I think it would be a good idea to have a dedicated deck discussion sub-forum. Especially around spoiler time, the strategy section is likely to be overwhelmed with single card discussion, potentially pushing current deck discussion off of the main page. Additionally, it will be much more difficult for new players to find a starting point for their deck lists when decks and other strategy are all lumped into one place.

I rather like the way it's handled at The Source:

• Deck discussion
• Format Discussion (includes articles and single card discussion)
• Community Discussion
• Tournament announcements and results
• Rules questions.

I'm hoping we're able to handle this with tags and filters, but you could be right, we're going to have to see how hard the site is to navigate once it starts filling up with content

Already now it's becoming difficult to navigate and find topics. I understand that the breaking up into pillars in the old TMD deck strategy was probably too split-up, but we need some categorization, and deck discussion and other strategic discussion should really be divided in my opinion.

@peterflugzeug I didn't really like that it was divided into pillars based on single card inclusion rather than overall baser strategy. There could be a better classification system.

I like the old pillar idea, that solves 80% of the trouble and then have a Misc Blue, Misc Hate Bears or some generic threads like that?

@defector It contributes to the idea that other strategies are somehow less valid.

I think it's reasonable to establish subforums with a series of bins:

Includes Mishra's Workshop
-> Shops
Includes Golgari Grave-Troll
-> Dredge
Includes 3+ Cavern of Souls
-> Critter Decks
Includes 3+ Force of Will
-> Blue-based Decks
Does not fit into any of the above bins
-> Combo

@AmbivalentDuck said:

I think it's reasonable to establish subforums with a series of bins:

Includes Mishra's Workshop
-> Shops
Includes Golgari Grave-Troll
-> Dredge
Includes 3+ Cavern of Souls
-> Critter Decks
Includes 3+ Force of Will
-> Blue-based Decks
Does not fit into any of the above bins
-> Combo

What about strategic elements at the top level and then linchpin cards (or pillars I guess) underneath that level?
I'd really like to get away from the idea that you need to play a pillar card to be valid. There's so many cards that have been printed since that paradigm was adopted.
You would have Shops as a heading under both aggro and under control and similarly with the other assigned "pillar" cards. They'd still be useful to classify decks just not in a way that overshadows the baser strategy of the deck. Really you're leveraging the effectiveness of that card to achieve a strategic goal in game not so much as basing your deck around drawing that one specific card in a lot of cases. For the record, I think your breakdown for classification system based on cards is accurate with the exception of combo. Classifying everything else as "combo" seems wrong to me.

At first I misread it as "Does not fit into any of the above bins" => Blue-based Deck ... Amusing.

@Aaron-Patten If you really want to do this well I'd say you're going to need to leave discretely defined archetypes. To really get information with deep meaning from this data, some sort of venn diagram system which acknowledges the overlapping nature of the interaction between cards, is going to have to happen. So long as we stick to "archetypes" as more than a way to facilitate a casual conversation (this term is born out of soft-sciences anyway), I think we're kinda stuck tail chasing on some nebulous categories. I'd look for a way to codify card usage and overlaps.

@Topical_Island Fair. I still don't think it's an insurmountable endeavor. I'm also pretty sure it'd be worth it to see what kind of strategies people would bring to the table if we were able to eliminate that bias the pillar paradigm engenders. How would you classify strategies without using pillar cards?

Casting Regeneration on this thread because there was some discussion in one of the FB groups a few days ago regarding adding subforums; In addition to the OP's list, I'd really like a separate sub for "Developing" strategies and decks, as well as a "Primers" sub.

Having "Developing" would hopefully encourage constructive discussion about strategies without clogging the Vintage Strategy forum with B- decklists for people who don't care to see it, and having a "Primers" section that is relatively clear of other kinds of content would make it a go-to section for how to play certain decks and a great place to send people who want good analysis and strategies for decks, as well as encourage people to fill the section (and TMD in general) with quality, well-thought-out content.

This also oddly solves thread-bury which I've noticed is a problem with the endless scrolling nature of the forum software, and because we have notifications in the top left, there's a way to stay updated about what's going on in the subforums.

@Brass-Man I like tags and I think that the tag overview page does a good bit of the work there, but tags on every thread will need to be enforced or something to make it work