[Premium Article] The Decks of Vintage

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/14442.html

Blurb:
Stephen takes a break from brain-melting play-by-play action in order to bring us an overview of the runners and riders in today's Vintage metagame. He brings us five of the strongest players in the format, and talks us through their strengths and weaknesses in order to fully prepare anyone coming fresh to the Vintage tournament scene. This is an excellent primer article on the current state of Vintage, and a fine refresher for those coming in with more experienced eyes...

Enjoy!

[Juice]

Excellent summary of the actual state of Vintage and analysis of the decks.

I see that since the restriction of Gifts, no one deck (in those lists) run the one. I asked myself why not running it in the Mean Deck in place of the FOF. FOF is a bomb but is only card advantage and depends on luck (even with all the good cards in a deck). You can always keep the card you want but in this case, impulse (or other) seems superior. And as you say, the first card advantage is scroll for ancestral.
Gifts seems like the restricted bombs in the Mean Deck because you win the game with it. Not with FOF (even if resolving a FOF will often put you in the place to win the game).

I thought of Gift in GAT too. How about a pile like will, regrowth, fastbond and gush ? Is Gifts too heavy costed for GAT that has a slim mana base ?

Did Gifts fell in the oblivion ?

[Aardshark]

Excellent summary of the actual state of Vintage and analysis of the decks.

I see that since the restriction of Gifts, no one deck (in those lists) run the one. I asked myself why not running it in the Mean Deck in place of the FOF. FOF is a bomb but is only card advantage and depends on luck (even with all the good cards in a deck). You can always keep the card you want but in this case, impulse (or other) seems superior. And as you say, the first card advantage is scroll for ancestral.
Gifts seems like the restricted bombs in the Mean Deck because you win the game with it. Not with FOF (even if resolving a FOF will often put you in the place to win the game).

I thought of Gift in GAT too. How about a pile like Will, regrowth, fastbond and gush ? Is Gifts too heavy costed for GAT that has a slim mana base ?

Did Gifts fell in the oblivion ?

Steve may or may not address this on SSG, but I think the problem with gifts is that it operates more as an engine than a pure vehicle for card advantage.  The card quality of both GAT and Gush TPS (and almost any other quality vintage deck) is such that FOF is guaranteed to yield +2 card advantage, unless you opt for +1 card advantage due to the presense of one or more bombs. 

In contrast, gifts will only yield +1 card advantage, and is therefore inferior as a pure card advantage engine.  Also, Gifts reduces you're deck's density of whatever you're gifting for (card advantage, mana, bombs, etc).  Where Gifts shines is in decks that plan to use the cards placed in the graveyard (e.g. via recoup for Will).  But recoup doesn't make the cut if you're only playing 1 gifts, so neither does gifts.

Alternately, without access to the graveyard gifts can work as an indirect tutor, by gifting for tutors to find Will.  But Gifts --> tutors --> powerful card(s) is a slow plan unless you're a mana drain deck that can control the game, and (hopefully) will have drain mana to spare.  Gush tendrils isn't either of these, hence gifts is inferior to FoF.

I could imagine gifts having a place in slower builds of GAT that run Drains and regrowth, although FoF is probably better (unless another card is included that facilitates a gifts pile from which Will can be cast.  However, GAT builds are land-light, and can't really support a 4cc spell (most builds I've seen don't run FoF either). 

In sum, gifts is still a good card, but doesn't quite make the cut in the decks in the current metagame.  If a mana-heavy control deck with 3 separate cards that otherwise access a consistent way to access the graveyard ever emerges, gifts might have a place as a 1-of. 

[Akuma]

I agree with what has been said...

The only deck I currently use Gifts in is Control Slaver. It's GG with an active Welder in play.

[Meddling Mike]

It is also a virtually unstoppable kill. Countermagic can’t stop it as none of the key steps in the game plan are disrupted by it. Neither does mana denial. Bazaar of Baghdad is a land. Dread Return is free. And Dread Return is always preceded by several Cabal Therapies to clear the way of pesky disruption spells that might stop Ichorid from comboing out. Unlike previous Ichorid iterations, this deck is practically immune to Wasteland and Tormod’s Crypt simply because of the goodness printed in Future Sight in Street Wraith, Bridge From Below, and Narcomoeba. The Ichorid deck has a favorable Hulk Flash matchup, ironically.

I have some serious problems with the bold/underlined statements

Saying that Ichorid is IMMUNE to Wasteland is ridiculous, I suppose if you have another one in hand it must be unreal nice to live in Christmas land, but otherwise you're about to get wrecked as your clock gets slowed by 2/3. The deck can definitely win through a wasteland w/o a bazaar if it successfully manages to chain it's dredgers for a few turns, hits some important cards on the dredges early and your opponent doesn't wreck you in the meantime. The same can be said for Tormod's crypt, Ichorid can survive one if you force them to use it without overcommitting yourself, but at the very least your clock is getting significantly slowed down and you may be dead before you can rebuild.

Can they be played around? Sure. Immune? Not by a long shot.

[Xman]

I thought of Gift in GAT too. How about a pile like will, regrowth, fastbond and gush ? Is Gifts too heavy costed for GAT that has a slim mana base ?

GAT relies on free (or damned near free) cards.  This includes stuff like Gush, Ancestral, Brainstorm, Opt, Wraith.  I think in my GAT build the most expensive draw spell is 1 (obviously you pay the alternate cost for Gush).  If it costs more than 2 mana, and isn't called Psychatog, then it is generally not worth it.  By the time you get 4 mana out GAT should be in pretty decent control of the game & be in a position to nail the door shut already.

Also, what would you cut for Gifts & Recoup?

[Jo84]

I have some serious problems with the bold/underlined statements

Saying that Ichorid is IMMUNE to Wasteland is ridiculous, I suppose if you have another one in hand it must be unreal nice to live in Christmas land, but otherwise you're about to get wrecked as your clock gets slowed by 2/3. The deck can definitely win through a wasteland w/o a bazaar if it successfully manages to chain it's dredgers for a few turns, hits some important cards on the dredges early and your opponent doesn't wreck you in the meantime. The same can be said for Tormod's crypt, Ichorid can survive one if you force them to use it without overcommitting yourself, but at the very least your clock is getting significantly slowed down and you may be dead before you can rebuild.

Can they be played around? Sure. Immune? Not by a long shot.

Stephen is right in this point. He said practically immune and with Petrified Fields Wasteland is as boring as Tormod's Crypt for me.

The reasons are pretty obvious, because to hit Ichorid really hard with Wasteland you need the following scenario:
a) You have a Wasteland in your first 8 cards.
b) Your opponent has just one Bazaar and no Petrified Field.
c) After the first Bazaar activation there is not more than one dredger in his graveyard. (otherwise he can dredge in his drawstep into dredge and dredge and so on...)

Of course you can slow an Ichorid deck down with Wastelands, but that´s only a path to victory if the Ichorid is really unlucky (Let´s say the next 20 cards include no dredger, which costed me a game one time, I think.)

Although Wastelands are mostly played by decks that do not have a fast clock, so Ichorid will still be faster.

Game 2 and 3, Wastelands are much better because they buy you time to find more hate and the counter backup to protect it from removal. Wasteland + Yixlid Jailer with counter backup costed me several games.

[desolutionist]

c) After the first Bazaar activation there is not more than one dredger in his graveyard. (otherwise he can dredge in his drawstep into dredge and dredge and so on...)

With only your drawstep, you can only dredge once per turn.  (So the deck is actually slowed significantly) The problem is that the only decks playing Wastelands are still slower.

[Meddling Mike]

Stephen is right in this point. He said practically immune and with Petrified Fields Wasteland is as boring as Tormod's Crypt for me.

1. The list Stephen posted does not include petrified field, and rightfully so, they're terrible dead cards unless your metagame is loaded with wastelands. Having cards like that in there instead of proactive cards could slow down the kill considerably.

2. Winning without Bazaar is much harder and longer. You need to drop multiple dredgers off your first bazaar and then you need to find more in the subsequent turns before you run out of dredgers in the yard and you are forced to draw up to eight, discard, then dredge again on your following turn. Suddenly a kill on turn 2 or 3 is now a kill on turn 6 to 9 which gives opponents ample time to put their own gameplans into practice.

[meadbert]

Turn 9? 

This whole scenario sounds far fetched to me.
If you are on the draw then you see 8.8 cards by average after Bazaaring on turn 1.  You claim you have 1 Bazaar and 1 Dredger.  That is fine, but there are still 6-7 other cards.  Either you have Bridge From Below in which case you are potentially on a four turn clock, or you have a ton of disruption in which case you have a decent shot of surviving a six turn game.

[Vegeta2711]

This whole scenario sounds far fetched to me.

Yeah, if the game goes to turn 9 odds are the Ichorid player is dead already. C'mon, Mike.

In all seriousness, the Bazaar comment is an obvious exaggeration and that's what MM is getting at. The deck isn't practically immune to Wasteland, it still hurts like hell to lose it, it just isn't anywhere near as bad as when the deck was complete crap and NEEDED Bazaar or it'd be lucky to win any game ever.

I'm actually a bit more annoyed about the inaccuracies on GAT, but I'll let somebody else take that barrel of fun.

[Meddling Mike]

Turn 9? 

This whole scenario sounds far fetched to me.
If you are on the draw then you see 8.8 cards by average after Bazaaring on turn 1.  You claim you have 1 Bazaar and 1 Dredger.  That is fine, but there are still 6-7 other cards.  Either you have Bridge From Below in which case you are potentially on a four turn clock, or you have a ton of disruption in which case you have a decent shot of surviving a six turn game.

8.8 cards while on the draw? What are you talking about? 7 cards in opening hand, one card for draw step, two cards drawn off bazaar, let's get all kindergarten arithmetic on this bitch..
7 + 1 + 2 = 8.8?

Yes, the deck can clearly recover without losing much if it lives in Christmas land and have a second bazaar. The number of dredgers doesn't matter much. Even assuming the deck can dredge it's draw step draw every turn, which doesn't always happen, only getting one dredge a turn and the ability to drop the dredgers and other relevant cards back in the yard at will to assure future dredges sets back this deck's clock considerably.

Yeah, if the game goes to turn 9 odds are the Ichorid player is dead already. C'mon, Mike. Wink

I'm pretty sure that was my point Josh.

[diopter]

8.8 cards while on the draw? What are you talking about? 7 cards in opening hand, one card for draw step, two cards drawn off bazaar, let's get all kindergarten arithmetic on this bitch..
7 + 1 + 2 = 8.8?

Fairly sure he was accounting for mulligans.

If you've read meadbert's posts then one thing you would know is that he is honest about his observations. If he says your scenario is farfetched it is because that is his observation - and almost nobody tests Ichorid more than meadbert.

[RaZe]

This whole scenario sounds far fetched to me.

Yeah, if the game goes to turn 9 odds are the Ichorid player is dead already. C'mon, Mike.

Games 2 - 3, it isn't unusual for Ichorid to go up to those many turns. Considering opponents mulling for Leyline, to playing their hate cards instead of 'going off' in whatever fashion their decks functions plus Ichorid's disruption [Chalice/Therapy/Unmask] and you got a fairly long game ahead of you. Bad Ichorid players tend to scoop too early or just have a horrible list that cannot fight through hate coming at them. But a competent Ichorid player with a tuned deck usually win games 2-3 [especially Game 2 wins] after turn 6 when paired up against good players with good decks.

[Purple Hat]

This whole scenario sounds far fetched to me.

Yeah, if the game goes to turn 9 odds are the Ichorid player is dead already. C'mon, Mike.

Games 2 - 3, it isn't unusual for Ichorid to go up to those many turns. Considering opponents mulling for Leyline, to playing their hate cards instead of 'going off' in whatever fashion their decks functions plus Ichorid's disruption [Chalice/Therapy/Unmask] and you got a fairly long game ahead of you. Bad Ichorid players tend to scoop too early or just have a horrible list that cannot fight through hate coming at them. But a competent Ichorid player with a tuned deck usually win games 2-3 [especially Game 2 wins] after turn 6 when paired up against good players with good decks.

?  you got any data to support this random claim?  virtually everything loses to ichorid game 1 if decent ichorid players usually won games 2 and 3 ichorid would be completely dominating the meta....however we see ichorid not winning any tournaments at all.  It puts up enough top 8's that I feel like it's eventually gonna win something, but to say that compotent ichorid players beat good players with good decks games 2 and 3 most of the time is pretty clearly and overstatement, otherwise ichorid would win most tournaments in which a "compotent" ichorid player was entered....anyone seen that happening?

[RaZe]

This whole scenario sounds far fetched to me.

Yeah, if the game goes to turn 9 odds are the Ichorid player is dead already. C'mon, Mike.

Games 2 - 3, it isn't unusual for Ichorid to go up to those many turns. Considering opponents mulling for Leyline, to playing their hate cards instead of 'going off' in whatever fashion their decks functions plus Ichorid's disruption [Chalice/Therapy/Unmask] and you got a fairly long game ahead of you. Bad Ichorid players tend to scoop too early or just have a horrible list that cannot fight through hate coming at them. But a competent Ichorid player with a tuned deck usually win games 2-3 [especially Game 2 wins] after turn 6 when paired up against good players with good decks.

?  you got any data to support this random claim?  virtually everything loses to ichorid game 1 if decent ichorid players usually won games 2 and 3 ichorid would be completely dominating the meta....however we see ichorid not winning any tournaments at all.  It puts up enough top 8's that I feel like it's eventually gonna win something, but to say that compotent ichorid players beat good players with good decks games 2 and 3 most of the time is pretty clearly and overstatement, otherwise ichorid would win most tournaments in which a "compotent" ichorid player was entered....anyone seen that happening?

But a competent Ichorid player with a tuned deck usually win games 2-3 [~snip~] after turn 6 when paired up against good players with good decks.

Please re-read my sentence without the contents in the brackets. I think you might have misunderstood my statement.

I don't recall saying Ichorid WILL/always/usually wins games 2-3. All I stated was that Ichorid players should expect to go to win no earlier than 4 turns post board especially game 2 when they are on the draw. If the opponent was unskilled/unlucky, then they win earlier/easier. If they are unskilled or their deck isn't tuned to face the hate, then they have completely lost by turn 3.

Decks win against Ichorid game 2 because they can pre-emptively slow down it's goldfish via established hate. Ichorid has a better chance winning game 3 because it can act before most hate comes down and is able to play it's own protection before the aforementioned hates are played. But Ichorid would have sided out a good part of it's combo cards for anti-hate cards and are inherently gonna be slower on it's own as well. Winning Ichorid is about winning game 1 in a blink of an eye, and being able to overpower hate game 3 through a long arduous struggle.

[Purple Hat]

maybe there's a language barrier issue here?  it still looks to me like your posts are saying ichorid's games 2 and 3 usually go to 6+ turns at which point ichorid, with a compotent pilot will usually win against a good player with a good deck. 

[Addolorisi]

maybe there's a language barrier issue here?  it still looks to me like your posts are saying ichorid's games 2 and 3 usually go to 6+ turns at which point ichorid, with a compotent pilot will usually win against a good player with a good deck. 

I had to reread the sentence myself to make sure I understood what he was getting at.

He's saying that post board, if the Ichorid player is going to win, it's going to take him 6+ turns to do so.

[RaZe]

Thank you. I apologize if my grammar or sentence structure is confusing. I tend to cram too much things in one sentence. But just to be more accurate... I'll add something to that.

I had to reread the sentence myself to make sure I understood what he was getting at.

He's saying that post board, if the Ichorid player is going to win against a capable player using a deck with adequate Ichorid hate cards, it's going to take him 6+ turns to do so.

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

@ meddling mage

I can see where you’d think waste is game over for ichorid, I thought so as well. I’ve play tested ichorid a lot after FS (dispite my dislike of the the deck in general, i have to admit it was fun winning that high of a game %) vs many a waste heavy deck. Every time it managed to pull threw off the draw step, even through the often occurrence of double cryptings. True the 3rd would leave me with little deck left to win with, but the existing zombie aggro on the table usually came through. But waste did next to nothing, as well as crypt 1-2 occasionally 3.
The goal is to keep leyline in play and keep echoing truth safe from therapy, or get that thrashing wampus on the table.

[Spacebalzz]

I find it interesting that everyone's arguing about the "invincibility" of Ichorid and its "practically" immune to the common forms of hate.  Where is the empirical evidence to support this?  Given, Ichorid has an amazing game 1 record, winning most of its first games; however, it does not win tournaments (I think even Steve mentioned this at one point).  Hence, it must not be quite as resilient in games 2 and 3 as people seem to be assuming.  I'm not saying its not a good deck, its a great deck, but lets not get carried away use rhetoric that incorrectly characterizes it.

Concerning a wasted bazaar:
A wasted bazaar by itself is certainly not game over for the Ichorid player, it simply slows them down a bit.  And by slowing the Ichorid player down, this gives the opponent ample opportunity to find other forms of hate (i.e. Yixlid in Fish, Crypt in other decks, sometimes Planar Void).  I think thats the point here.  Yeah, Ichorid isn't destroyed by any single silver bullet (Leyline aside) in game 1, but, rather, by combinations of cards that work against it.

Just some thoughts,
-Matt