But can you honestly say that Vintage is not at least 90% Shops builds, bazaar decks (mainly dredge), or U-control (draw cards, counter spells, play a finisher and some PWs) Fish and storm or belcher are maybe the other 10%. Steve, you and I used to meet at the same house and play in the same tourneys when we were college aged. Do you think it is good that decks have to start off with the same X cards, depending on archetype, to have a chance to compete?
No more than the fact that TPS and Merfolk both play Islands, Mox Sapphire and Black Lotus bothers me.
That many decks share tactics is totally irrelevant to the issue of whether Vintage is a healthy and diverse format. There are only 5 basic lands in the game (not counting snow-covered lands). There is, by design, going to be overlap in the cards that decks play. The fact alot of tactics are shared in Vintage across strategies and archetypes doesn't bother me as long as there is a strong diversity of strategies.
The format used to be alot worse in the days you talk about. Back when we played on the SCG circuit, the format was essentially homogenized by whatever the legal, dominant blue draw engine was, and they were all Yawg Will decks. Now we have a ton of diversity strategically that results in very different ways to attack the metagame. The format is much better than it was back then.
Would it be terrible if decks like mill, poison, burn, RG aggro, etc were as powerful and good as any blue control, shop, or bazaar deck in a 100 man tourney?
no of course not.
But would it be terrible if every deck in a top 8 of a major tournament was mono blue, if they were totally different strategies? that would be great too.
For example, if the Vintage Champs Top 8 was:
1) Mono Blue Merfolk
2) Mono Blue Belcher
3) Mono Blue "Almost Blue" (Gush Combo w/ Brain Freeze)
4) Mono Blue Landstill
5) Mono Blue "The Answer" (hard control with Chalice, Ancient Tomb, Sphinx)
6) Mono blue high tide combo
7) mono blue Mask Naught
8) mono blue Workshop prison
I would find that to be just as acceptable as the to 8 you described. that's 8 totally different strategies (aggro control, speed combo, combo-control, hard control, hard control/prison, slow combo, combo-aggro, and prison). That would be awesome.
I mean, there is a reason why people say "I need X cards in my main/sb to beat shops, X to beat dredge, and X to fight through opposing U-control....and maybe 1 tutorable, splashable board sweeper for fish." These decks make up the majority of the scene. And it's not that i don't understand why. Obv those cards and strategies are the most powerful. but do they have to be? Can't new printings open up diversity further and even the color wheel?
Of course new printings can generate more diversity, and they do! But, again, color parity =/ strategic diversity. That's the fundamental flaw in your analysis.
There is an imperative for strategic diversity, but color parity is non-achievable, and likely not desirable. It would mean printing cards of absurd power level.
If you could run a monowhite deck successfully, consistantly, there would be cards that are sitting in binders now that may become playable in new decks. If you could run infect and win, it could make Modern and standard players join into vintage and would open things up - and make more unplayed cards playable.
I'm really not trying to bash Vintage. I do love the format, if nothing else but for nostalgia But I dislike seeing that formats as wide open as Modern are not more of a model for Vintage, where a VAST variety of strategies AND colors are viable and competitive. Yes, GW humans and the like exist...but my point isnt that the format is ALL U/shops/bazaar...it is just an overwhelming majority of it and the best options to have a chance to win consistently. Any deck can wander in as a hate deck and steal a metagame. But the top three have been the top three for a long time - and are far more powerful. Just look at your sb if you disagree. Why would growing the format be so bad by printing new, powerful, but univerally useful effects in non-artifact, non-blue colors be so bad?
It wouldn't be. But it wouldn't balance the colors nor make more non-blue decks.
People play blue because it has good cards, and there is almost no cost to including at least some blue cards in any strategy.
And as I said, I made a new thread, but I feel the top 8 (and really top 64) hammers in my point that U-control, shops, bazaar give you the best chance to win as they have for a very long time. I don't like that and I really don't get why everyone is so fine with it. Does everyone just love draw/counter, artifact prison, zombie making so much?
No. What you don't understand is that people aren't fixated on blue. People don't wake up and say "I've Got to play Blue today!" Rather, it has to do with the deck building options available to them in this format.
The interaction of dual lands and fetchlands means that deck designers can basically include any of the best cards in the entire Vintage card pool in any deck they want to build. It doesn't matter what the strategy is, you will likely be including at least a few blue cards if you are optimizing it.
The reason Modern may be different is because there are probably greater costs to playing third or fourth colors, I would imagine, than there are in Vintage and Legacy, and cards like Ancestral Recall and Time Walk don't exist.
If you really wanted a format that had color parity, the first thing you would do is make it very costly to play 3, 4 or 5 color decks, so that all strategies have to be mono color or two colored, and any additional color comes at great cost. That's the opposite of the case of Vintage. Not playing a 3rd or even a 4th color means you are irrationally denying yourself access to more of the card pool at almost no cost. I really don't see how I can explain this to you any other way, but, your focus on color parity is completely misplaced because of the deck building and mana generation tools available to Vintage deck designers.
It would be strange if blue saw less play, not more.
