So the June B/R announcement comes and goes without any changes for Vintage. One person on TheManaDrain said, "The format is really diverse right now. I'm not sure that unrestricting cards is the way to go right now." Diverse? Maybe, maybe not. One thing is for sure, the format is stagnant.
Since September of '08, we've had Mana Drain-Time Vault decks, Shop-Prison Decks, and Disruptive Agro decks dominating the format. Dredge moves up and down but remains only slightly tweaked and at the bottom of the major archetype list. Oath zig-zags more wildly as the new fattie of the quarter gets released in the newest set, makes an impact, and then people adjust.
In fact, Oath is probably the only place real innovation has happened recently. Instead of fast fatties like Akroma, Razia, and Helkite, the archetype has moved to disruptive fatties like Iona, Terrastadon, and on occasion Emrakul.
The only really interesting debate, IMO, that has gone on for a long time is whether or not Trinisphere and Black Lotus belong in MUD lists anymore. The Black Lotus discussion would have been much more interesting if those same lists didn't include Mana Vault. I guess the toying around with Mystic Remora was interesting too. But anyway, I digress.
It's unfortunate, IMO, that there are several fun decks that are on the sidelines because they can't really break into the format right now. Goblins are out. Bomberman is dead. Elf combo is out. R/G Beatz is out. Dark Ritual Combo is virtually out. Dragon Combo is out despite Entomb's unrestriction. Grow decks are out. Slaver is out. The format could be so much more diverse and dynamic but it's stifled thanks, in large part, to poor management of the B/R List.
I want to go back to the Golden Age of Vintage (Summer '07-Summer '08). I want to take a look at three "decks" (I use that term very loosely here) from that era: Gush Decks, Flash Decks, and Agro Decks.
Gush was such a dynamic source of innovation from that time. Obviously GAT came out first since everyone remembered it from the first Gush era. Followed by Empty Gifts. Then a whole string of innovative decks like Next Level Doomsday, The Tropical Storm, and Tyrant Oath. It all finally culminated in MS Paint just before the restrictions of June 2008.
"Oh c'mon, Troy. That's not innovation. That's just switching the win condition around." Um, well that may be, but when you witch from Quirion Dryad to Tidespout Tyrant as your win condition, that's a major shift in strategy and more importantly, a major shift in counter-strategy. When you go from a storm kill to Painter-Grindstone, that's a major shift in strategy. And the cards that work against one, won't against the other.
When you switch from Inkwell Leviathan to Sphinx of the Steel Wind, that's not a major shift in strategy. When you go from 9 Sphere to 13 Sphere, that's not a major switch in strategy. When you add Show and Tell to an Oath deck, you're not changing the basic function of the deck. That's just making the decks more efficient which only squeezes other decks out of the meta.
Okay, let's go back and look at Agro decks from the Golden Age. The knee jerk reaction I always hear is, "There weren't any back then. It was all Gush!" What a bunch of crap. First, let me highlight one deck I thought was particularly cool during this era: "Gob-Lines". Remember that Dredge, Flash, TPS, and Gush relied a lot on the graveyard at the time. Gob-Lines main-decked Leyline of the Void, Wastelands, and Earwig Squad to fight those decks. This was totally awesome and a nightmare for those decks that faced it. TPS would lose its Tendrils. Tyrant Oath would lose its Tyrants. Flash couldn't function. Dredge folded like a house of cards. What made this deck so cool in my mind is that the age old tribal deck of Goblins went from an all-in agro deck, to a disruptive agro deck. Pilots had to change their mindset and rightfully so. The meta was shifting constantly and so should the strategies to compete against it. Gob-Lines never got much traction, though. Shortly after Earwig Squad was released, Gush and Flash got restricted and reliance on the graveyard diminished- especially after the printing of Tez.
But that wasn't the only agro deck of note at the time. Everyone forgets (or nearly everyone) that a simple R/G Beatz deck won a SCG Power 9 tournament in Chicago. Yep, a deck sporting bland critters like Kird Ape and Skyshroud Elite and burn spells demolished a well tuned meta of Gush and Shop. The deck got picked up in tournaments everywhere and became a real contender- until the restrictions. It didn't pack a lot of disruptive creatures- maybe Gorilla Shaman or Viashino Heretic. It just beat face to win. Good luck with anything like that winning now.
Finally, let me talk about Flash for a minute. Flash went through a lot of mutations. First, to bust a myth, the Turn Zero Kill deck sporting Gemstone Cavern, Disciple of the Vault, and X cost artifact creatures probably never existed. Or, if it did, performed so horribly it never posted any top 8 results. In Vintage, Flash had three major incarnations. One was a Sliver deck. It used Venomous Sliver and Heart Sliver to kill with poison counters. Poison counters, people! What competitive deck ever won with poison counters in a constructed format? It's gotta be the only instance of this happening in Magic's history. That's incredible. Sadly, it's mostly forgotten.
Another incarnation was a combo with Kikki-Jiki Mirror Breaker. This one was really complex and had all sorts of vulnerabilities to cards like Pithing Needle, burn spells, and Tormod's Crypt in addition to LotV. It honestly, didn't work that well and still required an attack.
The last form of the deck was Reveilark kill with Mogg Fanatic. This was definitely the best. Unlike the other two, you didn't need to attack to win. And you could win at instant speed with the "lost the game" triggers of Summoner's Pact and Pact of Negation on the stack. That was the real innovation of the deck. Eschewing the combat phase for a true combo trick. It radically changed the way people had to play against it. That's when Flash spiked up to a whopping 12.5% of the top 8 meta. wow. The decks adjusted quickly, MS Paint hit the scene, and Flash was back down below 10%.
But the thing is, the deck totally changed the way it won. It went from attacking to pinging. That's a much greater shift in tactics than tossing in the newest robot, fattie, or duplicate printing that we've been stuck doing for the last two years.
And you know, I'm not even going into how Slaver Decks, Masknought Decks, Shop Decks, Ritual Decks, Fish, and off-the-wall Rogue Decks innovated during this period. Every couple of months the meta game changed to a point where it was different, exciting, and engaging. You could never rest. You had to constantly update your main deck and your sideboard.
This latest decision by the DCI just keeps the status quo. It doesn't change the dynamic that's been at work for the last 22 months. And it's hard to see how this will change through printings thanks to RnD's decision to put more emphasis on crashing creatures into each other while at the same time de-emphasizing wins that use spells and new engines.
So, we're kinda stuck. The DCI has said they want to keep Vintage to 5 pillars. RnD has said they want to emphasize the creature and planeswaler card types over instants, sorceries, artifacts, and lands. Therefore, the likelihood of a new pillar or engine for Vintage is extremely low. It follows then, that for the foreseeable future, change is unlikely. The best we can hope for is deck tweaking.
Yay.
Peace,
-Troy
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