[Article] Goblins and Slivers and Dryads, Oh My!

[Vegeta2711]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/14538.html

OMG HI HI, I WROTE A VINTAGE PIECE.

Yeah, really.

[acidfreak]

Nice article.

I think it's great that Goblins is a viable deck again. Seems to me like the format has taken a good turn after the restriction of Gifts. Type 1 was getting a bit too combolicious.

[Chippo]

I think it's great that Goblins is a viable deck again. Seems to me like the format has taken a good turn after the restriction of Gifts. Type 1 was getting a bit too combolicious.

Sorry for going off-topic on this but I don't think Type 1 is getting less combolicious with the restriction of Gifts. Lately we definitely see the rise of GAT (which also comboes in a way) and Flash (which is pure combo) in the European meta. And what I understand from articles on Starcity and TMD is that this is also true for the American meta.

Nevertheless nice article and I think that this is a very good starting point for people who want to enter Vintage.

[squeegee]

Ok, first of all, very nice article.

I do have to say though that I don't agree that Bomberman has trouble with the "random" decks.  I know that they are usually going to be packing graveyard hate which can hurt, but in the matches I've played against random decks, I usually walk right over them.  The sheer number of answers that Bomberman has is usually enough to breakdown a non-tier 1 deck.

I do have to say that I haven't tested the Goblin matchup though, so I don't know where this would go.  But the only storm combo deck I have ever had trouble with is Gifts, so I don't think the others would be a problem.

That said, again, thanks for the article, and I hope I get to test the Goblin matchup soon.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Caveat - I wasn't at D2 Waterbury, and the results still aren't up.  As I understand it, only one goblins deck made t8, right?

Josh, I understand you like Goblins, and that it dominates a lot of other formats, but don't you think it's a little optimistic to highlight this as the metagame answer of choice for Flash and GAT?  I can see how blasts and leyline or krark are great early answers to Flash and how they quickly force an unwinnable game when the rest of the swarm shows up.  However, GAT looks like a brutal matchup for this deck.  Krark and Fanatic telegraph what a GAT player needs to do to keep his Dryad alive, and the Gush engine should race the swarm in most games; especially now that the list is watered down with metagame cards.  Not to mention that GAT can integrate a number of cards that will swing the matchup further.

I do respect goblins; I've lost to it in tournaments.  I also realize how adaptable it is.  I would think bringing in more tools like magus of the moon, pyrostatic pillar, and maybe even something like stoneshaker shaman or threaten would help against GAT.  I can see it being an option, but there's lots of good hate options right now; I was just surprised to see a title with dryads (ok, right), slivers (sure) and goblins (huh?).  

[Razvan]

i saw vegeta's picture and i automatically thought it's 1.5.
damnation.
reading now. glad you write vintage. do so more often, your articles are awesome.

[SonataOfTheCathedral]

It good to see you highlighted Goblins. It may shape up to be the dark horse of the format as it has matches that are even or better against all the top tier decks.  I see it as the best option vs Flash and GAT, besides playing Flash or GAT.

[Meeee]

My roomate played the agaisnt Elias about 8-9 times the day before with GAT and the matchup is fairly rough for GAT.  YOur only reasonable outs are very early fastbond Gush chains or psychatog any slow hands can often get overrun.  Obviously the better you are with GAT and at the match the more this percentage could change but currently it appears to be unfavorable without some tweaks to GAT.

[SonataOfTheCathedral]

Keep in mind the version of Goblins I played at Waterbury was horribly untuned. I didn't play Simian Spirit Guide over Lotus Petal (durf durf) and had a weird mana configuration. But still I stormed through a field of Bomberman, GAT, and Flash crushing all without a loss. Goblins is the real deal. If you aren't willing to acknowledge it as a threat, there might be a good chance you will lose to it. Similar to how Fish was during the Gifts era. People lost to it because they thought it was a joke deck piloted by seven year olds.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

First, to make that clear, I liked the article. I read pretty much all your articles and they usually contain some of what to me seems the most well-informed commentary on whatever subject you choose. So thanks for giving me something good to read As I'm going to criticize some things from it, I thought I should maybe make that obvious first.
On to criticizing-land:
First and foremost, I can't understand at all how you can even suggest that the Gifts-metagame was healthier than the current one or that Gifts wasn't in need of restriction. True, it didn't dominate top8s. If you compare it to the number of remotely capable players playing it, though, the deck was insane. In the roughly two years I played the deck, the only games I lost were to manascrew, me punting badly (after slight errors, Gifts usually still pulled you out) and two games to utter lucksackery. But let's ignore if Gifts status of best deck or not. Let's rather look how it influenced the metagame. From the moment CAB unveiled Gifted for the first time, all of us were convinced Gifts would be restricted quite soon. It didn't happen. Instead, Type 1 got turned into combo-land.
Gifted dominated the lategame to a point were no other deck was even remotely likely to win the match should Gifted reach 4 to 5 permanent manasources in play for more than a single turn. As a result true control-decks, like Slaver, died. And as nothing could beat Gifts lategame, the race for being faster began.
The problem here was that Gifts itself would usually kill you between turn 3 and 4 if left undisrupted. So, with the lategame cut of, the only way to consistently beat Gifts was to have a deck that regularly killed (or locked you, manadenial being especially efficient vs Gifted) by turn 3 maximum. If you look at what was actually winning tournaments during Gifts 2.5 year presence, you'll see that only dedicated mana-denial strategies and speed-combo had any chance at all of taking Gifts title away. Once EtW got printed, this ended, too. I firmly believe that Gifts would be boarding around 6 Leylines now and crush everything the way it did before Future Sight hadn't it been restricted. The only things that kept it from actually dominating top8s were a) playskill and b) the missing hype. Missing hype? What I mean is that people didn't for some reason didn't react to Gifts like they do to GAT now. It was clearly one of the best, if not the best deck (I have played the deck for an insane amount of time and games and still, when I lost, I had punted the game somewhere. Even against the most broken openings. I think I had two games in the full two years were I was just lucksacked out, both involving Tinker->DSC plus double backup) but people just didn't play it.
That metagame was sick, horrible and just disgusting, with every deck just racing to be faster and faster (the result being Ritual-Gifts, which pushed the envelope even more as it still dominated anything but original Gifted in the lategame and killed even earlier). Gifted was my (ok, my and Maxims) brainchild, I loved playing it but I couldn't be happier it's finally gone. It should have been dead more than a year ago, once Scroll was discovered by Smmenen.


Second, rerestricting Gush because GAT's dominating: I very much disagree with that, for two reasons. The first one is simple. Yes, GAT is making up one third of top8's. If I look at the attendance-breakdowns, then I see that there were at least one third GAT attending, though. Seems ok to me. This is simply the hype culminating. Smmenen and others (me included) have loudly proclaimed Gush is insane. Well, backed up by history, people believed us and are now playing the deck en masse. D'oh!
The second one is also based on player behavior. GAT is a great deck, no question. It has such an easy time winning tournaments in the hands of a great player (like Rich) for a different reason, though. People haven't realized that Type 1 is different today than it was pre-June 20th. Their decks are still built in a way that is most effective against Storm-decks.
Here's a memo for everybody still playing UW Fish: CREATURES ARE BACK IN VINTAGE, SUCKER! The dominant decks are no longer Ritual-fueled Tendrils decks and 3U-I-win-the-game-this-turn instant decks. The current decks will make FAT creatures and just smash your crappy white weenie deck with a few FoWs on size. Switch decks, damnit. Nobody guaranteed white weenie would be t1 viable for forever. Once people stop playing decks that give GAT a bye because they can't deal with a single fast fat creature, GAT will start doing worse. I don't think everybody playing Fish should switch to GAT, but I do very much think they should switch to SOMETHING.

So what to do about crazy fatties?

a) Play even better aggro. ICBM claims their Goblin-deck has a good matchup against GAT and I can believe it. Sure, 2003 GAT smashed aggro of any kind so that it wasn't funny any more. Those aggro-decks were Sligh and SuiBlack, though, while GAT ran 7 creatures and not five. Turn 1 Lackey can turn very ugly for a deck that has as few answers to it on the draw as GAT has (basically FoW or Mox+Dryad), especially if Wasteland gets involved. Considering the deck is posting results, I guess the idea seems quite good.

b) uhm, were talking creatures here, right? Oath of Druids seems like it should be kind of good there. Oath wasn't unplayed because it's an inherently bad deck. It was unplayed because it's Gifts-matchup (assuming equal and high playskill on both sides) was horrendous. Gifts was a better combo-deck and easily the better control-deck, too. Oath basically only won the nut-draw games. Well, guess what, Gifts and thereby Oath's really bad matchup are gone and has been replaced by a deck with multiple creatures. Time to take the 1G Enchantment back out, I guess.

c) Those creatures are cast of like 19 mana-sources maximum? And the other best deck of the format is playing 19-20 manasources, too? And both have huge problems with Chalice @2. And there are nearly no other permanents coming down? Sounds like the time for Doctor Stax to return. Stax was pushed out of the metagame by EtW-Gifts. Guess what, EtW has nearly left the building. Now, obviously if you just take your Stax-lists from the Gifts metagame, you'll be doing horrible. The deck is equipped to fight a huge storm-turn, not being killed incrementally by creatures or through a single blue instant (Sphere of Resistance will still randomly win it, though). The lists have to adapt. And they are already doing so. Spooky Stax seems to be doing so and it also is starting to place. I assume the popularity in the field -> t8 percentage of Stax is far higher than that of GAT, btw.
As a sidenote, I remember the time when Stax was considered a legitimately powerful deck of its own, not a metagame hate-deck. What happened?^^

So there are solutions to GAT out there, it's just that people keep playing decks that are in no way or form adapted to the current metagame. For the first time in two years, people (especially Fish-players) are expected to change decks. With a player-base attached to their decks like they are in type 1, it's obvious that this does take some time. White Weenie is bad now. Deal with it. The time no one needed removal is over. So put your Control Magics, Verdalken Shackles, Engineered Explosives and Duplicants back into your decks. You very likely see something huge during every second round that'll smash your face in if you can't handle it. You'll be surprised how much your GAT matchup improves, if your deck is actually set up in a way to account for the presence of some huge beatstick on the table early on.
In addition, the full hype is on for GAT, so everybody who is unsure what to play now will first switch to GAT, flooding the tournaments with it. Obviously this will also show in the top8's. I'd be honestly surprised if GAT had even represented up to its percentage of tournament presence in the top 16 at Waterbury day 1.

Third point (not very related to the article, I think, but as I'm already rambling... ): The real problem with the format is not Gush, not even really Flash (though I'd be happy to see it go), it's Merchant Scroll. When everybody else is playing Ancestral turn 2 or 3 maximum, you have to keep up. The restriction of Ancestral and Mystical is a joke if you play four Scrolls.
So you need your own Scrolls just so you don't get into Ancestral-disadvantage. Considering in addition that Scroll is what gives GAT and Flash their high consistency (and simply looking at the number of Merchant Scrolls being played), the card is just insane and belongs on the restricted list rather sooner than later.

And something on Flash: The deck is just sick. The most annoying thing about it is, that it can be beaten but it's just like playing Blackjack. This is not why I'm playing Magic... The removal of Merchant Scroll would severely weaken the deck, maybe even to the point were it becomes bearable. I'd still prefer to just kill Flash and be done with it. Magic is not supposed to just be about who can shuffle better.

/edit: Obviously another reason why so many people are playing GAT is simply because it's so incredibly fun to play...

[Aardshark]

Caveat - I wasn't at D2 Waterbury, and the results still aren't up.  As I understand it, only one goblins deck made t8, right?

Josh, I understand you like Goblins, and that it dominates a lot of other formats, but don't you think it's a little optimistic to highlight this as the metagame answer of choice for Flash and GAT?  I can see how blasts and leyline or krark are great early answers to Flash and how they quickly force an unwinnable game when the rest of the swarm shows up.  However, GAT looks like a brutal matchup for this deck.  Krark and Fanatic telegraph what a GAT player needs to do to keep his Dryad alive, and the Gush engine should race the swarm in most games; especially now that the list is watered down with metagame cards.  Not to mention that GAT can integrate a number of cards that will swing the matchup further.

I do respect goblins; I've lost to it in tournaments.  I also realize how adaptable it is.  I would think bringing in more tools like magus of the moon, pyrostatic pillar, and maybe even something like stoneshaker shaman or threaten would help against GAT.  I can see it being an option, but there's lots of good hate options right now; I was just surprised to see a title with dryads (ok, right), slivers (sure) and goblins (huh?).  

Supporting data: Goblins took 2nd and 6th in a 31 person ancestral recall tourney in NorCal. See http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=33771.0.  Note that these were the only 2 Goblins decks in the tourney. GAT abounded (though admittedly our 2 strongest GAT players were off kicking a** at Nationals), as did flash and stax.

[madlucas]

Actuelly a lot of players here in Italy have been playing Goblins for long time and many of them Top8'ed multiple times.
Even during the Gifts era it was a really popular deck maindecking REBs and Pyros,COTV,Tormod's and Pillars.
Older lists used to play with White for STP but right after they found out that it was a bad choice because people started to play with Massacre in their SB.
Here the most recent versions play with SSG and Blood Moon instead of Magus because it's more hard to deal vs enchantments when you are fronting a deck full of creatures so you need different answers to the deck.
If you go on www.morphling.de you can find several lists of Goblins and you will see that many of them Top'ed in very big tournaments which are bigger than TMD Open.

[Vegeta2711]

First, thanks for the feedback guys.

Josh, I understand you like Goblins, and that it dominates a lot of other formats, but don't you think it's a little optimistic to highlight this as the metagame answer of choice for Flash and GAT?  I can see how blasts and leyline or krark are great early answers to Flash and how they quickly force an unwinnable game when the rest of the swarm shows up.  However, GAT looks like a brutal matchup for this deck.  Krark and Fanatic telegraph what a GAT player needs to do to keep his Dryad alive, and the Gush engine should race the swarm in most games; especially now that the list is watered down with metagame cards.  Not to mention that GAT can integrate a number of cards that will swing the matchup further.

I played against GAT for a significant period of time with the Goblins lists and I think the GAT match is slightly favorable and at least even at worst. The key against GAT is I don't need to put a huge amount of pressure on, all I need to do is be able to swarm around a single Dryad early which will most likely die if they use it to stop my biggest threat (PD or Goon). The bonus is that many times an early Dryad can only be pumped once or twice in response to something if the GAT deck isn't countering something. Thanks to Vial and cycling, I can force uncounterable removal down at instant speed, this is especially good if you add a Stringscourger or two to help out (something that should be considered).

Part of the reason Goblins has a good match is because they can limit the amount of Gushes at minimal investment via red blasts while also draining life away from Fastbond. Trying to combo out with only 9-10 life makes it a lot harder for most people to 'get three' than when they've got 17-18.

@Mon
I just woke up and am going to get lunch and don't want to short change you a full response. So I'll give you a fleshed out one later, till then let me  give a quick summary of my position.

1. I could beat Gifts. In fact I can do so consistently with Ichorid, Stax or certain Fish builds. This biases me against it for the most part. Because if I can beat really good Gifts players with modified lists, I'm pretty sure anyone who put their mind to it could at least go 50/50 with them. 
2. I would take playing versus Ritual Gifts anyday over Flash, which is one of the most disgusting combo decks to be legal in any format ever.
3.

The first one is simple. Yes, GAT is making up one third of top8's. If I look at the attendance-breakdowns, then I see that there were at least one third GAT attending, though.

But that's the thing, for MANY players it's a +EV choice to take GAT even if they can't pilot it that well (And the majority can't, ask anybody at Waterbury). So to me it simply is a forgone conclusion that more people will play GAT than would've played Gifts, it rewards you even if you can't play the deck at a certain threshold and is (IMHO) more powerful than Gifts was in the hands of someone who fully understands which role to take with the deck.

So there are solutions to GAT out there, it's just that people keep playing decks that are in no way or form adapted to the current metagame. For the first time in two years, people (especially Fish-players) are expected to change decks. With a player-base attached to their decks like they are in type 1, it's obvious that this does take some time. White Weenie is bad now. Deal with it. The time no one needed removal is over. So put your Control Magics, Verdalken Shackles, Engineered Explosives and Duplicants back into your decks. You very likely see something huge during every second round that'll smash your face in if you can't handle it. You'll be surprised how much your GAT matchup improves, if your deck is actually set up in a way to account for the presence of some huge beatstick on the table early on.

Sure I agree with this. Still think Gush unrestriction was a stupid move, but GAT should go down eventually.

4. The real problem with the format is not Gush, not even really Flash (though I'd be happy to see it go), it's Merchant Scroll.

I never had a problem with Scroll until it won the game for my opponent on turn 2. Despite what Chapin says, fetching Ancestral doesn't do that. In full honesty, I think you might as well just hit Brainstorm as well if a sorcery speed limited tutor is good enough to get restricted. Because I feel Brainstorm is a superior card to scroll in many ways.

anyway, flesh this out later, tata for now.

[Vegeta2711]

Ok full response to Mon now.

In the roughly two years I played the deck, the only games I lost were to manascrew, me punting badly (after slight errors, Gifts usually still pulled you out) and two games to utter lucksackery.

Shay has lost a total of like 3-4 matches over the course of 6 tournaments since GAT came back. People can go on insane streaks with broken decks. Like I get your bringing this up to help reference that the deck is really good, but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty low on the scale of empirical evidence to look at.

Instead, Type 1 got turned into combo-land.

T1 has always, at it's core, been centered around combo land ever since Tog was created. Once combo-control became a mainstay and we learned to make better combo decks, it's always been combo-land to an extent.

Gifted dominated the lategame to a point were no other deck was even remotely likely to win the match should Gifted reach 4 to 5 permanent manasources in play for more than a single turn. As a result true control-decks, like Slaver, died. And as nothing could beat Gifts lategame, the race for being faster began.

f you look at what was actually winning tournaments during Gifts 2.5 year presence, you'll see that only dedicated mana-denial strategies and speed-combo had any chance at all of taking Gifts title away.

Steve actually summed this point up better than I could, so I'll quote him: "Dominating the late game in vintage is like winning the special olympics. congratulations. "

Realistically you SHOULD win every game you could reach 4 or 5 permanent mana sources, because you have to fight hard against combo to live that long and every other deck is trying to stop you from getting those mana sources. In fact that was my preferred method of beating Gifts decks, mana screwing them long enough to win, because Gifts was expensive and the gifts kills was moreso. The problem is with your idea here is that it sounds like this is somehow really bad. Once Gifts established itself as the top drain deck, wouldn't you think it'd be stupid NOT to fight it using one of the other established mediums of attack? it's not like these decks were developed purely as a response to Gifts, they existed for years upon years.

The other reason with the Gifts dominance theory as far as continuing even if it was unrestricted right now is for three simple reasons.
1. GAT does everything Gifts can do except cheaper, faster and realistically just better.
2. Ichorid smashes the deck into a million pieces, Leyline or no. The deck was a bye for it.
3. Gifts was dying down, at least in the U.S., before it was restricted in the first place.

That metagame was sick, horrible and just disgusting, with every deck just racing to be faster and faster

And this is where the wheels come off the bus as far as me understanding your argument. Flash is faster and far sicker than just about every combo deck in this format since... well actually I don't know about this format. I'd have to bring up like the Academy decks or 4 Jar decks to come up with just as broken or more powerful decks. 4 Consult / Vault / Rit / Necro Trix in the context of the Extended format it was legal in is about as good.

Like realistically what's the differences between what you're describing now and back then?
Storm Combo -> Flash (Even worse)
Fish / Aggro control - > GAT (Even worse)
Gifts -> GAT / other worse Drain decks
Mana Denial - > The same Stax crap as before

Second, rerestricting Gush because GAT's dominating: I very much disagree with that, for two reasons. The first one is simple. Yes, GAT is making up one third of top8's. If I look at the attendance-breakdowns, then I see that there were at least one third GAT attending, though. Seems ok to me. This is simply the hype culminating.

But that's the thing, for MANY players it's a +EV choice to take GAT even if they can't pilot it that well (And the majority can't, ask anybody at Waterbury). So to me it simply is a forgone conclusion that more people will play GAT than would've played Gifts, it rewards you even if you can't play the deck at a certain threshold and is (IMHO) more powerful than Gifts was in the hands of someone who fully understands which role to take with the deck.

b) uhm, were talking creatures here, right? Oath of Druids seems like it should be kind of good there. Oath wasn't unplayed because it's an inherently bad deck. It was unplayed because it's Gifts-matchup (assuming equal and high playskill on both sides) was horrendous. Gifts was a better combo-deck and easily the better control-deck, too. Oath basically only won the nut-draw games. Well, guess what, Gifts and thereby Oath's really bad matchup are gone and has been replaced by a deck with multiple creatures. Time to take the 1G Enchantment back out, I guess.

I know people will argue with this, but GAT doesn't really use creatures in the traditional aggro-control sense. I know it can, but against a deck like Oath the more likely route of victory will be sitting there and then combing out, only playing a creature when it's about to win the game. Many times against Rich I won't even have a turn, since most of his kill turns come along with drawing half his deck and playing Time Walk. Now you may want to argue Oath still has a good game against GAT, which I don't really agree with, but I just wanted to clear up the logic that 'gat runs creatures, hence oath must be good against it.'.

As a sidenote, I remember the time when Stax was considered a legitimately powerful deck of its own, not a metagame hate-deck. What happened?^^

Trinisphere got restricted and people started realizing Rebuild was a good idea.

So there are solutions to GAT out there, it's just that people keep playing decks that are in no way or form adapted to the current metagame. For the first time in two years, people (especially Fish-players) are expected to change decks. With a player-base attached to their decks like they are in type 1, it's obvious that this does take some time. White Weenie is bad now. Deal with it.

Sure I agree with this.

So put your Control Magics, Veldaken Shackles, Engineered Explosives and Duplicants back into your decks. You very likely see something huge during every second round that'll smash your face in if you can't handle it.

Not so much with this for the reasons I stated earlier. I think a slight influx of these are good, but many decks core strategies simply don't match up well against GAT if the pilot goes into combo mode.

The real problem with the format is not Gush, not even really Flash (though I'd be happy to see it go), it's Merchant Scroll. When everybody else is playing Ancestral turn 2 or 3 maximum, you have to keep up. The restriction of Ancestral and Mystical is a joke if you play four Scrolls.
So you need your own Scrolls just so you don't get into Ancestral-disadvantage. Considering in addition that Scroll is what gives GAT and Flash their high consistency (and simply looking at the number of Merchant Scrolls being played), the card is just insane and belongs on the restricted list rather sooner than later.

I heavily disagree with this and here's why. Merchant Scroll was fair pre-Gifts, it was good with Gifts and it's only borderline broken when it can fetch AR in a deck trying to abuse it. Here's the thing though, never before could Scroll be directly traded for CA without costing any extra mana AND be able to fetch the win condition directly from your deck. It gets ridiculous only when you can transform the card from a tutor to an enabler itself. Scroll is a sorcery speed limited tutor, Brainstorm is far more powerful that than and provides more consistency to decks like Flash and GAT than Scroll , it never comes up in discussion for restriction.

I don't think fetching AR is a big deal personally. Congratulations, you run cards that help power your deck and find the best cards in there, at most deck's cores that's what their entire strategy revolves around. My issue is that you think you have to play your own AR to keep up, which is misleading. Stax and Goblins can beat even the broken Scroll decks and not run AR or even bother running blue cards! That's because fetching and playing AR isn't a viable strategy in itself if the other guys plan directly attacks yours. If I run red blasts or strips or spheres or anything like that I can disable the play while damaging any further implementation of your strategy. Scroll doesn't trump this plan, nor does it trump the idea of Flash killing you before you can do anything.

If you restrict Gifts and Scroll, I'd argue you have to hit Brainstorm too for helping provide even more consistency to decks core strategies. At some point we have to weigh allowing a few "broken" tutors in the format to provide a coherent plan or simply restricting anything that fetches cards and playing a variant of Vintage highlander with 4 BS and 4 FOW.

On your final note, I agree flash is disgusting and should be taken care of. If B-wish and LED could get hit for long, I'd say a real turn 1 win deck should get smashed by a restriction.

[Smmenen]

If you restrict Gifts and Scroll, I'd argue you have to hit Brainstorm too for helping provide even more consistency to decks core strategies. At some point we have to weigh allowing a few "broken" tutors in the format to provide a coherent plan or simply restricting anything that fetches cards and playing a variant of Vintage highlander with 4 BS and 4 FOW.

This is pretty much the conclusion I've come to.    In actually testing Flash and going back through the games with a close analytical lens, I've come to realize (when I actually look back at the games, not based upon my recollection of what happened), that Brainstorm is the key card to Flash relative to Scroll.    Part of the reason is the power of Brainstorm with the Pacts, which is unreal.   It's made me put Brainstorm in a different light. 

If you restrict Brainstorm and Scroll, all blue decks start like this:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Brianstorm
4 Force of Will

I'm not sure what to do about Flash just yet.    I'm at the point where I agree something should be done, simply based upon principle.  I mean, as I said in my article yesterday, it's hard to imagine how we could restrict LED and B Wish from Long and let Flash live, even if I believe that Long is a more consistent deck (i.e. lower mulligan rate).   

[Shock Wave]

I'm not sure what to do about Flash just yet.    I'm at the point where I agree something should be done, simply based upon principle.

Wow, I never thought I'd see a statement like this coming from you. In any case, I'm happy that you're starting to support the notion of interactivity in this format. I really can't agree with either of you regarding Brainstorm though, especially in the comparison in power levels to Merchant Scroll. Brainstorm is not a tutor, nor does it net you card advantage. Yes, it is a very powerful spell, but resolving it really doesn't do anything except shape your hand. Come to think of it, I submit that when Brainstorm becomes a consideration for restriction, it is because we're at a stage of critical mass in Vintage, where drawing 3 cards is almost akin to tutoring for a random bomb. I don't think we're there yet, however I do believe that Brainstorm is exceptionally powerful right now almost entirely because of Flash. Think about it. Before Flash, Brainstorm was on the radar but nobody had really ever wanted to pull the trigger on it. Enter Flash, and all of a sudden Brainstorm seems almost too powerful. That leads me to conclude that nixing Flash will return Brainstorm to a high, yet acceptable level of potency.

Merchant Scroll is a different beast. I have felt for about a year now that this card was a problem, and it has been brought up on many occasions in the past. I'm not quite sure why it flew under the radar for so long, but it seems it was because nobody quite understood the power of playing with 4, although I'm sure it's possible there are other reasons I am overlooking. In recent years, however, the format has seen the entrance of very powerful blue spells (as if tutoring for AR or FoW wasn't good enough): Gifts, Gush, and Flash. If we're going to talk about restricting cards on principle, this card is an effing tutor for one of the most powerful spells in the game and in addition, it is blue. It's almost like a blue DT, since so many decks go for AR in the early game anyways.

My question is this: If scroll is restriction worthy (and it seems this is becoming a possibility), then what has allowed it to fly under the radar for so long? I mean, running 4 blue DTs for AR must've been some good back in the day, no?

[zeus-online]

I think it would be very interesting to restrict merchant scroll, flash, gush AND brainstorm.....While working on Slaver (work in progress, got it to about 40% vs. flash) this weekend we ended up putting 4 REB's in it, simply because all of the best decks are playing an insane amount of broken blue cards.

Flash should get hit simply because it's way too fast, no sane person wants a coin-flip format.
Gush should get hit because GAT is just as stupid now as it was before, to me there is no choice of decks right now, there's just GAT.
Merchant scroll has been in almost every good blue control decks for years, carl winters psychatog deck from 2003 featured 3 scrolls if i remember correctly, then we had a gab where 4CC and slaver was good, neither ran scroll, then came Gifts with a full set of scrolls. Even the last incarnation of long from the last era ran 4 scrolls...and now GAT and Flash is running a full set...I think it's restriction worthy.
Brainstorm is what makes vintage decks super-consistent, more so then scroll, it fixes mana bases, shuffles back cards like DSC, Bounce-spells and whatever else that might not be needed at the moment. For people who like to look at top8's and identify the amount of certain broken cards, try looking at brainstorm...Whether or not this is enough for restriction, i don't know - But i wouldn't mind seeing it go.

/Zeus

[Purple Hat]

restricting brainstorm would be as bad for the format as restricting force of will.  if you restrict force you end up with a format where you can't really have the predictable ability to stop your opponent from just killing you on the spot.  if you restrict brainstorm you can't really predict how your matchups will turn out.  I like playing gat, so I'd rather not see it restricted until we give the metagame a chance to adjust.  people are just starting to develop counter strategies like goblins and spooky stax.  I think come september we will have a metagame where gat is a good deck but there are other good decks out there.  I don't think that about flash.  I think the deck is just dumb.  It's highly inconsistent and a bit overpowered.  this seems like a bad combination because you have to board for it, but most of the time it's either gonna win or lose without your input.  taking scroll would decrease the power level of both these decks some but I doubt it would help enough with flash.

[diopter]

lol seriously? Restrict Scroll or Brainstorm?

Brainstorm's ubiquity is akin to people playing lands in every deck - it makes decks consistent and able to play their own cards. And it does so at a cost-to-benefit ratio that is nearly commensurate to Serum Visions - 1 mana and 1 card to see three cards with no net card advantage. R&D will not and should not restrict Brainstorm.

As for Merchant Scroll... Scroll becomes powerful because of Ancestral Recall - 1U and U to draw three cards is good, but fair becasue it takes up your first 1.5 turns of mana development. Scroll is also flexible by being able to fetch answers or other threats, but at a tempo loss. It is ultimately a fair card.

If you think Flash and GAT are too powerful, then restrict Flash and Gush. I would be against both restrictions, but at least your point would make sense. Nobody played Gush and Merchant Scroll together when Gush was restricted - the reason Gush is good is because you can chain them. And restricting Flash would be enough to seriously weaken the Flash deck, as the deck can't afford to be tutoring for it's kill condition 89% of the time.

The point is, if you have a problem with GAT or Flash, then deal with that problem and stop spewing nonsense about restricting Scroll or Brainstorm.

[madmanmike25]

First off, let's try to shy away from the "restrict Flash, re-restrict Gush, possibly restrict   Brainstorm(honestly, wtf)" since that wasn't really the point of the article.  I agree completely with Diopters last sentence in the above post.

On to the article.  Nice read.  What stuck out most to me was:

"Waterbury has come and gone, and more or less bolstered my suspicions that Flash is the deck to beat (along with GAT)."

I think that Flash is kind of the 'new thing' to play.  Not that it isn't insanely fast(it is), it's just popular right now.  GAT(or just Tog) on the other hand, has been played previously though it hadn't done much when Gush was restricted.

I think there are plenty of viable cards in Vintage that can impede Flash, I won't bother listing unless someone asks me to.  That being said, and reading what you wrote about Flash decks, I'm curious as to a couple of things concerning your Goblin decks.

1.  Why not run 4 copies of SSG?  You comment about how good it is, but only run 2 copies in one of the lists. ' REB of Will' is a very feasible answer to an early and fatal Flash.

2.  Why no Chalice?  Chalice @ 0 is not only 'free' disruption on the play against MOST vintage decks(I'm not looking at you, Ichorid), but stops Summoner's Pact and Pact of Negation in addition to the moxen.  It's also another artifact for Krark-Clan Shaman and has previously been in Vial builds of all kinds.

3.  With no knowledge about the opponents deck (game 1), how can you know when to aggressively mulligan into a Leyline?  This is an issue since Leyline is pretty much a dead draw unless you have Lotus.

4.  You say the second list is "more experimental".  Which seems to be the better list so far to take to a major(read: diverse) event from your experience?  Take into account that it isn't like Flash takes up almost half of the field.

5.  I like the idea of Vial-ing in a Stingscourger.  Am I correct in assuming that this will work on Protean Hulk in response to Flash sending it to the graveyard?

And finally thanks, it's nice to have a free article about Vintage and not have to wait 3 months to read it.

[The Atog Lord]

5.  I like the idea of Vial-ing in a Stingscourger.  Am I correct in assuming that this will work on Protean Hulk in response to Flash sending it to the graveyard?

No, this doesn't work. By the time you have priority, the Hulk has already hit the graveyard. There aren't many cards in Magic that move cards from one zone and then to a second zone in their resolution, but Flash is one. The Hulk enters play and then the graveyard during the resolution of Flash, so there is no time to do anything while it is in play -- neither player gets priority.

[Shock Wave]

As for Merchant Scroll... Scroll becomes powerful because of Ancestral Recall - 1U and U to draw three cards is good, but fair becasue it takes up your first 1.5 turns of mana development. Scroll is also flexible by being able to fetch answers or other threats, but at a tempo loss. It is ultimately a fair card.

The point is, if you have a problem with GAT or Flash, then deal with that problem and stop spewing nonsense about restricting Scroll or Brainstorm.

It is not nonsense to suggest restricting Merchant Scroll scroll. The card is a tutor. It finds the most powerful draw spell in the game. It should be restricted on this basis alone. Also, your contention that it takes up your first 1.5 turns of "mana development" doesn't really make sense. What else would you rather be casting with an island and a mox on your first turn? I can't think of a better card (besides Time Walk, in some situations). You're not sacrificing mana development to play Merchant Scroll. If anything, casting Merchant Scroll on your first turn ultimately results in a huge tempo gain a once you resolve Ancestral Recall.

You're confusing the concepts of mana development and mana expenditure. Missing a land drop, getting a land wasted, or having the wrong lands are examples of hindered mana development. Using renewable mana resources to cast spells defines mana expenditure. Spending mana to cast a spell a like Merchant Scroll has nothing to do with mana development.

BTW Josh, regarding this argument (which I overlooked in my initial post):

Merchant Scroll was fair pre-Gifts, it was good with Gifts and it's only borderline broken when it can fetch AR in a deck trying to abuse it. Here's the thing though, never before could Scroll be directly traded for CA without costing any extra mana AND be able to fetch the win condition directly from your deck. It gets ridiculous only when you can transform the card from a tutor to an enabler itself. Scroll is a sorcery speed limited tutor, Brainstorm is far more powerful that than and provides more consistency to decks like Flash and GAT than Scroll , it never comes up in discussion for restriction.

I don't think fetching AR is a big deal personally. Congratulations, you run cards that help power your deck and find the best cards in there, at most deck's cores that's what their entire strategy revolves around. My issue is that you think you have to play your own AR to keep up, which is misleading. Stax and Goblins can beat even the broken Scroll decks and not run AR or even bother running blue cards! That's because fetching and playing AR isn't a viable strategy in itself if the other guys plan directly attacks yours. If I run red blasts or strips or spheres or anything like that I can disable the play while damaging any further implementation of your strategy. Scroll doesn't trump this plan, nor does it trump the idea of Flash killing you before you can do anything.

If you restrict Gifts and Scroll, I'd argue you have to hit Brainstorm too for helping provide even more consistency to decks core strategies. At some point we have to weigh allowing a few "broken" tutors in the format to provide a coherent plan or simply restricting anything that fetches cards and playing a variant of Vintage highlander with 4 BS and 4 FOW.

I think Merchant Scroll will end up being a consideration in future metagames, even where Flash is restricted. I believe so because once the metagame slows down (and it will significantly if Flash gets the axe), then it is inevitable that a higher premium will be placed on card advantage instead of card quality. Vintage has changed recently where card quality has trumped card advantage, because of silly combos like Flash. However, if the emphasis shifts back to card advantage, resolving Ancestral Recall will once again become one of the most (if not the most) powerful early game plays in the format. If this is true, then having Merchant Scroll float around as a 4-of is rather silly.

Flash is broken right now, and Scroll and Brainstorm are rather ridiculous alongside it. However, with Flash gone, I think we'd have a healthy metagame and we could leave Scroll and Brainstorm alone until they started to demonstrate a serious problem. In any case, that's all a long way away.

[Purple Hat]

I think Merchant Scroll will end up being a consideration in future metagames, even where Flash is restricted. I believe so because once the metagame slows down (and it will significantly if Flash gets the axe), then it is inevitable that a higher premium will be placed on card advantage instead of card quality. Vintage has changed recently where card quality has trumped card advantage, because of silly combos like Flash. However, if the emphasis shifts back to card advantage, resolving Ancestral Recall will once again become one of the most (if not the most) powerful early game plays in the format. If this is true, then having Merchant Scroll float around as a 4-of is rather silly.

Flash is broken right now, and Scroll and Brainstorm are rather ridiculous alongside it. However, with Flash gone, I think we'd have a healthy metagame and we could leave Scroll and Brainstorm alone until they started to demonstrate a serious problem. In any case, that's all a long way away.

But in a metagame where card quality is less important the other side of scroll gets significantly worse.  right now the ability to not only get cards but also to get the right cards makes scroll very powerful, but if the meta slows to the point where getting the right cards is less important then scroll loses power in balance with, if not faster than, it's gains through the increasing importance of getting Recall.

[diopter]

It is not nonsense to suggest restricting Merchant Scroll scroll. The card is a tutor. It finds the most powerful draw spell in the game. It should be restricted on this basis alone. Also, your contention that it takes up your first 1.5 turns of "mana development" doesn't really make sense. What else would you rather be casting with an island and a mox on your first turn? I can't think of a better card (besides Time Walk, in some situations). You're not sacrificing mana development to play Merchant Scroll. If anything, casting Merchant Scroll on your first turn ultimately results in a huge tempo gain a once you resolve Ancestral Recall.

You're confusing the concepts of mana development and mana expenditure. Missing a land drop, getting a land wasted, or having the wrong lands are examples of hindered mana development. Using renewable mana resources to cast spells defines mana expenditure. Spending mana to cast a spell a like Merchant Scroll has nothing to do with mana development.

Sorry, you're right, I did mean mana expenditure. Regardless - what I was trying to say was that Scrolling for anything other than FoW on your first turn gives your opponent an unimpeded first/second turn. Scrolling for FoW comes with its own problems. The Merchant Scroll engine is great but it's power is not limitless and it has weaknesses.

Also, Ancestral Recall is only the "best draw spell in the game" in context - it has the best cost-to-benefit ratio. Tacking on an extra 1U to its cost takes it from "broken" to "good but fair".

[Smmenen]

I think Merchant Scroll will end up being a consideration in future metagames, even where Flash is restricted. I believe so because once the metagame slows down (and it will significantly if Flash gets the axe), then it is inevitable that a higher premium will be placed on card advantage instead of card quality. Vintage has changed recently where card quality has trumped card advantage, because of silly combos like Flash. However, if the emphasis shifts back to card advantage, resolving Ancestral Recall will once again become one of the most (if not the most) powerful early game plays in the format. If this is true, then having Merchant Scroll float around as a 4-of is rather silly.

Flash is broken right now, and Scroll and Brainstorm are rather ridiculous alongside it. However, with Flash gone, I think we'd have a healthy metagame and we could leave Scroll and Brainstorm alone until they started to demonstrate a serious problem. In any case, that's all a long way away.

But in a metagame where card quality is less important the other side of scroll gets significantly worse.  right now the ability to not only get cards but also to get the right cards makes scroll very powerful, but if the meta slows to the point where getting the right cards is less important then scroll loses power in balance with, if not faster than, it's gains through the increasing importance of getting Recall.

I only agree with part of that.

The perspective your speaking from is the perspective of people who played Thirst in Gifts instead of Scroll.   I think they were wrong in 2005 and they are wrong now.   Scroll will always be powerful, moreso than other cards, even if the metagame slows to where it was in 2005.   

Brainstorm is, tempowise, Ancestral Recall.  The DCI has already stated several times that it is a legitimate candidate for restriction.   It is the best unrestricted draw spell in vintage, bar none.   And its the second best non-draw7 blue draw spell ever printed (after Ancestral).   Yes, Brainstorm is a better card than Gush.   But that's obvious.   

[RaZe]

Instead of the usual cries/suggestion for restricting certain cards, wouldn't unrestricting be a lot more be a better or at the very least interesting development for Vintage?

Why restrict Gifts and unrestrict Gush?
How about we unrestrict Gifts back?

Why didn't Fact of Fiction get unrestricted before Gush?
Then unrestrict Fact.

Merchant Scroll is the best unrestricted tutor, and is the backbone of most blue based deck. Restrict it! Bring back Ritual-Storm!
Here is Burning Wish back.

What about Shop decks? We're already at a decline for a year now!
4 Trini....@#$@$...sphere. [With Serum Powder, are you crazy!?!?! - Just a lil diabolical]


My insight or foresight on what some or if all of these changes do happen can do for the metagame is probably narrower and shorter than more than half the people who have posted in this thread, so I'm putting it out there as an alternative. Instead of cutting out the possibilities of viable decks why not broaden it out? Sure it might be harder to pinpoint any given metagame accurately, but it's just like Legacy and it's quite a good thing in my opinion.

Heck, I think Regrowth, Personal Tutor, Entomb have no business in the restricted list with Gush out. But hey, bash me for those statement all you want. I'd sure want to know why they're there.

[Vegeta2711]

Guys, not to be rude, but the main point of my article wasn't to spark another B/R debate. The only reason I directly addressed the issue was because Mon wrote a significantly detailed reply that went over it. If you want to continue the B/R discussion, more onto another thread.

[Purple Hat]

@steve: I was actually thinking that with the speed and massive counterwars of the meta right now I use scroll to get force of will and mana drain way more than I use it to get ancestral.  if the meta slowed down more and I was playing less of a turn 1-2 slugfest followed by a drawn out beatdown segment I'd probably start using scroll more to get ancestral because it wouldn't be as good to have 2-3 counters in hand all the time.  that's what I meant by scroll's power to get the right cards would diminish in importance while it's power to get ancestral would become more important.

back on topic.  I feel like as people search for answers to flash that aren't reverent silenceable goblins is going to get swept up in the massive amounts of small creature kill that's likely headed for the format to try and answer flash.  things like Engineered Explosives, slice and dice, etc will, in my opinion, take a heavy toll on goblin decks that aren't packing things like the goon. (if you drop ee on turn 1 and survive to turn 2 you beat flash) I think GaT is ultimately gonna turn out to be a very good deck but right on the edge of restrictability and as mon said when the meta adjusts to it and some of the people stop playing it it will start showing up in less top 8's.  I think we've spent 4 years learning to build and fight storm combo, now it's time to learn to build and fight creature-control-combo and creature decks again.  I remember back in 2004 when people were saying that Hulk would always be the best control deck and something needed to be done.  gat feels that way to me right now.  Sure it's powerful and people are doing well with it but look at who the people are and look at the results compaired to the field.  I don't care what rich shay and brassman play at waterbury, I'm putting them in my t8 prediction just because I figure I'm about 50/50 that one of them's gonna win the whole damn thing.  you bring up rich losing like 5 matches in the last month, but honestly, when was the last time you really saw rich lose more than 5 or 6 matches in a month outside of top 8's and finals.  He's probably the best player in type one right now and he's been at or near the top of that list for the last 3 or 4 years at least. 

[Smmenen]

I've seen Rich lose alot last year and the year before, both at Gencon and to me.   His top 8 rate at the SCG events was about the same as mine: 50%.   He won SCG Richmond Day 1, but I knocked him out day two and i made top 8.   I knocked him out of SCG Rochester in may on one of the days, and I think he made top 8 the other, but I can't recall.   Rich had two losses at Gencon, one to Mark Trogdon.

[jcb193]

Well before this turns into a debate about who's deck is biggest.....

I tend to agree with many people that the GAT fad willl fade a little in the next few months.  Keep in mind, about 2-3 years ago GAT was popular because it had all the power of combo, yet was fun to play and VERY forgiving.  These kinds of decks will always bring out a higher number of partipants than normal powerful decks, simply because they are more fun to play or more accessible. 

If you look at the pie graph of Vintage Magic players, pure combo decks do not increase in membership.  Those players move from one optimized combo deck to the next (like flash), rarely attracting new converts.  Control players stay with control, etc etc.  GAT type decks will appeal to both power players and tier 2 tournament players.