Three Decks One Box (Copy Pasted)

[Onslaught]

I didn't know people actually talked about Vintage on other boards, but I did stumble across this. This deck has made a few T8s and hasn't had much discussion. I also thought Visna's posts about his deck and general Vintage philosophy were worth archiving on TMD. I hope he doesn't mind, does he post here at all?

Land: 13
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp

Artifact: 7
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire

Creature: 7
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Mindshrieker
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Worldgorger Dragon

Enchantment: 4
3 Animate Dead
1 Necromancy   

Instant: 19
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Dark Ritual
1 Echoing Truth
1 Entomb
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Misdirection
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Thrist for Knowledge
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sorcery: 10
4 Thoughtseize
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Reanimate
1 Time Walk   

Sideboard: 15
4 Bloodghast
4 Standstill
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Worldgorger Dragon

My take on the deck is that it's a Worldgorger Combo deck, with a secondary maindeck plan of Reanimating Jin and beating down. The maindeck Extraction is to remove an Eldrazi from the Graveyard if you are milling someone out with Mindshrieker, while the Cabal Therapy is decent discard if you have milled it into your own library and want to kill off one of your snapcasters.

So the main deck has two different plans, while the sideboard can transform it into a dedicated Worldgorger deck (with more Worldgorgers) or go control using Standstill and discarded Bloodghast(s) to get the beats on.

Thanks for your Interest in My Deck...

Vintage is still a format that a person can win and have fun with almost any type of deck, not just mainstream decks that you’re repeating the same pattern of play in order to win (Like playing Chess and repeating the masters game play from years past).

This is why I play dynamic decks that are mostly MeTa Universal and the win is determined by ones knowledge of the other player’s deck, not mainly luck, deck cost and /or cards drawn. Deck’s that from start to finish, have a "high fighting chance" to "fun" ratio. After all, it’s all about the "Art of Sideboarding".

When In a room full of experts, you are left with luck and misfortune that wins the day. This is the new state of Vintage and why I play by the style of Poker’s, “Chip and a Chair Theory” (Knowledge and Determination), Bruce Lee’s fighting style (Nothing is fixed, use dynamic combos) with a touch of WTF (Using non-mainstream cards and combos to weaken, confuse and win).

Worldgorger /Snapcaster reanimate deck with Accumulated Knowledge that sides in Landstill is fun, fast and very Dynamic.

The object is to identify what you’re playing against and misdirect or force them to make a error and take advantage of it. EX: People always are looking at what I do between rounds, they think I’m playing -6 (Another Dragon Deck) and watch to see how many cards I side in, I always side in all 15 even if I’m not going to swap any cards and make comments about bringing in Jace.

OK, Now the Good Stuff /Missing Stuff:
Correct Beralt but, lets add a little more.

1st off, this is a speed deck, things that trip it up are the reasons for its design.

Bloodghast and Bazaar of Baghdad:
They work really well together along with Accumulated Knowledge. Playtest and you
will see why having Landstill in the SB works. AK's can always be replaced with others like Ponder…etc. Nothing beats the face of opponents when you cast it. Bloodghast can be used to annoy and misdirect the opponent. You will be surprised how my ppl can't deal with BG because they don't want to waste a graveyard removal card. Leyline's are not as common as you would think.

No Really, Why Landstill:
Just think, the MD is weak against...Shops...Landstill and the other 15+ Counters in a deck, decks. Now, Just add in the above cards......makes a better counter game /game 2 /game 3.

Why 3 Dragons in the Side:
Magus Decks, hard casting Dragons, love it!!!
Dregde, Shops...just Gets the combo out faster and you can
mix it up with the rest of the sideboard.

Why Jin-Gitaxias, I mean Win-Gitaxias:
If you know they have things like Natures Claim, then go fo Jin. Jin is a fast win for 1 to 2 mana and can be chucked to FOW.

MD:
Cabal Therapy is also a extra Thoughtseize or a extra self discarder...etc
Surgical Extraction = Good Against the decks that this is weak...Counter decks /Dredge, Storm…etc
(Thoughtseize & Surgical Extraction Are like Peanut Butter and Jelly)

Basically, cards like Echoing Truth, Hurkyl's Recall, Surgical Extraction are good to have in the MD because of the Meta Game and potential combos…

Last,
Why Mindshrieker, not Oona:
Easy Cast, Counters "on top of the library" tutors and is fun when playing Shops. (look, it’s a flying 7/7, I mean 11/11…LOL)

Hope this helped….
V,

My Current Sideboard :
4 Bloodghast
4 Standstill
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Grafdigger's Cage (lol!!!)

Keep in mind, Bloodghast are low casting, besides using landfall,
And Grafdigger's Cages are only used for Oath, Dredg and
Tinker decks..

I've been streamlining the deck to make it even faster and work better with Mr. Snapcaster.
Intuition and Thrust of Knowledge are good, along with Mana Crypt...but I have took them out as you will see.

***I'm experimenting with Recall(Not Ancestral Recall) and Thought Scour.


More Than Two Colors:
I have been trying to make a 3 to 5 color version. Cards like Balance, Nature's Claim and Ancient Grudge are on the top of the list. I just can't get it to balance out for tournament play, only casual.

Zombie Infestation, Squee, Goblin Nabob, Zombie Madness / Life from the Loam are ok, but as you will see when play testing..Kissing (Keep It Simple Stupid) the design
is best for the Meta Game.


Method of the Madness, Deck Breakout and Breakdown:
The reasons behind the following numbers /ratios is due to years of observation and
data calculation (Short Answer). This is a Fast Deck, Fast Deck's in Vintage should have
1-13 lands depending on other sources of mana an deck type. Getting rid of the dead cards and bottlenecks from mana sources to combo cards (Necromancy) and make it as fast as possible.

***Examples of Fast Decks: Dredge, Storm, Affinity


My Current Experimental Deck:

Combo: (13 in Total)
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Mindshrieker
3 Animate Dead
3 Reanimate

Counter, Disruption, Discard: (13 in Total)
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
4 Thoughtseize
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Echoing Truth


Draw /Get Cards: (13 in Total)
3 Thought Scour
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Entomb
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk

Lands: (13 in Total)
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Island


Mana Cards: (8 in Total)
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Dark Ritual


Stats:
21 Sources for Mana, Avg Mana cost: 1.83
Land Ratio: 21.7%

Casting Cost:
0=7 Cards
1=21 Cards
2=12 Cards
5=5 Cards
5+=2 Cards


Card to be Considered:
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Strategic Planning
1 Personal Tutor

As you can see, I like balance…the ratios work for this deck, take out a draw card, replace it with a draw card…etc.

The Combo List is open for anything, I decided to take Entomb out and place it in "Draw /Get Cards" list because it work for all three decks.

V

I wonder what other peripheral boards are hiding some tidbits of quality Vintage discussion...

[LotusHead]

Bazaars don't produce mana, so I cound 17 mana sources (including dark ritual).

Interesting deck.

God I miss Vintage.

[fury]

Very interesting approach ! I will test it, then discuss on some choices...

[Onslaught]

I made some of my own tweaks, and it's super fun to play. It's such a dog vs. Workshops but pretty damn good against anything else. There are soooo many cards I'd like to fit in, but most of them boil down to marginal stuff that would just be too fancy. A list of observations...

-I've never played Minus Six, so I'm not really used to the flow of activating Bazaar in a blue deck. It's weird! At least in those ghetto Madness decks you had Squee and stuff to discard. You have to make some painful choices here, but Snapcaster usually alleviates some of the pain. Pitching early AKs is fine too. Still, I kind of want a Squee in here. Some of the more random x1 inclusions are pretty much the soul of the deck, so I would feel bad cutting Surgical or something for the Squee.

-I kind of want more mana but at the same time it's obvious that you can't afford the space. I think I might try running some Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth though to turn Bazaars into mana producers in a pinch.

-The deck needs some way to win against Leyline. You can kinda play around Cage, Tormod's Crypt, etc, but vs. Leyline you pretty much have to resolve your one Echoing Truth or you lose (unless you can win with Factory/Standstill plan...)

-Which brings me to the next thing - the Standstill/Factory plan is actually pretty solid, which is surprising. That being said, if your counter density was just a bit more robust it would really shore up a lot of matchups. Since this deck is going to be bad against Workshops any way you slice it, why not go all out in beating blue and use the 3 wildcard sideboard slots on Mindbreak Trap? Or two Mindbreak Trap and one Misdirection. Having 8 free counters post board with Factory/Landstill would be pretty sick if they boarded in a bunch of nearly dead GY hate against you.

-The two best cards in the game feel conspicuously absent in some situations. Since you have the full tutor package, there are lots of times you Thoughtseize and go "well I wish I could just go get Tinker and win outright." That's eating up two precious slots though. And, if you try to justify a Tinker bot by saying "well I won't run BSC, that way my robot will also be a reanimation target..." then it defeats the point of running Tinker in the first place. So Tinker not being in is sort of understandable. Yawgmoth's Will on the other hand...again I can see the reasoning. You're already mana light, so casting it without your Lotus or Ritual is difficult. You already eat up a lot of your goodies in the GY with aggressive Snapcaster plays (the first time you Entomb for Ancestral to Snap it back is when you might fall in love with this weirdo deck!), so your Will might not be that impressive in the first place. And, you are usually the faster deck that can just tutor up a card to end the game instead of tutoring up a Will to create an overwhelming advantage. On top of all that, games 2 and 3 are going to feature all the GY hate they can throw at you, which further decreases the attractiveness of Will. Still, not using Tinker or Will in a two color UB deck...!

-As alluded to earlier, a rainbow version could be pretty tasty. This deck really, really, REALLY wants Ancient Grudge, though I doubt that would do much to shore up the Workshop matchup. But there are a lot of other super flexible cards a deck like this would love to have access to, like Fire/Ice I guess. Balance is probably hilarious too.

-For the general flow of play...this deck is like a love letter to Vintage. It's so refined while being completely unrefined. The amount of synergy leads to so many plays where you are doing something slightly suboptimal to just barely scrape by, but it's usually worth it for the overall versatility. I've had some of the weirdest game states I've had in 10 years of playing Vintage within just 20 games of using this deck. Highlights include:

-beating a T2 Tinker with FOW backup by reanimating Jin Gitaxias, drawing 7 (netting a Merchant Scroll), blocking BSC, and then bouncing it the next turn
-watching a Workshop deck Jester's Cap itself to remove Slash Panthers since Mindshrieker was slowly beating him down
-Snapping an AK with 4 copies in GY
-Getting the god draw of all your x1 random shit to open with Ritual, Thoughtseize taking Spell Pierce (one other in hand), Cabal Therapy taking something I can't remember, cast Entomb, pay 2 life for Surgical Extraction on Spell Pierce to strip the other one from hand.

Speaking of Cabal Therapy, you always wish there were more copies of it after you board in Bloodghast. Between Mindshrieker and the Surgical, you can mess with topdeck tutors pretty consistently. Snapping back the Extraction is good fun too. My thoughts are kind of all over the place with this deck at the moment, but it's just such a blast to play. And not to get too corny, but it's pretty inspiring too. You really CAN play whatever you want in Vintage. I've always believed that, but this is just a very nice concrete example.