Help with a semi powered deck

[Philou]

    Hi,

  I am a very "oldschool" vintage player coming back to buziness lately. My last vintage pet deck was a mirror universe control with moat mainboard. I tweaked it with love and no internet at the time  .  It was good enough then , but now it's very outdated.

  This Sunday there is a tournament in my city and i want to put a better opposition than last week competition where i played an "oldschool" black disruption deck (knight of stromgald without Stp to fight are a bit useless).

  My main problem is that i miss Black lotus , mox jet , pearl , emerald , ruby and no proxies are allowed. I have acquired enough card to play Control slaver or Oath ( http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/16958_So_Many_Insane_Plays_The_2009_Players_Guide_to_Vintage.html ) beside the 5 powers i miss. The last time Top 8 was fully powered with at least  3 Oath , 1 tezzeret control , 1 TPS and 1 Stax who won ( against a red/white magus of the moon deck i couldn't identify) in final.

  So my question is should i go with a semi powered deck ?


          If your answer is yes : - What deck between Oath and Slaver (maybe another option ?)
                                              - How do i modify my mana base and what card to put instead of the 5 power i miss ? ( a long time problem for me )

          If your answer is no : - What kind of unpowered deck to run against a meta full of oath and where everybody has the power nine.


  I must add that my skill is a bit rusty and was not that good back in the days , but control is my favorite strategy.


  Thank you for your anwser 

[tito del monte]

Hi,

If you have Sapphire, Ancestral and Time Walk you could definitely play some of the mono-blue decks in the Esperzoa thread: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37229.30

They're aggro-control, but packing Chalice of the Void and Null Rod will help you compete with the fully powered decks in your meta - probably more optimal than playing only semi-powered Slaver or Oath.

Hope that helps!

[Philou]

  As i was little inspired bye the mono blue topic , i kept my initial slaver list for the tournament.

  I have met a TPS , an UW fish , a Tezzeret control and a RW christmas beating.

  I won the TPS because he was crazy enough to remove his FOW before the tournament, my platz did the rest.

  Fish owned me 2-0. Stiffle on my fetch , wasteland , null rod , ninja drawing were his most annoying tricks.

  I won 1st game against tezzeret with luck. He then sided mystic remora which was really a win win card for him. He won 2-1.

  I finnaly met a red/white kind of christmas beating. I won 1st game with platz protected bye counterspells. He won the rest with same tricks as fish : mana denial with wasteland and null rod.


  The final was between a tezzeret deck and a tyrant oath/storm deck. Tezzeret won again

  I think next time im gonna try a fish build with null rod and chalice as you advised me. The UW fish deck was the most annoying for me today. It was the only deck where i feel like i couldn't win  .

[Harlequin]

Control Slaver, and welder based decks are generaly strong because of Moxen, Lotus.  Slaver is a deck that "wins" through gaining/maintaining an equal board then somewhere in the mid-late game they slam down a backbreaking Yawg (because of Lotus, welded out moxen, and other delicous P9).  So CS without Lotus and full mox is not going to have those lategame gamebreaking yawgs.

Oath.  Oath doesn't need Moxen (so long as you aren't thinking Tidespout Tyrant).  Especailly if you build a heavy-control/disruption oath.  Timewalk (which you appear to have) is likely one of the most powerful spells to have in oath.  If you aren't running moxen you want to really think about what disruption you are going to run.  Avoid cards like Negate and Leak, and favor cards like Drain, Counterspell, and even Muddle the Mixture (which can double as a tutor for Oath and Timewalk).  Under the basic premiss that if you have 2 mana to you is likely going to on turn 2 off two lands (rather than turn 1 off land+mox).  You'll want stuff to do on turn 1 so depending on what your mana base looks like, you could run Duress, Serum Visions or even Force Spike or Disrupt.

With lots of Oath in your meta, I would suggest running Maindeck Engineered Explosives as well.  EE is hands down the best card for any Oath v Oath mirror match.  Unless of course the other oath decks were heavy null rod decks.  Another really good pair of cards to run for the mirror is: Crop Rotation and Stripmine (and possibly waste).  As you can use croprotate to either get an orchard of your own or kill thier orchard.

Running a Tendrils deck without Lotus will likely be a big handicap.  If you have a set of chrome mox, then Ad Nauseam Tendrils (ANT) is possibly an option esp if you have Twister and Recall.  But again without Lotus the deck may fizzle more.

[LennoxLewis86]

I very much agree with the idea of choosing a deck based on what power you do have. So MUC and Fish seem good deckchoises.
Especially Fish with lots of Null Rods to battle the meta IMO. You actually have 3 of the better pieces so you should be able to make a good deck easily.

[Philou]

I have come up with this list :
             
                     4 Force of Will
                     4 Mana drain
                     2 Stifle
                     1 Brainstorm
                     3 Swords to Plowshares
                     1 Ancestral Recall

                     1 Time Walk
                     4 Extract

                     3 Null Rod
                     1 Mox Sapphire

                     4 Meddling Mage
                     1 Kataki, War's Wage
                     4 Sage of Epityr
                     4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
                     3 Jotun Grunt

                     1 Strip Mine
                     4 Wasteland
                     5 Island
                     1 Plains
                     2 Flooded Strand
                     2 Polluted Delta
                     4 Tundra

It is largely inspired by a Steven Menendian list. I have added 4 Extract, because i think it is a great card against oath and tezzeret which dominate the meta. 1st turn you remove time vault or colossus or whatever kill condition they have included. Moreover you can check opponent's deck and that's 4 good slot for sideboarding. That's just theorycraft tho , as i couldn't test it yet  .

[dawgie]

You don't need Mana Drain in that list. Most of the time you will not have any Drain mana to spend on except for Null Rods (which you need to play on the first turns if possible meaning you don't need Drain mana for that), Ninja (which you will be putting into play with Ninjitsu), or Jotun Grunt (which you can play easily without Drain.)

The good replacement for Mana Drain is Daze as it protects your turn 2 Null Rod.