I think Josh was referring to the fact that we can answer the key cards with fast mana of our own between SSG, Lotus, and our 2 moxen.  For instance, let's say Oath plays a T1 Oath.  We can fight back w/ Cavern on "Cleric" or "Human" + SSG/Lotus/Mox and cast an uncounterable Containment Priest or Leonin Relic-Warder (if we get WW).  That's not to say that we can beat every fast mana combo deck, but there's a lot of 2-mana plays we can make to deal with the real business the combo deck is bringing; not so much focusing on the Moxen themselves.

Got to proxy up both Martello Shops and UR Delver (the 3rd and 12th place lists from the last NYSE Open, if I recall correctly), and learned some interesting stuff that I'm sure a lot of you already know but in case someone else is looking at this thread brand new:

• While I really like Hammer Mage against Frobots, I realized quickly how less effective he is against Martello because of the larger dudes that deck spits out.  And since this version seems to be the most popular version of shops, I put the 2nd Hammer Mage in the sideboard.
• Similarly, since they have larger dudes, I got to understand how important Swords to Plowshares is in the matchup to help deal with Forgemasters, Lodestone, and other giant robots.  With Chalice on 1, I can at least deal with it maindeck between the Relic-Warders and Hammer Mage and then add onto the hate w/ Ingot Chewers.  While I still don't feel so comfy about the card when Mental Misstep is flying around, I have to accept and believe that I'll get them every so often when they don't have MM in hand (to be fair, it's not like we give them many MM targets in the deck to begin with, so it inevitably becomes a hard counter to StP).
• I don't know how the rest of you have been doing with land/moxen count, but I've been struggling to keep openers on 22 land + Lotus Petal.  So I increased the land count to 23 and had considerably less issues.  I've also added a 3rd Wasteland to the maindeck because of how much it slows up shops and dredge when you nuke their Workshop/Bazaar.  I get that it doesn't hurt Dredge as much if they have access to Petrified Field but gives you some time to land a hoser.
• Got to experience how much more insane Young Pyromancer is in Vintage when you can draw gas like Ancestral and Treasure Cruise.  To hedge a little against Pyromancer/Mentor decks, I'm trying out 2 Megaliths in the maindeck with access to a Lavamancer post board.  Against Delver, I've found my graveyard to be big enough to abuse Lavamancer but not large enough against Mentor (they can also blow you out with the prowess trigger -- Sudden Shock seems to be a much better to that).

Current Mainboard
4x Containment Priest
1x Hammer Mage
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
3x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Prophetic Flamespeaker
4x Spirit of the Labyrinth
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3x Sudden Shock
4x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte

4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Cavern of Souls
3x Plateau
2x Plains
1x Mountain
2x Keldon Megaliths
4x Arid Mesa
3x Flooded Strand
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine


Sideboard
4x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Lavamancer
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sudden Shock
1x Hammer Mage
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Wasteland
[/quote]

To Josh's point (@oshkoshhaitsyosh), it's a metagame deck.  So if you wanted to hedge against ritual-based combo decks, you can pack something like Ethersworn Canonist in your 75 somewhere.

Totally agree here.  I've found that they've been reluctant to attack with Lodestones when there's a 3/1 on the other side of the table unless they got a SoFI on it or some other type of buffer.


After proxying up Dredge and playing some games against that, I def understand now the importance of that particular card in that MU.  Spirit seems OK in the sense that it curbs the amount they can abuse Bazaar, but Containment Priest REALLY slows them up.  At first, I had a hard time understanding 4x Cage b/c I was thinking about Oath packing 3 or so Mental Misstep but now understand the importance of a T1 Cage/Priest.  Like T2 is too late, I get that I really need it T1.  So thank you Josh for keeping me in check there.


This one I'm still having a hard time seeing eye to eye with you on.  I can def see how the taxing effect of Thalia is not as good in Vintage as compared to Legacy when you have Moxen in the format to accelerate the mana while not having access to Port, another mana-taxing card in the Legacy version of D&T.

What I like about Thalia, however, is that you do slow them up a little bit in the early to the point where you can drop enough dudes to overwhelm your opponent.  And while the interaction doesn't come up all the time, I really do like getting Jitte counters on it 1st and using them before combat damage.  Also, I do like having a 2/1 first striker to ward off zombie tokens from Bridge (as opposed to trading or waiting for Mom) while taxing them if they want to generate more zombies by trying to cast Therapies.  Nonetheless, I'll work with the 4th copy in the board until I can live with cutting it.

As for Swords, I have a hard time seeing the effectiveness of the card when you have Chalices and Mental Misstep running around. At least with Chalice, you can remove it with Relic-Warder and/or Hammer Mage, but I may very well change my mind since I haven't played against Martello Shops yet (next in the gauntlet).


Which is why I really appreciate you, Desolutionist, and the other folks on the thread for giving me such a good sounding board as I'm exploring the archetype and format going into Champs.   

Can't believe it's already 2 weeks from now!

Hope everyone's had a great weekend!

- Celso

Current Mainboard
4x Containment Priest
2x Hammer Mage
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
3x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Prophetic Flamespeaker
4x Spirit of the Labyrinth
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3x Sudden Shock
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte

1x Lotus Petal
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Cavern of Souls
3x Plateau
2x Plains
1x Mountain
1x Keldon Megaliths
4x Arid Mesa
2x Flooded Strand
1x Scalding Tarn
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine


Sideboard
4x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Grim Lavamancer
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sudden Shock
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Wasteland

Gameplan was probably to not give his opponent a 6/6 by removing his own Wurmcoil that was bring targeted by the Duplicant, then proactively cutting him off from Forgemastering again later in the game by putting Revoker in play (not reactively to the previous activation).  I assume that he drew Steel Hellkite later, which was savage but awesome.

Some other notes from playtesting last night:

• Shaving a Containment Priest from the maindeck were good against Frobots and Mentor, but I don't know how much of a beating it's going to cost me against Oath. I'll find that out in due time.  -- Same comment applies to shaving the 4th StP.
• The 4th Thalia was totally worth it.  It's great to harass the Blue decks by wasting their duals and taxing their spells (and even cutting them off card draw).  And 2/1 w/ first strike is still a very reasonable attacker (esp w/ Jitte and Sudden Shock), so I think adding the 4th copy to draw her early seems very resaonable.

Hey everyone!

Been learning Magic at the kitchen table between Ice Age and Urza's Saga, then played a little more in college w/ my roommates (also casual).  But didn't take the full dive into MTG until around Magic 2011 when someone told me about DoTP.  From there, I started going to an LGS around SOM prerelease and haven't left since.

Format-wise these days, I've scaled all the way down to Legacy and casual (primarily EDH and Cube).  Been playing Legacy since I moved up to CT around 2012, and I really enjoy what the format has to offer.  Shortly after, I've lightly followed the Vintage format but haven't started to pay more attention until Vintage Masters came out.  Now we have Eternal Weekend on the horizon, and I see it as an opportunity to break into the format at that event.  Since I don't have power, it seems like a great opportunity to shoot for the budget challenge.  So you'll likely find me in the Null Rod (esp. Simians Mom currently), Misc., or Creative areas until I somehow stumble into power and get a better feel for the format.

Really looking forward to getting to know the great Vintage community that people have been talking about for some time, and don't hesitate to hit me up on TMD, Twitter (@BalduvianBears), or Facebook (/BalduvianBears).

- Celso

Both interesting thoughts here.  There clearly is a tension between wanting to keep some opponents off mana, especially Workshop due because of the explosiveness the deck gets when it's in play, as well as not getting color-screwed if we want to play 4 LD lands and 4 semi-colored lands (which gets more awkward when we want to cast Relic-Warder or Flamespeaker).  Then again, the Legacy D&T deck that's splashing Red (albeit they have Vial and no  or  cards) plays 8 colorless lands + 1 Cavern.  I'll have to put some serious thought on how to make it work yet.  @msg67183 -- I can see the pro/con of Megaliths (kills a lot of things but requires Hellbent) but haven't drawn it enough to lean one way or the other year.

Props to @desolutionist because I've been really happy with Hammer Mage as well as 2 Jitte (card was a house against Mentor and is gas when equipped to Flamespeaker!).  Any reason why I can't access 3x Hammer Mage?  In play, they're redundant, but can't I just pitch the extra copies?  Or am I missing something else as I'm evaluating the card?  Nonetheless, it was bananas when I could activate for 3+ to get SoFI and lock pieces.

Moved onto testing against Mentor last night and felt really good about the matchup when I was able to dump uncounterable Spirit of the Labyrinths against them to turn off BDEV minus DTT (is DTT a problematic card in this matchup anyways?).  Next stops are Oath, Delver, and Martello/Forgemaster Shops.

So does that imply that you're recommending that (A) I make Lotus Petal a permanent mana source as well (probably another fetchland or 2nd mountain or even Sacred Foundry considering we have a couple of  and  spells), or (B) keep Petal and continue to have the Moxen replaced by the fetches I alluded to before (or another type of permanent mana source like Foundry or basics), and/or (C) up the land count to something like 23 lands from 22 + Petal?

Also, have you played with Hammer Mage as well?  Seems like Serenity gets around Revoker naming Hammer Mage, but it also wipes out any Revokers that you do have with Spirit (but I can see where both of those cards are vanilla 2/1's and 3/1's in certain matchups).  Not sure if you compared the two and still ended up liking Serenity.

I'm going for the budget challenge, hence why I cut the power (also don't own them).  Is a straight-up land better than Petal in that case?  When I looked at the two Moxen, I thought about another permanent source of that color in the deck (hence the +1 Strand, +1 Tarn).  As for Lotus, temp fast mana came to mind, which is why I thought about Lotus Petal in its place.  I agree with you that Chrome Mox Diamond don't seem to make sense because you creating card disadvantage to get the mana (Chrome Mox seems more offensive because you're giving up action for mana, and Mox Diamond requires a higher land count so you can have 2 lands [one to pitch for Diamond] and Diamond in hand.

Def going to try out Hammer Mage -- I know I'm hedging my maindeck more towards hating Shops (since I'm expecting that to be the most popular deck at Champs), but I do have some Mentor, Oath, and Delver hate in the side:

Current Mainboard
3x Containment Priest
2x Hammer Mage
4x Leonin Relic-Warder
3x Mother of Runes
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Prophetic Flamespeaker
4x Spirit of the Labyrinth
4x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

3x Sudden Shock
3x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte

1x Lotus Petal
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Arid Mesa
4x Cavern of Souls
2x Flooded Strand
1x Keldon Megaliths
1x Mountain
2x Plains
4x Plateau
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Strip Mine
2x Wasteland

Sideboard
1x Containment Priest
3x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Grim Lavamancer
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Sudden Shock
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Wasteland

QUESTION: Does anyone know of any stock Oath/Mentor/Delver (or any other current popular archetypes) decklists that I should consider in testing?  For the time being, I'm looking at TCDecks.net at recent Vintage events of considerable side and starting there for now.

Thank you for pointing out some of the key plays against Shops.  Most of them seemed to be straightforward, but I didn't think about saving Swords/Shocks for the Factories (I usually tried to take some of the pressure off by aiming them at their bigger guys until I built a board state).

Question for you and the rest of the thread -- has there been any hot tech in testing that's worth trying??

Love chatting with the folks on this thread -- getting me more and more excited to play Vintage! 

With the T1 plays, I do like the fact that SSG is in the deck to power out a quick play.  But for that same reason, I'll def replace one of the power cards with Lotus Petal to get another explosive play.  I'd love to use Mox Diamond, but I'm sure I'll hit the awkward one-land/one-mox hand that I'll have to ship.  I suppose Chrome Mox is an option, but I don't think I want to get rid of a business spell.  Then again, I could pitch a card that's dead in the matchup.

Serenity is another sweet card I forgot about since I've only seen it in Tin Fins.  One downside I see is that kills Spirit of the Lab, Revokers, and whatever mana rocks that do end up in the decks (even equipment).  I've found when I can cut them off activated abilities, their cards aren't all that scary, especially since our deck can play fairly well around Chalice.

So I sleeved up the latest @oshkoshhaitsyosh list that I referenced before (haven't replaced power yet just to get a feel for the deck and the mana) and proxied up Frobots that took 2nd at NYSE, and I felt like I just got smashed in the mainboard games because of the evasion in Ravager in addition to the normal threats that Shops have.

[1] Are Frobots something that'll be out in full force at Champs, or is there a more traditional Shops list out there that I should test against?  I plan to go home tonight and proxy up Oath and Mentor to continue playtesting in addition to Shops.

[2] If I do plan on cutting the power, does Stony Silence/Null Rod become a reasonable add to the maindeck?  I was thinking of cards that would've helped me a bunch against Frobots (and probably Shops as a whole), and those came to mind.  Sudden Shock was AMAZING against Ravager when they're not prepared for it, and I can see how powerful it is against Mentor, so I'm excited to cast those at champs!

Hey Josh and the rest of the people in this thread! I'm heading to Eternal Weekend this year for the first time and figured this would be a pretty darn good place to get my first Vintage experience.  I've followed the format a bit since Vintage Masters came out and have been playing Legacy for the last 2-3 years, so I'm not completely foreign to eternal formats.

With that said, I have two main questions -- one around the evolution of @oshkoshhaitsyosh's decklist and the other around non-power options.

[1] DECKLIST QUESTION(S)

I was curious about which edits were good/bad between the last list @oshkoshhaitsyosh posted (which I referenced) and the one before it.  Here's the summary:

MAINBOARD
-1 Mother of Runes (from 4 to 3)
-1 Grim Lavamancer (from 2 to 1)
+1 Phyrexian Revoker (from 2 to 3)
+1 Lightning Bolt (from 0 to 1)

SIDEBOARD
+2 Umezawa's Jitte (from 0 to 2)
-1 Phyrexian Revoker (from 2 to 1, but looks like it was moved to the maindeck)
-1 REB (from 1 to 0)
+1 Shattering Spree (from 0 to 1)
-1 Path to Exile (from 3 to 2)

At first glance, it looks like we're increasing the hate against shops and other fair decks and giving up hate against Blue decks.  Of course, I'm going to start with this list and playtest to see what works/doesn't work and go from there.

[2] NON-POWER OPTIONS

If I were to build a version of the deck for the Budget challenge at Eternal Weekend, would I replace with more mana sources, or can I put more action in the deck?  If I don't need the mana, then I was thinking about trying out SFM.  If I do need mana, would I go with something like Mox Diamond/Lotus Petal for the fast mana or just replace with lands?

Thanks in advance for the feedback! Looking forward to exploring Vintage!!

- Celso
@BalduvianBears