Free article: MassMoxBase

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

While I don't get to play Vintage any more, that doesn't keep me from still thinking about it. Sometimes I even have a new idea:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/21251_Eternal_On_The_Other_Side_Of_The_Ocean_MassMoxBase.html

Let me know what you think It definitely feels good to talk about Vintage again for once!

[Phele]

I can't say anything about most of the presented mass mox lists. Belcher and Meandeck Tendrils experts probably will add something, especially how to avoid hostile FoWs, Chalices, Mindbreak Traps, Spheres and Stuff like that, which seem to be the toughest enemies for such kind of decks.

But the last vintage list, you call it True Tezz Combo Control, reminds me a lot of the already existing Turbo Tezz lists, that keep winning and top8ing in several tournaments in Europe and the US. Instead of relying on Seat of Synods and Thoughtcast as a draw engine they use more Sensei Tops and Voltaic Keys which interact perfectely with Grim Monoliths and Tezzeret.

There are so far two successful versions existing: One with less lands and more combo orientaded of John Jones

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=41984.msg582257#new

and one more control orientated like this one from Raul Alonso

http://www.elsantuario.es/foro/index.php/topic,9561.0.html

Both play lots of basic lands and less Moxen then you propose and so seem to be better prepared against Chalice and MUD, the dominator of Vintage, in general. But both share one major point with your lists. They include lots of fast mana accelerators and use them to play out tools to finish the game very quickly. I didn't see any discussion on these kind of deck approaches in this forum yet, so this might be a good starting point. And the lists might also give you some thought food to further develop your mass moxen lists.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Thanks for the links, the lists are definitely interesting. I wasn't aware of something similar to my Tezz-combo suggestion already existing before someone blasted me for stealing Jones's list on scg - now I at least know what decklist he was talking about *g*. Using Top-Key as your draw-engine has obvious synergies with Mox Opal so that seems like a good idea.

[Phele]

I wasn't aware of something similar to my Tezz-combo suggestion already existing before

Which just shows that the concept in principal is promising, if different good players and deck builders all over the world (i saw this kind of deck being played in Manila and Tokio as well) come to similar deck lists.  I am very curious on how this deck will develop.

[DubDub]

While I appreciate your enthusiasm (let's stuff 20 accelerants into THAT deck too!), I think it's important to remember that "the land drop" is one of the few resources available to players (along with their starting hand, drawing one card per turn, their life total, their lack of poison counters (suddenly relevant), their not having been hit by Phage, etc).  One would need a good reason to voluntarily reduce the use one can make of that resource.

Lands are more durable than artifacts in general, the difference between getting an imprinted Chrome Mox Nature's Claim'd, and getting a dual Wasteland'd is immense.  Sure, the Wasteland activation was zero mana, but it also took one of the opponent's land drops.  In comparison you're already down a card due to imprint, and the resources your opponent spent to Claim it (one mana and the right card in hand) are more easily replenished.  There's also almost nothing your opponent can do to render lands useless ahead of time (Choke, Back to Basics, Blood Moon come close), unlike what Chalice of the Void and Null Rod do to accelerants.

This isn't to say that anything you've done is wrong, and certainly a high accelerant count is useful in ways apart from resilience (speed and storm come to mind), but I would encourage people who may start with one of your sample lists to not just take the 'MassMoxBase' as a given.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

I completely agree that the MassMoxBase forces you to sacrifice a lot of resilence that can be gained from having a solid number of landdrops. That's the reson why every deck I presented outside of the Tezz-list at the end was fast combo - a decktype notoriously weak already on the subject of profiting from regular landdrops because it doesn't plan to see more than two turns (and therefore two landdrops) anyway. Those decks also have trouble beating Sphere-effects anyway and additional Moxen seem better at doing that than Dark Rituals. The "good reason" you mention in that case would be "my opponent is dead already so who cares about how many lands I have."
This isn't meant to say your concern isn't fundamentally valid, just that in the decks I suspect will want the MassMoxBase it hopefully shouldn't matter much.

[voltron00x]

Always happy to see more articles about Vintage!  And your participation on this board can only be a good thing as well.

[CHaPuZaS]

During the LMV of February I played something like this, a TurboTezz List mixed with a Tezzcast list (Kind of TurboTezzCast):

1 Blightsteel Colossus
4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
2 Misdirection
4 Thoughtcast
1 Transmute Artifact
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Gifts Ungiven
4 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault
2 Grim Monolith
2 Mox Opal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Island
4 Seat of the Synod
3 Underground Sea
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand

The deck performed well having into account that I've tested the decklist before the first round, losing the round that will have let me draw into Top8.

This weekend I might be playing it again, and I'm about to take out Blightsteel Colossus, given the ridiculous amount of Steel Sabotage being played in Madrid (I played 4 in the Sideboard). The deck is extremely fast, that's for sure. During the last playtestings with Tezzcast, the fourth Mox Opal proved to be just too much.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

@Matt: Thanks

@CHaPuZaS: That list looks sweet - I so want to have Vintage tournaments around here, if only to run something like it! I don't believe not playing Brainstorm can ever be right, though.

[The Atog Lord]

Carsten, thank you for writing this. It is a really interesting article. I put together a couple of the lists and goldfished them -- they can get an impressive number of first and second turn kills. Whether they are viable against a field in which MUD is so popular, I don't know. But I do think that they demonstrate what a deck might look like that has strategic superiority over Ichorid.

CHaPuZaS, I like your list too. Both of the Turbo Tezz lists you have presented, and the lists cite above, indicate that having once fallen out of favor the venerable blue planeswalker is seeing play once again. And while many blue decks include a vault and a key as their win mechanism, these decks seem built around the idea of assembling that combo. Perhaps this is more viable as a strategy now that Steel Sabotage gives blue a much better way to handle that deck's old nemesis, Null Rod. Or perhaps omnipresent Workshop decks have made cards that simply draw and search less effective, and have made it better to invest mana in a card such as Tezzeret, who needs no future mana. I am not sure. But in any case, the lists look very interesting.

[CHaPuZaS]

I don't believe not playing Brainstorm can ever be right, though.

Thanks! Most of the good discoveries I've made during my MTG lifetime were due to testing what others thought to be not good enough. Not including Brainstorm is a though decision I must admit, but you should have into account that for the same amount of mana you'll be drawing two cards intead. Fair enough, I already know how good BS is, but I still prefer not to run it in some of my Tezzcast variants. Again, is a though call.

What do you think about the number of Opals in the deck? Four seems to be just to much for me, have you tested it?

Perhaps this is more viable as a strategy now that Steel Sabotage gives blue a much better way to handle that deck's old nemesis, Null Rod. Or perhaps omnipresent Workshop decks have made cards that simply draw and search less effective.

That's just what I thought when I first saw that card. Perhaps I didn't expected so many people to think the same way, so I packed very happy my brand new Blightsteel Colossus, but too late I discovered that no blue deck was allowing me to attack with it. I don't know if it was just bad luck or that here in Madrid we have a good list of Workshop players. Anyway, Steel Sabotage is superb. An opponent played a Magus of the Unseen and I was able to activate Vault-Key, see how my rival tried to steal my Vault and return it with an Steel Sabotage to my hand to play and activate it again with a second key.

[Daenyth]

I would run 3 thoughtcast / 1 brainstorm before I ran 4/0. Without exception.

[Smmenen]

Carsten,
why didn't you call it "MaxMoxBase" rather than "MassMoxBase"?   Mot juste  

Cool article!

[The Atog Lord]

Max mox would require mox diamond too.

[Shax]

Moxes are as only as good as much as you win the die roll, and what kind of metagame you are expecting. Since moxes get shafted by Null Rod, which doesn't see much play, but some. And Phyrexian Revoker, which is seeing lots of play since it's new.  Spheres make your moxen plan become a creeping moxen plan. Chalice destroys this tactic completely, and artifact bounce and destruction that was mentioned hits them all. Against Fish stuff like Kataki really ruins your day. If you think your going to play lots of Blue decks, and stuff like Dredge then your Moxen are going to be better off than some of the Europe fields that have top 8's split with MUD. Aggro MUD is still pretty bad even if they don't run all the Sphere effects, since they sometimes run Null Rod instead. Steel Sabotoge sounds like a good deal for a Storm 'MassMoxBase' type of deck. If your running the Tezzerett version, get lucky? Your more of a glass cannon anyways, so happy trolling.

Mox Opal's is pretty amazing, so I think it will eventually find more of a niche spot in vintage for list like these. Thats just a hope though.

[ReubenG]

Cool article.  Have you tested this MassMoxBase with Leyline of Anticipation? I would think it would turn the weakness of all mox to a positive, IF you can get the leyline (Powder would be mandatory).

I was toying with the idea of using the leyline to drop moxes and disrupt a players manabase (chalice on 0) or disrupt their hand (thoughtsieze) before they get anything played and pushing the new Tezz2.0 with it. Worked OK, but you had to have business spells with your openers/mulligans as you needed the leyline to start the game. After reading your article, I am thinking that the land may have been the weakness.

I hadn't thought of pushing a deck (other than Dredge) to no land like you are suggesting, but that may work with what I have been brewing better than what I had initially goldfished with lands, I'm going to try this idea with it.  

Thank you for the thoughtstarter!!!

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

@ Rich: Thanks a lot. Praise from one of the formats brightest definitely feels good I suspect something that uses a mass-artifact mana-base but stops short of going to below 12 lands similar to the TurboTezz-list is likely more resiistant to MUD than a heavy-land/basic deck. Having acceleration was always really important in Gifts vs Stax because it allowed you to play the Moxen through his first turn Sphere, than having mana up to act under even two Spheres the turn after. If you only had lands, they'd just continue dropping a Sphere for every land you played and you'd die. As long as you can consistently hit your first 1-2 landdrops (and don't run into Chalice @ 0/Null Rod) mass artifact-mana seems rather good against MUD actually.

@CHaPuZaS: Not playing Ancestral would be something new, too. Not running Brainstorm is nearly as bad imo. Brainstorm is the second best draw-spell ever printed and should be in anything that has blue mana and fetches.

@Smmenycakes (sorry, couldn't resist using Womprax's nick for you ): I'm happy you liked it, another of the "big guys" who likes my thoughts after two years of ignoring Vintage - definitely reassuring
As for MaxMoxBase, I didn't even think of it to be honest. At that point I'd have been forced to go with MaxMoxMix just for the heck of it, though, don't you think? *g*

@Shax: For my thoughts on MassMoxen vs MUD see my answer to Rich. As long as you don't go overboard like I did in some of my sample-lists, MUD should actually be easier to beat with more accel, not harder.

@ReubenG While I see problems (the Leylines are so bad if you draw them but at the same time you're quite reliant on them when on the draw), the concept you suggest blows my mind. I hope you get that to work, it seems utterly beautiful.