5 Color Control

[BlackVise]

So, most of my 'proper' Vintage playing is done online or with proxies. This deck, however, is my one real Vintage deck which I've been working on slowly for well over a year now and will probably be working on for many years to come.

The idea of the deck is to control the board via a toolbox of answer cards which can easily be tutored or drawn, and then win via Time Vault, Blightsteel Colossus or Talrand, Sky Summoner. So far I've found it quite easy to switch game plan if one is disrupted, and in particular Talrand and Tezz have both had that 'Oops, I win' factor.

I decided to post it here rather than the competitive forums because it wouldn't have a chance against any competitive Vintage deck.

Here's the current list:

Win Conditions (4):
2x Talrand, the Sky Summoner
1x Blightsteel Colossus
1x Time Vault

Board Control (4):
1x Trygon Predator
1x Balance
1x Fire//Ice
1x Repeal

Counters (7):
3x Force of Will
2x Mental Misstep
2x Spell Pierce

Tutors (6):
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Merchant Scroll
1x Tinker
1x Trinket Mage

Card Draw (8):
1x Brainstorm
1x Ponder
1x Thirst for Knowledge
3x Forbidden Alchemy
1x Deep Analysis
1x Gush

Utility (6):
1x Time Walk
1x Voltaic Key
1x Sensei's Divining Top
2x Tezzeret the Seeker
1x Noxious Revival

Mana Base (25):
1x Mox Pearl
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
1x Lotus Petal
1x Strip Mine
3x Mishra's Factory
1x City of Brass
4x Gemstone Mine
7x Island
4x Seat of the Synod

I haven't included the sideboard because it's just a pile of meta dependent cards at the moment.

The next cards I'm looking to include are Ancestral Recall and the fourth Force of Will.

Aside from that, there are a few points I'd like some feedback on:

- The draw engine feels too slow and unreliable at the moment; when I get an Ancestral Recall it will be replacing one of the Forbidden Alchemys, which should help a bit, but besides that I'm not sure what else to do. Deep Analysis seems a little random and janky, but at worst it's usually Force of Will fodder.
- Yawgmoth's Will; worth adding in a deck that isn't running Black Lotus, full Moxen, Mana Drain or Dark Ritual?
- Vendilion Clique; could it have a place in this deck? I feel like the mana curve's quite high already, and adding that could just make it worse.
- Glen Elendra Archmage; again, could it have a place in this deck? I really like the idea of it but as with Vendilion Clique the mana cost seems too high.
- Flusterstorm; I'm considering adding it as a singleton to help against combo decks and as another counter to protect my own cards. If I do add this I might actually just replace the Forbidden Alchemys with Gush to make it easier to build up a storm count. Thoughts?

I'm not looking to make this uber competitive right now as I don't have the money to (fortunately, my meta allows IE/CE cards in place of ABU, so power cards aren't as out of budget as they would be otherwise ), but I do want to get it working as reliably and as efficiently as I can until I can afford to add more power cards.

Any thoughts or feedback would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

[bluemage55]

A playset of Bobs, if you can get your hands on them, would dramatically increase the power and consistency of your draw engine.

[serracollector]

Replacing 1 tezz, and 1 forbidden alchemy for 2 jace tms could be good too.  Also why noxious revival over say Regrowth or a Snapcaster?

[BlackVise]

A playset of Bobs, if you can get your hands on them, would dramatically increase the power and consistency of your draw engine.

Bob's out of budget at the moment. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Replacing 1 tezz, and 1 forbidden alchemy for 2 jace tms could be good too.  Also why noxious revival over say Regrowth or a Snapcaster?

As with Bob, JTMS is out of budget too, but he's definitely on the to-add-when-I-can-afford-to list.

Noxious Revival is incredible - it's essentially Vampiric Tutor for cards in your graveyard. The reasons I chose it over Regrowth (which was actually originally in the deck) are 1) it's instant speed, meaning your opponent doesn't get as much time to prepare for whatever you're recurring and 2) it's cheaper to play and far easier on my mana base. The reason I chose it over Snapcaster Mage are 1) it can get back permanents like Strip Mine, a destroyed/countered Time Vault etc, and 2) it's far less mana intensive.

My only issue with it is that it can be quite a tempo loss, although this is rarely a problem.

On the subject of removing 1 Forbidden Alchemy, are there any other cards you'd replace it with? I'm currently looking at Yawgmoth's Will or a singleton Vendilion Clique.

Thanks for the replies!

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

A playset of Bobs, if you can get your hands on them, would dramatically increase the power and consistency of your draw engine.

Bob's out of budget at the moment. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Replacing 1 tezz, and 1 forbidden alchemy for 2 jace tms could be good too.  Also why noxious revival over say Regrowth or a Snapcaster?

As with Bob, JTMS is out of budget too, but he's definitely on the to-add-when-I-can-afford-to list.

Noxious Revival is incredible - it's essentially Vampiric Tutor for cards in your graveyard. The reasons I chose it over Regrowth (which was actually originally in the deck) are 1) it's instant speed, meaning your opponent doesn't get as much time to prepare for whatever you're recurring and 2) it's cheaper to play and far easier on my mana base. The reason I chose it over Snapcaster Mage are 1) it can get back permanents like Strip Mine, a destroyed/countered Time Vault etc, and 2) it's far less mana intensive.

Don't forget blanking opponents snapcasters and draws if you need to.