@Smmenen

I apologize for not fully articulating my point of view about group think by saying that I think that Shops and Mentor being perceived as the best decks helps to perpetuate the problem because they are the most played decks and unsurprisingly the most successful decks. If there was a larger sample size of players who had made the Top8 of Challenges then I think you could argue that the MTGO meta was efficient, but a large percentage of the Top8s are made up by a small percentage of the players per @p3temangus in the Turbo Xerox thread,
"25% of the Top8s are made by 6 players
50% of the Top8s are made by 16 players
75% of the Top8s are made by 33 players
53 individuals made Top8".

It's impossible to say whether the Top 6 or 16 players would have Top8d the events that they did if they hadn't played the decks that they did, but success begets success.

Because there is so much data available on MTGO I think people such as yourself have put too much stock in the data because there aren't even TO reports on TMD for events like the 53 player TDG Luau, while there is data ready for consumption every day on MTGO.

My opinions about why I don't want to play in Daily events are truly just my opinions. I think that if Daily events did not post decklists or would let you choose whether your list was posted or not they would be improved. I don't want to give away my new technology for free just because there is an event to play in. One could say that this is pointless and to some degree they would be right, but the element of surprise is a real thing. It's not to say that one cannot succeed while playing what everyone knows they will be playing, because I am a testament to this not being the case. However, while people know 50 of my 75 before we sit down, the 25 they don't know can drastically change how the match goes.

There are plenty of people who are playing in Daily events because this is their only avenue to playing Vintage on a daily basis and many of those people are more than happy to try out new and crazy ideas, but I can't be the only person who doesn't want to play their current Champs list in a daily event for fear that their list will catch on.

You are certainly allowed to complain about the format, but the idea that you are excused in doing so because others did it is childish. You're right, I didn't make a post telling others to stop campaigning for Gush to get restricted; I didn't post at all because I was tired of hearing people complain. For someone who takes posting on this forum so seriously, I am somewhat surprised that you spend so much time and effort blaming others for what happened. My general point on the matter was that the current Vintage environment could be improved by people spending more time building, testing and discussing new decks than complaining about how overpowered Monastery Mentor and Workshop decks are.

@KingLeovold said in The Downside to Vintage on Magic Online and GroupThink:

Thanks for your insights! While the things you listed are indeed downsides MTGO is incredibly valuable for vintage for two main reasons. One is the cost. As someone who did not get into magic until about 6 years ago the cost of real life power is astronomical. I could play literally any deck with any card for less then the price of a couple of paper moxen.

The second reason MTGO is incredibly valuable to vintage is that there are lots of games that can be played in a short span. There are no vintage tournaments anywhere near me, sanctioned or proxied. The only way that I can play vintage on a regular basis and improve is through regular play. MTGO presents that on a consistent basis.

One last thought on the Vintage Challenges. I personally would be more willing to try new deck ideas because the odds of placing and getting my money back are much higher than in dailies. I have a hard time not playing either shops or mentor in a daily.

Just my two cents. Thanks for the post!

You're totally right, Magic Online makes Vintage a lot more accessible, I may have undersold this exceptionally important piece. My post was more a critique of the way that Vintage is structured on Magic Online than that it's a thing.

I apologize in advance if this theory has been stated elsewhere, I admittedly did not spend the time to read all 122 posts in the Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor thread, especially given the length of some of the posts.

With that out of the way, I think that Magic Online has negatively changed Vintage because of the structure of the events. I also think that "community wide discussion" has hurt the community as a whole.

1. My biggest complaint is that the decklists for Vintage Dailies are posted for 4-0 and 3-1 decks. While there are players who take these events as a point of pride and want to see their name and deck posted as much as possible, it cuts down on innovation. I look at a Daily as a testing session, but why would I test with my list for Vintage Champs or another big tournament in an event where my list will be posted for public consumption if I do well? Additionally, if I played something new and creative that did well then my list would be copied or metagamed against by the others in the event. This strategy is widely accepted, but in my opinion it invalidates the metagame. It's analogous to filling your maindeck with Grafdigger's Cages and Containment Priests because you're about to play in an 8 man tournament with 2 Oath and 2 Dredge decks. There's nothing wrong with this strategy of course, but analyzing this data and presenting it as useful is asinine. I wish that after the tournament you could opt whether your list would be posted or not, so people who wanted to try out new things without losing their edge could do so and those who wanted glory could get it. As it currently stands, Vintage moves faster than it ever has, but it's all micro rather than macro changes which rewards people tuning existing decks rather than designing new archetypes.

2. Vintage Challenges are usually 40-50 player events and reward the Top 32 players. The problem with this prize support is that it encourages people to play known commodities. If my goal is to win prize, why would I play something new and innovative rather than Mentor or Ravager Shops? I get that this is not all or even most player's goals, but when the Vintage Challenges happen every week, the prestige level is low. Mentor and Ravager Shops are powerful enough decks that if played well should at least be able to yield a 4-4 record. If you play a brew then maybe your chance of catching everyone by surprise and winning the event is higher, but your chances of going 2-6 are also much higher. From a value perspective, it makes sense to play a deck with a high floor, which feeds into the notion that we're in a two deck metagame.

3. This critique pertains solely to TMD and Facebook, but people need to stop complaining about Vintage being so awful. I agree with the ideas that Monastery Mentor is very good and Gush/Probe getting restricted did not do enough to slow down the Delve engine, but complaining about it just turns people off from wanting to play. The Vintage community by and large has spent significantly more effort complaining about the format and squabbling over who thought Gush getting restricted would "fix" the format than it has in trying to address the problem at hand.

If instead of focusing on whether Mentor should get restricted, the Vintage community instead worked to build a good Leovold or Paradoxical Outcome deck then Vintage would be a much better and more inviting format.

I feel obligated for whatever strange reason to give my $0.02 on the whole "State of Vintage" debate.

First though, I want to express my thanks to Matt, Ryan, and everyone else who helps put together data like this. I have been longing for data like this for far too long and put together Metagame breakdowns which paled in comparison to this back in 2010-2014. I know how much thankless work must go into this and I want everyone who helps with this to know that I appreciate the work they put in.

Vintage is a strange format in that it is an eternal format defined by the most powerful cards from the dawn of Magic which also incorporates and in some cases is shaped by the newest sets. I think for a long period of time this was not entirely the case, blocks like Kamigawa and Ravnica didn't completely change the landscape, but now it seems that every year something new comes out and completely rocks the Vintage world.

My point in saying this is that most Vintage players can point to a year and subjectively declare that, "Vintage was best in year ____". No one is wrong in saying this, maybe you loved the format in 2005, 2009, 2011, 2014 or 2016; regardless, you're not wrong for feeling that was the case. Unfortunately, Vintage is never going to be the place that it was in 2014 again before Khans came out, it doesn't matter how much you dislike what the Delve cards did to Vintage, they're not going to be un-printed. Personally, I loved the metagame immediately before Khans came out, but who really cares, Vintage is never going to be the same as it was until someone holds a "2014 Vintage Tournament".

Arguing about whether Vintage was a better format when Mana Drain is a strong card is a fool's errand. I think that trying to shape the B&R to make something like this a reality could work out really well, or it could be disastrous and given that nobody really knows what will happen if they restrict X or when something format altering is printed in 2018, it might be best if everyone stopped fighting about the B&R.

I think that Vintage is approaching a point where there are going to be people who play "Modern Vintage" and then there is going to be those who want to play "_____ Vintage" similarly to how people play 1993/94 Magic. I would probably play in an event like this, but I like being able to brew new decks and seeing how the new sets change things, so ultimately I'm going to be playing Vintage for the foreseeable future. I doubt that WOTC will do something like restrict Workshop, Bazaar or Force, but if something is viewed as oppressive I envision WOTC restricting or printing cards to prune back the plant so to speak, with the hope that they don't completely kill it.

I think the best place for this would likely be in the board of a Living Wish Belcher deck, though it seems marginal at best there.

@BazaarOfBaghdad said in SMIP Podcast #63: "Where Do We Go From Here?":

After watching Vintage Super League throughout this season, Mentor has to be the #1 target, just for its mindlessness. People who know little about the format can just overpower the format (not meant to be a knock on Tiu). Preordain is the card being discussed that I most want to keep since it is the unrestricted card that most seems to matchup to that archetype's pillar (card filtering, draw, quality). I also want to keep Probe if and until the Storm archetypes prove excessive. I've lost a couple of times because of an early Probe's damage, so the card is not strictly free, and can even lead to some quality skill-intensive decisions about when to fire/keep/pay for. I think Gush is fine and Misstep, while annoying, is not oppressive. I would hope that WotC, with more resources at its disposal, analyzes the situation to see if benefits in format diversity created by an absence of Misstep would trump its lack of oppresiveness.

I think that basing the Vintage Banned and Restricted list on the results of the Vintage Super League would be a huge disservice to the rest of the format. I understand that the VSL is the main avenue in which most non-Vintage players get a glimpse at Vintage, but the premise of the League is not a representative sample of Vintage in large part because it is invite only and so small. I admittedly did not pay extremely close attention to the VSL this season, but I know that in seasons past decks like Dredge, Workshops and Eldrazi were largely underrepresented as most people were playing Blue decks. This was happening before and after Lodestone Golem and Chalice of the Void were restricted and I think is at least partially attributed to the players wanting to play the archetypes that they find the most fun and the most enjoyable for the viewers.

Thank you for this podcast, I thought it was very pertinent, especially the analysis of the candidacy of various cards for restriction.

I felt like you touched on this, but that it's worth mentioning again that each person's perception of the B&R decisions made are shaped by their opinion of when Vintage was best and/or what they view as a healthy metagame. If someone thought that Vintage was best in 2002 and wish we could go back to the days when Workshops and Dredge were an afterthought then they might advocate something like restricting Bazaar and Workshop. Just because I don't agree that this is how Vintage should look doesn't mean that person is wrong. I also think that someone could make a claim that a metagame where Vault-Key and Blightsteel Colossus see almost no play or that changes need to occur until Bazaars as a pillar become better is not healthy.

My personal opinion of when Vintage was best is probably right before Khans came out. Just about everything was viable, or at least more viable than many of them are today. I also think that a healthy metagame is one in which one deck is not unbeatable, which I think is the case now. I do think that Mentor is overpowered as shown by the invalidation of many flavors of blue since it's printing, but I don't think it warrants restriction.

Steve, I would be interested to hear your take on @diophan 's post. I can't help but interpret the B&R announcement as meaning that MODO and proxy events (Like the 88 person Eternal Extravaganza) do not influence their decision when compared with the European Vintage Championship which last year has 98 players. WOTC almost solely paying attention to the Top 8 of 2 events a year is scary, especially when you think about it through the lens of the ebbs and flows of the metagame. Sometimes this is based off of printings or restrictions, but more often they are natural developments. Ballista was printed and Workshops surged, then Mentor adapted with Null Rods and Workshops performed worse. Next, the metagame evolved further with Mentor decks that didn't play Stony Silence succeeding. Perhaps the next step is Outcome Storm finding success because of the rise in popularity of Mentor without Stony Silence in the main.My point in saying this is that I worry that taking 2 snapshots of the metagame could lead to extrapolation that is not warranted and a banned and restricted announcement that addresses a pivotal card in a deck that just so happens to be extremely well positioned for 2 events but were answered organically for the rest of the year.

Just a quick note, Montolio was 5-0-1 when he lost his final match falling to 5-1-1 and getting 9th place. This event was very strange because it was so close to being 8 rounds, so only Craig Masley and myself were able to draw into the Top8 at 5-0-1 and everyone else (5-0-1 and 5-1 had to play their final round).

I think Dredge's poor showing was mostly because the most experienced Dredge pilots in the field did poorly (Sullivan Brophy and Travis Compton). I don't know if this was because Dredge is poorly positioned or for some other reason.

Kevin, you're 100% right about my list. I took Montolio's deck from the N.Y.S.E. Open and cut 2 Witchbane Orb and 2 Relic of Progenitus from the sideboard for 2 Karakas, a 3rd Tormod's Crypt and a 3rd Dismember. As I mentioned in the tournament report I wrote, I played very little Vintage between the N.Y.S.E. Open and TMD Open 17 and felt that aside from the rise of Grixis Pyromancer that the metagame hadn't changed much if at all.

@Winterstar
I think that the Workshop pillar has by and large lost its ability to adapt and change to the metagame. The Ravager TKS deck practically builds itself and as results have shown is obviously quite strong, but this is because it preys on Gush decks. I don't really know if Workshops could adapt to Gush getting restricted, but for better or worse the metagame has revolved around Gush Tokens decks far longer than Lodestone Golem or Chalice of the Void have been restricted.

I miss the days when I could switch between Kuldotha Forgemaster, Smokestack and Null Rod based Workshop decks depending on how the field was changing. Now the metagame has for the most part stagnated, with the major changes being people deciding between which Gush deck is best. Conspiracy has a good chance of shaking up the format as does the Banned and Restricted announcement for Kaladesh.