I still really like lavamancer. He hits confidant, pridemage, hexmage, meddling mage (lots of mages), hierarch, mindscensor, and arbiter. Even with goyf he makes the mirror better. I also had him in because having a bunch of 1cc critters helped ninja come out turn 2 a lot better. But you are right, 4 is the wrong number. I'd like to run 3 since you want to see one most games.

Waterfront bouncer becomes cursecatcher then.

So, it looks like we've (I've?) got:

23 Mana
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
4 Mishra's Factory

16 Beats
3 Grim Lavamancer
3 Gorilla Shaman
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Cursecatcher

21 Spells
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Force of Will
3 Annul/Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
3 Stifle
3 Daze
3 Null Rod

But we need work on the sideboard no? I'm thinking something like:

1 null rod
4 reb
3 umezawas jitte
3 annul/spell pierce
4 Energy Flux/Rack and Ruin/Vaishino Heretic

Which isn't so much different than your suggested one. Do we need more protection against Storm Combo (arcane lab or chalice)? Should we run any bounce in the SB? Do you think this is enough Oath hate (snare, annul, pierce)? Is Ingot chewer superior to flux, RnR, and heretic? Do we even need that much Stacks protection?

The deck still feels really metagamable, lots of interchangeable MD spots if necessary. One of the reasons why I originally liked the deck.

I haven't posted on the Drain in forever, but since UR Fish is back, I might as well.

This is what I had constructed before I left for Legacy:

4 Volcanic Island
3 Island
4 Scalding Tarn (this was a mix of deltas and strands back then)
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
4 Mishra's Factory

4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Gorilla Shaman
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Waterfront Bouncer
2 Voidmage Prodigy

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
3 Brainstorm

4 Force of Will
3 Annul
3 Stifle
3 Fire/Ice
3 Null Rod
1 Rushing River

Which is actually pretty close to what you have now.

I stopped liking Daze when people started running more basics and spiketail hatchling started to suck. I found MD annul awesome, as it hits Oath, Stacks pieces, SoLoMoxen, and random things like Animate Dead for Dragon. Since Oath is arguably the worst matchup, it really made sense to me to have some MD protection against it and things like annul (which splashed over to things like Stacks) fit the bill. People have fallen in love with Daze again it seems, but the deck may have room for both.

Grim Lavamancer is soooo good in the mirror (and Control Slaver still existed back then) that I wanted 4, no matter what. I would still want 4 today since they can push through that last bit of damage.

I could definitely see going down to 3 mox monkey (so good at fighting tinker) and dropping the 2 voidmages for 3 spellstutters. And since you say you usually counter 1cc spells, why do we need mutavaults? Factories just seem better.

Waterfront Bouncer was also really good against Oath and DSC back then, but I think things have changed a bit. I had a lot of Oath in my meta, so my list may be slightly skewed toward that. Something to think about at least.

I liked Brainstorm much better than standstill back then, but it's restricted now so I'm not sure what I'd run in its spot.

Fire/Ice was for the mirror, to tap Oath's creatures, and to push the last bit of damage through. Not sure how good it is in today's meta. It would still be good in the mirror, but something like Daze, Spell Pierce, or Spell Snare may be better.

I LOVE this deck, I'm so happy it is being worked on again.

I completely agree here.

My problem with these new rules changes is that they are made under the presumption that they are making things easier.  I just cannot see how this is true.  Before we had The Stack that governed every part of the game.  Once you knew how the stack worked you knew how the game worked.  Anybody understands a "stack" because it is a tangible thing we can interact with in real life (what goes on top last comes off the top first).  With the new combat rules the game is disjointed and I feel ultimately MORE complex because of it.  They've failed to achieve their goal and ruined a great strategic part of the game.

However, besides the mana burn change I really don't feel the new rules will have a huge impact on Vintage.

Ok.  Yeah, I can definitely see that this deck would be better against the modern drain stuff.  My old RG Tempo (what we used to call it) was built to beat Stax, Slaver, and Shop Aggro.  Not much of that is still highly played in the metagame.

Its all making sense now.  Tez is more mono blue-ish than Slaver ever was, so MDing REB effects definitely makes sense.  Tarmogoyfs seem to single-handedly solve the clock issue, which makes cards like kird ape and wild mongrel obsolete.  I really do like these new lists, I wish I was playing when some of these cards first came out (like Magus and Goyf).

I think it boils down gradual shift away of the Suicide concepts.  Sui used to disrupt really hard early then apply a fast clock. 
I remember most non-blue aggro-control lists following the same pattern (hence why root maze was used).  Now decks can recover from an early disruption suite a lot quicker, so aggro control must be able to apply continuous disruption.

I definitely like this deck, thank you and Steve for updating it.

Great, I'm out of it for a couple years and THAT is when RG gets some love.

No one probably remembers, but there used to be a lot of discussion on RG using elvish spirit guide, root maze, null rod and artifact mutation.  None of these things seem like new concepts to me.  Sure, better cards were printed, like magus and tin street, but all the concepts are definitely the same.  How come people notice now, lol?

Anyway, back when I used to play the deck I found root maze invaluable.  I don't quite get why you guys dropped it.  With 8 spirit guides I don't understand how you can get stuck under your own maze.  The card single-handedly allowed me to win against Oath and Storm Combo.

But I also played wild mongrel as a way to get rid of multiples of null rods and mazes and still do some damage.  I'm not sure he fits in the deck anymore.

I guess the deck looks like an updated version of what guys like me, ShadyPhoenix, Dralock, and Dxfiler were doing like 2-3 years ago.

One thing I do remember was that I sometimes had trouble finishing the game.  What I mean by this is that I would play my disruption pieces early and start beating down, but then they would still resolve something before I could get the final points of damage in.  My impression back then was that my creatures just didn't beat for enough, so I stayed with cards like kird ape and rancor.  If I tried to add more disruption, my clock got slower, and since every Vintage deck has a certain level of inevitability I just couldn't push that damage through before they found an answer.

How does this deck solve that?  Deck compression with things like Tin Street and Magus?  Does it really make that much of a difference?

I'm glad to see this deck is still around.

I'm just throwing out ideas, so if this is stupid, I apologize.

Have we ever considered siding out bazaars?  Maybe put careful study in the SB to side in.  This would allow you to still dump stuff in the gy, but avoid needle.  Its also more blue. My thinking here is that people will be gunning for you after game one, so it would help to have more FoW fodder.

Just a thought.

I had a great time, even if I did come in dead last.  After I played oath round 1, looked over to Jesse playing Oath, then walking down the tables seeing another Oath, I sorta gave up.  After my match with Waddie I started trying to get that last place prize.  To be honest, I just wasn't into playing this time around, so I might be taking a small break.

Or, stop letting people use my UR Phid deck... :lol:

Good tournament, Peter will probably make me drag him to the next one, so see you in 2 months.

Due to some expenses involving my girlfriend, I am not really able to make it to any of these.  If there is one during December though...at least toward the middle, I think I can make it.

At least that means Cody got his fourth drain, right?

EDIT:  sorry for the necro, but I really don't want NC Vintage to die, and I wanted to show that I will be in a better position to support the scene in the future.

The reason I want 4 gorilla shaman is because of the synergy with Root Maze.  If you can get both out really early they can't use their artifact mana ever.  It's also just good on its own.  In any deck running blue 1-2 is sufficient IMO, but without a draw engine, I really like having the consistency of having 4.  Once again though, the deck is so metagamable there isn't a card in the deck (besides possibly the manabase) that should be a 4 of in every situation.  So I don't think that 4 Shamans have to be there, but I do like having 4.   

Blood moon is in my build for more than just Oath.  It wrecks Grim Long, which is such a bad matchup.  It helps against Kudzu.dec which I've discovered is just bad for us.  Choke works as well, in certain metagames, so it should definitely be on the skeleton list somewhere.

However, I am going to say I'm not a big fan of any 3cc card that doesn't win the game.  Hence why I like Choke/Blood Moon much more than I like Troll Ascetic or Ohran Viper etc.  Mana drain is still something to be worried about.

Yeah, that is basically a good skeleton.

However, I would never go below 4 Gorilla Shaman unless the metagame was really scrubby or aggro based.  You really want to draw them in every match outside of Fish.  If anything it's a metagame call to go 3 Lavamancer VS 3 Gorilla Shaman.

RG is incredibly metagamable, you have tons of different cards that can potentially be in the deck.  I think you've listed just about all of them.  Naturalize can go MD if you play against a lot of Oath, I had that configuration for a long time.  Emerald Charm is also a good anti Oath or Dragon tech.

In the artifact destruction/situational creature slot I suppose Viashino Heretic could be mentioned.  He definitely is a solution to DSC.

I've also seen builds running Kudzu, but I don't think it belongs in this deck.  There was a RG that did well a while ago with it in it, so I thought it might be worth mentioning.

These top4s are beginning to be redundant  .

Once again I wish I could have been there.

Love it!!   :lol:

So that makes 3 Drains for Cody then?

This is what I played and split top4 at a local tournament:

2 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
4 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Wild Mongrel
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Gorilla Shaman
3 Kird Ape
3 Basking Rootwalla

4 Root Maze
4 Rancor
4 Artifact Mutation
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Null Rod

SB
4 Naturalize
4 Red Blasts
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Blood Moon

Which I think is 61, and I know Dave hates when decks are 61 cards.  But I've been playing with this configuration for quite some time now and the reality is that the deck is so redundant it just doesn't do anything to the consistency.  If I had to take out a card it would be a rancor since it is dependent on having a creature.

I wouldn't play the deck in a tournament more than 5 rounds.  The only way the deck can win is to hate pre-emptively, which is absolutely usesless against random stuff.  In a tournament > 5 rounds you will probably encounter a deck you can't hate.  Also, as Dave Feinstein pointed out, it has a pretty poor game against Combo, which is currently huge.

Wastelands + Null Rod + Gorilla Shaman + Root Maze is the main way to shut down the opponent.  They overlap on purpose because RG sucks if it doesn't have multiple disruption pieces on the board.  And without a draw engine, it needs a lot of cards that disrupt in similar ways.

To pitch dead cards like multiple mazes or rods I included mongrel.  He is just so awesome because he puts everything on a quick clock.  He helps the random aggro matches and can in some cases save your butt against bad matchups like Oath.

I tried the root maze and pillar configuration main, but I found that it decreased my aggro and made some of my "good" matchups rather bad.  It also made me lose to random stuff even more.  It never actually improved my combo match enough to warrant both main.

I wouldn't go above 4 fetchlands with root maze, but they do need to be there for the slight thinning and lavamancer food.

Those are some of my thoughts on RG.

What?!  No RG in the Top4!!  That's bogus  .

I hate not having a car.  Please keep these tournaments going, I will hopefully be able to attend more of these things in the near future.  It's exciting to finally have some Vintage in NC.

Congrats to Cody, Cullen, Chris, and EJ.

Hrm...I'm sensing a pattern with top4s...

I wouldn't take out Entomb, not even for Timewalk.  Entomb allows you to win early much more consistently than Time Walk does.  It also allows you to win with Witness even when you don't have a RtR, Intiution, or Cunning Wish in the yard and Bazaar is not active.  This can be important against decks with a lot of hate, or just when you want to go off earlier.

Peter himself said he didn't like the card and sided it out in just about every matchup.  He still kept it in though against faster combo like Grim Long.

I think it is much more useful here than time walk.

Any extra mana you have should be put into removing cards with Wretch.

I also definitely agree that Bob should be here.  One of Sui's main problems was that it ran out of gas fairly quickly.  It also doesn't have the greatest topdecks because your discard has a tendency to be less than stellar after the early game.  Bob helps to fix both of these problems.  By drawing 2 cards a turn you draw into more beaters, as well as more disruptive elements like waste or strip.

Why isn't null rod in there again?  Chalice is good at stopping power, but null rod can serve the purpose of stopping memory jar, slaver, sol ring, and mana vault (there are others, but those are the most threatening IMO).

Here is my decklist:

“RG Tempo” 61
2 Taiga
3 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
4 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Wild Mongrel
4 Gorilla Shaman
4 Grim Lavamancer
3 Kird Ape
3 Basking Rootwalla

4 Root Maze
4 Rancor
4 Artifact Mutation
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Null Rod

Sideboard
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
4 Naturalize
4 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Blood Moon

I got beat by Marsh with Kudzu.dec round one basically due to mana screw.

I then proceded to sweep the losers bracket against Michael with monoblack Aggro, Brian with RG mirror, then Adam with BG Loam Control.  The only time I boarded was against Adam, as blood moon shuts off his deck which ran no basic lands.

Then I drew into top8 with Daniel who was playing Suicide Black, I think it was a pretty traditional list with hyppies and sinkholes.

Top8 I played EJ with my worst matchup ever Grim Long.  He duresses my root maze, but I rip another one off the top and have both Shaman and Root Maze on the board.  He plays necropotence, bounces maze and tinkers for Jar (not all in the same turn).  Knowing I have artifact mutation in my hand he pops jar right away but it gives him all mana and no gas.   I think that is almost statistically impossible.  With necro out and mongrel beating every turn he scoops.

Game 2 I keep a mana disruption hand, waste his turn 1 city, and follow up with turn 2 null rod with strip mine and ESG mana.  He doesn't win right away which means I get blood moon down and he loses.

Although I had never met most of the guys at the tournament (at least IRL) everybody made me feel like part of the group.  Vintage players really are the nicest magic players.

I had a great time, even without DCI Reporter or whatever the software is.  It was awesome to finally meet some of you guys in person.

I don't think I'll be able to make the next one, but if these are still happening in October or later I will definitely make a effort to get there.

If anyone is going to be in the Triangle area in NC.  Ultimate Comics has Legacy usually every Friday.

1322 Fordham Blvd #9
Chapel Hill NC 27514
(919) 960-8107

I suppose it depends on the Metagame.  If you are going to be trying to race Oath a lot you want a faster clock.

I guess against a combo metagame you'd want to MD null rods and wastelands to try to somehow slow them down.  But in an aggro or control field you probably just want to outrace them.

I'd play something like this

Lands
4x Taiga
8x Mountain
2x Ancient Tomb
1x Forest
4x Wooded Foothills

4x Goblin Lackey
4x Goblin Ringleader
4x Goblin Warchief
4x Goblin Piledriver
2x Siege-Gang Commander
1x Goblin lookout
2x Gempalm Incinerator
4x Goblin Matron
4x Goblin Recruiter
1 Skirk Prospector
1 Goblin Sharpshooter

1x Chrome Mox
1x Sol Ring
1x Mox Ruby
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mana Crypt
4x Food Chain

Uses the FC win as well as the prospector + sharpshooter win.

If pyromancer gets stifled, you lose.  If lookout gets stifled, you are still in the game.  It all depends on preference I guess.

I'd drop the wastelands and strip mine.  You want to start beating as fast as possible, and colorless land drops would slow you down.

You also may want to consider Goblin Pyromancer or Goblin Lookout.  They can push your dudes over the edge, even if you haven't comboed out.

Depending on the metagame you could put REBs MD.  Horos on ABS did that with some success.

What was the rest of the metagame like?

It's good to finally see some NC Vintage tournaments get advertised on the internet.  If only I had checked the anouncement forum more often I would have been there...sorry.   

That was awesome. I'm so going to use that in everyday talk just to get the funny looks.

Great job once again.

However, I am also wary of dropping the lone EE from the MD.  I absolutely love it's ability to swing games randomly against problematic aggro.  I've had good luck with it so far, so I earnestly await your results with 3 needles MDed  .

Would cabal therapy be good for the vindicate spot?  Yes, Vindicate nukes anything, but cabal therapy can be really good against combo, and can get rid of dangerous bobs.  Doesn't Chains hurt combo as well?  I mean, if they are using draw7s it really makes them go a different route.  It makes bargain not as useful, which can be incredibly good at times.

I really like the deck.

North Carolina

Cerebral Hobbies
265 S Elliott Rd
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
919-929-0021
http://www.cerebralhobbies.com/

BTW, Sports Cards Unlimited is no longer located in Northgate Mall.  They've relocated to North Duke Mall.  I'm not sure of the address or phone though.  I'll look into it.

EDIT:  Never mind about Cerebral Hobbies, they are going out of business.  God I hate Magic in NC.

Even with hate and manlands the matchup is going to be hard.  After boarding I wouldn't go so far to say that U/R has a GOOD matchup against Oath.  It definitely isn't an autolose, pre or post board.  However, just like WS Aggro has a bad game against Drains, U/R Fish has a bad game against Oath.

Your boarding plan will probably be the most effective, but I have one problem.  I would not take out stifle.  If Oath does come down before you have bombardment, you need stifle to stall them.  I've beaten Oath like this a couple times.

Pheldagrif has an important point.

While it is possible to stall Oath with U/R, and the matchup isn't completely unwinable, it is better to just accept it as a bad matchup and do what you can with what you have.

U/R Fish is a metagame deck, just like any other Fish deck, but the metagame it should be used in is quite different than U/W.  U/R is good in the mirror, or against other Vintage aggro-control decks.  It has awesome tools to deal with Drain based decks, and is on par or better against Stax than U/W.  The deck is made for a different metagame, and if you are in a Oath heavy metagame, you should probably switch to a different deck.

If B2B is ineffective because everyone has fetchlands, would splashing red for Blood Moon be better?  Not mono-blue, but still serves the same purpose.  The metagame seems right for it, I mean everywhere you look its either bazaars or as you said, fetchlands.  I could be completely wrong though, I'm just throwing out some thoughts.  Although, if you are already going red, why not slaver?

As for the win, I like Meloku and tinker + colossus.

Truthery.

I've tried chalice with vials but what ended up happening was less disruption and more cards that don't do a whole lot.  With chalice, if you plan on setting it on anything other than 0 you need vial, but then you can't run another slot of disruption, like null rod (which helps against other things besides moxen).  It seemed to weaken the deck and never worked right.

Besides, with 4 gorilla shaman, getting rid of moxen shouldn't be a problem.

As much as I like R/G, I think people should keep in mind that it probably isn't the best deck to take to a tournament with more than 5 rounds.  After all, R/G is more or less a hate deck, and when you have to battle through eight rounds you are going to get paired up against something that you can't hate (random aggro for instance).  R/G is for specific metagames where you know there won't be much variation in decks, and you know what is played.  For example, I played a R/G variant (not the one I posted, it was changed to fit the metagame, which was aggro, bad combo, and Oath) at my local meta for 4 rounds and came in first, defeating a bad combo deck, a metagame prison deck, MUC, and Oath.  It CAN be effective in smaller metagames.

Actually, yes.  But it always seems that people don't like to make that distinction.  Its always seemed to me that the natural progression of R/G Beatz was Tempo.  I guess I'm in the minority.

Okay, nowhere did I say I'm not advocating a clock.  Nowhere did I say I wanted R/G to become prison.  I'm saying that you use disruption combined with a fast clock.  However, that fast clock should not consist of burn cards that make you run out of gas.

Wild mongrel, basking rootwalla, kird ape, rancor.  These cards give me a fast clock (lavamancer and shaman beat as well, and you shouldn't underestimate those extra few points of damage).  Yes I can conceivably win turn 4.  Yes, I can consistently win turn 5.  Will your deck beat mine, possibly, but not because my strategy is flawed, because my deck is not metagamed against aggro (I have a R/G build that is, and it does have more burn in it).  My deck HAS beaten Fish, it HAS beaten Stax, it HAS beaten Gifts, and it HAS beaten Oath.  Can we stop yelling now?

The deck does not seek to lock the opponent, it seeks to stall the opponent so that they don't win, meanwhile putting them on a fast clock.  If all you do is aim at the head they will have no trouble comboing the turn before you go lethal.  If they have to worry about manabase disruption then they can't easily go off and your fast clock actually has time to work.  Your strategy can, and does work against Slaver (as does mine) but Grim Long, Gifts, Dragon, Oath, these decks will not care if you have a 4 turn clock, their clock will be faster.

However, you say you include REB, Tormod's crypt, and null rod, which are all disruption cards.  So this leads me to believe that we are not arguing the ends, but actually the means.  Null rod we agree on.  REB should at least be in the SB, so we agree there as well.  Crypt I just can't see with null rod.  Your deck runs crypt, mine runs root maze, same ends, different means.

As for gorilla shaman, having a shaman out in a powered environment is just plain good, and without a draw engine you aren't going to have one as much as you'd want with less than 4.

This deck should beat Stax either way because Stax doesn't like dudes, and that is what we play.  Goblins is an aggro deck whose clock is going to be faster than even your deck even without the rare combo win, so I don't understand bringing that up helps.