Please don't respond to this thread!
This is meant to serve as a useful reference rather than a discussion, more like a thesaurus than a blackboard.
Basicly I'm going to post each day a link to the results of the vintage league for that day. I'll give a quick summary of what the 5 selected decks were (note that this is not reliably a metagame snapshot based on how the selection process works). If one of the decks is really weird or interesting I may post the list.
I'm responding to the original post directly because I think point two raises a very important idea that is lost in the subsequent comments.
Strategies that go "over the top" rely on one mana spells to bridge the gap. Land acceleration decks need fast bond or crop rotation. Creature + null rod decks need birds and elves instead of moxen. Urzas tron decks (or probably cloud post) need expedition map.
In another post I mentioned how combo decks need one mana discard spells to set up for going for the next turn.
Misstep really chokes off a lot of angles for innovation. And is, in my opinion, the number one candidate for restriction. Not that I'd mind mentor.
Just to give everyone a quick update, this thread is not abandoned, but I'm on vacation and traveling with limited access to internet. (Cell phone companies really get you on overseas data so I'm trying to keep it available for emergencies and limiting internet to when I'm somewhere with free wifi. )
The thread is not abandoned, but it's going to get updated in burst as my vacation allows. Rest assured everything will eventually make it here.
Oct 7th
Standstill w search for azcanta
Pitch dredge
I think you are not fully giving credit to the size of the type one community compared to other formats.
There have probably been more hours put into testing standard in the past 24 hours than have gone into vintage in the past 5 months. The vintage community is really small, maybe 10,000 players tops, probably much fewer and it tends to be older players with jobs and other commitments. Standard or modern are played by millions of people and many of them are kids or college students who can easily test 4 plus hours a day. Some of them are literally professional gamers who can test 12 hours a day leading up to big events.
To compound the huge gap in hours spent, vintage is also a much harder problem; so many more cards, so many more possible decks. The fact that we as a community haven't found a deck building solution to the current meta is only very weak evidence that it doesn't exist.
Note that I don't think that means people should do nothing and wait for a new deck to be found. At some point looking at a puzzle you have to acknowledge that if you haven't solved it yet you're probably not going to. But I also wouldn't be totally shocked if someone built something that beat current builds of mentor and shops forcing those decks to change somewhat.
A long time ago I saw a player who was unfamiliar with this interaction die by casting Will against a player with active helm. I don't think it was helm combo, just a fun of winconn in a control deck.
The keeper player was way ahead and had resolved recall and other big effects but had gotten one morphing countered early and had pitched the other to force of will. So he tutored for yawg will to set up a big turn that would have featured lotus, ancestral, timewalk and morphling out of the yard. Then when he cast will his opponent activated helm and the game was over. It was the first time I ever saw that interaction, pretty hilarious.
thats pretty big. I suppose this makes Bloodmoon depths at least theoretically viable.
Some kind of mono red disruption deck with blood moon and magus of the moon. Then you play depths and if they can deal with the moon effect all of a sudden you have a 20/20.
Probably not actualy good. But interesting.
Alright I'm at lunch typing this up from memory since I'm not at a computer, I'll probably follow up with exact numbers later.
This time instead of a simple goal seek I used as evolutionary approach.
I calculated win percentages by aggregating the matches from the last 3 vintage challenges and then recalculated win percentages as if all 3 were a single large event. I excluded decks that didn't get 6 instances across three events, so that meant no delver eldrazi or non outcome combo. I left big blue and blue control as separate decks rather than combining them into a drain pillar (may do that tonight).
I started with each deck shops, dredge, outcome, oath, mentor, big blue, blue control, and other having equal share of the meta. Then based on the win percentages and meta share I calculated each deck's win percentage against the field. For each deck with a below 50% win percentage, I assumed 10% of the people playing that deck would move to a deck that had a >50% chance against the field with the shares being proportional to how much the new deck was beating the field.
I then repeated this 2000 times to see if a stable meta emerged with a balance of decks that all won about 50% against the final field.
That's didn't happen, instead the meta settled into an oscillating patter that repeated every 150 iterations or so.
In this repeating pattern oath and outcome are unplayed. They get forced out of the meta pretty quickly (less than 50 iterations) and never come back.
The two main pillars are shops and big blue. Shops goes from about 20% to about 57% and back. Big blue goes from around 25% to around 60% and back. These two decks together are never less than 70% of the meta and sometimes make up as much as 80%.
The mix of the remaining 20%-25% drives where the main two decks are in the cycle and which of them are waxing or waning.
Of these, other goes from 0% to 5%, blue control goes from around 5% to 15%, and mentor also is in the 5% to 15% range.
Obviously all this analysis depends on the win percentages being accurate, and we don't actually have the sample size to derive accurate percentage information. So don't take this too seriously. But it gives an interesting picture of how things play out if what we are seeing is actually accurate.
Also more people need to be playing mana drain.
Yeah Facebook is a terrible institution. It fosters all sorts of bad habits and algorithmically manipulates people to both spend more time on Facebook and to engage in behaviors that get others to engage with facebook (rants, drama etc).
Correlational studies have found a wide variety of negative links on every thing from life satisfaction, to income.
It's basically just awful.
@apollogod
Glad I finally took the plunge and bought in two months ago.
I am very excited about this. I'm am one of the probably many players that can't play in most dailys but would be up for a round or two after getting home from work.
THanks. I'll try to catch up. May take a bit though. I appreciate the kind words
Nov 10
Oath 2 inferno 1 GB, slice and dice, see beyond, spyglass, 2 sylvan
Oath w emrakul and GB, show and tell sylvan
Ravager shop overseer and 3 hangerbacks
Nov 7
Pyromentor
Bargain
Dredge amalgam leyline main
Ravager shops overseer
Standstill
Bargain
Sorcery (17)
1 Dark Petition
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Ponder
4 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Yawgmoth's Will
Instant (14)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Ritual
2 Flusterstorm
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Vampiric Tutor
Artifact (13)
1 Black Lotus
2 Defense Grid
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
Enchantment (4)
1 Necropotence
3 Yawgmoth's Bargain
Land (12)
1 Badlands
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Underground Sea
60 Cards
Sideboard (15)
1 Island 1 Defense Grid
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Bontu's Last Reckoning
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Pyroblast
1 Rebuild
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Simian Spirit Guide
3 Tormod's Crypt
Nov 6th
Oath w 2 inferno and GB, 2 md grudge, spyglass, slyvan
Standstill w moat ad emrakul
Pyromentor
Paradox storm control, forces, drains, flusterstorm, missteps, tendrils kill and tinker bot. Also 3 thrists
Ravager shops w overseer
Paradox
Creature (2)
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Snapcaster Mage
Sorcery (6)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
Instant (25)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
2 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Paradoxical Outcome
1 Repeal
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Vampiric Tutor
Artifact (13)
1 Black Lotus
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Opal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
Land (14)
2 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Underground Sea
60 Cards
Sideboard (15)
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Echoing Truth
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Rebuild
2 Steel Sabotage
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Yixlid Jailer
Nov 5th
Oath with emrakul and GB, 1 show and tell main
Ravager shops overseer
Nov 4th
Standstill
Oath GB and emrakul
Dredge w MD amalgam leyline unmask
Pyro mentor
Oath w inferno spyglass see beyond and inferno
Nov 3
Oath w inferno titan, 2 sylvans, 1 spyglass 1 grudge
Dredge w fate stitcher and sun titan
Leovold BUG w goyf
Standstill
Pyro mentor