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The use of “Poxwalkers” in Oops! All Spells is inspired by “Yassy?” who came in 17th place in the 2022 Asian Vintage Championships.

I would like to be considered the following decklist as either an improvement or an alteration to established Vintage Oops! All Spells.

4x Balustrade Spy
4x Undercity Informer
3x Narcomoeba
2x Poxwalkers
1x Grief
1x Thassa’s Oracle
4x Pact of Negation
4x Force of Will
4x Dark Ritual
4x Agadeem’s Awakening
4x Sea Gate Restoration
3x Cabal Therapy
1x Chain of Vapor
1x Mental Misstep
1x Tinker
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Gitaxian Probe
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Dread Return
4x Chrome Mox
1x Goblin Charbelcher
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Emerald

The difference in the above list compared to other established lists such as what Medvedev usually plays is that Poxwalkers are added with an increase in Cabal Therapy. With the addition of Poxwalkers you can now chain them with a full four Cabal Therapy allowing you to rip the opponent’s hand apart in addition to being able to discard key cards in your own hand that should be in the graveyard such as Thassa’s Oracle and Dread Return. The importance of this option is that it can be used relatively all the time in some way after you mill your library, allowing to both protect the combo and discard your key cards.

Chain the Cabal Therapys and Poxwalkers in this manner:

-Post Balustrade Spy or Undercity Informer with library in Graveyard
-Sacrifice Narcomoeba to Cabal Therapy #1 and trigger Poxwalkers to enter the battlefield
-Sacrifice a Poxwalkers to Cabal Therapy #2
-Sacrifice a Poxwalkers to Cabal Therapy #3 and trigger Poxwalkers to enter the battlefield
-Repeat if there is a 4th Cabal Therapy
-Dread Return Thassa’s Oracle to win the game

With the addition of Poxwalkers you can an option to exile your opponent’s permanents in addition to ripping their hand apart with Cabal Therapies. Suggested Sideboard to do so with the above decklist:

2x Poxwalkers
1x Dread Return
1x Ashen Rider
Optional 1x Cabal Therapy

Though the above sideboard option many exile multiple permanents it is worth noting that this option may not work on your opponent’s “hate” cards since it requires the same combination that Thassa’s Oracle would use to win the game. Still there may be some use for it and worth noting.

@iamactuallylvl1 said in Vintage Format Health Update from WOTC:

Vodalian Hexcatcher

As long as stickers, Optimus Prime, Negan or that homeless white rapper aren't in the A tier decks I'm down for Vintage champs.

thumbs up
Thanks!! 🙂

@botvinik
This is the thread I think.
http://www.themanadrain.com/search?term=omnath&in=titles

@botvinik I dont really have any solutions ritual combo either 😞

This is truly amazing content. Thank you for compiling this data and doing the analysis.

@iamactuallylvl1 I obviously cannot take any credit here but I am enjoying that Stone Forge is creeping into the top tier when there was so much doubt about it's power level.

I think the arch type has a lot of potential in the current meta and will continue to do well.

@tronowolf
In what format?

@botvinik cool, thanks! That's on my list of things to pick up soon too...
So it'll be Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, and LED for now... going to with on the Seas and try to get the artifacts last.

I still can't believe these prices!! Revised Duals were like $20 cards...
kicks self again so so very hard...

That website linked to above as also pretty helpful... thank you!!

@lienielsen
No one really ever played the deck.

One of the things I found counter-intuitive about Chain of Smog is that it doesn't work like Storm. That is, you don't have to stack up a bunch of CoS triggers right away. They create copies on resolution, so you only ever have one CoS on the stack getting volleyballed around. Cute way to enter a multi-player non-mandatory loop!

I think if you want to play black and red you might as well play blue and if you want to play grixis the old thief lists seem like a good place to start. They often ran some discard elements and the notion theives/hulllbreachers seem good vs all the thoughtcasts running around and golos is very sad when you dack their crucible.

@botvinik said in Stranger Things Secret Lair:

This is where I take issue with your comparison SoK was available in significant print for months during which time more would be printed if shortages developed and the cards could be extensively played and tested in and outside tournaments. Secret Lairs are available for a weekend, not available through events like draft, not available through standard retailers, no additional will be printed, and they give wizards a perverse incentive to print good cards in the hardest to get way. At a point a quantitative difference in availability becomes a qualitative difference in availability

I am going to disagree with you here simply because the number printed are reflective of the demand, pure and simple. Yes SOK had a larger print window but was also during a period of time when magic literally almost died, and the player base was much lower than it is now. TWD is a set that literally a bunch of resellers bought 10 of at a time to sell them on the secondary market, and was at the time the number 1 selling Secret Lair (maybe still is?) If the players wanted to get in and buy 10 copies each or any given secret lair there would be literally 2.5 times the supply needed for the playbase.

I also genuinely do not know anyone who could tell me "I did not oder the set because I could not get to a computer for a day", and there was plenty of warning that it was coming to give people time to plan around or set up a shill buyer. It isn't even the case anymore as the SLs have a week to a month long window now.

I know WOTC does not release numbers to the public typically but I would not be shocked to hear that there are more copies of Rick in circulation than there are any given rare from a poorly selling set like SOK or even just earlier non reserve list sets that did not have the player base that the game does now. Rick is something like a $50 card and the rest of the stuff in the set is mostly chaff, and I don't think that is too bad a price point for most serious players who either want him for EDH or for Legacy humans, considering there are plenty other cards in those decks that cost much more.

If anything, the absolute biggest issue with mechanically unique Secret Lairs like TWD is that there are no non foil copies for people who are serious about playing them in a tournament setting, and even that seems to have been rectified now with the Stranger Things set having both versions.

I started this thread to get a pulse on where the meta is right now and to get some strategies on how to play with or against some decks.

I dipped a toe into a Vintage league with a mono blue delver brew and went 3-2. The format looks fast when I play against any bazaar deck. I also get put on the backfoot fast against Shops and almost any Urza saga deck.

The strange observation that I have is that the Challenge results do not match league play. The leagues have very fast decks that made to grid out a league. The Challenge results has RUG, BUG and Golos decks that look more like grindy decks.

I'm not sure what is going on here but I can say that I'm not in a hurry to play in a league again.

I'd like to play in the practice room more and just experiment with some brews. Without the MTG Melee, I'm not sure on how to do that. Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

@moorebrother1 said in Control decks:

@moorebrother1 The issue with the deck is that the deck does not do a good job at attacking any particular arch-type or strategy in the format.

As far back as M10 I remember hearing this from guys like Rakso, Menendian, Zherbus et al. and so if you feel this way, it's just the usual sentiment for control; ironically, that was at a time when control was still at its peak especially for skilled players. Just looking at some of these new decks drops my jaw. Who remember's Tan's builds from 20 years ago? Abyss, Moat, and Morphling. And then we moved on to some other crazy crap and routine use of balance to address oath/fittest, somewhere in the mix of all that people started running kaerevek's torch as a secondary win against FoW. Somewhere along that line workshop hit with Chalice and we went back to more traditional wins with colossus and added REB/Pyroblasts, some guys went full tilt with 4 in the maindeck and another 4 in the sideboard and welders. I left right around the time painters was a thing and that was the beginning of the re-emergence of control-combo. Pivoting to agressive combo to quickly win the game vs. Control lock like the "Good ole days."

That's when everyone was crying Vintage hit "Critical Mass." Hah! Far from it!

I did see a few posts above it was mentioned about "having the right play" at the right time and that will always hold true for control. It's rarely a proactive deck; it's a constant reactive chain that requires intuitive solutions and meticulous setups for the win.

Consider the draw engines in the evolution: Fact or Fiction, Gifts Ungiven, Divining Top, Brainstorm, Gush.They were all effective for their time period albeit a bit slow sometimes. I think we're about as streamlined as it gets on that in the current era.

If you're looking for the next Moderately stable evolution of control, you'll need to get the timeline and progression down like the back of your hand and build from scratch. That's how the "Masters" have always edged it out. I have not yet set out to see the new builds yet in action from a decade of walking away from the game.

I hope that's helpful to your quest. God Bless.

Thanks for the feedback!

@LieNielsen I'm certain you are an OS/MS player busting out the land tax/scroll rack/armageddon combo, lol. For Vintage...maybe. While that list doesn't seem particularly bad as a white hatebears deck, the vortex seem like the weakest card of the list.

I don't typically see bazaar in a whitebears list, and I think the combo angle of it is a bit slow for what most vintage decks do. I don't think the card is completely useless, but I do think its applications in the majority of the vintage meta is limited at best. Requiring multiple lock pieces to make this playable seems suspect.

Splashing green for something like collector ouphe/FoV just seems better to me. If it has to be monowhite, I'm thinking containment priests or null rods serve that slot better. THAT list looks like it wants to be playing turn 1 land tax/scroll rack (which is iffy in Vintage anyway), so a second land drop could be your singleton bazaar (with only land tax as combo?) or any 2nd mana to cast a real threat or heavy lock piece like null rod. You might snipe a mox and then go on a land-kill plan, but it seems unlikely to be a consistent field-wrecker to me.

I don't mind that detention vortex can fragmentize or plow and MORE...it's the many times where this will do either effect poorly or LESS than other options.

I may be wrong and this might be a 1-mana banishing light...I just don't see it in any reliable form without a total build-around. And I think there are far more busted cards to build around if you're jumping through hoops.

@botvinik You mean the Brassman quote in my signature? It's from the Team Serious Deathstar chat. I thought it was hilarious.