I think the top 16 presents an very interesting set of information to the argument. For one, we have 4 more ravager shops added to the tally out of 8 additional decks. That would certainly lend credence to the 'shops is OP' crowd. But at the same time we also add 4 different decks which shows a diversity. Stoneblade, landstill, blue moon and dredge. When you hit the top 16 (and in a tournament this size, top 8 vs top 16 is tie breakers which is more about how your opponents did than about how you did) we suddenly go from a 2 deck format to a 6 deck format.

No, the sky is NOT falling. Yes, we have a clear tier 1 deck in ravager shops - 7/16 is clearly the deck to beat in the format. Whether its over-represented, under-represented as the top deck or exactly represented how you want a top deck to be is 100% your opinion. But its a fact that it put in 7/16 slots and no 2 other decks combined did that well.

After that we have 6 different kinds of other decks in the top 16. That is a fact, that can't be disputed. That means the top 16 decks were represented by 7 different archetypes!!! And it didn't even include a BUG deck which has been pretty popular lately so there's 8 decks. Can somebody look at these facts and tell me with a straight face that this is a wholly unhealthy meta? Keep in mind I have publicly stated my support for the restriction of workshop. But that is a wholly different issue and to be honest that discussion doesn't belong in this thread. I only bring it up to show that Im not a fanboy of shops trying to prop up my favorite archetype.

Now, having 1 deck be that dominant in and of itself is not a healthy aspect. However with so many decks being able to perform well, its hardly indicative of an unhealthy meta. The general meta is just fine. Its time we as players stopped doing a few things:

1. Stop planning main deck for the blue vs blue match up so heavily that we ignore shops.
2. When we lose round 1 to shops, stop blaming mental misstep. Its a card I also feel should be restricted. But its 2-4 slots in some decks. Its a symptom of the problem, not the whole problem. And constantly referring to MM means we'll never resolve the problem. Its like treating a fever by putting somebody in an ice bath and believing with all your heart that the ice bath will cure whatever ailment is causing the fever.
3. Shops wins by doing 2 things - deploying annoying lock pieces alongside quick, hard-hitting threats. Non-shops players need to meet shops 1 of 2 ways: a) develop a strategy that ignore their lock pieces and can outrace their threats or b) Develop a strategy that can work within the confines of their lock pieces and destroy their threats.
4. Stop whining and complaining for changes that are not supported by facts, especially here on these boards. I rarely post anymore because, to be perfectly honest, the boards are filled with that kind of rhetoric and its a real turn off.

The meta is as diverse as its been in a long time. In general, its healthy. There are parts that could be tweaked but in any given round of any given tournament you could face any number of decks. Compare this to 3 months ago when you went into a tournament and in any given round you were probably facing shops or mentor. We're in a good spot right now, folks.

@evouga said in [GOR] Assassin's Trophy:

One of the key roles Abrupt Decay plays in Oath is to steal games from control players who are turtling behind a Grafdigger's Cage or Containment Priest, and who assume that their grip full of counterspells will save them. Losing uncounterability is thus a significant price to pay against the control matchup.

What you gain is the ability to kill Big Jace and other problematic planeswalkers. Vengevine and Hollow One are not as exciting as targets since Oath has a naturally strong matchup against aggro strategies (including Dredge and Survival) and existing tools for dealing with both creatures (e.g. Abrade).

I'm not convinced the tradeoff is worth it in Oath specifically, but certainly this is a powerful enough effect to be playable, in the abstract, in Vintage.

Being able to hit mishra's workshop or Bazaar of bagdhad is pretty strong.

It went great. My 9 year old got one of the sickest card pools for a sealed tournament that I've ever seen. It included thing in the ice, jace, westvale abbey, invocation of saint traft, liliana's indignation (absolute allstar in sealed) and her support cards were pretty solid, too. I basically had 50 mins to build 3 decks so I built mine and while doing that told the kids to figure out what colors they wanted to play by whatever criteria they wanted to use. Then I went and built their decks based on their color choices.

My 9 year old's card pool in the hands of even a semi-experienced player would have been a 4-0. But she went 0-4 (0-2 each round). I watched a few games out of the corner of my eye (arranged it so they sat on either side of me all day) and there were a few should definitely should have won but she just would miss plays constantly because well, she learned the game the night before. My 15 year old actually won a round. She was really psyched about that. Technically she went 1-2-1 on the day but her tie she conceded to her opponent since she was felt unlikely to get enough wins and the guy was a really good sport. Both girls' opponents all day long helped them with play, gave advice etc. A few even kind of played a few of their turns for them suggesting they take an action back and try a different action. None of them took advantage of their green opponents. It was a great experience and I offer huge props and thanks to all the players at Deal Me In Games.

@ChubbyRain said in April 24th, 2017 Banned and Restricted update: GUSH AND PROBE/TOP in Legacy:

@Khahan Sounds like such a change would be good against Shops, no? People advocating changing Gush into spells that cast mana are misunderstanding the effect Gush had on deck construction

Ok, what did we really do to the meta game should be the question. If the answer to how gush's restriction affects gush decks is that we have to put more mana sources (lands mostly) into the deck then what really changed? We are already talking about the 'new metagame' as if we are running mentor decks with more mana in them instead of more draw. So what changed?

The biggest thing that changed is that people who had a biased opinioned on the matter and kept classifying any and every deck that had a gush in it as a 'gush' deck will find out that they affected no real change in the metagame. We'll find out that Mentor is the oppressive beast in the room that kills other strategies and decks from being created.

Now, if the change to a restricted gush actually helps spawn new decks that rely on different win-cons and we see some true innovations then we'll find that the people who have been witch-hunting gush were right.

My prediction for the meta is the former rather than the latter.

@mdkubiak said in SMIP # 65: Amokhet Vintage Set Review & B&R Fallout:

In a lot of ways, this is the biggest concern to me is how people are treating bans/restrictions. Almost as if it's a tool to combat decks they don't enjoy. Which, sadly, starts to mask the true needs of ban/restrictions. B/r's, as I said, should only be used as a last resort. Now, with all the outcry, this picture is becoming muddier and muddier.

I just thought this was worth repeating.

@Klep said:

I like the idea of the DCI being active in attempting to manage the Vintage format. I like the idea of restricting and unrestricting cards just for the purpose of shaking things up and shifting the format in addition to preventing it from getting unhealthy (this is something I feel they did with Gush's unrestriction, and I think that was successful at least for a while).

That said, it's also important for them to recognize what the key cards are that define the format beyond just the restricted list and be extremely reluctant to do anything to change those. They should also be sure to pay attention to the people who actually play and discuss Vintage the most, and not be overly swayed by small, ingrown metagames like the VSL.

To be honest, I do NOT want vintage to have a governing body actively trying to 'shake things up' or shape the meta. At that point its no longer vintage. People on these boards always talk about what vintage is in terms of decks being played. Vintage IS the 3 pillars. Vintage is gush. Vintage is the P9. I don't view vintage in terms of what the meta is. I view Vintage in terms of what it could be. And it could be anything because Vintage, at its heart, is the format that lets us play nearly any card ever printed. As soon as you artificially start to manipulate that with bans and restrictions to guide the format we are no longer playing Vintage.

Monitor it for brokenness. Monitor it for a healthy to semi-healthy metagame. But don't shape the metagame by any means other than the decks being played and the players imaginations. Otherwise its not Vintage.

I'm taking my 9 year old and 15 year old to the Innistrad pre-release on Saturday. Neither has ever played MtG before but both have gotten a crash course the past few days. They have no delusions of winning anything but think it would be a great blast. Since my wife and 12 year old will be out of town I can either take them with me or skip the tournament. Guess we all win.

At any rate, I'm planning on printing out the following cheat sheet for them to use. The purpose is to remind them of the basics. Not teach strategy. Just walk them thru a game well enough that they dont have a judge called over every 2 seconds. Just wondering if there is anything here others would take out or anything else they would add in:

Phases of a turn

1. Untap – active player untaps all permanents in play. No other actions may be taken’
2. Upkeep – Check all permanents in play to see if any have upkeep abilities
   Both players get the opportunity to play instants or activate abilities
3. Draw step – Active player draws a card. Both players get opportunity to play instants or activate abilities
4. Main Phase 1 – Active player may put 1 land into play, play instants, sorceries, or play any permanent (creature, artifact, enchantment, planeswalker). Inactive player may play instants in response to active players actions
5. Combat:
   a) Declare attackers
   b) Declare blockers
   c) Deal damage
   Both players may play instants or activate abilities in between each step.
6. Main Phase 2 – See main phase 1. Note if a land was played in Main phase 1, another may not be played
7. End phase – Check all permanents or delayed abilities for ‘end of turn’ triggers. Each player may play instants or activate abilities. When all else is done, discard down to 7 cards.

Playing spells/Activating abilities

1. Must have priority – active player has priority. Inactive player only gets priority when active passes.
2. Determine costs
3. Pay costs
4. Put spell/ability on stack. Ability does not leave stack and have its affect until both player pass priority
5. Spell resolves meaning you do whatever the card text says.
   Common Terms:
6. Discard – put a card from your hand into the graveyard.
7. Sacrifice – put a permanent from the battlefield into your graveyard
8. Permanent – An enchantment, creature, planeswalker or artifact that is in the battlefield.
9. Spell – A card that is on the stack waiting for its affects to happen
10. Card – any ‘card’ in the library, hand or graveyard zones
11. Spell/ability cost – the resources needed to pay for a spell or ability. For a spell it is the symbols in the upper right hand corner. For an ability it is everything before a : in the card text
12. LIFO – Last In, First Out – spells resolve from the stack in the opposite order they were placed there.

Game Zones:

1. Library – a face down stack of cards that you draw new cards from.
2. Hand – cards that are visible only to you. These are the cards you have to play with at any given time
3. Battlefield – Where cards become permanents for repeated or continual use
4. Graveyard – Where cards when they are discarded, sacrificed or leave the stack
5. Stack – Where a spell or ability is after its cast/activated, but before it resolves and has an effect on the game.

@joshuabrooks said in How I learned to stop complaining and enjoy the meta:

@p3temangus said in How I learned to stop complaining and enjoy the meta:

@joshuabrooks everything is relative though, and even though the price of CE/IE power is super inflated, $2000 for 5 CE moxen is substantially more affordable than $2000 just for a Sapphire. If there ends up being a "correction" in both directions, then so be it. No one believes that legalizing CE will suddenly create 2000 person vintage GPs, but maybe it means EW pulling 500+ regularly. Maybe StarCity could reliably pull 220+ for vintage events. This could also allow more smaller TOs to host EW qualifiers, which by definition must be sanctioned. I just think its a no brainer move.

I totally agree, every bit helps, and if it does occur, it will put some upward price pressure on Arabian Nights/Antiquities/Legends cards unfortunately, but yeah, every bit helps, we're in agreement there, but I don't think it's a silver bullet.

If someone wouldn't buy a $600 mox a year ago, they probably won't buy a $600 CE one today (however, there is an argument that legalizing CE might make unlimited more affordable if people trade down/in).

While I agree that every little bit helps, I disagree that just making CE/IE legal would help. There would be a 'price correction' in ce/ie cards as their over inflated prices over inflates even more. There would be no downward trend in ABU prices. The same people who are priced out of playing vintage now would be priced out of playing vintage still if ce/ie suddenly became legal. Dribs and drabs of cards being added to the pool will do nothing but help investors and big stores who hoarded cards. The rest of us will still be paying an arm and a leg. Nothing short of a supply influx large enough to deflate the price of ABU will truly help anybody but those who already have the cards.

I also want to add a personal plug for Jason at Deal Me In Games here. The prize support we post is based on attendance of 30 people. I just want to note that Jason has NEVER once scaled prize support down. Even when we had 12, he offered full prize support (the top 8 basically begged and insisted on lesser support).

When he offered the Bazaar of Baghdad at 30 and we hit 24 - he still gave out the bazaar. I suggested he up the entry fee to $35 to use the extra $5 to offset the prize for the top 8 at the end of the year and he refused. So while I'm the visible face who does all the advertising, Jason is the one who takes all the financial risk and puts himself on the line. He never fails to be a stand-up TO and shopkeeper when it comes to prizes. So a big thanks to Jason for all his support for the T1 community this year!!

@bobbyvictory said in EW Meta and discussion.:

@khahan Islands/bazaar/shops - man so diverse. Its just a bunch of blue decks loaded up with counterspells + some board control + draw/tutors + wincons, 1 dredge deck and a bunch of shops decks. Not diverse at all.

Then don't play vintage. That is what vintage is. We have access to the most powerful cards ever printed. Therefore we will play the most powerful cards ever printed.

The meta IS FINE. In any given tournament you know at some point you'll see shops but in any given round you could see any one of 5-6 different established decks plus 2-4 different rogue decks. That is a good healthy meta.

Except for you who defines decks so broadly that you might as well complain that the only viable card games are magic, yugioh and pokemon or go home.

Seriously, how long does he get to keep clogging every discussion with his warped and ill-informed view on Vintage before he gets banned or even more people get tired of hearing the same drumbeat and just walk away?

How about something basic like:
Volcanic Mana Source
Land - Island Mountain
When ~this~ comes into play, target opponent draws a card (or scry 2 or 3?)
T: Add U
T: Add R

spark hunter masticore in the side?

There's an important word missing from this card, though, that gives its functionality in many common situations: Draw. This is not card draw so it sidesteps effects like leopold and narset, parter of veils (and the no-longer played uba mask).
It will see play - maybe not a lot. But I think early on it will appear in a few decks.

@albarkhane said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

A Shops deck with only 1 Workshop is still a Shops deck. Just like a Gush deck with only 1 Gush still embodies the spirit of a Gush deck. It would want to play Wastelands, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein, some fast artifact mana and just power out Spheres and Lodestone Golems. If you recall the mtgo classic format, all the best decks were just worse versions of all the current vintage decks. (Classic didn't have the entire Vintage cardpool such as power) No matter how you slice it -- Null Rod or Eldrazi or whatever, its still the Shops deck.

Technically, that is true but this won't happen. Reason is that you forget something in that analysis : shop deck are running about 40 artifacts because because 4 workshops make it worth it. Now if you have only 1 workshop and no (or few) way to tutor it would you still want to play that many artifacts ? Would not you want to add some color and get all nice effects that brown is missing ?

Ultimately, you will play a whatever-deck with a more than average number of artifacts to still get nice use of the singleton workshop (could be for exemple some kind of turbo-tezz or something like the 5C shop decks that used to be played). I am not sure if such decks would be still shop decks.

On the other hand, singleton Bazar does weaken Dredge decks but does not kill them : They are called dredge decks not bazar decks ... they loose their best tool but not their reason of being.

Sounds like you've never been run over by shops when they dont draw workshop and just draw 1 of multiple sol lands and any of their thousand or so 2 drops.

@thewhitedragon69 said in New "Vintage" Casual Format: Limitless Singleton Stack:

@khahan Yeah, Type 4 was the inspiration for this format, but instead of drafting decks, you play with one shared library and grave, which makes for REALLY fun interactions/play lines and makes ungodly-awful cards like "Whisk Away" into a brutal turn of fortunes. The haymaker aspect of Type 4 is intact, but the shared zones really makes this format amazing.

Maybe its regional. The t4 we played in my area was what you are describing - shared library, shared graveyard, infinite mana. Just 1 spell per turn per person seems to be the main difference.

Looks fun. Sounds a lot like Type 4 we used to play back in the early 2000's except that type 4 limited us to 1 spell per turn.

@john-cox said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@protoaddict

I wonder if you could make a 4 color deck with singleton fetches?

Why couldn't you? We already saw a spreading out of fetches when sorcerous spyglass was printed.

I have to agree with Chubbyrain on being wary of a rules based list for B&R. For one, every single time a rule is created you have:

1. unintended consequences - things you didn't intend for the rule to cover that get covered.
2. abuse - hedging the rules, bending the rules, circumventing the rules
3. corner cases - things that just dont fit nicely into the rules but still need addressed.
4. more rules - typically to deal with issues #1and #3. And of course when a new rule is made, we circle back to the top of the list.

@tittliewinks22 said in Is it possible to have vintage be community run and maintained?:

@Khahan players are leaving older formats in paper due to accessability of cards. While proxy events are fine in conceptz its a novelty that wears off. Many players who have an interest in learning the format will play a few times with the proxy deck, then move on once they realise they'll never be able to afford the actual cards.

The #1 problem killing paper magic for old formats has always been and will always be the reserve list.

Except that I'm seeing a decline in attendance. Meaning people who used to come, therefore they have access to cards, are no longer coming. The reserve list is blocking new people from getting into the format and definitely is a contributing factor. But its one we can do nothing about.
Players with access who have played paper but move to online - that is something we may be able to do something about.

I agree with you 100% that the reserve list is a major problem. Its just a different problem than I'm asking about.

Before the shutdown, Deal Me in Games was discussing utilizing its own B&R list. We interviewed a handful of local players for their thoughts on a B&r list as well as having the event organizer (myself) and event sponsor (deal me in's owner) submit lists. Then compiled a B&r list which we were discussing utilizing for our 2020 T1 events. If we ever get back up and running, we revisit doing this.

But to be honest, regardless of altering the B&R and which stores B&r to use etc, I wonder just how much longer paper vintage has to live. I don't think its a 'sky is falling' moment to declare that paper vintage was on life support. And now with a multi-month shut down of shops and events and potentially a year off from the biggest vintage events each year, I'd have to say that somebody's hand is on the plug.

I've supported Vintage since the early 2000's when I got CCG to start up their tournaments which became the blue bell events. I took a break from magic and when I came back I got Deal Me In to start up a vintage series. I'll always support it as long as there's a player base. But over the years I've seen the player base dwindle down to next to nothing.

So the question shouldn't be what B&r list should we use. The question SHOULD be, what can we do to bring paper vintage players back? I'd love to hear some answers from members like chubby and brianpk who have migrated to online as their primary focus. What would it take to get you guys and others who have moved away from paper vintage back?