[Free Podcast] So Many Insane Plays Podcast Episode 47: Champs Review

[CHA1N5]

http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-podcast-episode-47-2015-vintage-champs-review/


Kevin Cron and Steve Menendian review Vintage Champs and Eternal Weekend.

0:01:00: Eternal Weekend Summary
0:02:15: Announcements
0:08:00: Congratulations
0:11:00: Our Predictions
0:22:15: Metagame Breakdown
1:08:25: Brian Kelley’s Winning List and the Top 8
1:40:35: Our experience
2:23:15: Rules Complications
2:58:00: Scenarios
3:30:05: Future Podcast Plans and Listener Feedback
Total runtime: 3:44:07

[Islandswamp]

I needed something to listen to while walking to work Monday, and I found this. I enjoyed it very much, thanks for all the hard work you guys do.

As far as deciding what results actually mean, I think in some ways it can be difficult. I think I've heard you mention something like this before, but it's possible for "Deck A" to beat the odds and beat "Deck B" even though it's usually the other way around. If there were events as large as the NYSE and Champs every few weeks or monthly (like the way there are GPs, PTs, and SCG Events for the other formats) then I think we would all get a clearer picture of where everything stands.

I think that you can make good generalizations from the data, and that is very helpful. You mentioned the factor of a good deck hitting a random budget deck that they didn't prepare for and missing the top tables because of it, and I think that's a good point. We also don't know how many games/decks/players were negatively affected by something like a bad match-up, excessive mulligans, or whatever.

In my opinion, looking at the decks just outside of the top eight might illuminate which decks to keep an eye on as well.

This has been really great having all of these podcasts coming out lately, thanks!

[ajfirecracker]

I had skipped the Ito / DeMars match initially and this podcast convinced me to go back and watch it. I highly recommend anyone else to do the same - that match is dense with interesting decisions.

[brianpk80]

Very enjoyable podcast so far.  I'm about halfway through.  Thank you for all of the kind words.  Regarding the Mental Misstep inquired about in the sideboard, I think of it this way: Most blue decks play 3-4 Misstep and an additional land in the sideboard.  I begin game 1 slightly pre-boarded for Shop by running the 17th land main and putting the excess Misstep in the sideboard.  Hope that helps explain!

[CHA1N5]

Very enjoyable podcast so far.  I'm about halfway through.  Thank you for all of the kind words.  Regarding the Mental Misstep inquired about in the sideboard, I think of it this way: Most blue decks play 3-4 Misstep and an additional land in the sideboard.  I begin game 1 slightly pre-boarded for Shop by running the 17th land main and putting the excess Misstep in the sideboard.  Hope that helps explain!

Makes sense, thanks. Do you bring it in against Shops when you expect cage?

[brianpk80]

Very enjoyable podcast so far.  I'm about halfway through.  Thank you for all of the kind words.  Regarding the Mental Misstep inquired about in the sideboard, I think of it this way: Most blue decks play 3-4 Misstep and an additional land in the sideboard.  I begin game 1 slightly pre-boarded for Shop by running the 17th land main and putting the excess Misstep in the sideboard.  Hope that helps explain!

Makes sense, thanks. Do you bring it in against Shops when you expect cage?

No, 2x post-board where Cage is expected.  In the matches where I go through game 1 without revealing any Oath components (this has happened twice so far), both Missteps get boarded out. 

[Shax]

I am totally not into the Shop list with Hangerback Walker, card requires too many things to go it's way for Shops to thrive with it. This isn't even counting all the extra wins a composite list would bring if people just played it to be honest.

Its never the Workshop cards fault, but the workshop players for packing a poorly designed Shop strategy or losing die roll/ not getting better die rolls during the Swiss.

[ajfirecracker]

Hangarback Workshops absolutely dominated this tournament, despite failing to put up the last "W".

25% of the top 8 and top 32 of the biggest Vintage tournament ever simply cannot be dismissed analytically. If you want to prove that Hangarback is not "the real deal" there is no alternative now to going out there and crushing it.

[lizardking1545]

I had skipped the Ito / DeMars match initially and this podcast convinced me to go back and watch it. I highly recommend anyone else to do the same - that match is dense with interesting decisions.

Where did you watch that match?  Card Titan only has matches 4-6, 8-finals uploaded on YouTube.  I was really wanting to see all the other rounds!

[CHA1N5]

I had skipped the Ito / DeMars match initially and this podcast convinced me to go back and watch it. I highly recommend anyone else to do the same - that match is dense with interesting decisions.

Where did you watch that match?  Card Titan only has matches 4-6, 8-finals uploaded on YouTube.  I was really wanting to see all the other rounds!

http://www.twitch.tv/cardtitan/profile

[nedleeds]

http://www.twitch.tv/cardtitan/v/12859666

Starts roughly there ... they chopped up some of the videos for YouTube but it's not complete. Be nice if they were chopped up by match with titles e.g. "Stallone vs. JCVD - Oath vs. Oath". But I'm happy we have video at all, complaining about free entertainment is low brow.

(before anyone kills Randy, he already apologized for not acknowledging Ito as a former champion)

As for the actual podcast, thank you. It was enjoyable and lengthy. After hearing the analysis and playing in the event I think things are balanced just fine. For adamant "blue players" to complain about a perceived Shop match-up while having 3-4 Mental Misderps, Flusterstorm, Misdirection, and in some cases red blasts in their main deck is disingenuous. I'm not sure what these complainers want the format to become? A giant orgy of Mental Missteps over removal and cantrips? A homogeneous bath of power blue and counter magic? I get that a shop decks best draw often results in an uninteractive match, but so does Oath go from the perspective of many prospective decks. Have we come so far from the days of 4 x Disenchant? The same complainers seem entrenched in their stance of playing almost no maindeck removal. Play an EE, play a Wear/Tear. Seems like Kevin had this in mind with 2 maindeck EE, a Hurkyl's in addition to the ever present Dack.

The discussion of a shop banning, or a gush banning reminds me of the atheist watching the Christian, the Jew and the Muslim argue about whose book written by the creator is correct. Imagine the argument from the perspective of the guy wanting to play GWB? He thinks you are all nuts.

I agree that Ito likely was gunning for other shops decks. I did the same, I mained 3 Crucible of Worlds. I was rewarded with Shops, Shops, Shops, Hatebears, Shops, Shops as my 6 rounds (dropping at 4-2 to catch lunch at Reading). I still managed to lose twice to shops, round one on the back of the aforementioned uninteractive on the draw 'shops hand' where I mulliganed and was locked out by a chalice. But you know what, I could have Ratchet Bombs, I didn't ... so I got destroyed. My second shop loss in round 6 was highly interactive and interesting ... I won game one on the draw (gasp!). Lost game 2 and managed to lose game 3 on the play despite a strong opener.

[lizardking1545]

I had skipped the Ito / DeMars match initially and this podcast convinced me to go back and watch it. I highly recommend anyone else to do the same - that match is dense with interesting decisions.

Where did you watch that match?  Card Titan only has matches 4-6, 8-finals uploaded on YouTube.  I was really wanting to see all the other rounds!

http://www.twitch.tv/cardtitan/profile

Thanks!

[data]

I was hoping, when you reviewed Robert Greene's Grixis Thieves list, that you would comment on the absence of mental misstep.  I suppose Workshop was bound to show up in droves at Vintage Champs, so it may have been motivated by a desire to reduce the number of dead cards versus shops, but I would have liked hearing analysis regardless.

Great show, as usual.  Thanks for taking the time to put together a quality episode.

[voltron00x]

Cross-posting this from the comments of the podcast page:

I wanted to offer some thoughts on this podcast.

First, again, I thought this was an excellent podcast and will serve as a very good recap of this event, including the strategic shifts in the metagame occurring just ahead of the tournament and how folks approached the tournament itself in light of those shifts.

I particularly liked a few sections from this podcast and wanted to take a few minutes to write down a few thoughts.

The discussion on Engineered Explosives and the Sunburst mechanic with regard to common interactions with Workshops as well as Mental Misstep was excellent; this is a great example of something that helps players get an actionable improvement to both their understanding of some specific cards, and more generally with regard to how some of M:TG's rules interact. Same goes for Shattering Spree under Trinisphere and the Mystic Remora draw being optional.

As an extension of this thought process, it might be good feedback for the judge team for Eternal Weekend to take note of some of these interactions - which occur in Vintage quite frequently - and ensure that the judges for next year, from the head judge down, get to spend some additional time focusing on having a clear understanding of cost modification via Thorn/Sphere/Lodestone and 3sphere, and upkeep triggers like Smokestack and Wire, etc. From the stories relayed in the podcast, it sounds like these were the main source of questionable/problematic judge rulings.

I'd love to hear Kevin talk more about Mystic Remora. This is a card I played heavily for about 6 months in a Remora Gro build with Gush that was popular in the NE for a time in 2011 (including a win with 4x Remora: http://morphling.de/top8decks.... and one thing I found while playing it is that a surprisingly large percentage of players, when faced with this card, have no idea what to do, and make consistently baffling decisions. It was one of the main reasons I played it, frankly, as I felt like I got free wins from opponents just being completely flummoxed by the card. (Somewhat humorously at least to me, I was chastised at the time for trying to play both Remora and Gush together, but sometimes you just want to play all the best draw engines... this deck also played Dark Confidant - greedy, greedy.)

Steve, I spent about 3 hours playing your deck last night against a stock Mentor deck, where I felt highly favored, and against Will Magrann's list from Champs, where even after sideboard I felt highly unfavored (with the note that my draws were quite poor and my opponents were uniformly good). It is an interesting and pretty elegant design though I feel like in the NE, the approach for Workshops might need to be tweaked to account for regional preference.

Regarding Dredge, to the extent that you're able to do so, it would be interesting to see if there's any type of correlation between versions that performed vs. those that did not; for instance, was the quantity of Ichorids or Petrified Fields in any way statistically relevant, or did the transformative versions do better or worse than the traditional ones (assuming a statistically relevant quantity of transformative builds were in the field). I worked with Mark Hornung, Brad Granberry, and Brian Durkin on our list, which was an built on Sullivan Brophy's from the NYSE (and in fact my list was 73/75 of his for the event). While I dropped at 3-2 after my second loss in round 5, Brian made top 32 (I think losing a top 8 win and in), Mark made top 64, and Brad just missed top 64 at 69th, so I think there's still plenty of reason to believe that experienced Dredge players who had arguably the "right" list still did well at this event.

Looking forward to your next podcast!

[JACO]

Regarding the scenarios section, discussing Hornung vs. Duke G3 (match available here on YouTube), you guys both missed the obvious easy kill for Reid, even in light of Mark's Leyline of the Void in play. Well, obvious to me at least upon seeing the board/hand. After resolving Timetwister, Reid draws:
Sol Ring
Mana Vault
Badlands
Tendrils of Agony
Wheel of Fortune
Memory Jar
Vampiric Tutor

His board is:
Underground Sea (tapped)
Mox Sapphire (tapped)
Lotus Petal (untapped)
Chrome Mox (no imprint)

He has 1 black mana floating. Rather than screwing around with Yawgmoth's Bargain or Mind's Desire, Reid should have just used the remaining black mana floating to cast Vampiric Tutor for Hurkyl's Recall. To our other readers/listeners, can you find the deterministic kill?
.
.
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.
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Use the floating black mana to cast Vampiric Tutor for Hurkyl's Recall. Untap, and draw Hurkyl's Recall. Play Badlands, and tap it to cast Sol Ring (Storm 1), and tap Sol Ring to cast Mana Vault (Storm 2), floating 1 colorless mana. Tap Mana Vault to float 4 colorless mana total, then tap Mox Sapphire (U4) to cast Hurkyl's Recall (Storm 3), floating 3 colorless mana. Play Lotus Petal (Storm 4), Sol Ring (Storm 5, 2 colorless mana floating), Mana Vault (Storm 6, 1 colorless mana floating), Mox Sapphire (Storm 7), and Chrome Mox (Storm 8, imprint Wheel of Fortune if you wish). Tap Sol Ring and Mana Vault for 5 colorless to cast Memory Jar (Storm 9, 1 colorless floating still). Tap Mox Sapphire (U), Underground Sea (B), sacrifice Lotus Petal (B), and tap Chrome Mox (R) for RUBB+1 colorless and cast Tendrils of Agony (Storm 10, still had a mana floating). Game Blouses.

You mentioned Hurkyl's in regards to pumping up the storm count for this massive Desire + Time Walk junk, but Hurkyl's was the answer for generating a large enough storm count to simply ignore the Leyline of the Void in play. It looks like Reid missed that line as well.

[ajfirecracker]

The only problem that I can see with that line is Cabal Therapy - Mark was able to resolve a Therapy that could only win by naming Vampiric Tutor or Tendrils of Agony. Under your line, I think Mark wins by naming Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Memory Jar, or Tendrils of Agony. At the very least, hitting Sol Ring / Mana Vault would put Reid into the "Time Walk inside a Jar" situation that Steve and Kevin mentioned.

[Space_Stormy]

I thought Jaco beat me to it! I also saw a very particular line that I think I prefer over Reid's and Jaco's.  Since it was game 2 I am unsure if he would even keep in Hurkly's Recall against his dredge opponent as it was game 3 and he knew the hate to beat was Leyline of the Void.  To help out they did post his decklist in this feature: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/vintagechamp15/quick-questions-2015-08-23  He brought in Tormod's Crypt in some number so I don't think he still had it in his deck but if he did that was definitely an effective line.  Mine is similar and was also a kill with the cards drawn.  Since you see the cards he draws with the Bargain you are able to piece the other line together.  So the discussion stems from what to do post Timetwister where you have this board state:



Reid's hand is Sol Ring, Tendrils of Agony, Mana Vault, Wheel of Fortune, Badlands, Vamp Tutor, Memory Jar.  From here there are a decent amount of paths to go on but I see one with Chain of Vapor that seems to be much more efficient than investing 6 mana into a Yawgmoth's Bargain.  So I agree with playing the Sol Ring and the Mana Vault and then we get into his second upkeep with Vampiric Tutor into this board state where I think more decisions are available:



You have 7 Mana on the table and 1 more in your hand in the case of badlands.  You have all the gas you need since you have Wheel in your hand and if you deal with the Leyline you have your kill card as well so the path becomes get Leyline out of there and to get enough mana so that you can cast all of your Wheel cards.  So tutoring for Chain of Vapor opens up the following:

Play Badlands, Tap Mox Sapphrie, Badlands and Mana Vault for 3UR in pool, cast Chain of Vapor targeting Mox Sapphrie, sacrificing Badlands to copy it targeting Mana Vault, sacrifice Underground Sea to copy it targeting Leyline.  Replay Mox Sapphrie and spend 1 Colorless to replay Mana vault and cast Wheel leaving 1 Colorless left floating and all your other mana untapped which is Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Mox Sapphrie and Lotus Petal.  Wheel gets you Gitaxian Probe, Chrome Mox, Time Walk, Mana Crypt, Swamp, Dark Ritual, Necropotence.  Cast Gitaxian Probe which draws you Ancestral Recall.  Ancestral Recall draws you Dark Ritual, Gitaxian Probe, Imperial Seal.  Sacrifice Lotus Petal for B, cast both Dark Rituals for 1BBBBB in pool.  Imperal Seal tutors for Yawmoth's Will and then cast the second Gitaxian Probe to draw it.  From there just recast all your Dark Rituals, Lotus Petal, and then the Tendrils out of the GY for the win. You can also play the Memory Jar with Mana Vault and Sol ring as insurance before you cast Wheel but that seems a bit too reliant on drawing Dark Rituals/Black Lotus and other Moxes.

[JACO]

The only problem that I can see with that line is Cabal Therapy - Mark was able to resolve a Therapy that could only win by naming Vampiric Tutor or Tendrils of Agony. Under your line, I think Mark wins by naming Sol Ring, Mana Vault, Memory Jar, or Tendrils of Agony. At the very least, hitting Sol Ring / Mana Vault would put Reid into the "Time Walk inside a Jar" situation that Steve and Kevin mentioned.

I'm well aware that Therapy could disrupt this, or any other line, but you have to play to your best outs. If he has blind Therapy for Tendrils, of double Therapy for example, you just lose immediately anyway, so I think giving yourself the best deterministic play possible is the correct way to proceed. If he's only able to blind Therapy once I think it's more likely to mirror a previous play and blind Therapy something like Dark Ritual, or barring that, something from either Black Lotus/Yawgmoth's Will/Chain of Vapor triumvirate.

[fsecco]

Just wanted to say I loved this chunk of 3-4 podcasts you guys released the last few months. It's a blast to hear them! Keep it up and I hope all the episodes Steve listed at the end get made still this year!

[evouga]

I just finished the first half of the podcast; excellent so far.

I'd caution against drawing too many conclusions from the "penetration ratio" of the different archetypes. The lesser-played decks like Bomberman are typically piloted by long-time fans of the deck that are Vintage experts and extremely experienced with how to play the deck. I would expect these players to do better than average even if their decks are not especially positioned to take advantage of the metagame.

On the other hand decks like Dredge, Kuldotha Shops, and Oath are common "entry points" into the format and so I would expect them to have low penetration ratio simply due to the larger number of less-competent and inexperienced players piloting them.

[Smmenen]

I was hoping, when you reviewed Robert Greene's Grixis Thieves list, that you would comment on the absence of mental misstep.  I suppose Workshop was bound to show up in droves at Vintage Champs, so it may have been motivated by a desire to reduce the number of dead cards versus shops, but I would have liked hearing analysis regardless.

Great show, as usual.  Thanks for taking the time to put together a quality episode.

That's a good point.  I guess it just goes to show that some decks try to fight on different axes. 

If anything, this Vintage Champs proves that nothing is sacrosanct when it comes to the conventional wisdom (4 Force of Will be damned! ).

[Jostin123]

This was one of the better podcasts for the SMIP series.  I know it went longer than usual, but the amount of information newer players and vintage enthusiasts can pull from wasa extensive and very helpful in helping those who dont frequently play vintage gain a better understanding of what happened at Worlds.

There was a section where you all mentioned judge calls.  I agree that some of the judges blew calls that should have been made.  I want to specifically talk about the Roland judge call issue.  I sat immediately to his right when I was playing my opponent, Lenny,  in round 8 (who was sitting to the left of Roland's opponent).  Roland's opponent actually interrupted our game as well when it happened.

Lenny and I were playing out our second turns when we heard Roland's opponent get loud and try to tap down immediately after Roland played his tangle wire, and saw Roland get confused / frustrated / cautious in explaining how it works.  His opponent says something to the effect of "these don't tap down on your turn" and Roland saying something to the effect of "exactly, they tap down on YOUR turn", at which point, Lenny and I look at each other, as tension started to set in on that match.  I looked over to see that on roland's opponent's side, he had a Lodestone, a tapped mox, a tapped workshop, and a chalice with no dice counters on them, thus deducing that Roland's opponent played Workshop, mox, lodestone, chalice on 0, and passed. 

Roland had a workshop and a tangle wire with 4 counters on it, the same tangle wire the opponent was clamoring about a few seconds earlier. 

At this point, it's still my turn in my game when I hear Roland stop him.  Lenny and I both look over and see that he rushed into his draw step, and then Roland's opponent called the judge on himself.  Roland explained that he proceeded to draw and skipped his upkeep, and he said that Roland didn't remind him of the trigger (which he did, from the previous turn's back and forth).  The floor judge made the right call, and he appealed saying "where I'm from, that's a missed trigger, and we handle it differently".  The head judge  overrulled it.  At which point Roland was furious, and his opponent got to smash in with Lodestone and drop either another lodestone or a lock piece.  Roland got legally cheated.

I remember Lenny's name, because after the head judge walked away, Lenny leaned over to Roland's opponent and said, "not for nothing, but that was a dick-move".  I felt bad about the play.  I wanted to dat something, but a few years ago, I reported a similar issue where a player had misrepresented facts to a judge and I pulled the judge aside after he walked away from the table but before he made a ruling, and got a warning for it because as an active participant of the tournament, any imput I give could affect the ruling, and thus the match, and I'm not supposed to get involved as matches could have a direct or indirect affect of my placement on the standings (it was described afterwards that my approaching the judge could be interpreted as a form of cheating).  Spectators have no benefit from these judge calls, and are thus able to call these things out.  That was a few years ago, but I didn;t want to get thrown out for trying to do the right thing.  It really sucks.

Regardless, I don't like how it went down, and can personally attest that, had both judges known about all the back and forth when Roland played the tangle wire, the call may have gone against Roland's opponent as cheating. Roland did point out the triggers, about 15 seconds before.  His opponent was just desperate to win a match against a former world champ.

[Smmenen]

We received two emails from judges about our discussion of this incident, and I appreciate the report you gave, as another witness.

I am troubled by the fact that the floor rules don't seem to adequately address some of the situations that are arising in Vintage adequately or that there is simply confusion about how to handle them as a procedural matter.