[Free Article]What About Bob? Dark Confidant in Vintage

[Meddling Mike]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/11161.html

Ravnica has done its fair share to shake up the Vintage scene. Everywhere I go I see people trying to break Life from the Loam in Vintage, as it has been in Extended and other formats. Players argue the merits of Darkblast against Lava Dart as the king of one-toughness killers. Above all, people seem fascinated with the latest invitational card on the scene… Dark Confidant. With his relatively efficient casting-cost-to-body ratio, and an ability that seems to scream out “break me,� it’s no wonder that he’s become so popular so quickly.

However, it seems that everyone is trying to cram Dark Confidant into any available frame. This is reminiscent of when Isochron Scepter first arrived on the scene with the release of Mirrodin Block. I think the time has come for an analytical look at Confidant and where his place in Vintage lies.

[Komatteru]

You failed to mention how I included it in my Belcher Wishboard at Chicago.

There was also that U/B Fish deck that took 11th at Chicago that ran 4 Confidants.  There was a huge discussion and tournament report posted here on it.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

The first fish list in the thread looks janky to me.   Cutting Force of Will from fish just because one is running confident is insane; it's easily the best disruption spell in the deck and one of the best tools to stop the brokeness of the deck you are playing against is to simply counter their spells (I realize that the list is also running In the Eye of Chaos which has bad synergy with Force of Will, but I don't think that that is the correct choice, either).  Chains of Mephistopheles have good synergy with confident but obviously bad synergy with the Standstills.

When I play TT Confident, the life loss is almost NEVER an issue.  Confident has essentially almost no drawback; I have flipped Darksteel Collossus of the top of my deck and still won, and hitting fow, bargain, etc rarely matters unless you hit multiples.  In 5 rounds of swiss in a tourney I played on last Sunday, 3 of my matches went to time and confident's life loss was only significant in the games in which I resolved Yawgmoth's Bargain.(Admittedly the cards have poor synergy together but it's worth it because Bargain is so broken it often allows for easy wins) Even multiple confidents is rarely an issue, as beating for 4 or 6 a turn means that your opponent is propbably going to be dead before you are.  Also, top has great synergy with the confident, but it is really great even on it's own at providing excellent card selecetion and quality.  Plus, there the fact that you can cast a mini-tendrils to gain back life if necessary (although I don't think I ever did this).

Confident is good in the deck because it is really control/combo rather than straight combo.  There is the odd game where I have gone off on turn 2 or 3 (not turn 1, although it is of course POSSIBLE), but this deck usually wants to build up card advantage and control the game until it can win rather than trying to go off as quickly as possible.  Also, there is the fact that confident himself is a clock and a back-up win condition.

Also, since current Drain decks run almost no maindeck  removal, the confident getting destroyed in these matchups is also rarely an issue, and the amount of card advantage he generates is simply insane.  Resolving an early confident means one often has to simply ride him to victory.  Even against decks with removal, he is like welder a minimal investment and on top of that although good, not even essential to the deck's strategy.  Add to the fact that even if he is destroyed he often at LEAST replaces himself if not drawing a bit more first, and the fact that he is a creature vulnerable to removal compared to the fact that he can also block and attack to compensate and it doesn't really bother me.

So, although I guess people may be trying to cram him into every deck (Another deck that comes to mind is GWS creature-based Grim Long that runs a couple of copies), I don't think that he is necessarily as misplaced as it might seem.  Every deck wants to draw cards, right?

[Cross]

I enoyed this article, as my interest in the card has picked up lately.

I think your comparison to night's whisper is flawed. While night's whisper works as a one shot, the tendrils based confidant decks work to win through card advantage, not to try and win as fast as possible as oldschool storm decks. I think these decks are the pure control decks that you say don't exist yet. They run 4 drain, and 4 force,  brainstorms, TFK, and tutors; what else do you need for pure control? 

As far as Jdizzle's concern about the loack of his deck, I think the article was for decks built around Confidant, not decks that ran it in a few slots in the sideboard.

[Joblin Velder]

You failed to mention how I included it in my Belcher Wishboard at Chicago.

There was also that U/B Fish deck that took 11th at Chicago that ran 4 Confidants.  There was a huge discussion and tournament report posted here on it.

The article was about decks based upon it, not about random sideboard potential. Sorry you didn't get to see your name.

[forests failed you]

 the tendrils based confidant decks work to win through card advantage, not to try and win as fast as possible as oldschool storm decks. I think these decks are the pure control decks that you say don't exist yet. They run 4 drain, and 4 force,  brainstorms, TFK, and tutors; what else do you need for pure control? 

The Confidant/Tendrils decks don't qualify as pure control, but rather they would probably be considered Combo Control.  The difference between Combo Control and Pure Control is that pure control decks try and control the game indefinately and win by locking up the board via card and resource advantage; whereas Combo Control decks only try to control the game up until a point where they can combo off and win the game on the spot. 

If you think about it; 4 Drain, 4 Force, Brainstorm, TFK and Tutors are all in Slaver and many Gifts lists, yet those decks would not be considered pure control either. 

I definately second your sentiment that many of these new Confidant based combo decks play more similarly to Gifts than to TPS or Grim Long.  In that sense they are probably closer to being a combo control deck as opposed to a pure combo deck.

[rvs]

Nice article, well written. One thing: I thought it was clear to everyone by now that Darkblast is vastly superior to Lava Dart, hence the discussion is over right?

I especially liked how you mention Isochron Scepter in context with Bob, since I hadn't really thought about it that way, although I do think Bob has more merit, and will make more of an impact than Scepter will, but I agree it seems to be similarly hyped right now.

[Gabethebabe]

I was a little disappointed with the actual content of the article. It was based on two quite well known decks and strategies (and missing the first combo deck that used Bob, i.e. Belcher), but without any new/interesting ideas.

You dismiss Top as being a card that is added to negate the drawback of Bob. As already said by Gandalf: Top is a very good card on its own.

The comparison with Night´s Whisper is very useful and is more or less mathematical proof of NOT playing Bob in a pure combo deck. Doesn´t matter how much FFY likes it in his Belcher. The attempt made by BigMac to include it in TPS (see tournament forum) had success, but is nevertheless doomed (He himself also was not very impressed with it)

I don´t agree with your conclusions.

You don´t have to construct a deck with low cc cards. True, in such a deck Bob is good, but it is not necessary to build such a deck to have Bob do good work.

Also I don´t agree that you need a panic button to be able to get rid of Bob. That is just stupid. You don´t want to get rid of the creature your deck is made to abuse.

I would have concluded that to get the best out of Bob you need a deck with low cc spells (Fish) OR a deck that can negate the drawback of Bob by either winning quick (comboing or with some aggro deck) or by gaining life (Tendrils, but maybe also some EBA variant with Exalted Angel) or in some other way (Platz).

The synergy Bob and Tendrils just really shines becaue you can both win quick and gain life. I think TT is a good attempt to abuse Bob, but still I find the deck a little flawed (Thirsts do not pull their weight, high casting cost cards that can just sit in your hand, artefact bounce that can sit in your hand).

Let´s see if anybody can improve on it though.

[Sean Ryan]

Confidant Control

I have been thinking about this concept since I saw Koen's list. I think a better route to go would be to modify his list into something resembling a genuine U/b Control, similiar to Mono Blue in Strategy.

You could run a heavy counter/disruption package with FOW, MD, Leak, Duress, and artifact bounce. But, cut the heavy combo peices and Thirsts while retaining Tendrils for life gain and a finisher. I'm not sure if the deck would need another draw engine outside of Confidant/Recall/Fact/BS/Top.

One difficulty I ran into with Koen's List was MD competing with Confidant for basic lands on turns 1-2 against opposing decks with Wasteland.

A deck like this has no way of beating Gifts or Slaver at their own game and must gain advantage through superior disruption and consistent preasure via Confidant. 

Any ideas?

Sean

[Meddling Mike]

Ok, alot to respond to, best to start at the beginning.

You failed to mention how I included it in my Belcher Wishboard at Chicago.

My deepest apologies Justin, how I could have made such a grievous oversight is beyond me.

The first fish list in the thread looks janky to me.   Cutting Force of Will from fish just because one is running confident is insane; it's easily the best disruption spell in the deck and one of the best tools to stop the brokeness of the deck you are playing against is to simply counter their spells (I realize that the list is also running In the Eye of Chaos which has bad synergy with Force of Will, but I don't think that that is the correct choice, either).  Chains of Mephistopheles have good synergy with confident but obviously bad synergy with the Standstills

Let me just get this out of the way now, I by no means endorse this list. In the words of the deck's creator

Personally, I dont think UB fish is really that good

As the only list with confidant to do well in a tourney with upwards of 40 people I felt it was a natural inclusion. My part in this was analysis and explanation. I wanted to include a fish list with confidant that I've been working on, but I'd like to wait until after Waterbury, write a more in depth matchup analysis and generate some hard data to back up the deck before I go around publishing such things.

When I play TT Confident, the life loss is almost NEVER an issue.  Confident has essentially almost no drawback; I have flipped Darksteel Collossus of the top of my deck and still won, and hitting fow, bargain, etc rarely matters unless you hit multiples.  In 5 rounds of swiss in a tourney I played on last Sunday, 3 of my matches went to time and confident's life loss was only significant in the games in which I resolved Yawgmoth's Bargain.(Admittedly the cards have poor synergy together but it's worth it because Bargain is so broken it often allows for easy wins) Even multiple confidents is rarely an issue, as beating for 4 or 6 a turn means that your opponent is propbably going to be dead before you are.  Also, top has great synergy with the confident, but it is really great even on it's own at providing excellent card selecetion and quality.  Plus, there the fact that you can cast a mini-tendrils to gain back life if necessary (although I don't think I ever did this).

Confident is good in the deck because it is really control/combo rather than straight combo.  There is the odd game where I have gone off on turn 2 or 3 (not turn 1, although it is of course POSSIBLE), but this deck usually wants to build up card advantage and control the game until it can win rather than trying to go off as quickly as possible.  Also, there is the fact that confident himself is a clock and a back-up win condition.

With regards to top, my point is that you wouldn't play it by itself. Control Slaver has ample means of synergizing with top through welder tricks, Thirst for Knowledge tricks and fetch lands for when you don't like what you see but I've never seen a list that runs it. I don't think top is playable without confidant or being a key part of your deck's combo like Top/Fugure Sight/Helm in Sensei Sensei

With regards to the deck's role. If you really want to play a control/combo deck why not try to fit Confidant into a gifts frame instead?

Also, since current Drain decks run almost no maindeck  removal, the confident getting destroyed in these matchups is also rarely an issue, and the amount of card advantage he generates is simply insane.  Resolving an early confident means one often has to simply ride him to victory.  Even against decks with removal, he is like welder a minimal investment and on top of that although good, not even essential to the deck's strategy.  Add to the fact that even if he is destroyed he often at LEAST replaces himself if not drawing a bit more first, and the fact that he is a creature vulnerable to removal compared to the fact that he can also block and attack to compensate and it doesn't really bother me.

Personally, I find most drain decks have some means of removing 1 toughness creatures maindeck. Usually the hate is intended for Goblin Welder, but I'm sure they'll take down confidant in a pinch. As I put it in the article

Night's Whisper will never get plowed, blasted, darted, duped, or any of the other fine methods Vintage uses to deal with one-toughness creatures.

Not to mention trisked, clasmed, javelined and barb ringed.

I enoyed this article, as my interest in the card has picked up lately.

I think your comparison to night's whisper is flawed. While night's whisper works as a one shot, the tendrils based confidant decks work to win through card advantage, not to try and win as fast as possible as oldschool storm decks. I think these decks are the pure control decks that you say don't exist yet. They run 4 drain, and 4 force,  brainstorms, TFK, and tutors; what else do you need for pure control?

I concur with FFY's response to this question.

Nice article, well written. One thing: I thought it was clear to everyone by now that Darkblast is vastly superior to Lava Dart, hence the discussion is over right?

It's kind of funny, I drew the exact opposite conclusion RVS, I'll try and make a thread later about it.

I was a little disappointed with the actual content of the article. It was based on two quite well known decks and strategies (and missing the first combo deck that used Bob, i.e. Belcher), but without any new/interesting ideas.

You dismiss Top as being a card that is added to negate the drawback of Bob. As already said by Gandalf: Top is a very good card on its own.

The comparison with Night´s Whisper is very useful and is more or less mathematical proof of NOT playing Bob in a pure combo deck. Doesn´t matter how much FFY likes it in his Belcher. The attempt made by BigMac to include it in TPS (see tournament forum) had success, but is nevertheless doomed (He himself also was not very impressed with it)

I don´t agree with your conclusions.

You don´t have to construct a deck with low cc cards. True, in such a deck Bob is good, but it is not necessary to build such a deck to have Bob do good work.

Also I don´t agree that you need a panic button to be able to get rid of Bob. That is just stupid. You don´t want to get rid of the creature your deck is made to abuse.

I would have concluded that to get the best out of Bob you need a deck with low cc spells (Fish) OR a deck that can negate the drawback of Bob by either winning quick (comboing or with some aggro deck) or by gaining life (Tendrils, but maybe also some EBA variant with Exalted Angel) or in some other way (Platz).

The synergy Bob and Tendrils just really shines becaue you can both win quick and gain life. I think TT is a good attempt to abuse Bob, but still I find the deck a little flawed (Thirsts do not pull their weight, high casting cost cards that can just sit in your hand, artefact bounce that can sit in your hand).

Let´s see if anybody can improve on it though.

With regards to belcher, I can't recall ever having seen a belcher list using dark confidant, maybe it's a European thing?

Read the line below conclusions carefully

I think the criteria for a perfect home for Dark Confidant are as follows

Essentially what this means is that for Bob to work optimally these should be considerations. These are things that can make Bob better. For it to be a viable choice in a deck I'd say at least 2-3 of these criteria should be met.

I suppose I should point out again that the quicker you need to win the closer Bob gets to being a bad night's whisper.

[cssamerican]

My problem with Dark Confidant in Fish is you can't rip a bomb off your library with it, and it makes your worse match-ups (Any form of Aggro) even worse. Fish also has a fairly slow clock, so you risk taking a lot of damage before you win, which could make it easier for storm combo to beat you in the long run. I mean, if they only have to cast four spells to kill you that might be easier for them despite your card advantage than if they had to cast nine spells. To me that is the real problem with running Force of Will in a deck like this, ripping one with a Dark Confidant could be better for your opponent than for you, even versus combo decks.

I think everyone sees the problems with it in combo decks, though I am still not sure it doesn't belong. The reason being is every turn is a card and one less spell to cast to go lethal if your opponent can't prevent the Dark Confidant from attacking. It might be that it is more of a metagame card for combo/control storm decks, because in metas with few creatures it appears to be really solid.

Conclusions
I think the criteria for a perfect home for Dark Confidant are as follows:
 
The “body� should be an advantage, not a vulnerability.
The average casting-cost in the deck should be relatively low.
A “Panic Button� to get rid of Dark Confidant when necessary is helpful.
Synergy with either Brainstorm and/or Sensei’s Divining Top is a definite plus.

In the Vintage Forum I started a discussion on a Ninja Mask variant that utilized Dark Confidant. It didn't seem to garner much attention, and that might be because of the content or the fact few people seemed to post in that forum. Either way, I feel that it is best way to use Dark Confidant, and it so happens to meet all of your requirements. I am just not sure how good the deck would be when facing top players playing top decks. I don't play in tournaments because of where I live, and it is hard to judge opponent's skill level on MWS. But so far my results have been promising.

[forests failed you]

Nice article, well written. One thing: I thought it was clear to everyone by now that Darkblast is vastly superior to Lava Dart, hence the discussion is over right?

I wouldn't go so far as to say that one is any better than the other.  I still play Fire/Ice over both of those cards.  It is more or less a matter of personal preference.  However, the point you pick up on is that the metagame is more than capable of dealing with one toughness creatures, and that could be a serious hinderence to decks that are based around abusing Bob.  The key thing that I would point out in response to your observation that the current enviornement does include cards like Darkblast, Lava Dart and Fire/Ice is that Slaver still exists, in spite of relying heavily on the power of one toughness creatures.  The key reason for this phenomenon is probably that whereas Bob, Welder and Shaman are always inherently powerful spells when drawn, cheap answers like Lava Dart and Darkblast do nothing unless your opponent has already played a one toughness threat. 

The very fact that Darkblast, and other situational answers, accomplish nothing without a specific target in play is exactly the reason that I think a deck like Dark Confidant Combo/Control (or even Slaver for that matter) are completely viable in spite of the meta game hate.  If one's opponent doesn't draw their one casting cost guys, the creature kill becomes a dead card in hand; which is exactly the reason I still opt to play Fire/Ice over the recurable kill spells.   Fire/Ice is never dead in hand since it can either tap a permenent and draw a card or be pitched to Force of Will. 

The fact of the matter is that the answers to Vintage's small control creatures (Welder, Shaman, Confidant, and even Xantid Swarm, though he is more of a combo protection card) are for the most part ineffective and inefficient compared to the cards they are trying to answer.  I would have very little hesitation playing a deck based around Confidant even though cards like Darkblast and Lava Dart are floating around in fairly high numbers.  (As I have already stated the deck I do prefer to play is based around abusing 1/1 creatures respectively).  My question is this:   If one were to play this deck over say, GIfts or Slaver, what real benifts do you gain?  Slaver seems to have a MUCH stronger match up against Workshops and Stax, and in many respects it would seem that casting Gifts would allow you to go off faster and more consistently than trying to abuse Dark Confidant over the course of multiple turns.  I see many similarities between the Dark Confidant deck and pre-existing Gifts lists, but I'm not completely sold that the advantages of playing Bob are an improvement over the existing Gifts archetype. 

Good luck with your testing;  I'm interested to see what comes of progress!

[Kowal]

You forgot a criterion to make Confidant worthy of the slots:

Your deck needs to be designed to drag the game out longer than normal.

This is why I feel it's greatly superior in a fish-esque list in comparison to say, TPS.  Your gameplan is to draw out the game until little men kill your opponent, and your mana curve starts and ends at 2.  Can't complain there.  You even have ways to kill your confidant off if you run in to trouble, depending on your build.

Keep in mind no matter how easy he is to cast, he's still as slow a card drawing engine as Ophidian.  You need many, many turns to really abuse him heavily enough to keep the pace with decks running Thirst for Knowledge or Accumulated Knowledge.

[Whatever Works]

The first fish list in the thread looks janky to me.   Cutting Force of Will from fish just because one is running confident is insane; it's easily the best disruption spell in the deck and one of the best tools to stop the brokeness of the deck you are playing against is to simply counter their spells (I realize that the list is also running In the Eye of Chaos which has bad synergy with Force of Will, but I don't think that that is the correct choice, either).  Chains of Mephistopheles have good synergy with confident but obviously bad synergy with the Standstills.

As the creator of this deck I will elaborate a little bit...

I dont run FoW because I am deathly afraid of damage from Confidant... I dont run FoW because I dont play ennough blue sources. Is the list kinda janky? yes... Is it Bad? NO... The deck split first in an 80 person tournement... And then got 2 more top 8's...

Do I think the deck is tier 1? No... But I think its much better then the other fish lists availible, and the results generally agree... (UW fish has had more results but that deck is played by 15 Canadians every event... this fish list is played by just me... so that can also distort results...)

I really liked the article overall. Great Job Mike Lydon... Dont be to harshly negative or my 3 foil 1's might drop in value...

I think Dark Confidant is best obviously in Fish, but is very underlooked in belcher (Justin did a very good job of doing it justice)... I have been testing 4 main in belcher recently and I cant say its bad, but still on the fence.

Kyle L

[cophos]

I have been testing 4 main in belcher recently and I cant say its bad, but still on the fence.

I wanted to test the very same idea just for the sake of innovation and fancy new cards...
Anyway one of belcher's few strengths is the pure speed -> confidant = not very good ...

I did not try it out though. 

[Prometheon]

Belcher's greatest strength is it's speed, but it's biggest weakness is it's terrible topdecking (which Confidant helps). Is it worth sacking one for the sake of the other? I've tested 2 MB confidants and so far the results have been promising.

[monSt4r]

You forgot a criterion to make Confidant worthy of the slots:

Your deck needs to be designed to drag the game out longer than normal.

This is why I feel it's greatly superior in a fish-esque list in comparison to say, TPS.  Your gameplan is to draw out the game until little men kill your opponent, and your mana curve starts and ends at 2.  Can't complain there.  You even have ways to kill your confidant off if you run in to trouble, depending on your build.

Keep in mind no matter how easy he is to cast, he's still as slow a card drawing engine as Ophidian.  You need many, many turns to really abuse him heavily enough to keep the pace with decks running Thirst for Knowledge or Accumulated Knowledge.

I'm just saying this in theoretical way, but isn't running confidant good in a way you constantly keep on bombing the opponent. I mean, dont look at it in a narrow way of going off as soon as possible. Waiting or baiting counters and having a draw engines that's like a duracell battery bunny from TV is cool. And in the end when you're shure to go off or a bomb is in the game isn't that GG...

But it's only a therotical thought...attacking with fish is slower then exploding with TPS...plus confidant's 2 damage makes 1 less storm   

[BigMac]

I have had Bob in TPS two tournaments in a row placing first and second with them. (second report will come available as soon as i got the metabreakdown and the top 8 on here somewhere, the first is allready in the tournament section)

There are a few reasons it definately is good in TPS. Every card you draw with it is potentially a bomb or another spell towards your stormcount. Even if it is a land it is a good card as you do not play that many lands anyways. People tend to forget that TPS is control combo. You build your position and you kill your opponent. Next to that you have at least 4, but with the inclusion of tops you have 6 to 8, options to see what you will draw. Sure it makes your deck a bit slower, but oh so much more stable. Then you need to see that 13 to 15 lands, 5 moxes, mana crypt, lotus petal, black lotus and if you play it lions eye diamond are all 0 mana cost and will render you no damage. That 21-24 cards. Only up to 10 cards will do you some serious damage but all of those are bombs you eventually want anyways. I actually got a FoW of my Bob one time. That was the control card i needed (rather have had the duress i admit) to actually win.

Lastly, every damage your Bob has done to your opponent actually means one less storm count needed. So effectively it renders two cards then, one for you and one less needed. Compairing it to ophidian is bad because it draws a card wether you attack or not. Ophidian needs to attack and not be blocked. Ophidian only renders you a card and no damage. The drawback is not that bad. Not to many creature decks in vintage anyways. So attack when you can or draw a card.

To me Bob is a good card, also in TPS.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Not to get anywhere near hi-jacking the thread, UB Fish has only been disappointing because people haven't realized how painless a red or white splash is.  I've been playing a BWu list online for three months with high success rates (match win rates much better than 50% *including* random aggro, Gifts/Slaver, and (Uba) Stax).  Now, a large part of that is player quality.  But a larger part is the huge disruption ability gained by adding Kataki/True Believer/Meddling Mage/Swords or Pyrostatic Pillar/Mox Monkey/Shattering Spree. 

BWu has a strong ability to find answers, lock up the game, and just *draw cards* with the Confidant.   As a note, I cut Force of Will early and religiously put it back in once a week to re-convince myself that it's useless.  It seems counter-intuitive that you'd have enough time in T1 to Duress/Mage/Believer away their ability to win quickly, but I've had no problems doing so. 

Confidant, IMO, is best abused over the long game, especially if he's backed by strong disruption.