Vintage Strategy

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  Read Me! Vintage Strategy FAQ
  • Brass Man

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  White Eldrazi
  deck tech eldrazi • • Brass Man

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  @stuart I feel like I'm hearing more discussion of Sphere than Thorn as anti-Shops restrictions, for the exact reason that those restrictions would also hit Shops hard.

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  Seat of the Synod Mentor
  • Treblocaz

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  Two Card Monte
  deck tech 2-card monte • • thecravenone

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  @mdkubiak

  I could for sure be wrong about who played that list.
  The great thing about it was that a turn one oath was great against shops and delver. The defense grids were really good against delver and mentor and the helm + leyline was great against unfair decks. I swapped out the helms for serum powders and went all in on the oath plan. The deck had enough copies of cards that you weren't worried about exiling too much.
  It was a great deck and very consistent.

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  Can you ever 'Jund them out'? (Decklist)
  • Sovarius

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  Something about this list seems off to me. Maybe it's all the discard spells in it. Those seem especially bad in vintage at such a high number. I think 2 thoughtseize main and 2 board is enough. They get very bad in the late game and they aren't even great in the early game. This is not modern where you are taking away their first and ONLY play. This is vintage where if you take away a powerful line, they still have a second powerful line to take. And then you keep drawing worthless cards in the long run.

  I'd rather see more impactful creatures in the list than discard cards. Unfortunately, that probably means, and as much as I love Grim Flayer, that Grim Flayer becomes unplayable in the list because you will have one less archetype in the yard.

  I like manglehorn, confidant, deathrite shaman. I like flametongue Kavu or some other creature removal/creature hybrid.

  Jund wins because of two for 1s. I don't see a lot of value cards in this list. Mostly 1 for 1.

  You also get access to rootmaze to stop paradoxical outcome lists.

  Oh yeah and Liliana of the Viel is unplayable in Vintage. It does nothing vs 90% of the field.

  If you can find a way to get more ramp cards, mind twist becomes viable. I don't know if that means playing mana crypt and off color moxen or lotus petal or spirit guides. But I think the key to this deck becoming success hinges on Mind twist's inclusion and being able to cast it for 3-5 on turn 2.

  Green suns zenith and dryad arbor aren't playable in vintage either. GSZ is just a bad card. You are always overpaying 1 mana for whatever creature you are trying to get. The versatility of it is punished in Vintage especially because 1) it's a spell and more cards effect spells than creatures 2) tax effects exist.

  So cut the green suns, Liliana's, bad discard spells, grim flayers, garbage green sun tutor cards like dryad arbor and gaddock teeg.

  Add ramp, fastbond, more wasteland effects, mind twist, and probably play the 4 of the walking crucible dude, and some number of flametongue kavu. You could even just play crucible of worlds on top of the creature copy too. I really like that idea, along with fastbond and Mind Twist.

  See what I did there. I took out fair (often terrible cards) and added in a bunch of powerful ones.

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  Workshop Aggro
  deck to beat archetype workshop • • Brass Man

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  @bleedth3sky The games I generally lose with aggro shops, car or other wise to mentor, usually involve them having enough removal + snapcastering, that I basically just end up with 0 threats on the board. Cutting threats for more car/equipment feels risky to me because of that. However, I do think that plating can be a powerful card. I believe that @cutlex or @brassman might be able to speak to that further, as I think they both have actually played plating semi-recently in "tiny robots".

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  Doomsday post gush restriction
  • boggyb

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  The loss of gush would not be so bad if probe was still legal as well. But now, not only does the deck lose on its mana base and its draw engine but it looses the ability to capitilize on openings and win on the spot (not even mentionning that constructing piles can be harder in some instances). TPS is probably the better ritual deck going forward, especially considering the prevalence of workshops in the metagame.

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  Dredge going into Summer 2017
  dredge • • grumpytopdecker

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  @poxeveryturn said in Dredge going into Summer 2017:

  Shops has too many other decks to worry about siding in against to take up that many spots in board.

  I disagree with this statement. Shops is pre-boarded against Missteps and aggregate combo. The typical shop setup needs enough board cards to side spheres out in the mirror on the draw. Since Cage is double duty vs. Oath I normally have at least 2-3 other dedicated grave hate like Crypt or Relic. Relic can come in to replace spheres as well and win the Crucible war in shop mirrors.

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  Abrupt Decay vs Abrade (Decklist Included)
  • xXHazardXx

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  the main differences is that i played recoup to flashback time twister as my graveyard shuffle effect, and i played sun titan and vault key and finally i played tinker into sphinx of the steel wind and memory jar

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  Mentor Control
  deck to beat archetype mentor • • Brass Man

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  @vintage_rage
  By Force has been great for me. I don't know yet whether I prefer 2 or 3 copies in the sideboard, but I'm very happy with the card ... but my approach to Shops seems to be a little different than some.

  I wouldn't want to run By Force unless I was totally sure I had:

  a rock-solid manabase enough cheap removal to survive long enough to develop my manabase

  Postboard I'm running 19 lands (+5 artifacts) and 7 one-drop removal spells, which has been good for me. Typically I'm able to play a one-for-one By Force early, and get bigger value out of it in the late game.

  I think if I were not already in a position to do that, I would run more lands or more 1-drop removal instead of By Force.

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  UR Standstill
  • NBA84

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  @serracollector said in UR Standstill:

  http://morphling.de/search.php?type=1&app=10&sorting=DESC&search=john+knight&sent=1

  the 8.01 and the one below tho are my 2 lists I ran and t8 with, mind you, highly outdated, but the premist remains the same. Hope they give insight sir. Any questions feel free to PM me, I prolly got over 1000 hours in testing these lists on cockatrice.

  Yeah, I was looking more for a list that at least factors in the Dig Through Time restriction in terms of its age, which Morphling.de decklists don't really do. Thanks though.

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  Creature disruption that "stacks"
  • walking.dude

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  @serracollector Holy crap... we are discovering yet another way that Shops is totally insane!

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  This topic is deleted!
  • garbageaggro

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  GWBEldrazi (Homebrew)
  deck tech • • Topical_Island

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  @serracollector I'm just thinking of Company. I have no idea since I haven't tested. It just feels like... well, like a turn behind Workshop since you have to play a land to play Cobra and pass the turn. Workshop comes down and taps right away... Not trying to argue. Test it. Go nuts and let us know what happens. I'm glad you are interested.

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  Outcome Combo
  deck to beat archetype outcome • • Brass Man

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  I prefer the more resilient versions for several reasons. Though I haven't been able to join as many Dailies this month as I was in May, June, and July, I had a lot of success then with lists that walked the line between Paradoxical control and Cantrip Gush-Delve.

  The main reasons I've preferred the Paradox lists with a Mentor win-con that are not "Opal Soup" are:

  Lower frequency of hideous mulligans. Less games auto-lost due to inactive Mox Opal(s). Better equipped to win despite Stony Silence/Null Rod. Monastery Mentor is the best answer to Monastery Mentor Able to change roles, particularly post sideboard. For instance, when an opponent can be expected to overboard v. Paradox with Null Rods and artifact hate, I board out Mana Vault, sometimes EE, and 1 or 2 Outcomes, morphing into more of a straight up Mentor deck. Paradoxical Mirrors. The control/resilient versions have been substantially more favorable in matches v. the combo lists.
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  How many artifact mana sources can you play before Null/Stony wrecks you?
  • Sovarius

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  @john-cox said in How many artifact mana sources can you play before Null/Stony wrecks you?:

  I would recommend not to build around hate cards unless your building for a specific meta. You may build a deck that beats null rod, but find your self in a meta with very few decks that that matters against.

  As far as i'm concerned, the specific meta is any time that you play, your opponent could have them.

  It looks as though Paradoxical has fallen out a little bit, and Shops have moved away from Fleetwheels and Ballistas, and towards Metamorph and Precursor. Scouring decklists, i see very little Stony Silence and Null Rod.

  But everything warrants an analysis, it's all about the tiny edges and maximizing knowledge.

  While you are totally correct, decks that can be blown by a single card must prepare for that. You don't not play Nature's Claim in Dredge or Chain of Vapor in Paradoxical.

  @desolutionist said in How many artifact mana sources can you play before Null/Stony wrecks you?:

  I think you want less than 10-11 if you're worried about Rod

  Not super worried, John Cox raised a good point and i looked into more concrete data about these two and there is very little dampers in decks at the moment. But like i mentioned to him, it's worth playing a few less if it's too easy to be blown out, and have that tiny edge in addition to prepare a removal.

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  Standstill List-Need Help
  landstill • • jaeastep

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  Thanks for all of the help and for breaking down your explanations for me. I have very little experience in the format and try to read as much as I can and look over deck lists and watch matches. The help is very much appreciated! I was thinking of balance as a reset button like the supreme verdict in case things get out of hand and I need to "pull the chute" so to speak. I know that sometimes having that backup can really help and having it at a lower mana cost against a shops deck seems appealing as opposed to the 4 mana spell which gets expensive with spheres in play. I'll go back to the drawing board a bit with it and try to play test some. Thanks again for all the insights! This format is so fascinating and complex from a construction point of view.

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  Dack Fayden - is he a main deck solution anymore?
  • moorebrother1

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  Boy, I'm a little surprised to hear that people are down on Dack. I find him to be terrific against both Mentor mirror and Shops.

  Against brown, no matter what you play (Krosan Grip?) they can always respond to anything you do by sacing with Ravager, or unloading damage with Balista. That's just the nature of the game. So if you're used to Dack being game over the way it once was against a Lodestone, well... he's not that.

  But he is viable removal against a deck that you just need a bunch of removal against. If they play Dack into a Ballista... lets say, then yeah, they just dump all the counters on you and Dack in response. But that's exactly how you beat that deck. You have drawing cards and they don't. So if you can just 1 for 1 removal them until they are out of cards and resolve any drawing spell and get ahead, you will likely win. So stocking up removal and hate is great, and Dack counts. Toss in some Swords, some By Force, a dash of Stony Silence and you will hit a critical mass of hate that can carry the day. And where stuff like By Force might be great against Shops while bad against the rest of the meta, Dack is just live against nearly everything. I really love this card.

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  Vintage deck help - BUG
  bug control • • dragoscar

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  I've been playing BUG for the past few weeks and am overall happy with the performance.

  I have made adjustments with included the removal of Dark Confidant. I love this card but he was not good enough and was doing far too much damage to me.

  The two all stars in the deck are Leovold and Ramunap Excavator. Ramunap works best if you plan on building a mana control build like I have built. This with null rod and recuring wasteland/strip mine/ghost quarter works great. If you land a fastbond, you really can take over the game with this guy.

  Your list looks more aggressive which is not a bad route. I have 2 delvers in my list that really come in handy when you need to have quick or flying damage. Your list might make good use of this if you are looking for speed.

  Dismember has not been very impressive for me. I have one in my sideboard for the eldrazi matches but otherwise, abrupt decay is almost always better.

  I personally don't like having more than one Sylvan Library. I would replace the second one with gush.

  For me, BUG lists play the aggressor. As such, I rarely get good use out of Library of Alexandria as I play my spells quickly. This is a tempo deck so I think you would get more out of a wasteland (or 4).

  That's my BUG philosophy. Hope it helps.

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  Where is Oath right now?
  oath • • Topical_Island

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  In 8 matches I have used Punishing Oath ZERO times. But, as I noted, I haven't played a single Shops deck--or a White Eldrazi for that matter.

  My experience with MTGO has ALWAYS been that the meta shifts dramatically every few days. People careen from Shops to Mentor to PO Storm w/Tinker, I think.

  Dredge and Oath players seem to stick to them, but that just maybe my speculation.