Thank you to @the_unseen for collecting the data while Matt and I were at Eternal Weekend. Congratulations to glick for winning the tournament with an Esper Mentor list. 65 players registered for this month's P9 (62 of which showed up), which was a surprisingly impressive turnout considering the conflicts.

Top 16 Decklists:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-premier-2016-10-31

At a glance, there was an uptick in big blue and dredge (and a lot of gush). The big blue resurgance was largely due to paradoxical outcome. Note that we classified the storm PO decks as combo (similar to the deck Reid Duke played at Eternal Weekend) and classified the Mentor PO decks (similar to Stephen Menendian/Kevin Cron's deck from Eternal Weekend) and the Vault/Key PO decks as big blue.

Link to the googledoc:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rRd9VC7zJKoA0cGy-qjVLTwKMjc1NnUmFcHd6ji8dOI/edit?usp=sharing

As always, thanks to @ChubbyRain for help with the metagame analysis, especially in this busy week for results.

I would have a hard time grouping Paradoxical Outcome and Landstill decks under the same umbrella: vastly different roles, game plans, and vulnerabilities.

@BazaarOfBaghdad said:

I would have a hard time grouping Paradoxical Outcome and Landstill decks under the same umbrella: vastly different roles, game plans, and vulnerabilities.

Big blue references decks that play 8+ artifact mana sources. LANDSTILL is under "hard control".

Fair enough - my apologies and thanks for the clarification.

Any thoughts as to why Big Blue struggles against Oath, while Gush crushes it?

I tend to play either or, and the data listed here matches up with my general feeling about the matchup. I feel way behind when playing Paradoxical Mentor, and way ahead when playing Gush Mentor - but can't put my finger on the reason why.

As always, thanks for putting this together!

@TigersBadger said:

Any thoughts as to why Big Blue struggles against Oath, while Gush crushes it?

Because Big Blue is a lot worse than Gush

@wappla In this particular scenario, they had very similar winning percentages. I'm not following.

Yeah, they had similar winning percentages and Gush is almost 3x more popular. The metagame is structured to beat Gush because it's clearly the best deck and it still had a better winning percentage than fringe archetypes like Big Blue.

That doesn't actually answer my question about why big blue does so poorly against Oath specifically.

If you want to just bash the deck, you do you, but I would like an answer to that specific question rather than a dismissive response from someone.

Big Blue was 2-5 against Oath. That's called small sample size. Get a grip.

@wappla @TigersBadger

Small sample size is always a limitation when looking at MWP from single events. I haven't looked at individual lists for the Power 9 but given past events and personal experience, the following normally holds:

1. Gush is an incredibly consistent group of decks with a superior draw engine and either virtual card advantage from a small manabase or a bunch of planeswalkers. This allows you to adopt the control role and leverage the inherent inconsistency most Oath decks have into a dominating late game position. That and the movement to Mentor corresponds with a greater percentage of Containment Priests, which are incredible against all versions of Oath. I actually started running transformational SBs in various Oath decks as fighting against Mentor's hate and the consistency with which they can find them has been a losing proposition in testing. Or running Gushes of my own.

2. Big Blue decks are as inconsistent or more inconsistent than Oath decks. In generally, it's easier to assemble Oath + Orchard than Vault + Key or Tinker into Blightsteel without activating Oath, giving Oath an inherent advantage in the matchup. Individual cards out of Oath tend to be much better than their counterparts in the matchup. For instance, Ancient Grudge from Kelly or Odd Oath is great at attacking V/K and the Big Blue manabase. Abrupt Decay in other versions is also tremendous against Vault/Key. Thoughtseize is more devastating against Big Blue as it can throw a wrench in building towards Yawgmoth's Will or trying to assemble Tinker + Time Walk to one shot through an onboard Oath.

Transformational sideboards like take out all your creatures, use Oath to mill a Yawgmoth's Will combo?

@ajfirecracker said:

Transformational sideboards like take out all your creatures, use Oath to mill a Yawgmoth's Will combo?

Board out Oaths, board in 2 Mentors and relevant SB cards, play Gush Mentor in game 2.

@ChubbyRain You're ruining my secret tech.

@TigersBadger said:

That doesn't actually answer my question about why big blue does so poorly against Oath specifically.

If you want to just bash the deck, you do you, but I would like an answer to that specific question rather than a dismissive response from someone.

Gush decks in these lists include mentor which packs white. So you get StP, disenchant effects and containment priest to combat oath.