How many times in your build with 4 Shows is Bargain better than Griselbrand? Especially game 1? In which matchups? When a sphere player puts revoker in and stones Bargain you still have a 7/7 Demon. If you've been aggroed down to a low life title they both suffer. Certainly below 8 is an important number.

Edit: Have you weighed the benefit of having 2-3 griselbrands as it relates to being able to side Oath of Druids?

@brass-man thanks Brassy! The Enlightened Toolbox deck is coming along, though likely Brendan will make some big changes now with the Mentor boogeyman restricted, maybe I'll ask him to post his new list when he gets the chance :)

I know people have had success with it, but I am very wary of Salvagers in Oath, since I expect 1 Oath activation to be my plan against shops and White Eldrazi, and Salvagers isn't usually.

Below is what I've been playing since the latest B&R changes with modest some success (3-1 in a daily & 3-2 and 5-0 in the league). Basically cut a third preordain for a second bargain from my standard DPS list (definitely not certain that's correct, as I side out the second bargain a lot).

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Badlands
1 Black Lotus
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Petition
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mind's Desire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Necropotence
4 Polluted Delta
1 Ponder
1 Sol Ring
1 Brainstorm
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Underground Sea
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
2 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Swamp
2 Thoughtseize
1 Defense Grid
2 Preordain

2 Ancient Tomb
3 Ravenous Trap
1 Rebuild
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Defense Grid
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Island

I do think this has some advantages over PO Storm. It's faster than the slower PO builds, more stable than the faster PO builds (e.g. Reid Duke's with 4 Mox Opal and 2 Grim Monolith, which seems to have fallen out of favor), and less vulnerable to null rod effects (although they can still hurt depending on what we've drawn). Also, using duress effects for protection over FoW and other countermagic means our protection spells are less costly overall, and we make much better use of defense grid. Of course we lose the ability to be reactive, which makes us more vulnerable to shops.

However, I'll freely admit that the biggest reason I play this on MODO over PO storm is that I own the cards (virtual FoW and mox opal are pricey!), so my perspective is definitely biased. Regardless, I do hope the latest changes allow dark rituals to reclaim a place in the meta.

*edit#1 on 9/9/17: Just realized the aforementioned daily was before the latest b&r change. Sorry for the misrepresentation.

*edit#2 on 9/16/17: Updated to reflect fact that I just went 5-0 in my second MTGO Vintage league with this list. Played Ravager Shops, Delver, Dredge, Oath, and Uwx, if I remember correctly.

@Thiim

Thanks!

And David does read TMD :) Thanks for the tip!

@Evoclipse exiling 3 black cards from the yard doesnt sound too unreasonable. but the fact that you are never ever casting it for its actual mana cost could become an issue. at what point would it just be easier to just cast snuff out or slaughter pact?

@desolutionist said:

Hey guys, the list we are talking about was metagamed for a heavy Shop/Eldrazi meta. I wouldn't play DRS in any other kind of meta.

I don't think you would want to play DRS with dark petition in any metagame to be honest (unless I am missing something or some pretty radical changes occur).
I also dont think storm would even deserve consideration in a *Heavy *Shop/drazi environment.( Which would mean something along the lines of 30 +% instead of what we have currently)

However, the current metagame is miles away from that since shops and eldrazi combined make up between roughly 15-25% of the metagame.
The way I see it, you have a maindeck that has extremely powerful tools against most of the format, then you hedge your sb (with pack rat and other things) to get to a roughly 40-45% matchup vs your weak spots. What else are you going to do ?

Re configuring the maindeck to have more chances g1(which is the fundamental problem, seeing as you can not reliably expect to win all post-boarded games) hurts your overall win percentage against the blue portion of the field way too much for it to be worth it. I'd rather inbreed my storm list than dillute it (we're not playing control).

After all you don't see blue decks pack any maindeck answer to dredge whatsoever (when it is an equivalent matchup for them than shops/eldrazis is for storm).

I don't understand why you want to bring ravenous trap in against Salvagers oath, what do you board out for it? it's already hard to have enough room for max anti-control disruption + 1/2 answers to problematic permanents in my experience.

Along the lines of what @hankzhong said, isn't this deck just better without burning wish? It makes comboing faster and more consistent, and frees up enough space in the board to have a good shops matchup while not ignoring stuff like dredge.

I mean, adding oath to combat shops is still a great tactic. In a meta defined by shops and mentor-control, a deck like storm that already has a good control matchup, if it could be tweaked to have a better shops matchup, could be a real force.

There are other options, but it turns out that most of them are good only in really specific situations where in most situations Griselbrand is quite good. I agree on the multiples thing, if I were playing control oath right now i would split 1 griselbrand w/ 1-2 Rune Scarred Demon. I am not, because in this deck, just ignoring containment priest, oathing twice and winning with a memory's journey return'd yawgmoth's will has been real good.

Post board against shops I think your best bet creature wise is a mix of blazing archon (or elesh norn) and griseldad. Blazing Archon literally turns off their chances of winning against most modern shops lists, and griselbrand helps you win the game before they get a trike with enough counters to kill either the archon or you. Elesh Norn has been good, but sometimes you need to oath against, and it doesn't win through Wurmcoil which is frustrating.