@smmenen You're not wrong, but I think there are other factors--e.g. "I love my blue cards"--which matter in the sense of it shifts 3-4 players away from Shops, at least in the northeast.

It's also--while more winning in aggregate--a lot more linear of a deck. There are clear expression of skill, but they are different than blue expressions of skill, and that puts many people off.

@Smmenen Gush has a pretty good argument for restriction to me from that data in that quad gush was in a meaningful percent of even the 'other' decks (certainly grixis, Tahiti, delver, probably some of the oath decks, doomsday). If cruise and/or dig needed to go, gush needed to go too. the true non-gush deck representation is actually quite small.

I can get behind "restricting probe was a mistake." It certainly hurt storm, and it made cabal therapy strategies a lot worse. It doesn't serve the same purpose in every deck, and that excuses it's ubiquity to an extent.

@Prospero said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

To try and get back on point, and wrap this up, I'd just ask that people really think deeply about when Vintage really was balanced in the last few years. Maybe we could start taking steps back towards a metagame where players could play with more of their cards, and we weren't looking to just hit everything that ran well for a while, but looked to develop new strategies to combat new problems. Everything in life isn't a nail, and we have more tools at our disposal than a hammer. Terra Nova was built as a rebuke to a comment that no new innovations were possible in Shops until new cards were printed, or new restrictions/unrestrictions took place. Maybe before we take away someone's right to play their cards we can go to the drawing board and work towards addressing the problems at hand in new, unseen ways. This current philosophy is exhausting, and awful for the long-term health of the format.

I'll offer my 2 cents on this, in particular:

The best Vintage format I've played in was at NYSE 2 (or thereabouts).

This format included 4x Golem and 4x Chalice, and I still felt actively favored against Shops.

What I think was a defining feature of format was that the threats didn't match up with the draw engines all that well. Tinker for Blightsteel was the best thing in the format, followed by a lot of other clunkier two card combos (Salvagers, Vault/Key, Oath)--all of which want you to tutor chain, rather than go up cards. The best draw engines weren't in the same deck--and didn't synergize with--the best threats. The best draw engines lived in Delver (with Gush being as dumb as ever--and this was probably secretly the best deck), and Standstill. And there was space in between the two extremes--e.g. Blue Angels or BUG Fish, which had worse than gush/better than Vampiric Tutor draw engines, but better threats and answers than Delver of Secrets and Mishra's Factory.

Note that I haven't mentioned Shops here. That's because Shops decks were, by and large, a boogeyman, but very beatable. You had to show respect, play your 2 drops and EEs and Chewers, but you could win. The small shops creatures were prisony but, outside of Ravager, actively sucked when getting into the red zone (remember--you didn't have Ballista, HBW, or Foundry Inspector!), and the large shops creatures were necessarily clunky and occasionally uncastable.

That--at least how I remember it--was the best format I've played.

@albarkhane said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I am far from being an expert but from my little experience, when there are 2 dominating decks in a format the usual solution is a third deck that can predate on both of them.

This deck ought to be Oath of Druids, but I think the reason people call for Mentor's head is that a Mentor in play is often better than an active Oath. Mentor+3 Tokens+a grip probably beats Griselbrand handily.

Similarly, the big mana "i'm going to resolve Moat/other large spell" decks don't work because you don't actually out control and out-resource the TX deck. If they have an out at all, even if it's total jank like "Ultimate small jace, deck you"--they can stop everything you do and assemble it because they outdraw you so heavily. This isn't legacy, where the delver deck can be beaten with individual large spells, because you get to build resources while they try to cantrip to an answer--this is Vintage, where they'll build to 7 in hand versus your none in hand.

The closest to a good answer are the Outcomes decks (and, to an extent, the Gifts deck), because they are a big mana TX deck. They cash in some consistency in draw for "my cantrips draw 2-ifninity", but at heart, they are chaining draw spells until they find an answer/something that kills you, and have a passable shops matchup because they're playing a lot of mana.

The other angle to approach is Fish, but you lose so badly to Mentor->make 3 guys (not some insane sequence) and/or Walking Ballista that it's hard to justify the deck. You also have the problem of putting your TX opponent far down, and then them chaining spells into a balance and a full grip--things go wrong too easily.

Individual pilots have had success on other decks--but it's often something I chalk up to the pilot rather than the deck. Until anyone other than Josh Potucek picks up his Landstill deck and wins with it consistently, I'm going to say it's Josh being very good and the deck being at least playable, and not the deck being very good. Same story with @ChubbyRain .dec.

So yeah, people have tried, and so far, everyone has failed.