NYC Experimental tournament series - checking interest

Note: I posted a related idea in the xerox thread, but thought it made sense to pull this out into its own thread to see if it's really feasible.

It seems like we are at a spot where nobody really "knows" what to do with the format. Many of us have ideas, But no one really knows. The whole thing is so complex that I don't know if I'm even 50% confident any specific change would do what I think it would.

Zooming out from vintage and just thinking about how knowledge works, the right thing to do when you don't know what will happen is to run some experiments.

Ideally these would be large scale like WotC trying out a different restricted list every month on mtgo for a year. Or hosting a coordinated series of paper events in many cities testing the same change.

I don't have the capacity to make that happen. What I do have is a house in NYC that is convenient to most major subway lines and to the LIRR. It's spacious enouph to comfortably host 8-12 players and could possibly host 16 at the risk of lines for the bathroom between rounds.

So if I held such an event with an experimental restricted list and a buy in of maybe $10-15 with it all going to top 3 players, would you be interested?

It would be work to plan and set up, so I don't want to proceed unless people would actually come. Chime in here if you might attend.

What experimental lists to try?
I'd say start with extreme changes to see what the boundary conditions are, then back off a little and test smaller changes.

Here are some ideas on the extreme side:

• everything is restricted
• everything is restricted but Fow and lands other than bazaar and shop
• everything post reserved list is unrestricted
• everything legal in modern is unrestricted
  And then test specific theories from there. By this point we would have learned quite a bit so it makes sense to wait to have that knowledge before designing further tests.

On the less extreme side we could test specific proposals like

• misstep
• sphere
• mentor

Or

• bargain
• fastbond
• chalice

• priest
• cage
• mentor

Or other things entirely. Note this isn't the thread to discuss what to test, for now I just want to know if anyone would show up.

@mods if you think this post needs to be in another section feel free to move it. I put it here because if there is interest I would actually be hosting a small tournament.

Good luck with your endeavor! I hope you can get some people to try out experimental Magic. I always feel like Magic theory is such a shot in the dark, as nobody (despite their claims) really knows what will happen when things get restricted or unrestricted.

I will say, however, I don't think you'll find Highlander to be a very strategic format. I personally love it, but it's meant to be casual. When you have a deck that functions differently every single time you play it, it's hard to have a competitive environment or foster any innovation.

@joshuabrooks I've actually found highlander to be quite the opposite unless you're referring to EDH. You might want check out Canadian Highlander:
https://canadianhighlander.wordpress.com/
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/ways-play/introduction-canadian-highlander-2016-05-17
https://www.facebook.com/groups/288447914624649/
https://twitter.com/canhighlander?lang=en
https://www.reddit.com/r/canadianhighlander/
There is enough redundancy in any given classification of card types that the same strategic theory applies to Canadian Highlander that would apply to Vintage.

have you tried hosting

more paper vintage events

just with normal rules

@walking.dude This is a Great idea! I can't make it to NYC. Would love to do something like this in the Great Lakes region.

Medium Steve... 575... I see you brother.

I'd be interested in testing what potential restrictions/ unrestrixtions look like and also live in NYC. Feel free to PM me with possible dates.

Have you considered setting this up somehow so players would be able to "Skype In" to play in the event? That would open you up to having a lot more participants ...

Think you'd have more success experimenting on Cockatrice. You'd have recorded matches from both sides and could really pour over the results.

haiku shitposting aside, I personally like vintage right now, and I think most of the issues stem from too much talking, not enough playing (especially paper events which I consider to be orders of magnitude more worthwhile than mtgo events). if you have the numbers to do this without fracturing the vintage community even further, then great, do it, but I have my doubts.

One of the problems with something like this is determing what it is you're trying to do. Is the goal to play magic or to test these changes? If I'm trying to win, my deck is likely to be different than it would be if I was trying to test the changes.

I agree that something like Cockatrice is likely a better solution. I also suggest getting on voice chat with the person you're playing so that you can shortcut things instead of having to explain things in chat.