Blue-based vs. MUD

Vintage player from the DE/PA area, semiregularly attending Blue Bell tournaments, a magical place where only shops and blue decks seem to exist. My only play test partner is a firm advocate of MUD, and as such I have exponentially higher testing against the vicious shops than anything else in the format. Since I regularly play Drains (aside from the dismal 1-2 performance with AdNaus last tournament), this matchup is one I have explored regularly.

My attempts to combat MUD/shops (as that is step one when dealing with Blue Bell), have so far been as follows -

U/B/r Tezzeret with heavy basics, 4 Forces, 4 Drains, 1 Hurkylls Recall main with 4 Ingot Chewer, 1 Rebuild, 1 Rack and Ruin in the side
U/B Jace Control with 5-6 basics (4 Islands, 1-2 Swamps), 4 Mana Drain, 4 Force of Will, 1 Hurkylls Recall maindeck, with 4 Steel Sabotage on the board.
DeMars Control sporting 2 Ancient Grudge, 2 Trygon Predator, 2 Goblin Welder, 1 Steel Sabotage, 4 Forces, 4 Drains, 1 Hurkyll's Recall
RUG Painter sporting 2 Ancient Grudge, Painter+ 4 REBs for Vindicate effect, 3 Precursor Golem, 4 Forces, 3 Drains, 1 Hurkyll's Recall
RUG Control sporting 2 Ancient Grudge, 4 Lotus Cobra, 3 Precursor Golem, 4 Forces, 3 Drains,1 Hurkyll's Recall
AdNauseum sporting 2 Hurkylls Recall , 2 Chain of Vapor main with 1 Hurkylls Recall and 3 Steel Sabotage on the board.
BUG Gush Tendrils sporting 4 Forces 4 Mana Drain 2 Hurkylls Recall
BUG Gush Control sporting 4 Forces 4 Mana Drain 1 Recall
Oath of Druids sporting 1 Ancient Grudge, 4 Forces, 3 Mana Drains, 1 Hurkylls Recall

The list I test against is exclusively brown, and a brown that hates blue - a mixture of ratchet bombs, Chalice, all the spheres, (recently) Metamorphs, Wurmcoil Engines to fight non-XSteel Tinker targets (as they trump Inkwell and Battlesphere pretty handily, and does anyone play Sphinx anymore?) - etc... Generic, but well balanced and vicious, with a pilot that knows me quite well. Testing has been brutal on almost all fronts.

Notes so far -

The U/B combination post-board of Jaces, Drains, Forces, and Sabotages, and basics was probably the best non-Oath strategy I have applied to date. Two Blue Bells ago I went with this strategy, and handily won both of my workshop matches that day with little difficulty even against an experienced pilot. Granted, they were the ONLY matches I won, but that's more to do with my playtesting exclusively vs. NotBlue more than the plan itself. This is a solid anti-shop build for anyone sticking to a basic-heavy UB Drain shell. Jace on a clean board is also a house, should be immediately +2'd, and used to Time Walk their Lodestone Golem (they always have it) for as long as possible while your counters do work (preferably on said Golem). You have to fight for an inch, and every inch, but it works more often than not.

Both RUG projects were pretty summarily scrapped. I had thought possibly slanting towards fighting for "stuff on the board" was an angle of attack. Turns out when their decklist is 20 Black Lotus, 30 Timewalk, 10 Timewalks That Kill You With Photon Cannon, it really isn't feasible for a blue deck to do so. If you wanted to try this angle, the cobra builds have a better chance. Precursor would be golden if Ratchet Bomb and Steel Hellkite and Phyrexian Metamorph didn't exist. They do, though.

UBr seems like an inferior build of the UB plan outlined above, and should probably be treated as such. Especially now that metamorph exists, and if you Drain-> Chewer, they can Chewer->eat mana right back. Awkward.

AdNauseum posted better results than I expected given that a single sphere in play is annoying, and two often feels like someone breaking your kneecap with a baseball bat. If I could find a way to make the deck itself less inconsistent and terrible, this would absolutely be beyond viable. Sometimes you just kill them, sometimes you AdNaus at 8 and flip AdNaus AdNaus. Then again, AdNaus is probably more "black" than "blue", so I'm iffy on its relevance here. Point is, with ~4 bounce preboard and ~7 post-board, you actually wind up losing to your own deck more than you lose to workshops. If someone could regulate T1 ANT to the same consistency of Mystical Tutor ANT from Legacy, I'd probably put this into the "no fear" category, as the only hands you'd often lose are the "whole lot of Lodestone Golems coming up the hell right now, jump gypsy, jump" hands, which a lot of decks lose to anyway. Something to think about for Dark Ritual builders, at any rate.

DeMars control with infinite maindeck hate cards - I was pretty astonished at this one. It turns out, 7 maindeck hate cards and counterspells isn't enough sometimes. In fact, it isn't enough most times. I could usually make a game and rack up SOME wins on the play, but on the draw my Trygons often could never be casted. The one or two times they were, he usually had the Steel Hellkite. Ancient Grudge and Goblin Welder were awesome, but Wurmcoil and Precursors make that whole angle pretty miserable and he'd usually whittle me down from leftover 3/3s as we fought over everything else. For as much potential as this list packed, I was rather shocked. It's entirely possible this was pilot error, as I hear DeMars Control usually does fairly well vs. shops, but I feel confident in my play and choices. It often seemed as if MUD would simply "runner runner" their way out, but I guess that's easy when their decklist is literally nothing but multiple Lotus and runner runner Stark Industries Lethal Timewalks.

By the time I rolled around to the BUG GushBond X lists, I was losing a LOT of hope. My blue/black strategy was solid, but the amount of space it took to effectively fight Workshops left me little room to combat anything that played guys who weren't robots (i.e. Oath, Ichorid, Fish...yknow. Every other deck). The decks that tried to fight MUD in a game of inches were being rolled over by my partner's Golem Tanks time and time again. So I went to the old standby of "Play dumb spells and a bunch of Hurkyll's Recalls". Conclusions here? More game than the UB shell vs. everything else, less or even game vs. Workshops. Sometimes you go nuts on turn 1 and murder them, but most games you wind up 1 mana low or 1 turn short of stabilizing, bouncing, and winning. Hurkyll's Recall seemed to most often translate into a Fog to Not Die, at which point everything comes back and you die anyway. Solid vs. the rest of the field, but to be perfectly honest I felt better about my chances vs. workshop with AdNauseum. That says something. I'm not sure what.

Oath yielded best results in testing. Seven maindeck counterspells, 2 dedicated "I hate artifact" cards, and a stream of big dumb guys. Metamorph makes playing legendary creatures like Emrakul a bust without Dragon's breath. I hated dragon's breath, so the Iona/Robot/X plan seems fine. Iona blue, profit. Ratchet Bombs, Metamorphs, and Duplicants are a pain - but usually if they're trying to react to you instead of applying Robot Punch into your face over and over you get to actually play Magic, which the blue deck is usually better at. Wastelands coupled with "really cheap dumb cards" is a pretty good avenue vs MUD, and will often get you the game. That said, sometimes they're still going to Form Voltron with Lodestone Golems and spheres and Steels/Metamorphs for more Lodestone golems and you're dead with land on the board, because you're not Keanu Reaves and the machines win this time. It's Vintage. Sometimes you win the die roll and play Orchard+Mox+Oath, and they would cry themselves to sleep if they could. But they can't, because they're robots, and machines can't cry.

So, in order of effectiveness vs. MUD -

Oath + cards. Any cards. Really. Until they print Rush Jet of Revelation, 0cc, Destroy all Oath of Druids forever, this is a pretty firm strategy.

AdNauseum + bunches of blue bounce spells. As long as the deck itself feels like cooperating, anyway. If it doesn't I'm not sure it matters what you play against.

UB Force/Drain/Steel Sabotage package + Jace, TMS doing fateseal/unsummon duty.

GushBond X - the more bounce spells the better. Your manabase doesn't support the 12counter plan from UB as well when under attack, so sometimes you get Wasted out and sometimes you can actually kill them in the turn you get. Higher variance than any of the above. Still effective, probably moreso in better hands than mine. With a pilot with more Gush experience, this is probably up there with AdNauseum since the gameplan of "accelerate, Hurkyll's Recall, murder" is more or less the same.

DeMars Control - I was really disappointed in Trygon Predator, as the only times they were good was when I won the dieroll, had 3 mana (2 of which was color specific), and shops didn't have Metamorph, Duplicant, or Steel Hellkite. Which is one out of "way too many" games. Grudge and Welder are better as their Wurmcoil and/or Precursor Golem (which only Grudge solves) count decreases. Which is funny, since those are traditionally cards Workshop plays for value against the Mirror rather than blue.

RUG lists - A poor translation from Standard into Vintage. I'm not sure this should even be up here, but it was an avenue I tried, so here it is. I'd recommend avoiding this one. If you don't, start with Lotus Cobras and work from there.

I'm sure there's tons of others strategies and ideas I've missed, as I only have so much time for cardboard a day, but I wanted to at least share my notes in the hopes I could save someone some time, or at least provide starting points or jumping points in testing.

Offtopic notes: Metalworker MUD with ratchet bombs is incredibly strong. Precursor is a heck of a clock, Wurmcoil fights "safe bet" tinker targets and Phyrexian Metamorph fights the higher risk, higher reward robots. Tinker definitely isn't the powerhouse move against shops it once was, and I think if I had to recommend a deck for a player new to Vintage tomorrow, it would absolutely be MUD. It's really hard to fight them on their terms without being them, and combating them is more and more feeling like playing against Dredge, except they don't keel over once you start hating them - they just play more merciless killing machines from the future.

Hope something here can help someone, and if there's anything obvious I've missed (as I'm sure there is), please do let me know.

-WS