Requesting Help For a Starter.

[Benevides]

Bear with me as I give a short backstory.

Two years ago, my Friend, We'll call him Mr. Marek, talked to me about Vintage tournaments, and other such tournaments that required much higher end decks than the ones me and my friends at school ran. We ran decks that were fun, odd, cheap. It was casual gaming. Eventually though, one kid upped his deck, again and again, angry that I beat him with a Merc deck until he just started to destroy everyone.

I was interested in this, while I enjoyed casual, I could see myself having a little fun with decks that seemed to 'click'. I'm that kind of person, I really like it when things just 'click', and things are in order, and a plan/deck is executed in a precise manner with strategy. That's what really drew me to Vintage.

Well, At that time I didn't have a job, and while I attempted to save money for one of the Cheaper vintage decks my friend Mr. Marek told me about, I never really did. And I stopped playing magic for two years. Just...stopped. I lost all interest, and basically forgot about it. And as I stopped, all my friends from school that I got into it did likewise.

Fast-forward through various hobbies.....So, I've had a job for a while, it's not glamorous (Cook at KFC), but it gets me money for a car and college next year. (Going into my senior year) and now I have various bits of cash I put aside for hobbies and all of a sudden, I'm going on a MTG kick. Like, really bad. So bad, I got all my cards out of my closet and looked at them.

They were...sub-par.....I have a lot of them, at least by my standards, but none of them are really that great. A few worth a couple bucks I picked up in trades and a few betting games, but nothing serious. I looked at various Vintage decks and see that almost all of the cards I have, are not used in any of those decks.

So, i'll cut the BS. I'm a newbie to the Vintage area of Magic. I get some of the terms and such. And the ones I don't, I try my best to figure out. I don't know all of the card names by heart, and a lot of the better cards, I've probably never heard of. I'm trying to bust my way into Vintage, but I need to get a solid battering ram to do it.

I come here to ask for help. I plan to build a deck over some time. Yes I may have the money to buy it in one go, but that's not smart, in case something comes up where I need the money. And I'm a patient kid, so I can wait.
Mr. Marek mentioned two decks in the past, I don't remember any of the cards, aside from one or two, and I only remember the names for the decks.

The two cards are Brainstorm I believe, and Yawgmoth's Will. I've heard of Brainstorm, but never had heard of Yawgmoth's will. I see how, with the appropriate deck it could flow well, but the cards to add to that deck...no idea. Some time ago, I purchased a Yawgmoth's Will, back then. Got it cheap off one of my friends.
The two Decks he mentioned were URBana Fish, and Bomberman.


So..what I'm asking is..... (And I'm terribly, terribly sorry for my non-linear subject hopping),

-Are there any good decks, at a somewhat reasonable price for a starter Vintage Player?
-What exactly are Bomberman and URBana Fish decks, and why are they good?
-What decks could utilize Yawgmoth's Will effectively, since I like the card. (I don't know why, I just really like it. It seems like a card that could lead to some killer combos..but what do I know, I'm a n00b.)
-Any sort of advice, or words of wisdom for me. Or anything. I'm a very open child.

Thanks for your time, and all your help ahead of time. I'm sorry I gave you a spiel that amounted to almost nothing. I just come off awkward, and I can't OUTRIGHT ask for help. It feels demanding, and perhaps if I gave a rundown of the situation, it might ease you into the subject, and not blast me from the start or anything. and If you haven't figure out, I'm a nervous, quick talker, who can't properly translate that to text, so he jumps around a lot....And doesn't know where to end his sentences...YArrr....
 

[IthilanorStPete]

(Note: use magiccards.info to look up cards you don't know)
Start with this Stephen Menedian article and this one; however, they've been somewhat outdated by the restrictions of Flash, Merchant Scroll, Gush, Brainstorm, and Ponder. GAT, Hulk Flash. and Gush storm are gone; Tyrant Oath is neutered; MUD and Workshop Aggro are less powerful without the Gush decks to prey on.
Question 1: I don't know enough to really answer this question. Keep in mind that most tournaments (in the U.S.) allow some number of proxies, so you don't necessarily have to shell out the cash for Moxen, Lotus, etc. The cheapest with proxies is probably Manaless Ichorid; proxy your 4 Bazaars, then the most expensive/unavailable stuff like dual lands out of the SB; you can pick up a lot of the deck cheap.
Question 2: Bomberman is explained in the linked article. URBana Fish is a Blue-Red-Black fish variant; here's an example. Neither is really competitive
Question 3: The decks that use Will the best are storm combo decks; it allows them to reuse a graveyard full of Rituals and Lotus, and tutors to get mana and storm count for a lethal Tendrils of Agony. 2nd to that, you have more controlling decks like Drain Tendrils and Control Slaver that can play it for a huge tempo and card advantage - replay Lotus, discarded Moxen, used Ancestrals/Thirst for Knowledge, etc.
Question 4: Listen to the responses here, read through the large threads in the Open forum, read the coverage of the recent 2008 Vintage Champs here to get an idea of what the current metagame looks like. Also, I highly recommend downloading Magic Workstation; it's a great way to just get familiar with the basics of playing Vintage decks.

[Masta]

I like this thread, because it supports my theory that it has become increasingly ridiculously difficult for new players to break into Vintage.  I'm interested to follow this player's adventure.

To the OP:

-Are there any good decks, at a somewhat reasonable price for a starter Vintage Player?
-What exactly are Bomberman and URBana Fish decks, and why are they good?
-What decks could utilize Yawgmoth's Will effectively, since I like the card. (I don't know why, I just really like it. It seems like a card that could lead to some killer combos..but what do I know, I'm a n00b.)
-Any sort of advice, or words of wisdom for me. Or anything. I'm a very open child.

First things first, where are you trying to play Vintage?  At your local card store on Wednesday nights?  Or at regional tournaments that offer up Moxes and such for prizes?  Local shops usually don't offer unlimited proxies and so the power curve of the decks is a bit lower.  You can easily get by with a $100-$150 deck there, any fish build would be perfect.  The bigger tournies either offer full proxy counts or at least 8 or so, but here you're going to need some quality cards to do anything other than lose.

Yawgmoth's Will, what can't be said about Yawgmoth's Will.  It's arguably the most powerful card in Vintage.  Most of the best decks run it, and most of those decks plan on resolving it to win the game.  Most of the time, whenever it does resolve the opponent will just say "good game" because they know they just lost.  Try and pay attention to others when they play it, but don't try and dive right into a TPS deck and expect to know your ass from your elbow.  You know what I'm saying?

Playing is the best thing for you to do.  You can read all you want but it doesn't mean anything until you can apply it through playing.  Some people read -> play, I like to play -> read, but that's just me.  I suggest you look up a few decks on here, netdeck one of them, and play on MWS until your eyes bleed.  Then take a 15 minute break and play until your eyes puss, rinse & repeat.  It'll take awhile since there's a bevy of possibilities in T1, but you'll start to know your place pretty quick and get a grasp of what's good and what sucks.

Welcome to Vintage, Good Luck!

V/R
Masta

[Benevides]

Thanks, and I feel better that I'm not just an idiot, and it's kind of hard to break into vintage. I'll do my best to stick with everyone here.

First things first, where are you trying to play Vintage?  At your local card store on Wednesday nights?  Or at regional tournaments that offer up Moxes and such for prizes?  Local shops usually don't offer unlimited proxies and so the power curve of the decks is a bit lower.  You can easily get by with a $100-$150 deck there, any fish build would be perfect.  The bigger tournies either offer full proxy counts or at least 8 or so, but here you're going to need some quality cards to do anything other than lose.

There's one in New Hampshire, or somewhere in that vicinity my friend Mr. Marek goes to once a month or so. They have something like an Eight Proxy rule, and offer up moxes and Timewalks and such things. I live in Rhode Island, and I visit Stillpoint in Fall Rive, Mass. I live near the RI/MA  border, and that's the only shop within a driving distance for me. Though I think Stillpoint hosts Vintage once every couple months.

Yawgmoth's Will, what can't be said about Yawgmoth's Will.  It's arguably the most powerful card in Vintage.  Most of the best decks run it, and most of those decks plan on resolving it to win the game.  Most of the time, whenever it does resolve the opponent will just say "good game" because they know they just lost.  Try and pay attention to others when they play it, but don't try and dive right into a TPS deck and expect to know your ass from your elbow.  You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I know that what i'm attempting to do will take a lot of losses, a lot of nights playing solitaire, and seeing how my deck draws, looking at my cards and finding every possible outcome, practicing guessing what percentage chance some cards have for coming up and the chance of early draws. I'm pretty sure that when I finally build my deck, I'm going to get my ass whupped royally countless times.


And thanks. I just finished building my new comp, so I don't have any of my old files. I used to have apprentice, but I'll try out MWS. Thanks for your help. And hopefully within a year or more, I'll be playing Vintage faithfully.

[EnialisLiadon]

15 proxy is becoming slightly more common, which makes playing most combo decks not terribly expensive.  Proxying up 8-9 pieces of power, 0-2 Grim Tutors, 0-1 Imperial Seals, and some duals leaves you with mostly easy stuff to acquire.

The nice part about this plan is that you'll have a wealth of cards to go into a lot of different decks.

[Grand Inquisitor]

I think www.findmagiccards.com is better than www.magiccardsinfo.com for getting general info (text, image, versions, prices) on cards.

I like www.morphling.de for metagame research (in conjunction with www.starcitygames.com & here).  I use www.essentialmagic.com to get images for proxies (just copy into a word document).

As for whether you can play T1 cheaply and what to play?  A few refinements...

1) What is cheap?  Give us a dollar range.

2) What do you like to play?  A big component of success in Vintage is playing a style that fits you.  The decision trees can get so big that the better players survive 75% of in game decisions on pattern recognition.

The short answer, though, is yes.  Right now is a great time to get into T1 exactly because the metagame is fresh.  People will tell you it's an obvious choice between TPS, Slaver and Ichorid, etc, but the real deal is that the card pool and matchups are still very undefined.  There's lots of design space after the recent rounds of restrictions.

To give you some early feedback, the cheapest decks are always going to be aggro strategies:

UW Fish
Goblins
TMWA

However, you can jump tiers pretty quickly with some proxies and a different set of cards:

Ichorid
Bomberman
Belcher

There's also, as I said, lots of room for new development.

[Benevides]

1) What is cheap?  Give us a dollar range.

I can spend a decent amount of money over time. I have some of the cards that may be needed already, though not many. I have two Mind Slavers, if I were to make a Slaver deck, but as far as money goes..I'd say I'd be fine within the $100-150.00 range.

 

2) What do you like to play?  A big component of success in Vintage is playing a style that fits you.  The decision trees can get so big that the better players survive 75% of in game decisions on pattern recognition.

I think I'd like to play a combo deck. Something that feels like a puzzle with all the pieces. I really like the feel of everything just clicking together, but being somewhat complex and fun to figure out. So possible a heavy combo deck.

And my friend played a Bomberman or URBana fish deck. I'm not quite sure, and I don't know the idea behind them, though I intend to find out. But I remember playing them, and they seemed like fun and good decks. The lucky guy even had a real Black Lotus. though he didn't play it, kept it in a nice big case, and proxied it. Only for showing off.


Edit-------------

I just stopped by my local card shop today and picked up 3 Phyrexian Totems, A Revive, Paradise Plume, Chromatic Star. All of those for 10 cents a piece, and Fact or Fiction and MindSlaver for 4 bucks a pop. Good investments? I've seen a couple of those used in decent-ish decks. I also saw this deck that looked really fun on Wizards.com Magic section. The 'Booby Trap!' deck, and 'Eight Post' which uses Cloudpost and Vesuvus. I couldn't find those cards at the shop, and I may go get them. but I hear their prices have risen. It was the budget section of Wizards Magic Area.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Fact or Fiction and MindSlaver for 4 bucks a pop. Good investments?

FoF is one of the least broken restricted cards on the list.

Vendor   Rating   Feedback   Province   City   Style   Cond   #   Price
HB Avatar        68+    Ontario    Toronto    Normal    Mint    2    2.79
Magic Source Online        5,000+    Ohio    Harrison    Normal    VF    3    2.90
Ccg Bot        5,000+    Washington    Vancouver    Normal    VF    2    3.05

Mindslavers can be bought commercially around $3 (this is from www.findmagiccards.com if you bothered to look) and probably trade lower.

I think I'd like to play a combo deck.

Combo decks (usually storm or belcher right now) are medium to high in terms of investment cost among vintage decks.  You don't need mana drains, but you need all the acceleration (or proxy) and most of the restricted list.  Not to mention that mana bases for these are average to expensive.

Here's an important point.  One of my favorite things about your post was this comment:

I could see myself having a little fun with decks that seemed to 'click'. I'm that kind of person, I really like it when things just 'click', and things are in order, and a plan/deck is executed in a precise manner with strategy. That's what really drew me to Vintage.

I would guess that lots of people, very much including the better players on this site, will look at this comment and become nostalgic and identify with your appreciation about how this format works.  Sure vintage is about raw power.  However, what really makes the good things hum around here is the deep synergies that lie among the best and widest set of cards in magic.

When I recommended a number of mid-tier and non-combo decks and talked about 'new developments', for the first time in a few metagame cycles I could be completely honest.  The format is not solved right now.  Unknown (re: cheaper) cards are viable.

There are a number of good sources on this site where you can find good lists for what the staples are.  But right now you can infill those, do some serious (I mean lots of blood, sweat, tears, good testing) and be competitive.

There's a thread at the top of this board you should check out.  Also, where do you play (regional metagames are important).

[Benevides]

I play in the New England area. More precisely Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

I was actually looking at what I think to be a storm deck. I know it's based around storm, and I built one in MWS, It's the Drain Tendrils build. It's a fairly recent post, I believe the post has something like 6/20, so I'm guessing that's the update of how recent it is in relations to restrictions and such. Is 100-150 a good price range for what i'm aiming to achieve.

Also, during my visit to the comic shop today, I noticed on the 30th of this month, there's a Vintage tournament. 'How fortunate!' I thought. and Then thought, 'How unrealistic!' in relation to how long I would have to build a deck. The tourney is giving out a Mox or Timewalk as first place, I'm not entirely sure. And runner ups in the 5th and 6th places get dual lands. That's all I remember. I really only concentrated on the runner up prizes, the only place I could put within the realm of minor impossibility for me.

I won't compete in it, unless I miraculously build the deck with my $75.00 on hand, but I will be there to watch, and talk, and check out the overall flow of the tournaments. I used to be into Warlords, and in my first tournament, I was actually shaking a little bit, just because I didn't want to look like a fool to the vets. I came out ok. I got past two rounds, and into the Quarter-finals miraculously, but got swept hard in a best of three. No chance what-so-ever....I digress fully. I'll just stop here.

[Masta]

I play in the New England area. More precisely Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

I was actually looking at what I think to be a storm deck. I know it's based around storm, and I built one in MWS, It's the Drain Tendrils build. It's a fairly recent post, I believe the post has something like 6/20, so I'm guessing that's the update of how recent it is in relations to restrictions and such. Is 100-150 a good price range for what i'm aiming to achieve.

Also, during my visit to the comic shop today, I noticed on the 30th of this month, there's a Vintage tournament. 'How fortunate!' I thought. and Then thought, 'How unrealistic!' in relation to how long I would have to build a deck. The tourney is giving out a Mox or Timewalk as first place, I'm not entirely sure. And runner ups in the 5th and 6th places get dual lands. That's all I remember. I really only concentrated on the runner up prizes, the only place I could put within the realm of minor impossibility for me.

Drain Tendrils has been hot lately ever since that post went up.  I don't really think of that deck as something that 'clicks' with fantastic synergies, but rather one that just plays better cards than most decks.  I think that deck was a product of where the format has been heading back since Mirrodin and Slaver came to light.  Card drawing has become so huge in vintage lately it's unreal.  I like how the deck takes this aspect of the game to the absolute extreme, tosses in the game's best counter back-up and some restricted brokenness and whalla!  You got yourself a winning deck.  It definitely has the sickest draw engine to date, and it only makes sense that the deck is successful because a lot of the time card advantage = win in vintage. 

Before I get to ahead of myself, Drain Tendrils is quite pricey to build.  You probably won't get by making it with $100-$150 unless you're allowed the purportedly common 15 card proxy limit.  This way you'll be left buying a handful of $5-$15 cards as well as some much cheaper uncommons like Accumulated Knowledge, TFK (Thirst for Knowledge), and the like.

Be careful about what cards you run and buy right now.  It's easy to get excited and buy a bunch of cards that seem sweet to own, but you may never even sleeve them up.  Slaver is a great card but it's really only used in one type of deck, Slaver.  FoF (Fact or Fiction) is a good card but like the other poster mentioned it is one of the least 'broken' of the restricted list and probably wouldn't hurt if it were unrestricted, but that's another thread.  If you can't wait to buy some cards and you have to scratch that itch, consider some of these, especially if you like combo:

4 Force of Willl
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Gifts Ungiven (the other, much better Fact or Fiction)
Some sac-lands (Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, etc.)

4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Gush
1 Tinker
1 Echoing Truth/Chain of Vapor

These cards are very commonly found in vintage and even if you don't play them right off the bat, odds are you probably will sooner or later.  The top cards are affordable rares, while the bottom set are very affordable uncommons.  Plus a lot of these cards are in your ideal Drain Tendrils build, so rest assured you're not only building your deck but your collection as well.  Come to think of it, I remember someone on this site used to compile statistical data of cards represented at large tournaments, and on top of that how often they showed up in Top8 lists.  That would be a great place to look for great, commonly played vintage cards to start your collection.  Maybe someone can finish this thought for me and post a link?

Also, maybe your Bomberman friend could loan you a deck to play for that tournament?  Just a thought.

V/R
Masta

[Benevides]

I've messaged him, since I haven't talked to him much, simply because of life and such taking up my free time, but I think he will. I believe he has two or three separate decks, he funded two of them with a Black Lotus he sold. *Lucky, Razzle Frazzle....* If I can borrow it and go to the event with him (Which he offered to ferry me there in his car with his group) Then I'll get into the system and at least test the water. But if I can't get into contact with him, I'll still go watch. I know a lot of people at the Comic Shop because I also have a love for comics, and Warlords, so I can at least hang out without being awkward.

And thanks for the suggested cards, and every ones help. I'll be sure to pick those cards up. I was thinking off about half my current cards, a lot of them are Kamigawa until Coldsnap, and only a fourth or so are earlier sets, simply because I collected when I was seven or eight, and never learned to play the game, so I just collected them. Got better cards then, than when I was actually trying to get better cards >.<

another quick question, Would this be a good pet deck to toy around with casually?
Booby Trapped!

[Masta]

another quick question, Would this be a good pet deck to toy around with casually?
Booby Trapped!

heh, I dismiss like 99.9% of the decks on wizards.com as crap.  I wouldn't ever go there for anything other than using their card database, but that's just me.  If you want something to play around with, netdeck something on this site.  That Booby Trap deck you provided looks like it's a first class ticket to an ass whooping, casual or not.

Moreover, why even play casual?  Just play Type 4?!

V/R
Masta