@iamactuallylvl1 said in Ain't No Rest for the Paradoxical - 11th Place Tournament Report - Vintage Champs 2018:

@ebgmtg karn has been slowly less impressive for me. I thought he would be a good plan versus jeskai but I have found him to be a liability versus dack. I would be looking to move away from him in the future. @ChubbyRain 's opinion may differ?

If Dack is your problem, I know what your issue is. Karn isn't there to tick down--he's there to just keep ticking up for a few turns. Paradoxical--even with the bonus card usually being a Mox--can overwhelm Jeskai if you get to just tick up Karn a bunch, then -1 and get an extra Will/Outcome to just have more stuff than they have answers. It was one of those very paradoxical "this isn't a threat, it's a howling mine" realizations.

@serracollector said in Survival Salad:

In the BUG Variants running 4 Dr. Shaman and Leovold, and ESG (Albeit not played most games for this purpose), could a Singleton Priest of Titania be a thing? Anything past her and another elf leads to enough consistent Mana (looking at you Orcish Lumberjack) to go off every turn right?

Priest of Titania is win more. 3 mana+Survival is realistically death already, and while it would be great to cast Hollow One, it's often better to just cycle it away and try to hit gas or a more castable card.

@trius

I'll offer an explanation: Often, it's a "I just started going off, and I guess at some point I'll let you know that you're dead. If you know you're dead, I guess you'd concede?" It's fun to just combo off, especially with outcomes.

It's very much not being rude, or showboating, or whatever. They came to have their fun, and by god, they intend to have it.

Now, in paper, I suppose I'd just scoop myself a lot faster--they are taking up precious time on the clock, and no judge can say they're not within their rights to keep taking game actions which are advancing the game state--but on MTGO? Fine, go nuts. If I get bored, I'll concede.

Because (1) it's a fantastic run hot deck (Cosmo's deck from champs, for example, doesn't have Preordain. It's going to fold on itself some medium percentage of the time, though I'm sure it's fantastic when it does not), and (2) it doesn't have any real champion online who is willing to grind the deck and get the 3 to 4 5-0 records it takes to get noticed. (and a big #3--it relies on your opponent not knowing what you're doing a little bit).

@spook said in Survival Salad:

@drstreetmention edited the "original" post -- although going through the decklists right now, Paul Callis who played "Junk Survival" to a 6-2 record played the same 60 as the winning Asia Vintage Champs-- so it really was Bant.

Cleaning up the data and moving people to the right category:
Bant Survival = 65% win rate (8 players)
RGwu Survival = 55% win rate (6 players with 1 or more Ancient Grudge and Chewer)
Other Survival = 75% win rate (1 player: FOW Leovold / Misstep)

Thanks for puttting this together. Not surprising to me in the least--the RGwu versions are far more matchup dependent, and that's not as good in a huge tournament like Champs. Bant was simply ultra stable and did well. FoW Survival was me, and I finished 8-2 (with 1 loss to, of all things, Blood Moons), good for the casual 75%. That's not really any sample size.

What I see from this is that--back of the napkin--is that you've got enough sample size that you're about 80% certain that bant was better against the champs field than RGwu, and 0 statistical certainty about anything about FoW Survival.

That said--every single version is notably north of 50%, so I'm quite certain that we had the best deck in the room, with a very decent conversion rate to the top 8.

@chubbyrain

I would not have gotten to x-2 without the work of @kaluma , @wfain and @GutoCmtt Props to them for breaking the format as much as it has ever been broken.

@iamactuallylvl1 said in Ain't No Rest for the Paradoxical - 11th Place Tournament Report - Vintage Champs 2018:

@neo_altoid @CountDaBubba it is perfectly reasonable to play Dig and Cruise and up your blue count for FoW. This is what ecobaronen decided was the correct line. Personally my team liked dig, will, snap a small amount more.

Agreed on that. We felt Snapcaster was basically required, and it was "Pick 2 of Will, Cruise, and Dig"--and Will/Dig was what we (well, only Ryan, really, as BPK ended up on Oath,and I ended up on Survival)

@iamactuallylvl1 said in Ain't No Rest for the Paradoxical - 11th Place Tournament Report - Vintage Champs 2018:

@countdabubba Good question! It is my belief that you can only support 2 "delve spells" in PO. So for this you have to choose between Dig/Cruise/Will and Snapcaster. Dig is the best one as you are a combo deck. Cruise IMO is more underwhelming then Will and Will plays a bit better with the one snapcaster mage. It is perfectly acceptable to run 1 dig 1 cruise or 1 dig 1 will 1 snap. Any other configuration doesn't make sense.

@brianpk80 , @diophan and I also came to the same conclusion. You can't actually support any further delve spells in PO (or really, any non Xerox deck).

@gutocmtt said in Survival Salad:

Poor Squee, he's already got that face and you put him alone ;(

That's because @wfain is a monster.

Just played a league with the list from kaluma's stream and I really liked it. Phantasmal and containment priest made me run more confidence against tinker (while still losing, but variance hits every deck), and I guess it would be nice against oath and it's blue to force.

PI has consistently impressed. It answers a lot of the problems of the deck without being pure trash outside of problem situations. 1U 4/3 haste is for real.

Btw, I really liked your idea of hurkyl's in the side. Hurkyl end step to survival with nothing holding you back, and even have another turn until your opponent be able to attack again. I mean, energy flux is kinda lights out for shops when you play it, but it's 3 mana against a deck with wasteland, sphere, revoker... And sometimes hurkyl would save you when flux wouldn't. I'll definitely try it for my next league on flux's spot!

I like the idea of Hurkyl's (and we certainly do enter a Hurkyls->you're dead kind of state). Worth trying (I think it's wrong), but worth trying, as Hurkyl's x2+Trygon+removal gives pretty good game.

I also hate only 12 mana producing lands. It's possible that it's right, and 4 mox is correct, but I hate only 12 lands.

Re: Cruise--I've found that it's one of the worst cards early and one of the best cards late. Deep Analysis isn't insanity to play, and worth trying. I think Brainstorm is pretty overrated, tbh, as you want to brainstorm with a full hand, and Survival does not have a full hand all the time. I'd cut Brainstorm before I cut Cruise.

@rat3de said in Misdirection:

But even as recent as 2015 when both Mental Misstep and Flusterstorm were both legal it was still being used in multiple top 32 decks of the Vintage NA EW. It seems to have dropped completely off the map right after. All the reasons stated above make sense, but how come it was still being used so recently (in vintage time)?

People are slow to adapt, and in a format where Vintage where the other 59 can carry you so hard, it sometimes doesn't matter. I think Misdirection might even still have a place in Oath of Druids if we go back to Abrupt Decay being the tool du jour to fight Oath, but short off that, the combo decks are too critical mass-y and the control decks too good at casting Misstep, Flusterstorm and Reb for Misdirection to matter too much.