41 players played in the post-restriction, pre-Labor Day Vintage Challenge. Congratulations to WinRyder for winning with an impressive 9-0 record piloting delver! Paradoxical decks made up the largest chunk of the field. The "next level" decks packing null rod effects did much better, however.

Thank you @brianpk80 for not having tech issues and being able to record the decks not in the top 32 for us.

Top 32 Decklists:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-challenge-2017-09-03

Archetypes:

Tags:

Spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oQo1dOO4A2MO_y3YmE5jQyWDTQoetBxmwD0Dj8ve8XY/edit?usp=sharing

Does the Null Rod tag include Stony Silence?

@smmenen Yeah it includes any deck with null rod or stony silence in the maindeck.

Playing Bane of Progress was my biggest pleasant surprise for tech that worked well. Kelly oath's main plan is hard to execute vs shops and Bane is really good at turning games around, especially with how hard shops is pressuring your life total these days.

41 players.
12 Paradox / 9 shops.

Great format.

@13nova you're trippin. PO had a 41% win percentage and only had 1 in top 8.

The format is miles better than before, based on this event.

@13nova

Sprinkle in the Dack/Delve singleton Mentor decks and it's literally exactly the same as the pre-restriction, "nightmare" meta

@desolutionist said in Vintage Challenge - 9/2/2017:

@13nova

Sprinkle in the Dack/Delve singleton Mentor decks and it's literally exactly the same as the pre-restriction, "nightmare" meta

Shops was 45% of top 8s and is now 25%. It not even close to the same.

@13nova BUG fish had a 60% win against the field alone. To dismiss the 20 players not piloting shops or P.O. is a joke and more of a recurring problem than the current meta.

This looks really good. Everything with big representation has reasonable win rates. The outlandish win rates are mostly from small sample decks. The closest to high win % and decent sample is pyromancer with a sample of 4.

Sample of 4 isn't worth panicking over and pyro is fundamentally just not that scary. Overall I feel pretty good about these results.

Once we get to a few weeks of data I'll do some aggregation and run the theorictcal gametheory metagame evolution paths again, but I think it's a bit early for that now. Things need some time to settle a bit and builds are in flux.

It is incredibly common for established, tuned lists to do better than new, experimental lists immediately after a format shakeup. The fact that people felt more comfortable playing Outcome or Workshops than something untested in the very first week of this new meta shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.

@desolutionist
I don't understand what some people expect - the rise of completely new archetypes? People abandoning Shops or the "Dack-Delve-Engine"? The restrictions happened last week and all we have is a few League 5-0s and a rather small premier, aka no relevant sample size. Also, I think that if you interpret the results things look really healthy: old archetypes can still be played with success but they dropped in overall win percentage. Delver, an archetype that was pushed to tier 3 territory suddenly was able to rack up 9-0 again.
Let's wait before becoming too vocal about nonsense restrictions - they weren't meant to invalidate archetypes but to end the previous power struggle.

Yeah. Anecdotaly some of the more undeveloped decks that I've been testing in the tournament practice room have been faring a lot better post restriction. The blue decks without mentor just don't clock you as fast, and that gives more time for nonsense like bazaar squee to create value. Likewise it seems like shops has fewer of the turn one lock piece turn two lock piece turn three lock threat you never play a spell hands. It's a lot easier to play through one effect than two or three.

I don't think that either of the two decks in testing now will be "the next big thing" but I can tell there is more room now. Someone is going to find something to do with that extra room.

The metagame looks overall more healthy and certainly feels more open from a gameplay and deckbuilding perspective. Shops are still viable but feel less opressive. Aggro control/tempo decks like delver and bug fish are back in the metagame. Big Blue seems to be in a better place now that we can diversify wincons. Outcome has almost 30% of the field but it's win percentage doesn't translate, so it's likely that people chose outcome as a default deck in an "unknown" environment and with time the deck will go back to a more reasonable % of the meta. Even dredge gets some love in the top 8. Only notable absence is Dark rituals, which were expected to become more viable with the unrestriction of Yawg Bargain. As null rod becomes more prevalent to react to outcome, we might see a shift from outcome storm to ritual storm, or at least one can hope.

Great job on this one for the DCI, looks like we are steering back towards the "golden age" metagame that we had before Khans.

Gush was correct to hit as well, judging by URx delver's performance, if probe and gush were still unrestricted it is likely that delver would still be in a position to dominate.

This is absurd...can we please allow more than one 41 person event on a holiday weekend before we start leaping to conclusions about metagames?

Here's the meta breakdown from the first challenge after the restriction of Gush:

You can see that the numbers of metagamePostGush are very similar to what we have now in metagamePostMentor, except that metagamePostGush is actually much more diverse (more combo, more Oath, etc.)

The metagamePostMentor data, which is less diverse, suggest that the metagame will become quickly consolidated and even less diverse as people are able to netdeck more. (assuming that the metagame will behave in a similar trend, which have no reason to assume otherwise)

The given is that the metagame will "tighten up" and become less diverse since the evidence over the last 6 months suggests that netdecking is the most prominent form of deck construction. Since we are already at a less diverse starting point, the new metagame will undoubtedly be less diverse than the previous metagame (before the restriction of Mentor).

@desolutionist The metagame homogenizing is hardly a given....

@chubbyrain

How many restrictions has Shops had? After every Shop restriction over the last few years, it begins on the decline and and eventually emerges as the best deck. Looking at the performance of Shops at this event, it's not unreasonable to estimate the meta is headed for a similar spot. The Jeskai Mentor deck can go back to what it looked like in some of its earlier forms with cards like Stoneforge Mystic and Lightning Bolts to combat BUG Fish and and Delver. I expect the URW decks to not lose much steam. I think the decks are a little more attractive to me without the Mentor madness, but there definitely won't be any drastic changes to the meta besides Shops eventually climbing the ranks.

For the next event, the top 16 will play the same decks. The bottom players will netdeck those decks. And the middle pack will probably tune their decks up and switch decks more akin to the top decks. Maybe a handful of players bring something new to the table, and hopefully get a top 8, which might stick but most likely not.

@desolutionist So I think it is unreasonable to presume to know where the meta is going to be going over the next 3 months from this one tournament, especially considering the 5-0 decks from the leagues. There haven't been shops in every one of those despite being a deck that is easy to include due to having very different cards from the blue decks that have been 5-0ing (this is apparently part of the consideration for which ones to include). Looking at all the lists people have been able to 5-0 with, including things like white trash for the first time since white eldrazi happened I think, a stoneblade spell queller deck, a bunch of tinker vault ket bot decks, grixis thieves, and even in this tournament RUG delver, which I know hasn't been present in a long time. It looks to me like the diversity has gone way way up.

Yeah shops may still be reasonable, but I think in no way is the idea of it as the best deck being supported by data at this juncture. I have been doing some playtesting, and while the deck still has broken draws, it is also way more susceptible to bad openers and mulligans to oblivion. This seems most important in big tournaments, and makes it in my head closer to the "prison" or chalice aggro style decks in legacy, and less like the behemoth that shops had been in vintage over the past couple years.