but people just flat out don't know what they are doing against Dredge. People continue to ignore Yixlid Jailer and Leyline of the Void as valid sideboard options AND continue to keep hands with no hate or no quick line to victory, it’s pathetic. People need to actually play against Dredge and learn the matchup, how many cards they need, and stop complaining because they are lazy and do not want to test the matchup. LSV probably said it best in one of his videos that Dredge is the "tax man" because it forces people to actually learn how to play against and properly side for it, or get punished for your own ignorance.
That’s why Dredge has been able to win both of these tournaments; the majority of players in both just don’t know what they are doing in the Dredge matchup. I just felt astonished all day at Vintage Champs with the lack of and poor sideboard cards people were bringing in against me when I asked what they brought in games two and three. In speaking with Anthony he also noted the same thing, YOU even mention it in your article that the shop player in the finals kept a bad hand and thus was punished for it, that’s what the deck does. It will continue to run wild in this format as long as people ALLOW it to….

We also can't forget that the deck sometimes literally is high variance, you can just mulligan to oblivion with this deck and lose, in any game. Calling for any restrictions to the deck IMO is ignorance. It is my conclusion that:

1. You don't play enough Vintage with/against Dredge to understand the matchup...IE Claiming ANY deck has 100% win rate against ANY thing is very rash and ignorant.

2. I believed you even mentioned this to me yourself that you don't play enough Vintage due to testing for PTs, Worlds, ETC. So even suggesting any format changes seems premature given the diversity of decks we have now in the format.

3. Your ignorance to Dredge was pretty clear when you claimed it could never win a tournament.

Here is the thing, I kinda agree with you actually with number 3. If people properly learn, test, and sideboards for the matchup Dredge can't win a tournament IMO, it’s that simple. The deck is already high variance enough, pair it with a prepared field and the results as shown at Blue Bells and NYSEs provide the data for this. As long as people continue to be lazy and ignorant to Dredge, it will continue to win and have people continue to whine about it. The problem is the people whining should be the ones to blame. They are usually the people who don't take the time test the match up, board effective cards, and make optimal use of those cards (Keep loose starting hands).

Other than that I found the article very thought provoking, which is usually the trait of a good article. In a sense the format feels accelerated, but I feel it is also balanced and fair, as demonstrated by the diversity of decks in each top 8.

[The Wolf]

I think this article is 100 time better then anything you have written before.  These are the exact reasons I stopped playing vintage and moved over to only playing limited. 
I think duress is a very interesting card to bring up.  Games used to involve seeing what your opponent had in their hand and trying to craft a way to win.  Now it’s just who executes there plan first with the most free counter back up.

I know there are members of the community who like the format as it is, but long term its only going to get worse.  Each sets just makes the games a little faster and more broken. 

[Prospero]

Brian, I didn't agree with everything that you wrote, but I thought it was a great read.

I won't know until I see the report/metagame breakdown, but it felt like there was quite a bit of Dredge on Saturday at Blue Bell.  I know that Elias had four rounds of it.  Off the top of my head, I know that Gans (senior), Scalzo, Hornung, Berse, Addessa and one other played it.  There were 36 players, so that's 16.67% of the field right there, off the top of my head.

Still, while there was all that Dredge, there was only one Dredge deck in top eight (Addessa) and it was summarily knocked out in the first round by Jeff Folinus, running MUD Marinara. 

Dredge completely warps sideboards, but it does keep fields honest.  I would love to see decks like TPS see more play, if only because they seem to be a natural predator for something like Dredge.  Even if we don't have that, though, I'm sure that we will reach a point where the diehard Dredge pilots are tired of running up against sideboards that are dedicated to beating them (and thus put their Dredge decks down for a while). 

In the end, while each person may enjoy something different about Vintage, people enjoy winning.  I would imagine that the Dredge problem is solved naturally, as players ready themselves for the match and Dredge pilots have tougher and tougher matches.  Dredge would fade for a while and wait to catch us unprepared again.  Dredge was very, very hated at Blue Bell and the results bear it out.  I was very glad to see it.

Gush/Bond is broken and it certainly does dominate metagames.  As broken as Gush is, I don't know what happens when you restrict it (this time around).  Do Workshop decks become that much more obnoxious?  Would we then be at a point, several months down the road, where a large percentage of the player base was aggressively campaigning for something like Lodestone Golem to be restricted?  If Gush wasn't in the field, I'd imagine that CatStax would come back, as Jace would seem to be the best unrestricted engine left. 

Blightsteel Colossus is the most obnoxious card that I've ever seen.  If banning the card isn't the answer (an opinion which I can respect because of the slippery slope it puts you on), then you're going to be pushed to answer the card through printings.  A printing that's effective in a Workshop deck is going to have to be a pseudo lock-piece, if only because they aren't always going to have the Blightsteel Colossus and a player won't want to be punished for having an answer to a problem that has yet to be presented.  After all, the blue deck still has the Jace plan and the Vault/Key plan to answer.  A lock-piece printing isn't going to be a card that a blue deck would want to run.  So something else would have to be printed there.  I'm concerned that you would have to answer it with multiple printings.  Even then, the printings may not be good enough if they're too narrow.

Still, to reiterate,  I enjoyed the read, as usual.  It was very thought provoking, 

[Prospero]

As an aside, while it will almost assuredly not happen, if Wizards increased the amount of poison counters required to kill a player, BSC could be turned into a two turn clock.

[nineisnoone]

well written and love that it's free. thanks. but about the only thing that I agree with is BSC. but on principle that is a non-point as I don't think it is so bad that it needs to break the rules of Vintage with a ban. Imo, time vault is worse despite being a two card combo.

@Dredge:
-non-interactive? if I don't play counter-spells, I am non-interactive with the stack. if I don't run artifact hate, I am non-interactive with Shop decks. interactivity is a two-way street. not one way.  
-not fun? a) who cares? pardon me, but I don't really think the fact that someone doesn't like playing against your deck should make any difference. it's a clear bias to one player over the other. you play the deck you want to play and bollocks to everyone else. if it's bad for the format, that's one thing. but if someone players are unhappy, they can just deal with it. not everyone likes playing control decks.
-??? I'm also not even sure what your issues is. The deck is 100% beatable every time and will never win a tournament... but you want to restrict it out of the format? How does that even make any sense?
-Hate? I actually love the fact that there are strong decks that can just be hated out of the format (i.e. Dredge and to a lesser degree Shop). It opens up the format to having X deck + hate being viable. Forcing dominant decks to have to play specific cards for match-ups rather solitaire their way through the game, allows underpowered decks to prey on the opposing decks dilution.

@Gush:
See, Gifts and Fact. Not dominating. Preemptively banned. In retrospect unnecessary. Will Doomsday break it? Perhaps. To be honest, I kind of doubt it. (That said I LOVE Doomsday, so I hope that it does well)

[bisamratte]

Player1: Gush sucks, Bazaar sucks! Restrict it!
Player2: Agrees and wants Lodestone Golem to be restriced.
Player3: Null Rod is unfun!
Player4: Can beat all those archetypes...

In my opinion, vintage is a very healthy format at the moment. We have many different archetypes and all of them are strong and broken.

And, if you look around here in europe, you'll find a more diverse metagame than in the US. Example: I'm playing Painter for three years now. I've played 5 tournaments with it this year: German Magic 2: 2nd of 80, 3x Swiss Vintage -> 3x Third (~40 participants), 1x Bazaar of Moxen -> 48th of 383.
Q: Can I beat Gush? A: Like any other blue deck (Remora, Turbotezz,  Jacecontrol,...).
Q: Dredge? A: Even preboard and without any graveyard hate (not consistently, but more consistently than any other blue deck). How? Blast Bazaar and Combo for the win!
Q: Shops? A: 3 Chewer, 2 Needles, 2 Bolts and a second Hurkyl's out of the SB and a good manabase main.
Q: Noble Fish? A: My best MU of all those.

What I want to say? Just play the right decks to beat the metagame!

[Ufactor]

This is *supposed to be the format where broken things happen.  Other formats feel like playing with Barbies, instead of playing with knives and guns.  I personally am attracted to a format that's not overly regulated and WotC can't tell you what you can/can't play.  If you want to play "fair" Magic, then go play Legacy Modern!

[KingSquee]

Jake Gans has won tournaments with 61-card Dredge builds with no Serum Powder so I'm not sure how effective restricting that would be. Then again he is the best Dredge player in the world for a reason!

Hornung, as I'm sure you know I'm one of those players who would rather play $1 games of Pitty-Pat or best-of-39 games of War than playtest against Dredge. Pre-sideboard testing is a joke. Post-sideboard you still mull to Bazaar, I mull to hate, and "testing" is still a joke. Playing dozens of post-SB games just to know better when to pop a Crypt/Relic/Spellbomb is a waste of time.

A couple Blue Bells ago, I got paired against Dave Gans in round 1. He was on his usual Dredge, and I was on my usual (for now) Cat Stax, with 6 hate cards in the SB. He took game 1, as Dredge does whatever absurd percentage of the time it does. Game 2 he keeps his seven, my hand has no action, mull to 6. 6-card hand, more of the same, mull to 5. 5-card hand has a Wasteland and nothing else. I keep, even though I know I'm toast. What's the point, really?

The point of all of this is that I agree with Demars, Dredge is absolute BS to play against, at any time. I thoroughly despise it.

Playing against Blightsteel isn't much more fun. I miss the days when Tinker was resolved against me and I tried to guess which robot was going to destroy me this time. Would it be Darksteel, Inkwell, Sphinx, or even Myr Battlesphere? There is no more guessing.

Now it's pretty much "do I have a Metamorph?" Nope. Bad game, let's go eat. Or, "do I have a Metamorph?" Yep. Does my opponent have Force/Hurkyl's/Steel Sabotage/Jace/etc? Yep. Bad game, let's go eat.

Playing against the Gushbond engine was fun in the halcyon days when I played RG Beats. The following happened more than once during those times: Play Trop, play Sea, go to 6. Cast Gush... Response! Bolt, bolt, you're dead!

I haven't played all that much against the modern GushBond engine. When I have, it's been against the East Coast Wins variants, which would usually end in losing to Jace's ultimate or Ingot Chewer beatdown. That is about as much interaction as you can ask for in modern Vintage, and why I'm really bummed out with the state of Vintage right now. If it weren't for the awesome PA/NY/NJ Vintage community, I'd probably be sitting a few events out right now.

[forests failed you]

It continues to be the BIGGEST problem in Vintage IMO. No one wants to playtest or sideboard properly against Dredge....THAT"S why it keeps getting these results. If we break it down we can come to the conclusion that the hub Dredge pilots are in the NJ/NY/PA area. If you look carefully at the results of these tournaments in this area how often do you see Dredge actually winning a tournament in this area?....NOT VERY OFTEN. The players in this area have been conditioned to learn how to play against Dredge and properly use their six sideboard cards; something that more people need to do.

Looking at the two tourneys that Dredge did win, Vintage Champs and TMD Open 15, I don't know if you noticed or watched any of the games the pilots played but people just flat out don't know what they are doing against Dredge. People continue to ignore Yixlid Jailer and Leyline of the Void as valid sideboard options AND continue to keep hands with no hate or no quick line to victory, it’s pathetic. People need to actually play against Dredge and learn the matchup, how many cards they need, and stop complaining because they are lazy and do not want to test the matchup. LSV probably said it best in one of his videos that Dredge is the "tax man" because it forces people to actually learn how to play against and properly side for it, or get punished for your own ignorance.
That’s why Dredge has been able to win both of these tournaments; the majority of players in both just don’t know what they are doing in the Dredge matchup. I just felt astonished all day at Vintage Champs with the lack of and poor sideboard cards people were bringing in against me when I asked what they brought in games two and three. In speaking with Anthony he also noted the same thing, YOU even mention it in your article that the shop player in the finals kept a bad hand and thus was punished for it, that’s what the deck does. It will continue to run wild in this format as long as people ALLOW it to….

We also can't forget that the deck sometimes literally is high variance, you can just mulligan to oblivion with this deck and lose, in any game. Calling for any restrictions to the deck IMO is ignorance. It is my conclusion that:

1. You don't play enough Vintage with/against Dredge to understand the matchup...IE Claiming ANY deck has 100% win rate against ANY thing is very rash and ignorant.

2. I believed you even mentioned this to me yourself that you don't play enough Vintage due to testing for PTs, Worlds, ETC. So even suggesting any format changes seems premature given the diversity of decks we have now in the format.

3. Your ignorance to Dredge was pretty clear when you claimed it could never win a tournament.

Here is the thing, I kinda agree with you actually with number 3. If people properly learn, test, and sideboards for the matchup Dredge can't win a tournament IMO, it’s that simple. The deck is already high variance enough, pair it with a prepared field and the results as shown at Blue Bells and NYSEs provide the data for this. As long as people continue to be lazy and ignorant to Dredge, it will continue to win and have people continue to whine about it. The problem is the people whining should be the ones to blame. They are usually the people who don't take the time test the match up, board effective cards, and make optimal use of those cards (Keep loose starting hands).

Other than that I found the article very thought provoking, which is usually the trait of a good article. In a sense the format feels accelerated, but I feel it is also balanced and fair, as demonstrated by the diversity of decks in each top 8.

First of all I'm not sure how effective attacking my credibility as a legitimate Vintage source is on the grounds that I am a professional Magic player and spend my time also preparing and testing for other formats.  If anything, I would have to believe that my experience in other formats would be a boon that I bring to my vast understanding and experience, having played Vintage for well over a decade.

Secondly, I don't think that the issue was specifically my "ignorance" of the Dredge deck, how it works and how one fights it, with relation to playing with it or against it; but rather, a general misunderstanding of other people's understanding of how to test, prepare, and play against the deck.  The biggest lesson I learned from the fiasco that was "The Vintage Survival Guide" was to assume that just because I know, understand, and get a specific result that what I do is applicable to everybody else.  And, that is a mistake that I only needed to make once, and will never make again. 

Just because I test against it and make sure my plan is sufficient, just because I understand what hands should be kept or thrown back, or just because I understand what I need to be doing at any given time in a game, doesn't mean that other people are going to also have the benefit of my experience and achieve the same result.  I have never lost a match to Dredge, and I don't specifically attribute that statistic to the dumb luck of an ignorant man.

The issue that I take with Bazaar is that it is what I presume to call a "broken" one card linear combo, that simply doesn't have any natural predators in the meta-game.  Dredge doesn't have bad match ups to specific strategies, it has bad match ups depending upon what percentage of ones deck slots are devoted to dredge specific hate cards. 

On the one hand I feel like we are making the exact same point, where in my "Survival Guide" I specifically stated that people should prepare and test to beat Dredge and make sure to play 6-7 cards, and obviously people didn't go the extra mile... 

My point was never that Gush, Dredge, or Blightsteel Colossus can't be beaten, rather that their existence and evolute constricts and oppresses the format because of the drastic lengths players must go to address them.

The other thing that I find bizarre (bazaar) is that a lot of people in response to the article are saying: "Vintage is the place broken stuff happens and we like it that way."  To me, commending a format for being broken seems really foolish, as broken implies that it doesn't work or requires "fixing," which is exactly the point that my article is suggesting in the first place. 

I realize that the existence of 0 cc artifacts binds Vintage to a different set of rules than any other Magic format, but I strongly believe that weeding out the one card combos and printing new cards that punish decks for narrow modes of interaction would greatly improve the quality of game play.

[voltron00x]

Glackin - Last year I had a blue bell Where I played elephant oath, and faced Dredge five times in seven rounds, going 3-2 with two game one wins. Last Saturday I faced it four times in six rounds with Gro, going 3-1 with one game one win. That's 33% game one wins. At the NY grudge match i faced Dredge with Shops and won game one. Not testing preboard is foolish.

[Womba]

It continues to be the BIGGEST problem in Vintage IMO. No one wants to playtest or sideboard properly against Dredge....THAT"S why it keeps getting these results. If we break it down we can come to the conclusion that the hub Dredge pilots are in the NJ/NY/PA area. If you look carefully at the results of these tournaments in this area how often do you see Dredge actually winning a tournament in this area?....NOT VERY OFTEN. The players in this area have been conditioned to learn how to play against Dredge and properly use their six sideboard cards; something that more people need to do.

Looking at the two tourneys that Dredge did win, Vintage Champs and TMD Open 15, I don't know if you noticed or watched any of the games the pilots played but people just flat out don't know what they are doing against Dredge. People continue to ignore Yixlid Jailer and Leyline of the Void as valid sideboard options AND continue to keep hands with no hate or no quick line to victory, it’s pathetic. People need to actually play against Dredge and learn the matchup, how many cards they need, and stop complaining because they are lazy and do not want to test the matchup. LSV probably said it best in one of his videos that Dredge is the "tax man" because it forces people to actually learn how to play against and properly side for it, or get punished for your own ignorance.
That’s why Dredge has been able to win both of these tournaments; the majority of players in both just don’t know what they are doing in the Dredge matchup. I just felt astonished all day at Vintage Champs with the lack of and poor sideboard cards people were bringing in against me when I asked what they brought in games two and three. In speaking with Anthony he also noted the same thing, YOU even mention it in your article that the shop player in the finals kept a bad hand and thus was punished for it, that’s what the deck does. It will continue to run wild in this format as long as people ALLOW it to….

We also can't forget that the deck sometimes literally is high variance, you can just mulligan to oblivion with this deck and lose, in any game. Calling for any restrictions to the deck IMO is ignorance. It is my conclusion that:

1. You don't play enough Vintage with/against Dredge to understand the matchup...IE Claiming ANY deck has 100% win rate against ANY thing is very rash and ignorant.

2. I believed you even mentioned this to me yourself that you don't play enough Vintage due to testing for PTs, Worlds, ETC. So even suggesting any format changes seems premature given the diversity of decks we have now in the format.

3. Your ignorance to Dredge was pretty clear when you claimed it could never win a tournament.

Here is the thing, I kinda agree with you actually with number 3. If people properly learn, test, and sideboards for the matchup Dredge can't win a tournament IMO, it’s that simple. The deck is already high variance enough, pair it with a prepared field and the results as shown at Blue Bells and NYSEs provide the data for this. As long as people continue to be lazy and ignorant to Dredge, it will continue to win and have people continue to whine about it. The problem is the people whining should be the ones to blame. They are usually the people who don't take the time test the match up, board effective cards, and make optimal use of those cards (Keep loose starting hands).

Other than that I found the article very thought provoking, which is usually the trait of a good article. In a sense the format feels accelerated, but I feel it is also balanced and fair, as demonstrated by the diversity of decks in each top 8.

First of all I'm not sure how effective attacking my credibility as a legitimate Vintage source is on the grounds that I am a professional Magic player and spend my time also preparing and testing for other formats.  If anything, I would have to believe that my experience in other formats would be a boon that I bring to my vast understanding and experience, having played Vintage for well over a decade.

Secondly, I don't think that the issue was specifically my "ignorance" of the Dredge deck, how it works and how one fights it, with relation to playing with it or against it; but rather, a general misunderstanding of other people's understanding of how to test, prepare, and play against the deck.  The biggest lesson I learned from the fiasco that was "The Vintage Survival Guide" was to assume that just because I know, understand, and get a specific result that what I do is applicable to everybody else.  And, that is a mistake that I only needed to make once, and will never make again. 

Just because I test against it and make sure my plan is sufficient, just because I understand what hands should be kept or thrown back, or just because I understand what I need to be doing at any given time in a game, doesn't mean that other people are going to also have the benefit of my experience and achieve the same result.  I have never lost a match to Dredge, and I don't specifically attribute that statistic to the dumb luck of an ignorant man.

The issue that I take with Bazaar is that it is what I presume to call a "broken" one card linear combo, that simply doesn't have any natural predators in the meta-game.  Dredge doesn't have bad match ups to specific strategies, it has bad match ups depending upon what percentage of ones deck slots are devoted to dredge specific hate cards. 

On the one hand I feel like we are making the exact same point, where in my "Survival Guide" I specifically stated that people should prepare and test to beat Dredge and make sure to play 6-7 cards, and obviously people didn't go the extra mile... 

My point was never that Gush, Dredge, or Blightsteel Colossus can't be beaten, rather that their existence and evolute constricts and oppresses the format because of the drastic lengths players must go to address them.

The other thing that I find bizarre (bazaar) is that a lot of people in response to the article are saying: "Vintage is the place broken stuff happens and we like it that way."  To me, commending a format for being broken seems really foolish, as broken implies that it doesn't work or requires "fixing," which is exactly the point that my article is suggesting in the first place. 

I realize that the existence of 0 cc artifacts binds Vintage to a different set of rules than any other Magic format, but I strongly believe that weeding out the one card combos and printing new cards that punish decks for narrow modes of interaction would greatly improve the quality of game play.

I am not specifically attacking your credibility and I apologize if it came off the way, it was more of a venting on everyone crying about Dredge in general.

Again with the ignorance, I apologize for making it seem specifically aimed at you but I agree with you. You tried to layout a blueprint to beat Dredge, which I believe could have been more in-depth, and people simply continue to ignore it. However, I don't think that warrants for a deck to see restrictions on it because other people are too lazy to prepare for it.

"On the one hand I feel like we are making the exact same point, where in my "Survival Guide" I specifically stated that people should prepare and test to beat Dredge and make sure to play 6-7 cards, and obviously people didn't go the extra mile..." This is one of the main points I am trying to stress, but I don't believe it warrants DCI action...

You mention that Dredge doesn't have natural predators in the metagame, which is true at the moment. You also mention that Gush, Dredge, or Blightsteel Colossus oppress the metagame, which is true but I also believe this comes back to how Mental Misstep and Lodestone Golem are EQUALLY has oppressive to the metagame. Dredge's natural enemy is storm decks, specifically faster ones which utilize Dark Ritual and/or Duress effects, such as ANT. Cards like Mental Misstep and Lodestone Golem really take away a lot from these decks that can prey on Dredge. These two cards have really oppressed dark ritual storm decks, the natural predator of Dredge. If you want a shake up, I would look to one of these cards. I mean a turn one Lodestone could effectively shut you out of the game followed by another sphere...and its a win condition with a sphere effect itself. Mental Misstep is so powerful tempo-wise that even some shop decks have begun to utilize it...that seems equally as warping as Dredge IMO....

I agree that Gush, Dredge, and Blightsteel oppress the format, but I also think there are other cards as well, which do it equally. Overall I would say look at the results for all of the Vintage tournaments recently, we have an incredibly diverse metagame despite these "oppressive" cards and that to me doesn't warrant any restrictions. People just need to be more prepared and tested for tournaments....

[MaximumCDawg]

Generally, a good read.  However, like many other people here, I think you're complaining about something that isn't a problem.  I think the key to why your complaints are not tenable is this passage in your article:

"The DCI's recent banned and restricted announcement, with regard to the Modern format, seems to suggest that, at least in that format, fast, efficient, and degenerate combo decks are viewed to be unacceptable and detrimental to quality games of Magic being played in a competitive setting. The pruning of the B&R list seems to suggest that resource building and interactive game play are seen to be ideal characteristics of a healthy and complex format."

Two points rear their ugly head here.  First, you're taking the goals in development of a different format - Modern - and assume Vintage must try to do the same thing.  That's bonkers; different formats are different games.  DCI is absolutely trying to slow down Modern.  IHow does that imply it should also be trying to slow down Vintage?  Vintage is literally defined by the busted, broken, fast stuff you can do.  I hate to say this kind of thing, but if you don't like Tinkering for a BSC or assembling Vault-Key, then Vintage isn't for you. (But see below.)  It's not a bug, it's a feature!  Don't like it?  Well, luckily, DCI has made formats for you: Legacy, or if that's still too fast, Modern, or if celerity is really not your bag, there's always Standard or Limited.

Second, you imply that a slower game leads to more "resource building and interactive game play."  This isn't true at all.  Vintage is far, far, more interactive than other formats precisely because it's so fast.  Take Modern.  DCI's stated goal is to prevent kills on turns 1, 2, and 3.  You can therefore engineer a deck where the first few turns have pretty minimal interaction, and you only have to start thrusting and parrying on turn 3.  Standard is the same way; you can actually pilot a deck that doesn't interact much in the first few turns.  Vintage decks are only "non-interactive," as you put it, if you don't bother to prepare to interact with them.  If a player doesn't bring cards that deal with Dredge and gets rolled by it, he has no one to blame but himself.

Because your opponent can explode at any moment in Vintage, you don't have the luxury of sitting on your tush in that format.  If you cannot interact on turn Zero, you cannot compete.  You must be ready to strip your opponent of resources, tangle on the stack, or win yourself immediately.  It's a high-octane, maximum-interaction slugfest where you are playing your opponent far more than you are playing his deck.  This is MORE interaction, not less.  I play sanctioned Vintage weekly, so I have some experience to point out that Vintage games do NOT necessarily end faster than those in other formats.  They may take less turns, yes, but those turns are much deeper, much more thoughtful.  More happens in a turn in Vintage.  

Now, you could fairly argue that Vintage might be more popular if it were a different format.  Maybe the things that make Vintage Vintage are unattractive to many players.  Fair enough; I have no data to refute that.  But, do you REALLY think that the barrier to entry in Vintage is that it doesn't seem fun?  Really?  Might instead the prohibitive cost of acquiring Vintage staples and aversion to playing with a deck full of proxies have a smidigin to do with it?  Heck, even Null Rod is over ten bux.

I suspect, at the end of the day, that Vintage's limitation is not the way it plays but the availability of the tools to play it with.  When Standard players complain about turn 1 kills in Vintage,  I bet they're probably making more of a statement about the availability of Black Lotus and the Moxen than they are about the techniques of Vintage play.  That is, they're complaining about how you seem to be beaten by unfair CARDS in Vintage, as opposed to beaten by superior play.  This leads very quickly to sour grapes about the whole format.  

[KingSquee]

Glackin - Last year I had a blue bell Where I played elephant oath, and faced Dredge five times in seven rounds, going 3-2 with two game one wins. Last Saturday I faced it four times in six rounds with Gro, going 3-1 with one game one win. That's 33% game one wins. At the NY grudge match i faced Dredge with Shops and won game one. Not testing preboard is foolish.

Dredge wins game one 85-90% of the time against the whole field save for rogue strategies such as Dark Times. So obviously it is possible, albeit very unlikely, to win game 1. I mean, I won game 1 against Hornung in the Vintage Champs semi-finals and was feeling great. I Wasted his Bazaar and shit out Lodestones while he tried to slow-dredge for the win. There was no interaction whatsoever except for me Wastlelanding the Bazaar. Then I lost the back 2 due to inadequate sideboard hate and a couple play mistakes.

But my point is, what does testing pre-board accomplish? I mean, for the most part, game 1 vs. Dredge both players are goldfishing, no? You're trying to trigger Oath or cast Tinker as quickly as possible, and Dredge is trying to do its thing. Was there any interaction to speak of? I understand Games 2 and 3 have much more interaction, thus I separate the two. But it still isn't much more fun, and I can think of a couple hundred other things I'd rather be doing. You eventually hit a critical mass of lines of play vs. Dredge.

[meadbert]

I would be very sad if Bazaar were restricted because it is such a fun card in general, but even I think Dredge has gone too far.

IMHO, Dredge can serve an important roll in type 1 when it is an anti combo deck and when it is an anti-control deck by dodging counters.

When a deck has a 80%+ turn 2 goldfish with double or triple counter backup it gets silly.

When addresssing Dredge I am coming from the perspective of someone who likes Dredge in general and thinks it should be in the format, but that it should not be nearly as fast as it is now.  IMHO turn three and four goldfishes are appropriate, but consistent turn two wins are harmful.
If done "right" I would like to see a Dredge deck that can be raced by Goblins or that can be raced by Shop Aggro if they open with Waste on Bazaar.

I would go after Dredge one card at a time and I would not start with Bazaar.

First I would go after Dread Return and Fatestitcher.  Those cards are not played as more than 1 of in any other decks so there is not collateral damage and they are massive combo enablers.  Without those Dredge is looking at winning games with Bridge token beats and Ichorid beats while using Therapy and presumably other control to disrupt.  The token Dread Return can still do damage, but folks are not going to want to run 5 card Dread Return suites when they only have 1 Dread Return.  I think such a deck would play a positive roll in vintage.

Before Bazaar, I would go after Serum Powder.  That would also hit certain versions of Stax which is unfortunate and part of the reason I would rather restrict Dread Return and Fatestitcher, but Serum Power is a free, uncounterable, one sided draw 7 that can be played on turn 0 and thus has been ripe for restriction ever since it was printed.
The second reason I prefer not to restrict Serum Powder is that it allows Dredge to win without playing spells and thus dodge heavy counter decks and heavy mana denial.

[diopter]

Aggro vs control in an old format has always been like this. Ever tried to "interact" with RDW/Sligh using U/W[/G] in really old extended? If you didn't have answers like CoP:Red or Oath into Ravenous Baloth or Wrath and a prayer, or you were dead. All they're doing is trying to topdeck Incinerate + Fireblast.

[Womba]

I would be very sad if Bazaar were restricted because it is such a fun card in general, but even I think Dredge has gone too far.

IMHO, Dredge can serve an important roll in type 1 when it is an anti combo deck and when it is an anti-control deck by dodging counters.

When a deck has a 80%+ turn 2 goldfish with double or triple counter backup it gets silly.

When addresssing Dredge I am coming from the perspective of someone who likes Dredge in general and thinks it should be in the format, but that it should not be nearly as fast as it is now.  IMHO turn three and four goldfishes are appropriate, but consistent turn two wins are harmful.
If done "right" I would like to see a Dredge deck that can be raced by Goblins or that can be raced by Shop Aggro if they open with Waste on Bazaar.

I would go after Dredge one card at a time and I would not start with Bazaar.

First I would go after Dread Return and Fatestitcher.  Those cards are not played as more than 1 of in any other decks so there is not collateral damage and they are massive combo enablers.  Without those Dredge is looking at winning games with Bridge token beats and Ichorid beats while using Therapy and presumably other control to disrupt.  The token Dread Return can still do damage, but folks are not going to want to run 5 card Dread Return suites when they only have 1 Dread Return.  I think such a deck would play a positive roll in vintage.

Before Bazaar, I would go after Serum Powder.  That would also hit certain versions of Stax which is unfortunate and part of the reason I would rather restrict Dread Return and Fatestitcher, but Serum Power is a free, uncounterable, one sided draw 7 that can be played on turn 0 and thus has been ripe for restriction ever since it was printed.
The second reason I prefer not to restrict Serum Powder is that it allows Dredge to win without playing spells and thus dodge heavy counter decks and heavy mana denial.

Why has Dredge gone too far?? Where is it winning?!?!? It has won two major tournaments (People are more prone to ignoring Dredge outside the NY/NJ/PA area IMO) but other than that it has been par for the course with all of the other decks in the format. The nature of the deck....mulliganing to Bazaar, will always make Dredge hit or miss. Paired with the correct hate, this deck is EASILY contained. Like I mentioned before I don't actually think its 100% Dredge thats warping it, its cards like Misstep and Lodestone Golem that have shielded out Dredge's enemies. If built properly Oath is also a tough matchup for the deck, but again these are decks that no one wants to play because of the other cards in the metagame.

[meadbert]

When I say Dredge has gone too far, I do not mean in terms of being too good.
I only mean in terms of how fast it wins.

[ilpeggiore]

Aggro vs control in an old format has always been like this. Ever tried to "interact" with RDW/Sligh using U/W[/G] in really old extended?

have you tried in old vintage ? Battles of drain-reb-rod-ophidian and draw seven.



The problem is simple :

80% of the field is playing one or two of this engine :  bob/remora/gush/oath.

so every deck is full of reb/flusterstorm/MM/TS etc... to beat the majority of the field.

BUT if the meta was more balanced (more stax/mud, GW) you couldn't permitt to play 15land list with flusterstorm/reb/MM/misdy.
=
slower meta, more interactions

[diopter]

The format has hardly ever been slower.

[voltron00x]

Glackin - Last year I had a blue bell Where I played elephant oath, and faced Dredge five times in seven rounds, going 3-2 with two game one wins. Last Saturday I faced it four times in six rounds with Gro, going 3-1 with one game one win. That's 33% game one wins. At the NY grudge match i faced Dredge with Shops and won game one. Not testing preboard is foolish.

Dredge wins game one 85-90% of the time against the whole field save for rogue strategies such as Dark Times. So obviously it is possible, albeit very unlikely, to win game 1. I mean, I won game 1 against Hornung in the Vintage Champs semi-finals and was feeling great. I Wasted his Bazaar and shit out Lodestones while he tried to slow-dredge for the win. There was no interaction whatsoever except for me Wastlelanding the Bazaar. Then I lost the back 2 due to inadequate sideboard hate and a couple play mistakes.

But my point is, what does testing pre-board accomplish? I mean, for the most part, game 1 vs. Dredge both players are goldfishing, no? You're trying to trigger Oath or cast Tinker as quickly as possible, and Dredge is trying to do its thing. Was there any interaction to speak of? I understand Games 2 and 3 have much more interaction, thus I separate the two. But it still isn't much more fun, and I can think of a couple hundred other things I'd rather be doing. You eventually hit a critical mass of lines of play vs. Dredge.

I'd suggest that the weakest part of most people's magic skillset (speaking in-game) is Mulligan decisions,  and this significantly impacts pre and post board win % vs dredge.

Also, re: article,  Mental Misstep is probably the best hate-support cards there is. Like, astoundingly effective.

[Womba]

When I say Dredge has gone too far, I do not mean in terms of being too good.
I only mean in terms of how fast it wins.

Game one sure. However, a lot of the blue decks, especially Gush, knowing they don't have to worry about counter spells can win just as fast because they don't need to wait for counter backup. Workshop decks can effectively lock you out of the game by turn two. Ritual decks can easily win turn one-two....Which leads my back to my original point, why does the DCI need to take action against this? Are we just nuking the format just because?!?! Especially after one of the biggest tournaments in North America had EIGHT DIFFERENT decks...

How is there a problem with the metagame is the ultimate question? I believe Demars touched on some of it, but to actually fix it you’re asking for a drastic overhaul. I am not sure it even needs fixing. Everyone complained about Vault/Key, these cards don't even make it into all of the blue deck's 75s anymore!!!! I think what Demars proposed was drastic but a unnecessary fix to encourage more blue decks IMO. I still don't see how this format is "fast" either. You don't reasonably Gush until turn 3 unless you have Fastbond, sure you’re going to have the Oops I win with Vault/Key, Tinker/Blightsteel, but they are one ofs....if you want it to stop and be less broken you’re going to need the ban hammer instead of restriction and running a ton of tutors to get the restricted cards.... Ultimately this will only lead us down a slippery slope of having relying on the DCI to "correct" the format when we ourselves are largely responsible....

[Ummmyeh13]

 sure you’re going to have the Oops I win with Vault/Key, Tinker/Blightsteel, but they are one ofs....

The problem is that these win conditions are so fast to end games, that the format becomes less about these cards being individual one-ofs, and more of 60-card "kev-vault" or "Tinker" decks.

[Womba]

 sure you’re going to have the Oops I win with Vault/Key, Tinker/Blightsteel, but they are one ofs....

The problem is that these win conditions are so fast to end games, that the format becomes less about these cards being individual one-ofs, and more of 60-card "kev-vault" or "Tinker" decks.

Thats what I meant, just in more words....

 "running a ton of tutors to get the restricted cards (Tinker or Vault/Key decks)"

[Onslaught]

As an aside, while it will almost assuredly not happen, if Wizards increased the amount of poison counters required to kill a player, BSC could be turned into a two turn clock.

This is my new pipe dream. Vintage can't ban cards, Magic doesn't do power level errata, so...change the mechanic itself. Would there really be a huge outcry if at some point it was slipped into a rules document that you lose when you have 12 poison counters instead of 10? It doesn't change the function of any existing cards, it's pretty elegant. Maybe there is some T2 deck that uses poison, or a Legacy pet deck that has to get 2 extra points of damage, but who cares? T2 will have the mechanic rotate out anyway, but Vintage is marred forever by Blightsteel.

Petition to raise poison kills to 12 counters begins here lol ;[

[JuzamDjinn]

What we see now is: in vintage, we have more efficient but narrow answers than ever, so choose your weapon!

Could not have agreed more. I played Merfolks in my first Vintage tournament (BoM3). Scared of all the t1 wins and power 9. I choose 4 Null Rod md and 4 Energy Flux sb, won easily against a lot of tier 1 decks... Choosing the right weapons at the right time is key to victory. Nevermind how strong that gush, bazaar or blightsteel are.