[Free Article] Dragonlords and Pyromancers: Attacking Post-Champs Vintage

[voltron00x]

Holy crap, I wrote something about Magic!

Dragonlords and Pyromancers: Attacking Post-Champs Vintage

Come for the analysis of Dragonlord Oath and Stephen Menendian's Gush Pyromancer deck, bask in the glory of my (quite possibly worse, who knows) version which was good for top 4 at the 9/19 Top Deck Games event, and behold the power of the best Trump card you've ever seen.

Side note: This is totally free and self-published, if you'd be so kind as to whitelist my site or to turn off ad blocking while you're reading this article, that'd be great, and if you're so inclined, go ahead and click those Google ads. They're tailored to whatever you're into, so I guess whatever you're seeing, that's your thing, you no good degenerate! Or be the song that fills my heart and replace your Amazon.com bookmark with this link: http://amzn.to/1VgwMMk

[brianpk80]

Thanks for posting!  I appreciate the understanding of the deck. 

[vanquish]

thank you for this article voltron00X, mystic remora really opens up a whole new angle for this deck to operate, that innovation you made with stephens deck can also be applied to other gush decks, im thinking of doing the same to the doomsday control deck that smmenen also pioneered, you can operate under remora blanket and not be in trouble of depleting your hand should an attrition war ensue.

[voltron00x]

This actually harkens back to a series of decks I started playing in the spring of 2011: 
http://morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=1528&highlight=1#place1

Note that I pretty quickly cut Bob out of this deck, but the rest of the shell was pretty solid and I believe both Tom Dixon and Jake Gans won tournaments with versions of this deck.

While I was testing with Stephen's deck I kept thinking how it was close to that list. I actually tried Tinker/Sphinx for a bit before cutting it for 9/19, and I'm not yet sure whether or not it is worth trying. The artifact count is pretty low, but Dack Fayden helps make sure you've got an Artifact available.

[p3temangus]

I played a riff on Steve's list at a local 22 man event and T8'ed losing in the quarter finals to Grixis Thieves.  Aside from a very different looking sideboard, my changes to the main were:

-1 regrowth
-ponder
-mystical tutor
-1 preordain
-1 fetch land

+1 abrupt decay
+1 Fire/Ice
+2 Dig through time
+1 basic island

My local meta is extremely heavy in delver and Oath, as well as the 20% workshops that is expected on Long Island.  Abrupt decay was an absolute house all day, but looking back it may be best suited for the SB as it runs the risk of being totally dead early, and does not pitch to FoW.  I ran into that exact issue in my Qfinals matchup...Abrupt Decay, alas, does not kill a Jace. 

Since then I have been testing with 2-3 Deathrite Shaman.  4C builds can always use the mana fixing, and it just increases the threat density without having to give up permission.

With that, i have been trying:
-abrupt decay
-1 dig through time (ironic considering today's news...)
- Basic island #2 (also ironic since Moon "answer" style decks just took a big hit)
-1 gitaxian probe

+3 Deathrite Shaman
+1 Fetch land

I've been tinkering with the number of Gitaxian probes...3 may be the correct number but I have been testing 2 with the 3rd shaman.

Hopefully more to come!