SMIP #34: Vintage Tactics: Cantrips!

[Smmenen]

http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-podcast-episode-34-vintage-tactics-cantrips/

Kevin Cron and Steve Menendian analyze Vintage tactics: cantrips. Also, Old School Magic, Titus Chalk’s So Do You Wear a Cape?, and Magic card prices.

 
Podcast (somanyinsaneplays): Download (Duration: 1:22:45 — 77.8MB)


Timestamped Table of Contents:
0:01:00: Announcements: upcoming tournaments, Old School Magic, So Do You Wear a Cape?
0:15:44: Card prices and the future of reprints: Vintage, Legacy and Modern
0:24:10: Brainstorm
0:48:30: Ponder
0:54:40: Preordain
Total Runtime: 1:22:45
Other Show Notes

- Pauper to the People 143 Video Audio
- So Do You Wear a Cape? by Titus Chalk
- Is Legacy Cheaper Than Standard?
- Team Serious Vintage Open Vintage (Columbus, OH, USA) – April 12
- Odyssey Games Vintage (Kalamazoo, MI, USA) – April 12
- Vintage at Eudemonia (CA, USA) – April 20
- 93/94 Old School Magic at Eudemonia (CA, USA) – May 18th
- Comic Town Legacy/Vintage Split Tournament (Columbus, OH, USA) – May 31

[tito del monte]

Hey guys - thanks so much for the support for So Do You Wear A Cape? - really appreciate and great to hear you enjoyed it!

Another cracking show as always

[WhiteLotus]

Nice podcast, very pertinent about the uses of these 3 cantrips.
Although I disagree that in Gush decks ponder is necessarily an auto include, especially when they're geared for the long game. Or even while going off through chaining gushes since if you ponder and see gush, you get stuck with the other two cards, whereas preordain let's you dig deeper/ get rid of unwanted cards in that scenario. You're also bound to draw a lot of redundant cards (superfluous lands/ counterspells/ abrupt decays) you won't be needing in many cases, so the ability to avoid drawing them is pretty nice. Those are the main reasons I don't play ponder in my gush deck, I also play Magus of the future which has better synergy with preordain.

But in a ritual combo deck, I'll always choose ponder over preordain since those decks have a lot of very powerful 1 ofs. The ability to see more cards or to shuffle for a random card that has a good amount of chances of being a bomb outclass by far preordain's card selection potential, and also as you said in your podcast there is a lot more chances that the game may very well end before you get another draw step.

It's too bad you didn't get the opportunity to say more about sensei's divining top or explore other cantrips such as gitaxian probe, repeal, the spellbombs, Impulse ...

I appreciated the advertisement for the so do you wear a cape? ebook, it made me want to read it which i'll probably try to do soon.

[DubDub]

I enjoyed the podcast.  It was a nice counterpoint to the recent podcast done by everyday eternal looking at discard spells.  (You can find that one here: link.)  Also, I thought it was interesting that Steve referenced an old article by Adrian Sullivan on one-ofs on the same day that... Adrian Sullivan had a new article on one-ofs.

Was there a question for listeners at the end?  If so I missed it because I didn't wait whole thing out.

[Smmenen]

Nice podcast, very pertinent about the uses of these 3 cantrips.
Although I disagree that in Gush decks ponder is necessarily an auto include,

I'll put a caveat then:

Any Gush deck that meets the following two criteria should have Ponder:

1) designed on Turbo-Xerox principles of a super light mana base

2) Employs the Gushbond engine (Fastbond, 4 Gush, Yawg Will, and 1-2 card finisher)

[yugular]

Great episode as usual.

I was checking out some old articles by Smmenen at SCG. You mentioned a Vintage checklist in some articles in the end. Do you still have up to date checklist somewhere? Or do you know if someone else has?

[Smmenen]

The last update of the Vintage checklist is in my set reviews for Eternal Central.  That's the most recent version of it.  http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-dragons-maze-eternal-set-review-updated-vintage-checklist/

[MTGFan]

Excellent podcast, once again!

The discussion on cantrips was great but feels biased toward the combo player, which certainly the hosts (at least one, afaik) predominantly are.

As more of a prison/aggro-control player I would love to see the hosts' take on cards of that persuasion, such as proactive answers like Pithing Needle, Chalice of the Void, Wasteland and the like. If the hosts don't have experience playing these archetypes, then maybe from the perspective of the combo player fighting through that kind of hate. That perspective would be interesting as well.

[Smmenen]

Excellent podcast, once again!

The discussion on cantrips was great but feels biased toward the combo player

Could you elaborate on that?  What gave you that impression?  We tried to abstract the discussion of these cantrips away from any particular archetype or strategic orientation. 

[Random Noob]

I am going to check out the eBook "So Do You Wear A Cape" sounds pretty interesting.

What came to my mind, while you were discussing Brainstorm and its timing, for optimal use;

One point was, beeing able to hide a card, from cards like Gitaxian Probe - Isn't Gitaxian Probe a Cantrip by itself? It could be an interesting card to gather some information about. 2 of the Cantrips in the Podcast are restricted, so even if the optimal play is useful knowledge, it won't happen that often.

Cantrips in my mind are used as somekind of engine, where you can trust on, while building your deck, and Gitaxian Probe could be a 4 of, since its not restricted. While I was thinking about, I thought of just running Probe as cards 61-64, but this can't happen, since Mud's Sphere effects.

Probe is a Cantrip, which isn't great in Deck manipulating, but gives you information, that normally a Discard Effect would give. This could set up your strategy, since you have information, what your opponent is on.

I think of Gitaxian Probe as a cantrip, worthy to discuss. Nethertheless great PodCast, as always.

[mr.grim]

Great podcast!