Brian DeMars article on the Vintage Champs @ GenCon

[rxavage]

The Power 3 Reign (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/24739-Vintage-Avant-Garde-The-Power-3-Reigns-Supreme.html)

Thoughts?

I really like DeMars's article series Vinatge Avant-Garde, also they're the reason I became interested in the format when I got back into mtg.

How about Oath being the 4th unrestricted "pillar"? Griselbrand and Oath in the right deck should be more powerful than Bob I'd imagine.

[Arianrhod]

I think you hit the problem on the head -- "in the right deck." To my knowledge, nobody's broken Grisel Oath yet. It exists, it's good, and so on....but it's not as busted as what it seems like it should be. It isn't good -enough-, and I think a lot of it has to do with the core variance of Oath itself. If you have backup plan in hand (Rituals/Show), then those are dead cards unless you draw a Griselbrand. If you have Griselbrand in hand, you can't use Oath. The only times you're actually happy are when you have Grisel + backup plan in hand, or Oath + nothing else in hand. This core variance is why I abandoned Oath as an archetype after playing it exclusively for 3 years. Sure, you get those hands where you can't possibly lose. But for every hand like that, there's three more where things don't go as planned.

That said, this is actually the first of DeMars' articles I've agreed with in a while now. Drains and Rods aren't really pillars anymore, frankly. I like Bob replacing Drains as a pillar, but I do think that something needs to supplant Rods. I guess technically Stony Silence...but that doesn't have a good ring to it. I almost think that the aggro pillar is defined by Goyf, frankly. Rod is more of a support card anymore, rather than a true plan in and of itself.

[Koby]

I've been listening to the beginning of the So Many Insane Podcast #16 and in that episode Meandeck has discussed the polarities (rather than pillars) being:

Dredge
Workshop
Landstill
Aggro (RUG / Bant)

Big Blue is truly flexible enough to not get pushed into any of those corners and just have enough power to really be designed to beat anything it wants to, but not necessarily everything. I think Demars makes a good argument for Dark Confidant being a power player right now, yet I'm surprised a deck based on Dark Confidant can really survive against Lightning Bolt decks. I'll have to do some more testing.

[nedleeds]

I sat through 4 rounds of champs, played in a prelim. I 2-2 dropped in champs. But the mighty wrist band allowed me to relax and watch some matches.

Though Dark Confidant is huge ... I don't know if I'd call him a pillar. There are decks that ditch him for other draw / mana engines like Gush (other masochists play both). As far as him getting bolted, it happens but the format has Mental Misstep (oh how I forgot how much I hate that retarded card). I still think the 3rd pillar is good blue stuff.

As for champs itself I feel like these big blind vintage tourneys come down to a couple of assumptions you have to live with in order to not get frustrated.

a) Are you willing to sometimes just lose to shop decks on the draw? If you want a shot against them on the draw then you are likely looking at Dredge, playing blue and mulliganing to Force of Will, or playing Hateful Bears.

or

b) Are you willing to deal with the static hands of shops (generally no card movement, just drawing off the top) for the overwhelming ease of play and number of broken openers that simply don't allow your opponent to ever do anything meaningful.

Being on the draw against shops defined everything for me because it's the most miserable thing in the game of Magic. Way more miserable than dredge. Dredge for all it's 'non-magic-ness' has a bit of play skill involved it sometimes mulligans into slowness and rarely gets you turn one. Facing a shop player on the draw with no FoW can mean actually never having a meaningful thing to do for your brief game. With the shop player having to make decisions a stoned chimp could make.

[Koby]

I somewhat disagree regarding Shop sbeing skill-less. The finals match between Suicide-Jace and BC's Shop deck highlighted the elements that take skill. While it's true that BC's decisions game down to: "which piece do I lock?" with not much more interaction outside of that, but I think the podcast really dove head-first into the lines of play that made the final game of the tournament really interesting from a decision perspective.

[nedleeds]

Eh, I mean maybe your mulliganing decisions take some tact but really the deck is pretty straight forward. Play sphere effects first if possible to lock out blue, play moxen before chalice on 0, etc.. I didn't see any compelling or remotely difficult shop on non-shop action all 3 days. Now shops on shops when you've got like 3 golems, a myr battlesphere that's been metamorphed 3 times a triskelion and an active forgemaster things can get pretty hairy.

Edit: I'll check out the podcast.

[PeAcH]

Despite being an archetype that sometimes allows the pilot to make mistakes going unpunished, playing MUD correctly is the difference between giving no outs or giving some.

A good MUD player is frightening as much as a Dredge good player.