Ray's Theory of magic: "The way you win in vintage is by making your opponent play Type 2"
Chalice at 0 and mox monkey take away thier moxen, Wasteland removes those "broken" vintage lands... and Mindcensor takes away all those vintage tutors. Basically, stackless stax trys to exploit the weaknesses inharent "broken" vintage cards.
The Opposite Tack: "The way you win in vintage is by playing Type 4"
The basic Idea here is to play tons of mana, and huge bombs that are just one level more-broken than the incrimentailly broken typical vintage cards. In other words, why remove a creature for
when you can steal a creature for
? Ok thats an exageration but the idea is the same.
A blast from the past:
So after Jer and I both did poorly day 1 of SCG-Richmond, we decided to hit the "Business" center of our hotel and do some deck searches. I was looking for something that could be fast, but also could win incrimentally. I search for decks running maindeck Gushes and Empty the warrens. I printed off a few "empty-gush" lists and hit the drawing board. Jer took another approach and search for decks running Chalice of the Void. with the intention of building
Chalice@1.dec. He found a 7/10 list that took 3rd at Waterbury in January ..... 2007. Still though, looking at the list - It had merrit. It was at its center, a shop deck: welders, shops, artifact bombs, and the 4x chalice we were looking for. But It also was able to patch up the area's where Shops typically fail. It had plenty of filtering/card drawing in the form of 4x Thrist, 4x Brainstorm. And It had turn 0 control with 4x Force.
A few things needed to be brought up to current standards (simply because new cards have been printed).
4x Brainstorm -> 4x Ponder
A "no-brainer" (pun intended). The deck runs an impressive ONE shuffle effect. Ponder offers the same advantage as brainstorm, but the added bonus of being able to shuffle when the deck isn't giving you the love. The deck typically runs at sorcery speed, there are no drains or EOT tutors needed, so the sorcery speed is not really a problem.
SB Triskellion + 1x Pentavus -> x1 Triskelavus.
This simply rolls up the function of two dudes into one. The deck ran several Triskellions in the board, and this would free up alittle space in the deck.
The sideboard was totally revamped.
SCG-Day2:
At 2am we finished Jer's deck and played like 1 game, and hit up a Waffle house. He was impressed, and knew he was going to play it. Long story short he missed top-8 but ended in the upper part of top-16. He admitted to loseing at LEAST two games to play mistakes or bad choices, and chalked those losses up to deck in-experiance. The general feeling was that the deck was missing something.
8 Hours to CT:
One of the merrits of the deck was that it could chalice for 2 without hurting itself at all. And while this is a strong play, it's often better to lay a turn 1-2 Chalice at 1. Chalice@1 just hurts so much of the meta now - its almost guarenteed to hit 9+ cards in EVERY deck. The problem was if you didn't have a welder down before chalice, you basically never would... and that hurt consistancy. Thats when I looked to a card that would make all chalices less semetrical: Vexing Shusher. Now you can chalice at ANY value and know that you are only a Shusher away from making chalice one sided. Even with chalice at 2, the shusher himself is uncounterable. Not only does he play well with chalice, he also provides nearly limitless protection for your bombs. And lastly, hes got 2/2 feet... which can be realivant against tempo-aggro, where the deck was weak. No one aspect of Shusher was 'amazing' but all the little niche applications amounted to something greater than sum of it's parts. And now we consider him integral to the inner-workings of the deck.
The List:
4 Workshop
1 Anceint Tomb
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Shivan Reef
4 Volcanic Island
5 Mox
3 Sol, Crypt, Lotus
3 Gilded Lotus
4 Force
4 Ponder
4 Thirst
4 Welder
3 Vexing Shusher
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Tinker
1 Wheel
1 Timetwister
1 Memory Jar
1 Timewalk
1 Ancestral
1 Sundering Titan
1 Memnark
1 Triskelavus
1 Panoptic Mirror / Mind's Desire
1 Trinisphere
1 Mindslaver
////// Sideboard ////
4 Viashino Heratic
4 Tormod's Crypt
1 Platinum Angel
2 Jester's Cap
2 Goblin Bombardment / Greater Gargedon
2 Duplicant / Trike
=======================================================
Not your typical Control Slaver:
With shops in deck, you can really easily hardcast bombs. So you don't always trash big artifacts with Thirst. Often its moxen, extra chalice, or even double lands that get junked so you can hardcast a threat right now.
Not your typical Shop deck:
zero wastelands, Trinisphere only (no balls). The deck makes an effort to get away from stacks typical static control, and hopes to be able to combine accelleration with just enough forces to get by.
Panotic Mirror:
This is a very interesting card. If you know your triggered/activate abilites, you can get some fairly good mileage out of this card ... game 1. In game 2, I always board it out on principal. Because instant speed removal is going to be commonplace for game 2. We are currenly testing Mind's Desire in this slot (and we might just have to test Monkey Cage and Rasputin Dreamweaver just for Travis's sake).
Consistancy:
The deck is suprizingly consistant for a deck running silly robots. It has basically: 25 Mana, 23 "4"-ofs (sorry shusher, your just no good in multiple), and 12 bombs. Ponder smooths out mana-screws or mana-floods, while Thirst does the "heavy lifting," Chalice and Force pitch your opponent's ability to win, and eventually you'll find the bombs you need to win.
The Sideboard:
I think the only real core card is 4 Heratics and 4 Tormod's crypt. You want a crypt in your opening 7 to have a chance against Ichorid. If you can get a welder down for some delicous crypt recursion thats good. Heratic is a great answer to the current metagame. He is a powerhouse against Painter, DeezNaughts, Shop Agro, and MUD! He also gets boarded in to hold the line against small dudes in W/G-tempo, Stax, Goblins, R/G or R/B. He doesn't come in against the big-3 Oath, Gush, and Tendrils.
Tournement Appearances:
The Vexer-less verson hit top-16 at SCG on minimal testing. After Jer and I both did some testing with it, we decided to bring it to Myriad Games. In about a 30-person tournement we BOTH made top-8 I went 4-1-0 in the swiss and Jer made it on breakers at 3-2. We were paired round one as 1st and 8th seed. Then I lost to ELD playing GAT with -substantial- artifact hate in the board (3 Chewers, 3 Grudge, and 2 Needle if I'm not mistaken). ELD had to face the deck 3 times with GAT and has 2 matchs wins and a loss against it, going to 3 game all 3 times. Despite the overall losing record, I feel like the deck was about on even ground with him... Game 3 of top-4 I just needed to Chalice at 1 to seal the deal. I had a slower-turn-3~ish hand which was no match for his recall, sapphire, fastbond hand but It had no force. All of our games were basically decided on how busted our opening grip was, and If I could stick a chalice or not.
On the Slate:
Tolaria West + EE. It's probably the exact opposite of where the deck wants to go, but It might be a better option than Aceint Tomb... the deck ends up dealing itself alot of damage. With Tolaria West you can get Tolarian, Lotus, Ruby, EE, or Chalice... doesn't seem that terrible.
