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Author Topic: So what's new in Vintage?  (Read 1089 times)
CrashTest
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« on: September 18, 2011, 10:54:26 pm »

Hey everyone - some of you may remember me, I have not played in a few years. I was interested in getting back into the action. So what's new in vintage lately? Are the world champ deck lists from August still the top decks to beat, or has anything changed? When I stopped playing the vintage scene tournament wise was a bit weakened, how is it now?

        Hope to hear from everyone!
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Onslaught
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SmoothCriminalRW
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« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2011, 04:15:22 am »

Worlds Champs lists certainly aren't outdated, especially if you are just looking for a broad view of what the meta has become the past few years. There have been a few minor shifts since then though. Were you around when Time Vault was changed? If not, that's basically the biggest thing that happened in your absence. Blightsteel Colossus is also pretty important, giving you only one turn to answer Tinker. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is as metagame defining in Vintage as it was in T2, so I'm sure you've heard about him by now. Lodestone Golem is another new format defining card that was printed while you were away. Gush was unrestricted in the past year too, though maybe you've been gone for so long that you didn't even know it was restricted. A (very) broad overview of the current viable decks:

Blue: Blue decks are defined by their draw engine: usually either Gush or Dark Confidant. A recent trend has been to run both. Jace usually shows up in some amount in most blue decks, as does Vault/Key. Main victory conditions are usually Tinker or Vault/Key, though various Gush decks can have a storm kill. These all sound very homogenized, but blue is insanely diverse at the moment. Small changes here and there make decks into completely different archetypes, so you have a lot of interesting variations (considerations like Spell Pierce vs. Thoughtseize, what amounts of Mana Drain, Mental Misstep, etc. to use, and so on). Some notable blue decks to look into include: Suicide Jace Vault (Dark Confidant, Vault/Key, Jace), Meandeck Bob/Gush (there's an article about this deck on Eternal Central), Rich Shay's Gush deck from Champs (Missteps, Drains, and Jaces), and "East Coast Wins" (a Gush deck with Vault/Key and Storm kills such as Empty the Warrens). Other blue decks include Demars control (a City of Brass deck that can be thought of as a modern Keeper), various Painter's Servant builds (usually with Mystic Remora and maindeck REBs, which makes it a strong choice in a heavy blue meta), and Lotus Cobra Gush.

Bazaar: I'm not sure if Dredge even existed as an archetype the last time you played, so just a quick overview: use Bazaar of Baghdad during your upkeep to mill a ton of cards with Golgari Grave Troll and Stinkweed Imp, get Bloodghast/Bridge from Below into your graveyard and Narcomoeba into play, and then make a bunch of tokens with Cabal Therpay or Dread Return. The version that won Champs used Sun Titan, Fatestitcher, and some colored mana for even more explosive lines of play. It's almost impossible to beat Dredge game 1, so it's recommended to dedicate at least 6 sideboard slots against it. In games 2 and 3, you are usually fighting a war over your hoser, such as protecting Leyline of the Void from Nature's Claim. The only other Bazaar deck that comes to mind at the moment is "Minus Six," which is a Worldgorger Dragon combo deck (unless you quit a loooooooong time ago, I'm sure you already know the Worldgorger deck) that has a transformational sideboard into a Blue Control style deck.

Rituals: Rituals haven't been seen much lately. The main decks that make use of them at the moment are TPS/various Storm based combo decks, or Dark Depths (a Suicide Black style deck that can combo out with Vampire Hexmage/Dark Depths or Leyline of the Void/Helm of Obedience).

Workshops: Lodestone Golem made MUD decks considerably more powerful, and for the most part he has led to Workshop decks eschewing Smokestacks. The most recent build to have success includes Slash Panther for increased tempo and the ability to attack Jace before being unsummoned. Other builds include Metalworker/Steel Hellkite, Kuldotha Forgemaster with various combo wins, or more controlling builds with Goblin Welder and Smokestacks.

Misc: Noble Fish uses creatures with Exalted like Qasali Pridemage and Noble Hierarch (which both power up Cold Eyed Selkie), while running the usual Fishy disruption stuff like Null Rods, Wastelands, FOW, etc. GW beats is another aggro deck, and it's packed full of hate bears like Gaddock Teeg or Kataki. There's a lot of other viable Rogueish stuff out there, such as a Wizard deck with Voidmage Prodigy....you can still play Quirion Dryad Gro with 8 Duress and some Vendilion Cliques....there's Bomberman...this is getting pretty bottom of the barrel fringe though. If you know all of the above decks, you pretty much know 90% of the metagame. There have been a lot of fun semi-intriguing/viable Vintage cards printed in the last few years too, so if you're into innovating/messing around with pet decks, you can look at cards like Riddlesmith and such.
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CrashTest
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« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2011, 09:12:25 am »

Thanks for the detailed answer!

       That is pretty interesting, dredge especially. How about tournaments and things of that nature, a lot of interest still or did a lot of people stop playing?
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