Vintage Challenges - September

Introduction

It's pretty clear that players (and Wizards of the Coast) have divergent opinions on the role of data in Magic. My opinion is that data is an imperfect representation of reality. I would much rather have as much data as possible, while understanding the limitations of such data. That said, I think we have reached a point where we as a community might be oversaturated with these weekly reports and the conversations that follow. Ryan and I are both committed to collecting Vintage data from as many sources as possible. What we remain split on is how often to disseminate that data. We could continue to publish weekly reports or we could combine them into monthly reports like this one. Please chime in the comments below.

Top 32 Lists

9-2-17
9-9-17
9-16-17
9-23-17
9-30-17

Metagame Breakdown

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Xerox is what we are using to refer to former Gush decks - most are Young Pyromancer based, either with Delver or splashing white for Mentor. Some are playing Seeker of the Way... Fish decks refer to Bug Fish, Combo is kind of a grab bag for DPS decks - most combo decks have been absorbed into Paradoxical. Tom's winning Rector Flash list is the source of the 87.5% MWP on 9/23.

Thanks to Ryan for his considerable help as usual. Jonathan Suarez also helped with data collection for the 7-23 challenge and it was much appreciated.

brianpk80

Monthly seems best to me, as it can then be a highly anticipated thread without as much cantankerousness. Thanks for your diligent reporting (and Ryan & Jonathan Suarez as well!).

Winterstar

I think I like the monthly format.

Tom Bombadil

Seems like a pretty diverse meta. I would probably differentiate between Delver Xerox and Control Xerox (just with Pyromancers and/or Mentor) as the first one plays a more aggressive role.

kistrand

I like this monthly format as well. It has the benefit of larger N and also provides an easy to follow description of trends during the month.

ravager101

Monthly format is great, appreciate the work that you guys do!

cutlex

This is amazing! I echo the sentiment of a monthly thread being better. I am curious if a 'unique players' field would be a significant investment? It would be interesting as a sort of 'normalizer'.

@chubbyrain said in Vintage Challenges - September:

Fish decks refer to Bug Fish

This stings, Matt. Amazing data regardless.

As long as you don't let a community full of Chicken Littles kill these reports forever then I'm fine with whatever frequency you choose.

@cutlex 124/219 players were unique. It's easy to do (really just a bunch of copy/paste), so I'll try to include it subsequent reports. Thanks for the input!

diophan

@hierarchnoble

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@hierarchnoble You were the one exception

ydl

For each of the weekly challenges, where does one get the count of participants? For example, the TC Decks report for the 10/8/2017 challenge didn't show the total number of players.

Smmenen

Did you guys calculate matchup win ratios, like you normally do? Also, is there a spreadsheet or a link to the spreadsheet?

Thanks for this, guys.

diophan

@smmenen https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jzlMEdKZXUgt6-EeCnf-AhiZFRX_XAD1SvRVQWHMAXc/edit?usp=sharing

Everything there is copied from other spreadsheets. I just did the matchup winrates so hopefully those are correct.

@ydl We get the full metagame data by manually observing the tournament as it is taking place (which is a pain).