Introduction

Wizards of the Coast announced the beginning of weekly large tournaments on Magic Online. Formats include Modern, Legacy, Standard, 1v1 Commander, and, of course, Vintage. Today was the first such event, and though Ryan and I were unable to play, we were helped out by Sean Ottaway and Shawn Anthony in collecting relevant data. Before we launch into that, weekly events represent both a large amount of data and more work for Ryan and I. If you would like to help us with data collection going forward, please shoot us a message.

The Top 8

Top 8 decklists will most likely be posted tomorrow, though seeing as there was some...difficulty in setting up the events, it is possible this might not be the case. Decklists: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-challenge-2017-05-22.

1. Mourning Palace - Grixis Thieves
2. Trucky333 - UW Landstill
3. Lexor19 - White Eldrazi
4. TheLastGnu - UW Stoneblade
5. UnrestrictBrainstorm - Jeskai Mentor
6. Jazza - Ravager Shops
7. Tattoocek - Jeskai Delver
8. JBrandersen - Pitch Dredge

Metagame and Match Win Percentages

Archetype classification after a major restriction is an evolving process. We tried to be as descriptive and complete as possible between archetypes and tags. In generally, we tried to lump similar decks together in archetypes while attaching additional tags to describe decks in broader terms. For instance, the Mentor archetype consisted of the remnants of Gush Mentor - Mentor + Cantrips + Delve spells. It did not include Paradoxical Mentor or DPS Storm-Mentor lists. All of these decks are tagged as Mentor then. So if the question you have is "How many Mentor decks running the Preordain draw package were in the field and how did they do?", look to the Archetypes. If your question is how many decks were running at least 1 Mentor?", look to the Tags. If you want to look at the raw data, it's right here. And if you have a better system, let us know...

Its worth mentioning that Jazza went 6-0 in the swiss and then was a no-show for Top 8 because at first there was no top 8.

@desolutionist said in Vintage Challenge - 5/22/17:

Its worth mentioning that Jazza went 6-0 in the swiss and then was a no-show for Top 8 because at first there was no top 8.

It was weird...he lost game 1 in 2 minutes and game 2 in 1 minute according to the match details. That's not how typical no shows or drops present - typically 10 minutes inactivity then dropped.

@ChubbyRain I would like to help out with data collection. Email me at reachthesky61385@gmail.com

I'm happy with how I did, but its kind of crappy that Wizards tainted it by not having the top 8 work correctly. The top 8 pairings were not by standings, they were random. And if someone didn't make it over, even worse. I think by the way they messaged, if you did better in top 8 than standings they paid the diff. So if Jazza was 1st is standings, he probably got paid 1st prize payout and was no point in playing out the top 8. He probably conceded to his opponent since he could not win anything more. That what I would have done.

Although, at the end of the swiss I got paid the 5-8 prize support, and then when I won 1st, I got paid the 1st place prize support on top of it, not the difference like they said. Not that I'm gonna complain...

@mourningpalace this makes sene. Jazza had nothing to gain.

I got my t8 prize once but no bonus prize.

@mourningpalace

Did you get a supplemental prize or did you get more than they advertised?

@desolutionist I got what was advertised for making t8 in the EDH Challenge.

@The-Atog-Lord

I got 300 play points and 10 treasure packs for 15th place. And as far as I know, everyone in top 32 got their entry back in play points.

When the event ended I got 400 play points and 25 chests. When I won 1st, they gave me 100 play points (which was correct) and 75 more chests (also correct), but then they gave me another 25 chests. So I ended up with an extra 25 treasure chests. (I also got the Amohnket set). So was just extra chests I ended up with.

Basically I ended up with 125 chests instead of 100. Everything else was correct (not sure on qp's, don't really pay attention to those).

@mourningpalace said in Vintage Challenge - 5/22/17:

Basically I ended up with 125 chests instead of 100. Everything else was correct (not sure on qp's, don't really pay attention to those).

The burning inquiry is how were the Treasure Chests?

I don't open them, I just sell them. Find they are usually junk... so I got 290 tickets for them.

@mourningpalace

People have been coming out ahead by opening them. You can get things like foil Rishadan Port

@desolutionist True. Or you could get a bunch of garbage rares and commons. It's a gamble. I prefer the guaranteed value. I was opening them all for a while and rarely got anything good. Maybe I'm just unlucky.

@mourningpalace You were not unlucky. You can open them and get way ahead but it is not normal. Goatbots on their website has the EV of them. The EV is 2.23 and you can sell them for more then that. You are literally throwing away value by opening them, unless you value the thrill of playing the lottery.

@ChubbyRain Question on your data in the tags section... It shows Vault/Key as only one deck, with 0 wins and 4 losses. I ran vault/key and went 8-1. I don't think the data pull worked correctly for individual cards?

Thanks for doing this. These metrics are amazing, per usual.

@mourningpalace

You have to type them in manually. There were multiple Thieves decks and Time Vault was a forgotten tag for those decks.