Need help catching up to Vintage

[sa17dk]

Okay. The last time I posted was in early February. Now, that isnt too far away, being just 4 months, but as I come back to browse the forums there are a lot of unfamiliar terms/cards/changes. I was pretty active in terms of knowing what was going on with the metagame, etc but I got bored due to the lack of time to actually play magic. However, recently, my interests for the game have peaked again but it seems as if I've been left in the dust. So I have a few questions regarding how Vintage has changed within these few months:

1) Apparently Gifts got restricted, Gush got unrestricted, and something called Flash is popular. What's going on?

2) What are the top 5 decks right now? I understand that a concrete top 5 list wont be established from what I hear about the restrictions/unrestrictions/new mechanics, but I'm curious as to what are the speculated top contenders.

3) What happened to decks like Fish, SS, Gifts (is it completely dead now?), Oath, Stax (I didnt hear about this deck even back in February. Is this deck pretty much off the radar too?)

I thank you greatly for all your help.

[Shock Wave]

1) Apparently Gifts got restricted, Gush got unrestricted, and something called Flash is popular. What's going on?[

I'm not really sure how to answer that question. What's going on.... with what? 

2) What are the top 5 decks right now? I understand that a concrete top 5 list wont be established from what I hear about the restrictions/unrestrictions/new mechanics, but I'm curious as to what are the speculated top contenders.

Flash, GAT, Stax, Bomberman, Fish. There are other playable decks, but those are the best, IMO.

3) What happened to decks like Fish, SS, Gifts (is it completely dead now?), Oath, Stax (I didnt hear about this deck even back in February. Is this deck pretty much off the radar too?)

SS is still good. Oath is playable, but certainly not amongst the best. Gifts might still be playable, but it got hit pretty hard.

[A.-1.]

Flash a rare from Mirage was "fixed."

Flash  Instant
Oracle text: You may put a creature card from your hand into play. If you do, sacrifice it unless you pay its mana cost reduced by up to 2. The creature now actually sees play and then goes to graveyard whereas before if you did not pay its cost it never saw play.

It is combined with Academy Rector to get Yawgmoth's Bargain (less popular but the original combo) or Protean Hulk (Oracle text: When Protean Hulk is put into a graveyard from play, search your library for any number of creature cards with total converted mana cost 6 or less and put them into play. Then shuffle your library.). You essentially win the game for  and a . There are two "Hulk" kills. One gets Carrion Feeder, Karmic Guide, Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker and creates a large number of hasted Karmic Guide tokens. The other kill is four Virulent Slivers and one Heart Sliver for a hasted poison counter kill. The entire deck either finds, protects, or is the combo and is very redundant.



Flash, GAT, and Bomberman are the three decks consistently putting up good results. But Scroll TPS, Stax builds, Fish builds, and occasionally Ichorid make top 8.

[zeus-online]

My current test gauntlet is:
UWb Bomberman
Flash
Ichorid
GATr
Stax
UWB Fish
Long (Using kobefan's list)

/Zeus

[ashiXIII]

My current test gauntlet is:
UWb Bomberman
Flash
Ichorid
GATr
Stax
UWB Fish
Long (Using kobefan's list)

/Zeus

You should probably replace GWS Long with Meandeck's Scroll Long deck.

[ErkBek]

Long (Using kobefan's list)

You should probably replace GWS Long with Meandeck's Scroll Long deck.

Ouch.

Unfortunately, both decks kinda suck at the moment. Neither are worth playing since they both got outclassed by new stuff. Flash > Long and Gush Decks > Mean.dec