Steel City Vault - Discussion

[meadbert]

It is.  Has anyone else tested it yet?  The card I dropped in the list I tested were the second Impulse and Transmute Artifact.  I do not know if that was right, but that is what I tried.  Pact was solid in the early game because you always get a good card, but when you wanted to complete the Vault/Key combo it was a bit sketchier.

[hitman]

If Tainted Pact is functioning as a "super Impulse" and you're finding it awkward to assemble the Time Vault/Voltaic Key combo with Pact, wouldn't it follow to replace another copy of the regular Impulse for a super Impulse and put the Transmute Artifact back in?  That way, if you're trying to assemble a Time Vault combo, you can Pact into the Transmute.  This way you haven't actually lost anything in terms of versatility.  Your mana is just worse.  That could be remedied by cutting the basic Island and replacing it with another fetchland or City of Brass.  You would still have twenty-one blue cards to support Force of Will.  Just a suggestion.

[meadbert]

I have been testing with -1 Impulse, -1 Ancient Grudge and that seems to be going well.
It does not revolutionize the deck or anything, but it does make it slightly better I think.

EDIT:  So one reason this works pretty well is actually digging for Force.  Force is the only 4of in the deck a frequently you are "Impulsing" for Force.  If you do not find a Force you can keep going fairly safely for a while and keep something broken.  The alternative is that you do find Force which is strong in the early game.  So, in the early game this is very powerful.  Late game it gets much weaker.

[hitman]

If you're frequently looking for protection with it, why not just run more protection?  This deck strikes me as an aggressive deck that doesn't really want to interact.  Why not play two Pact of Negations to help ensure your spells resolve after a draw 7?  You already have Force of Will and a Misdirection.  If your goal is to be the aggressor, you don't want to have to pitch blue spells in your hand to extra Misdirections.  To ensure that you've got the mana to be the aggressor, your protection needs to be cheap, or better yet, free.  Adding protection would make the Drain matchups much better. 

When you start cutting Ancient Grudges, you're losing the reason to run this deck in the first place.  The premise was that the format has devolved into Time Vault vs. Null Rod.  Time Vault is clearly more powerful because it runs faster mana than the Null Rod decks and the tutors to win very quickly so we want to run a Time Vault deck.  However, if a Null Rod does hit the table it's very hard to deal with realistically speaking.  In order to combat Null Rod, Ancient Grudges were included because of their extreme efficiency at beating Null Rod.  If you start cutting Ancient Grudge, you're not only missing Drains to prevent Null Rods from seeing play in the first place but fewer cards in the maindeck that can deal with it once it hits.  This deck would become a strictly-worse Tezzeret deck at that point.  Against other Time Vault decks, you lack the disruption to prevent them from killing you and against the Null Rod decks, you've got no Drains and few answers to a resolved Null Rod.

When cutting cards to fit in other ones you want to try, I would keep that in mind so you don't lose relevance in the format.

[LennoxLewis86]

Keeping in Transmute makes Pacting to win a bit better, although still risky. You can find 3 cards to combo out, which is pretty decent. (actual piece, Tinker, Transmute) Not to mention cards like Will and DT, and when Pacting EOT: Vamp for piece or Mystical for Tinker can close the game as well.
Also, Transmute is a neat card in itself so I'd keep it in for Entomb tricks as well as Tinkertricks.

I haven't really thought about how effective Pact would be as a defensive spell. Pacting for FoW is a very strong play, and makes the card even stronger than I initially thought. This deck needs to be the agressor but Pact seems to be much better than Impulse. It can be tutoring when it needs to or it can give you protection in hand instantly when you need it, and it does it pretty consistently. None of your other tutors can do this.

I'd too be a bit hesitant to play with only one Grudge in the deck, given that you need to destroy those Null Rods. Playing lots of Draw7's ''doubles'' the amount of Grudges in your deck it seems. I always managed to run into one, do you still manage to find Grudge when you need it most?

I'll def. start testing the deck again, I'll be trying -2 Impulse, +2 Pact

[Grand Inquisitor]

Pact of Negations

Am I missing something or does PoN not work when the 'combo' is vault/key (i.e. unless you also have 6 early game mana)?

Instead of PoN, even a lonely mana drain could do pretty well.

[LennoxLewis86]

Yes, Pact of Negation doesn't work well with TV/Key.

I wouldn't add extra protection if Tainted Pact can function as the extra protection when it really needs to. It seems to be a better option than Drain because it can also function as more than a potential counterspell. I agree with hitman that SCV is an agressive deck and where FoW's can be used agressively, Drains are defensive counterspells, which are often used to prevent the opponent from resolving their spells rather than defending your own bombs.

Tainted Pact might be a counterspell which costs 1 life, needs blue pitch and may exile x valuable cards (whicj is way worse than Drain in terms of countering spells) but it is more than that. It's a super Impulse and a (risky) tutor as well. Drain is ''just'' Drain and would be dead in hand a lot of the time I think.

[hitman]

Am I missing something or does PoN not work when the 'combo' is vault/key (i.e. unless you also have 6 early game mana)?

Instead of PoN, even a lonely mana drain could do pretty well.

You're not missing anything; I brainfarted.  I thought the upkeep trigger was three mana even though I play with this card in my EDH deck.

[Andreas]

I am just starting to become familiar with the deck, so one specific question to those of you that have been playing it for longer.

In our Metagame U/G/W Fish (also called Noble Fish) has a very strong presence. And besides all the usual Problems Fish can pose for SCV, Noble Fish presents yet another obstacle: Quasali Pridemage. Before boarding he simply has to be dealt with if you want to combo off with Vault/Key, and the only solution in the deck is a single Fire/Ice. Alternatives include welding the destroyed combo piece back in or tinkering for Inkwell, but I was wondering if there are better solutions for this problem. Maybe add a second Fire/Ice to the maideck?

[meadbert]

I would say use Welder to recur KEy/Vault or just Tinker for Leviathan or something.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

In our Metagame U/G/W Fish (also called Noble Fish) has a very strong presence. And besides all the usual Problems Fish can pose for SCV, Noble Fish presents yet another obstacle: Quasali Pridemage. Before boarding he simply has to be dealt with if you want to combo off with Vault/Key, and the only solution in the deck is a single Fire/Ice. Alternatives include welding the destroyed combo piece back in or tinkering for Inkwell, but I was wondering if there are better solutions for this problem. Maybe add a second Fire/Ice to the maideck?

Pyroclasm kills every creature in their deck except Goyfs or Trygons.  Against other decks you can use it to kill Confidants and Welders.  1 might work as a metagame-based utility slot in the maindeck, and/or you could run 2-3 in the sideboard.

Tinker-->Leviathan is great if you can land it early enough (have to watch out for Daze/Spell Pierce), but later in the game you have to worry about them racing it.

[CorwinB]

In our Metagame U/G/W Fish (also called Noble Fish) has a very strong presence. And besides all the usual Problems Fish can pose for SCV, Noble Fish presents yet another obstacle: Quasali Pridemage. Before boarding he simply has to be dealt with if you want to combo off with Vault/Key, and the only solution in the deck is a single Fire/Ice. Alternatives include welding the destroyed combo piece back in or tinkering for Inkwell, but I was wondering if there are better solutions for this problem. Maybe add a second Fire/Ice to the maideck?

Pyroclasm kills every creature in their deck except Goyfs or Trygons.  Against other decks you can use it to kill Confidants and Welders.  1 might work as a metagame-based utility slot in the maindeck, and/or you could run 2-3 in the sideboard.

Tinker-->Leviathan is great if you can land it early enough (have to watch out for Daze/Spell Pierce), but later in the game you have to worry about them racing it.

Wouldn't Volcanic Fallout be a good alternative to Pyroclasm, or is the 1RR casting cost too expensive ? Volcanic Fallout runs at instant speed (good), and is uncounterable (very good). The problem is of course managing to gather 1RR against Fish and its mana denial plan.

[Andreas]

One more question that came up in my testing: How do you play with SCV against regular Tezzeret (with Confidants)? Supposedly this matchup is at least slightly favourable, or isn't it? In particular do you try to play around Mana Drain? Or do you wait until Tezzeret taps down or you have at leats some counter backup (which with only 5 counters in the maindeck might be a long wait).

In my opinion SCV is far more sorcery based than Tezzeret (in particular once Tezeret has managed to land a Confidant), so the waiting game would definitely favour Tezzeret. On the other hand trying to overload Tezzeret's counters would mean walking into Mana Drain, and that extra mana can have quite the unwanted side effect.

[sean1i0]

I can say that in testing I pretty much treated it like I did old GrimLong:  I just threw one bomb after another at Tezz until I had exhausted their counters and then won.  Now, I don't know if that was how I was "supposed" to play it or not, but I do know that it wasn't even a matchup.  It was a joke.  I won at least 80% of my games.  The first game I played with it actually I mulled to an only decent 5 card hand, suffered double Thoughtseize in the first 3 turns + countermagic and still won.  The inevitability that I felt when playing this deck against Tezz was just unreal.  I think a big reason is that, as has been stated earlier in this thread, your draw sevens essentially nullify any card advantage that Tezz has gained.  In other words, it doesn't matter how many turns they've had Dark Confidant out or how many of your spells they've countered, if you can just get one through, your catch up in card advantage and then some, because your deck is better suited to reap the benefits of a draw seven.

[wooder]

I played this deck against human opponents for the first time at GP:Madrid at the Day 2 Vintage event.

The only change I made from Brian's list was this:
- 2 Impulse
+1 Dream Salvage
+1 Empty the Warrens

Not once was I overjoyed to see EtW in my hand, because I was never enroute to a storm win when it showed up. Although, if I'd been shooting for it I probably could have gone that way.

Dream Salvage, on the other hand, is great. Draw it into a Draw7 hand, and it's Ancestral for 7. Twice in the tournament I played it to draw for 14 cards. One game it fueled a T1 win, (draw7 -> draw7 -> DreamSalvage -> Key/Vault/Goblin) and the other was a T2 win.

[mistervader]

My only two changes were ETW and Darkblast for the two Impulses. While Impulse is great, I do randomly get some ETW love because I still play like a storm player. I don't toss all my Moxen onto the table when I can, but only when I need to. It helps me when I suddenly ETW for 5 and just win from there.

[yukizora]

I have a short question about the MUD matchup.
Is it winnable, especially with lodestone golem? I just can't imagine comboing with a sphere on the board...
I'm planning to play this deck once, but this matchup seems to be disturbing in the current metagame, as I don't see any other deck being a real threat for SCV.

[Grand Inquisitor]

The deck has ancient grudge and goblin welder (natural predators of artifacts) and its win condition is artifact based (so as not to get hit by lodestone).  I haven't tested it, but it sounds reasonable.

[mistervader]

Here's another change I recently made, because I did agree with how bad Windfall has been for me...

-2 Impulse
-1 Windfall

+ 1 Empty The Warrens
+ 1 Darkblast
+ 1 Sensei's Divining Top

The top, in testing, has been awesome. It really kept me in the thick of things simply because I had a way to search for bombs, which means I have the luxury of throwing bomb after bomb against a counterwall, or just making for awesome topdecks against hate decks. Furthermore, the Key-Top synergy is just plain love, as we all know by now.

Personally, I'm not too fond of Intuition because it relies on me having Regrowth, Will, or Welder ready at hand for me to capitalize. I know it's a great "tutor" for Darkblast. However, consider the other three cards I crammed in: Darkblast is pretty good against Welders, Selkies, and Bobs, ETW can randomly win games on its own, the Top helps increase my virtual threat density, but the Intuition is a fairly poor tutor on its own, in my opinion. Out of all the cards in the deck, I don't see myself cutting anything else, although I sure wish I could've cut a non-blue card instead in some cases.

Anyways, how do you guys feel about Nature's Claim in lieu of Naturalize? Is Chalice for 1 that big an issue for you?