Easter Tendrils

[GrandpaBelcher]

This was my first Vintage deck when I started playing regularly about two years ago.  As such it holds a special place in my heart.  When I played it again this weekend in a no-proxy tournament in Bowling Green, OH, I was reminded just how fun it can be.

Engine

4x Helm of Awakening
4x Darkwater Egg
4x Skycloud Egg
4x Shadowblood Egg
4x Chromatic Sphere
3x Mossfire Egg
1x Sungrass Egg

Gasoline

4x Dark Ritual
3x Cabal Ritual
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Grim Monolith
1x Lotus Petal
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
1x Chrome Mox
4x Polluted Delta
3x Underground Sea
2x City of Traitors
1x Tolarian Academy

Creamy Leather Interior

1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Windfall
1x Yawgmoth’s Will
1x Memory Jar
1x Tinker
1x Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1x Rebuild
1x Burning Wish
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor

Brakes

2x Tendrils of Agony

Sideboard

1x Darksteel Colossus
3x Duress
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
2x Hurkyll’s Recall
1x Balance
1x Wing Snare
1x Tariff
1x Chainer’s Edict
1x Tendrils of Agony

The idea is to play out a Helm of Awakening, make some mana, play Eggs and Sphere for free to draw cards and build storm, and find a Tendrils via tutor or drawing.  Once the deck gets rolling, it rarely fizzles.

Land -> Ritual -> Helm -> Ritual -> Eggs…

City of Traitors -> Helm -> Ring, Vault -> Eggs…

Plus any of those openings leading into draw 7s with floating mana, or just a bunch of mana into Bargain or some Eggs and a win.

In a five-proxy environment, I had Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Mox Jet, Mana Crypt, and Timetwister in for Rebuild, Sungrass Egg, Underground Sea, Grim Monolith, and Chrome Mox.  With this configuration, the deck has a goldfish somewhat similar to 2-Land Belcher.  First turn kills are common, and if they can’t be pulled off it’s easy to set up the win on second or third turn.

This deck also has the same weaknesses as Belcher—most notably Null Rod.  However, I’ve found that it’s very resilient against Force of Will and can produce enough mana on its winning turn that Stifle can be overcome that turn or the next one.  Running the deck with one fewer Helm of Awakening and one more Cabal Ritual makes it less reliant on Helm and less susceptible to Welder.  Seriously, the deck doesn’t absolutely need Helm to go off—at the tournament on Sunday, I bet almost half the times I won were without Helm.

I’ve also played the deck as a more 5-color version with Cities of Brass, Crop Rotation (and, by extension with the added utility of Academy, Time Spiral and Mind’s Desire), Balance mainboard, Gamble (this wasn’t very good, although once I Gambled for Tendrils with Tendrils in hand just to build storm), and Enlightened Tutor.

Of those, the only ones I would seriously consider again are Cities of Brass and Crop Rotation because lots of times City -> Rotation -> Academy was game winning.  Time Spiral was okay, especially for getting back cards in the graveyard, and Mind’s Desire is usually game winning (because even finding 4 eggs and a Dark Ritual finds you four more cards) but they were most often discarded to other draw 7s.  Desire I would play if the deck had fewer lands and more free mana.

As such, I’ve been considering this deck for a 10 or more proxy environment.  What do you think of a list like the one above—

- 4x Polluted Delta
- 3x Underground Sea
- 2x City of Traitors
- 1x Chrome Mox
- 1x Sungrass Egg
- 1x Grim Monolith
- 1x Rebuild

+ 4x City of Brass
+ 1x Mox Jet
+ 1x Mox Sapphire
+ 1x Ancestral Recall
+ 1x Black Lotus
+ 1x Mana Crypt
+ 1x Mind’s Desire
+ 1x Crop Rotation
+ 1x Timetwister
+ 1x Mishra’s Workshop

The Workshop would be the biggest hit to the deck.  City of Traitors (or Ancient Tomb) is probably better since, against a weak opponent, one can play first turn Helm of Awakening, then go off next turn with no more mana sources.  Workshop’s restriction doesn’t allow that.  However, I experimented with a 4 Workshop build earlier this year and had some success with enough artifact sources to convert the mana.

Also, if you feel that Rebuild is necessary (e.g. a lot of people play Sphere of Resistance or Null Rod) you can move Windfall to the board as a wish target and keep the Rebuild.  That might not be a bad idea anyway.

This is probably my favorite deck of all time to goldfish, and if you have any questions or suggestions, I’ve probably tested it at some point and can give an opinion.  What do you think?  Could it post a decent record in an average metagame?

[Rittler]

Well, I think this is a very interesting deck to play and since I'm always searching for Combo-Decks which can be played on a budget I have some questions

- What makes this better than Tendrils K.I.?
- When do you side in the Elvish Spirit Guides?
- What's the reason for the absence of any maindeck disruption? (except Rebuild)
- What makes City of Traitors better than Ancient Tomb in this deck? (I guess the 2 dmg are not relevant when going off in the first few turns)
- Where is Necropotence?
- How would you deal with a first turn Null Rod or Trinisphere?

Thanks for your time...

[GrandpaBelcher]

Rittler: I'm glad this looks interesting.  I put a lot of time into this deck about a year ago, and like I said it's one of my favorite decks to play and goldfish

I'm not familiar with Tendrils KI, so I don't know the answer to your first question.  If the engine gets into play (Helm, 2 mana, and a bunch of eggs) it's near unstoppable.  Storm is very easy to build, mana is easy to create, and tutors and draw cards are very easy to find and play.  Also, in many cases there's not a lot of setup; you can play Helm and go off in the same turn.  One of the really nice things, actually, is that you can run just about any card in the deck that doesn't have a double-color mana cost by adjusting the eggs, making it very modifiable.  Black and blue are obviously your main colors (Darkwater, Shadowblood, Skycloud), but if you think about it, my deck has 11 red or green sources and 9 white ones.  I think I even played Channel in it for a while when it had Cities of Brass.

ESG comes in against Combo in the hopes that I can speed my own deck up that much more.  ESG also comes in against Stax, basically any time I think I'll have a harder time making enough mana to go off in one turn.   I can play sculpt-a-hand while their lock pieces do nothing to my empty board.  This is how I deal with first turn Null Rod or T-Sphere, after weeping a littel bit.  Null Rod is easier to deal with than Trinisphere, but Trinisphere is restricted.

It's very hard to find room in the maindeck for disruption because the Eggs take up so much space (20 slots).  You can see I sometimes play Balance in there; that's in place of Rebuild when I'm not expecting artifact disruption.  Rebuild is usually okay since I can bounce my own permanents and replay them or just cycle it, so it's hardly ever wasted.  Game one I just try to be as fast as possible so I can bring disruption in out of the sideboard, which I do (Duresses) against decks with counters.

I like City of Traitors just because if you have to dig with eggs (i.e. first turn egg, egg; second turn break, break), it can get very painful with Ancient Tomb.  City is also nice just because it adds to threshold sometimes.  It's a toss-up really.  I used to play one and one before I got a second City, and I used the two cities because I couldn't find the Ancient Tomb before the tournament.

Since most of your searching and digging has to happen while you're going off, Necropotence is surprisingly bad in this deck.  You don't want to put the brakes on your engine to refill your hand and win next turn.  Bargain is usually easy to play and is not disruptive.  With threshold and a Helm in play you can play Cabal Ritual -> Yawgmoth's Bargain, draw into a mana source and continue winning.  I had Necro in there for a long time, though.  It might just be personal preference.

[Rittler]

Well, here is a link to a Tendrils K.I. list

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=27005.0

How do you in fact deal with a 1st turn Null Rod, I mean, you only have a single Rebuild in there, I don't think finding it is always easy, is it?

[GrandpaBelcher]

Ah, KI TT, I do remember seeing that.  My problem with that list is that some of the cards (Phyrexian Walker, Ornithopter, Shield Sphere) do nothing on their own except add to storm count.  You can at least break eggs to draw more cards and find a Draw 7 or whatever else you need.  Otherwise they look like similar approaches.  If you're in a Stax-heavy environment and KI TT works against Null Rods as it says in that post, go with KI TT.  If you're set on playing this in a Null Rod environment, you can add some bounce or artifact hate and change some of the eggs to Nights Whispers for unaffected card drawing.

Null Rod does shut this deck down, but it's not something to worry about unless they can back it up with a fast clock.  It's not hard to build mana with this deck, so you still have two draw spells and four tutors to go find something to deal with artifacts.  After the first game, you have two more spells that can return artifacts to their owner's hand making it fairly likely you can do something early.  If artifacts are something that you feel you'll have to really defend against, put Hurkyll's Recalls in the main and have more sideboard hate.  Since you'll probably want to use red artifact hate, you'd probably want to go with Cities of Brass as the manabase and maybe run a Badlands (I tried Volcanic Island before this weekend, but this deck needs black mana).

Finding room for artifact hate is hard, but it's totally doable.  I have Rebuild mainboard because it can also help with storm count.  Hurkyll's Recall and Chain of Vapor can too.  Shattering Spree and Rack and Ruin can take out multiple threats.  If you go with a Land Grant manabase, Oxidize is cheap and Deconstruct is essentially free.

Also, the deck can set itself up to win through a Null Rod.  Helm of Awakening still works, so you can still play Eggs for storm count and get discounts on your draw spells and Cabal Rituals.  Most importantly, this allows you to return their artifact locks to their hand and win the same turn.

Tinker for Darksteel works after boarding too.

[Prometheon]

I had a deck similar to this in Extended a while ago, but it was more White-based. Second Sunrise is completely retarded if you can get past it's casting cost. Any way to try and fit it into the deck?

Also, with second sunrise, Crystal Vein becomes better than City of Traitors.