Thanks for getting these lists up!

For note: My list has 1 Auriok Salvagers, and 1 Flusterstorm, not a playset of each--just in case someone tries to copy/pasta.

Nice report!

I also like the acknowledgment you've given to the newest member of our community, Rick Shays.

I think that Tom Dixon (Shawn Griffiths and Vinny Forino also come to mind for me as people I've heard play everything well, but I haven't seen play everything) is the person that comes to mind as "success with all the archetypes."

Unfortunately, a lot of the very best Vintage players are the very best at one deck or archetype, and only sparingly branch out (Brian Kelly counts: he only plays Brian Kelly decks!). Even Legacy transplants like me aren't totally fluid with their choices--I certainly was for a while, but now, I'm basically a mono-tundra player. It's a "feature not bug" thing about the format, where knowing a ton about your deck matters a great deal.

Any update on this event?

See:
http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=44291.0

This is an old idea (but, a very good one!)

I say this in all honesty: Gifts wasn't enough to make this style of deck good. It helped (don't get me wrong), but Tinker/Vault/Jace the deck is just not where I want to be right now.

As far as your results...I can't believe you're having high success against Delver. Your deck has (1) the same amount of countermagic, (2) worse card draw, and (3) more expensive, only arguably better threats. Its the same problem that the grixis deck has always had with delver. Storm is just an awkward deck, and yes, your deck seems to have lots of high cc awkward against shops cards, though I'd imagine it's not unwinnably bad.

I think the more effective Gifts decks have been ones where the desired Gifts pile is essentially "known" before hand, unlike your deck, where your pile is always up for debate (Do I want to tinker? or vault/key? how do I do that?). For example, Hrishi's Gifts Storm list has Gifts...but 7-8/10, you get Recoup/Will/LED/Lotus, subbing different cards in for pieces you already have. Or my Gifts Bomberman, where 7-8/10, you get Rites/Salvagers/Tasigur/Lotus, subbing in different cards for what you already have.

Gifts has a lot of power by being a flexible card, but it sure seems to me that the right way is to let the card be drawn up as a linear kill condition (I'm *always* getting this pile of 4, given the choice) rather than a "I don't know, let's find out, I have all these tools" card (which is how I view your deck full of tutors). If you need to be creative you can do that in game--no need to go deep on having multiple slightly different effects of differing names.

1 Mark Tocco. For that matter, I think any current Vintage World Champ should have a standing invite to the VSL.
2 Roland Chang. I appreciate the contributions of the Forinos to Shops (scratch that: I, personally, do not. I lose too much to their builds!), but I think Roland has had more high profile success of late, and is also a well known name in Vintage. Also, top 8'd the last champs.
3 Chapin. High profile name, would probably be good on commentary.

I'm not surprised at all. Time Vault, the strategy (that is, Vault/Tinker/Will/Tutors/Jace) is at its absolute worst of all time in the current metagame. Shops is better at locking them out than ever before. Delver puts on a high volume of pressure backed by better card draw and counterspells. Hatebears are better than ever. I don't think that the deck has gotten worse, in terms of its own power level, but other decks have caught up and passed it for the time being. Gifts gave people some hope of the deck being better, but simply put, it was another 4 mana durdle spell, and even when that spell mostly said "win the game" on it, it wasn't quite good enough to give the archetype enough of a shot in the arm.

Card is good. Good enough is another question altogether. My initial thought is to try and get mentor and trinket mage, but the card doesn't seem reliable until you have ~20 creatures in the deck, which is very high for vintage.

Same spot as Hank, looking to get down to the event for the legacy half.

Crucible+Zuran Orb only needed like 20-30 iterations to actually kill, and maybe 10-15 more iterations to find the Fireball effect.

Bomberman is a lot worse than this. Things like "EE+Top+Bomberman" is a kill isn't intuitive to the viewer (or, for that matter, the players), and virtually impossible to actually execute on MTGO. The Tasigur kill is actually impossible to do on MTGO in any sane amount of time (I tried in solitaire mode. I gave up because you need *hundreds* mana to do execute the combo, and most of it blue.)

Will players concede to Bomberman combo? If so, then bomberman is VSL playable. If not...well, no, it really isn't.

I'll be there. Do standard legal proxies count? :p

I literally should still have like a hundo in credit there from their last event. The events were well run, and the store is convenient to get to and nice, but there was a real "I have nothing to do with credit there" issue. I guess its a #firstworldproblems type of thing, but eternal players can't easily purchase eternal relevant cards there, and I would recieve a really embarrassing amount of  if I didn't accept credit (I don't have an issue with this though). Honestly, that's one of the biggest complaints I had--that credit at that store was fundamentally worthless. I'd still go, since the events are nice, but I'd wonder whether this would still be am issue.

Thanks for the report, JD!

So basically, you're saying that you play Storm and Infect in Legacy, and I play Maverick and Stoneblade. We (just maybe) have different evaluations on "what do I want to do in a game."

And it really seems to be a "to each their own" thing. When Tom played the deck, his comment was that he wanted 4 Tasigur, which seems directly opposite to what you were wanting.

Basically, I look at these results, and am a little surprised.

Your list isn't anything special (I think even you'd agree to that), but you're just crushing people?

I think there's a real possibility that BUG Fish might be a reasonable deck again. Even still, I'm so skeptical that two Deeds is enough to make Delver a better matchup. It was mostly unwinnable before, and I can't imagine it's gotten that much better.

How did games play out? That's something I'd be interested in hearing.

What can I say, I went to Brian Kelly land!

I think that's a pretty fair comparison to start with. Basically, the reason I like Oath better than I like Steve's list (though, I think, as you've noted, traditional Oath and Gifts are attempting to do similar things) is that it's a pile of interactive cards and cantrips to find answers or combo pieces to form a game plan, over coming in with a defined plan on what you're doing.

I think that Steve's list isn't really a combo-control deck as he purports, when I think about it. It doesn't assemble a varying game plan and finish with a combo, and doesn't even have the tools to do that. It tries to execute a plan of "resolve gifts" single mindedly from the very start of the game. It's a straight combo deck. I'd discuss it in the same breath as Steel City Vault, or Belcher, or Storm. If I look at it from that perspective, it's a lot more reasonable of a deck, and I suspect my dislike of it is reflexive of my dislike for strategies with Vault and Key, rather than any issue with what cards it is playing.

There's a good reason combo-control strategies haven't been prominent, and it's because they're actively bad against the field. I've basically had all my success in vintage beating decks which look like your Gifts pile (sure, maybe they were worse because no gifts, but the basic plan was the same), because they're a lot less good in practice than they are in theory. When they're going uninhibited off they feel unbeatable, but that's only maybe 30% of games. The remaining 70% of games are very, very awkward for them.

Basically, why aren't we just playing Belcher, which has a higher turn 1, 2 and 3 percentage, loses to most of the same things, and can still play the requisite 8 counterspells? Because I'm not interested in trying to play this deck and combo once people have the time to set up a defense.

Well, I'll try and run it back this year

I mean, then they just give you back Tasigur, right? It's sorta awkward...

This didn't come up for me...because I forgot to play Top. But that seems pretty good.

Congrats!

I would have loved to have another one of our classic matches!

I think your assessment of the card isn't badly wrong, but I think our evaluation of what the deck is doing different, so we disagree on the card. I view the deck as basically a midrange value deck that can combo you out as one of your routes to victory, rather than a combo deck with a fighting monster backup. I will note that I still had 1 spellbomb in my deck--largely for the reasons that you noted. Tasigur was really my Pyrite Spellbomb (the one which one shots them), rather than my on color spellbomb (in my case, Nihil). He's oddly enough convenient with Unburial Rites to just kill them, but I think you very well might be right that I should be putting Spellbomb in my Gifts piles over Tasigur--my thought was that if they had 1 counterspell, they put Salvagers and Rites in the Yard, give you Tasigur+Lotus, you flashback Rites, have it countered...and now I'd rather have a 4/5. I believe that in general, that if someone can stop you from getting infinite mana, they will, and as a rule, once you ask "I have Salvagers combo?" and they say "Yes", your opponent has just passed priority until the end of turn.


No. Never. I can't imagine wanting to cast Jace over Gifts at any point in the day.


Wow, thanks for the props! No, none at all in mind's desire. If I was going to play a storm card, it would be Tendrils of Agony, which just kills them, rather than Desire, which does more durdling. You might not know me as a player, but I'm someone who saw old style Grixis Control and was instantly off the plan of running that deck. Mind's Desire is a card which is fine in storm and belcher, and garbage elsewhere.

I think 2 basics (you actually need 3x Tundra to reliably combo and cast mana drain, though I could see only 2x Underground Sea) and a pile of swords and disenchant effects is going to be highly effective against shops, but I'm not really on a plan, so much as jamming a bunch of cards which are good against them and hoping that's good enough. I have to imagine my shops matchup isn't unwinnable, but it was a "I don't know how good it is" matchup. I talked with my car on the way back, and I think I should have cut the Recall in the board for either an EE or a Devout Witness, but the answer is in testing, rather than anything else.

Oh. This is something I don't care about at all. If they break up the combo, more power to them. I will then battle them with my 4/5 and 2/4, and probably win, because if I switch to that plan, they've straight up discarded a card. Duress is strong when going for a linear kill, but the strength of bomberman--and I would argue especially this rendition of Bomberman--is that you don't have to go infinite to win, and just beating down will do the trick, and I think that Duress as a disruptive spell isn't where you want to be in most scenarios.

I actually don't know if I would have boarded Tasigur out. RiP is so stupid against Dredge that 6 mana 4/5 is probably good enough if it's on the table. And if you're on Containment Priest or Cage as your hate, Tasigur works just fine. I haven't done the count, but off the top of my head, I'd try to transition into a more or less Tinker Control deck with 9 hate cards (3 RiP, 1 cage, 1 spellbomb, 4 priest) as Sphinx of the Steel Wind really ought to do the job against Dredge. Ok, Maybe Tasigur would come out, as Auriok Salvagers would be a cheaper blocker...

Duress also doesn't solve the issue of Extirpate. If they already have Extirpate, then they Extirpate Lotus, since if I get my entire deck, presumably I can find a way to beat Extirpate. If we have to give it to them, then they simply Extirpate Recall in response to Duress, and we're back to the same place we were. You need to not give them all the cards if they have Extirpate, and I think that means you just take the Noxious Revival kill over the Recall kill if they have 1 black mana up.

Guilty as charged. I'm going to copy/paste your account into mine.

The tl;dr: the instant Tundra is a viable magic card in Vintage again, I have success again. Coincidence? I think not. Also, Tasigur the Golden Fang is a silly, silly magic card.

My list:

(10) Counterspells:

4 Force of Will
2 Mana Drain
2 Flusterstorm
2 Mental Misstep

(5) The restricted cards:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker

(11) Not restricted Spells:
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Noxious Revival
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Disenchant
1 Unburial Rites
3 Gifts Ungiven

(10) Creatures
3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3 Trinket Mage
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Auriok Salvagers

(24) Mana sources
8 SoLoMox+Crypt
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Island
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra

SB:
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Disenchant
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Rest in Peace
1 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Containment Priest
2 True-Name Nemesis

Some explanations on individual cards:

Tasigur: He replaced all of the Aven Mindcensor/Vendilion Clique/other creatures in standard bomberman list. He serves dual duty here, as he hits a great deal harder than they do, and is also a pyrite spellbomb once you're going off. He's incredibly low investment, can provide more cards going long (even if they tend to be bad ones). I basically was convinced to play Bomberman when I realized that you no longer needed to play bad cards to one shot the opponent, and can instead use Ancestral Recall.

0 Sensei's Divining Top: Card is the greatest, and should be in this deck. It would be a darned shame if you FORGOT TO PUT ANY IN YOUR DECK OR REGISTER ANY. If you take anything from this, it's that you should put at least one Sensei's Top in your bomberman list. I wanted to fetch it with Trinket Mage multiple times. It's a card which would let me play the control role as well as the deck plays other roles. Still, you miss it less than you think, as you just keep fetching up Lotus, and "Just kill them" as a forced line, rather than trying to get fancy with Top.

Tinker/Bot: This was my hedge against Delver. Basically, Sphinx is unbeatable for Delver. Tinker also had some marginal value in fetching up Lotus or Spellbomb to set up the combo. I also thought it gave me more flexibility in terms of Gifts piles, but this only rarely came up.

0 Vault/Key: You know how I played Tasigur to avoid a cycling card in my deck? Now imagine what I think of Time Vault and Voltaic Key.

0 Yawg's Will: I have registered this card once in my life, regretted it, and think it is highly overrated, especially, in the more or less midrangey decks that I tend to play.

Unburial Rites: Sets up winning gifts piles, and does all the reanimation you need in one card. Rites makes Gifts->full Salvagers combo possible in gifts pile, which I don't think anything else can do. Is the card the worst when you draw it? Sure, but it's fairly unique as a functional reanimation spell that works out of the yard, and *nobody* expects the pile of Tasigur, Lotus, Salvagers, Mox to kill them on the spot when they give you Lotus and Mox the first time.

Noxious Revival: The "alternative" kill card, as well as a good Gifts target. The alternative kill allows you to merely kill all of their creatures and take all the turns if your recall happens to be binned. Noxious Revival then prevents you from decking. Also has other modes, as I won a game by Revivaling a Red Blast in response to a target from a Snapcaster.

True-Name Nemesis: The plan against other control decks (and Delver) was to be more of a fish deck than a control deck, and this is the best of the fishies. Most hard control strategies--like Landstill--are going to have a very limited number of outs to TNN.

Containment Priest: He's an all around good hate card...and is boarded in as Ashcoat Bear more than you'd think. The flash lets the deck play a more Faeries style game, which is where you want to be in the blue durdling mirror.

A report:

Pops Ferrante on Mono-Blue Transmute Artifact: I am very bad at names, I apologize. Both my opponent and his son are fun people to have in the Vintage community! Thanks to Rob for helping me out!

Game one, he assembles Tezzeret, gets Time Vault, and passes the turn. I draw Auriok Salvagers, and kill him before the Time Vault untaps.

Game two, we durdle for a bit, while I attack with Tasigur and a Trinket Mage. He gets down to 7, and goes for the big finish, where he Transmutes a Grim Monolith. I determine this is probably a problem, and Drain. He then Transmutes again. We fight a counter battle, and I fire off a Flusterstorm for 8 which he calmly pays for with another Grim Monolith, and gets Time Vault, and passes to me. I battle him to 1, have nothing...and a miracle occurs when he simply doesn't have the key to go with his vault, and dies.

Craig Berry on U/W: Game 1, we battle back and forth, both missing land drops, and neither person really willing to blink. Eventually, Craig resolves a True-Name Nemesis, but depletes his resources in resolving it. I tinker up Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and am able to race when Craig fails to draw a Swords or Disenchant. Even this is understating how tight the match was, because there were shenanigans with Tasigur and Karakas and Vendilion Clique involved, and the match hinging on a single Nihil Spellbomb.

Game 2, both Craig and I board in Containment Priests, and do battle with 2/2s. Our fine game of limited was broken open by me using Demonic to find True-Name Nemesis, which proved to be good enough in a world of 2/2s.

Mark Tocco on Landstill: Game 1, we both have Library after I DT for library, and kind of durdle for a while as I hit land drops, and he unbelievably misses. We fight over an end stepped Gifts, I untap, and Salvagers him. For the second time today, I explain how Tasigur, the Golden Fang, kills people. Tocco is fairly amused.

Game 2, Tocco chooses to draw, and plays library. Some reasonable amount of time and unreasonable number of cards later, I scoop to Jace+Crucible+Strip.

Game 3, I resolve DT for Library, and bury Tocco with Library as he misses a couple land drops. I think the coup de grace was delivered by Tasigur, who made the sudden shocks in Tocco's deck look pretty awkward.

Matt Murray on Sensei, Sensei: I was 50/50 on running Matt's list on the day, but decided I hated Yawgmoth and his Will too much, as much as I loved the Top and Magus of the Future.

Game 1: Matt and I trade lots of resources, but he's mulliganed, so I end up one card left to his none. I have a snapcaster left, and flashback DT for gifts. Matt does nothing on his turn, I resolve Gifts, and he concedes.

Game 2: Matt mulligans. I play Trinket Mage on turn 1, and Tasigur+Walk on turn 2. Matt loses both his Mana Crypt flips, and dies in short order.

Rounds 4+5: ID

Round of 16: Jeff Anand, on U/R/(x?) control.

Game 1, I play land Mox, DT, and get Salvagers. Jeff plays Mox, Mox, Land, Dack, and steals my mox. I play Crypt, Lotus, Salvagers, Tasigur with force backup, and he dies on the spot. He too is makes me go through the motions of casting Ancestral Recall 3 or 4 times, before smiling, realizing what was happening, and conceding.

Game 2, we go back and forth for a bit, and he has some amount of advantage because he has Red Blast, which is way more efficient than anything I have. when I'm on 4 mana+Lotus, he casts magus of the Moon with 3 up. I respond with Gifts, and he tries to Snapcaster a blast...but that blast is put back on top of his library by Noxious Revival, I gifts up Rites, Salvagers, Pearl, and Tasigur, and Jeff dies in a flurry of Ancestral Recalls.

Round of 8: Rob Edwards on Oath

Game 1, Rob casts Preordain, Brainstorm, Lotus, Will, Preordain, Brainstorm finds the Oath and Orchard on turn 2, and kills me. It was brutal.

Game 2, Rob is able to beat Containment Priest #1, and Grafdigger's Cage, but not Containment Priest #2, and dies to Orchard Tokens, the Priests, and a Trinket Mage.

Game 3, Rob keeps a loose 6, and dies to Containment Priest and Tasigur, after casting 1 Oath which is disenchanted on the spot.

Via Rob Edwards: "In game one of our match, I also played Thoughtseize turn one and during the Will. It was even more brutal than you remember. In game two, I mulled to five and you kept seven, but I still managed to empty your hand after you played FoW pitching Misstep to counter my FoW on your Cage. After I dealt with Cage and Priest and you were hellbent, you top decked the second Priest. In game three, I Missteped your Cage, Misstepped the same Cage you Noxious Revivaled, then you Disenchanted the Oath, but it was the fourth piece of hate in Priest that got me. I assembled Show and Tell and Iona a turn too late. "

Top 4 split. Two byes are awarded by Calvin on the split, and are raffled between Nick DiJohn, Hank Zhong, and me, as Keith already has one from crushing me and Rob Edwards at the NYSE. I instantly lose raffle, and will be playing round 1 of the Eternal Extravaganza vintage event.

Overall, the strengths of the deck are its ability to shift from aggro to control to combo very, very quickly. I'm happy casting Trinket Mage into Tasigur and beating down, but sitting back, and counter spells and killing creatures into a Gifts is also viable, and the combo kill is always looming. The deck rewards proper role assessment heavily, and basically allows/requires you to re-evaluate your plan at the start of every turn.

However, some pieces are individually quite weak (salvagers is the biggest offender, followed by Noxious Revival), and the deck is very, very mana hungry. I didn't put in the time to figure out a more solid plan against Shops than "play Disenchant+Swords+Pray", and was very lucky to avoid Shops on the day.

I'll write it up tomorrow, but I have some results for tasigur salvagers from the calvin invi. The tldr is that tasigur is a card which lets you play all of combo, control, and aggro as the situation dictates.

Not really. Once you have infinite mana, Tasigur turns Ancestral Recall into your kill on the spot (no, they're not going to kill tasigur in the middle as they draw their deck. You have literal infinite counterspells). If you have Noxious Revival in your Gifts+Salvagers list, then Noxious Revival+Thought Scour is a kill. Noxious Revival+Swords+Walk is also a kill (kill all of their creatures, take a 100 extra turns, beat them down, reset your library to lands.

The kill card with Tasigur is Noxious Revival, which then kills them in any number of ways, all of which you'd be playing anyways. Noxious Revival is a reasonable inclusion in any Gifts list, so no, you really don't need a spellbomb once you have infinite mana. As far as "the card which kills them" in Salvagers lists, this one is pretty compact, since as far as I can tell you don't need to do any extra work for him to kill people.