Lands, A Different Build For Vintage

[J-B-E]

Hi all,

First time posting here. My name is John I'm a vintage player in Ireland (although I don't have any of the cards), I love the format and over the last 6 months I have been brewing some vintage decks and put quite a lot of time into both of them.

I would ideally have liked to keep them for a vintage tournament but unfortunately can't afford MTGO or paper tournaments so I said I'll post two lists up here.

The first one is my take on Vintage lands which I believe to be a better build than the suado-legacy build that I've seen around and was in the team VSL.

Lets get to the deck list:

Spells:

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
4 Nullrod
4 Serum Powder

Enchantments

1 Fastbond
4 Exploration
2 Manabond

Sorceries

4 Life from the Loam

Instants

4 Mental Misstep

Lands:

Green mana

1 Forest
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Verdant Catacombs
3 Savannah
2 Trainquil Thicket

Land Destruction

1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

Other lands

4 Riftstone Portal
3 Thespian's Stage
1 Glacial Chasm
4 Mishra's Workshop
2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
3 Dark Depths
4 Bazaar of Baghdad

Sideboard

4 Sorcerous Spyglass
3 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Stony Silence
1 Glacial Chasm
4 Nature's Claim
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

This is the 19th iteration of the build.

Ok now on to why I think this is the best (or certainly close to) way to build lands in Vintage. Lands hasn't had much success in vintage because people have just taken the legacy list & strategy and jammed it into vintage, throw in a few Bazaars and it's all happy days.

First mistake is playing red, punishing fire combo is not good in vintage.
Second mistake playing gamble or even worse, crop rotation which are both awful in vintage because of mental misstep, in particular crop rotation.
There are many others as well, the numbers of cards are all wrong and the general strategy of the deck has to change a bit from legacy.

I also tried building the deck with blue for Ancestral and Walk along with Academy ruin but that proved to be incorrect.

Serum Powder is bonkers good in Lands, it's a bazaar based dredge deck. Workshop also is fantastic, being able to play turn 1 null rod is backbreaking against many decks including the best one in the format, and the second best for that matter.

This list is like a vice, you really attack your opponent from all angles and then finish it off with Marit Lage.

Matchups:

PO: Excellent, you have the stony silences in the board which get around H recall, also they're anti graveyard hate is almost always Tormod's Crypts which don't do much against nullrod/silence. You need to mulligan very well in this matchup, you want to land your lock piece ASAP.

Ravager Shops: Hilariously good, Null rod, tabernacles and Wastelands, game over.

Landstill: .... They're strategy revolves around Standstill.... you have 34 lands and don't need to cast spells to win. I haven't lost a game to standstill.

Stax: Tougher, they have crucibles and Smokestacks, would probably give this a 50/50

Leovold/Deathrite: Ok this one is tough, Deathrite is extremely good against lands, and it's the main reason why there are 4 Spyglasses in the board, for that and planes walkers.

Oath: Tough pre board but post board you get a lot better, it's why I have the one of Arbour in there because you getting to resolve and Oath trigger does happen a fair bit, although this could be wrong and Arbour should be a forest.

Belcher: Not even close, they pretty much have to win turn 0, Glacial Chasm is GGs.

Dredge: The sideboard isn't exactly set up to combat dredge, Tabernacle + Cage will get you there but obviously you can change the board to make this a better matchup, couple of Bogs etc, depending on your metagame.

Mentor/Pyromancer: Very good, they good wide and Tabernacle gets them , Null rod strategy not so good so some number come out and Spyglasses, Chasm and Claims come in.

Storm: Nullrod doesn't completely wreck storm which is unfortunate so this matchup is a bit tougher. I wouldn't say it's less than 50%.

This deck is very hard to play well. I would consider myself a decent/good magic player, definitely not a great one. and it's taken a lot of practice, particularly around mulligan decisions.

Would love to hear your feedback if you get a chance to give it a whirl. I think it's setup very nicely in this metagame and genuinely believe it's a really good deck, but to be fair I would say that so interested in some feedback.

I am going to post the second brew I made in a different thread hope you get a chance to have a look at that too, it's Called Druid.

Thanks guys,

John Egan

[garbageaggro]

A couple things:

1. I would probably use the thread that already exists for this archetype rather than start a new thread, you aren't doing anything that different from the already established lists.
2. I don't think your 4 maindeck workshops are justified in a deck that runs 9 total maindeck artifacts, 5 of which you don't really want to cast.
3. I don't know if calling out people for playing a bad version of the same deck you seem to be interested in is the best tone to take if you want to have constructive conversation. You do you, but I am still hoping newmanadrain can be a place for constructive conversation.

[J-B-E]

@garbageaggro I didn't realise there was another thread sorry.

The 4 main deck workshops are there because you want, in several matchups to maximise you chance of turn one null rod, with the Serum Powders you can get away with the them, but yeah you could definitely play 3 if you wanted.

Didn't mean to be rude regarding the other lists that's where I started with this one I just think this is a better way to build it in Vintage. no offense intended.

[garbageaggro]

WRT workshop, if that is the only reason, wouldn't you be more inclined to play mox diamond or ancient tomb, since both of those also work for other things, and don't really reduce the ability to play turn 1 rod. They also do as much or more for you after null rod is down.

[J-B-E]

@garbageaggro Mox Diamond and Null rod are a Nombo. , The list runs four Riftstone Portals so most games your workshops are Savannahs. Yeah you could do Ancient Tomb but the matches tend to be longer grindier types and the loss of life is a pain. Interesting point though , I had a mox Emerald in the list which I took out, Would rather have a land

[bactgudz]

If the point of the fast mana is to cast null rod, mox diamond doesn't seem like any more of a nombo than a workshop that becomes useless after casting the rod (I wouldn't think that spyglass and rod are in the deck together for many matchups). Diamond is certainly more useful when you don't have the rod. Diamond also lets you power out stony silence...in fact maybe mox pearl or emerald may be worth considering if you are dedicating those shops slots to powering out rod effects.

[J-B-E]

@bactgudz They are worth considering perhaps 3 shops and a mox might be right. The advantage workshop does have is that most of the time it will be a Savannah and you often need all the mana you can get in lands. Having played with 4 X Shops I haven't found it to be a hinderance that much of the time but yeah for sure there are occasions where you don't get the Riftstone, one small advantage shops has and it's only come up a couple of times is that sometimes casting the Serum Powder is the correct play if you need that bit more mana, usually you just hold it and discard to Bazaar.

This list still needs a couple of slight changes and playing 3 shops could be well be the best way to do it.