Ill-Gotten Salvage

[GrandpaBelcher]

One of the neatest things I saw at the Baltimore tournament was a guy playing Dream Salvage combo. His goal was to play Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, or Ill-Gotten Gains, follow up with Dream Salvage and combo out with Tendrils. It was awesome. He had one land (a Gemstone Mine) and full suites of Gambles and Chromatic Spheres, and Summoner's Pact for Elvish Spirit Guide.

He'd had good luck (finishing 2-3 overall, I think) but the deck needed some work. Yangtime and I spent some time (about 4 hours) between the tournament and dinner at the Blue Moon Cafe building and refining a list. The experiment was fun, and the deck did have some dominant and explosive turns. Playing Ill-Gotten Gains and following up with Salvage is re-tar-ded.

The deck can play a lot like Grim Long with the tutors and acceleration.  The main synergy in the deck is to get five mana and play Ill-Gotten Gains and Dream Salvage on turn one so that you have 10 cards to your opponent's three.  You can also use a Legacy-like Ill-Gotten Gains and Infernal Tutor loop to win the game and protect the whole thing with Pact of Negation.

Serious Salvage

4x Ill-Gotten Gains
4x Dream Salvage
3x Infernal Tutor
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
3x Chrome Mox
4x Pact of Negation
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Imperial Seal
1x Grim Tutor
2x Tendrils of Agony
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
1x Sol Ring
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal
5x Moxen
1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Windfall
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Necropotence
1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
1x Chain of Vapor
2x Underground Sea
1x Badlands
1x Swamp
3x Bloodstained Mire
3x Polluted Delta

That's as far as we took it. You're probably better off playing something like Grim Long that doesn't require Pact of Negation to back up, but it can be incredibly fast out of the gates.  I'd like to hear anybody else's comments, especially if the guy from Baltimore who played the inspirational deck is here.

[KoboldsRfun]

I'm glad to see that you liked my deck.  It was basically an idea i had floating around in my head ever since i saw dream salvage.  The version of the deck i used at the Baltimore tournament was pretty much thrown together at 2 AM the night before, but i think its pretty close to the optimal build of it if you want the deck to go off turn one.  I did think about adding cards like infernal tutors and pacts to give the deck a bit more versatility but it seemed to go against the core nature of the deck.  What i meen by that is I looked at wheel/windfall as the main combo starters and the I'll gotten gains as more of a pumped up regrowth with a nifty added synergy.  This way the deck has a much stronger focus on the first turn kill, because if it didn't I think your right that you would be better off playing something like grim long.
   
Here's the deck list that i used at the Baltimore tournament.

Salvage7(Kenny Rogers version)

x4 Elvish Spirit Guide
x4 Simian Spirit Guide
x4 Summoner's Pact
x4 Tinder Wall
x4 Dark Ritual
x1 Cabal Ritual
x4 Manamorphose
x4 Chromatic Sphere
x1 Gemstone Mine
x2 Chrome Mox
x1 Black Lotus
x5 Moxen
x1 Mana Crypt
x1 Lotus Petal
x1 Mana Vault
x1 Ancestral Recall
x1 Vampric Tutor
x1 Imperial Seal
x1 Personal Tutor
x1 Mystical Tutor
x4 Gamble
x1 Regrowth
x1 Demonic Tutor
x1 Yawgmoth's Will
x1 Timetwister
x2 Dream Salvage
x1 Ill-Gotten Gains
x1 Windfall
x1 Wheel of Fortune
x1 Tendrils of Agony

This version of the deck works pretty well but i have been working on it here and there and have had some ideas to make it go off a bit more efficiently.  I'll mostly likely play this new version at the next big vintage tournament that is fairly close to me.

[GrandpaBelcher]

Hey, thanks for joining TMD.  Welcome!

I remember from playing against you that your manabase looked shaky, though I know you must have done just fine with it and I expeienced some of the brokenness.  When the goal just became to play IGG, Wheel, or Windfall with Dream Salvage, having a manabase that made five mana consistently became the goal, and we got it to that point.  Plus, we cut cards like Gamble (which would lose us games 1/4 of the time), Chromatic Sphere (because mana was usually so tight), and Summoners Pact (because we never wanted ESG or Tinder Wall THAT badly).

Then we sort of ended up building IGGy Pop for Vintage.  Ill Gotten Gains is powerful even as a discard spell, and it could be used with Pact of Negation and Infernal Tutor to set up early wins even without Dream Salvage.  One of the biggest problems we found transitioning from a Legacy build was missing the Lion's Eye Diamonds, which are so integral in making mana for the IGG loop.

Still, the deck is fun, fun, fun to play, and your build looks like a real brain teaser, figuring out how to maximize the potential of every card drawn.  I wish there were a local scene around here so that I could try these decks more often.