No idea if this is the right forum for this, but...

I had a conversation with my friend about magic.  He and I both used to play quite a bit but have since stopped due to the fact that college doesn't really provide you with an opportunity to play cards. 

Anyway, we like to talk about wacky, imaginary formats.  We were talking about vintage today and he mentioned that he always though of it as a stupid format because ever since its inception the best decks have just been blue decks with a splashes of other colors for their best cards.  We talked about how this largely was due to the abundance of mana fixing from non-basic lands.

It then sort of struck me "what would vintage look like without non-basic mana fixing lands?"

This naturally kills the 3-4 color blue decks that have existed in the modern age of vintage, as well as non-blue based storm (when that existed...).  In this hypothetical format, if you want to play cards of a certain color, you have to set aside a significant portion of your deck space to use it. 

We talked about decks that might be good in the format, and we thought mono-blue decks were the decks to beat.  High Tide sounded pretty strong.  RG Beats with Guttural Response seemed like a decent hate-deck.  Surprisingly, so did BW Fish because it has access to multiple duress effects, creatures that generate card advantage + disrupt, and decent permanent removal.  Shop decks take a hit because they can't utilize wasteland very well.  Dragon actually seems like a top contender.  etc etc etc

The point I'm making here is that the smoothness of Vintage manabases have naturally kept us playing blue cards with the most frequency.  Why play Tarmogoyf in a green deck when I can just add a Tropical Island or two to my deck that has five to seven blue fetchlands?

This idea of blue dominance is particularly interesting when taken with the Vintage restrictions of Brainstorm, Ponder, Gush, Merchant Scroll and Flash (Brainstorm especially).  The restriction of these cards has often been called an attempt to neuter blue cards and to spark innovation in the format.  However, neither thing has really occurred in the format because even with these incredible tools gone, there is still little to no incentive to stop playing blue decks.  That's because blue is still the most powerful color by a wide margin and blue players are still freely able to run the best cards in each color and still be able to run basics so that they aren't completely hosed by wasteland?

The cards that allow for the current blue manabases are The ABU duals along with Flooded Strand and Polluted Delta.  The last two are especially bad here in that often they allow the player to build a deck basic islands in a deck that didn't even have a full set of the duals for the corresponding secondary color, or allow it to pick up tertiary colors with ease without having to rely on jank like City of Brass.  Maybe a year or so before Brainstorm was restricted, Smenememnene called Brainstorm the best unrestricted card in some thread on scg and at the time I was like "duh."  Now I'm not really sure that was the case.  The use of Brainstorm as an auto-4off isn't something that really took off until after Onslaught.  Further, if fetchlands didn't exist, would people play Brainstorm as a four-off if it wasn't restricted?  The card takes a huge hit in power when you can't shuffle your chaff back into your library.

I see so many forum posts complaining about how all the restriction of brainstorm did was take us back to the blue decks we were playing a couple of years ago.  If instead the blue fetchlands had been restricted?  I'd imagine that the metagame would be largely different in that blue would become significantly weakened in that it would not be able to rely as easily on cards of other colors, which has been sort of a given since the inception of the format (1996 keeper manabases wouldn't really work now because efficient forms of LD exist). 

I'm not really advocating the unrestriction of those five cards and the restriction of strand and delta.  I'm just simply curious about how people feel about the ease of mana fixing in this format, and the effect which it has in deck choice and construction.

With regards to tournament play, doesn't the original version technically shut off the ability to play creatures that are in the RFG Zone because they're in the sideboard (that haven't necessarily been RFG'd with this spell)?  Say, for instance, I'm playing three gaddock teeg in the maindeck and one in the board, and you rfg a tarmogoyf with this spell.  Since ~this card~ is in the graveyard, can I not play gaddock teeg?

I'm in Avon, Connecticut, but I'm not sure if that helps much.

Edit: I remember hearing something about a "Matt's Sports Cards" in Somer.  Does this place exist anymore?

So, I hate to tarnish this thread with another incredibly ambitious proposition, but are we at the point where we need a new Eternal Format? 

Some people have stated that they are wholly opposed to banning Will in Vintage simply due to the fact that we want to play with "every card." [Within reason, obviously we can't be playing with Ante or Dexterity cards (or at least to operate under the facade that we can)].  Some of the rhetoric from this camp has, in effect, stated that if you don't like the general state of the metagame, go play Legacy.

We all know that the bolded part is a huge draw for the format.  The fact that we want to play Moxes and Tinkers is the reason that the italicized solution is not really a solution at all, more a deragatory rub at naysayers who simply won't agree with their rhetoric. 

With that said, could a format that bans and restricts cards similar to Type 1 pre 2k1 work?  That way, no card would be banned in Vintage (yawgmoth's will can still be played in one format) and people who wish to play Willless Vintage can play a slightly different format.  Similar to Neo-Legacy, it gives individuals the ability to develop new deck ideas without completly destroying the old Vintage, as Neo-Legacy did for Legacy.

Of course, there are major problems that acompany this idea.  The biggest is that it divides our community, both in terms of time to test decks and potentially draw to tournaments.  Does Store X hold a mox tournament for Vintage, or Vintage Squared?  Does Steven Menedian right articles about Vintage One, or Vintage Two?

This idea does have its problems, but since both pro-ban and anti-ban camps seem to not be listening to one another, the solution for this problem may not solely rest in one format.     

Ok, I'm curious about your viewpoint.

You say that control decks with combo kills are the problem.  How far should we curb these combo kills?  Completly?  Enough so that pure control is viable in the internet metagame? 

Also, what should be done to curb these kills?  Your post seems to hint that banning Will isn't enough.  Do we then Restrict Salvagers?  Oath?  Dragon?  Oath? 

Rather than try and pass this idea off as my own, I'll simply quote from JD (This came from the thread "Belcher Optimazation", which you should read if you haven't already):

I'm not seeing how this is better than the (currently not played) Mesmeric Fiend.  Fiend has not W requirement, and beats (however small).

Sure, the card that Fiend takes can come back, but this is only going to happen with any frequency against decks that actually pack chumps.

I'd suggest Negator, but the recent influx of Warrens tokens probably makes him suck again

The biggest problem I have with your deck is the use of lots of important cards in the 1 cmc slot in addition to chalice.

I tried building something similar to this, and I ran into tons of problems where I would play Chalice @ 1 and just have several cards stranded in hand.  You play significantly more cards in the 1 cmc slot than I did (I ran 4 Rits, 4 Duress, 1 Vamp, 1 Consult), so I can imagine this being an even bigger problem.

I understand that whether to shoot out Chalice @ 0 or @ 1 is often dependent on hand and on the deck you're playing, as well as the amount of time that has elapsed in the game, but I can't help but feel that there are going to be many times when you have tons of relevant disruption at 1 cmc and it is optimal vs the deck you're playing to play Chalice @ 1.

I resolved this partially by running Bazaar of Baghdads.  They help to filter out land/dead spells rather well, and they're especially good with Dark Confidant (As you'll be drawing 3 + x, where x is the number of confidants in play, cards a turn and discarding 2). 

I don't understand how Lotus Petal is bad in this deck.  Turn 1 dude is pretty good.  Sure, its pretty much dead if not in your opening, but this land operates on very few lands anyway.

Have you tried Rootmaze and Sphere of Resistance in the board?
 
Those are great board answers against Combo.  Rootmaze is paticularly devestating because it isn't an artifact, and thus can't be bounced by Hurkyl's.

I've talked with Tim about this deck, and...

The main reason to play this deck, it seems to me, at least, is to play with Bloodmoon.  Bloodmoon is such an incredible bomb that forces most decks to tutor up for bounce to win.  However, since it isn't an artifact, it doesn't die to Hurkyl's/Rebuild. 

The problem, of course, is that Bloodmoon has already been used in Slaver.  And UR Slaver is probably superior to UR phid.  Slaver has a faster clock, better Disruption (iirc bloodmoon slaver runs mana leaks, and of course goblin welder), and a better draw engine (Thirst, which doesn't get shut down by men, and Gifts, which has become increasingly popular).

Leyline probably wrecks this deck, given that it relies off the grave quite a bit.  But those are, for the most part, relegated to the sideboard.  Which is where the Seals should go.

Oh Timothy!  Why can't you ever stop playing RG Tempo?

Thanks for the report, and the pictures.  Personally, I scrolled down for the pictures, then red bits and peices.  Pictures really should be mandatory in Tournaments Reports.

Thirty five mana?  Am I reading this correctly? 58.3% of your deck is mana?  Are Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox and the full complements of both SSG and Cabal Ritual actually necessary?

Why are you including SSG?  Generally, storm combo added ESG (in addition to basics, of which there are very few in this build) to have mana sources that didn't get pooped on by stax, among other things (but the stax thing was probably the biggest reason for its inclusion).  Tell me, is Stax such a problem for you that you need to include this in your deck?

Bearscape is awfully pricey.  It costs 2GGG before you get one token.  There are deffinetly better options than this.

Crucible as a one-off seems rather sketchy.  You'd willingly waste a turn welding crucible into play?  Sure, its effect is incredible, but I'd much rather weld in titan.  Could this be life from the loam instead?  I mean, you have Intuition...

Have you tried Deep Analysis?  Its pretty decent with Bazaar + Intuition...

I think I'll stop commenting on this deck, as its rather similar to the list I've posted in open except without the Dragon kill.

Drop Duress and add more Dragons?  Does that make you very vulnerable to getting your board removed?  Or is Necromancy good enough to deal with this problem?

Archeological Dig replaced Black Lotus, which I thought was Lotus Petal.  It was something i'd thought about while posting without testing it at all.

Ultimately, Factory is pretty underwhelming as a one off.  I have fond memories of being trounced by MonoGreenZaar Factoriesstripminelifefromthe loam.dec, but I doubt there's enough room to support this.

Portal has been a decent late game card.  I'm playing a lot of permanents, and I can easily Dredge out Loam.  It probably would be better if I had multiple Squees.  I guess I shall begrudingly get around to trying two out.

Also, how do people feel about Will?  Its a bomb at times, but there are other times that I draw it early and it just sucks.  Discarding this seems like sacreligious, almost, but I am often either am forced to do that or mull should it be in my opening hand.

Yea, this situation of not having Red came up once or twice. 

I'll try out Witness/Trike.  I'm not sure if I can afford the slot, but I'll try it.

I've added another Life from the Loam.  This card was so good when I played the deck again.  Intuition -----> Loam, Bazaar, Strip Mine is pretty nasty.

On that note, I'm playing Crop Rotation.  It now actually does quite a bit, getting Stripmine, Bazaar and Factory.  Factory is sort of ehhhh, but I'm a big fan of cards that play multiple roles, and Factory not only does this on its own, but allows Crop Rotation to do this also.

I've cut Petal.  The not sticking around thing is awful annoying, especially considering that I have Gemstone Mine.  I'm trying Archeological Dig, but this may turn back into Undiscovered Paradise, or a Painland, or another Factory.

Beleiver was not all that he could be.  I'm sorry, he's WW, which is annoying, because with most other cards in the deck I only need one colored mana.  Animating him is ok, but a lot of times I'd rather animate Titans.  I've cut them, for now, for 4th animate and Balance woot.  Holy shit is Bazaar + Balance stupid good.  Balance is also really good with Life from the Loam. 

God, I am plumbing the depths of awful cards here :/

26
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Stripmine
1 Mishra's Factory
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
4 Bazaar

13
2Life from the Loam
1 Crop Rotation
1 Darkblast
4 Animate Dead
2 Dark Confidant
4 Goblin Welder


21
4 Duress
3 Intuition
1 Balance
2 Sundering Titan
1 Entomb
1 Portal
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Caller of the Claw
1 Recall
1 TW
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic
1 Yawgmoth's Will

I've loved Urborg so much that I've actually considered Joiner Adept.  Does that make me awful?

Regarding the Bob:

The cards in this deck have an average cmc of 1.38.  Bob pain isn't that much of an issue.

I think that, this time around, I've not evaluated portal correctly.  I've also seemed to forget that Confidant's ability isn't a draw abiliity    I think I'll throw it back into the deck.

Loam and Darkblast can probably go in over the Chants.  I originally wanted to play these main because I was so afraid of combo, but I'm not sure how effective they'd be anyway.  Oh well, I'll toss them in the board.

My mana base is a complete joke, and I'll be the first to admit it.  I cut the artifact mana (Crypt is in the deck, Vault and Ring aren't)  because in playing the deck, I would get so frustrated not having lands.  However, the addition of more mana sources has probably diminished this.  I'm recutting artilands.

True Beleiver over Chant is hella interesting.  I'm definetly trying that.

I have no idea what happened to the Shivan Hellkite in my deck when I copy+pasted this?  The Triskelion is something that's left over from Lunar's list. 

Holy crap, undiscovered paradise looks interesting.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Citadel is too painful, though. 

Here's the list I'm going to be fooling around with for a while:

26
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Undiscovered Paradise
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
5 Moxen
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
4 Bazaar

13
1 Life from the Loam
1 Darkblast
3 Animate Dead
4 Dark Confidant
4 Goblin Welder


21
4 Duress
2 True Beleiver
3 Intuition
2 Sundering Titan
1 Entomb
1 Portal
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Hellkite
1 Recall
1 TW
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Ways to deal with Oath:

If you keep white: Seal of Cleansing, Disenchant, Kami of Ancient Law, Insert cards that destroy enchantments

BR: Diabolic Edict, REB, Goblin Bombardment

Bombardment actually forces you to play Rituals + Will + Tendrils as an alt win, which is something you should probably add to the deck anyway.

Everyone has been talking about this new Planar Chaos card Extripate, and the adverse effects it will have on Dragon.  I'm not completly convinced about this, but that's besides the point.  All of this talk of Dragon needing to adapt reminded me of a breif conversation with Lunar about adding Tinker and Titan maindeck to Dragon way before I saw anyone else mention doing so.  And since he was so in love with Cerebral Assasin, I thought I'd revisit the deck. 

Here is the list I've hammered out after some breif testing. 

Updated list:

26
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Undiscovered Paradise
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
5 Moxen
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
4 Bazaar

13
1 Life from the Loam
1 Darkblast
3 Animate Dead
4 Dark Confidant
4 Goblin Welder


21
4 Duress
2 True Beleiver
3 Intuition
2 Sundering Titan
1 Entomb
1 Portal
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Hellkite
1 Recall
1 TW
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic
1 Yawgmoth's Will
For anyone who has picked up this deck, you've probably run into the following two problems:

1) Horrid mana base
2) Reliance on Bazaar

The card choices have reduced these problems a tad bit.

Urborg:  Urborg offsets the mana problem slightly, it turns Bazaar into an actual mana source, and allows you to cheat the counters of gemstone mine and tendo ice bridge.  I think its fine to have two here because this deck runs bazaar, and as such if you have 2, you pitch them.  And while you often want to see this land as often as possible, 3 is probably one too many on account of it being a legendary land.

No Sol Ring, Mana Vault: Again, the deck has horrible mana issues.  These cards are really a gigantic pain in the ass in that they 1) Don't produce colored mana and 2) actually require another mana source to be played.  While Mana Crypt suffers from the former, it makes the cut it that it doesn't suffer from the latter.

Shit lands aka 2 Artifacts, Tendo Ice Bridge: The deck wants colored mana.  I think I've already outlined why I prefer the arti lands over Sol Ring and Vault.  Tendo is good because it can allow me to cast chant.  I'm still not sold on this, I think its probably my weakest mana source.

Dark Confidant: It seems most of us have temporarilly stopped with our Bob Maher fetishes, but I haven't!  Simply put, he replaces Squee.  Really, I've always hated Squee.  He's absolutely useless without Bazaar, and even then I've never really thought he was that great until I got multiples of him.  Confidant not only gives you an extra card every turn (and his condition isn't a may, which is relevant if you're stupid) but brings the beats and makes you less reliant on Bazaar.

Animate Dead: Eschewing Lunar's 4 Reanimate, 1 Dead plan, I've simply gone with 4 Animate.  It saves SB space for the transformational Dragon board.  I might cut down to 3 of these.

Duress: Better than Force of Will.  Force of Will isn't really "free" here, the deck is tight on space, and force forces (lol) you to run blue cards that you simply don't want to run. 

Chant: Combo is your worst matchup.  This is probably the second best card you've got against Combo.  It doesn't hurt that this is gas against virtually every Vintage deck.

Crypt: Since I'm so used to playing Control, I probably play too much disruption    This is, however, really good against the field.  It gives you an out versus Ichorid, and lets you Tinker with impunity versus active welder.

Intuition: Well, its noteworthy that there are 3 here.  I'd play four if I was running force, but I simply don't think four are needed, especially now that the deck relies on 3 engines (Confidant, Zaar+Confidant, Intuition) instead of two (Squee+Zaar, Intuition).

2 Dragon: With 3 Intuitionm 4 Bazaar and 4 Confidant, I didn't feel that it was necessary to include 3-4.

What isn't in the deck / Other cards I tried:

Entomb, Crop Rotation: I've listed these here because they suffer from the same problem: They're awesome support cards that make terrible topdecks.  I'm simply not convinced that the goodness that they provide you with is worth the times you'll draw them and they'll be complete ass.

Possesed Portal: This is a parlor trick.  Its another overcosted shitter that CAN lock the oponent down, but really, I'd rather have a large man that actually does some focused shitting.  Secondly, I've cut Squee, making this symetrical.  And symetrical just isn't good enough for this deck.

Breakthrough: I tested this a while ago, when I ran Renamiate.  It was sometimes ridiculious to spend 1U to draw four cards, dump my hand, then shit out Sundering Titan.  But these times were few and far between.

Reanimate: Its not that I don't want to run this card, its that I'm pretty sure everything else here is better.  If things get cut and I have free space, who knows?

The Sideboard currently looks like this:

2 Crypt
2 Chant
3 Shattering Spree
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Pithing Needle


Ichorid: -2 Chant, +2 Darkblast
Fish: -2 Crypt, -1 Dragon, -4 Duress, +4 Pithing Needle, +3 Shattering Spree
Combo: -1 Triskelion, -1 Dragon, -2 Animate, +2 Chant, +2 Crypt
Stax: -4 Duress, -2 Chant, -1 Something +4 Pithing Needle, +3 Shattering Spree, 
Control Slaver, MeanDeck Gifts: No idea.  Seriously, what to cut here?

Edit: Added Will.  Can't beleive I forgot that card. 

Completly redid sideboard.  Decided to not add transformational sideboard for now.

I've also really been liking Warrens main.  Like Tinker, it is a great early/midgame threat, is virtually uncounterable, and at the very worst gives you some chumps versus fish/ichorid.  Am I horribly off base here?

I went 0-2 drop.    

I was way to depressed to actually play in another flight.  I got three White rares (Pentrarch Paladin, Akroma, Dusk Elemental) and went WR (I also had the Red Pestilence).  Unfortunately, all of my other white cards sucked, and I never drew any of my red removal, and I lost both die rolls.  Despite my ridiculious White rares, I definetly shouldn't have run white. 

Oh well.  I completly recouped my Sealed $$$ by selling my pool to a dealer.  I picked up this at the pre-release:

1 English Drain
1 Foil MM Brainstorm
1 Chris Rush signed Dark Tormod's Crypt
1 Volcanic Island

All in all, it was an allright time.  I read tons of Catullus while waiting in between rounds!

Granted, basing this sort of thing on the number of viable cards is quite silly, especiallywhen you consider that collectively, the cards on this list have had more of an impact on Vintage than the list of white cards.


I'm REALLY hoping that you mean in the context of vintage.

I'm really curious about the use of Leyline.  I understand that you predicted lots of Ichorid at Myriad, but would you play these at a larger event with a (potentially) more diverse field?  Of course, you absolutely wreck Ichorid with these, and these seem decent versus Dragon, but these do require four sideboard slots. 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a 3 for 2 in favor of your oponent.

You're using a card and 1B to have you and your opponent both remove two cards from the game.

If you use the apc this is a 4 for 2 oponent.

Why didn't you list "inherent card disadvantage" as a con?

What's worse is that the oponent gets to choose which cards he/she removes from the game. 

The only reason that I could think that you'd like it is has some synergy with Erayo's Essence (you mentioned SS).  I guess you might get this to work in a deck that seeks to dump its hand asap (Which, IIRC, SS does not want to do).  There are also some synergies with Confidant, both in him letting you recoup cards and in letting you sac him if he's about to kill you.

Edit: How is this better than Cabal Therapy?

Yea, getting starting decks with four colors is the suck.  I ussually start the game on the second or third highest difficulty reason because of this.

The city thing is the reason I always start with white.  The white spell is such technology.

Comrade Welder's expansion symbol is brilliant.

Why in god's name aren't you running Crop Rotation?  Tutoring for Strip Mine for G is good, and you're running a 5c mana base, so there's no reason how to run it.

On another note, how's that one Bazaar working out for you?  Seems far too random without the 1 Crop Rotation.  You'd also probably want a Barbarian Ring, to deal with weenies.

Put some Seal of Cleansings in the maindeck.  They deal with Oaths, Fluxes and pesky artifacts.

Force Field is so bad maindeck.  True this is a pain in the ass for Oath game 1, forcing them to tutor up Rushing River, but it does little more than stall.  This is not going to help you for goblins if they go for the Recruiter + Food Chain kill or the Sharpshooter + Prospector plan.  As you've mentioned earlier, Fish runs Rod main.  Pyroclasm and Ensnaring Bridge are the best you can do here.

Your Sideboard is a mess.  Here are some cards for your consideration:

Pyroclasm: Fish, Goblins, Aggro
Seal of Cleansing: Already touched on this
REB/Pyroblast: Gifts, Slaver, Combo (You want to hit Rebuild/Hurkyl's)

Also, I'm pretty sure I count all five colors.