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Vintage Strategy

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  ChubbyStreams: Nahiri Control
  chubbystreams • • ChubbyRain

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  @brass-man The sharks are back in town!

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  What cards are you excited about?
  • Islandswamp

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  @dataspot said in What cards are you excited about?:

  Azor's Gateway: Ignore the transform side. Think of this as a 2-mana artifact that can "loot" for 1 each turn. The exile versus discard is relevant, given how easily the graveyard is accessed in Vintage, but it might be good.

  If you've seen the combo deck that's playing it, I wouldn't ignore the transform side at all. It can easily tap for 10+ mana.

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  Esper - Paradoxical Mentor
  • moorebrother1

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  @moorebrother1 If that's your goal, I would recommend Memory Jar highly over any of the TinkerBots.

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  RIX and Oath
  • PugSuperStar

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  I for one actually think Nezahal is on par with Sphinx of the Final Word. Having a Mystic Remora attached to it is pretty great actually. It's a bit harder to protect from Swords since it doesn't have hexproof, but if your opponent needs to dig for that Swords he's in bad shape because you'll draw a lot. The great downside is that is has no evasion and that can hurt your clock a lot and make it impossible to race a Mentor.

  Zacama seems good for the destroy artifact/enchantment ability, but it seems too pricey and Inferno Titan already takes care of most of the problems in Shops these days anyway.

  The other 2 I don't see playing. Azor's abiltiy is too expensive and the cip trigger is just "kinda" useful. Zetalpa is just a big dumb beater so no.

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  Talking Vintage Gifts
  • desolutionist

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  Any updates to Gifts as of recent?

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  4C Keeper 2k17
  • p3temangus

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  Thanks for getting back to me! The list looks great. I’m sure it makes for some real grindy games. I’m going to my first vintage event this weekend and looking forward to running some sort of Leovold deck!

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  Wear//Tear ... Why not?
  • Topical_Island

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  I don't know that it's any more complicated than Wear//Tear costs 2 mana to kill artifacts.

  I do think that Wear//Tear is the better card against Oath - beyond being an instant, attacking mana can be pretty relevant against Inferno Oath decks planning on ramping to
  6 drops. Still, Fragmentize is fine in the matchup and much better against workshop decks. I think generally people are more concerned about their Workshop matchup right now, and Jeskai players who are worried about Oath (like myself) have access to the probably-better-than-wear//tear Containment Priest.

  Still, there probably is a deck that wants the card - either something that's very short on anti-Oath/Shops slots and can't afford to run Cages/Priests, or something that has excessive anti-Oath/Shops slots and can afford Wear//Tear in addition to Fragmentize/Cage/Priest ... I don't know what that deck looks like, but it's plausible

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  UB Delver
  • John Cox

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  @glick
  I like fatal push!

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  Dredge Sideboarding Tactics
  • jhport12

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  Me play unmask dredge, leline in main deck
  My side for general metagame is this:
  4 nature c.
  4 hollow
  3 Gurmang
  3 cabal pit
  1 fragmentize
  Cabal also help a lot for cast gurmang.

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  Doomsday
  • TheAngryFish

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  @pugsuperstar thanks man that was a good read

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  Vintage Dredge Primer
  deck tech deck discussion dredge primer guide • • zebotc

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  @oestrus it’s typically not used, and it’s very situational. I mainly put it on the list as an additional option for people to consider. You are correct that dread returning it doesn’t really do much in the short term at all, and hard casting it would be very difficult. I actually haven’t tried it out myself either, but it has enough going for it that I felt it deserved at least some mention. I have seen it used a couple times in Dredge/Reanimator lists. But I’m thinking it’s more of a niche card that only works in certain builds and is very very situational.

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  Let's discuss White based hatebears!
  deck tech hatebears • • Griselbrother

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  Let's bump this thread once again and hope it will get a little more discussion - especially now that David Williams and Eric Froelich both played Hatebears in VSL the last weeks and did well (although I'm not really a fan of the build they played but I can comment on that another time if desired).

  Personally I'm a big fan of Palace Jailer but only in certain builds. It has been very good in the one I posted originally in this thread (because of Ancient Tomb, Containment Priest and Eldrazi Displacer), but I do recognize that it can be clunky in more traditional builds.

  I have been playing both Mono White, GWB and GW lately, and personally I prefer the Mono White or the GW builds. Black gives acces to some very good cards like Dark Confidant and, especially, Abrupt Decay and Demonic Consultation but I don't like either Dark Confidant or Abrupt Decay against Shops and what I've found is that you really want to focus on Shops first and foremost for at least three reasons. I've also found both Deathrite Shaman and Kambal, Consul of Allocation to be underwhelming. Basically Deathrite Shaman is too slow and I almost always wanted it to be an Elvish Spirit Guide instead. Kambal is also slow and I'd rather prevent my opponent from playing spells instead of him taking 2 damage off each spell.

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  Speed Shops
  • Gremlin Lord

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  Did you consider Slash Panther?

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  The Present and Future of "Taxing" decks?
  hatebears shops humans • • Dumpsterac1d

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  Sorry, I didn't notice this reply until now.

  @dumpsterac1d said in The Present and Future of "Taxing" decks?:

  @Griselbrother how is 3 mana prohibitive! I'm confused. Are people saying that any deck other than Shops has an impossible time generating enough mana to play 3-drops on turn 1 or 2? I think in the past week I've had 2 people drop Jace on turn 1 against me while I was holding a t1 3-drop. If you drop a Prison t1 or even t2 against Shops, They'll most likely have to make a decision of whether to attack or cast spells which can buy you time, and they can't pay for Prison with Shop mana. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but in combination with Null Rod, Suppression Field, targeted removal, etc, it can do work.

  3 mana isn't impossible to get to, yet it's still worth mentioning that Hatebears has a harder time getting to 3 mana than most other decks because of the lack of draw and card filtering.

  I think the problem is that people want a "Golden Gun" against any deck, like they want to bring in one card from the SB without thinking too hard and just draw it and then their opponent scoops. I can think of several combinations of the cards mentioned that, together, could incapacitate a Shops deck, and many others. Since they're incapable of running crippling taxing effects now and have basically stopped putting things like Tangle Wire into the deck, having 2 or even 3 cards that are really good against shops (but not golden gun good) is perfectly reasonable. I don't think they'll print this for us:

  Magus of "I Kill Shops Decks"
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  Flash, Haste, Hexproof.
  T: Destroy all artifacts your opponents control.
  1/6

  so... We might as well just pick things that have the broadest applications in Vintage and use a few of them. Personally, I have 3 Kataki, 3 Stony, 2 Muse, 3 Relic Warder and more, and I'm trying Suppression Field in the SB, but I'm not personally sure it fits into my deck yet. One thing I am quite sure about is that Ensnaring Bridge isn't going to work unless the deck is built around it, and with JUST Bridge and your hand at zero cards, I'm not even sure it would be effective when Ballista is a card.

  I agree with your statement that you, in general, want to play cards that have a broad application, which I believe I also mentioned earlier. I also wrote that "In my experience it takes a pretty dedicated build and a combination of quite a few cards to beat shops" which pretty clearly indicates that I'm not looking for a "Golden Gun" against Shops. While I do think that Ghostly Prison has some application across matchups (although it's definitely not what I want to be doing against Delver/Pyro/BUG), I think that it's actually an example of such a "Golden Gun" and probably not a very good one (though it should be said that I haven't tested it) because it's a) slow and b) can be played around.

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  UR Delver
  • didor

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  Thank you for your advice ! I'll start with sapphire, though will probably never be able to afford the lotus.

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  Oath
  oath archetype deck to beat • • Brass Man

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  @ribby said in Oath:

  I just am not feeling Preordain specifically in Oath. There's not an Oath curve that I see Preordain being a great fit in.

  Oath is defined by its marquee two-drop and really appreciates off-color mana.

  Preordain is really best utilized by decks with low curve that will often have a single spare on-color mana on some of the game's critical turns. Either to cast the Preordain, or more importantly to be able to cast the Swords or Pyroblast or second Preordain that you Preordain into.

  In Oath I just see Preordain adding a lot of air. I can't see the upside to Preordaining with your Forbidden Orchard into X with a Mox Pearl open, and no second land in hand. You just waste an entire turn then I think?

  I think any deck that isn't a Xerox variant or an Ancient Tomb variant (where it is easy to use up all your mana every turn) really needs to understand how it will curve out in both Mox and non-Mox situations. Given that the current best decks have fractional mana curves, I would really like to take Oath in a different direction so as to not just become a worse version of something else. Just jam threats, they don't have to be super expensive but they probably should cost more than half a mana.

  I dunno. Maybe I'm crazy. I'm turning my attention to Oath soon and will think through this some more.

  It's about finding the cards you need man. If that doesn't make sense in an Oath deck, where does it ever make sense? In particular the strength of Preordain over the oft-considered more-powerful Ponder expresses itself most coherently in this strategy. Just like Dig Through Time can put valuable cards on the bottom of your library, protecting them from being oath'ed away and giving you a crucial few turns after a nasty amount of self-milling, Preordain puts two cards on bottom quite often with it's scry ability. In contrast, Ponder may leave you needing to shuffle, which can be detrimental. I always play one Brainstorm, and either three or four Preordains, but sometimes one Ponder in place of a single preordain. The shuffling can be nice with Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and that's the only real reason I would prefer it in an Oath deck.

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  Mentor Control
  mentor archetype deck to beat • • Brass Man

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  In the actual meta (see the last vintage challenge) it could make sense to maindeck Containment Priests. Dredge and Oath are stronger than ever and the Ambush Viper mode of the Priests make them even usefull in almost any matchup but Storm and Paradoxical.

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  Where is Oath right now?
  oath • • Topical_Island

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  @brianpk80 pppffffttt... get a load of this Brian dude everybody. Like this guy knows anything about Oath decks. Next he will be telling us to play with some big dragon from type 2 like a 14 year old. What a noob.

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  EW Meta and discussion.
  eternal weekend meta • • Sovarius

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  @brianpk80 They treated me well without having go result to Oath of Druids.

  I wouldn't be caught with an Inferno Titan in my deck. To each their own.

  Then again, you are one of 9 people at this tournament that can debunk the theories of my deck lol

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  5-Color Humans (Now with Fetchlands)
  • Stormanimagus

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  guys, I've already put this deck on the back-burner for now in favor of a knight humans list with better cards that match-up better vs. the field. I'll come back to you all when I think it is relevant again.

  -Storm