OK, I've been messing around with this a bit more, testing against various people who aren't up to tournament standard but are at least somewhat familiar with Vintage, and I think the mainboard is basically fine as-is. Sometimes I mull badly but I think that's just the nature of the beast with this style of deck and mana-wise this deck is about as consistent as it's going to get. LED won me a crazy amount of games I would otherwise have lost (often without even cracking it -- just having the extra 0-drop artifact can matter a lot). FOW is definitely necessary with the number of Balustrade Spy combo decks running around; at the moment I'm using them in game 1 and boarding them out in matches where I feel it's safe. I haven't properly tried Sensei's Top yet... same goes for Tezzeret, but with the main issue being getting enough mana I'd be surprised if cutting my basic cantrips for it were viable. (Also, redundant Chrome Moxes and Opals make nice Tinker targets.) I'll update this when I've got time to seriously try them out.

The sideboard is still a little awkward:-

4x Hurkyl's Recall
4x Brain Freeze
4x Leyline of Anticipation (underperformed maindeck, but almost always worth boarding in in games when you know you're going second and essentially a necessity against Workshop decks which know what they're fighting)
Mind's Desire
Voltaic Key
Thirst for Knowledge

All of these have performed well except for Hurkyl's Recall, which only really seems good for either boosting my mana when I already have an abundance of mana artifacts (sometimes needed but not very often) or getting rid of opposing cards that are more annoying than dangerous -- the most threatening artifcts will stop me casting HR in the first place. I think I can run four hate cards (in the slots where FOW is currently maindecked), but not much more than that. How common is Leyline of Sanctity these days? I see four options here:

1) Cut the Recalls for 4x Cyclonic Rift or other bounce effect (I suggest Cyclonic Rift because it can get rid of multiple Leylines with one card if need be) and get rid of the Leyline directly.
2) Cut the Recalls for 4x Lab Maniac and try for some convoluted self-milling with my Storm sideboard plan.
3) Leave the sideboard unchanged and hope to not run into Leyline of Sanctity, since most of the decks I'm facing will need to dedicate 8 or mpore slots to beating Dredge and will hopefully be unable to make room for niche hate. Keep Recall as an option for the situations where it matters.
4) Again ignore the threat of Leyline, but replace the Recalls with Divining Tops -- if they work better than Probes -- and board them in in matchups where having stuff to pitch to Force is not a relevant concern.

Advice?

EDIT: Just realised Tezzeret gets around Leyline. But I doubt I'll be able to get his ultimate off against an opponent who knows it's my only way to win. Most decks will have either have killed me by then, have some form of damage spell in hand or will have creatures on the board to deal a point of damage to Tezzeret and shut me down completely. Bob, in particular. The idea definitely has potential but I think I need to be a bit more careful than reducing the number of mana sources.

Not always -- you'll get a free untap step half the time. The other half of the time, you'll win the die roll and Leyline will be completely dead if you're trying to go off on turn 1.


Again, this is a deck that really wants to be winning by turn 3 at the very latest. If the game is at the point where attritioning out your opponent's resources with strategies like this, I suspect you've already basically lost.


So is being able to counter their shenanigans, which is why Force exists in the first place. It's a safety valve. If you play Force against those decks, you cripple them unless they have a Force of their own. If you play Leyline against another combo deck and you have the reources to get a decisive advantage but not to outright win on the spot, you're screwed.


Sorry, could you go into more detail here? If they draw badly off your draw 7, you're good... but how often is that going to happen to a well-built deck? How often is your opponent going to play a draw-7 that cripples you? (That's not rhetorical, I'm not familiar enough with the Vintage meta to know)


Force is never a card you cast because you want to. It's a card you cast because you have to.


This, however, is a legitimate issue I've come into often. I can't really think of any way around it, though -- going in without Force backup is frequently suicide -- and sometimes you have the spare mana to hardcast it. In the situations I've needed it and not been able to use it, Pact would not have been a viable replacement, and I doubt I can get away with Mana Drain.


For what it's worth, I usually pitch Gitaxian Probe. It only digs down 1 card, and is consequently often not that useful beyond being a nearly-free cantrip.


That's good advice; thanks. I was judging Null Rod by the Workshop deck I originally built, which ran several Null Rods as answers to most of the stuff that goes on in the mirror.


I can reach UU reasonably often. The issue is opposing counterspells, and Time Vault is one of those things people tend to expect and plan for

What would you personally cut for Transmute? It's gotta be worth a try, at any rate.

OK, done a bit more testing:-

1) Leyline isn't going to help this deck win on turn 1 against Workshop decks. The Academy land drop matters quite a lot -- I find myself getting it out most of the time when I win. Additionally, not being able to put it down makes Expedition Map completely dead and Time Spiral nearly as much so... unless Hurkyl's Recall is THAT effective as a replacement form of mana ramp, I don't think I can sideboard enough cards in for this plan to be viable. I'll update on this; suggestions welcome, because Workshop decks are by far the most problematic matchup. The main issue is that it's easy for them to t1 play more than one card I absolutely must counter, and I can only usually reliably Force one card.

Anyway, the weakness of Workshop decks is that they really can't interact with your instant speed shenanigans. So I think a better use for Leyline is to get my foot in the door and force a few mana rocks down, which with the extra keys might suffice to ramp my way through their sphere effects once it gets to my actual turn. That makes Null Rod the only card that absolutely hoses me (unavoidable, so I just have to make sure I can counter it). For that, I still need Force of Will, which raises the question of what I can board out for the Leylines... too many answer cards destroys the flow of the deck.

2) Dredge hate is basically irrelevant, at least assuming I'm using the right stuff (Grafdigger's Cage etc). If a dredge deck gives me the time and means to get hate for it in play before they just win, I might as well use the time and cards to just win before they can get going.

3) I could use some advice on how Pact of Negation would be correctly used in this deck, if at all.

4) I don't think Cunning Wish is going to work, though again I'll test it. It doesn't do enough for three mana... if I have that much mana to spare I'd rather be trying to draw into my win conditions. The only thing I might urgently need is Brain Freeze, and in that instance I might as well just run that in place of the Wish. Maybe I can use it to fetch Pact of Negation to protect my combo, but I don't see it doing much else and if I'm in a position to cast it profitably, chances are I've already broken through the counter wall. People don't tend to try to counter my win conditions; they tend to try to counter the things I need to get going, such as Expedition Map or one of my many draw-sevens.

5) The Storm plan is definitely a thing, and is probably going to be my answer to Revokers naming Charbelcher (which as-is just shuts down the mainboard if it resolves). Being able to board in 5 or 6 cards and have a functionally entirely different deck seems valuable.

6) Excess Voltaic Keys are definitely a good idea. Thanks to Time Vault, they present a threat that the opponent must counter but which I don't care that much about resolving -- sacrificing it to make my opponent ditch an otherwise-problematic counterspell is a fair trade, IMO. I don't think I can get away with a fourth mainboard, sadly.

For those who're going to goldfish this, do let me know how variations work for you!

EDIT: I'm sceptical of Transmute Artifact. Running cards solely for their interaction with Time Vault seems dubious when it is at best a secondary plan or counter bait.

Hmm, it seems like a sideboard option -- against anything except Shops, it's basically irrelevant, and it's still dead if you win the dice roll. Might cut the pacts for it, since I rarely seem to find myself using them, unless it's another caseof me not knowing how and when to use the card. I tried Brain Freeze and it works best when you just cut the belchers for it, make a cut for Mind's Desire and leave the rest of the deck unmolested -- which suggests that the Recalls might be dubious.

I don't think Candelabra is that good here. You have to have the Academy out, which usually means getting both the Candelabra and the Expedition Map to resolve. And if you don't have it, it's a dead card, whereas Voltaic Key intercts nicely with mana vaults etc while also threatening a Time Vault win. Finally, what would I actually cut for it?

I've built this deck as an experimental sort of thing, and so far it's worked reasonably well:-


I'm more or less happy with the mainboard, but I've got a few issues with the sideboard. The Brain Freezes were meant to be a secondary Storm win condition, but this very rarely seems to work out in practice (though I'm not sure whether this is because the deck list is wrong for it or I just haven't learned how to play Storm), so I could use suggestions for that. I also don't have much to use against Workshops decks, which are obviously an abysmal matchup for this deck so far: if they win the roll and get a Sphere effect or Null Rod down on turn 1, it's game over on the spot. I'm not sure whether Mind's Desire should be in the mainboard (and if so what to cut for it) and I suspect 4x Pact is excessive, though I'm not sure what I would put in their place.

Any advice?

Hi. I'm 20, which i expect is fairly young by the standard of most posters here. I'm a newbie, both to Vintage and Magic in general -- I only started playing during Scars block. I quickly got really into the game and recently started collecting Moxes. I took a quick look at Vintage, since I had the card pool for it, and... it's great fun. I really like the little-room-for-mistakes aspect which means a game is almost never hopeless (unless you're playing against Dredge and are on the draw, in which case you might as well just concede the match on the spot), and the format has a remarkable resilience to modern "power creep" where the best Legacy deck is pretty much directly ported from the most recent Standard season.

I'm currently brewing up my first deck, which is a Workshop-based build that I'm not entirely sure is up to date but has nevertheless performed well in the matches I've played. I think I'll stick with it, but I might end up changing my mind once I've given a few other decks a try. But I'm happy to have a top-tier option that's not blue-based control.