Topics created by moorebrother1

@protoaddct I think the idea is that Transmute becomes tinker 2-5 (or however many your running). Personal tutor is a good idea to in this sort of list (I would assume). One problem with Personal Tutor is you can loose Tinker to Leyline/Will, Transmute is also a bit faster.

Edit: -Also what @MaximumCDawg said.

@thewhitedragon69 said in Contempt for the meta-game:

Changing ingot chewers for shattering spree is not innovation.

What about for Offalsnouts?

@stuart for me, setting a goal related to a finish or result is actually counter-productive. We can’t control that- no control over matchups, die rolls, top decks, shuffle distributions, etc. It is, therefore, not worth worrying about. Very simply, I seek to maximize my preparation physically and mentally, maximize my enjoyment (by giving myself a chance to win and a deck I enjoy the mechanics of, ie no battle of wits), and minimize my controlable mistakes (missing on board math or forgetting revealed information).
Anything else is not in my control and shouldn’t be worried about.

(I do have some skins on the wall btw, SCG top 8, GP top 16)

@dunnydee I you have a deck with more threats or disruption that is a good strategy. The issue with Xerox v Xerox is not just card advantage but tempo and card draw. If someone can get a Jace or Dack through and you cannot answer it, they you will lose in 2 turns to their tempo.

If you are on Oath or PO then losing a FOW is not the worst idea depending on how you manage the board. If I'm on Oath and board in 2 uncounterable creatures then I may drop an FOW. If I'm on PO and I bring in 3 defense grid then I may drop an FOW, but that is very situational.

@stuart Ral is awesome but he is not nearly as good as Niv-Mizzet. He just does so much work and most control decks have to spend significant resources to get rid of him. The other decks do not really fear him aside from the 5/5 body but once I start casting spells he normally clears the board.

Looking at past years you have: EW EU in April, TMD Open in May, SCG CON in June, NYSE in July, EW Asia in August, EW NA in November and Nebraska's War in December.
Some of those almost overlap, why is all the love going to Q2 and Q4 only?

To be honest the real thing keeping prison decks out of the meta is mainly Aggro shops, it's just way more efficient and consistent.
It's kind of like the comparison between landstill and jeskai, why try to completely control the game over many turns instead of just controlling the game long enough to win before your opponent has time to recover.

They would have to restrict some aggro pieces to make Workshop Prison a viable archetype again

@brass-man it might be that snapcaster and delve spells are better vs crypt effects than Yawgwill, etc are.

Here's a cute data point, for what it's worth. I spent most of the day today testing some Battlebond tech @Aelien . We weren't explicitly trying to react to this thread, but our results are probably relevant to the discussion

I was playing a controlly Grixis deck with 4 Mental Misstep and a Mind Twist

Aelien was playing a stormy deck with 7 Duress/Thoughtseize effects.

The Mind Twist was very good for me, and the Duress effects were very good for Aelien. At no point were either of us sad to be running those cards. I think these cards are still quite good against Combo, reasonably good against Slow Control, fine against Tempo Control, and bad against Workshops and Dredge. I think what one does with a Duress is so different than what one does with a Mind Twist that you have very different requirements for wanting them, and I think what one does with Hymn to Tourach is just something no Vintage deck wants.

Ultimately I think if you're just looking at playing one of Ravager Shops/Jeskai Mentor/Esper Outcome/Inferno Oath/Dredge, in a field that consists mostly of Ravager Shops/Jeskai Mentor/Esper Outcome/Inferno Oath/Dredge, discard effects just aren't the best option over alternatives (with the exception of Cabal Therapy, possibly Unmask out of Dredge decks). That's going to include most players in most metagames ... but I do think there are reasonable decks outside that list, and reasonable metagames that diverge from that list, in which Duress/Thoughtseize/Mind Twist are good choices. Hymn to Tourach, I think, won't make the cut in anything reasonable, and I can't think of any other discard effects that are particularly notable.

@moorebrother1 I would argue my streams come close at times. I just streamed a Channel Mirror deck with Spellseeker (1-3) and Danny Batterman's Rector Flash w/Seeker list (4-1) yesterday. I'm planning on streaming Experimental Frenzy tonight. I've previously streamed Tezz, Humanstorm, Kaya Control, or whatever I'm interested in at the time through leagues. Rich Shay @The-Atog-Lord will stream random decks that do well or his own creations. Brian Kelly's @brianpk80 streams are always original experiences with wild cards like Nicol Bolas or Glyph Keeper.

I would recommend following us on Twitch.
Me: https://www.twitch.tv/chubbyrain1
Rich: https://www.twitch.tv/richshay
Brian: https://www.twitch.tv/bpk80

@mediumsteve Your points are very good. And, if I were just playing in a league on MTGO or playing at a small local event I would probably think about a 3 color version.

I have tested many iterations of the deck and I have to emphasize that if you are playing more than 6 rounds consistency is key. Some people will do extremely well with 3 colors but I have found that against Shops and Jeskai you need to be very consistent. I strongly believe that a 2 color build is good but the single color build is just more consistent.

I've been playing Paradoxical Oath fora few months, so a little less mana rocks and with Orchard. I'm switching from that to some kind of form of the above brew ideas.

I'm firing up a Vintage league over the month of October locally, allowing proxies. About 7 solid so far up to maybe 12 depending on the next few days. We might do round robin, which sounds like a ton of matches, but this actually allows us to play at leisure over the month; each participant meets with each other whenever they can arrange that between the 2 of them, which isn't so hard given nearly every player is a regular attendee at one or more weekly events at our most popular local store.

I have been testing with this guy and he is awesome. He literally closes out the game and he does it faster than Terferi. He may or may not work in Xerox. I'm going to try that next and the run some leagues and see how I finish but at first glance he is really good.

Print an elf that etb removes all 1 of copies in all players decks. Barely effects any other formats, brings back elves, or helps dude decks, obv implications in Vintage.

Besides that? Get rid of the reserved list and reprint cards so more players can get into the format, more people, new blood, new innovation's.

@moorebrother1 Bad luck only exists if the goal is winning. If the goal is to do everything that you can to cause winning to happen... no more luck, good or bad... only choice-making, good and in my case, amusingly bad.

@chubbyrain said in How do I beat Jeskai:

Based on my experience with the deck, Jeskai and other Xerox decks can be built to beat any deck in the format consistently. What they cannot be built to beat is every in the format (including the mirror).

If the goal is to beat exclusively Jeskai, your strategy should be to align your threats to match up effectively against their answers. For instance, the Jeskai variant with Lightning Bolts, Fiery Confluence, and Snapcaster Mage was built for a Combo, Oath, Control, and Shops heavy metagame. The maindeck burn is never dead as you can use it to close out games, but it matches up poorly against Dredge's SB strategy of Fish Zombies and decks that run 4 toughness, non-artifact creatures (i.e. Eldrazi) or creatures immune to removal (i.e. TNN outta Merfolk). That changes if the deck skews towards White removal and Pyromancers as those are much more effective at combating creatures, but you end up with sub-optimal cards against Oath and Combo, along with a much weaker SB plan against Shops.

</thread>

Basically, Shops and Survival (to a lesser extent) are strategically favored against the Jeskai Strategy. Fast Clock+Spehre Effects+Minimal vulnerability to Mental Misstep/Pyroblast are the keys to beating Jeskai, and they make a high percentage of Jeskai cards irrelevant ("Treasure Cruise!" leads to "you're dead" fairly often in those matchups!). Everything else, it's hoping they have to cast a few cantrips to get to where they need, and that you can kill them in that window.

I used to be firmly in the Energy Flux camp on this one. (I still think Flux is just crushing, and at least in Control Oath, which runs a bit mana dense, it's pretty good. They can make all the thopter tokens they like.) However, watching Rich Shay, and also my wife as they run Xerox, the 1for1 cheap removal game is viable at least. Shattering Spree is probably the best in that vein, since it can be, but isn't limited to being a 1for1. As a passive observer, it does seem that blunting, and finally taking apart their board with spot removal is viable.

Ancient Grudge bears a mention here.

I posted a couple to get started. I will write something for Jeskai. Hopefully people provide feedback, and advice. It would be very helpful with SCG Con coming up.