@Prospero said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

To try and get back on point, and wrap this up, I'd just ask that people really think deeply about when Vintage really was balanced in the last few years. Maybe we could start taking steps back towards a metagame where players could play with more of their cards, and we weren't looking to just hit everything that ran well for a while, but looked to develop new strategies to combat new problems. Everything in life isn't a nail, and we have more tools at our disposal than a hammer. Terra Nova was built as a rebuke to a comment that no new innovations were possible in Shops until new cards were printed, or new restrictions/unrestrictions took place. Maybe before we take away someone's right to play their cards we can go to the drawing board and work towards addressing the problems at hand in new, unseen ways. This current philosophy is exhausting, and awful for the long-term health of the format.

I'll offer my 2 cents on this, in particular:

The best Vintage format I've played in was at NYSE 2 (or thereabouts).

This format included 4x Golem and 4x Chalice, and I still felt actively favored against Shops.

What I think was a defining feature of format was that the threats didn't match up with the draw engines all that well. Tinker for Blightsteel was the best thing in the format, followed by a lot of other clunkier two card combos (Salvagers, Vault/Key, Oath)--all of which want you to tutor chain, rather than go up cards. The best draw engines weren't in the same deck--and didn't synergize with--the best threats. The best draw engines lived in Delver (with Gush being as dumb as ever--and this was probably secretly the best deck), and Standstill. And there was space in between the two extremes--e.g. Blue Angels or BUG Fish, which had worse than gush/better than Vampiric Tutor draw engines, but better threats and answers than Delver of Secrets and Mishra's Factory.

Note that I haven't mentioned Shops here. That's because Shops decks were, by and large, a boogeyman, but very beatable. You had to show respect, play your 2 drops and EEs and Chewers, but you could win. The small shops creatures were prisony but, outside of Ravager, actively sucked when getting into the red zone (remember--you didn't have Ballista, HBW, or Foundry Inspector!), and the large shops creatures were necessarily clunky and occasionally uncastable.

That--at least how I remember it--was the best format I've played.

Prizing good. Trophy better.

I honestly think people would pay $50 for a cash prize...and a small plaque for top 8, and THE trophy for the winner. Keeps the feel of a unique prize, while being almost certainly less expensive than a lotus.

@chubbyrain

I would not have gotten to x-2 without the work of @kaluma , @wfain and @GutoCmtt Props to them for breaking the format as much as it has ever been broken.

@islandswamp

This matters. A lot.

Remember kids, calling your opponents lucksacks is OK (also, raging at your screen)...just don't do it in chat.

@francois-f

As the story goes, Coval didn't eve call the judges, and literally appealed to try lose the match, as he was unable to do so. His opponent lost because they were at a feature table, and the judges saw it and had to follow procedure.

@blindtherapy Loyal Retainer+Legend does get us there with high probability, but if we're actually reanimating, you have to imagine it's better to just Dread Return them, right?

@wfain It's spelled "Outcome". Please. You seem to be and have acted like a reasonable human being, I'd really prefer if you didn't turn into an internet troll who has an opinion which I ignore out of hand. (See: anyone who uses the word "Derpstep" more than once non-ironically).

Because (1) it's a fantastic run hot deck (Cosmo's deck from champs, for example, doesn't have Preordain. It's going to fold on itself some medium percentage of the time, though I'm sure it's fantastic when it does not), and (2) it doesn't have any real champion online who is willing to grind the deck and get the 3 to 4 5-0 records it takes to get noticed. (and a big #3--it relies on your opponent not knowing what you're doing a little bit).

Report, while it's still fresh. Props to @kaluma for the deck, I felt damn near unbeatable for most of the day. My Jeskai sideboard of 2x decay+squee was great. my shops sideboard was irrelevant (I won via normal survival things, not anything else), and my dredge hate was dredge hate.

R1 Storm. G1 I break his soul by flusterstorm on Tinker, after leading windswept heath pass.
G2 I assemble drs+leovold+countermagic. he gets clocked and dies after trying and failing with macro.

R2, lose G1 to blind revoker on lotus, win game 2 to assembling the bash bros, then winning a drawn out affair where I had to beat a traxos via phantasmal image, then lose game 3 to revoker on lotus

r3, I smash Jeskai with "here is survival, are you dead?". game 2 was a more buffoony affair where hardcast trygon predator and wonder win the game right through rest in peace.

r4, smashed landstill. felt like I won 3 games, as bazaar and survival donked him. But I did lose g2 having taken some hits while finding abrupt decay for containment priest, and getting fiery confluenced for 6.

r5 smashed Jeskai. g1 played sylvan library. it found me 3 survival. the 3rd stuck and killed my opponent.
g2, it's a more drawn out affair, but I basically win by trygon eating his hate, then pooping out vengevines.

r6 beat dredge. He mulled to 1 g1, and I had double leyline ancestral in game 2.

r7 lost to blood moons. lost g1 to "surprise you're dead" won g2 off forest jet decay blood moon, lost g3 to emerald sapphire recall...find 0 mana sources, null rod dead.

r8 beat shops, lost g1 to trinisphere, had fast trygon predator games 2/3 and he carried me home.

r9 beat grixis control. g1, I have a bug fish hand. DRS, Leovold, misstep bolt on leo, stick survival, ballgame.
g2, I open bazaar, hollow one hollow one against his library. I force his dack fayden on 3 with flusterstorm backup, then rip walk to put him to 0 instantly.

r10, I battle shops, g1 have this awkward moment where I've survival'd, forced a couple things, but now our opponent has revokered survival and has larger monsters. fortunately, I have DRS and burn her out for the win.
g2 she opens on sphere. I bazaar, vv+rootwalla (pitching esg to cast rootwalla) hollow one, and 2x hollow one the next turn and easily win.

My deck was from my last post:

20 core survival
3 drs
2 leo
1 trygon
1 phantasmal image
1 squee
1 esg
1 wonder

4 force
3 misstep
1 MBT
1 fluster
1 sylvan library
1 walk
1 recall
1 treasure Cruise

7 fetch
2 trop
2 bayou
1 Savannah
1 forest
4 Emerald, Jet, Sapphire, Lotus

sb
3 flux
4 leyline
3 priest
2 stony
2 decay
1 squee

@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.

@brass-man said in [DOM] Dominaria Rules Change:

@chubbyrain [[Arc Lightning]], baby

[[Rolling Thunder]]

Go big. Or go home.

You ought to cross post this to the Karn Forge thread, where I think you'll get more traction.

For your idea....I don't think it's bad idea, in that it's a legitimately castable spell that (1) the academy didn't even discuss and (2) is an effect that Karn Forge actually wants. However, it has a few problems. The biggest of which is that it's grid with suspend. Giving people a turn isn't the best idea in Vintage right now. While I'll freely admit to starting a lot of games with "grid, go", you also want the ability hit 6 mana on 1 (not the craziest thing in a Workshop+Grim Monolith deck!) and Grid+Threat your opponent. What I do think makes more sense is a single Hope of Ghirapur out of the board, if we're playing one at all, as a wishable Grid effect, which more-or-less ensures that you can set up for the follow-up wish for Lattice to end the game.

Also, re: the finals against Joe--I'm pretty sure I'm a big favorite if I hit mana off my top 3 draws, instead of more Karns. The problem there wasn't that I didn't have a grid effect, it was that Joe (very wisely) cut me off mana instead of trying to fight threats.

@nba84

But they require a lot more cardboard to do anything. I would guess the average 7 from DPS kills a little faster and more resiliently than the average 7 from forge, in the sense of when the opponent is hard locked or actual dead. But it doesn’t do the same on 5 cards. Forge, Mox, Shop kills on 2 or 3 some decent percent of the time if the opponent doesn’t have good interaction. No storm hand of 3 cards does the same reliably.

That’s really the big difference—a lot of the Karn/Forge hands are legit 1 card combos, in the way Ad Nauseam is a 1 card combo (you just need mana and Ad Nauseam, everything else is a “I’ll sort it out later”). The mana production in Forge is a lot better than for DPS (see: Mishra’s Workshop), so it mulligans better and kills faster on average, when you take mulligans into account.

BUG with wasteland and 3+ ouphe mostly stomps forge. It’s really not good for forge, though if your opponent is casting lightning bolt/swords, you’re in for a bad time.

@iamactuallylvl1 said in Ain't No Rest for the Paradoxical - 11th Place Tournament Report - Vintage Champs 2018:

@ebgmtg karn has been slowly less impressive for me. I thought he would be a good plan versus jeskai but I have found him to be a liability versus dack. I would be looking to move away from him in the future. @ChubbyRain 's opinion may differ?

If Dack is your problem, I know what your issue is. Karn isn't there to tick down--he's there to just keep ticking up for a few turns. Paradoxical--even with the bonus card usually being a Mox--can overwhelm Jeskai if you get to just tick up Karn a bunch, then -1 and get an extra Will/Outcome to just have more stuff than they have answers. It was one of those very paradoxical "this isn't a threat, it's a howling mine" realizations.

@serracollector said in Survival Salad:

In the BUG Variants running 4 Dr. Shaman and Leovold, and ESG (Albeit not played most games for this purpose), could a Singleton Priest of Titania be a thing? Anything past her and another elf leads to enough consistent Mana (looking at you Orcish Lumberjack) to go off every turn right?

Priest of Titania is win more. 3 mana+Survival is realistically death already, and while it would be great to cast Hollow One, it's often better to just cycle it away and try to hit gas or a more castable card.

@trius

I'll offer an explanation: Often, it's a "I just started going off, and I guess at some point I'll let you know that you're dead. If you know you're dead, I guess you'd concede?" It's fun to just combo off, especially with outcomes.

It's very much not being rude, or showboating, or whatever. They came to have their fun, and by god, they intend to have it.

Now, in paper, I suppose I'd just scoop myself a lot faster--they are taking up precious time on the clock, and no judge can say they're not within their rights to keep taking game actions which are advancing the game state--but on MTGO? Fine, go nuts. If I get bored, I'll concede.

Because (1) it's a fantastic run hot deck (Cosmo's deck from champs, for example, doesn't have Preordain. It's going to fold on itself some medium percentage of the time, though I'm sure it's fantastic when it does not), and (2) it doesn't have any real champion online who is willing to grind the deck and get the 3 to 4 5-0 records it takes to get noticed. (and a big #3--it relies on your opponent not knowing what you're doing a little bit).

@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.

@chubbyrain

I would not have gotten to x-2 without the work of @kaluma , @wfain and @GutoCmtt Props to them for breaking the format as much as it has ever been broken.

@iamactuallylvl1 said in Ain't No Rest for the Paradoxical - 11th Place Tournament Report - Vintage Champs 2018:

@neo_altoid @CountDaBubba it is perfectly reasonable to play Dig and Cruise and up your blue count for FoW. This is what ecobaronen decided was the correct line. Personally my team liked dig, will, snap a small amount more.

Agreed on that. We felt Snapcaster was basically required, and it was "Pick 2 of Will, Cruise, and Dig"--and Will/Dig was what we (well, only Ryan, really, as BPK ended up on Oath,and I ended up on Survival)