Fighting workshop

[BruiZar]

First of all, let me make a big disclaimer here by saying I haven't touch vintage in over a year. I was wondering though, with the recent top 8 of gencon consisting of 4 shop decks, why non-shop decks don't utilize ancient tomb or city of traitors themselves?

I know this isn't legacy where combo decks use ancient tomb / city of traitors to power out a show and tell, but it seems surprisingly strange to me that non-shop decks aren't utilizing these type of lands. Fear of colorscrew is all fine, but if you can't get out of a sphere lock, all the colors in the world aren't going to matter any way.

There is also Gemstone Caverns, which reallly doesn't want to catch a wasteland, but at least you have spell pierce or steel sabotage mana up on the first turn.

What are the currently most played ways to fight through workshop? Lotus Cobra/H. Recall/Rebuild?

Would love to get a heads up on the format and discuss sol lands here.

[bluemage55]

First of all, let me make a big disclaimer here by saying I haven't touch vintage in over a year. I was wondering though, with the recent top 8 of gencon consisting of 4 shop decks, why non-shop decks don't utilize ancient tomb or city of traitors themselves?

I know this isn't legacy where combo decks use ancient tomb / city of traitors to power out a show and tell, but it seems surprisingly strange to me that non-shop decks aren't utilizing these type of lands. Fear of colorscrew is all fine, but if you can't get out of a sphere lock, all the colors in the world aren't going to matter any way.

Because spheres aren't the only thing locking you out of the game.  You also have to deal with (potentially recurring) Wastes/Strip (against which Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors actually impede you), Tangle Wire, CotV, Forgemaster, and simple beats to the face.  Against this range of threats, your real tools are basic lands, Hurkyl's, removal, countermagic, and Bob.  Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors either don't help with these or even makes things more difficult.

There is also Gemstone Caverns, which reallly doesn't want to catch a wasteland, but at least you have spell pierce or steel sabotage mana up on the first turn.

This makes absolutely no sense.  Why would Gemstone Caverns be superior to playing a basic Island or a fetch in any way for casting spell pierce or steel sabotage?

What are the currently most played ways to fight through workshop? Lotus Cobra/H. Recall/Rebuild?

Ingot Chewer, Bob, Drain, Hurkyl's, Nature's Claim.

[Kiriyuu]

There is also Gemstone Caverns, which reallly doesn't want to catch a wasteland, but at least you have spell pierce or steel sabotage mana up on the first turn.

This makes absolutely no sense.  Why would Gemstone Caverns be superior to playing a basic Island or a fetch in any way for casting spell pierce or steel sabotage?

Presumably because you can have it in play on their first turn on the draw, unlike a fetch land or basic island.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Gemstone Caverns

Just as important as getting ahead of workshop decks is gaining card advantage as you enter the mid-game.  This is why in addition to Dark Confidant, Ancient Grudge is one of the best cards you can play.

[Wagner]

I used 1-2 Ancient Tomb in Bomberman to combat Shop and be a turn faster against blue deck for years as the deck needs plenty of colorless with Salvaghers, Trinket and Mindcencor.
Thing is, you need a deck that will allow you to use those 2 mana efficiently, and a lot of decks packing Spell Pierce/Sabotage/Flutter/Duress/Drain won't be able to make consistent good use out of it.

If your deck can support it maindeck, then yes, it's good, but as a sideboard card to fight a workshop deck, there are much better.

[bluemage55]

There is also Gemstone Caverns, which reallly doesn't want to catch a wasteland, but at least you have spell pierce or steel sabotage mana up on the first turn.

This makes absolutely no sense.  Why would Gemstone Caverns be superior to playing a basic Island or a fetch in any way for casting spell pierce or steel sabotage?

Presumably because you can have it in play on their first turn on the draw, unlike a fetch land or basic island.

For some reason I was thinking of Gemstone Mine even while typing Gemstone Caverns.  Disregard my stupid.

[Blue Lotus]

I wouldn't get too worked up about shop's performance. This was a large tournament, but still just one.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Dredge and shops accounting for 75% of the top 8 in a 186 man tourney.  Let's not get worked up over that though.  As was pointed out earlier, shops and dredge are such a small and insignificant part of the meta.  Let's just focus on making RUG delver better and lets forget shops/dredge exist or that their inherent gameplan is problematic (i.e. stop your opponent from casting spells/win despite whatever spells your opponent casts).

Enough with the sarcasm.  Say what you mean and be clear about it - Prospero.

[Wagner]

Dredge and shops accounting for 75% of the top 8 in a 186 man tourney.  Let's not get worked up over that though.  As was pointed out earlier, shops and dredge are such a small and insignificant part of the meta.  Let's just focus on making RUG delver better and lets forget shops/dredge exist or that their inherent gameplan is problematic (i.e. stop your opponent from casting spells/win despite whatever spells your opponent casts).

This attitude is getting really annoying. There is such a thing as argumenting without being a passive-aggressive ass.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Well then, what I MEAN is that shops and dredge have inherent problems for vintage in that they attempt to win before your opponent makes any relevant play or stop your opponent from casting ANY spells.  They are basically the equivalent of belcher without the vulnerability to null rod/force of will.  So long as there are dredge/shop decks, they will make up the large percentage of top 8s in decent sized tourneys where they are played in mass.  The piddly little 12 man tourney's people cheer about winning with their latest snapcaster deck where 1 shop deck and 0 dredgers show up is squat.  When big tourneys like this draw a large quantity of varied deck types, the cream rises to the top....in this case it's the decks that don't play by the rule of facing an opponent that matters.

I don't want to turn this in to a restrict shop/bazaar thread...but I can't be the ONLY person who sees dredge and shops making the bulk of big tourney top 8s despite every deck's sideboard being 12 anti shop/dredge cards and maybe a couple rebs or pyroclasms.  When decks basically boil down to "how can I make my sb beat shops and dredge and make my main edge out blue-fishy.dec with my blue-fishy variant"....then that seems pretty stale to me.  Decks no longer beat a field...they beat dredge and shops with an overloaded sb and main hate....then try to beat the mirror that is attempting to do the same.

"I ran 4 leyline 3 cage 1 jailer. My hate was sufficient but the power of the deck beat me as he was not a good player." Oshkoshpotculek

Not to pull in a quote from another thread, and sorry to massacre dude's tagname....but this basically sums up my feelings on what shop/dredge do for vintage.  This guy, who has put landstill back on the map, plays well and has ample success.  Then he has EIGHT cards (more than 50% of a sb) dedicated to beating a single deck, and still loses...to a bad player who doesn't even know vintage cards like mishra's factory does but runs a deck so blatantly powerful and rule-neglecting that he wins anyway.

Call it bad luck, but I see an inherent flaw in a system where I can basically run 4 leyline, 4 jailer, 4 crypt, and 3 rav trap and still get crushed by dredge because he just goes bazaar, lions eye diamond, recur fatestither a crapload of times, swing for 180 and since you didn't have force of will (maybe not even playing blue), you just lost...thanks for drawing 7 cards...gg

[Stalker007]

at the end of the day is what u draw and your oppenent draws and the way both of u play on the day that desides the outcome of the game. its LUCK on what u draw or topdeck that wins u the game.ive seen dredge fall on its arse when they cant play a single thing cause a bazzar never sees play.u have to know when to mulligan and no what hands will win u the game.

dedge and workshop can be beaten quiet easerly if u draw the cards and get them in play b4 they can.if playing black use extipate it gets rid of bridge and stops them getting the tokens out to kill u and it cant be countered.

dredge and workshop decks can be very consistant and will always see top 8 in big tornies due to the fact they win consistanly plus ppl want that braggin right to say i won and beat some good players even great players if u want to win u play the decks out there that will give u that chance but at the end of the day every deck out there can be beaten its just what u draw how u play and what u sideboard that will decide that

Welcome to The Mana Drain. Please learn how to capitalize letters correctly. Also, the second-person pronoun is "you," not "u." I am unable to read most of this  post because you did not bother to make it legible for your fellow posters. In the future, please invest at least a modicum of effort into what you post here. Thanks. -- Rich

[TheWhiteDragon]

at the end of the day is what u draw and your oppenent draws and the way both of u play on the day that desides the outcome of the game. its LUCK on what u draw or topdeck that wins u the game.ive seen dredge fall on its arse when they cant play a single thing cause a bazzar never sees play.u have to know when to mulligan and no what hands will win u the game.

dedge and workshop can be beaten quiet easerly if u draw the cards and get them in play b4 they can.if playing black use extipate it gets rid of bridge and stops them getting the tokens out to kill u and it cant be countered.

dredge and workshop decks can be very consistant and will always see top 8 in big tornies due to the fact they win consistanly plus ppl want that braggin right to say i won and beat some good players even great players if u want to win u play the decks out there that will give u that chance but at the end of the day every deck out there can be beaten its just what u draw how u play and what u sideboard that will decide that

Luck has something to do with it, but good deckbuilding limits luck with consistency.  My issue is with the fundamental strategy of those two decks...not trying to interact with the opponent and locking them out or just beating them before they can play a spell.  Decks run maindeck ingot chewers, hurkylls, leylines, nihils, etc.  How many maindeck pyroclasms or darkblasts do you see?  None...because people run 15 cards in their sb to beat just TWO decks and splash a couple hate cards main so they might have 4 slots of board space to put in a reb or claim or something.  I've had hands where I've had lands, lotus, hurkyls, trygon, noble, and vial (running fish) and my opponent opens with workshop, trinisphere...or chalice 0, tomb, sphere...followed by workshop, tangle....followed by strip mine, lodestone....gg for me.  Anytime I can draw a great hand FULL of hate, and not get to play a single spell is not fun.  Likewise, I've had leylines bounced with CoV and then bazaar bitchsmack my face for 80 before I get a turn 2...because I don't magically open with leyline + double force + 2 blue cards.

Granted, these decks CAN be beaten.  But should I really have to run a deck that has 10+ cards dedicated to beating ONE type of deck just so I can top 8?  Does my sideboard need to be geared to beating JUST dredge and shops while I even pack maindeck hate for both just so I have a chance to not go 0-2-drop?

"dredge and workshop decks can be very consistant and will always see top 8 in big tornies due to the fact they win consistanly"  That says it all, doesn't it?  You can't say that about fish, landstill, or any other deck type, now can you?

[Blue Lotus]

So long as there are dredge/shop decks, they will make up the large percentage of top 8s in decent sized tourneys where they are played in mass.  

Again, this is a bold claim to make from one tournament.

Shop doesn't bother me. Sometime you run bad and don't draw enough lands. This happens in any format.

"not interactive" is really subjective. Sometimes I play bbs. Either they win by turn two or everything they play is countered for the rest of the game. Is that an interactive game?

Bonus points if you can guess how I win games.

[MaximumCDawg]

He's kinda right, though.  Dredge and Shops are powerful decks in their own right, and it doesn't hurt that not everyone they play in a tourney is going to have the right sideboard hate to take them out.  That probably explains their top 8 appearances more than anything else; if someone is not targeting these decks, they roll all over them.  It's not till the top 8 that they will consistently hit prepared opponents every single match.

THREE POINT ATTEMPT: You play Belcher so you can lose on turn 1 and go have dinner between rounds?

[gkraigher]

Look this conversation has diverged into an angry rant about how 2 of the 3 main archetypes in vintage require all sideboarding cards.  Blue based decks are just as strong, and consistently put more decks in top 8s and produce more tournament winners. 

That being said, if you want to beat shop decks, the best way to do it is with 2 for 1 spells.  That includes cards like ancient grudge, leonin relic warder, duplicant, rack and ruin, and snapcaster + lightning bolt.  Hurkyl's recall is very good, but different.  Energy Flux and Kataki are excellent also. 

Attacking their manabase is difficult, but if you can find a way to destroy an early Mishra's Workshop you have to do it.  Even if that might mean vampiric tutoring up a strip mine.  It depends on the situation, and you're ability to figure out what is in your opponents hand, but destorying an early workshop early can be extremely devestating.  They have somewhere between 18-20 lands, and no means of card draw, so their mulligans directly effects your line of play. 

[Blue Lotus]

THREE POINT ATTEMPT: You play Belcher so you can lose on turn 1 and go have dinner between rounds?

Please. The answer, of course, is drain into consecrated sphinx beats. The goal is to see if you can deck yourself before winning the game.

[LotusHead]

I have had a lucky Ancient Tomb in my bomberman builds for at least 4 years also, to power out Trinket Mage (and Thirst/Tinker/whatever), and it also helps with Engineered Explosives calculations.

The way to beat workshops is to proxy up several different workshop decks, and play against them over and over and over.  This helps you figure out what in your maindeck you should take out, and what you need to pack (or overpack) in your sideboard.  That's what I did VS Oath a few years ago (overpack), and carefully decided what SB hate to play, how much, and when.

Knowledge is power in Vintage (as is winning die roll, getting awesome hands, giving the cut of death to opponent's deck), but playing playing testing and testing is king.

[Ten-Ten]

I dont like Ancient Tomb in bomberman, unless the deck is super-focused on the combo, for the same reason most players won't play mana vault in Bomberman.
I do like two Wasteland/ one Stripmine in place of off-color moxen though.

[BruiZar]

To echo previous statements about dredge and workshop, in my opinion, vintage boils down to this:

Big blue is the amalgamation of raw power in vintage. These are the best cards and they will over-power anything and everything that tries to play magic against it. So, all competitive decks are going to be some variant of blue lists.

Blue is a control color and there are several ways to combat the raw power of cards that type of strategy:
A) play a better control deck

B) make sure the player cannot cast spells
Workshop denies playing cards at all. Workshop just became too consistent when Lodestone Golem was printed. Too many spheres, combined with pressure at the same time. The new mirrodin block sure didn't help. So, when your opponent can't play spells at all, that's a pretty efficient counter to something like a control deck.

Legacy version: I played my legacy MUD deck against ANT the other day, and I did not lose a single game on the play with Chalice of the Void and Lodestone Golem as the only resistors in the deck. Dark Ritual decks are dead in vintage, but even in Legacy the strategy is just incredibly prone to being hated out by sphere. With the printing of Thalia, Dark Rituals are having a hard time casting anything. Even though Legacy storm and MUD are laughable compared to vintage, I see them as baby cousins of the same strategy. What can legacy learn from vintage, and what can vintage learn from legacy?

C) make sure that the player doesn't have any relevant cards to cast
So, What do you do if you don't run blue and can't play with shops? Well, your deck must be designed in a way that: ignores blue control cards AND a deck that ignores sphere effects (i.e, just don't cast a single spell in the first place! This is why Dredge is such an important piece of the vintage puzzle. It's the only non-blue deck sans workshops that can stand the brokenness of big blue while still being able to execute its game plan under sphere effects. Dredge just doesn't give a crap about what you play, as long as it doesn't win the game on the spot, or its graveyard hate.

Legacy version: I played legacy manaless dredge against Stoneblade in a tournament back when Nicolas Rausch first released his list. Well, my opponent simply scooped turn 2 twice, vintage style, because non of his cards could actually do anything. Reference: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/22324_Deck_Tech_NotQuiteManaless_Dredge_With_Nicholas_Rausch.html)

So, I am curious if you guys agree with this statement. It would seem to me that big blue could really use Gemstone Caverns even if it's card disadvantage or otherwise wasted slots. Starting out with a Gemstone Caverns holding up something like stifle and spell pierce is going to give you a window to execute your game plan before you're tangled by spheres or overrun by bazaar activations. Stifle against wasteland or bazaar is a time walk that let's you get to 2 mana and lets you untap with an unmolested turn. That may just be enough to ride out the initial flurry of resistors and zombies. If the die roll in vintage is a very important factor, especially against shops and dredge, I think it just makes sense to play with Gemstone Caverns to counter those strategies. I mean, it's the same strategy as bazaar decks and even though you don't have serum powder to enable more consistency, I think this could be looked into a lot more. I would guess that Gemstone Caverns is the equivalent of Bazaar and Workshop for Control strategies. Control generally needs live-counters to play control, which is why Mental Misstep and Force of Will are played. Force of Will is a 2 for 1, the same way Caverns is a 2 for 1, but Caverns allows you to play a much more diverse range of cards (like Spell Pierce, Steel Sabotage, Stifle, Vampiric Tutor or Ancestral Recall on the draw). Control has the added benefit of having the best draw spells in the game (Not counting dredge abuse), so they can sort of make up for the card disadvantage of Gemstone Caverns. The big problem ofcourse, is running Gemstone Caverns in multiples, as it is legendary. Still however, I would guess that with effects such as Brainstorm and Jace the Mindsculptor, the raw power of always being on the play with a gemstone caverns hand in a control deck seems big.

I'm glad people have used and are using Ancient Tomb as a way to counter spheres. It would seem that it works for some people and I am curious to learn more about your experiences with the card.