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1. Metagame Breakdown by Archetype

There were twelve Vintage tournaments of 33 or more players in November and December of 2008. These tournaments occurred across the globe, from the Netherlands to the Philippines, from Louisville to Quebec. That makes for a total of 96 decks. Links to the Top 8s can be found in the Appendix.

Here’s what made Top 8 (placement in Top 8 in parenthesis).

12 Events (96 Top 8 Decks):

22 Tezzeret Control (1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,6,6,6,7,8) (1 Painter/Tez Hybrid) (3 Tez/Slaver Hybrid)
10 Ichorid (1,1,3,5,6,6,6,6,7,8)
10 Control Slaver (1,1,2,4,4,4,5,6,8,8) (3 Tez/Slaver Hybrid)
9 Fish (1,2,4,4,5,5,5,7,8) (3 UW, 3 UR, 2 BUG, 1 Mono-U)
7 The Perfect Storm (1,2,2,3,3,3,7) (2 Bob TPS)
6 MUD (1,4,4,6,7,7)
5 Painter Combo (2,3,5,6,8) (1 Painter/Tez Hybrid)
5 European Control (2,3,4,5,6)
5 Oath (5,6,7,7,8)
3 Stax
3 Belcher
2 Mono Red Workshop Aggro
2 Landstill
2 Goblins
2 Bob Control
1 R/G Beatz
1 Mono-Red Control
1 Cerebral Assassin
1 Drain Tendrils
1 Hermit Druid Combo
1 Ad Nauseam Combo

2. Breakdown by Archetype as Percentage of Top 8s

Tezzeret Control (23% of Top 8s)
Ichorid (10%)
Control Slaver (10%)
Fish (9%)
TPS (7%)
MUD (6%)
Painter Combo (5%)
European Control (5%)
Oath (5%)
Rest of the Metagame: 20%

Tezzeret Control is by far the strongest and best-performing deck in Vintage. Ichorid, Control Slaver, TPS, and Fish each make up almost 10% of the field. Shards of Alara just entered the format when this dataset begins.

Compare this archetype breakdown to the September/October breakdown:

TPS (10.7% of Top 8s)
Fish (8.9%)
MUD (8.9%)
Oath (8%)
Control Slaver (7.1%)
Ichorid (6.25%)
Painter (5.35%)
3c Control (5.35%)
Rest of the Metagame: 39.45%

Aside from Tezzeret, one of the biggest differences is the ‘Rest of the Metagame’ statistic, which fell by almost half. Oath and TPS both declined slightly. Control Slaver’s numbers are slightly overstated, since a third of those were Tez lists as well. Ichorid’s numbers improved significantly.

3. Breakdown by Engine – November/December

43 Mana Drain Decks (45% of Top 8s)
12 Null Rod Decks (13%) (estimate)
11 Mishra’s Workshop Decks (11%)
11 Bazaar of Bagdad Decks (11%)
10 Dark Ritual Decks (10%)
9 Other decks (9%)

Compare this breakdown by engine to the September/October breakdown:

46 Mana Drain Decks (41% of Top 8s)
14 Dark Ritual Decks (12.5%)
13 Mishra’s Workshop Decks (11.6%)
11 (estimate) Null Rod Decks (9.8%)
7 Bazaar Decks (6.25%)
Other (18.85%)

4. Analysis

In the last metagame breakdown, I wrote:

The next dataset will be very revealing as to what, precisely, the role of Tezzeret is, and whether cards like Ad Nauseam will be more than bit players.

It appears that we have answers to both questions. Ad Nauseam, so far, is little more than a fringe player.

But most importantly, the role of Tezzeret is now clear. Tezzeret is by far the most dominant deck in Vintage. It not only makes up about 25% of Top 8s, besting the next best deck by more a greater than two-to-one margin, it constitutes exactly half (50%) of all tournament victories in this time period. In other words, it’s winning every other Vintage tournament.

Tezzeret is the best-performing single archetype in any two-month dataset since I started recording tournament data on a regular basis in mid-2007. No single archetype in the second Gush era reached those numbers. As a point of comparison, Gifts Ungiven decks in the Fall of 2005 made up only 18.1% of Top 8s in that time period, at a time in which Mana Drain decks constituted 40% of the Top 8 field, and had significantly fewer tournament victories.

Oddly enough, however, the number of Mana Drain decks making Top 8s only increased by 4%, from 41% to 45% of Top 8s, at the same time that Tezzeret shot from almost nothing to over 23% of all Top 8s. In addition, the percentages of all of the "engines by percentage" stats are only within a percentage or two from the pervious data set (with the exception of Bazaar decks, which increased by 5%). How can all of this be?

There appear to be several explanations. The short answer appears to be that the "rest of the metagame," which aggregates all of the archetypes that made up less than 5% of Top 8s individually, halved from almost 40% to 20%. In addition, the percentage of "other engines" dropped from 19% to 9%. Finally, the Mana Drain archetypes consolidated. Bomberman and Drain Tendrils virtually disappeared in this time period.

5. Restriction Discussion

Tezzeret decks are outperforming any single Gush archetype from a few months ago, and those archetypes triggered multiple restrictions. In addition, they are outperforming Gifts decks of the past, and those decks also triggered a restriction. However, unlike Gifts or Gush, there is no obvious candidate for restriction.

First of all, restricting Tezzeret makes little sense since many of the lists only run one Tezzeret anyway, and most only run two. Second, almost every other engine card, cards that Tezzeret would run as a four-of, such as Brainstorm, are already restricted. The only unrestricted non-land cards that are run as four-ofs are Force of Will, Mana Drain, and to a lesser extent Thirst For Knowledge.

Third, although the primary draw engine selected by most Tezzeret pilots is Thirst For Knowledge, it is not uniformly so. In fact, some Tezzeret lists only have 3 Thirsts as is. Many Tezzeret pilots are running Accumulated Knowledge and Intuition, and alternative draw engines. And even if Thirst were restricted, Tezzeret pilots would still be able to run one and find three other cards to fill those slots with little harm. With Gifts, Fact or Fiction, Merchant Scroll, and Thirst, there is already a critical mass of Blue draw spells that well support Tez lists. Restricting Thirst would just allow more room for the Tezzeret pilot to run other, alternative cards, with minimal harm.

The only other possible restriction that would reign in the Tezzeret decks would be Mana Drain (aside from Force of Will, which is not an option). As it is, Mana Drain decks make up over forty-five percent of Top 8s, an absolutely astounding statistic, belying blue dominance. Compare that to the fact that Gush decks made up no more than 25% of Top 8s from June, 2007 to June 2008.

Despite this incredible dominance, I would not recommend the restriction of Mana Drain. As empirically problematic as this might be, there are subjective considerations, as well as further objective considerations, which weigh against such a move.

First of all, the reality is that Vintage players tend to enjoy Mana Drain metagames. As a dominant deck, they tend to be the most interactive. They provide opponents with the feeling that they are making relevant decisions because they tend to be slower than other Vintage archetypes. These metagames tend to get increased attendance and player participation and enthusiasm. Part of the reason is that Mana Drain decks have natural predators, and those predators are popular archetypes like Fish.

Second, and objectively, the restriction of Mana Drain could actually trigger a worse metagame than one in which Mana Drain decks are dominant. This is the danger of a cascading restricted list. If Mana Drain were restricted, the metagame could quite easily be primarily composed of Mishra’s Workshop and Storm combo decks. On a related note, restricting Mana Drain could lead to a "critical mass restricted list," when the restricted list no longer accomplishes very much since most Vintage decks will be built primarily around it. In light of these considerations, restriction in general is a policy device to be avoided.

Finally, as a historical matter, it is unlikely that Tezzeret’s dominance will persist for any durable period of time. If history has taught us anything, it’s to be patient. Another deck always manages to emerge at the top eventually. Last year proved that this happens rather quickly if we a patient. If we are in the same position six months from now, then a more convincing argument could be advanced.

V. Year End Summary

Before we close, I wanted to give you some summary "end of the year" statistics. There were 51 sufficiently large tournaments since the June restrictions. Here are those cumulative tallies:

408 Decklists:

41 The Perfect Storm (10%)
41 Fish (10%)
38 Control Slaver (9.3%)
33 Ichorid (8%)
29 MUD (7.1%)
26 Tezzeret Control (6.3%)
26 Painter Combo (6.3%)
24 Oath (5.8%)
15 Bomberman (3.7%)
14 Drain Tendrils (3.4%)
13 Stax (3.1%)

This is mostly just an FYI, so make of it what you will. There were three additional Control Slaver lists, but I counted them as Tezzeret lists. If we combined the Workshop archetypes, they would be the best-performing by a small margin. From the perspective of the last six months, things look very healthy. The top 5 archetypes each use different engines. From this view, Vintage looks like it’s in really good shape.

It’s my personal view that Vintage is fantastic right now. The Tezzeret decks being the best deck make a very good metagame target. They are beatable (they have some glaring weaknesses), and they should give creative players a great challenge as they work on combating them. At the same time, the Tezzeret lists will evolve to maintain its current position. It looks like we are going to have to a great year!

Next week, I will review Conflux. Until then…

Stephen Menendian

Appendix

10.25
1) Quebec, Canada
Tez won

10.26
2) Madrid, Spain (55 players)
Tez won

11.09
3) Zurich, Switzerland (48 players)
Ichorid won

11.10
4) Barcelona, Spain (85 players)
Tez won

11.16
5) Rome, Italy (64 players)
MUD won

6) Madrid, Spain (46 players)
Tez won

11.22
7) Pittsburgh, PA (41 players)
Tez won

12.05
8) Madrid, Spain (133 players)
Fish won

12.07
9) Breda, Netherlands (44 players)
Control Slaver won

12.20
10) Louisville, KY (34 players)
Tez Control won

11) Catalan League End of Year Invitational (32 players)
Mana Ichorid won

12.28
12) Manila, Philippines (56 players)
TPS won