Survival
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Ok, what about Selvala, Heart of the Wilds. She seems a bit slow, but I think in a grindy match where you can get down one HO or VV it just enables crazy lines or a hardcast of big boys. Thoughts?
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@rat3de Grindy matchups remind me of lightning bolt. I don't know, seems slow and fragile. But maybe with some more thought on it, it could be made viable, but I don't see it right now.
There's one thing I was wondering... Currently we are using 2 kinds of builds: counters and taxing (which can be divided into the old stony silence or the grudge version). And I honestly think those builds are near optimal for it's purpose. I'm not saying there isn't space for innovation. I just think that innovation probably will have to take other routes.
One of those routes may be something focused on assembling the combo, with resources to make it work earlier, search for it, destroy hate. I think it's way more viable now as we got the catch-all assassin's trophy, as every other card has some weak spot, like nature's claim not destroying jailer and priest, decay not destroying leyline, etc. Maybe get back to the idea of crop rotation? Lately I feel like my recalls aren't getting countered and my missteps are not getting much resistence. Maybe that's time for it to come back. With black we got demonic tutor too, and other really great cards.
I'm not saying I will go to that direction, but for others who have energy to pursuit another build (I'm focusing on getting better at the BUG, maybe I'll try others soon too), I think maybe you should change your approach. Just maybe. And maybe there is another way of building countering/taxing survival decks better than the ones we have, but I'm feeling there will be only small improvements, maybe other approachs to the SB, but that the core is pretty close to ideal.
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@gutocmtt I agree with this completely. Bant/Stony build is consistent, has good mana, good plan against shops in the SB, tries to dodge Tinker/Mentor from PO. Grudge build has greedier mana, should dunk on shops, has a reasonable plan against PO, still tries to dodge mentor but can red blast tinkers. BUG versions are weakest vs shops (still not bad though!) and have a delver-y plan against most of the field. This versions feels strongest against PO, Oath, and the mirror.
as far as innovation goes, there is probably some small tuning you can do for each of these, but improvements will be in the margins. The core is definitely very powerful and the flex cards can be adjusted to fight various metas.
if you want to take the deck in a slightly different direction you could build the flex cards to be more proactive and combo oriented. A card that hasn't been mentioned much that is very powerful in conjunction with survival is Lion's Eye Diamond - you can crack LED with a survival activation on the stack for a pile of VV's. Heavy crop rotation builds could also be viable as in a Bazaar focused deck. You could also maybe try for a dredge/survival mashup?
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@gutocmtt The interesting point of innovation I could imagine is a BG base without Bazaar. Just rely on Survival and play actual lands instead. Probably not the best plan though.
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@kaluma I have actually been thinking recently about the Dredge/Survival mashup, I think it would be super interesting but just a bad version of both. It would be super hard I think to trigger VV in dredge because you are not casting the creatures most of the time. Also @wfain I agree that could be cool but I think it may be to slow to function properly.
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time to burn some play points on this pile
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@kaluma Why not YawgWill? It allows you to cast Hollow Ones from the graveyard potentially for free after a wheel?
"Pitch Dredge is the worst thing to happen to Vintage this decade." - 2015 Vintage Champion Brian Kelly
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@rat3de it would mess with your vengevines after casting it, but interesting idea! going harder on fast mana opens up tinker as a card too... another good plan vs shops, potentially fast clock against other decks?
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@kaluma that is fairly similar to the first version I went 5-0 with actually. We’re going backwards
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@kaluma You could also run Dark Deal as pseudo Wheel of Fortune if you want more wheel effects.
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I played 2 or 3 leagues with deep analysis and I remember seeing it about 6 times. One of them was in a hand that I had to mulligan (due to having it and not having survival/bazaar, but it would lead to the same outcome with TC), about 3 times it was great, and in two of them it made my opponent use his GY hate in response to fetch activation/playing mox to cast it, which is... acceptable. In all of the good situations I had bazaar.
Being realistic, without bazaar, we can barely cast TC. And in games without bazaar where we can cast TC, we probably will already have the 4 mana to cast deep analysis. Didn't feel like an awesome card, but I don't see how that slot gets better. It can make some bad situations worse by drawing into it, but it's also another nice hit for the upkeep bazaar with no cards in hand.
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Eternal Weekend results:
Bant Survival = 64% win rate (7 players)
RGwu Survival = 58% win rate (4 players)
Other Survival = ~63.6% win rate (4 players: Junk, Bug, 2 4c lists) -
@spook I assume GWUR is Other, here. Does anything else fall in that category?
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@drstreetmention I had written the colors backwards and updated my post, I got the info from the spreadsheet posted by Diophan
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@spook Well I probably should have been able to parse that properly anyway. Thanks for the breakdown.
If you already have this handy: how many of each variety were there?
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@drstreetmention edited the "original" post -- although going through the decklists right now, Paul Callis who played "Junk Survival" to a 6-2 record played the same 60 as the winning Asia Vintage Champs-- so it really was Bant.
Cleaning up the data and moving people to the right category:
Bant Survival = 65% win rate (8 players)
RGwu Survival = 55% win rate (6 players with 1 or more Ancient Grudge and Chewer)
Other Survival = 75% win rate (1 player: FOW Leovold / Misstep) -
@spook very interesting. Thanks.
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@kaluma said in Survival Salad:
time to burn some play points on this pile
That looks really cool. Let me know if your going to stream it.
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@spook said in Survival Salad:
@drstreetmention edited the "original" post -- although going through the decklists right now, Paul Callis who played "Junk Survival" to a 6-2 record played the same 60 as the winning Asia Vintage Champs-- so it really was Bant.
Cleaning up the data and moving people to the right category:
Bant Survival = 65% win rate (8 players)
RGwu Survival = 55% win rate (6 players with 1 or more Ancient Grudge and Chewer)
Other Survival = 75% win rate (1 player: FOW Leovold / Misstep)Thanks for puttting this together. Not surprising to me in the least--the RGwu versions are far more matchup dependent, and that's not as good in a huge tournament like Champs. Bant was simply ultra stable and did well. FoW Survival was me, and I finished 8-2 (with 1 loss to, of all things, Blood Moons), good for the casual 75%. That's not really any sample size.
What I see from this is that--back of the napkin--is that you've got enough sample size that you're about 80% certain that bant was better against the champs field than RGwu, and 0 statistical certainty about anything about FoW Survival.
That said--every single version is notably north of 50%, so I'm quite certain that we had the best deck in the room, with a very decent conversion rate to the top 8.
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@neo_altoid you could play a ham sandwich to top 32, as long as it has overpowered land(s) and some spicy mustard. So I’m not taking your result as worthwhile. But that is a good disclaimer for other people.
