Nice read! Almost makes me want to do my own write up, almost...
Great read! Thanks for putting this together.
Will you and Kevin do a SMIP North American Vintage Champs preview podcast too?
I think this card has a very low floor and in certain situations an extremely high ceiling. Based on the 2 in the cost this card is going to be best in a full Moxen, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt Deck. I would not be surprised if this starts as a fringe 1 of and then works it’s way up from there.
I enjoyed this a lot, especially the Metagame analysis and prediction.
This tournament has very unique attributes (Price, non-proxy, location, timing) which I was pleasantly surprised that you debated and came to a logical consensus on. For what it’s worth, I think there will be more Jeskai and less Shops which is more in line with Steve than Kevin’s predictions.
I may have missed this, but I would have liked for a prediction of attendance, because I think that will determine a lot of the Metagame. My thought is somewhere between 100 and 150 players and I think the expected metagame will be different at 100 vs 150 players. Vintage is a format with a lot of die hards who show up and play their deck regardless of what is at the top of the heap. I think that if this event got to 200 players the meta would more closely resemble NA EW 2017 than Waterbury.
One thing which is more a compliment to the work that Ryan Matt do than a criticism of your analysis is the limited value of just having Top8 data as compared to full MW% by archetype. I know you cannot control what data is published and available, but in your analysis I think it would be beneficial to spend less time stressing what deck won the event. It goes without saying, but there are a lot of factors other than what archetype someone played that contribute to whether someone makes Top8 or not let alone wins the event outright. I think more value could be drawn from looking at the non-stock cards in the lists rather than Workshops Top8%.
I really like this card for all the reasons you said. The inevitability it provides you once resolving is massive and could make it very impactful. I wish this card were printed back in the heyday of Turbo Tezz, it would have been a great addition there. I would try something with even more artifact mana, like Grim Monolith, Voltaic Key, and maybe even a Chrome Mox or two.
I’m looking forward to playing with this card. Glad it’s an uncommon too.
@vaughnbros said in Mishra's Self-Replicator [DOM]:
Isn't this just better than Precursor in a lot of scenarios?
Precursor’s strength is that it’s 9 power for 5 mana. You need to spend 9 mana to get 10 power out of this card.