Can you make a good control deck with only GU?

[Dnine]

I had some time to kill today so I decided to try to make a GU control deck that could compete at a high level.  While green is hardly played except as a splash color for fastbond and dryads I think that it offers more then that.  I will admit though that fastbond is by far the best vintage card so I want to make sure to utilize that.  In fact land interactions is one of greens strongest assets in vintage.  Not only do cards like fastbond and it's bastard offspring exploration help you accelerate, but other land related cards like life of the loam can be an unstoppable card advantage engine.  So focusing on this I started with the core deck utilizing fastbond effects for acceleration and life of the loam for card advantage.  In order to actually utilize those lands though I definitely need strip effects and bazaar. 

2 life of the loam
3 bazaar of bagdad
1 strip-mine
4 wasteland
1 fastbond
4 exploration

With a life-strip recursion plan I'll need a way to assemble the lock.  For this nothing works better the intuition.  I fetches all 3 pieces at once and it doesn't matter what you get handed to you.  Int for life-bazaar-strip-mine is the plan here. 

4 intuition

And since we are running exploration and fastbond it only makes sense that we would want gush as well.  Not to mention the always played blue cards.

4 gush
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
4 force of will
1 mystical tutor

Since we are running a mana denial theme, it also make sense to deal with moxes.  Now I'm only 2 color and don't really want to move into a third so mox monkey is out.  Chalice could work, but I'd hardly ever want to set it at anything but 0.  Null rod seems like the right call here. 

4 null rod

Now for the part of the deck where I know I'm going to lose some people, but I hope they at least here me out.  This deck relies on exploration and fastbond for acceleration.  That and running null rod means I don't want much artifact accel.  Because of this I decided to only run the lotus for artifact accel.  This also frees up my mana base to run more lands.  I know this may sound wrong, but it also allows me to do one more thing. 

Foil.

Yes foil, the card that promises so much, but always disappoints.  I know this, yet I was willing to try again.  this deck can't help but have extra lands in hand, and with a 2 color mana base with no moxes it becomes pretty easy.  You have life and gush to help as well.  Not to mention the cards are discarded instead of RFG'd and no blue card is needed.   It actually works here and gives me 4 additional turn 0 options.

4 foil

Lastly I need a way to win.  Originally I was planning on running a few terrivors and a few goffs.  Then I started thinking about the fact that I needed some silver bullets for getting me out of tight spots.  Some bounce or something, but I had not enough room for both.  I decided to go with living wish to pull double duty.  Most of the time you don't want your kill early so the mana shouldn't be a problem and I get the flexibility to get out of tight spots.  I also cut one bazaar to have a wish target to free up a slot.

4 living wish.

I also thru in 1 regrowth and 1 E. witness to allow my intuitions to function as hard tutors to round out the deck

4 force of will
4 foil
4 intuition
4 gush
4 living wish
4 exploration
4 null rod
1 ancestral recall
1 time walk
1 mystical tutor
2 life of the loam
1 fastbond
1 regrowth
1 eternal witness
3 bazaar of bagdad
4 wasteland
1 strip-mine
4 tropical island
4 breeding pool
7 island
1 black lotus

sideboard
(wish targets)
1 bazaar of bagdad
1 maze of ith
1 terrivore 
1 water front bouncer
1 e. witness

3 tarmogoffs
3 sower of temptation
4 trygon predator


So this is where I'm at now.  I'm still undecided if I should switch out 2 lands for the 2 on color moxes.  I'm also still tweaking my sideboard as I'm unsure of all the matchups. 

[madmanmike25]

I'm suprised no one has responded to this.  Here goes.

Foil.
Yes foil,..
4 foil

No.  No to 4 copies of Foil in a deck.  Ever.  Two copies at the most, the other 2 cards could become Misdirection or whatever.  Foil is essentially 3 for 1 and thats a terrible way to start a game.  I know people will probably cite the time it saved them from a 1st turn kill but still.......damn.  Since we are seeing lots more aggro in Vintage, countering that turn 0 spell will net you 4 cards in hand (even fewer if you had to mulligan) and pretty much wins the game for them.  Later it becomes slightly more tolerable and that isn't saying too much.

Can I be honest with you?  This deck seems like it tries to win way to slow.  You seem more focused on stopping your opponent from winning and building card advantage.  Even with that card advantage, you don't have any devastating plays either.  Personally I don't think that's a great strategy for Vintage.  You might want to consider Turboland type decks.

4 living wish.

I know you want this as your go-to card, but it almost seems that these should just be Goyfs.  Wishboards are fun, but slow.  Hell, even Cunning Wish is slow and no deck really runs four of those successfully. 

In a deck similar to this, I ran Sylvan Scrying to find Strip asap.  It also allows you to add a Maze maindeck so you can occasionally bump into it.

Intuition is a great and underused card imo.  That being said, 4 copies is probably too much.  Merchant Scrolls are great to complement 1-2 Intuition.  Don't forget it also gets Recall.  Try them.  Your main Intuition pile(loam, strip, bazaar) is your best, so it isn't as good the more you cast it.  It seems you would be casting Intuition at sorcery speed most of the time anyways.



Here is a list of some of the cards you should consider:

Crop Rotation(isn't this an auto-include?)
Frantic Search
Tabernacle at Pendrall Vale
Sylvan Scrying
Merchant Scroll
Trade Routes
Mishras Factory
Crucible of Worlds(again, why isn't this in your deck?)
Glacial Chasm(1 of these nullifies multiple creatures.  works with exploration and Crucible)
Riftstone Portal(turns your mazes+bazaars into mana)
Gift's Ungiven(Regrowth, E.Witness, 2 good cards)
Garruk Wildspeaker
Azusa

Good luck, it's a fun concept.  Hell, I just might build my own deck with some of the above-mentioned cards.
Mike