Played my first league game last night with storm outcome bargain. Great fun to be able to pay just one match. Insane games first game op "turn 1"s off time walk then takes all the turns.

Game 2 results in crazy top deck war. I tendrils with storm count 9 on turn 1 and one copy gets forced, leaving op unable to crack a fetch and with no other mana sources (tolarian in play but no artifacts). I meanwhile have robot as my only win condition having exiled tendrils... I've no timewalk and having seen Dack game 1 terrified of having robot stolen. Eventually find a safe line.

Game 3 op tinkered turn 2.... For trinisphere...I was not expecting that. Needless to say I can't combo off before Tezz ultimate seals the deal.

@diophan said in Vintage Challenge - 8/5/17:

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-challenge-2017-08-06

congrats to @Thiim and thanks @diophan for your continuing efforts compiling this data!

Thanks @The-Atog-Lord for a thought provoking piece.

The thing that struck me most was what @chubbyrain said:

I would also argue that Gush really isn't weakened relative to the field. It still has incredible synergy with Dack Fayden, JVP, the delve spells, JTMS, Mentor, Pyromancer, Managorger Hydra, Nahiri, etc... You still end up with virtually all Blue decks adopting the same Gush Engine, just with other ways of extracting value from the card rather than a tiny manabase.

The current state of Vintage reminds of a variant my uncle and I used to play similar to today's Canadian Highlander where each card had a point value. Unlike Canadian Highlander you could play multiples - even Type 1 restricted cards - provided the overall number of points was within the limit.

As time went and more cards were printed it became impossible to keep the power level of two card combos in check without assigning absurd point values to cards which in isolation did nothing (e.g. Illusions and/or Donate). This meant they couldn't be used in other decks either. The fix was to eventually assign points to two card combos, but it was the beginning of the end of what had been an enjoyable format until then, and I'm determined to give Canadian Highlander a try at some point.

Now in Vintage there is no cap on the number of restricted cards you can have in your deck (as long as you only have one of each ). As long as Wizards continue to print cards that have synergy with the other cards in the Tier 1 decks particularly TX/Shops they will push the power level of these decks up.

I believe @Smmenen when he says that gush was not a problem pre-Khans. But I think the genie is now out of the bottle. And while it would be nice to restrict pairs of cards (i.e. you can play with only one copy of A & B (X)OR 4 copies of A X(OR) 4 copies of B) that would be simply be a different format that isn't Vintage.

Eventually synergy becomes "too good" (and I accept some people such as @brianpk80 describe this in a qualitative way and others want to see quantitative hard data based on tournament results to assess this). But if Wizard's agree something needs to be done the only tool which they have available is to restrict one of the cards that fuels the engine (or the win con).

Unless Wizard's stop printing cards that fuel these engines it seems there is only one place Vintage will end up - an endless string of restrictions. Sadly I don't see this increasing diversity if a deck of singletons is still Tier 1. Though since you'll be playing quasi-highlander maybe gameplay will be a bit more diverse and people will complain less.

@nedleeds what I think is more depressing is that all the blue decks in the top 8 ran mentor...

@Prospector said in MTGO Vintage players contact info:

Hi I'm Patrick van Beek - pvanbeek online I play evenings in Europe (EST+5). I play most decks except hatebears and dredge

Thanks to the banning of troll in modern I now play dredge too. Just need a reprint of cavern (of souls) in MM3 and I'll be in my way to hatebears too

I really enjoyed this, thanks for posting, also catching up I your stream.

@Chronatog said in MTGO Outside Assistance:

2.2 Tournaments and Events.
(iii) Collusion A player or players working together to gain an unfair competitive advantage in an event. An example of collusion includes sharing knowledge of draft picks with other players of an event during the drafting portion of that event.

To me for this to apply
a) players need to be playing in the same event,
b) the advantage gained would need to be unfair

Personally I interpret this as, streaming/advice from chat completely fine as long as it's not coming from another player in the tournament

The grey area is when it's other players in the same tournament who have access to information not available to anyone else.

Scouting in paper tournaments is a bad analogy as anyone with a bit of time can do it. Whereas in a Modo event as far as I know the only way to know for sure what deck someone is on (before you've played them) is for them to tell you themselves or someone else to have faced them in a prior round and then pass that information on.

But even then who is to say that the advantage gained is unfair? It's an edge and very difficult to say how such edges add up.

I also completely buy that you could do this outside of a stream it and would be undetectable.

And it would be the wrong outcome if someone was sanctioned for collusion as a result of something someone sat beside them said or was posted in the chat that was caught on stream. This would discourage an activity that is of great benefit and service to the community.

So I've reconciled myself that while my opponents may have an edge (streaming, teaming or otherwise) it didn't detract from me having fun - which is the main reason I play.

I for one would prefer if players stream . Having read this thread I think most of my pre-conceptions were wrong - I thought having the chat on your side gives you some edges. However much of the information that might by provided by the chat can be looked up and if you are so inclined you could set up a bot to look up the information to save time .

The one possible exception (and maybe I'm also wrong on this) is the innocuous what is my opponent on? Yes you can look up what they've played in recent tournament, but if someone in chat knows what your opponent is actually on as they faced them in a previous round this can hugely influence mulligan, turn 1 play. Is there anyway of finding our what your opponent is on - can you review previous rounds while the tournament is underway?