It's great that you guys are presenting your version of this deck, but I think calling this a major innovation or the "Mean Deck" is just taking it a little too far. Many people (including myself) have been playtesting this type of deck for a LONG time.
What is this "type" of deck? A deck with restricted black enchantments, lots of restricted tutors, Force of Wills, Duresses, and plenty of accelleration? That encompasses Gifts, Long, TPS, Intuition Tendrils, Ritual Gifts, Brassman Gifts, Meandeck Gifts, etc, etc.
But then again, that''s the point that I was making in my article “Offshoots and Ladders” on February 12,
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/13687.html I documented the evolution and development of the Gifts and Long archetypes. I pointed out that people were finally connecting the two archetypes strategically. We saw attempts to bridge the divide between Gifts and Long.
To reiterate what has already been stated in this thread - the cards are not new. That's the point and the reason this deck is so good. We've been dancing around this for 18 months. It's only now that my team has pulled it together, although others have gotten close.
The reason for calling it mean deck is the 4 Merchant Scroll, which is a minor change in terms of raw card numbers, but tactically and strategically critically different. TPS typically was just a mishmash of restricted cards that ran Time Spiral and alot of other restricted cards. This deck has a much different and far more coherent game plan around the engine of 4 Merchant Scroll sufficient that this is not a TPS deck. It's the aggro mode of MDG.
No one that I had seen had put 4 Merchant Scrolls into TPS. It's a major innovation in terms of bringing together the Long/Gifts hybrid into a coherent form but not in terms of the actual cards themselves.
That's why this deck is called the Mean Deck - it's 4 Merchant Scrolls in this shell - a shell that we've all seen dozens of times before, but no one had put 4 Scrolls around it.
4 Scrolls is the whole reason for the new name. It's a new plan, tactically and strategically. 4 cards is an entirely new engine that changes the entire internal dynamic of the deck.
I posit, very simply, that Ancestral Recall is the best and most important card to resolve in Vintage next to Black Lotus. Once Ancestral Recolves, I posit that that player wins the game more often than not. You are ahead in terms of card advantage, tempo, and card selection.
That's why I think all of the previous iterations that have come before fall short and why this is such a major advance in terms of understanding of the format, if nothing else.
Merchant Scroll is a great follow up card for its flexibility. you can find more threats, more answers, or tutor chain with Mystical.
In short, no one before had put 4 Scrolls into this deck without running Gifts as well. By defying that particular convention and identifying the key engine (best engine) in unrestricted Vintage, we assert that this is a unique and worthy innovation that justifies the new name.
The NorCal crew has been playing "Ritual Gifts" forever
By forever, I hope you mean the last 6 months when Scott Limoges started publically talking about it.
Six months in the larger scheme of Vintage is almost nothing.
Moreover, Ritual Gifts is barely 5 cards different from Meandeck Gifts. I still think that it was a pretty big advance because Scott keyed into MDG weaknesses and evolved the deck in the right direction. This deck is the evolutionary offshoot of both decks. In a sense, you could say that MDG was the grandfather, and Ritual Gifts the father.
it seems and Europeans just call it TPS, which many dismiss just because of the name but the deck has been evolving and adapting in the overseas metagames for years (see MaxxMatt's post).
I read through Maxxmatt's post, and unfortunately, what eludes him and others is that none of those lists have 4 Scrolls - they look pretty much the same as they did back in 2003. TPS is a pretty awful deck because Grim Tutor was a stronger engine - and hence, Long decks consistently outperformed TPS.
Unfortunately for Europeans, Grim Tutors are pretty scarce in non-proxy environments. And hence TPS still existed in European non-proxy tournaments.
Again, and the key difference, is that none of those decks ran even anything remotely close to a full complement of Scrolls.
Thanks for presenting your ideas on the subject, this is definitely the direction where post-restriction "Ritual Gifts" is probably going to head. What is in your sideboard? More bounce, red blasts, Massacre, extra mana, EtW?
I can't emphasize this enough: this deck was designed for a Gifts environment and designed to compete (and beat) Ritual Gifts as well as Control Gifts. It is not supposed to be a post-restriction Ritual Gifts, but the evolutionary pinnacle of the Gifts/Long archtype.
Whether it succeeds in that or not is open to debate.
I discuss the SB in some detail in the article, but in line with Chapin's suggestions, this deck wants to morph into the control mode as strongly as possible post board. Part of it is simple: decks bring in answers so the aggro mode is less successful.
The deck should have no less than 2 Massacre, 3 Red Blasts and plenty of GY hate post board. I prefer at least 1 T. Crypt, 4 Rebs, and 2 Massacres as the starting point.
Interestingly, I no longer favor Empty the Warrens simply because I've sensed that the metagame has shifted around it somewhat. I see Stax decks with Kegs and Bridges and other decks with Engineered Explosives, etc, etc.
