Vintage Super League

[Will]

In my opinion, a match between two very good pilots is vastly more interesting than one between two lesser skilled players. This is because in general, a more skilled player makes fewer mistakes than a less skilled player. Given more time to make decisions, it is assumed that better choices will be made with regard to lines of play. Therefore, more time should lead to better matches with fewer mistakes.

It is also worth noting that the commentators are tremendously entertaining and insightful. I love hearing them discuss lines of play and just banter in general, which as a result of the additional time to make decisions is extended.

My only critique at this point is with the hand cams. What's to say that someone playing in the league won't be watching the stream so they both know their opponent's hand and also hear several lines of play from the commentators. This seems like it would work if the matches were streamed on delay, but could take away from the integrity of the event. Also, hand cams take away some of the fun for the viewer when both players are using them. The correct line is obvious with perfect information, but I would like to only be able to see one or none of the player's hands so that the viewers and commentators have to figure it out for themselves. 

[Smmenen]

My only critique at this point is with the hand cams. What's to say that someone playing in the league won't be watching the stream so they both know their opponent's hand and also hear several lines of play from the commentators. This seems like it would work if the matches were streamed on delay, but could take away from the integrity of the event.

I asked that same question and raised this same concern, but Randy trusts everyone in this to act honorably.  

I've only played one of my four matches 'live' using hand cams so far, as my match last week was pre-recorded on Monday, but live-streamed for the audience and the commentators on Tuesday.  We tried in vain to get my handcams up the last two weeks, but there have been glitches we haven't had time to fix.

EDIT:

FYI: I archived my replays on my stream so folks can watch them.   

My match against Chris Pikula from last week can be viewed, in its entirety, from my POV, here: http://www.twitch.tv/smmenen/c/5145476

I really misplayed the first game, but the decisions were fairly difficult: i.e. when to Gush, whether to play Pyromancer, countermagic, draw, etc. 

[evouga]

Is Round 5 going down tonight?

[Smmenen]

it's happening right now: twitch.tv/magic

[Meddling Mike]

Week 5 Replay on YouTube.

[fsecco]

I was Chris x Eric today and I think that on G3 Chris should use Ghost Quarter on one of Eric's Islands when Top was on the top of the deck. That way Eric would have to shuffle Top away or lose a land and Chris could have more time to find a threat... did this come up on the chat when the match was live?

[evouga]

There were a couple of mulligan decisions that struck me as rather suspect: LSV keeping a hand with Lotus, Top, countermagic, and no other mana sources, and Tom's G3 mulligan of a hand with Bazaar and Unmask (but no dredgers). Both players went on to win those games, but those decisions surprised me.

I'm starting to feel really bad for Bob. He made at least one critical error this match (letting Jace slip out of Lodestone range) but his losing record during this league is due in large part to getting repeatedly and horribly screwed by the RNG.

[boggyb]

He has no dredgers, and needs to win by turn 2 or 3 at the latest vs. storm. There's a very good chance he just bricks for a turn or two and dies. It was the right call.

[evouga]

I suppose. His alternative is to disrupt Randy and then hope for a dredger in time to win the race (realistically, he needs either a dredger or a second Bazaar in his top three cards). He is hoping to mulligan into Bazaar and a dredger, and most likely must also find a piece of disruption. One should run the numbers but I find it counterintuitive that the latter plan is correct.

[Smmenen]

In retrospect, I got very unlucky in the first game, but i also made a critical misplay.   I got very unlikely to have two no-land hands and have to mulligan to 5, but it was also ridiculously frustrating to fetch out a land only to Gush into just more lands.  

The critical misplay was playing Fire on the two Welders.   They were strategically irrelevant, and I should have saved my Fire for any potential Notion Thief.  When he played Notion Thief, I played Force and Misdirection, but if I had Fire there, I would have been able to kill it.  I also wouldn't have played the Trygon there, and would have Gushed at a different time.  

Of course, I didn't know he had Notion Thief there or else I wouldn't have used my Fire, but I played 8 test games of this matchup before, and the only real card I focused my attention on besides Tinker and Yawg Will was Notion Thief.   Welders in that position do nothing, and I'm not going to die to 10 turns of 1/1 beats, as I have too many blockers in my deck. 

That entire line was suboptimal, both prospectively and in retrospect.  

I'm really looking forward to my match against LSV next week

[boggyb]

edit: nm I thought you were referring to game 3

[Smmenen]

I think it's interesting how the pre-league discussion of pros v format ringers has curiously dissipated :p

[saspook]

The weekly nitpicks:
Bob maher: He could've played chalice for two + hellkite a turn or two earlier then he did. And it would have won him the game.
Can't remember if he had chalice for six here? If he did then this line is obviously not going to work.

G2 Tom vs. Randy:
He could've vamped for timetwister, stripped the bazaar and then timetwistered, i like the bargain play a bit better though. I think it merits some thought as to playing mana crypt vs. not playing it.
Also, he totally had the game once he drew another mox.

Chalice on 6 was in play.  Timetwister was in Randy's board game one, did he side it in?

[Vennie]

he didn't as far as his comentary before the next match is correct, because he was looking to land, rit, dt into lotus into bw into twister in one of the post sided games.

[Meddling Mike]

[Hrishi]

I loved the Ascension deck, although it does benefit from people not running the required amount of graveyard hate.

[Meddling Mike]

I suppose. His alternative is to disrupt Randy and then hope for a dredger in time to win the race (realistically, he needs either a dredger or a second Bazaar in his top three cards). He is hoping to mulligan into Bazaar and a dredger, and most likely must also find a piece of disruption. One should run the numbers but I find it counterintuitive that the latter plan is correct.

Exactly, i do not think you will get a much better hand at 6 cards. Your chance of getting bazaar in the next 6 is lower, which might force you to mull to 5....and so on.

I think this was just a bad mull from TomM. I was actually looking at his 7 and thinking that was a really strong opener. I ran the numbers. He's about 38% to hit a Dredger with his Bazaar activation (Unless he powdered and I missed it.). The ability to unmask was also a really nice bonus of that opening hand. Even if you missed on that 38% the unmask is probably disruptive enough to buy you another turn to find your dredger. Dredge is already at 7% to mull into oblivion. That number should get a decent boost after the mull to 6 has already happened without a Serum Powder. Clearly it worked out well for him, but I think with the knowledge that Randy had almost no graveyard hate there's no way mulling that hand was right.

EDIT: For some reason I thought TomM was on the draw. Fixed the numbers.

[vaughnbros]

Unmask and bazaar in an opening 7 is one of the best hands the list he was playing could hope for.  That wasn't just a bad mulligan it was a horrendous mulligan and should've cost him the game.

[evouga]

I did the math.

I'm assuming Tom wants 1) a piece of disruption on turn 1, and 2) the ability to start dredging immediately on turn 2. I'm assuming he has 11 dredgers in the deck, 6 disruption pieces, and no Serum Powders.

The two scenarios are:
1. Keep. He has Bazaar and disruption in hand, so he needs a dredger in the top two to begin dredging at the beginning of turn 2. Chance of this: 38%
2. Mulligan until he sees Bazaar and a dredger, then hope for disruption either in his hand or in the top 2. Chance of this: 21%

So keeping maximizes his chance of achieving the dream scenario.

Side note:
If all he cares about is his ability to dredge on turn 2, with or without T1 disruption, Option 2 improves to 49%. So a mulligan is correct if he believes he can beat Randy on pure speed.

If he kept in his Serum Powders (I'm not diligent enough to go back and check) the math becomes a *lot* more complicated (but mulliganing also becomes more defensible).

[Meddling Mike]

If he kept in his Serum Powders (I'm not diligent enough to go back and check) the math becomes a *lot* more complicated (but mulliganing also becomes more defensible).

He did keep them in. They were in his opening hand. When I was studying for one of my actuarial exams I tried to find a firm figure on the probability of mulling to 1 and not finding a bazaar. It's possible to calculate, but it was a gigantic pain in the ass and I couldn't write a computer program to do it for me. Steve figured 7% in his initial Dredge article by having somebody run some absurd number of simulations. I figured that was reliable enough.

[The Atog Lord]

Zeus, I only have one Giant Robot. But, Welder can be used to return either component of Vault / Key. It can also generate value with either Web or Nihil Spellbomb. So, that's at least the logic behind continuing to run them. Of course, I'm always open to the idea that my builds could be improved.

[evouga]

If he kept in his Serum Powders (I'm not diligent enough to go back and check) the math becomes a *lot* more complicated (but mulliganing also becomes more defensible).

He did keep them in. They were in his opening hand. When I was studying for one of my actuarial exams I tried to find a firm figure on the probability of mulling to 1 and not finding a bazaar. It's possible to calculate, but it was a gigantic pain in the ass and I couldn't write a computer program to do it for me. Steve figured 7% in his initial Dredge article by having somebody run some absurd number of simulations. I figured that was reliable enough.

It's not *so* bad. You write a recurrence relation f(n, c, s, b, d) for the probability of drawing a bazaar and a dredger, where n is the number of cards you draw, c is the number of cards left in the deck, s is the number of Serum Powders left in the deck, b is the number of Bazaars left, and d is the number of dredgers left. It's just a bit more work than I'm willing to do atm.

[Smmenen]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/pr/vintage-super-league-2014-09-25

Profile of the league on the mothership.

[Meddling Mike]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/pr/vintage-super-league-2014-09-25

Profile of the league on the mothership.

It's great to see that it's getting good exposure like this.

[GrandpaBelcher]

We were having a Twitter discussion today about having the VSL do more explicit promotion of Vintage. Simply encouraging people to play in the MTGO Vintage daily and other events would go a long way. Pointing out IRL tournaments through TMD might be helpful too. They could do this through commentary and in some of the writeups.

[evouga]

I did the math.

I'm assuming Tom wants 1) a piece of disruption on turn 1, and 2) the ability to start dredging immediately on turn 2. I'm assuming he has 11 dredgers in the deck, 6 disruption pieces, and no Serum Powders.

The two scenarios are:
1. Keep. He has Bazaar and disruption in hand, so he needs a dredger in the top two to begin dredging at the beginning of turn 2. Chance of this: 38%
2. Mulligan until he sees Bazaar and a dredger, then hope for disruption either in his hand or in the top 2. Chance of this: 21%

So keeping maximizes his chance of achieving the dream scenario.

Side note:
If all he cares about is his ability to dredge on turn 2, with or without T1 disruption, Option 2 improves to 49%. So a mulligan is correct if he believes he can beat Randy on pure speed.

If he kept in his Serum Powders (I'm not diligent enough to go back and check) the math becomes a *lot* more complicated (but mulliganing also becomes more defensible).

I reran the calculations including the Serum Powders. If he keeps, he has a 38% chance of disrupting Randy and finding a dredger on T1. If he mulligans until he gets Bazaar+dredger (using Serum Powders as appropriate) his odds of doing this are 29% (up from 21% if he had boarded out his Serum Powders).

On the other hand, if he doesn't care about disruption, he has a 65% chance of finding a T1 dredger if he mulligans.

The correctness of the mulligan therefore hinges on how important disruption is vs speed in the matchup.

[Coopes]

We were having a Twitter discussion today about having the VSL do more explicit promotion of Vintage. Simply encouraging people to play in the MTGO Vintage daily and other events would go a long way. Pointing out IRL tournaments through TMD might be helpful too. They could do this through commentary and in some of the writeups.

Yep, this would be really big I think.

[Smmenen]

We were having a Twitter discussion today about having the VSL do more explicit promotion of Vintage. Simply encouraging people to play in the MTGO Vintage daily and other events would go a long way. Pointing out IRL tournaments through TMD might be helpful too. They could do this through commentary and in some of the writeups.

Yep, this would be really big I think.

The daily events are impossible for me to play in because of the timing, but I think it would be great to get more online play opportunities. 

[Smmenen]

Reminder that the tournament resumes tomorrow night.

I face LSV (5-0 v. 4-1) so it's a pretty big deal.  If I go to 6-0 I'll have defeated both of the current X-1s.  Otherwise, we'll have a potential 3-way tie at the top.

[Twiedel]

Do you know which time that match will be streamed (just a guess)... I'm in the mood of getting up at night to watch this. Expecting a great match, don't let me down Steve ^^