[Free Article] Vintage: Gateway Decks

[voltron00x]

My article this week is an attempt to aid player acquisition.  Essentially, I break down four different strategies that are relatively budget-friendly and easy for someone who wants to get into Vintage to build and play effectively. 

The four decks I review are:

1 - Dark Times
2 - Noble Fish
3 - Workshop Aggro
4 - Goblins (2 versions)

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/18833_The_Long_Winding_Road_Vintage_Gateway_Decks.html

[myw002]

Hey Matt, nice article.  Pretty much covers all the angles a potential new vintage player would want to know about the format (price, price, price, and what's good).  It's funny because my friend was wondering how to get into the format with a good, affordable deck and I suggested 'Dark Times' as well. 

Just wondering, is TPS affordable for the new vintage player?

[Sextiger]

I found a minor error, you mention that Clique can cycle away extra lands.  Clique specifies a non land card. 

[Zieby]

Just wondering, is TPS affordable for the new vintage player?

It depends on the amount of proxies you can use and the amount of POwer you have.
The deck uses the complete power 9 and a Impereal Seal and Grim Tutor.
So if you have 1 Piece of the 11 mentioned, then yes is is a deck that can be played easely.

TPS is one of the hardest decks in the format to play correctly, so when you are starting to play Vintage it could be wise to select another deck first.

Greetz Arjan

[voltron00x]

Just wondering, is TPS affordable for the new vintage player?

It depends on the amount of proxies you can use and the amount of POwer you have.
The deck uses the complete power 9 and a Impereal Seal and Grim Tutor.
So if you have 1 Piece of the 11 mentioned, then yes is is a deck that can be played easely.

TPS is one of the hardest decks in the format to play correctly, so when you are starting to play Vintage it could be wise to select another deck first.

Greetz Arjan

For someone coming into the format cold, the fact that the deck is so skill-intensive makes it a bad choice, although someone with extensive experience with similar decks in Legacy would probably be fine after some testing against the top-tier decks.  If you own the Legacy staples, you can probably expect to build the deck at around the 15-proxy level if you're willing to invest in some less-expensive Vintage-specific cards (DT, Vamp, Tolarian, Mana Vault, Memory Jar, Tinker, etc).

[Killane]

Really good article - liked it alot - Dark Times seems very very interesting and I might run it for a bit to change things up.

re: TPS - the deck functions quite well with a Sensei's Top in place fo the Grim for soemone who wants to do it with 10 proxies. Undersgroudn Seas are still quite expensive, and it runs alot of cards that have no place in other formats but sit above or close to the $10 mark. It's not cheep, but it's way less expensive than Noble Fish if you are starting from a point of owning 0/75 cards. it is rather difficult to run though, and I for one wouldn' recommend it to someone who is new to the format.

[voltron00x]

I found a minor error, you mention that Clique can cycle away extra lands.  Clique specifies a non land card. 

Good catch, I'll see if Craig can correct it.  I was thinking "mana source" rather than land when I wrote it (ie moxes / lotus, particuarly when Null Rod is in play).

[mikekilljoy]

One of the best articles I have seen in a long while from almost anybody. Great stuff yet again. See you in Philly!

[Scyther]

Great Article.

I was wondering somehow u didn't mentioned Oath. Double Dragon Oath is relatively easy to play, can easily be played/build in a 10-proxy torney and ur one of the people knows most about the deck.
But I understand that its not really a Gateway deck
although years ago when Double Angel Oath (Akroma+ Razia) was pretty popular many many guys played the deck unpowered here.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Great article and thank you for introducing the masses to our deck!

I found a pretty big error:

Corey’s deck is set-up to attack artifact-heavy decks through the use of Goblin Vandal and Null Rod; Vandal in particular is exceptionally good against Workshop decks (similar to Trygon Predator, but more easily resolved in the match-up). He even went as far as to play Artifact Mutation! This list is tailor-made for the Stax-centric New York metagame. Cory splashed Green for Krosan Grip, which is also exceptionally good against Oath of Druids. Outside of these inclusions, the deck is very similar to Goblins decks that one would see in Legacy or even in previous Extended formats.

He doesn't run even a single copy of Vandal.  Max and I run 4.  This should influence your discussion later on:

This deck (Jester's Goblins) puts much less emphasis on the Stax match-up and is more focused on beating decks with limited win conditions such as Tezzeret, TPS, and Oath of Druids.

Who would enjoy Goblins?  The easy answer would be people who play Goblins or have played Goblins in any other format.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, our goblins build is actually one of the most tutor-heavy decks in the format.  I wouldn't suggest it to a new player since you also have to know exactly what you're doing with both tutoring and Jester's Cap.  I'd actually suggest it to people like yourself who've played "Fish" strategies successfully and ANT pilots who know when to Demonic Consultation for Black Lotus.

Goblins is probably the best example at the moment of a pure, creature-based Aggro strategy in Vintage.

I disagree with this, but I won't gunk up your thread debating it.

[voltron00x]

Well, that's a big error.  I had the article written and went back and added the Goblins part during a lunch break, obviously I didn't reread it closely enough.

Regardless Goblins players from other formats should be familiar with the tutor piece to some extent from Matron (and in fact in Legacy Goblins, the interactions between Lackey, Matron, and Vial are one of the coolest parts of that deck and in my experience offer the best chance to outplay / blowout unprepared opponents), its just the Jesters Cap part that requires some testing and comprehension about how other Vintage decks work (similarly to Sad Sac in other decks).

Not trying to say the deck isn't skill-intensive but I'd definitely recommend this style of deck over something like Vroman Oath, 5C Stax, TPS, or Tezzeret.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Not trying to say the deck isn't skill-intensive but I'd definitely recommend this style of deck over something like Vroman Oath, 5C Stax, TPS, or Tezzeret.

Having introduced a few people (with mixed success) to vintage, I've actually found that decks like Vroman Oath and Dredge are the best introductory tools.  First, both have a decent amount of "Oops, I win" to give them positive early experiences.  Second, both have a very easily understood game plan.  Dredge: Make lots of zombies and attack.  Oath: find and play either Oath or the Time Vault combo.  Do it early, but Ancestral Recall first against blue "counter" decks if you have time to do it.  Third, attacking with a swarm of zombies or massive dragons/angels appeals to the inner Timmy we all harbor.

By contrast, I find that vintage aggro decks (dredge aside) are brutally hard to play because you need the right proactive answer at the right time.  I consider goblins much harder to play  "right" than Doomsday was in the Gush meta.

[voltron00x]

King James Oath is a good first Vintage deck, or at least, it was for me.

Vroman Oath... not so much.

That deck plays a larger number of tutors. You need to understand Gifts and Yawg Will, as well as several overlapping combo options once you get Oath active, with and without Iona.  Its pretty skill-intensive.

Again, I never want to debate how difficult decks are to play, because everyone thinks their favorite decks are skill-intensive and most Vintage decks are... but I do think a person can hit a reasonable proficiency level with Goblins faster than Vroman Oath if they've never played Vintage before.

[Monomax]

Thanks, Im proud that you mentionned my deck in your article.

Its my birthday and a nice gift to me.

I think there are is alot of deck that can become competitive for anyone who wish to work hard on it!!

If on the 73 player tournament we would have been 12 Jester's Goblin player, Im sure there would have been more of us in the Top 8!! I wouldnt say we are pure aggro, but I agree with you(not like my teammate AmbivalentDuck) that we have a focus on this.

I think you wrote a nice article since you visit a more mysterious side of vintage. The one that few people who dont play vintage know about since they still think «Vintage is Turn 1 Win» which is clearly wrong. I know lots of people that says «I wont start playing vintage cause we dont wanna copy existing deck to win» well... there is actually a place for innovation!!

[median]

A couple things came to mind on what I would have thought could have made the list. With goblins mentioned why exclude Ichorid? is Ichorid no longer a proxy friendly deck? Also what are peoples thoughts on ANT, that seems extremely easy on 10 proxies. But as usual great article, and kudos to making me realize shop aggro isn't all that expensive.

[P]

Not trying to say the deck isn't skill-intensive but I'd definitely recommend this style of deck over something like Vroman Oath, 5C Stax, TPS, or Tezzeret.

Having introduced a few people (with mixed success) to vintage, I've actually found that decks like Vroman Oath and Dredge are the best introductory tools.  First, both have a decent amount of "Oops, I win" to give them positive early experiences.  Second, both have a very easily understood game plan.  Dredge: Make lots of zombies and attack.  Oath: find and play either Oath or the Time Vault combo.  Do it early, but Ancestral Recall first against blue "counter" decks if you have time to do it.  Third, attacking with a swarm of zombies or massive dragons/angels appeals to the inner Timmy we all harbor.

By contrast, I find that vintage aggro decks (dredge aside) are brutally hard to play because you need the right proactive answer at the right time.  I consider goblins much harder to play  "right" than Doomsday was in the Gush meta.

I'd tend to disagree with giving a new Vintage player a Dredge pile. While obviously powerful and easy to play, it's pretty much the worst example of Vintage interaction that I can possibly imagine and in no way representative of our format, hell it's even barely a magic pile. Not only does the deck pretty much completely ignores the opponent on the first game, but it forces the other guy to drastically change his gameplan for game two, easily netting zero pertinent information on the format other than "mull into a guy with a beard and win". Is that really how you want to introduce Vintage to someone? If anything it only would reinforce the Vintages stereotypes.

Don't get me wrong, playing Dredge is one of my guilty pleasures, along with eating chunky monkey ice cream and watching my Gilmore Girls DVDs in my underpants, but it's pretty much, in my opinion, the very last deck that I'd want anyone to start a career in Vintage with.

I really did like the piles in the article, which was a great read by the way. Not only, as advertised, are they buildable on a budget, but they are great to introduce the Vintage strategies due to their simplicity of gameplay and the interaction they bring to the game. They do not require the player to have an in depth knowledge of the obscure techs of vintage to play, but still pack pretty powerful plays and most of all, are simple enough that the player can, instead of focusing on counting probabilities, concentrate on the game at hand and understand the format better, which is usually the point of the process.

[myw002]

@median:  I suppose you could proxy ANT.  Main proxies would be: Black Lotus, Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Ancestral Recall, Timetwister
Secondary Proxies:  3x Underground Sea, 1x Bayou/Trop (?), 1x Chrome Mox (?)

You're right it does seem that it is very possible to proxy out this deck with ease, however, I don't know who enjoys playing with proxy dual lands >.>

@Matt Elias: Random question, did this article stem or at least was influenced from the thread on mtgs about "getting into vintage" ?

[voltron00x]

Partially, yes...  its been something I wanted to write for a while.  The time seemed right given the success of some of these decks lately and the ever-increasing cost of playing Legacy.

[Prospero]

Another solid read.  There definitely are 'gateway' decks to Vintage, and I certainly agree with you that your selections have served as such.  I suppose there is a tinge of irony in Corey Mann's and Max Brown's lists being used as 'gateway' decklists since both have played Vintage for at least the last seven years or so.  Still, I think they'd both agree with you.  I have known many players to pick up something cheap and aggressive at first, only to become control or combo pilots later on.

I enjoyed the article, great work Matt.

[evouga]

I have a couple of questions about the Dark Times decklist.

1. Why Sadistic Sacrament over Bitter Ordeal? Ordeal dodges the countermagic run by the juiciest Sacrament targets, e.g. Tez and Oath, and the Wasteland package makes it easy to build Gravestorm.
2. How does Gatekeeper of Malakir compare to Diabolic Edict?

[overseer1234]

I9 really like the article and actually hope that these kind of article's appear more often since I'm a beginning vintage player myself.

But there are some things I don't quite agree on:

The four decks I review are:

1 - Dark Times
2 - Noble Fish
4 - Goblins (2 versions)

These I can agree on, definitely the the decks that are easily accessible for those that want to start with vintage

but:

3 - Workshop Aggro

I don't get how this deck is a good starter, without doubt ichorid is way more easily accessible (give like 30 euro's for chalice's and leyline's, and get the rest for pretty much a penny while you can easily proxy bazaar) and even before you could consider ichorid,  GW(B) (Meandeck) Beatz is also pretty accessible if you already have the manabase.


Other than that, damn good article, since it give's a good insight about how the decks work.

[2nd_lawl]

I have a couple of questions about the Dark Times decklist.

1. Why Sadistic Sacrament over Bitter Ordeal? Ordeal dodges the countermagic run by the juiciest Sacrament targets, e.g. Tez and Oath, and the Wasteland package makes it easy to build Gravestorm.
2. How does Gatekeeper of Malakir compare to Diabolic Edict?

I think Im qualified to answer this.

1) So you can go swamp, ritual, sad sac. turn 1 and remove 3.  You need at least 3 agaisnt tez otherwise it is basically pointless (you need to take vault, tez, tinker target, [or tez, key, tinker target if they are holding vault which is actually better]).  Some non-combo oath lists run exactly 3 creatures.  Some tps lists are vulnerable to 2, but all are vulnerable to 3.  Some versions of the Deck are also cold to 3 but beat 2. 

Post board some oath lists might have 4 creatures, and if you think that might happen to you alot you can switch out 1 of the board sacrament's for ordeal as a tutor target.

2) Gatekeeper is just bad vs oath.  One of the important ways you can beat t1 oath on the play, is to edict yourself and then waste their tapped orchard.  Also, t1 ritual duress edict is the best thing you can do against t1 tinker, since  you will be so far ahead.  In general just costing 1 less (and not requiring double black) is going to win you more games then getting a random 2/2 is.  Gatekeeper is probably better vs decks like fish and goblins, but you really want to be combing vs decks like that.

[voltron00x]

I9 really like the article and actually hope that these kind of article's appear more often since I'm a beginning vintage player myself.

But there are some things I don't quite agree on:

The four decks I review are:

1 - Dark Times
2 - Noble Fish
4 - Goblins (2 versions)

These I can agree on, definitely the the decks that are easily accessible for those that want to start with vintage

but:

3 - Workshop Aggro

I don't get how this deck is a good starter, without doubt ichorid is way more easily accessible (give like 30 euro's for chalice's and leyline's, and get the rest for pretty much a penny while you can easily proxy bazaar) and even before you could consider ichorid,  GW(B) (Meandeck) Beatz is also pretty accessible if you already have the manabase.


Other than that, damn good article, since it give's a good insight about how the decks work.

Glad you like the article overall.  A couple things...

1 - There isn't much I can add to Meandeck Beats that hasn't already been discussed, mostly by Menendian.  I added an updated sideboard a while back, but generally speaking the deck hasn't changed much.  I also don't think its positioned as well as it was previously, in a now more-diverse metagame.

2 - Dredge is... Dredge.  At some point, people get tired of getting force-fed Dredge as a cheap intro deck to Vintage and Legacy.  The deck's a one-trick pony.  It happens to be a one-trick pony that I really really enjoy for whatever twisted reason, but still, I wanted to cover a deck that actually plays Magic and gives you a taste of Vintage. 

For the sake of argument, let's say you want to play Workshop Aggro and you already own Wastelands.  I'll ignore the cards I'm going to proxy and stuff like Shaman and Trisk that cost a buck or less.  Unless prices have changed dramatically, some smart shopping should get the following:

4 Magus of the Moon:  $20
4 Lodestone Golem:  $12
4 Goblin Welder:  $36
4 Solemn Simulacrum:  $15
4 Thorn of Amethyst:  $15
4 Sphere of Resistance:  $20
2 Ancient Tomb:  $10
3 Sword of Fire & Ice:  $36

That's, what, $164?  That's budget at this point for a Magic deck in any format, really.

Not only that, another $40-ish bucks gets you playsets of Tangle Wire and Smokestack, and now you have two distinct Workshop decks to choose from.

[Doomsday]

And just to make that even cheaper, I can't find normal Thorn of Amethyst for more than $0.50 anywhere online.  So $2 rather than $15.

I really liked the article, too.  Thanks again!

[jester3397]

The really expensive ones are sets of
Goblin Welder
Metalworker
Tangle Wire
Smokestack
which runs around 30-40 per set.

[Shock Wave]

Don't get me wrong, playing Dredge is one of my guilty pleasures, along with eating chunky monkey ice cream and watching my Gilmore Girls DVDs in my underpants, but it's pretty much, in my opinion, the very last deck that I'd want anyone to start a career in Vintage with.

Best post ever. 

[MULocke]

I'd agree that oath is a solid first deck.  I'm much more of a legacy player, but I saw some area vintage tournaments coming up and decided to give it a try.  I found I could already 20-proxy both Vroman's and Matt's (is that the King James version?) lists without even having the format-specific cards like orchards (playing with real fetches, duals, forces, and tutors but proxied orchards... priceless).  Oath has been a ton of fun to play, it's powerful, and it's nice because of the free "oops, I win" scenarios like AmbivalentDuck mentioned.  It's already gotten me a top 8, even.  Maybe the fetch/dual manabase is a bit too spendy for the player with no cards, but it's a pretty good gateway for Legacy players because most of them have the blue fetches and duals.

I've notcied a problem with most gateway decks in any format is that they tend to be either glass cannons or decks that are cheap but not really viable (i.e. Legacy affinity), but the choices listed here seem much better poised to actually win an event.  Cheap glass cannons like Belcher and mindless aggro (not fish or goblins) might be able to break a new player into the top 8, but gives him very little chance to win forcing him to either stick with a suboptimal deck or go out and find a new deck again.

[TheShop]

My #1 pick for budget deck of the century would be ELVES!

The whole deck is like $40 without sac-lands nonproxied...it is not a "mindless" aggro deck and many will not see it coming.  In a proxy tournament you could probably build this deck for like $5...it would probably cost more to make the proxies than buy the cards for most of the deck.

Also, it really is competitive.  The deck is quick enough to at least win some pre-sideboard matches.

When we had tournaments regularly in my area, they were non-proxy.  We soon discovered that a good extended deck will beat a poorly-tuned vintage deck that is missing most of the mana-base. 

[o uncola o]

The really expensive ones are sets of
Goblin Welder
Metalworker
Tangle Wire
Smokestack
which runs around 30-40 per set.

I think Goblin Welder has fallen significantly in price.  You can pick up a set for around $22-$26 bucks now.  I agree about all of the others.

[Smmenen]

Don't get me wrong, playing Dredge is one of my guilty pleasures, along with eating chunky monkey ice cream and watching my Gilmore Girls DVDs in my underpants, but it's pretty much, in my opinion, the very last deck that I'd want anyone to start a career in Vintage with.

Best post ever. 

I don't really agree with this.   I think TK's dredge lists are very interactive, plenty of skillful decisions, and give beginners good insight into what vintage looks like from across the table.    Of course, I don't and cannot get the experience of new players to vintage who start out playing dredge, so i could be wrong...