One of the problems is also that power has become much more powerful in the sense that a few years ago, Goblins for example was a very viable deck. Sligh was a very viable deck, black weenie (with hymns, spectres and negators, remember them??) was a viable deck. Now if you play goblins or sligh you will get an asskicking 6 rounds in a row. Because the format keeps getting faster it is even more important to have power pieces because they provide that speed boost no other cards in the game can give you (besides maybe mishra's factory but noone plays stax without the power anyway..). Now if i want to play a real deck it would be ichorid because 4 bazaars even though they are ~800€ (which is over half of a monthly wage!!), is still alot cheaper than the power9+vault. Even if you want to construct a decent non-powered fish deck you still need to dish out several hundreds of dollars just for the dual/fetch lands.  I own two mana drains if i sold them i could buy the most expensive legacy deck, and drain isn't even considered an expensive card. You people must shit money or something.

The difference between powered and non-powered decks is just too large. Basically your only option besides spending an in my opinion unjustifiable amount of money on power cards is to play 4 null rods/leylines.deck, well knowing that you are just not as competetitive as the powered decks.

Now i have done some investments and trades specifically for type 1. I own gifts, welders, metalworkers, fow's, drains, smokestacks, ichorids, the whole tutor chain etc and can build almost all top tier decks by proxying up only the power9+bazaar+shop. Those cards did cost me quite alot of money and are useless outside of type1/legacy. Not to mention the costs of a full set fetch and dual lands.

The point is that if i want to play competitively i have to go to proxy tournaments, doesn't need to be alot of proxies but enough to be able to proxy a few critical pieces without which the deck wouldn't work. If i want to go to a noproxy tournament i have no choice but to play null rod+weenies or some other wannebe deck which lets face it is just not as good or fun to play as a real deck, even though there is some kind of allure to beating a powered player with it, i will stand no real chance at going top 8 and actually winning a power piece.

Also it seems that many people who are anti-proxy had the opportunity to buy it when it was still relatively cheap.

In the end second-hand prices are none of wizards concern. The health of the game is. Reprinting and giving power as prices in sanctioned type 1 with a restricted allowed amount of proxies is imo a logical solution. That way the reprints will stay rare, prices will stay high but new players will have a way to aqcuire it.

The only other solution is to create a format with the P9 banned but the rest of the restricted cards legal as one-of. This might also be a good solution to the stagnation of the metagame.

I don't know. It works for Fish doesn't it? This is like fish but with alot more power even after the restrictions.

...or still playable without gush/bstorm?

GroAtog
Waterbury, Winner - Scott Limoges

Main Deck

2  Flooded Strand
4  Island
3  Polluted Delta
1  Strip Mine
3  Tropical Island
4  Underground Sea
17 lands


2  Psychatog
4  Quirion Dryad

4  Accumulated Knowledge
1  Ancestral Recall
1  Black Lotus
4  Brainstorm
2  Cunning Wish
1  Demonic Tutor
2  Duress
4  Force of Will
1  Gush
4  Mana Drain
1  Merchant Scroll
1  Mind Twist
2  Misdirection
1  Mox Emerald
1  Mox Jet
1  Mox Pearl
1  Mox Ruby
1  Mox Sapphire
1  Mystical Tutor
1  Time Walk
1  Vampiric Tutor
1  Yawgmoth's Will

Sideboard

1  Berserk
1  Blue Elemental Blast
2  Diabolic Edict
1  Fact or Fiction
1  Hurkyl's Recall
3  Naturalize
2  Pernicious Deed
4  Tormod's Crypt

This deck only loses three brainstorms by the restrictions (like all other decks). Could it work with a brainstorm substitute like opt, serum visions,... ?

I am now trying this (unpowered )
Blue
4 Force of Will
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Serum Visions
2 Mana Drain
2 Counterspell
2 Misdirection
2 Cunning Wish
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Gush

Black
4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Green
4 Quirion Dryad
1 Fastbond

Multi
2 Psychatog

Artifact
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
1 Lotus Petal

Land
1 Strip Mine
2 City of Brass
4 Island
4 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand

Basically you want to control the early game and draw cards until you get two tutors, then get yawg with one gush with the other and tutor into accumulated knowledges or cunning wish for berserk or to reuse gush.

The thing is when you're able to cast dday with three mana left you win anyway using the gush stack or bstorm rit rit MD research. The problem is usually that i have dday in hand, rit to cast it, but only one mana left. What you really want to do is cast doomsday turn 2, then live a turn by the grace of FoW or Duress and untap, draw, win. Now you can only risk this early in the game. If they game stretches out you want to get a ritual, dday, cantrip and three mana up so you can win in one turn. Usually the restraint is not drawing into the dday stack but lack of mana to execute it in the same turn (which is where blotus and ancestral recall really make a difference, as they allow you to build dday stacks that require only 1 or 2 mana to execute).

I now play -3 Daze, -1 Windfall, -2 STop for +3 Opt, +3 Street Wraith.

It really looks like meandeck dday now, except with no power.

Its possible to kill the turn you play dday with two mana and a street wraith or three mana and a cantrip with this stack:

stack
Brainstorm
LED
Ritual
Will
Tendrils

I played some games against fish and won most of the time with just tutoring up necro (always a good decision in this deck). He killed me one game with a draw that i shouldn't have kept and i killed myself once by screwing up my dday stack. Going off is usually easy as duress/unmask do their job well the first two turns of the game, allowing you to go off in one turn once you have ~3/4 land in play.

Budget Doomsday

Blue 18
4 Force of Will
3 Daze                 // not sure
2 Misdirection        // not sure
1 Pact of Negation
1 Gush
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Mind's Desire
1 Windfall             // not sure

Black 20
4 Doomsday
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Street Wraith

Multi 1
1 Research//Development

Artifact 5
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond

Land 16
4 Underground Sea
3 Watery Grave
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard 15
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Massacre
1 Echoing Truth
1 Tendrils of Agony
?

This is what i am now playing. The blue cards that i am not sure about are basically six spots i have left beside the skeleton of my deck. I'm trying to bridge the brainstorm gap with 1 bstorm, 1 ponder, 2 tops. The problem is that it puts the blue count too low to run FoW decently, and this is made worse because you do not want to have to remove MDesire, Gush and Research/Dev as they are the easiest combo cards to win with. I have considered Serum Visions (cantrip lets you win this turn and pitches to FoW) but it is so much worse than Top imo. Daze is sometimes brilliant but sets you back a turn and you really want two islands on the table to win with the Gush stack.

I'm gonna try -3 Daze -2 Misdirection -1 Windfall and +3 Opt +3 Unmask.

This is now my new deck, with desire instead of WGD:

Budget Doomsday

Blue 15
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
1 Pact of Negation
1 Gush
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Mind's Desire

Black 23
4 Doomsday
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
3 Unmask
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Street Wraith

Multi 1
1 Research//Development

Artifact 5
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond

Land 16
4 Underground Sea
3 Watery Grave
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard 15
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Tendrils of Agony
?

I am not entirely sure about some cards though. A little more blue for FoW would be nice, also the sensei's tops are neat but I sometimes I wish I had chromatic spheres instead.

After playing some games with it, it seems that the WGD kill is just too easily hated out, it is too vulnerable to everything from creature kill and bounce to extirpate & leylines. So i read some of menendian's articles on dday stacks in search for ideas, and came up with a new kill, using the same scenario as before (two islands in play, doomsday cast last turn, and no power9 cards), stacking:

Gush
LED
Street Wraith
Mind's Desire
Research/Development

The way this works is: draw gush, play gush floating UU, replay land, float another U, play LED, cycle wraith, in response sac LED for UUU. Draw Desire, you now have 6 mana floating to play it. Storm is 3. Draw and play Reserach/Dev off Minds desire, shuffling 4xTendrils of agony in your deck. Use the two remaining desire effects to cast tendrils for 5 and tendrils for 6, dealing 22 dmg.

This kill works under the same conditions but is obv much harder to stop than the dragon. It does require you to run 4xTendrils too (research dev can get cards in the sideboard right?). This also allows me to ditch all of the crummy cards needed to support the WGD combo (careful studies etc), making more room for disruption and tendrils.

Any thoughts?

Edit: My rules knowledge is a bit foggy; is it possible to sac led in response to putting the cycling effect on the stack?
'Cycling is an activated ability that functions only while the card with cycling is in a player's hand. "Cycling [cost]" means "[Cost], Discard this card: Draw a card."'
So you could stack the cycling effect and then sac LED before drawing the card am i right?

Oona is indeed alot better kill card, ambassador out.

Careful Study #2-4
Ideas Unbound
Chromatic Star
Mana Vault
Yawgmoth's Bargain

Careful study serves two purposes in this deck: it builds up your threshold, which might not be so important anymore, but originally I had four cabal rituals in it to compensate for having a lack of mana artifacts, so you could go for the tendrils kill as soon as you have multiple rituals and a tutor for will. Chromatic sphere and ideas unbound (which is basically a really bad ancestral) are in it to make doomsday stacks using the tendrils plan. That being said, they are weak cards. Bargain is also for the quick tendrils plan but its not so good without 8 rituals. The upside of bargain is that you win the same turn if you draw into a doomsday.
The other reason for Careful study is that it is part of the dragon combo, and it provides a basic amount of drawing since you play quite a few cards that are suboptimal so it allows you to ditch these cards since you recover all of them if you cast a doomsday anyway. It is also a bit to try and compensate for having no more 4 brainstorms early in the game.
Mana vault is a leftover from the predict kill requiring 4 mana. It can go out.
I'm now trying 3xSensei's DT, 2x Misdirection and 1 windfall and 1 wheel of fortune (with 1 volcanic island).

Budget Doomsday

Blue 14
4 Force of Will
4 Careful Study
1 Pact of Negation
1 Gush
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ideas Unbound
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Ambassador Laquatus


Black 21
4 Doomsday
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Animate Dead


Red 1
1 Worldgorger Dragon

Artifact 7
1 Chromatic Sphere
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault


Land 16
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
3 Flooded Strand
3 Watery Grave
1 Island
1 Swamp

Sideboard 15
?

Let's take a common scenario:
Turn 1: Land, Duress
Turn 2: Land, Ritual, Doomsday

It took me a while to figure out how to win from here on the next turn, with no cards in hand that support the combo.
I looked around and found that the best unpowered pile involved the dragon kill using Predict, and requiring 2UB
mana to execute. Not good enough since it wouldn't allow me to go off but it gave the idea to use the dragon combo.

The cheapest doomsday pile i could come up with that has no power9 cards in it is:

Gush
Animate Dead
Careful Study
Worldgorger Dragon
Ambassador Laquatus

Drawstep draw gush, play gush floating UB mana. Draw animate dead & careful study, replay a land,
play careful study, draw worldgorger dragon and ambassador and discard them. You still have two mana floating
to play animate dead and combo off with dragon.

You can play around leyling and extirpate by waiting until you have one of the stack cards in hand
(either a careful study or the animate dead) and stack chain of vapor to bounce leyline or duress to disable extirpate
instead of the study.

Ive thought about adding unmasks, maybe frantic search, misdirections, sensei's and alot more. Too much to fit in.
I'm also looking for an even cheaper stack using a single bazaar of baghdad as the first draw card (if i can afford one :p)

If you comment, keep in mind that it is a budget deck so no power.

Any suggestions?

Nice article.

I think it's great that Goblins is a viable deck again. Seems to me like the format has taken a good turn after the restriction of Gifts. Type 1 was getting a bit too combolicious.

Here in Belgium stax and slaver are pretty popular, so that fire/ice seems a good idea although the red mana can be annoying if i have to cut another fetch for a basic. Trickbind can shut down all sorts of stuff, mostly storm. I dont know about how much flash if any there is going to be.

I'm going to a proxy tournament this sunday and this is what I intend to play. I expect a lot of stax and control slaver to be there. This is Mon's list with +1 Merchant Scroll, +1 Opt and -2 Daze and some sideboard changes. I like this more controllish version.

4x Quirion Dryad
1x Fastbond
1x Regrowth

4x Gush
4x Brainstorm
4x Merchant Scroll
3x Opt
1x Cunning Wish
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
1x Echoing Truth
4x Force of Will
2x Misdirection
2x Mana Drain

1x Psychatog

4x Duress
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Yawgmoth's Will

1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Jet
1x Strip Mine
3x Flooded Strand
3x Polluted Delta
3x Tropical Island
3x Underground Sea
1x Volcanic Island

-sb-
4x Leyline of the Void
2x Trickbind
2x Red Elemental Blast
1x Berserk
1x Oxidize
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Artifact Mutation
1x Energy Flux
1x Fire/Ice
1x Submerge

I think the DCI considered Gifts too powerful and that they kind of unrestricted Gush (which let's be honest is good but not spectacular unless you get your single copy of fastbond) so that there would be at least one viable control deck in the combo/graveyard happy metagame. (Even though playing against ichorid or flash has very little to do with 'control' and almost comes down to do-you-have-leyline-or-not with a FoW or Duress backup). Tbh i like type 1 less now than a month ago.

Let's say you draw an opening hand of Umox, Bmox, tropical, merchant scroll, FoW, street wraith, gush.

How would you play this? Merchant scroll for ancestral, or start the tutoring chain for fastbond?

Why would you pay  for a long stasis game if you can win with flash instead?

Wouldn't it be better if you replaced the ritual and tendrils with high tide and brain freeze?

The fact that you have to draw your card before you can scry and that it is not instant makes serum visons not-so-good imo. Opt always seems better.

Here is what i run now:

4 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Island
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring

4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Gush
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Echoing Truth
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

2 Psychatog

4 Duress
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

4 Quirion Dryad
1 Fastbond
1 Regrowth
1 Berserk

So I have a proxy tourney the 1st of july and i was planning to play Gifts, so i'm left searching for a new deck. What do you guys think the post restriction/unrestriction top decks are going to be? From what I've read it'll be something like:

Dredge Return
Flash
Doomsday
Long

GAT
Fish

5c Stax

Will slaver still be viable? Are graveyard strategies too powerful? It seems that if you dont have four Leyline o/t Void you might as well not show up.

Out of these i'd probably play Gro-A-Tog, seems like the most fun deck to play  .

If you don't play power then you must run a full set of dark rituals and some extra cabal rituals, otherwise you will never be able to reach a decent storm count.

You should write a non-premium article every now and then 

Do you think this deck is playable without
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Imperial Seal
?

If have almost all the cards except the power, would be nice change of deck for me. (+ Doomsday sounds so cool when you cast it  ). Maybe two more cabal rituals? Or is the kill entirely dependant on Blotus?

That deck of yours is remarkably close to my unpowered gifts deck:

3 flooded strand
4 polluted delta
2 bloodstained mire
4 underground sea
2 volcanic island
3 city of brass
1 island
1 swamp
1 strip mine

1 darksteel colossus

1 lotus petal
1 mana crypt
1 sol ring
1 mana vault
1 grim monolith
4 dark ritual
2 cabal ritual

4 force of will
3 mana drain
1 chain of vapor

4 brainstorm
4 gifts ungiven
2 merchant scroll
1 demonic tutor
1 vampiric tutor
1 mystical tutor
1 tinker
1 recoup
1 yawgmoth's will
1 yawgmoth's bargain
1 necropotence
1 tendrils of agony

This deck is not that bad actually as you can get random turn 1/2/3 wins on the back of your (non-power9) brokenness, but you can't always protect your kill and it's too inconsistent (as in sometimes you get really crappy hands) to take it to a tournament imo.
If i had a single black lotus than i'd play it on a tournament, that makes a huge difference with gifts.

(And i'm from Belgium, and i'm getting into type 1 by slowly assembling this deck, at my third mana drain now  . For now i just play goblins in tournament, from what i've seen stax and slaver are quite popular here, and goblins is cheap and pretty decent against those decks (and fish is almost a bye)).

Mana Drain dead? Not yet, but it might happen as Vintage as a format increases in speed every other block or so. Actually this is quite concerning, it seems that vintage is moving more and more towards the win-the-die-roll-first-turn-kill scenario.

Didn't wizards once say in an article that Mana Drain was the standard for T1 and they would take action if it became too slow?
(I hope so 'cause I just bought my third Mana Drain, damnit!  )

Oh and Flash with future sight is just ridiculous, remember how it was playing Trix? Flash is like that except that it goes off a few turns sooner, costs less than half the mana, its instant and it kills you on the same turn. Joy. Budget decks are definetly history this time, except if you're playing Flash.

Ok, so i played goblins with maindeck crypts and cabal therapies in a t1 tourney last week. I was 20th out of 41. I learned that crypts should be in sideboard, therapy really sucks in goblins and that mogg war marshal is decent, but not great (although it did win me a game against stax just by stacking all four marshalls on top of my deck and let the other guy die from his own smokestack).

So next time i'm playing food chains, here is my new list:

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

4 Food Chain

3 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Taiga
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
5 Mountain

Sideboard
4 Thormod's Crypt
4 Null Rod
1 Goblin Tinkerer
1 Goblin Welder
1 Goblin King
1 Siege-Gang Commander
3 Naturalize

I was thinking about dropping food chain and just play the fastest version of goblins availeble, with four maindeck Thormod's Crypts, and four extra Leyline of the Voids in the SB. That way you have 0-mana hosers against most combo decks so you can use all your mana for the goblin offensive, hoping that the hosers give me that one extra turn i need before i die to combo decks.

Artifacts
1 Mox Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Sol Ring
4 Tormod's Crypt

Creatures
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Ringleader
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Goblin Welder
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Mogg Fanatic
3 Siege-gang Commander

Basic Lands
10 Mountain

Lands
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

Sideboard:
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Null Rod
4 Shattering Spree

Any comments? (also on the sideboard, kind of thrown together).

Prospector or not? Goblin Vandal or Goblin Welder? Chalice o/t Void or Null Rod?

Why would you not play food chain? Is there a difference wether they drain a Food Chain or a 3-mana goblin? To me FCG is a super-powered aggro deck that also happens to have a combo kill.

If you play yawgmoth's will and then a gifts out of the graveyard, are the two cards from gifts that don't go into your hand removed?

This should have been in the Rules Forum, but yes they are removed.
-Godder

Here is my updated list:

// Mana 26
6 Mountain
4 Taiga
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
3 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

// Spells 4
4 Food Chain

// Goblins 30
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Goblin Lackey
3 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Recruiter
4 Goblin Ringleader
3 Goblin Warchief
4 Skirk Prospector
3 Mogg War Marshal

Sideboard:
4 Null Rod
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Pyrostatic Pillar (not sure about this one, its for storm decks, maybe final fortune and try to race them is better, or chalice of the void?)
3 Naturalize

I've found that with Mogg War Marshal you don't need Siege Gang Commander anymore, as you can just generate 20+ goblins by stacking the marshals among the other goblins from a recruiter and ping em to death with Sharpshooter. I need to fit in at least two Gempalm Incinerators, but i'm not sure what to take out to free up two spots. I also have two ancient tombs but im worried that if i fit in more colorless land i might start getting mana issues.

Just a thought: Would it be worth to make a transformational sideboard with 4 duress and 4 Cabal therapy in addition to the land destruction package to improve the combo matchup?