I made a mistake.

God, I'm never going to be able to afford shops, ever.

This card is bananas, son!

Thanks! I'll let you know how he does.

Thanks for the input, but I really don't think it's that difficult to pick your cap targets against most decks. Regardless, he's going to play goblins. Is the list in the initial post still your recommendation?

Also, regarding legacy goblins, that deck is actually quite strong. Tarmogoyf trumped the old builds and rather than adjust, goblin players kind of just threw their hands up and started playing goyfs themselves. Nowadays, though, between new goblins, relics, and new builds, legacy gobbos has a much easier time battling green monsters.

Hello everyone,

I'm bringing my friend, who knows little about vintage, but plenty about legacy goblins to a vintage event in the near future. I know a fair amount about vintage, but nothing about goblins. As a result, neither of us is really equipped to decide which list is best to run cold at a vintage tournament. My expectation is that the metagame will consist of Oath, Tezz and landstill, with some shops, some storm and some ichorid. I figure rods and squads are in order, but as far as the rest of the list is concerned I'm at a loss. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Well, if you want the best aggressive weenie, you already know it's goyf. Regardless of whether or not you choose to play green, however, I think your colour choice is fun, but flawed. I just can't see an aggro control deck succeeding without at least 4 (probably more like 6) duress effects... and dark confidant is probably the best creature in magic. I'd suggest UBR or UBW if you don't want to play deez noughts, or even UBRW if you're feeling adventurous.

What advantage does this build provide over the actual tyrant blue? You're not even running anything synergistic with painter's servant outside of the grindstone combo. I really don't see painter's servant being playable outside of a shop deck or a deck that abuses red blasts.

Also, I agree about slaver... totally random. If you REALLY want to have a nasty surprise tinker target, jester's cap is much better right now, and much cheaper to activate and play.

10 Proxy vintage is significantly cheaper than standard or extended, provided that you play for a few years. Keeping up with standard for a few years can be ridiculously expensive, whereas 90% of your vintage playables will remain playable forever. I'm a student who's been playing vintage for 10 years and I find standard to be on the verge of prohibitively expensive, but I have absolutely no trouble keeping up with vintage and legacy. I have friends who hardly even own regular vintage cards and they still manage to get reasonably competitive decks together. Fortunately for them, (proxy) mox, land, dark confidant is one of the best plays in vintage.

The problem with this logic is that flash and oath both goldfish faster, on average, than goblins, with the additional help of countermagic. Playing to race these decks is simply playing to lose. You certainly need a fast clock, but you also need to accompany it with disruption, or get very lucky. In the current meta, leyline really isn't an unreasonable maindeck card. All of the tier 1 decks care about their yards, and a few of them really can't win with a leyline on the board. Even just keeping a player off yawg's will for a turn can be enough for you to poke through lethal damage.

You know, there used to be a time when duress was considered a hate card. I remember going to a mox tournament early in my vintage career with a deck that played four maindeck duress, and my first round opponent cried for the whole match about having to face off against a "hate" deck.

If you think playing aggro is too stupid, you'll really dislike playing flash.

Casting flash is better than casting dream halls. I think that's how a lot of arguments are going to end until one of merchant scroll or flash gets restricted... or everyone but the carp brothers quits vintage.

I more or less agree with your list, but it's looking like painter's servant is going to find a home somewhere in the top 5 from the set. It's probably not that playable in a random environment, but as long as blue decks are dominant and abundant, maindecking red blasts will already net you +EV on the field, and the fact that you can also set up a reasonably cheap 2-card combo finish is just icing on the cake.

Errr, Massacre won't kill teeg, but I think you're right about the removal; it should definitely be something scrollable.

Some random thoughts:

- I really don't see why you're not running wastelands in that deck, and I'm not sure that sol ring and manacrypt are better than off-color moxen or additional lands.
- 8 Duress effects seems like a lot, as do 3 illusionary masks.
- Did you find the singleton needle (without trinket mages) to be worth the slot?
- Where are the strip effects to go along with those stifles?

I think a solid step forward would be replacing any of those cards I mentioned with 2-4 wastelands and a strip mine. They can buy you the turn(s) you need to seal the deal in a lot of close games.

In my opinion, you should either take the advice of much more experienced players and go check out the current B/R goblins deck, or make some tweaks, test them against real decks and provide reasons for other players to believe that your deck is competitive. The deck you have posted here is straight-up outclassed even by the Legacy version of goblins.

I really don't think those burn spells are going to do much for you in this format, and raging goblin won't do much for you in any format. Earwig squad is pretty much the only thing keeping goblins competitive, and even then the deck is tier 2.

Red/Green beats, Jamison Bryant's SCG-winning deck, is fairly good, but it is much weaker in the present metagame than it was a few month ago. A few months ago the biggest decks in the format were MUD, which RG beats smashes, and GAT, which it had a reasonable matchup against. Now the biggest decks are tyrant oath and flash, both of which RG beats is an underdog to.

If you really have your heart set on pure aggro with no disruption, standard is very aggressive right now.

Any chance you can hook us up with that slaver list? I try not to, but I can't help being borderline obsessed with that deck.

In my opinion, this card is totally superfluous. The only way to make it worth playing is if you have gush/bond, but if you get fastbond into play you're already going to win the game anyway. This card is also a turn too slow and one too many blue mana. (I also don't really like the art )

This card is certainly interesting, but I think that timewalk itself is already under-appreciated in vintage.

One tournament doesn't prove anything. There are more viable decks that play platinum angel than ichorid, even if they don't get played at tournaments hosted by ICBM.

if you're paying black mana for this thing, it's strictly worse than grim tutor, which hardly gets played, and probably diabolic tutor as well, which doesn't get played in any format. If you're paying colorless mana for this thing, there are much better ways to spend your mana, as per the example above.

kaiser:

A few things.

- I really don't think carnophage, sarcomancy or stromgald crusader are worthwhile. 2 powered beaters that bring nothing else to the table aren't threats in vintage.

- Any suicide list definitely needs to start by playing dark confidant, and should consider other creatures that either speed up the clock or disrupt your opponent, such as hypnotic spectre, mesmeric fiend or phyrexian negator.

- I'm not sure why suicide decks can't splash for goyfs with some fetches and bayous

- Chains of Mephistopheles! I'm not sure why more black decks don't run this card. Your hand disruption strategy can be totally negated if your opponent draws gas off the top and finds threats. Chains makes sure that once you knock them down they have a hard time getting back up. Also, it doesn't prevent you from drawing extra cards off bob.

- Unmask seems outdated. If you want more early discard effects just add more thoughtseizes or some cabal therapies. I think thoughtseize is probably better in this deck than duress, by the way.

- Other notable omissions are mox jet, demonic tutor and possibly vampiric tutor and demonic consultation (I don't think yawg's will belongs in the maindeck of suicide black)

- if you do run vampiric and demonic, tutorable hosers such as planar void and null rod might be useful additions as well

For the record, the more relevant statistics on mulling into leyline aren't the values that predict getting exactly 1 in your opening hand, but rather the probabilities of getting at least one in your opening hand, as has been suggested above. The chances to find at least one leyline by aggressively mulliganning are summarized below.

7 cards      0.400
mull to 6   0.611
mull to 5   0.728
mull to 4   0.795
mull to 3   0.834
mull to 2   0.855
mull to 1   0.865



As far as my opinion on the flash matter, I'm not sure if flash should be restricted- maybe it should be- but I'm almost certain that merchant scroll is a problem. I thought merchant scroll was the problem when gifts was restricted, I thought merchant scroll was the reason GAT dominated, and now I think that merchant scroll is responsible for the degeneracy of flash and the raw power of tyrant oath (the best deck in the format?). Merchant scroll has been the centerpiece of every dominant deck since Steve showed everyone how broken it was when he based the engine of meandeck gifts around it.

Merchant Scroll is a demonic tutor that's not allowed to get black lotus or yawgmoth's will (unless you want to wait a turn, spend a blue mana, and reduce your hand size by 1). That's still pretty effin' good.

I recently played bomberman to a second place finish at a 20ish person tournament and I really didn't combo out THAT often. A lot of my kills were from salvager / trinket beats. I also had alternate win conditions in tinker -> colossus and empty the warrens, which came in handy quite a lot. I don't think you need to be too worried about yard hate. Salvagers is still an excellent card in a deck filled with nasty tutorable, reusable artifacts, even if your lotus gets removed from the game.

Passing the turn grants you an extra untap step.

With the sliver kill if you needed to waste all your turn 1 mana casting merchant scroll or demonic tutor, you wouldn't be able to pact your opponent's turn 1 trini, because you'd die during your upkeep. With the lark kill, however, you can tutor up flash with your turn 1 mana, pact during your opponent's turn, and then in response to the pact trigger, with your freshly untapped lands, you can win the game on turn 2 at instant speed.

EDIT: whoops, didn't see the other two replies ><

I think it's pretty clear that the example is out of context. The whole discussion is about game-ending plays on the first turn.

My problem with this argument is that magic is already a game that heavily involves chance. There is a fairly substantial chance in any given tournament that you'll end up losing a round to repeated mulligans, poor draws, etc. Now, if that round of poor luck happens to coincide with the round that you get beaten by a 5 year-old playing flash, then you're in fine shape for the top8, but if it doesn't then you might be going home early without really even having anything to say about it. That's not the kind of experience I'm looking for when I drive for an hour and spend 30 bucks to enter a tournament.


You forgot the part where you have to swing 5 times in a row with a 4/4 artifact creature, or where your opponent has the stifle for your oath trigger, or the bounce spell for the platz in response to the pact trigger. Even if you were somehow instantly winning in response to the pact trigger on your next turn, at least your opponent has seen at least one turn to do something. Honestly, I would gladly play against platz oath for 7 straight rounds in a vintage tournament. A combo that takes 7  (OK, 5 if you have multiple angels) turns to kill isn't even scary in extended.


So, he had lotus, 2 dark rituals, demonic tutor, force and a blue card in his opening 7? That's a pretty nutty opener- certainly far less likely than a turn 1 flash kill, and also involving at least a modicum of thought (although that's pretty much as straightforward as storm combo gets). Every deck can draw the nuts, but a deck like superlong isn't going to do it with nearly the consistency of flash and you know it.

So she discards her worst card to 2-for-2 you instead of 1-for-1. I don't see what's wrong with that play.

My friend was in contention until either the 5th or 6th round of the tournament, but he definitely lost at least one of his matches simply due to lack of experience.

I'm not sure that the lone teeg was relevant at any point for him.

The rituals he liked because they helped him keep pace with more broken decks. The list plays on-colour moxen as well.

I believe balance won him a few games. I know in one game he'd been fighting GAT with waste effects and duress effects but was staring down a fat dryad and a 5 card hand versus his single card hand of vampiric tutor. Unfortunately for the GAT player, misdirection doesn't have much to say about balance, and 6 for 1 got my friend there.

Extirpate seems good in the deck, I'll have to try it. I had honestly considered them for the maindeck briefly, but decided that it was too cute.

I always play different decks than my friends because they generally borrow most of the cards from my collection. For example, on saturday another friend is playing Rich Shay's Tyrant Oath list, and I'm planning on playing this.

As for changes, that will be determined be feedback here and by testing tonight/tomorrow.

A friend of mine recently decided to come along with me to play in his first competitive vintage tournament. His favourite deck has always been his black/white suicide deck, so we tried to pick something for the tournament that he'd feel comfortable with. After tossing together a pretty boring BW list it occurred to me that there wasn't really a good reason not to splash for goyfs, so that's what we did. Here's the list, along with brief card choice explanations:


Dudes (15):

4 Tarmogoyf
This one seems pretty obvious.

4 Dark Confidant
Ditto.

4 Hypnotic Spectre
This could be any number of things, but as long as the deck is playing dark rituals, hyppie seems like a strong choice. His evasion is very relevant once jittes are boarded in, and his ability can obviously be devastating, especially in a slower format.

2 Kataki, War's Wage
With the renewed popularity of workshop-based strategies, Kataki seems like a very strong choice right now.

1 Gaddock Teeg
This is pretty random, I guess, although he seems like a solid inclusion. Other creatures that I considered were withered wretch, jotun grunt, mesmeric fiend, devout witness and nantuko shade.


Disruption / Removal (19):

4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
6 or 7 seems like the right amount for this category, just by my own intuition. I'm not sure what the correct balance of thoughtseize and duress is though.

2 Null Rod
Null rod seems excellent right now, although it's still weak in some matches, such as GAT.

3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
More than 4 of these seems like a lot to support with a tri-colored manabase.

4 Swords to Plowshares
Vintage is more aggrotastic than it's been in a dog's age. Running the full set of swords seems good.

1 Balance
Best card ever printed?

1 Pernicious Deed
Random tutor target. Strong against aggro, artifact manabases, random threats, etc.

1 Planar Void
Game 1 out vs. dredge, solid play versus any will decks.
 

Tutors (3):

1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
These seem pretty obvious.

1 Enlightened Tutor
Fetches null rod, deed, planar void, and potentially SB cards.

Loam (1):

1 Life from the Loam
Provides resilience in the face of crucible, and randomly can wreck weak manabases.

Mana (22):

4 Dark Ritual
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
4 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scrubland
2 Bayou
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

My manabase was constructed pretty arbitrarily. I don't claim to be an expert in this department, so I may be running too few or too many sources. I just make my manabase and adjust based on goldfishing / MWS games.

SB:

3 Umezawa's Jitte - aggro
3 Pernicious Deed - aggro / shops
4 Leyline of the Void - yard based decks
3 Ray of Revelation - oath, although I doubt this is enough
2 Oxidize - more artifact hate


Other cards that I had considered while building the deck were the following:
- Chains of Mephistopheles (ruins GAT, great with Bob, tutorable)
- Hymn to Tourach / Sinkhole (misdirectable shenanigans)
- Vindicate (slow, but very versatile removal)
- More maindeck deeds
- Devout Witness (disenchant on legs)
- Jotun Grunt / Withered Wretch (yard hate)
- Maindeck Jitte (instead of null rod)

My testing has been limited to MWS games, which I know are unreliable. So far I have been happy with the results, though. I'm planning on playing some form of this deck in a tournament this weekend, after which I will have more relevant results to discuss. Any suggestions/criticisms on specific card choices or the deck as a whole would be appreciated.

My vote is Goblins or RG Beats. Both decks have been doing well lately and neither requires anything expensive (you can afford to skimp on mox ruby and black lotus, although the lists are obviously slightly better with those cards)