Single Card Discussion : Sunforger

[warble]

First, the card:

Sunforger - Equipment (3)

Equipped creature gets +4/+0. RW , Unattach Sunforger: Search your library for a red or white instant card with converted mana cost 4 or less and play that card without paying its mana cost. Then shuffle your library. Equip 3

Discussion:

The only drawback to this card, aside from sucking all the available mana that r/w will have(and null rod), seems to be the fact that you actually play the card you search for instead of placing a copy on the stack.  In addition to the color mix, I believe this card is virtually unplayable, but being stubborn I would like to see if I can find a use for this card.  The solution?

Play this card in a fully mana-accelerated R/W deck.  That's right, I want to know if Sunforger in fully accelerated red/white can succeed.  I can't use the term fully powered because that would imply ancestral and walk, and I do not believe red/white/blue without goblin welder is a good idea...in fact I think it's a bad idea.  And if you play goblin welder there is a much larger pool of artifacts I would prefer to this one.

Advantages:

1) Tutor power.  Feasibly, sunforger with full mana acceleration can be utilized to play an instant on turn 3.  Prior to that turn I do not believe it can come into play.  However, the fact that there is recursive tutor power for red/white is amazing to me.  It's a new concept, and one that is intensely scary if the deck Sunforger was played in contained, for example:

4 Rack and Ruin
4 Disenchant
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Lava Dart

2) Reusability.  The tutor + free casting cost of sunforger doesn't go away.  Once you resolve sunforger with a few creatures you get answers every turn from now to infinity (ok now I'm just blatantly quoting a rap song).

3) Damage.  White/Red does not contain prison elements.  What it does contain is damage, utility creatures that are amazing, and answers to everything (everything) under the sun.  The fact that those answers are instants make the card playable, and the fact that Sunforger helps to provide a three-turn clock once you don't need any more answers is amazing.

Disadvantages:

1) Mana.  Red/White typically wants more disruption cards and less fast mana.  The fact that you have a draw engine could be enough to offset this mana sink, but potentially resolving your mana and having all your Sunforgers countered is..the suck.

2) No Protection.  Again, your deck needs a plan if sunforger cannot resolve.  Can you feasibly succeed?  If you drop sunforger with acceleration before drain mana is up, good, but what happens if that doesn't happen or it gets forced?  What's the backup?

3) Null Rod.  Quite simply, decks with mana acceleration fear null rod and will almost always counter it.  With a large amount of artifact hate it should be simple to take null rod out even if it resolves, but...it's still a disadvantage...

4) It's Equipment.  If your creatures all die, the card is useless.  How much of a drawback is this?  Let's leave that up to experienced fish/aggro players to tell me because I just don't know.

My opinion:

I believe Sunforger will see some limited play in fish decks, but will not be experimented in conjunction with the fast mana that it requires.  As a result, I will only be playtesting Sunforger in fully mana-accelerated decks.  I believe it is a great hate card, and a well constructed aggro/disruption base using red and white will have a winning percentage against stax, cs, gifts, and zombies.  I do not believe that the same deck can win game 1 consistently against stax and fish, but that is a concession I would be willing to take.

My questions:

Why does everyone hate Sunforger?  Is it the mana, the color mix required, the fact that null rod shuts it down, or the fact that creatures are required to make it work?  If this card was a tutor+free cast for RW3 would it be playable?

Or is it just better to have blue instants than this card and a deck full of answers.  Is the deck that's required for this card really just an antiquated toolbox deck that has no hope of surviving in the current environment because it's just too reactive and just not broken enough?

Thanks, look forward to your responses.

Edit: Added Decklist

8 SoloMoxenCrypt
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Sunforger

4 Plateau
3 Flooded Strand
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Plains
2 Mountains

3 Hearth Kami
4 Goblin Welder
4 Grim Lavamancer
2 Gorilla Shaman

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Rack and Ruin
4 Disenchant
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Lightning Bolt
2 Lava Dart
1 Orim's Chant

SB:
4 ReB
3 orim's chant
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Price of Progress

[Moxlotus]

All of the reasons you listed why it may not be good are completely correct.  That is why it isn't played.  There are better cards to play.

[AmbivalentDuck]

The fact that it requires 8 mana to do anything useful is what kills it.  Sword R/U only requires 5 mana to cause a more immediate and significant swing, and it doesn't see play.  Even if you look through recent Fish builds, Jitte has been moving to the background because it's too slow at 4 mana.

[forests failed you]

I saw this card getting played a little bit in extended.  The most savage thing I saw it do was go and get

Absorb.

[Khahan]

Creatures to use with it:
True Believer
gorilla shaman
goblin vandals
icatian javelineers
blistering firecat??

instants it can search
[card]boro fury shield[/card]: = nasty vs colossus
lightning bolt
stps
R&R
abeyance
orims chant
REB
disenchant
argivian find
bathe in light (in response to dark blast for example)
blind with anger
boil
boil
chastise
debt of loyalty
devouring light
flame burst
gilded light
Price of progress
pulse of the forge
ray of revelation
scour


Obviously some are better suited than others. But a quick glance over the list of instants, those are the ones that seem somewhat useful to very useful.

You could make it a control beatdown, using your weenies to deal combat damage and other cards to slow down/shut down your opponent (gilded light, scour, blind with anger, grab the reins, boil, ray of revelation, chant, abeyance) or you could go the burn route and just search out price of progress, pulse of the forge and flame bursts.

I don't think either one offers a tier 1 or 2 deck, but its certainly worth looking at the concept, like you said.

[warble]

Like you stated, I don't believe the burn route is extremely effective, but games 2 and 3 you have such versatility tweaking your deck that you could go burn or disruption pretty effectively.  That being said, the sideboard is going to be key to making this deck work.  It'll probably be a buttload of instants...

Boil versus a blue deck is awesome.  The reason I believe in this card is simply that; you get nuclear power with red/white that you didn't have without blue or black before.  Nuclear power is tutors and going around casting cost.  I mean, you're really just paying 1 mana for the tutor and then paying the casting cost of the spell.  If you're stuck at low mana you can two-turn it but that's really a last-resort.

Thank you SO much for providing a list of the cards that are available to really tweak the deck, as I'm currently busy managing and interviewing for a CTO position I really don't have a lot of time.  I really love innovation and the argivian find is sweet as well as all those graveyard-happy cards.  It's post-sideboard that I think the deck can really do some damage, as I mention in the initial post.  Sure, game 1 we will have some almost-auto-scoops, but games 2 and 3 we're going to have so much brokenness that it will likely be worth the game 1 loss.  And having bad matchups is just a part of type 1 (as we all know, we just try to minimize that expectation).

I think you bring up a great example of why it's important to have rack and ruin x 4 maindeck.  If you don't have those creatures, and you don't have their casting costs down LOW, you can't expect to play through chalice at 1 or 2.  Making sure there is no one-card answer to your deck is key because we all know TPS and Dragon have that succeptability, and the answer to that is the answer to how to make those decks work.  Great TPS and Dragon players know how to work their vulnerabilities such that they are minimized, and the small portion of the game that they are vulnerable is therefore extremely hard to identify.

With regards to Fire/Ice and other equips, I believe the sunforger will be typically used in a non-combat sense as opposed to the other equipments that actually demand some combat damage, etc.  The ability is an instant, and does not demand you lose your creature for it, so it's far different from the other equips brought up.  I search for rack and ruin and use it, and all you get to do is take it, your sundering titan doesn't kill my equip and I'm going to rack and ruin the next 3 turns.  Take THAT, workshop deck.  It's the advantage over the Stax matchup and Gifts/CS that I really want to emphasize.  Playing consistent threats is key, and IF you can resolve sunforger it's going to be that threat.

However, we all know getting a 3-cost artifact out without mishra's workshop is pretty tough.  It is by no means beyong the power of a fully accelerated deck, however, and this is what I want to emphasize.  It's the acceleration that makes the card playable.

It's not 8 mana, it's my expectation as I stated earlier that you need two turns to use this.  I'm expecting to play it on turn 2 and use the artifact on turn 3 on average.  This would be the same turn as a mindslaver activation, however it may be that emptying your hand on turns 2 and 3 and using on turn 4/5 is the typical play.  Since we have swords and other early conditional answers it's almost always going to be optimal to utilize those tools prior to the sunforger.  Again, I can't emphasize enough how effective the deck will be against stax, gifts and cs.  I'm in the northeast, and I play towards my metagame.

[kirdape3]

Somehow I think that the existence of Mana Drain invalidates this card, as they can either just Drain the equipment itself or the instant that you go and find.  Draining something of that cost seems awfully good.

[ashiXIII]

Creatures to use with it:
True Believer
gorilla shaman
goblin vandals
icatian javelineers
blistering firecat??

instants it can search
[card]boro fury shield[/card]: = nasty vs colossus
lightning bolt
stps
R&R
abeyance
orims chant
REB
disenchant
argivian find
bathe in light (in response to dark blast for example)
blind with anger
boil
boil
chastise
debt of loyalty
devouring light
flame burst
gilded light
Price of progress
pulse of the forge
ray of revelation
scour


Obviously some are better suited than others. But a quick glance over the list of instants, those are the ones that seem somewhat useful to very useful.

You could make it a control beatdown, using your weenies to deal combat damage and other cards to slow down/shut down your opponent (gilded light, scour, blind with anger, grab the reins, boil, ray of revelation, chant, abeyance) or you could go the burn route and just search out price of progress, pulse of the forge and flame bursts.

I don't think either one offers a tier 1 or 2 deck, but its certainly worth looking at the concept, like you said.

Boros Fury-Shield doesn't work if you get it with Sunforger. You have to pay the R to get it to do what you want it to, and getting with Sunforger only prevents the damage from one source.

[warble]

Boros Fury-Shield doesn't work if you get it with Sunforger. You have to pay the R to get it to do what you want it to, and getting with Sunforger only prevents the damage from one source.

Well, he's specifically talking about a card that answers Colossus.  I think that the maindecked 4x Swords to Plowshares will come in WAY more handily.  Anyway, that's what he was talking about...but yes you're right it's really strictly inferior to STP.  But I think every creature control in the game is as well.

It's true that drain is awfully good but keep in mind that it's an instant, and draining instants is almost always inferior.  You get to use your sun twice to their 1 drain, so you'll still be able to resolve the instant you want at least once (although yes combo will still have a ball with the drain mana).  It's this "bomb aspect" that I love.  I run tormod's crypt for a single uncounterable answer to yawgwill, why would I even think twice about running searches for swords to plowshares?

I mention earlier that mana drain and the fact that you can counter the tutored card is the first drawback.  It's actually the only reason I am not running this red/white deck currently.  I can't figure out how to get around that one MAJOR flaw.  You don't get it directly on the stack and it makes me cry.

[ashiXIII]

It seems like you're running a lot of four-ofs where you don't have to. Sunforger fetches out the card you need, so you only need to run 1 copy of the more situational cards. 4 Rack and Ruin, for example, seems like way too much (maindeck, at least) Also, I would suggest running Absorb if you have Sunforger. it's pretty nuts. You might want to search Gatherer for Red/White instants that cost 4 or less, because there's probably a lot of good stuff that no one would ever think about, because of other superior options when you're actually paying to play the card.

[Khahan]

Boros Fury-Shield doesn't work if you get it with Sunforger. You have to pay the R to get it to do what you want it to, and getting with Sunforger only prevents the damage from one source.

Duh, of course. Thank you for pointing that out. That's not the kind of detail I usually miss.

Anyway, that's what he was talking about...but yes you're right it's really strictly inferior to STP.  But I think every creature control in the game is as well.

Perhaps in this deck where CC isn't as relevant, something like [card]chastise[/card] could see some  use. Maybe 2 STPS/1 chastise.  You certainly wouldn't want it in your hand.

Also, the point about the 4 ofs is pretty good. This deck can tutor up an answer at a moments notice. Since an answer often spells the doom of many decks, you only need or two direct answers.

4x absorb
4x REB
That's 8 counterspells to combat 4x drain, 4x FoW, though they are not quite as effective.
But then you also have gilded light which can act as a counterspell.

You also have burnout and pyroblast as hard counters for the counterwar.

[Limbo]

So if I understand this correctly, you are going to play an artifact that takes loads of mana to cast and activate (and a creature to combine with it to boot) just so you can get some card-advantage by tutoring up a card that you can't cast without said artifact. And once you have played that card, you once again have to spend a boatload of mana to pull of the trick again? Not too mention that you will play sub-optimal cards to begin with, just so you can abuse the artifact? Oh man, I'd love to play against this deck in a tournament.

More constructive criticism : Sunforger should be decent in the late-game (the disadvantages are for the early game, the advantages start counting in the late game), but I am afraid you won't reach the late game with this kind of deck

[ashiXIII]

So if I understand this correctly, you are going to play an artifact that takes loads of mana to cast and activate (and a creature to combine with it to boot) just so you can get some card-advantage by tutoring up a card that you can't cast without said artifact. And once you have played that card, you once again have to spend a boatload of mana to pull of the trick again? Not too mention that you will play sub-optimal cards to begin with, just so you can abuse the artifact? Oh man, I'd love to play against this deck in a tournament.

More constructive criticism : Sunforger should be decent in the late-game (the disadvantages are for the early game, the advantages start counting in the late game), but I am afraid you won't reach the late game with this kind of deck

As bad as this deck might be, I'm sure it would be a blast to play with.

[Limbo]

As bad as this deck might be, I'm sure it would be a blast to play with.

In casual : yes.

In tournaments : No.

As in tournaments you would probably be dead and buried before you can do something qualifying as "a blast"...

[lordmayhem]

This could indeed be a fun casual deck. Since the equip cost is what really brings this equipment down, why not try something as random as an Auriok Steelshaper over unnecessary dedication to excessive acceleration?

Oh and rather than Absorb, why not Dromar's (Rakso's) Charm? Acts as removal as well as a counter. Flexible.

[ashiXIII]

This could indeed be a fun casual deck. Since the equip cost is what really brings this equipment down, why not try something as random as an Auriok Steelshaper over unnecessary dedication to excessive acceleration?

Oh and rather than Absorb, why not Dromar's (Rakso's) Charm? Acts as removal as well as a counter. Flexible.

Yeah. As fun as this deck might be, I can't see anyone thinking it's really competitive. Maybe this should be moved to the casual forum?

P.S. Great insight on Dromar's Charm. That card is incredibly flexible. I'd make the comment about not being able to cast it when you draw it, but I doubt you're casting Absorb anyway. Maybe this deck should run a 5-color manabase, to make the most of the powerful multi-colored instants?

[warble]

Well, as I'm getting ripped on for people not thinking it can be competitive, I won't object if this gets moved to casual.  However, the real reason it's here is that it will be a fully accelerated deck, so decks that run solomoxencrypt typically don't have terrible tournament experiences.  This deck will go around casting/activation cost quite easily, so all this "dude it's too slow" should disappear once I get a decklist up.  I have experience with acceleration and red/white with acceleration and a load of two-for-one's is pretty darn fast at getting those answers/threats out.  As one example I'll name hearth kami, a mediocre creature but one that, with mana out there, becomes a significant threat.  That will be a typical turn 1 drop with this deck, making it far different than other red/white decks out there.  That means it's one of the weaker turn 1 plays with this deck.

Just wait until my next big meeting and I'll get that decklist together.  Because of the acceleration I get a far different early game disruption than other red/white decks such as tmwa.  While that deck seeks to answer everything with it's mana and then the mana goes beatdown on you, there isn't a real point in trying to out-race your opponent with sunforger as you simply can't get out-answered.  Especially when you can kill all opposing acceleration, and late you'll outrace everyone and their momma.  I do think yawgwill is a significant threat to this deck's objective, as early disruption that gets replayed basically says "game" to your face.  That being stated, to beat the gifts and cs matchups I expect to be able to answer yawgmoth's will effectively.  Again, I expect the real hangup is mana drain.  Even with sunforger resolved the opposing deck can accelerate into their spells via mana drain mana from sunforger activations.  Typically you're only going to need this once or twice with a mana drain deck, as their strategy is dedicated to making that mana drain lethal and it almost always works.

So if I understand this correctly, you are going to play an artifact that takes loads of mana to cast and activate (and a creature to combine with it to boot) just so you can get some card-advantage by tutoring up a card that you can't cast without said artifact. And once you have played that card, you once again have to spend a boatload of mana to pull of the trick again? Not too mention that you will play sub-optimal cards to begin with, just so you can abuse the artifact? Oh man, I'd love to play against this deck in a tournament.

Hey Limbo, specifically what would you take to a tournament to really "abuse" the deck that plays sunforger?  I'm curious, as the bad matchups are really fish and other early disruption decks (especially those that run null rod + force of will).  Of course, if you're a dedicated fish player then it'll be games 2 and 3 I seek to remove all your creatures are belong to me.  Game 1 you have a great matchup as the deck has to decide between winning control and winning aggro...

I think it's interesting insight using mixed color cards that you cannot cast, but the fact that you would want to run scroll rack is pretty inferior in my mind.  I believe it would probably be strictly better to, at that point, run fish with blue and use counters and force of will to do that dirty work.  They'll come out earlier, without necessitating another card, and force of will is about as broken a card as you can include in your vintage deck.  Card disadvantage for a free counter...word.  The cost of using the equip is actually the cost of hardcasting force of will...and if it's equipped the activation cost is the same of mana drain.  Hmm, this gets interesting . . . it's like the mirror match from hell.

[Harlequin]

The deck may look ok on paper.  But I think if you take a look at some of the "flow" of the deck.  There are some challenges that perhaps you have not seen yet.

Firstly, the deck seems to have have what I would call "The Godhand Syndrom." You quite correct in that it is extremely easy for a typical type 1 deck to power our 5 mana on the first few turns ... look at metalworker.  In the right deck it's possible for Shop-> worker go, tap shop + worker for 17 mana!!  So you are right, mana accelleration is extremely easy to accomplish in type 1.  But this deck seems needs too many puzzle pieces to make this deck work.  in your opening hand you need some mana acceleration, one creature, and a sunforger... and if you've got all that then your golden.  But your deck has little to no search, draw, or selection.  So drawing randomly into multiple accelleration cards, a creature, and a forger will maybe happen one in ten games... if your lucky.  Now throw in the fact that your opponent can counter spells before they've even played a land, and your deck starts to fall appart.  Falling back on creature beats + actually casting your forger spells is an ok plan B, but if your going for that win you're going to end up haveing those accelleration cards clogging up your draws.  The deck seems to have no inharrent syergy with itself other than "This card can be searched for by sunforger."  Try not to evaluate a deck's quality based on the best hand it can draw.

Secondly, your baseing a deck on a concept that very rarely works in type 1.  This concept is "Short term loss, for longterm gain"  There are only a few cards in type 1 that fall into this catagory that actually work.  The biggest example of this is Smoke Stacks or Oath of Druids, and welder to a lesser extent.  Smoke stacks doesnt do anything for a full two turns... so in theory it has a short term loss, but then is goes crazy in the late game, and ultimately has an enormous synergy with the deck that houses it.  Welder is such a small loss of tempo (one red mana is hardly a loss of tempo), for such a ridiculously broken ability that it almost doesn't count.  With Oath, again you must wait full swing before you can trigger oath, but trigger oath will win you the game in a matter of turns.
Many other cards have been tried and failed.  The best example of this is Isochronic scepter.  A fantastic deck in concept,  Drain on a stick, AK on a stick, the dreaded Orim's on a stick, dare I say Ancestral on a stick...  The list goes on an on of fantatic cards that you can use with Isocronic scepter.  The problem is when you play the scepter you loose both 2 mana and a card from hand, to gain a long term advantage.  Also with scepter your adding vaunerablity (null rod, Pithing needle, any artifact destruction, any bounce spell) AND the copy can still be countered (even with stifle!!).  Every deck has a way to bone Iscocronic Scepter.  scepter walks a thin line between being awsome and totally loosing you the game.  It has been wieghed, it has been measured, and it has been found lacking in a vintage setting.
And Sunforger is an ultra-crazy version of Isochronic scepter.  True it doesnt cost any card disadvantage...it infact creates card advantage... But at the same time your adding in yet another linch pin on which you can "deactivate" the sunforger.  namely small creatures.  Darkblast, Lavadart, Fire/Ice, Pyroclasm, sword to plow ... All new challengers for sunforger to work around. 

Type 1 has acelleration, but that is not type 1's defining quality.  If I had to pick ONE quality that Type 1 decks all must have - I would pick: Efficency.  Instant gradification for a spell resolving almost defines the format.  Look at a deck like Gifts or other Combo decks.  Every spell (with the arguable acception of Imperial Seal, and timevault) will swing the game in your favor the moment it resolves. 

Decks like stax have time on thier side.  smokes stacks and Welder have plenty of time to become threatening because tanglewire, Ubamask, wasteland, Null rod, Chalice, and spheres are holding the game's tempo at a simmer.

Oath is packing duress and plenty of countermagic to protect the oath for the 3 or 4 turns required for your angles win the game.  Also Oath only costs 2 mana, so the short term loss can be easily brushed off on turn 1 or 2 (where generally few spells of major conciquence will be played).  Much better than looseing tempo on say turn 3 or 4 or later... where the game will be won or lost.


The deck you propose has no way to control or commpensate for the relatively large loss of tempo you will experiance on turn 3 or 4.  Then it has a relatively weak coup-de-gras.. in that you must activeate the sunforger several times over several turns to actually win the game.

Have I played the deck? No.  Do I know everything about magic? No.  Do I know even HALF of what really pro vintage players know? Probably not.  But I have built my fair share of "Almost competative" Vintage decks.  Most of them look AWSOME on paper, Own 90% of my test matches on MWS ... but when I bring them to big tournements I find that I'm always a turn late or a mana short of bringing the deck to top 8.  Many of the problems inharent in the deck's I've built are extremely difficult to pin-point. 

Here is what you need to do.  Proxy up the deck, Sleave it up, get a pad of paper out and play 20 games with the deck, assumeing that your opponent plays NO spells.   If you have interactive cards like Price of Progress or Brow Beat.  Build some rules into your testing like: if my opponent has 8 life or more, he lets brow beats deal damage.  Or each turn I'll flip a coin to see if my opponent plays a non-basic land.
Record how many turns it takes you to deal 20 damage with your deck with each of the 20 games.  Then count up all your 3rd turn kills, your 4th turn kills, etc etc etc... then build your decks "win on turn X curve."  If you have something that looks like:
turn - %
1 - 5%
2 - 15%
3 - 45%
4 - 20%
5 - 10%
6+ - 5%

Then you have a deck that is on-par with a standard vintage combo style deck.  If your skewed out in the turn 5-10 range...then perhapse your deck is not vintage calibur.

A final note about posting:
There's no shame in posting an Almost Competative deck in the improvement forum.  Who knows, someone might have a idea that will push your original concept into the "new" competative archetype.  Look at the original builds of T1 Ichorid.  There has been a massive effort, spanning multiple teams, to streamline that deck from its orginal "sub-competative" form into the tournement winning form of the day.  Similarly there is no shame in addmiting that a deck you've designed perhapse is better played in casual. 

[warble]

Then count up all your 3rd turn kills, your 4th turn kills, etc etc etc... then build your decks "win on turn X curve."  Then you have a deck that is on-par with a standard vintage combo style deck.

Hi, sorry this is not a combo deck this is a disruption-hate style deck.  It doesn't seek to win prior to turn 6 similar to a fish deck, but has different plays from daze, stifle, force of will.  Here's a decklist I put together on no sleep at my meeting this morning.  Okay I slept a little but between my 11pm meeting with my India team and my 8am meeting and 2 hours of commute I didn't get much.:

8 SoloMoxenCrypt
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Sunforger

4 Plateau
3 Flooded Strand
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Plains
2 Mountains

3 Hearth Kami
4 Goblin Welder
4 Grim Lavamancer
2 Gorilla Shaman

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Rack and Ruin
4 Disenchant
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Lightning Bolt
2 Lava Dart
1 Orim's Chant

SB:
4 ReB
3 orim's chant
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Price of Progress

What's Good:
The workshop / artifact heavy matchup game 1 is easy.  It's child's play.  Welder and artifacts in the graveyard is game.  Trinisphere turn 1 pwns because we don't run force, but that is the same weakness that any non-blue deck suffers.  Just hope to draw fetches and basics as we can destroy that trini with most opening hands.  Similarly, the aggro matchup game 1 is almost impossible.  Game 2 against aggro we have lightning bolt and orim's chant coming in, leaving artifact hate in for their artifacts/equips and basically removing YawgWill hate.  Against the control matchup we have ReB and Price of Progress to accelerate, and 2 more tormod's crypts for the yawgwill.  As I state, there is one card I fear in vintage above all else. 

What needs work:
The weakest matchup will be against a combo deck, and typically I would employ chalice of the void at 0 or 1.  Unfortunately, the gameplan that I have here is really to use artifact hate as mana denial and try to out-race the deck by boarding in the bolts and price of progress, and blasting the brainstorms/intuitions.  Bargain and Necro versus burn is decent, but I believe monoblack tendrils will pwn this deck pretty hard no matter what I do.  Unless I have 4 Chalice and draw two of them it's not going to work out for this deck.  Any suggestions would be great.  I'm seriously considering running 4x Chalice of the Void maindeck, but I can't deny the power of tormod's crypt.

Sorry for the decklist, I know this is a single card discussion but it's been stated that the deck is "weak and gets pwned" so I want to prove that's not the case here.  Even marginal hands with less acceleration will typically place threats consistently.  Again, welder is basically sunforger protection and to be used offensively in conjunction with the artifact hate to own any opposing artifacts that your opponent may be silly enough to play.

Edit:  One other note, I couldn't find friggin' expensive casting cost red and white creatures that were better than my 1-costers.  This improves the early game but I'd prefer 2 and 3-drops.  Please, please tell me some good 2 and 3 drops.  I just...can't...find....them....

[Harlequin]

Why on earth would you want more CC creatures.  I would you'd be playing ornithopters and Walkers. 
How much mana do expect to have turn 2?

Your deck is not fish-like.  You let your opponent more or less play un-interupted for a few turns before your threats become threatening.  Fish going first turn Fetchland, go is threating.  They could have Force, Swords, Daze, annul, Stifle a fetchland ... Swords with backer, Annul with backer, Stifle with backer, even perhapse Brainstorm to find Daze or Force.  If fish keeps a 7 card hand and doesnt play a creature first turn, other decks should expect some form of first turn disruption.  Then it lays down 2nd turn gamestallers like meddling mage, voidmage, or Standstill.  Fish has a massive amount of early game disruption.  Fishes next plan is to draw tons of cards: LOA, standstil, Ninja, curiosity give you access to 3+ draws per turn.  Who cares that you need to end up going 2 or 3 cards to stop one of your opponents plays ... your drawing 3 cards a turn!  3 cheap semi-threats in hand (daze, swords, null rod, etc) will buy you enough time in fish to deal 20 damage.  one major threat (Pulverize, Rolling Earthquake, In the Eye of Chaos, Etc) may buy you more time, but its also more counterable.  Fish does not run mana accelleration by choice.  The reason being: You want to draw disruption or creatures on every draw.  Mana crypts and moxen makes fish more vaunerable to disruption and at the same time will gum up your late game draws.

Sunforger does not fit the tempo of fish.  At best before turn 10 your can reliably use 5 mana to tutor for one spell and cast it for free each turn.  Maybe past turn 10 you can also be playing creatures or spells that you have drawn.  by the time your get the 10 to activate the forger twice in one turn, you've probably decimated thier board and have nothing left in your deck to search for.    I think your either underestimating the speed of the format ... or overestimating your mana production curve.

I have tested TONS of games playing almost every deck under the vintage sun.  What I have found is that 75% of all vintage games are decided by what happens on turn 3 and 4.  No mater the match-ups no matter the deck, vintage piviots on turn 3 and 4.  Turns 1 and 2 are only used to prep turn 3... turns 5 and up are where the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer"  Who ever wins the counterwar, drops the bomb, Has the 7 card hand, has the tolarian acad, has the active welders ... etc etc ad-infanitum... will go on to win the game.   Whoever goes down on those to turns most likely will never recover in time.  Any play mistakes on turn 3 or 4 are by far the worst play mistakes you can make.  The deck you propose, and the card Sunforger in general, doesn't become threatening until late turn 4 or 5 at best.  It seems like if your building a deck that goes critical on those turns ... has already lost the match.  You seem to have no plan for controling the game in early turns.

How does your typical (non-godhand) first 5 turns pan out?  What are your typical "good" plays.

[warble]

My typical turn 1 play will be to drop a creature and mana acceleration.  The subsequent turns (2 through 5) are dedicated to keeping the opposing board clean and dropping my creatures and hopefully tutoring for and getting a sunforger in play/welding it in.  The reliance here is on the opposing deck actually trying to execute a gameplan.  If they don't, the natural aggression of weenie creatures and an uncounterable sunforger should be enough to win the game.  I would summarize the gameplan to be accumulating a number of artifact hate cards, swords to plowshares, and creatures on the board that will function towards your gameplan.  In fact, we do spend the first three turns playing out creatures and "setting up" by ramping up our mana for the inevitable sunforger activation and multiple answers during the same turn.  Against a deck such as CS this will pan out as loading up on red/white mana for plow and keeping welders off the board.  Observation of the opposing mana curve is key against a control deck, as it is a relatively accurate judge of when the control player "feels in control and will try to take it to you."  The fact that you can cast your instants during your opponent's end of turn and untap and do it again is relatively sound insurance that your accumulated toolbox will have the answer.  A sunforger in play is ideal, but the toolbox nature of the deck does not demand that it hits play because the answers in hand should get you past that "pivotal turn".

The real difference between fish and red/white is that red/white actually does have the answers, whereas blue/red has the counters.  It's a minor difference, but one that gives a different plan of attack.  While you say the best way to answer a threat is to counterspell it this deck says the best way to answer a threat is to have 3 answers to it in your hand and destroy that threat multiple times.  Maybe even remove it from the game.  For a card like time vault this is key because you're really responding to any time vault coming down by destroying it x 3 and at worst welding it out.  For colossus it's 4 swords to plowshares and welder along with one orim's chant in case you really can't do anything about it to hopefully buy you a sunforger activation.

One flaw is the search power, so it may be that the best thing for this deck is to lower the number of lands and add a few divining tops.  It's true that this is a lot of mana for a red/white deck, but it is also true that beating a workshop deck requires this.  As I'm metagamed for the northeast, this means that I prefer to consistently beat workshop, cs and gifts instead of trying to answer the aggro threat game 1.  As I completely change the threats available during games 2 and 3, I would prefer to beat more "broken" decks and concede a closer to 50/50 matchup that is skill intensive with another aggro deck.

What is a good play?  A creature turn 1 with some mana acceleration followed by a turn 2 rack and ruin/disenchant/swords to plowshares would be what I would expect from the deck.  As each creature has dual functionality, this allows me to do some damage early and force the opposing deck to react to my deck, which means slowing it's clock down.  Although the opposing deck has inevitability, getting there without mana acceleration means I may get the 6-8 turns I need.  It also means if they dedicate and can't "pull it off" that I win.  A good player will ineed try to dedicate and may pull it off, but they will have to work around the fact that you have a toolbox of answers in place and that those answers games 2 and 3 are all specific to your deck.  Against non-workshop decks I would definitely side out some of the 25 mana for games 2 and 3, as having so much mana against a non-workshop deck is a distinct disadvantage for an aggro deck that in fact does need a lot of answers and disruption to win, as you have noted.

What can fish not do?  Fish cannot tutor, it doesn't have that power.  It also can't run 4 disenchant and rack and ruin maindeck either, because it prefers to prevent the threat instead of removing it.  As a result it battles workshop but if workshop lands an early threat it just can't deal if it doesn't have the force.  If there is a darksteel colossus and the opponent has adequate protection it loses.  This deck can handle that matchup well and doesn't have to scoop prior to a hard lock, but it has problems with some other matchups (some of which fish does have problems with as well).  I love force of will and daze and stifle, but I also love how mana acceleration can provide that brokenness to non-blue colors.

[Harlequin]

I really fail to see the ammount of mana required to hit anything 3 times in one turn.  Lets say you want to kill some troublesome artifacts on your opponents board.  Suppose you go for:


Rack and Ruin
Disenchant
Disenchant or RnR

With two cards in hand disenchant in hand you need:
5RWW or 6RRW depending on if you have Disenchant-Disenchant or Disenchant-RnR

With one disenchant in hand you need:
7RRWWW to (potentially?) smash 4-5 artifacts.  you might as well just run pulverize, It even hardcasts for less!
Edit: Shattering Spree replicated 12 times?  Im sure you can resolve at least half of them!

I guess my point is, do you really lay down multiple destruction cards durring each turn?  How can you afford the mana to pull this off?  You don't even run as much accelleration as gifts.  on a side note, if gifts is spending 7BBUUU in one turn ... it is assuridly doing something better than clearing its opponents board.



Back on the topic of fish.  Fish can do exactly what you want it to do.  TMWA is an extremely effecient "destructive" fish type deck.  It makes darn sure you don't have any board to speak of, and it does it on a dramatically lower mana curve.  Other builds of fish hybrid type decks run Weather Wayfayer with utility lands like Maze of Ith, or Karakas, coupled with free spells like Abolish.  So I'm not sure I agree with you about fish not haveing tutor power.  Standard draw powered fish doesnt need tutors because the quality of each draw is even (see earlier post), but there are other versions of fish that run tutors, tinker, and other such "broken" cards.

In concept the deck seems very interesting.  I just don't see the "toolkit" qualities being as game breaking as it should be.  It seems sub-par based on the amount of mana you have to pour into the forger for one spell. 

[Khahan]

In concept the deck seems very interesting.  I just don't see the "toolkit" qualities being as game breaking as it should be.  It seems sub-par based on the amount of mana you have to pour into the forger for one spell.

I am still viewing this as a 'fun' concept rather than a serious tournament concept. However, I just want to point out 1 flaw in the detractors detractions:

You all act as if the sunforger must be cast, equiped and activated on the same turn.  It doesn't. It can be dropped turn 2. Equiped turn 3 and then activated turn 3 for whichever effect you wish.

And lets not forget the fast clock it does provide. Drop it on any of the creatures in this deck and suddenly you have a 6 power beatstick facing down your opponent.  That's 2 attack phases and an activation to search out price of progress.

Its not nearly as terrible as many are making it out to be (though on the flip side, I don't think its as competitive as Warble was hoping...but I'm certainly not going to try and discourage him).

[PucktheCat]

Compare this card to Jester's Cap.  Cap beats many decks with one activation, costs less than this to get active, doesn't need a creature, and doesn't lock you into playing a significant number of weak cards from the 3rd and 5th best colors in Vintage.

I can't for the life of me see how you anticipate this build being effective against Gifts.  Gifts decks can frequently race a Cap powered out by Mishra's Workshop, or stop it with Pithing Needle.  Both options are available against Sunforger as well, and are significantly easier to accomplish because of the higher cost and the less powerful effect of Sunforger.

In short, this card is strictly inferior to Cap against Gifts.  Since it is not clear to me that even the dedicated Cap decks (which have Welder+Bazaar and Workshop to accelerate out their bomb artifact) have an advantage against Gifts, I find it remarkable that you would claim that this deck is a metagame call against Gifts decks.

[warble]

Compare this card to Jester's Cap.  Cap beats many decks with one activation.

That is an excellent point, and I ran Jester's Cap in Control Slaver about a year ago.  As I stated, there are a number of artifacts that control slaver has access to, that are better.  Is it better to transform the deck against gifts instead of addressing the issue of yawgwill and outracing it?  There are always better answers, but maybe not enough room in sunforger to run cap.  I really think CS supports cap better than this deck...but your point is valid.  There are simply a lot of artifacts that make a deck broken, and the idea is to pick the best of them.  Can Cap really fit in a sunforger deck?

[Jacob Orlove]

You entirely missed his point. If your deck is based around paying ~6 mana to play and activate a specific artifact, why activate Sunforger (which does not win the game) when you could be activating Jester's Cap (which often does win)? The entire premise of a Sunforger deck is that it is possible to play and activate a Sunforger within a relevant amount of time, but why even bother if there are better cards to build around instead?

[Rapalaman1]

The entire premise of a Sunforger deck is that it is possible to play and activate a Sunforger within a relevant amount of time, but why even bother if there are better cards to build around instead?

Sucks when you realize this about your new deck ideas huh?

[Jacob Orlove]

Actually, that was a serious question: if there are good reasons to play Sunforger over those other artifacts, then we can discuss the deck.

[warble]

Well I guess the first important reason would be that jester's cap doesn't beat workshop.  It will not be able to provide a consistent threat either, but as you have stated and I will confirm a resolved jester's cap is very powerful.  With the 4x Welders you don't actually have to resolve it, so it's actually more powerful in decks that run welder.  If your opponent is able to resolve a tutor within the first two turns or mulls into a hand that can work around cap, as I would do against a deck with cap as a main threat, then the win condition in hand is likely enough to do you in.  Of course it's a benefit to have a resolved cap hit your opponent in vintage because a large portion of the deck is set to NOT contain win conditions.  Jester's Cap + Tormod's Crypt hitting your opponent...that's one hell of a disruption engine and I will not deny it's strength.
The second reason would be that cap does come down a turn later, so you're giving an additional turn to ramp up to drain that target, and that is KEY.  If you take a 3 versus a 4 cost spell in a non-workshop deck, it really is an extra turn to get that mana up.  As a result, if I ran Jester's Cap instead of Sunforger I would have to run maindeck ReB's simply to consider the control match playable.  If I go first I will expect to plop sunforger into a force of will or daze, but not into a mana drain.  It's allowing my opponent to untap and use drain mana that I fear against a drain deck, and rightly so.  If I can sunforger at my leisure with it resolved, or drop welder and weld it in, then I believe the gameplan is feasible.  Just dropping jester's cap into a drain is not playable.  That being said, if Sunforger cost 2 mana I'd consider it far more broken, and if it cost 4 mana I'd consider it unplayable.  Remember, I'm advocating full mana acceleration in this deck.  That won't race a mana drain for 4 mana consistently, but it will be able to race a drain to 3 mana consistently.  This is why I don't believe decks without workshop or force/thirst can run jester's cap.  It's not worth the tradeoff.

[PipOC]

Well I guess the first important reason would be that jester's cap doesn't beat workshop.

A single cap activation will remove from about half, to all of workshop's win conditions.  A single sunforger activation, that is, assuming you can get all the mana together to play equip and activate sunforger, will destroy 2 artifacts.  And that is without assuming that you probably gave the workshop player 3 completely unmolested turns to play equip and activate sunforger(not to mention the creature you have to equip it to).  I hardly call that beating workshop.  Cap will come closer to exhausting the workshop player's ability to win than sunforger will a large percentage of the time.