Gencon Vintage Championship - what deck would be best to play?

[kkoie]

Well I've been fooling around with various vintage decks for the last few months, and I'm still somewhat undecided as to what deck to play for Gencon.  I have a friend who sounds like he could loan me what ever pieces of power I lack, so I could play just about any deck except grimlong (only person I know who owns grim tutors now lives in japan).  So I was curious what some other peoples thoughts are?

I have built stax, but I just feel that with all of the stax hate out there, I'd rather play something else.  I myself was thinking of building gifts but a few of my friends seem to think that Oath is the way to go.  Anyway suggestions are welcome, thanks!

Kayvan

[Pitlord]

In all seriousness, I think either oath, shop aggro, or an aggressive build of fish would be the best to play at GenCon. A lot of people there will not be playing full power decks, which is good for oath and shop aggro. Also, the people who are playing full power will most likely be playing either gifts or slaver, becuase they are the best decks in the format at the moment. Workshop aggro and oath both have good matches agaisnt drain decks, as wel as the ability to roll over unpowered decks, making those two probably your best choice. Then it is simply a matter of how much hate you expect for either deck and play the meta.

[Lou]

In all seriousness, I think either oath, shop aggro, or an aggressive build of fish would be the best to play at GenCon. A lot of people there will not be playing full power decks, which is good for oath and shop aggro. Also, the people who are playing full power will most likely be playing either gifts or slaver, becuase they are the best decks in the format at the moment. Workshop aggro and oath both have good matches agaisnt drain decks, as wel as the ability to roll over unpowered decks, making those two probably your best choice. Then it is simply a matter of how much hate you expect for either deck and play the meta.

These statements are just not true.  Last year I didn't play against one deck that wasn't at least half-powered at Gencon, and I played a lot.  Taking this weekends Rochester top 8s into consideration, you will notice that neither Workshop aggro nor Oath made it.  This is because they don't have good matches against drain decks, but around 50/50 at best, which I truly believe to be the norm with most decks.  Good pilots are going to top 8, not necessarily good decks.  This doesn't mean that Workshop aggro or Oath can not top 8 at a large event, because they both have, and probably will again.

I was having this discussion the other night, about what to play.  We came to the conclusion that you play what you like, and you practice the hell out of it.  Don't take a pile of shit and become proficient with it, as that is obviously not going to do you any good.  But choose something that you like, tweak it to your playstyle, and test.

[Pitlord]

I may have a skewed perspective of GenCon because a lot of the people I know played fish a few years ago, becuase they lacked moxes and such.

Anyways, you have probably just hit the nail on the head by saying to play what you like. I believe any deck can perform well, as long as the pilot is competent enough. Play whatever is the best deck you can, and whatever you like the most and are the most comfortable with. Playskill matters, and being able to play something good is important. With that in mind, all you have to do is leave a few slots open, and bring cards you can tweak the main deck with depending on the meta there, which will most likely be drains, and lots of them.

[warble]

I heard there was some guy that made a deck with mindslaver and goblin welders.  I think that deck is good.  As to how you choose to wrap your little mindslaver + goblin welder, well that is up to you.  If I didn't want force of will, I'd play workshop . . . and if I did want force of will then I'd play that control slaver thingymabobber.  And if I was feeling like a complete whore and wanted to just knock out top players I'd play blue/white fish.  Because I'm a mean, mean person like that.

Seriously, mindslaver is a cheap ass win condition (4 mana) and it wins against every deck, and with goblin welder you can't counterspell it.  What the hell kind of consistency is that, I mean it's just not fair!

[escribano]

In this moment, there is no deck that shows his superiority above the others decks, I´m think, so, if you have a deck that is a litle worst from the rest but his way is really different, it´ll be a good option, cause sourprise can be a decisive condition above the rest.

If this is not your position, like I think, and you gonna get the top 8 above all, play the better tested deck that you have played more times, and cause of this, your position it will be better. In that moment, when you have your deck option, try to make a sideboard according the metagame, but remains this idea in your head: Now the metagame is very assorted, and probably you play against all kind of decks, and any moment, anyone, can left you out, so you musn´t think metagame is the most important think, and cause os this you must be prepared to everything and you´ll get this way metageme will be diferrent enought from everybody hopes, that is play the theorical best deck or the best deck against it. In not many cases, your way can be the metagame better option, and in this case, if you´re not one of the best players with this deck in the world, you must change your option, cause almost everybody will be prepared against you.

Again, and the last one time, sorry about my English.

[Disburden]

Whatever deck you play the best is the deck you should be playing at something like GenCon. This is truely more important than what deck beats what in what metagame. Since the decks I play most are Control Slaver and Grim Long, I'd probably play one of those over anything, dispite the metagame. Then I'd test and go from there.

[yespuhyren]

These threads are always pointless IMO, no offense to the poster, but here is my reasoning.

Everyone will say the deck to win will be the "Flavor of the Day" deck.  How many people were saying OMG ICBM oath is the best deck period, it can't lose, it is surely going to dominate SCG, etc etc etc.  I had ALWAYS said the deck was good, but nothing special, and if you check every post I have ever made, you will see I have always supported the theory that Oath is Tier 1, but by no means the best deck in the format

Even my teammate Colby for some reason started saying that ICBM Oath was the best deck.  Did it T8 though?  Nope.  Hell, Bomberman, a deck not even considered by most to be Tier 2 managed to T8, and Dragon had a HUGE showing, a deck that few expected as well.

The point is, that the only deck that consistantly T8's that people say will T8 is slaver.  Plain and simple.

Stax is dead!  Well....it won Day 2
Dragon is too hated!   Well, it T8'ed multiple times on both days, and twice by Peter
Bomberman is crap!  Well, it T8'ed MORE than Stax/Oath/Gifts/Ichorid etc

The point is, no one can say what the best deck is unless they are saying CS, because other than that they are almost always going to be wrong.  I personally don't believe that CS is the best deck, but due to the large numbers in which the deck shows up in and the playskill of some of its most prominent players IE Shay/Kowal/etc, the deck is expected to have a number of T8 slots.

Jason