I enjoyed the article, and I always like seeing updates to blasts from the past, especially when it turns into a history lesson for people

A good resource for ancient decks is the encyclopedia I put together years ago: http://www.archive.themanadrain.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=20uoj23uahaav36id5q6jqulr0&topic=37514.0

It took a lot of time to make and maintain and I kind of dropped it after a while, but there is an awful lot of information there.

Concerning the list in the article, it seems like reanimate would serve better than animate dead since you aren't trying to go infinite with dragon, and your most likely early target will be a welder. I would also turn at least 1 of the inkwell or myr into a wurcoil.

Another thing to note is that CA predates revoker, so It might be in your best interest play some answers to it in the main if you want to use your welders vs shops. (Granite Shards ftw)

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I was simply highlighting the incongruity of a post that frames the issue in terms of Turbo-Xerox (TX), asserts that TX is dominant in the format, and then opposes the restriction of Preordain.

If TX is dominant, you attack the cantrips, which is why Ponder and Brainstorm are restricted, not win conditions. Because if it's TX that is dominant, and not the win condition, then restricting Mentor should have no bearing on the dominance of TX, according to the logic Rich set out. The analysis as presented and conclusions of the OP are logically inconsistent.

That assumes the entirety of the problem is with the engine. The way I view @The-Atog-Lord 's argument is that the engine has been sufficiently hurt, but the end game is still too strong, and insulates itself too well from interaction.

I tend to agree that the best answer to mentor is mentor, and the second best answer to mentor is to hope you can prevent it from entering play. The third best way, going over the top, is only feasibly done by oath at the moment, and as has been said; all the hyper efficient hate pieces to over the top strategies have been printed in the same color as mentor.

I have said since it's printing that mentor is at the same power level as tinker, though in a shell designed around it that should probably be amended to more powerful than tinker. I am firmly in the camp of restricting mentor.

As far as gush getting an unfair axe, I'm very doubtful. Gush happens to be the best draw spell for control decks, and the best draw spell for tempo (or TX) decks, and allows for far too much flexibility to switch roles seamlessly in the middle of a game for no real cost (in terms of game play or deck construction).

It isn't a good thing when two control decks can whittle themselves down to a topdeck war and then one flips a gush and chains off ending their turn with win conditions in play and protection in hand. Without gush you get win conditions or protection during the topdeck war, with gush you get both.

In terms of misstep, I believe it is overall unhealthy for the format. While it does keep the 1 mana tutor and vault key decks in check, there are other cards that do that too. Unfortunately it also knocks out a variety of excellent answer cards.

I run 4 of them in salvagers oath because in addition to disrupting the opponent's normal game plan it is also better than force of will in protecting my own plan. Countering that swords to plowshares after I oath and before I draw has won me lots of games and made lots of salt. Being able to counter those grafdigger's cages, even against workshops, is a huge boon. And still I will be one of the first to say it is a dumb, no cost, no skill counter that needs to go.

This already feels like too much of a wall of text so I'll leave out my thoughts on workshops.

-Wiley

Is this the return of Sex.dec?! Is this just master bait?!

Top 8 list locations from the pdf in alphabetical order:

Brennen, Joe - p.24
Coval, Brian - p.57
Eberhart, Ryan - p.77
Franks, Justin - p.96
Hockey, Brian - p.134
Kieth, Jody - p.148
Pinter, Jeremy - p.219
Schatteman, Boston - p.241

Huge thanks to Jaco and team for getting these put up like this. Already saw a lot of neat and interesting decks rolling through this, and I liked the artwork on brassman's sheet

EDIT: 1st place unpowered list (Humfleet, Patrick) is on p.137

@JACO said:

@Evoclipse said:

Will someone stream the next daily? i would love to watch some vintage tonight

Sure, here you go:

Burn vs. Big Blue, classic matchup

I like this. It feels like it would slot into a shell similar to drain tendrils, where you can get incremental advantage as you control the game. Definitely an improvement over aetherflux reservoir, but not a snowbally as sphinx-bone wand (which can't see play because of casting cost).

There seems to a bunch of stuff in this set that at least has potential, but isn't immediately broken.

@Khahan said in Where is Oath right now?:

In any given tournament you can get the unbeatable nutz draw or the "where is my other combo piece?" draw and be left hanging. In years past this was Ok because the format was different. Oath held up better in the long game while it dug for answers. Today if it stalls there are too many decks that are just too fast for it. Even creature decks like mentor and ravager shops can beat it.

To be fair, there were a lot of games that I won just because I was a bomberman deck as well as an oath deck. One standout game was against shops where they landed double t1 grafdigers cages and a foundry inspector. I went t1 land, lotus, salvagers. His t2 saw tangle wire and another creature. I played land go, his t3 saw no sphere effects so I recurred lotus in my upkeep, made infinite mana in my main, hard cast griselbrand and over half of my deck until the rest of the combo was assembled. I also won at least 2 games against mentor just with salvagers recurring ee and pyrite spellbomb with no lotus.

Bomberman is a vintage worthy deck, and running it alongside oath does a couple of trade offs:

1. You have a really shitty mana base. No helping this, oath decks almost universally require running risky mana bases.
2. Your tutor for salvagers also often gives you access to the other combo pieces. It also costs less than other tutors normally run by bomberman.
3. Your yawgmoth's bargain gains you life and deals 7 by itself.
4. Since you only have to run the one salvagers and none of the other creature tutors you can have a higher density of countermagic in the deck. And awkward or not they still make a huge difference in the current meta.
5. Since you are already in white, you have great answer cards for anything you might face so long as you can anticipate it in your sideboard plans.
6. EE is just plain awesome, especially in oath and bomberman.

I was looking through some of my old vintage files and came across this, seemed too good to not repost:

The Epic Tale of Vintage
~ Screen Play by @Harlequin

ActI:

The Mob: Holy Crap I hate Card-X, Heres a Huge list of reasons why!
Top-8: Relax it's not that bad
The Mob: you just wait and see, they will restrict card-x and we will all laugh at you. You just wait until the 1st... Ahhh hahahaha

The DCI: ..... no changes
The Mob: /cry
Top-8: /tiny-violin

~ Repeat ActI like 2-5 times

ActII

The Hopefuls: This time... this time they will change!
The Mob: The DCI doesn't care, won't care, and never has cared. Besides were comfortable the way the format is now. This truely is the golden age of vintage in perfect harmony of balance of and luck

The DCI: SURPRIZE!! /slap

The Hopefuls: Hahaha Great, now I can play my pet-deck again! I support these changes.
The Mob: OMG-STFU-KTHXBBQ. Its the end of the world, Don't you see!? Here's a list of 1000 reasons why the DCI is stupid....
The Mob: ... In summary the format is much more about luck now than skill. So We Quit, I'm taking my cards and going home to play world of warcraft.
The people who actually did quit from the last R/B Update: Oh damn! This looks new and interesting, I'm going to start playing again!
Crazy Eyes: Following this logic let's just ban every card other than Swamp and Relentless Rats!

The Mob: Wait! I have an idea, lets make our own B/R list that ignore these changes.
TMD: That will NEVER work. Not in a million years.
The Mob: who cares, some of us - lets break off and agrue about -that- for a while, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will never work in a million years.
TMD: You have fun with that. And don't worry about making a mess we've got our bold-red ink and lock buttons ready.
The Mob: The rest of us, lets start a petition ~
"Dear DCI,
Colectively, we Hate you. We hope that you get attacked by bees, and anyone who comes to sees you and trys to help is also attacked by bees. You are stupid and smell bad. Here is a list of 1000 reasons why we think you are stupid.
Love,
~The Mob
PS - you won't get another dime outa me until you make a change... not that I every buy anything from you anyway"

The Mob: There that'll show them... wait nm we quit anyway no one cares anymore anyway.
Top-8: Later! Hrmmm.. now I have to come up with a deck to play. I can't play X, Y or Z... so I guess I just go back to card-W. Good ol' W...
~next week~
The Mob: Damnit! WOW sucks I want to play magic again!
Top-8: Cool with me, lets see if you can beat D0u3le_Yuu.Dec
The Mob: F*ck Card-W, that's way overrated. Besides we have all this new design space now!
~they play~
Top-8: Beat you again! That makes the score X-0-2. I'm in Top-8 again!
The Mob: Yeah well, its only because W is so stupidly O.P. and broken, and easy to win with, and requires no skill. It should be banned. You just wait and see, the next B/R list comes out on the 1st and I can't immagine they won't ban W. You just wait and see!!

...

~ Repeat from the begining until the rapture...

I suggested this at the end of the previous site and will do so again here. I would like a world map where users can pin their location and locations of their LGS's. This would go a long way towards shrinking the sometimes all too large world that separates Vintage enthusiasts.

It would also be nice to have a filter to show upcoming tournaments within a certain time frame. For instance, if I had travel scheduled to California in August I could center on the part of California I am going to and set the time range to August to see if there is a tournament I can hit while I am in town.

This would require a large amount of effort from the community side to populate, but I believe that if the tools are there they will be used.

Typed it out for you. I appreciate the pics, but had no f'ing clue what virulent plague was until you wrote it out, lol.

Deuces Wild - Nedleeds
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Helm of Obedience
1 Trinisphere
1 Memory Jar
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Mox Opal
3 Grindstone
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 City of Brass
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Mana Confluence
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Balance
3 Chromatic Lantern
3 Ancient Tomb
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Painter's Servant
4 Mental Misstep

Sideboard:
3 Witchbane Orb
1 Jester's Cap
2 Virulent Plague
2 Chains of Mephistopheles
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Ingot Chewer
2 Mindbreak Trap

@garbageaggro said in [IKO] Cat Bird:

[[dinosaur cat]]? No respect.

can't fly without a catapult, clearly inferior.

@serracollector said in [IKO] Drannith Magistrate:

Soooo.....this is a lock with Uba Mask?

Yes, and that might actually be something that isn't too hard to set up. Good catch.

This plays well with some already proven lands, like mishra's workshop, tolarian academy, mishra's factory, karakas, and maze of ith.

It also plays well with cards like volrath's stronghold, bazaar of baghdad, Library of alexandria, gaea's cradle, and the longest shot I could find that might be useful was vault of the archangel.

Other than mana ramp, or doubling down on golos utility I'm not sure it finds a home in shops. I also don't see any other archetype wanting it for utility since it is rather slow and clunky without a tutor engine like golos.

Still a neat card, and something to keep in the back pocket for when wizards slips up and make a truly abusable land to combo with it.

Good article as always. I really like the look of the Breach Painter decks. Goblin Engineer and Emry are both really good cards, nice to see them getting vintage play.

I always enjoy these little update on the format articles, thanks for putting them out.

I played a paper event in NC 2 weeks ago with notmi's Sun Titan oath deck. Even with a bunch of bad sideboarding decisions on my part I still took second, beating combo, dredge twice, and finally losing in 3 to paradoxical oath. My takeaway was that breach was fantastic, and prdoxical outcome is still on the border of too powerful for the format

Since then I have been brewing a paradoxical list that runs breach as yawg will 2 and 3, as well as running brain freeze/demonic consultation and thassa's oracle for an easy self mill win that doesn't care about things like veil of summer, and the alt win cons with vault/key etc that naturally slot into a paradoxical deck shore up any reliance on the grave that breach has. Its been fun to goldfish, just wish I had the cards on modo.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a UR delver with breach just as a way to cast an extra 3 lightning bolt/time walk/ancestral. It is a great way to add reach in the late game, and can act as a dreadhorde arcanist early.

I definitely think oracle and breach both have staying power in vintage, and I look forward to the future decks involving them.

@jaco said in North America Vintage Champs 2019 Coverage, Decklists, and Results:

updated the page for a section for the actual Top 8 lists, typed out on the web page. Will add a separate post for Top 8 Unpowered decks sometime later this week/weekend. Legacy Champs, Modern Champs, and Old School coverage on the way as well.

Awesome! Really looking forward to the Old School coverage. Love the format, just priced out of what I want to play.

Thanks again for all the hard work. It goes a long way to getting people to think about the format.

Top 8 list locations from the pdf in alphabetical order:

Brennen, Joe - p.24
Coval, Brian - p.57
Eberhart, Ryan - p.77
Franks, Justin - p.96
Hockey, Brian - p.134
Kieth, Jody - p.148
Pinter, Jeremy - p.219
Schatteman, Boston - p.241

Huge thanks to Jaco and team for getting these put up like this. Already saw a lot of neat and interesting decks rolling through this, and I liked the artwork on brassman's sheet

EDIT: 1st place unpowered list (Humfleet, Patrick) is on p.137

I played the following at our local tournament in NC last week:

# Mono R Stax
## Wiley
Creatures
4 Goblin Welder
3 Goblin Engineer
1 Lodestone Golem
4 Hollow One
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Sundering Titan

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Expedition Map
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
3 Null Rod
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Tangle Wire
1 Trinisphere
2 Uba Mask
1 Mindslaver

Lands
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Barbarian Ring
3 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Mountain
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Wasteland

Sideboard
2 By Force
1 Tormod's Crypt
4 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Ankh of Mishra
1 Null Rod
2 Witchbane Orb
1 Karakas
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

i went 3-2, getting 5th place. I lost to dredge (could have been won) and DPS which didn't seem winnable. I beat 2 white eldrazi decks and a non-welder shops list.

Random Thoughts:

Engineer as an entomb was great, and looping tangle wires was really strong. However, Sundering Titan can't really be played along side the engineers, you need the red mana to continue to get value out of him but the titan kills your mountain. plus titan just isn't as good as he used to be.

Expedition map was ok, but it was also terrible when all I had was shop or a mountain. It also doesn't play well with null rods. I would like to try out Golos if I were to play the deck again.

Every time I have slaver, I was short on mana to activate it.

There were a few time where, if I had a smokestack in the deck the game would have closed out a lot sooner, with less chances for my opponent to come back.

Uba Mask was a dud every time I drew it, and scouting the field it seemed like every deck it would be decent against ran multiple ways main and side to deal with it.

Hollow Ones were ok. They put in work, but I'm not 100% on them.

I really missed spheres, the land destruction plan just wasn't enough with things like force of vigor floating around.

Ankh of Mishra was a blank, I just didn't know what to put in there. Something like revokers or spyglass would have been better.

Witchbane orb did nothing vs DPS, I had it t1 in game 2 and they just chain of vapored it away and went off anyway.

There is an awful lot of value to be gained from welder tricks. Whether or not it is worth the 6-7 slots and the significantly worse mana base to support them is up in the air.

Something like the recent 5-0 "uba stax" decks seem just a bit better;

# Uba Stax
## Deunan
Creatures
1 Karn, the Great Creator
3 Golos, Tireless Pilgrim
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Lodestone Golem
4 Phyrexian Revoker
Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
2 Bottled Cloister
1 Chalice of the Void
3 Crucible of Worlds
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 God-Pharaoh's Statue
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mystic Forge
2 Null Rod
1 Smokestack
1 Sol Ring
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
4 Sphere of Resistance
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
Lands
4 Ancient Tomb
1 Buried Ruin
2 Inventors' Fair
1 Karakas
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Strip Mine
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Wasteland
Sideboard
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Null Rod
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Dismember
2 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Walking Ballista

Is there a link to the rules regarding adventure? I'm assuming it isn't an entire crop of creatures like misthollow griffon and eternal scourge and there is some kind of rider on the adventure ability that only allows it to be cast from exile when exiled with the mechanic.

If that is the case then I still prefer ingot chewer, which can also serve to remove bridge from below. But with thorn restricted there may be instances where you can use the differences between the two. I doubt a burning wish deck cares about the body, but maybe...

@vaughnbros said in Fastbond Brainstorming:

Issue is that outside of Waste and Ouphe it really doesn’t have much interaction. Storm decks probably crush it.

Outside of adding 4-6 sphere effects I'm not sure that is solvable, and even then they are planning to win through that against shops. GW gives Teeg, but how likely is it that they can storm out without bounce/kill?

You could try BG with discard, and maybe a backup hogaak plan.