Question and Answer thread.

[Nirien]

what is a good profile of the Control Slaver deck?  What are the good matchups, what are the bad matchups?  I'm thinking about playing this archtype in 5 color (a format that has a TON to learn from T1).  Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

[chewy01234]

do questions get answered anymore here?? anyway...

i know im dumb but why do many people use squee in dragon?
some people board it. whats the point of having it in your sideboard?

and why do some use 4x necromancy? and some use 1x? why is it in there in the first place? just as another animate dead or because its instant-ness?



Actually, those aren't dumb questions - they just show inexperience.  

1) Why Squee is used in Dragon?
Simply put, they make the deck better.  In the first place, you have staying power.  You can Intuition them up and use Bazaars to just outdraw a control oppponent.  If you randomly draw just one off a Bazaare and you are looking for a combo component like Animate, the Squee will enable you to hold the combo component in hand.  This makes Bazaar an overall better card.  

2) Why use Necromancy.  Here is an example I wrote in an article once and will explain why the deck uses Necromancy:

Here is a great example of that with Psychatog v. Worldgorger Dragon Combo:

Turn One:
Dragon:
Play Bazaar of Baghdad. Draw two cards and discard Worldgorger Dragon, Squee, Goblin Nabob, and Undergound Sea.

Psychatog: Play Underground Sea, pass the turn.

Turn Two:
Dragon:
Return Squee to hand. Play and break Polluted Delta for Underground Sea. Tap Bazaar to draw two cards discarding Squee, Squee, and Compulsion. Play Mox Emerald. Play Animate Dead. In response, Tog plays Brainstorm. Tog then plays Force of Will removing Psychatog from game.

Psychatog:
Play Polluted Delta. Break it for Volcanic Island. Play Mox Pearl. Tog has Intuition, Mana Drain, and Cunning Wish in hand. Generally, Tog plays Intuition for three Accumulated Knowledges and Cunning Wishes for Coffin Purge or Blue Elemental Blast to kill the Dragon Combo.

Turn Three:
Dragon: Return Squees to hand. Play Swamp. Tap Bazaar of Baghdad and draw two cards. Discard Squee, Squee, and Bazaar of Baghdad. Pass the turn.

On Dragon's endstep, Tog could play either Intuition or Cunning Wish. If it did, Dragon could play Necromancy (of which it generally has three in the deck and very likely has seen one by now) and win on the spot. Therefore, Tog has to use its resources inefficiently. It must to sit tight and wait until it has more mana to play it's draw engine and Wish + Purge/Blue Elemental Blast at the same time. Arguably, Tog shouldn't wait. But if it doesn't, it will likely lose on the spot. The Tog player must hope that if it waits, it can drag the game into the midgame where it can make its grab for Accumulated Knowledge with enough mana to stop the Dragon player at the same time.

Turn Four:
Dragon: Return both Squees to hand. Activate Bazaar discarding another Worldgorger Dragon, Squee, and Sliver Queen. Play a Polluted Delta and break it for Underground Sea. Play a Mox Ruby. Dragon has five mana available. Dragon plays Animate Dead - in response, Tog goes to get a Blue Elemental Blast and plays Blast on one of the Animated Dragons with the Comes into Play Ability on the stack. In response, Dragon plays Necromancy on the other Dragon. Dragon has Force of Will backup by this point (having drawn so many cards).

What you can see from this game is that Dragon gained tempo just from the threat of having Necromancy. This meant that Tog had to waste its mana on turn two and play defensively on turn three. Dragon thereby gained a Time Walk. The effect of this was that Tog couldn't play the draw spells it needs to draw more countermagic. Therefore, its game plan was constrained and its viable options dwindled with each turn, while Dragon's game plan grew stronger. By dictating the terms of the game, Dragon won.

Smmenen

[avgotts]

I've just started playing type 1. My college holds Type 1 tournaments every so often, so that people can play whatever they want. I've been playing since 4th edition, so I do have a bunch of the good Vintage cards, but I was wondering what a basic list of powerful Vintage cards to get would be, given budgetary restrictions (I would prefer not to have to buy cards over $20, or at least not many of them.) Just a basic list of good cards for the format would be really great, thanks.

[The Atog Lord]

what is a good profile of the Control Slaver deck?  What are the good matchups, what are the bad matchups?  I'm thinking about playing this archtype in 5 color (a format that has a TON to learn from T1).  Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

You should probably begin by reading my Control Slaver primer. It is a bit old, but the underlying theory behind the deck remains the same.

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15900

See if that helps.

[joe]

I'm currently trying to buy a set of power, and had a few questions about why a couple cards are so expensive.

How many Mox Jets, Timetwisters, Black Lotus' were printed?

When I'm looking on eBay or online stores and stuff, how many Moxes and such are usually on the market at a time?  Looking around online it seems like there are usually only 14 or 15 of each power piece up at one time.

Anyway.... just wondering about the economics behind the game.  Thanks.

-Joe

[orgcandman]

Ok, hopefully people still read this, but I have a question:

Why is it that many CS players are running Jester's Cap? It seems to me that the card is win-more, as if you're resolving it, you almost always would rather be resolving slaver. However, I'm seeing a lot of people post some results, so am I missing something? Is Cap win-more? Is it unneeded? Did I miss the tech train somewhere?

-Aaron

[TylerEss]

Back when TMD had a Suicide Black forum for discussion of bad decks, it was
decided that Miracle Gro, Suicide Black, Sleigh, White Weenie, OSE, and EBA were
all well past their primes, and that discussing such a bad deck meant that one
was obviously not interested in _competitive_ Vintage. EBA in particular keeps
"bouncing back", as it were, and posting T8 berths every once in a while.

Is this an issue of the deck not really being that bad, just having bad
matchups, and so only being good in certain metas, or is it just that there's
a dearth of playskill in the T1 player pool, and so a good player will always
rise to the top, no matter what they play?

(Obviously this is a subjective question, and I'm not looking for an answer so
much as sound speculation, for the fun of it.)

[monSt4r]

I'm haveing problems decideding what to side out versus
Keeper/Bus
TOG
Madness
WelderMUD

Thanks
steve

This is something worthy of beginning a new topic in the open t1 forum.
- Kowal[/color]

I tried that, but failed
I know I could have writen it better, but I did my best...

[cryolyte]

I have been playing at a small tournament every week for several months now. It is an unlimited proxy environment, so I have used my experiences to play different types of decks and learn different playstyles. I have accumulated all the cards I need to play any tier one deck and some obscure things, like EBA, SuiBlack, and 5tinker. So cards aren't an issue. My question is: Given this metagame, what deck would you play to have an edge at winning:

Dragon (witness kill)
Oath
2 TPS
2 Bird Shit
Tog
2 CS
Goblin/Fish Sligh thing
FCG
SuiBlack (metagamed, this thing has won several times)
Belcher
Sensei
Once in a great while a workshop deck will appear.

Thanks for any help.

cryolyte

[SpikeyMikey]

I don't play Vintage any more.  Haven't played a single T1 game since the T1 side at Worlds in Frisco.  So I'm not even a little bit up on what's what, and while I've spent a little time reviewing threads here, Vintage is the kind of format where hands on experience is absolutely necessary when it comes to deck construction and metagame theory.  Recently, I've been toying with the idea of running something similar to Angry Ghoul, as there was a discussion(and isn't there always) about cards that could possibly be unbanned in Legacy, and Hermit Druid came up.  I put a 1.5 version of the deck together(with of course, the 4 currently banned Hermits) using a SotF engine, and it was about as solid and consistant as you could ask a combo deck to be.  So I've been thinking about putting the deck together for T1, because I sold off all my power about a year and a half ago, and can't really play anything that's not strictly budget, or fits in a 5 proxy.  I've roughed up a decklist for it, and again, it's remarkably consistant, but obviously much slower than most T1 decks are.  It's usually fishing around turn 3 or 4, depending on how much acceleration you see.  You can fish faster, but doing so requires going sans disruption, and the deck is currently packing 4 Duress, 4 Cabal Therapy(with plenty of cheap critters to flash it with), and 4 Xantid Swarm.  My question is:  Is it worth pursuing something that packs this much disruption and works this consistantly, but isn't going to combo out until turn 3 or 4 every game?