Having just finished the excellent Vintage Champs last weekend, it's fresh on my mind and I'd like to reflect a bit on it.
A little background, I had stopped playing Magic for a number of years, my last vintage tournament was a Waterbury event sometime in the 2007 or 2008 era. Some of you may remember me as the "Crashtest" from the Starcity Games forum "What's the pimpest deck you've ever seen" mega thread that went on for a few years.
This June, I decided I wanted to come back and play some vintage. I did a little bit of research and read a lot online as to what the top decks where - and a lot of strategies and cards had changed since 2008. Nowadays, one could go on youtube and watch actual matches - something not available back then.
I decided I would play in the NYSE tournament, and decided on Oath. I had played Oath at my last waterbury event and had done well with it almost 7-8 years prior. Almost making top 8, losing in the final round to end up 6-2 if memory serves correctly.
I played a couple of local events in the NY/NJ/PA area, and took "Fenton Oath" to NYSE. At that event, the metagame had seemed to really be against Oath - and I did not do so well with it.
My next focus was to play the Eternal Champs, as I had never done so. I switched my deck up - and liked the delver/mentor deck that Stephen Menendian had played at NYSE.
So after playing it at various local events, I was happy with it. I had just come back from not playing a long time - so I needed some practice to get my skills and knowledge of the format back up, so I focused on this one deck without tweaking too much of the main deck.
Before I talk about the tournament, I'd like to say I'd had so much fun the last few weeks/months playing Vintage again. The community is so friendly - I have enjoyed myself meeting various new people and talking about magic and strategies. It's a great community and welcoming.
Here is the list I played:
Planeswalker (2)
2 Dack Fayden
Creature (7)
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Monastery Mentor
Sorcery (8)
4 Preordain
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Time Walk
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll
Instant (25)
4 Force of Will
4 Gush
3 Dig Through Time
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
3 Mental Misstep
2 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
1 Misdirection
1 Mystical Tutor
3 Swords to Plowshares
Artifact (3)
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl (Black Lotus replacement)
Land (15)
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
1 Strip Mine
1 Island
60 Cards
Sideboard (15)
4 Ingot Chewer
2 Shattering Spree
2 Sudden Shock
1 Wear // Tear
3 Containment Priest
3 Grafdigger's Cage
Pretty standard list - no changes to the main deck as I think it was nicely built. If you notice, I have a Pearl in place of a Black Lotus in there - I have a graded Alpha Lotus and did not want to crack the case just to play with it since no proxies were allowed. I almost considered picking up an unlimited one to play with, but decided against it last minute. Lotus is amazing, so I am sure the deck would have been a bit better with it in it.
As you can see, the sideboard is pretty heavily loaded against shops and dredge. I played in the Vintage champ trials the day before - and in 7 rounds, I played against exclusively blue decks, no shops or dredge. I was 4-1-1 until losing to Mystic Remora/Mentor in the last round.
During Vintage champs - another 10 rounds - I amazingly was able to avoid playing against any shops deck at all once again, and played against only 1 dredge deck. I ended up going 7-2-1.
in 17 rounds of both events, I played vs 1 dredge deck, and the rest pretty much were all blue! (Minus 1 hate bears deck) A mix of oath, bomberman variants, pyromancer/gush, and time vault/key decks.
Some impressions of the deck:
This deck seems to do very well against other blue decks, with its main deck Pyroblasts, Flusterstorms, and Misdirection. It felt like I was able to counter the important spells while putting them on a faster clock, most games I won with Mentor getting a big number of tokens and stacking damage with prowess. Turn 1 Delver went the distance a few times as well.
Had I faced Shops decks - I am sure I would have run into trouble. I find it a particularly bad matchup for this deck, because it has a low mana curve and ratio, therefore making it very vulnerable to Trinisphere, wasteland, sphere effects, etc. Post sideboard, I would have like to run Pulverize instead of shattering spree, plus adding a basic mountain. Luckily I did not have to face any last weekend.
Interestingly enough - both of my loses at the Vintage Champs came to Merfolk decks. One was tough - first turn True-Name Nemesis off a Lotus, and game 2 strip mine and wasteland, while the other Merfolk matchup I was not able to outrace. Hence why I had Sudden Shocks in the sibeboard, very useful card in dealing with a variety of creature threats.
I ended up 29th, which was enough for a top 32 prize - which was cool. Day before I made the cut for the top 24 prize at the Trials, so it was nice getting a little something!
Overall, I think this is a great deck - and with a few more sideboard tweaks, should do well. It's a blast to play, when you start stacking Mentor tokens off chaining cheap draw spells, it's a lot of fun.
The event was run very well, in a beautiful location with a lot of easy access to hotels and food. I had Mark Poole alter an Alpha Island for me with the Ancestral mage, came out nice - and a cool memento for me to remember Vintage Champs 2015.
-Thiago
