Pithing Needle in Vintage

[Anusien]

There have been a lot of cards that try to force you to diversify your threat base.  Cranial Extraction was the first in a while, and as far as I can tell the only effect it had on the format was the inclusion of Sarcatog in Italy to combat TPS's Cranial Extractions.  That change doesn't seem to have filtered over to the states, anyway.  Pithing Needle is different because it can come down before Drain mana gets active, and doesn't fuel a large drain anyway.  We all know it's ability to shut down Welders, Mindslavers and Goblin Charbelchers.  Does anyone actually believe it will have an effect on the format?  Is it's power enough to push the small remaining CS presence out of the metagame in favor of Gifts builds with a more diverse threat base?  How far would something like CS have to adapt in order to not be hosed, or will it not have any metagame effects at all?

[Moridar]

The first play of your turn is a pithing needle.  Naming Goblin Welder.  (Assume you're playing against CS)  Your opponent now has an artifact he needs to kill before his welders go active.  You need to shut him down long enough to win.  If he gets his welders active you're probably going to need to deal with a Mindslaver... 

Wayne

[yodoblec]

CS should be able to handle the card most of the times, it'll just take a little different maindeck such as when everyone started playing with Lava Dart, I doubt Pithing Needle will make that big of an impact though and actually probably won't be used in the main outside of some fish decks. It could single-handedly destroy 2-land belcher, as if that archtype wasn't dead enough in the first place.

[Xenoben187]

honestly, this card kinda makes me want to play slaver alot less, and I've been playing it for over a year now.  Lava dart sucked, but it only hit welder, hell, people are playing greaves to make welder untargetable.  It also meant I could save up counters to force through my welder w/o being destroyed.  Also, this card deals with more than
This card comes down first turn and it also comes down from any decks that AREN'T RED.  My biggest advantage against oath was knowing that they had no way of dealing with my welders, thus having little way of dealing with my subsequent mindslavers.  Now oath gets needle.  Also, U/W Fish and U/G fish get it too.  Again, I was only worried about U/W swordsing my welder and U/G took several turns to equip a jitte.  Pithing needle can easilly be fit into almost every deck's sideboard and even some decks mainboard.  Gifted.fr could easily sub these for furnaces, even though they don't cycle, I think they extra effect is worth it.

[Wolven]

I'd just like to mention something that a lot of people don't seem to meantion nearly enough...

Pithing Needle can name LANDS.

This has been a public service announcement.

Now that thats out of the way, I'd like to mention the ability to shut down Fetchs, Strip-effects, Bazzar, Library... etc. I think this will be the definingg role of Needle. There has been cards to hose activated abilities of creatures and artifacts before, however Pithing Needle shines in its ability to hose land. The added versitility is simply a bonus.

[absolute]

The card itself is versetile, but will only allow the format to work around it's abilities. Fetches aren't so much of a worry since most decks can run 2/2 fetches to negate the drawback, and minimize its ability. The strip effect being shut off is the ability to shut down a 1 of or a 4 of, and most of the format has already created manabases that are strip proof until the duals themselves are needed. Shutting down Bazzar is probably the biggest bonus that I have seen, but with dragon's tutoring ability it wouldn't be hard to pack a rebuild or artifact destruction spell (even though some lists already do regaurdless). Being able to shut down library is laughable, because you would be doing it so late in the game it wouldn't matter, or would have to count on the fact that a player actually gets to use it BEFORE it is known to be in their hand. Pithing Needle is reactive for the most part and I personally would rather play something else as a sideboard card, knowing that in a tournament situation I most likely will not know what an opponent is playing, and therefor will not want this maindecked. As a sideboard card it is decent at best.

[Whatever Works]

Pithing Needle shuts down Aether Vial right??? To me that is much more important than if it can hit welder in the current metagame. There are already much better cards that deal with welder, but there arent many better cards that are versatile that deal with Vial.

[Cross]

Null rod shuts down vial and jittes and slavers etc.

I tried this card in stax for a little bit and felt that there are better lock pieces, so as far as I am concerned it is unnecessary in prison decks.

What this car really does is nail on the lid of bazaar decks. Bazaar based decks almost can't win as long as this is in play.

I can't justify mainboard space, but it is definitely a great option for sideboards. 

[PipOC]

Pithing Needle shuts down Aether Vial right??? To me that is much more important than if it can hit welder in the current metagame. There are already much better cards that deal with welder, but there arent many better cards that are versatile that deal with Vial.

Gorilla Shaman?

He's a much more efficient card for dealing with vial, as he is also fantastic mana denial as well as being able to deal with chalice as well, partially circumventing fishes tempo.

[KrA0nS]

Someone is going to create a silver bullet type deck for vintage and run 4 Pithing Needle main and wreck everything, going to be a metagame deck like Dumptruck or even Rock.

[yespuhyren]

There might be a way to incorporate them into some form of deck running trinket mage/artificer's intuition.  Although it would be easy to build a deck like that around the cards to rip out the pithing needles, I still feel that it is too weak, and I personally will keep to my deck, as I don't have much that it can shut down except for

Disk/Keg Whichever I choose last minute
Library of Alexandria
Wasteland
Strip Mine
Polluted Delta

It doesn't stop anything brutally important to me winning

[Yawgmoths_Dummy]

Could Needle make Extract playable?

Extract           U
Sorcery
Search target player’s library for a card and remove that card from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.

It's blue (pitchable to FOW), and it's casting cost is only U.

Knowing what your opponent is playing first turn would be huge in setting up the Needle, and you get to RFG one of their cards as an added benefit. If only it were an instant!