What's the best Vault/Key Deck?

[lizardking1545]

I have been wanting to play a Vault/Key deck but can't decide what way to approach it.  Is it best in a Grixis shell or Bomberman or Oath, or a mix of everything?  I think a Gushbond deck might be the best but I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone else thinks.

[TheBrassMan]

I wouldn't think a GushBond list is the way to go, I think that's been tried by a lot of people, and never really broke out into widespread success.

Oath with Vault/Key is definitely a real deck - it's not my favorite personally but it's probably the most tournament proven of all the lists you've mentioned.

If you want something that sort of has the style of play of the original Vault/Key Tezzeret decks, I would suggest a Grixis control list. I also think there's a decent way to build Esper Mentor with Vault/Key - but neither of those decks seem to be putting up great numbers right now.

It's hard to say if any deck really maximizes Vault Key better than others - one of the great things about the combo is that it's easy to shove into a lot of strategies. Some people are still playing Turbo-Tezzeret, which has a ton of ways to interact with Vault/Key, but again, isn't exactly racking up tournament wins worldwide. I think you should base your choice on what sort of cards you like playing, and pick a deck that maximizes that style.

Is your goal to win the most games where Vault/Key just happens to be in your deck? I'd pick Griselbrand Oath.
Is your goal to play a "Big Blue" style deck that can play control or combo roles? I'd pick Grixis Control (with Tinker and probably Dack/Thief).
Is your goal to play a controlling list with a Vault/Key finisher? I'd play an Esper deck, with Mentors, Trinket/Salvager, or both.
Is your goal to go all-in on Vault/Key, without caring if your deck is a little fragile? I'd play Turbo Tezzeret.

[LandDestroyer]

With the last b/r update and the current meta does the answer to this question change at all? 

Pre b/r I had omni oath and UR the answer built.  1st lost 3 DTT, 2nd lost 3 chalice. 

I want to feel like I can do something powerful, so I like the auto win button of vault/key (I play twin in modern) and want multiple axis I can attack from. 

Haha, I think subconsciously I just want to fit everything in a deck...like have my vault/key/jace/tez with my oath/gb with a library, with tendrils lol.

help

[desolutionist]

I saw Brassman's comments and just had to respond...

Gushbond is the best approach to assembling Vault/Key.  This is for a number of reasons, but the most obvious reason is because the card, Gush, works more favorably (than any other card in print) with top deck tutors.  Top deck tutors (Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, and Lim-Dul's Vault) are the best tutors to find Vault/Key because they have the smallest mana cost.  The reason Vault/Key is even a real thing, is because its the cheapest, 2-card combo in the game.  So anything that's also cheap (1 mana tutors, and 0 mana draw spells) works best at putting out a Vault/Key.

Its worth mentioning also, that despite being the best way to get Vault/Key mathematically, Gush/Tutor is extremely flexible and can get all sorts of things.  

I and a few friends of mine have had overwhelming success with Gush/Vault/Key decks (East Coast Wins) in years past.  If you're looking for more recent proof, here is the list that I used to 4-0 last nights Daily Event:

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/355999#online

I believe the strategy began to rotate out of the forefront when people began putting too much emphasis on Monastery Mentor.  In my deck, Mentor isn't the focal point it's just a secondary win condition.  The primary win condition is Vault/Key.

[serracollector]

One would think that since the restriction of Chalice that Turbotezz would be the best Vaultkey deck right? You can now run all the artifact ramp you wish to get that turn one or turn two Tezz into play.

[xouman]

@desolutionist: Wow, that list has lots of win conditions. Vault, mentor, tendrils, jace... Not really hampered by graveyard hate, or by mentor hate, the only cards that really annoy this list are stony silence and SotL/Notion thief. And even with those cards in play, you have lots of chances to win.


About the optimal vault list, I think that it heavily depends on the metagame. It depends on the number of Dack Faydens around, the typical artifact's hate, the amount of combo, of hatedecks... Turbotezz is the most focused deck on vault, but grixis and esper decks can play a solid control role using vault as finisher. Brassman explained this much better than I could

[H]

While I absolutely respect Shawn's position on GushBond in this kind of deck (I had plenty of loses to him/Allen/others back in the day) I don't think there is an absolute best way to approach Vault/Key at the moment.  I think there are several ways to approach it that are all good/solid/winnable ways to build a list that features Vault and Key, all that have their own advantages.  For the moment, I will not mention Oath, because that is really a wholly different archetype with all kinds of different reasoning for different approaches.  With all due respect to Shawn and Andy (who are both better players than me and also more experienced in the current meta) I'd like to explain some of my thinking.

While GushBond is probably ideal in a vacuum, that is, it is the one that would absolutely goldfish best, merited on it's lower land count, ability to see more cards (via Gush/more cantrips), but there are merits to more lands/less cantrips, since more mana can often open up lines of play (like larger Yawg Wills, or playing something like Tezzeret 1.0).  There is also a general softness of this approach to Red Blast/Pyroblast and Flusterstorm, along with the aforementioned Notion Thief.

This is not to say that the approach is not good, or well positioned right now, because I have little doubt that it is, but there are other approaches that can be taken.  Obviously, Grixis Control has been around forever and Red certainly gives you a good selection of great cards including (but obviously not limited to) Dack Fayden, Lightning Bolt, Red Blasts, Ingot Chewers, etc..  The higher land (mana) count (22-23) these decks have can be advantageous in being able to play through soft permission (like Flusterstorm), Wastelands, and small numbers of Sphere effects.  However, as was alluded to, there are other colors to be played.

While White gives you access to premier removal in the form of Swords to Plowshares, there isn't much else that is really a great addition to a Combo-Control approach.  I think the 'undiscovered' approach is really Green, which gives you access to what I feel is a criminally underplayed card right now, Abrupt Decay.

Reasons for why people were moving away from Vault/Key were once given as Dack Fayden, Null Rod, Delvers then Mentors, then both Delvers and Mentors.  Really, the biggest threat I found was Abrupt Decay, yet, now no one wants to play Abrupt Decay.  What do all those above things have in common?  They are all hit by Decay.  Green also gives you access to Trygon Preadator, which Shop decks don't seem to be running much by way of answers to right now. 

In the days before Khans was released (and I literally mean a few days before) I had written a pretty long primer on Dark Confidant-Jace combo-control decks.  Everyone insisted that Confidant was not playable any more and I bought in.  Once Mentor came, the death of Confidant was seemly cemented and I gave up on updating it, which also coincided with me have less time to test.  I frankly still feel that Confidant is still playable and my limited results haven't disproven this, but it could certainly just be  a general delusion I carry.

I probably didn't really express myself too clearly here, but hopefully I managed to convey at least some of what I was trying to.

[LandDestroyer]

I saw Brassman's comments and just had to respond...

Gushbond is the best approach to assembling Vault/Key.  This is for a number of reasons, but the most obvious reason is because the card, Gush, works more favorably (than any other card in print) with top deck tutors.  Top deck tutors (Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, and Lim-Dul's Vault) are the best tutors to find Vault/Key because they have the smallest mana cost.  The reason Vault/Key is even a real thing, is because its the cheapest, 2-card combo in the game.  So anything that's also cheap (1 mana tutors, and 0 mana draw spells) works best at putting out a Vault/Key.

Its worth mentioning also, that despite being the best way to get Vault/Key mathematically, Gush/Tutor is extremely flexible and can get all sorts of things.  

I and a few friends of mine have had overwhelming success with Gush/Vault/Key decks (East Coast Wins) in years past.  If you're looking for more recent proof, here is the list that I used to 4-0 last nights Daily Event:

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/355999#online

I believe the strategy began to rotate out of the forefront when people began putting too much emphasis on Monastery Mentor.  In my deck, Mentor isn't the focal point it's just a secondary win condition.  The primary win condition is Vault/Key.

I really like how many angles you attack from.  Have you ever had 1 tezz in there though?

Do you have anything typed up on your experience with this build?

[LSD25]

its all about that singleton lim-duls vault.