[deck] UGw Madness

[Benfa]

Hi there! I'm new on this forum, so i'll try to introduce myself. My name is Marco Benifei, i'm from florence, italy, and i'm 23. I play magic since 1996 but i started playing vintage only two years ago. I know that my english is not very good but i'll try to do my best

I want to talk about madness, i love this deck and i played it in every kind of format and i'm still playing it in every kind of format 



1)

Let's start with my decklist:

4bazaar of baghdad
4tropical island
1tundra
1island
1forest
1plain
3flooded strand
3windswept health
5mox
1black lotus

4wild mongrel
4basking rootwalla

4circular logic
4force of will

4swords to plowshares
4careful study
4deep analysis
1ancestral recall
1time walk
2life from the loam
4squee goblin nabob

Sideboard:

4hidden gibbon
4naturalize
3energy flux
3roar of the wurm
1balance

I played the deck a lot, i did 5 tournaments in Italy, the smaller with 50 players and the bigger with 370 players, i won 3 and lost 2 in semifinal. I'm not saying it's the best deck ever, but surely it's ok, at least in the italian metagame.


2)

I'll try to analize some cards of the main deck:

bazaar of baghdad

It's a land, you can't counter it, you can't duress it, you draw two extra cards every turn, if it's buried by a wasteland you draw once at the same... simply devasting

Island-forest-plain

Against artifact decks you need them to avoid recursion of wasteland. We play two life from the loam so we could alse keep out the plain, but i'm still happy with this setting.

Life from the loam

I'm trying them... If your opponent has wasteland in the deck you need it, if you opponent doesn't have wasteland is quite useless but the deck is quite bazaar depending so you don't want to risk. Could be one life from the loam main and one in the side? You choise

Careful study

It's really good. In your opening hand you must have a madness activator otherwise you have to mulligan(exceptions are ancestral or blacklotus for a deep), so playing them you have four additional madness activator except to bazaar and wild mongrel. In this way you don't have to mulligan often. You need these card also to draw faster as you can into your bazaar. They are also very important to have blue cards to force of will; usually if you start with bazaar you willn't play careful in that game but you will not discard them because they are the only cards you want to pitch for force of will. I would play six careful study if i could 

Deep analysis

You don't have bazaar in your opening hand? Turn one careful and discard deep, turn two deep =5more cards(one of the turn)since the your opening hand. You have bazaar in your hand but you haven't squee? turn one bazar discarding a deep, turn two mox land deep and you can continue to activate your bazaar without discarding key cards. I would play six deep if i could

Squee

It doesn't do nothing...but you need four of them because i must be able to have bazaar in play, i played two tournaments without squee but against decks like gift it was really hard without them


Sol ring

I'm not playing it anymore, because i needed 1 slot for the second life from the loam but i don't now if i did the right choise because with 4deep analysis is really good and also after side if you put in roar of the wurm or if you play against workshop decks...


3)

Sideboard analysis:

Energy flux

You need it only against workshop decks, but if it hit the table you win...


Roar of the wurm:

Against creature decks...6/6 is big


Naturalize

You need it against oath otherwise you lose, you need them against workshop decks and you need it against a lot of other cards like pithing needle, nullrod, jitte and so on...It's a really flexible card for our sideboard.


Hidden gibbon


It's a new entry but i feel so studid to never try it before... It semms ok, but i need testing to decide, other options are orim's chant(against tps and yawgmoth's), or 4duress and one bayou(in that scenario you have to change flooded strand with polluted delta to have 6 fetch lands for bayou)


balance

Often is a useless card but sometime it's the only card that can save you from bad situations




4)

Matchups:

Madness has the particolarity of being a deck that is near to 50/50 in every matchup, in any format, seldomly you are 80/20 or 20/80 so it means that you must be very good playing the deck to take advantage in every matchup. It's not simply to play because drawing a lot of cards and obviously discarding a lot of cards you'll have a lot of choise every turn. The only thing i told you is: learn to play the deck and you'll notice tha's not that bad how it could seem in the beginning.



Sideboarding strategy:

Against workshop decks:

In 4naturalize 3energy flux and 1roar, out squee and  logic because they're plenty of wasteland for bazaar so squee often would be useful and the circular logic are bad cards when you aren't able to have a bazaar in play(or tapped out for a tangle wire). All you have to do is take time with force of will, sword and naturalize and finish them with energy flux. After sideboarding you have an huge edge.

Fishlike:

you don't want circular logic, they didn't have bombs in the deck to counter and they're plenty of wasteland, so out. The same for force of will, also because without locig you wouln't have blu cards for it to pitch. In: roar, naturalize(you don't want pithing needle to stay in the board and you can use it also to destroy mishra, nullrod, jitte). Now that i've in my side also gibbons i think i would side for them so i think we could also keep out some squee, depends on how many naturalize we want(we have also two life from the loam that give us cards to discard for bazaar)


Oath:

The first game it's hard but you can count on four naturalize after sideboarding that surely will help you a lot. Honestly when i had duress in the board i used to keep out wild mongrel, basking rootwalla, life from the loam and the plain(depends if they play wasteland) for duress, roar and naturalize and playing the game like a control deck, taking advantage with bazaar and don't letting oath being activated by creatures and when i was sure to be in control winning casting a roar from the grave; but now that i run gibbons instead of duress probably the plan will change and we'll have to try rushing them with gibbons wild mongrell and rootwalla, siding out life from the loam the plain and the swords, but i'm not sure it would be the best strategy, i've to test it before.


Tps, gift, pitchlong:

It's not easy to sideboard against these decks because it depends a lot if they play dark confidant or not(to decide how many swords to side out), it depends also if they run pithing needle in the side(naturalize). Against gift is a lot easyer because the are slower then tps and pitchlong or similar decks. Surely gibbons put pressure on them and if they run dark confidant it's a good thing; if they wouldn't play dark confidant i think that keeping out the white from the deck and sideboarding for black with bayou and the duress would be much better, because it's true that madness it's an aggro-control but in vintage i like to play it more control than possible because creatures often are too slow and it would be better have a contrast.


I'm going to stop now, i hope you enjoy the article and that you'll help me to test the deck. Every kind of reply is welcome, obviously also criticism.

Have nice games!

Marco

[wraith985]

I'm curious as to why you don't run Lion's Eye Diamond, as that card is ridiculous with madness cards of any sort.

[froz3nn]

led is actually terrible in a deck with 8 counters and 4 stps...

[Dante]

Yes, in the RGu versions that had draw 7's and meant to drop you asap, it was an auto-include.  With more control-ish version's, not so hot.

[Guli]

Life from the loam is not only to protect your bazaar. It works well with Mongrel aswell. And i would add at least 1 strip mine and if you can fit in 2/3 wastelands. They are tech with the LoAm.

[brianpk80]

Life from the loam is not only to protect your bazaar. It works well with Mongrel aswell. And i would add at least 1 strip mine and if you can fit in 2/3 wastelands. They are tech with the LoAm.

Actually, Life from the Loam does a lot more than simply protecting the Bazaar.  After using the Bazaar a few times, you should have enough land in your graveyard that Life from the Loam completely negates the card disadvantage factor of the Bazaar, much like a Squee.  I would lose the Squees and replace them with an additional Life from the Loam, a Strip Mine, and 2 Intuitions.

-BPK

[wethepeople]

I really dont understand the point of running so many discard spells with so few cards with Madness, i think the idea of the deck is kind of stupid. Madness decks run a few cards with threshold, Basking Rootwalla (which can very well be hardcasted) and a bunch of other half-ass draw spells (e.g. Careful Study) and after all this work all you get is a single Basking Rootwalla, and maybe, just maybe you have countered something with Circular Logic.

[slyfer]

In my opinion the decks weaknesses are it's completely sorcery-speed (except counter, 50% of them are suboptimal if you don't have bazaar+U or mongrel+U on table), so at least on game 1 you should faaaar from 50-50 vs any combo.
You have no answer maindeck to nullrod or chalice that wreck your mana base, why you should be over deck that runs counters, mages, lions, jotun grunt, swords also, ecc (UW fish, read the last post). With jotun grunt, madness beasts aren't the strongest anylonger vs fish
4 deep analysis without sol ring it's wasted... can't cast them from hand with mana open . In WGD Dicemanx used many deep, but he had duress + sol ring + mana vault.
1 Balance without any tutor is side wasted.
1 strip mine with 2 life of the loam deserve a slot.

I'm also not sure that you can state "flux=game" vs workshop decks, because first they can sometimes play around it, second without mana drain I would be happy to cast a sorcery-speed 2U enchantment (tangles, spheres, smoke, ecc...)

[klu]

A friend of mine is really found of that deck.
the list runs red rather than white for 2 rebs and 2-3 gorilla shamans main deck.
Intuition is god in that deck, since it fetchs bazaar+ strip + life from the loam..
wastelands, sol ring, full moxen are needed in the deck to have the intuition/deep analysis open fast enough (or even hardcast logic).

[Wudil]

If Oath is THAT an important matchup (and I think it is for you), why not playing 2 Ray of Revelation instead of 2 Naturalize?

I don't know if you have any use of this but did you try running 1 or 2 Riftstone Portal MD to "stabilize" your manabase? Abling an Island to produce U G and W as a basic land isn't a bad thing and this would let you run more basic Islands since your main color is blue in this deck.

My 2cts

[Cr0v4x]

I have one simple question. Why do you run Naturalizes in the board? Why don't you just play Ray of Revelations. They are tremendously better than Naturalizes. The first advatange is obviously that you can play them twice and the second advantage is that you can simply discard them to Bazaar and still use them.

[Wudil]

Maybe because it can target enchantments AND artifacts and he wants to have polyvalent cards instead of one single target cards...?

[wethepeople]

Maybe because it can target enchantments AND artifacts and he wants to have polyvalent cards instead of one single target cards...?

Ray of Revelation is so much better than Naturalize (in SB of course). It practically cant be countered (unless they have two Forces), and when going off in most decks that it serves as a purpose (WGD, Oath) they always have counter-backup at hand. Who cares if you can't take out an artifact like Naturalize can, but keep in mind Naturalize can hardly take out an Enchantment since it is countered all the time. I have tested both and Ray is always my first pick in a deck using both white and green.

I'm also not sure that you can state "flux=game" vs workshop decks, because first they can sometimes play around it, second without mana drain I would be happy to cast a sorcery-speed 2U enchantment (tangles, spheres, smoke, ecc...)

Every game I have ever resolved Energy Flux versus Stax, Workshop, etc, I have won. On several occasions my opponent has simply conceeded once that card has been dropped.

[MaxxMatt]

I suggested Benfa about cutting Squees.
I would have added both LftL+Strip and Jotun Grunts.

Grunts can be added for different porpouses:
1) Increase the clock of the deck
2) Spells Recursion
3) Add value to White as color in this deck

The deck can abuse of drawers and madness even without Squees ( Deeps, Careful Studies and Mongrels ) and when LftL is online, you would have quantity over quality too.

My maindeck spells selection would be a bit different from his one, but the deck would function in a strategically different manner.

I would play:

(20)
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
1 Forest
1 Tundra
2 Island
5 Moxen
1 Black lotus
1 ManCrypt

(13)
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Deep Analysis
4 Careful Study
1 Ancestral

(4)
3 Sword to Plowshares
1 Time walk

(4)
2 Intuition
1 Life from the Loam
1 Stripmine

(11)
4 Wild Mongrels
4 Basking Rootwalla
3 Jotun Grunt

(8)
4 Force of Will
4 Circular Logic

Sideboard:
4 Orim Chant
4 Energy Flux
3 Ray of Revelation
1 Roar of the Wurm
1 Sword to Plowshares
1 Balance

I bolded the main differences between our lists.
It seems a bit slower, but it have a good use of the grave too, it can select the needed bombs with Intuitions and contemporarly, put a greater pressure towards the opponents, with greater creatures and a bit of recurring denial with LftL and Stripmine.

I suggest you to try this list, it works really well against a lot of decks, maybe failing to be Tier1 against FastComboDecks.

BALANCE in side = MIndtwist against Combo and Control.