Mentor is like a Quirion Dryad that got blasted with gamma rays, then got bit by something radioactive.

It seems Wotc tried to answer Mentor by restricting Chalice.  The move gave Rituals a little wiggle room.  Was it wise or effective?  Who knows.  That said, Dark Ritual combo has to be faster than anything that uses attacking creatures, right?

I've found that finding silver bullets has never been the most effective way of solving a metagame.  /shrug

Nice work! 

Have you considered Snapcaster Mage in place of a blast? So many targets for it.  Snapcaster looks like a fair replacement for unrestricted Brainstorm, which made unrestricted Thirst so great, back in the day.

Maybe bring in a welder game 2/3 to fight hate.  They seem good now that chalice is restricted.  That said, Ingot Chewer isn't as potent now that chalice is restricted.


The assessment of the metagame seems good.  Unrestricted Thirst, Restricted Chalice, who knows!?

I believe so.  I'm not sure if there's any prize structure planned for December.  The November tournament didn't fire properly.  It *did* snow some 7 inches that day.  That certainly didn't help.

Personally, I'll probably show up and flop some proxies around.  If you're in the twin cities area stop on down.  Honestly, if you're coming from a long way away, carefully consider that it might not fire.  Also, if you live in the Minneapolis - St. Paul area, and love vintage, PM me.  There's room in the MN Vintage facebook group for you.

I assume so.  The store advertises Vintage tournaments every third Saturday.  Attendance was pretty weak for November.

Also, we have another Vintage tourney at

Mead Hall Games & Comics
1425 Lasalle Ave, Suite B2, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403
Sunday, December 21 at 1:00pm
5$
no limit on proxies

Totally sweet Vintage this season!  It's hard to not root for the home team here. Grats Steve!

I'm just glad LSV finally got over calling anything with Workshops "stax".  >.<

Perhaps you could start a new thread on your champs winning deck. 

According to your deckbuilding approach, it sounds like this Oath list is the perfect example of why you shouldn't copy vintage championship decklists, as discussed in the podcast! 

Saturday, November 15, at noon
$20 entry
Prizes based on number of entries

Unlimited proxies

Reserve your spot please call Hi-Score at
651-777-3011

Hi Score Videogames
2130 11th Ave E
North Saint Paul MN 55109

Third Saturday of the month is almost here!  Last month we had 20 people come out. Let's see if we can top that. Hope to see you there!

Nice show.

I liked your explanation of why green is so important in Delver decks.  The analysis of Abrubt Decay in the past and how it affects metagaming cycles is good.  Your theorycrafting on choosing a deck between delver/oath/shops depending on local meta and the importance of recognizing that Champs is not the place to go for deck copying was sweet.

I think that if the listener is sold on your podcast advice then Cruise probably doesn't need restriction.  Personally, I don't think it is clearly overpowered and as such, in need of restriction.  Perhaps if Top8s over the next year contain 18+ copies each of TC, then yes, restrict if people are absolutely sick of seeing the card.

Well, I shuffled up Rector-Omniscience a few times.  It is clunky.  It feels like the deck wants unrestricted Flash to be tier 1.  Unrestriced Flash and pitch counters.  And more Brainstorm.  The deck requires a lot of manipulation to work properly.

Which enchantment are you rectoring into play?  Which enchantments are in your deck?  What is your gameplan when you draw your enchantment off the top of your library on the first/second turn?

lolwhut!?!?  I think I can wrap my mind around the concept.  That counter argument is laughable, at best.


As far as Hurkyll's combo goes, the list might be over populated with artifacts.  I don't think you need to add any additional artifacts in order to combo off and generate storm.  The bottleneck will be mana before it is having enough artifacts to replay.  Just play the best cards.

Additionally, I would probably look to drop draw7s wherever possible and test Dig thru Time.

The tournament games that I've beaten dredge with Tabernacle always involved another oppressive hate piece.  Everyone who plays Vintage seriously knows you need multiple hate pieces versus the deck.  It's not a bad card if only because Dredge has no answer to it.  The dredge player might get some mana post board, but not that much.  Most definitely better than a metamorph that copies nothing.

In games two and three, Dredge players tend to side out Dread Return and Flamekin in favor of anti-hate, when Tabernacle comes in.  So, I don't see those two cards as reasons why Tabernacle is not good.

Why is Tabernacle not a good card against dredge?  Please explain.

People think it's good because it's a land and dredge can't really hate on lands.  Also, Dredge vomits creatures out.  And runs virtually no mana base.  Dredge having no respectable mana base and having to pay a mana upkeep for each of their army of turds is probably why people think it is good.   Please explain why you don't like the Tabernacle.  I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's bad.  How are people playing around it?

Dark Confidant, Tarmogoyf, Leyline of the Void?

All of these cards are pretty good staples.  Leyline in play makes delve cards really bad.

I'd probably start with a Dark Times shell and tweak it for KTK.

Okay everyone, I just got done crunching the numbers.  It turns out that this card is in fact not broken.  It seems to be fairly well designed.  Also, the lady in the artwork looks like my neighbor.  Except my neighbor has eyebrows.  /thread

Is there a storm deck that's better positioned than Burning Oath right now? 

Oath is a wonderful thing versus shops because you really only have to resolve one spell.  Obviously Oath is great versus the swath of creature decks out there right now.  If you are trying to build a storm deck in a Shop meta, how will it out-perform Burning Oath versus shops?  What does it do better than that deck?  Same questions for Steel City Vault.

Following this goal, you should probably try Rebuild, Chain of Vapor, and Empty the Warrens.  Retract is bad because it doesn't interact with your opponent.  Rebuild and Chain of Vapor both generate storm in their own way.  Have you tried these?  Empty the Warrens replacing Tendrils so you don't have to get to 10 storm.

Mind = Blown.

Also, thank you for posting the results!

If I were going, I'd probably assume that a third or so of the decks in the Vintage Champs will not be optimal, tuned, vintage staples.  Perhaps expect that pilots who are mostly interested in Legacy to play Vintage, because why wouldn't you?  It's right there.  That's not to say they'll be noobs and bad players, rather, just handicapped because of the nature of sanctioned Eternal.  I'd also assume that after half of the rounds are done, ~75% of the top half of standings will be legitimate Vintage worthy decks.

So, do you alter your sideboarding strategies to compensate for more underpowered decks?  No.  You want to build your deck and sideboard as if this was an unlimited proxy event because the hardest matchups, the matchups that matter, will be in the last 3-4 rounds of the event.  And these decks will be fully optimized.

So, your gauntlet is the myriad of tuned decks you find on this website.  It's a poor strategy to prepare (read: change your sideboard) for tier 1.5+ decks.  You just gotta fight your way through to the cream of the crop.

Also, don't worry about breakout decks, you can't prepare for an unknown, except to realize your deck's strengths and weaknesses, then compensate where necessary with sideboard options.

tldr: don't change strategies because proxies are banned or because of budget concerns.

Gencon is a great time.  So much to do.  The times that I went, I was only interested in Vintage before I got there.  As it turned out, I had a blast checking out the huge variety of games, events and shopping. Reminds me of Shakedown Street, except with card-floppers and not hippies.  At the very least, you have fantasy artists to sign your cards.  At the very most, you get to watch LARPers do their thing.  Who doesn't love watching that magic unfold?!?

Totally fake.  There is no way magic nerds are that lucky.

Well, that's less than ideal.

Perhaps collecting decklists before the tournament, like I mentioned during our round 1 match-up, would be a good idea.  Something about not giving otherwise honest people a chance to be dishonest is the line to play.  At any rate, I hope this doesn't affect future events negatively.

Scott, I want to borrow your sweet Mana Crypt.  If I recall correctly, we flipped for that thing 12 or more times in game one and it came up in my favor twice at most.  :p

Also, thanks for the write up!

Regards,
Jeff

1. 224 people exactly
2. 0
3. no
4.  3 pro tour players will play.  3 more in attendance just watching/not playing.
5. no
6. 3 pillars
7. 2 at most
8. no surprise decks in the top 20.
9. no team 'monster' deck ('monster', imo, assumes they make top 16)
10. 4
11. If I couldn't win the tournament, I'd want to see DREDGE win because IT KEEPS SIDEBOARDS HONEST. (not really a prediction type of question)
12. Yes
13. Some (or all) of the guys in the top eight will be: huge magic nerds.

So, this tournament was a blast.  I hadn't played Vintage seriously for years and this event was refreshing and fun.  The staff and players that attended were awesome, to say the least.  I'm not going to do an official tournament report, so I figured a brief follow-up here isn't too out of line.

20 dedicated Vintage players showed up with their best decks and fought for a Workshop.  From what I saw, the field looked like it had a number of the following:
shops decks (terra nova, Martello, Metalworker all represented)
NWCS
Merfolk
BUG aggro
UR delver
GWx hate bears
steel city vault
Grixis control

More interesting was that Dredge and Oath were underrepresented.  I didn't see either archetype.  Unfortunate for me, seeing as how I played a pretty standard Terra Nova pile with 3 cages maindeck.  >.<  Personally, I went 3-2 overall, not making top 4 in a 5 round swiss. Oh well, I had a stellar time playing cards, even if all 75 were proxies.   

Anyways, the format is happening here in Minnesota!  20 dollar vintage tournament every third Saturday of the month at Hi-Score Games and 10 dollar vintage tourneys every Monday night at Monster Den.  I'd encourage anyone who loves the format and can make it to the area to attend!

I would love to buy into Vintage online for the first time.  Fortunately, I have standards.

It's my opinion that WotC has made some terrible decisions in the past and now we have a tremendously successful company that puts out a game string of code that performs like it's in the early stages of beta testing.

Considering how much revenue WoTC has and the amount coming in from purchased online cards you'd think that they could present a polished product in a finished state.  I've participated in several alpha versions of PC games (from companies with little more than 2m dollars) that felt more refined.

I thank my friend often for giving me a tour of the program and letting me play around with Magic Online on his PC.  Then I thank him for owning a bar so that I can drink away the thoughts and memories that still linger from that nonsense.

Thanks for the write-up!


hmm.  I only see 44 cards listed maindeck.

I'm going to take advantage of the recent rules change regarding thread necromancy here.  This thread will now move from the fourth post down to the first.  WOO!

I'm not sure that this concept is viable at all, even if fully tuned.  That said, the deck presented is a fine example of 'too many combo cards'.  

OP desires to create a Rector/Show and Tell combo when really it should just be a Rector OR Show and Tell combo deck idea.  Really now, think about it. When was the last time you used Show and Tell to get a Rector on the table?    It's one mana.

You don't need any of these cards.  

When I took the following Academy Rector deck to the Vintage Champs in 2007 it won mostly off Flash, sure, but finished the opponent off by first getting Yawgmoth's Bargain.  Once you have a Bargain, you should not lose.  At this point, you Rector up a Form of the Dragon to protect yourself, kill your opponent, and to draw 3 cards a turn for free!
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=151427

Once you've dominated the board state with Bargain, just hold it.  Bargain into a hand with multiple Forces and removal. Slow roll another Rector into Form of the Dragon.  Or just cast tendrils.  Every turn your life goes back to 5. Bargain up to 3 cards every turn, being careful with FoW life payment, and you're set.

One thing to note is that this deck avoids much of the hate that's present today.  No one plays Leyline of the Void and Swords to Plowshares like they used to.  Now, it's replaced with Graf cages (useless against rector) and Lightning Bolts (for Jace).

Ultimately, the Rector plan is clunky and unreliable with Brainstorm restricted.  If you happen to draw cards like Bargain into your opening grip, you really want a way to return them to your library.  I don't think Jace is a playable replacement, unfortunately.

In Vintage, we can use cards like The Tabernacle at Pendrell vale to go off while completely hosing Dredge.

tldr: remove fluff cards. dominate any board state with a yawg bargain fueled blue hand.

Looks like you had a great tourney!

Wow, that's a lot of islands.

I notice only one Dredge deck and one Shop deck.  Are these decks not popular in your area? hated out? don't have the cards?

There was only one Dredge deck.  No one else played Leyline of the Void in their sb? what gives?