WW with Blue and Black Splash

[Crenellated Wall]

I recently came out of magic retirement (around 3-4 months ago) and I wanted to build one of my favourite decks again. After a few trips to the local card store, and some lengthy hours playtesting my deck against some of the best and most dangerous decks in Vintage, I think that I have probably the most advanced WW deck in the format. What I've compared this deck to with my friends is prison, where you drop a bunch of creatures that really disrupt your opponent's gameplan, all the while smashing his face in with weenies.

WW/u/b

Creatures:
4x Meddling Mage
3x True Believer
3x Kataki, War's Wage
4x Weathered Wayfarer
3x Samurai of the Pale Curtain
3x Glowrider
3x Mesmiric Fiend

Disruption/Utility:
3x Swords to Plowshares
4x Aether Vial
4x Chains of Mephistopheles
4x Cabal Therapy

Mana:
1x Mox Pearl (I use a plains, because I'm budget)
3x Tundra
4x Flooded Strand
3x Plains
1x Strip Mine
4x Wasteland
4x Scrubland
1x Mishra's Factory
1x Island

Sideboard:
3x Kami of Ancient Law
3x Rule of Law
2x Exalted Angel
4x Chalice of the Void
3x Umezawa's Jitte


Card choices:
Meddling Mage: This card is superb, especially if you know the matchup really well. Like a pre-emptive counterspell, you take the card that is the most troublesome for you and name it. This card is especially good in this deck, because you have cabal therapy and mesmeric fiend which allow you to take a look at your opponent's hand making the mage even better.

True Believer: This card is a speed-bump for combo decks, and also makes you immune to duress and cabal therapy after it is cast. This is actually the card that I am least confidant in, because a lot of the time combo has a way to deal with it before targetting you. With more testing against decks like TPS and Severance Belcher, I might advise this:

-3 True Believer
+1 STP
+1 SotPC
+1 Mesmeric Fiend

Kataki, War's Wage: This card is INCREDIBLE. As soon as I saw this on the spoiler list, I knew that this would be one of the perfect cards for this deck. Coupled with Weathered Wayfarer's LD, Kataki works to turn off moxen, as well as make additional utility artifacts cost more to keep in play. Also, this card doesn't shut off Aether Vial, like Null Rod does. It also has the required casting cost to power ratio.

Weathered Wayfarer: Decievingly, this is the best card in the whole deck. Against decks that pack a lot of (or a few important) non-basics, Weathered Wayfarer is devistating. If your opponent keeps playing out lands, you can keep fetching Wastelands from your library and destroying them, then searching for Strip Mine and destroying their Basic Land.

Samurai of the Pale Curtain: This card has a godd, if subtle ability. Against some strategies, this card hoses really well (Dragon, Crucible lock, Stax, Slaver). Against others, it just prevents Black Lotus from coming back to a Yawgmoth's Will, or stops welder from welding things in and out multiple times. Also, Bushido is pretty useful against other aggro decks.

Glowrider: This card is usually bashed as being a shitty card, but I actually think it's pretty great. Though it costs 3 mana, (not a WHOLE lot) it provides a non-symmetrical Sphere of Resistance that beats for 2. Coupled with Weathered Wayfarer's land denial and Kataki's artifact mana denial, paying an extra mana for a spell starts to get much more difficult, especially if you want to play a bunch in one turn (storm combo). I think that this card is pretty damn good.

Mesmeric Fiend: This card is solid. As a targetted Ravenous Rats, you will pick the most dangerous card out of an opponent's hand. Another plus is the ability to use it during your opponent's draw step with aether vial, and being able to see and take an extra card. Though there isn't a lot of synergy between Feind and Wayfarer, Glowrider and Kataki, it does have great synergy with the hand denial strategy of Meddling Mage and Cabal Therapy.

Swords to Plowshares: This I really want to be a 4-of, mainly because it's such a great card to have against aggro decks. Not only that, but it's useful against Dragon, Welder-based decks, and to a certain extent, oath decks.

Aether Vial: This card is another one of the focal points of the deck. Vial allows me to run a large amount of creatures with the same casting cost (2cc in this case). Vial acts not only as acceleration, but also as a way of getting important hate creatures through a counterwall. Once set at two, you can put almost all creatures in the deck directly into play.

Chains of Mephistopheles: This is one of the best hate cards that I have ever seen. This card is excellent against control, combo, and aggro control decks that draw cards. With this card on the board, card draw turns into an awful proposition. I originally had Standstill and Brainstorm in this spot, but after a freind suggested it to me, it was tested and kept. The reason this card is much better that card draw in this decks is because card draw is always going to benifit a faster opponent running a more broken deck. This deck is far from broken, so instead of trying to draw into more threats, you want to bring the opponent down to earth to play on your level, which almost every card in the deck is designed to do. I find that this card complements the deck very nicely.

Cabal Therapy: I love this card in this deck. Firstly because it disrupts combo on the first turn, allowing you to last longer that you usually would against that type of deck. Secondly, because this deck is chalk full of creatures, the flashback cost can easily be met, especially if it would prevent an opponent from winning (or entering a dominant position) on the next turn. Combined with Fiend, Mage and Chains, your opponent's hand becomes a lot less useful than it would usually be.


Sideboard:

Kami of Ancient Law: This card is basically to battle the Oath Matchup, which is really f-ing difficult. I want to include 4, but I'm having trouble finding room in the SB.

Rule of Law: This is another Card for the combo matchup. Particularly against some of the storm based combo decks like TPS, this card really hurts them if they can't deal with it in time.

Exalted Angel: This particular WW deck has problems with Aggro decks, EA helps to solve this problem, and it goes a long way.

Chalice of the Void: This card is another great option for a lot of decks. This card is usually set at 1, and at this level shuts up a LOT of decks. This is particularly effective in combination with Rule of Law against combo decks, because most of them use chain of vapor to bounce the rule.

Umezawa's Jitte: NOTHING helps you win the aggro mirror better than a Jitte. NOTHING.

I'm going to add some match summaries later, but I have to go eat dinner right now.

[shade88]

Have you tried pithing needle? It would seem to work really well in that deck. Not only is it an answer to a lot of good, various cards, but it strengthens your mana denial strategy also. It takes out wastes and fetches.
Pithing needle, 5 strip effects, weathered wayfarer, kataki, and glow rider would seem like a really nice mana denial strategy.
Not to mention the large amount of non-mana disruption the deck also packs.

[Ape]

What's with the 1 Mishra's Factory? Wouldn't a 4th Tundra be better?

Ape.

[Crenellated Wall]

With only 4 meddling mages in the deck 8 blue sources of mana are definately enough. The Mishra's Factory is an option that can be searched up by weathered wayfarer if you are lacking threats in the control/aggro matchup. Other things of note: After looking at the combo matchup again, True Believer isn't pulling it's weight. I've decided to go with the plan that I set forth before, so that I can improve the aggro matchup by going:

-3 True Believer
+1 STP
+1 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
+1 Mesmeric Fiend

[Rancor1]

It seems that with so few accelerants, glowrider would be way too slow. I recall reading just a few days ago in Vegeta2711's article on Saviors of Kamigawa that the one mana difference brought it from interesting to unplayable.

[Crenellated Wall]

Yes, I read that article too. As a single threat, yes, Glowrider is probably insufficient at slowing down other decks. When combined with other disruption, like Mesmeric Feind and Kataki, you can slow the game down enough so that Glowrider becomes good disruption. I have seen this happen in many games. Aether Vial also makes Glowrider playable because you can play Glowrider and another 2 mana creature on turn 3, which I think is pretty good. It fits well in the deck, and until proven wrong, I'm going to keep him there.

[Engine_number_9]

I definately think that you should consider using abolish maindeck. They are huge against Oath, at worst they are a killed mox.
Your main problem that you need to address is that your disruption comes (save therapy) online at turn 2, not turn 1. This is a huge disadvantage. Maybe move the chalices to the main deck aswell.

[Crenellated Wall]

I have actually been considering the same myself. My love affair with Chains has fallen by the wayside. This card hasn't been pulling it's weight at all recently, even against combo decks. I think that perhaps Chalice of the Void deserves a spot maindeck in it's stead.
Abolish I've always found to be suboptimal. I never really want to pitch a plains card to it, and 3 CC seems to be far too much especially when compared to other options. I like Seal of Cleansing a lot more in the artifact removal spot, so I'm going to give that a try. Seal and Chalice will be competing for a maindeck spot over Chains. That's all for now, but I want to get in a bit more testing before I comment.

[Freelancer]

I definitely like this deck, I haven't tested it yet but it seems solid (solid as in a good idea).

If I where you I would cut the chains for chalices and somehow fit it another fiend they are so good (especially with so little removal in T1).

How have the cabal therapy's been working for you? It seems that the large quantity of 1-offs in vintage might hamper its ability to disrupt the opponent (although going turn 1 therapy on mana drain sounds quite good).

Standstill might be a solid idea, you are capable of supporting it with 6 1-drops and a lot more 2-drops. It should probably be a 2-off though because you have very little man-lands and obviously not in conjunction with chains.

You should probably up the samurai count by one, it does a lot of little things.

[Crenellated Wall]

Well, actually, a few posts up I made 2 of the changes you alluded to i.e. 1 more Samurai, and 1 more mesmeric fiend.  Cabal Therapy has been alright, but I might actually prefer Duress in this spot. In regards to Standstill, I was running that card first, and it was pulling it's weight, but around here there are a lot of budget fish decks that rely on Standstill, and there is nothing worse that running Standstill against a deck that can abuse it more than you can, which is why I ran Chains in the first place. I might switch back to Brainstorm and test that out for a bit. There will definately be a changed list the next time I post.

[Freelancer]

That post was more or less to inform you that you where on the right track.

I just noticed you miss the amazing draw engine called ninja of the deep hours. I can see it being really good in this decklist. Returning fiends when the removed card isn't relevant anymore or renaming cards with meddling mage is very strong. Especially if you have 1 mana creatures and vial to back it up.

I think you should probably cut the therapy's for duresses. I can see therapy's missing targets quite often, besides there aren't many creatures that you want in your graveyard. This is another backing up kinda thing, I always read all the posts in the thread before commenting