How the Grinch Stole Christmas [TMDXI T16 Report]

[Meeee]

Speaking from my experience with repeal in gifts not Gush-Storm, you rarely ever need to repeal anything above 2 mana.  For 3 mana or less you can repeal: meddling mage (just about any fish creature really), chalice, null rod (not as important), Quirion Dryad, your own moxen (for storm), opposing fastbonds (stop a gush chain), and haste sliver to name a few cards.  The card is extremely flexible and replaces itself as making it an all around good card, it can also be used with dark rit to get mindcensors and such but they have flash so that's not too exciting.  Repeal is also a blue card and is obviously more synergistic with tendrils then a dryad.

[Smmenen]

White is the worst color in Vintage.

Balance
Auriok Salvagers
Swords to Plowshares
Aven Mindcensor
Jotun Grunt
Meddling Mage
Orim's Chant
...

Clearly. 

First of all, A list of played white cards does not even REMOTELY prove your case that white is a better color than green.   

Watch, I can do the same:

Fastbond,
Quirion Dryad,
Xantid Swarm,
Regrowth,
Crop Rotation,
Channel
Elvish Spirit Guide,
Oath of Druids
Gaea's Blessing
Tarmogoyf
Oxidize

There are four restricted green cards and only 2 restricted one cards, only one of which is played.   All four restricted green cards are actually good and see play in some vintage deck.   

White has been the weakest color in Vintage since 2002, at least.   

Anyway, while it may be technically true that Q. Dryad is only a 1/1, that's like saying Thirst for Knowledge draws 3 cards.  It's technically, true, but meaningless.
Ideas Unbound draws 3 cards and Goblin Welder is a 1/1.   So what?   The statement that Dryad is a 1/1 creature is a virtually meaningless statement in terms of telling you how it actually works in-game.

Quirion Dryad - 
Creature - Bad
1/1

Yep, that's Q.Dryad... Oh wait, there is some more text:

Whenever you play a white, blue, black, or red spell, put a +1/+1 counter on Quirion Dryad.

So unless you have Yawgmoth's Will or Fastbond (win conditions on their own), it's slightly better than a Vinelasher Kudzu...? Does that versatility of being able to either be a bad DSC or a Tarmogoyf somehow make it good?  I guess I just don't see, in a format where people won't even pay 2U for an indestructible 11/11 trampler, any creature strategy being optimal.

The fact that GAT decks are the BEST performing decks in Vintage right now should be pretty strong evidence that you are wrong.   

The fact that you don't understand it, doesn't mean that you are right.    If Quirion Dryad was so bad, then why would Rich Shay, myself, ELD, and many of the strongest vintage players continue to play it?   

But even if we assume that Dryad is a suboptimal card for whatever reason you advance, you haven't advanced a case that you've included better cards.

One Tendrils of Agony makes all of the Psychatogs and Quirion Dryads useless outside of just being alternate kills.  So wouldn't it make sense to just cut that crap for cards that can potentially improve your main kill?

One tendrils make all psychatogs and dryads useless?  I can't imagine any reasonable person would actually agree with that.    How does a single tendrils make Dryads useless?   

You're playing THREE Repeal maindeck and THREE red elemental blasts.   How are those cards any less limited than Dryad?

How is Repeal limited at all?  It's probably the most versatile non-tutor spell in Vintage.  Red Blasts was the obvious metagame call; they were only as limited as Force of Will throughout the day.

[/quote]

It's limited in the sense that the opportunity cost of 3 cards in a vintage deck is very high.   Repeal is not a very good card in comparison to the power of most playable vintage cards.   Playing UX to bounce a permanent that costs X and cantrip is pretty unimpressive.   In most vintage situations where your goal is to generate storm, Chain of Vapor is a superior card.   And if you are using it to draw a card, that's pretty awful when there are superior cantrips out there. 

In addition, your Dark Rituals essentially have only two spells they can support: Bargain and Tendrils.  You've made Rits even more narrow than they were in any deck I've ever seen.

This isn't Gifts; I can't just tutur up a bunch of artifact mana and Chain of Vapor them for mana.  I almost always need Dark Ritual to cast Tendrils and they are obviously essential for Yawgmoth's Bargain and better Yawgmoth's Wills.  It isn't optimal, but they're less dead than Dryads when I'm ending every game with a Tendrils.

You prove my point for me.

You're criticism of Dryad is that it is a limited card, but you acknowledge that the cards you've replaced it with are also limited.   

As for your Gush Tendrils list, your overall argument that Dryad is bad just falls flat when I take a look at what you've included.  If I were playing GAT against you, you would have very little chance without those Red Blasts.   It's not that Dryad is bad, but that you've loaded more anti-blue disruption into the main so that you can actually win counterwars.

I hope it takes more than 3 Red Blasts to destroy GAT.

Indeed it does; it takes alot more.    I don't think any deck in vintage is capable of "Destroying" GAT when the GAT deck is piloted by a competent GAT player.  You will always have a game on your hands. 

[Midknight]

It doesn't matter if a certain color, only has a few restricted cards. That doesnt mean its the worse color. Look at red, theres only 1 restricted card. But I do agree, white is the weakest color in vintage right now. Blue White Fish, seems to be falling off the face of the earth. Not a single person play that at the last tourament, I was at.

[desolutionist]

You prove my point for me.

You're criticism of Dryad is that it is a limited card, but you acknowledge that the cards you've replaced it with are also limited.

I think they're less limited than Dryad and I'm sure that it isn't even close to optimal.  Look at Jeremy Beaver's list from this tournament: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33808.0  It completely blows mine away; the deck will continue to get better as it exists. (It's competing with a deck that has years of development into it)

[Smmenen]

Dryad is one of the best Storm cards ever printed.   

I wouldn't even run Tendrils over Empty the Warrens, since Empty makes so much more sense in Gush decks anyway.   

[desolutionist]

Dryad is one of the best Storm cards ever printed.

So you'll continue to play it if Gush is restricted?

I wouldn't even run Tendrils over Empty the Warrens, since Empty makes so much more sense in Gush decks anyway.

You're going to have to break that down because that logic is clearly beyond me.

[Cunningbeaver]

I am pretty sure that we can all agree that the deck is explosive enough at its core to be able to support a tendrils kill.

Dryad is a great storm card, but she is storm later, whereas tendrils and etw are storm now.

One of the reasons he might lean towards EtW over tendrils is that a storm of 4(which is fairly easy to attain) nets 8 guys(obv). Which is a 3 turn clock, which would lead to the assumption that he oftens has his dryad on the board for 3+ turns and may at times find it difficult to power her over 4 or 5 or have the neccessary protection to keep the first one to stick.  Not so much to seemingly try and overextend to 10 storm for a kill but to possibly play into a 4-6 storm count generating great card advantage and then forcing an opponent to immediately find an answer.

Just a thought.

[Smmenen]

So, your argument is that if I think that Quirion Dryad is one of the best storm cards ever printed, I should be playing with it even with Gush restricted.    Doesn’t that assume that I would play with the best storm cards ever printed?   Yet many of my decks do not include the very best storm card ever printed: Mind’s Desire.

As to your second point, there are two key constraints on Tendrils in Gush decks.   The first is BB.   The second is the requirement of up to 10 storm to be effective.   Both are real constraints.   Empty the Warrens has neither.   

Tommy Kolowith played GAT without Dryads.  He used a couple of Togs and Empty the Warrens in his GAT deck.  Similarly, Paul Mastriano and our team came to the conclusion that Empty was better than Tendrils.   

The reasons are simple.  First of all, Tendrils is essentially useless without Yawgmoth’s Will.   This is because it is basically only Yawg Will (although Gush + Fastbond chains can sometimes be an exception) are the only way to generate the requisite storm.   In contrast, a bunch of spells in the 4-8 range followed by Empty is a fine plan in a range of matchups, from GAT to Stax.   You don’t need Yawg Will to fuel that.    Second, playing a light mana base using four colors makes every dual land critical.   If you aren’t playing red in GAT or Gush combo, then I think you are making a mistake, but it makes it much easier to cast Tendrils.   You’ll generally want each of your colors before you find a second black land.  A consequence of this is that Tendrils is not easy to cast as an add-on.   That is, if you are playing something like Tommy played, you might not be planning on the Tendrils and when it comes up, you might not be in a position to cast it.    On the other hand, you’ll be able to cast Empty.    I tested a Tendrils in GAT in the place of Tog last week anticipating I might need it in matchups like Oath.   What I discovered was that it was terrible in the GAT mirror for both of the reasons listed above.  I would often have Trop, Volc, Sea, and not be able to cast the Tendrils.   Furthermore, since I could basicailly only get lethal tendrils if I had an enormous lead or was playing Will, it was the definition of Win-More.   In contrast, Empty the Warrens would have been good/great in most if not all of those situations.