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