Faerie Stompy (Mono Blue Tomb Aggro-Control)

[MTGFan]

Top is never really -1CA. I think an argument could be made to say it is in some cases -VCA, as there are some matchups where it can be less than stellar, but that can be said of many cards.

The definition of card advantage involves a card being in hand or creating board presence.

When SDT is in hand, it is neutral and doesn't affect CA. When it is played, it creates no board presence outside of being a generic permanent and whatever utility it provides you as a deck filter, and thus is -1 CA both on the board and from the hand.

Compare SDT to something like Pithing Needle that is -1 CA when played from hand but can immediately recoup that as +1 CA by shutting down an opponent's permanent. A needle can come into play and immediately affect the board by naming something like "Jace" that is already in play, thus generating card parity with the opposing named card, or by preemptively creating virtual card advantage by naming an important strategy that the opponent was hoping to play later. SDT can do none of this - its sole utility lies in whatever you gain from filtering your library. It can never do anything but decrease card advantage by depleting a card from you hand to do nothing in terms of board presence.

Lets also not forget that it adds to your Academy Mana, can be sac'ed for Tinker, Can be tapped as a permanent for Tangle wire, turn on metalcraft for opal, and counts for affinity (if that comes to the forefront). If it eats a misstep it was a 1 for 1.

Adding to Academy mana, saccing for Tinker, tapping for Tangle Wire, turning on metalcraft for Opal are all things that ANY artifact can do. I can fetch an Ornithopter and achieve the same result. This is not something special to SDT. Again, the ONLY value you can extract from SDT is its value as a card filtering tool, which means it creates no board presence and generates no potential card advantage or even card parity.

So if you want to make the argument that in some cases its less than great, that's a fine argument. That is also what the sideboard is for.

I think that SDT is actively terrible outside of combos with Counterbalance and Terminus and the like. Anybody who plays SDT as a Trinket Mage target who is not also playing either of those two cards (or something similar that creates a combo effect) is playing a suboptimal list.

[MTGFan]

For a deck to be playable in vintage it must a) have a strong gameplan and limit opponent's interaction b) interact with the opponent and limit their gameplan. Your list looks like it does none of those things very well.

Can you explain how it does none of these things well? Chalice does not limit the opponent's gameplan? Force of Will, Phyrexian Revoker, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Glen Elandra Archmage, Vendilion Clique, Trinket Mage (fetching any number of silver bullet answers) don't do this either!? Are you familiar with any of these cards? May I suggest you look them up in magiccards.info?

You claim that your deck "basically has no problem dispatching Shop decks, Dredge decks, Oath decks, Confidant/Jace control decks, Storm combo decks and the other major players in Vintage." but how does it do that with only 4 fows and inferior win conditions ?
Every aggro based strategy in the format is usually a deck that impedes broken decks ability to win very strongly (Bug Fish, hatebears) or uses interaction to create tempo while they use a fast clock to win (delver, merfolk)

Inferior win conditions? This deck plays some of the most efficient creatures in the game. It plays creatures with lots of utility and disruption, or the second most efficient blue creature (in terms of p/t+ability to cost ratio) in the game (Illusory Angel).

This deck has arguably more disruption than decks like Delver and Merfolk because these decks mostly rely on soft counters that are highly situational and get worse as the game progresses. This deck is about trotting out hard counters like Chalice and Archmage that can actually lock the opponent out of the game, backed up by Force and Wastes and Revokers.

Also SDT has a lot of synergies in vintage such as fetchlands, dark confidant, repeal, topdeck tutors, voltaic key, cheap counterspells, tinker, Thirst for knowledge, tolarian academy,... There even used to be a combo deck that could draw it's entire library and generate infinite storm with it.

SDT doesn't have synergy with those cards. Synergy is creating a combo with something like Counterbalance - i.e. creating a lock by being able to counter most 1cc and 2cc spells just by the combination of the two cards. SDT + fetchlands, SDT + confidant, SDT + tutors, SDT + key is not synergy, it's just making SDT less crappy in a vacuum. And Tinker/Thirst/Academy benefits can be had by virtue of being any artifact. That is not anything special. I could play Ichor Wellspring or Ornithopter and receive those benefits. More accurately, I'd rather be fetching real card-advantage producing disruption pieces with Trinket Mage like Pithing Needle, or Engineered Explosives, or Grafdigger's Cage, and STILL getting all of those benefits from being paired with Tinker, Thirst, and Academy.

[vaughnbros]

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

Are they?  I ask since you seem to have taken most suggestions with hostility.

Top is never really -1CA. I think an argument could be made to say it is in some cases -VCA, as there are some matchups where it can be less than stellar, but that can be said of many cards.

The definition of card advantage involves a card being in hand or creating board presence.

When SDT is in hand, it is neutral and doesn't affect CA. When it is played, it creates no board presence outside of being a generic permanent and whatever utility it provides you as a deck filter, and thus is -1 CA both on the board and from the hand.

Compare SDT to something like Pithing Needle that is -1 CA when played from hand but can immediately recoup that as +1 CA by shutting down an opponent's permanent. A needle can come into play and immediately affect the board by naming something like "Jace" that is already in play, thus generating card parity with the opposing named card, or by preemptively creating virtual card advantage by naming an important strategy that the opponent was hoping to play later. SDT can do none of this - its sole utility lies in whatever you gain from filtering your library. It can never do anything but decrease card advantage by depleting a card from you hand to do nothing in terms of board presence.

Lets also not forget that it adds to your Academy Mana, can be sac'ed for Tinker, Can be tapped as a permanent for Tangle wire, turn on metalcraft for opal, and counts for affinity (if that comes to the forefront). If it eats a misstep it was a 1 for 1.

Adding to Academy mana, saccing for Tinker, tapping for Tangle Wire, turning on metalcraft for Opal are all things that ANY artifact can do. I can fetch an Ornithopter and achieve the same result. This is not something special to SDT. Again, the ONLY value you can extract from SDT is its value as a card filtering tool, which means it creates no board presence and generates no potential card advantage or even card parity.

So if you want to make the argument that in some cases its less than great, that's a fine argument. That is also what the sideboard is for.

I think that SDT is actively terrible outside of combos with Counterbalance and Terminus and the like. Anybody who plays SDT as a Trinket Mage target who is not also playing either of those two cards (or something similar that creates a combo effect) is playing a suboptimal list.

I think you have more than illustrated your point that you should not be playing SDT.  It is a fairly skill intensive card and if played improperly will not be optimal.

Also SDT has a lot of synergies in vintage such as fetchlands, dark confidant, repeal, topdeck tutors, voltaic key, cheap counterspells, tinker, Thirst for knowledge, tolarian academy,... There even used to be a combo deck that could draw it's entire library and generate infinite storm with it.

SDT doesn't have synergy with those cards. Synergy is creating a combo with something like Counterbalance - i.e. creating a lock by being able to counter most 1cc and 2cc spells just by the combination of the two cards. SDT + fetchlands, SDT + confidant, SDT + tutors, SDT + key is not synergy, it's just making SDT less crappy in a vacuum. And Tinker/Thirst/Academy benefits can be had by virtue of being any artifact. That is not anything special. I could play Ichor Wellspring or Ornithopter and receive those benefits. More accurately, I'd rather be fetching real card-advantage producing disruption pieces with Trinket Mage like Pithing Needle, or Engineered Explosives, or Grafdigger's Cage, and STILL getting all of those benefits from being paired with Tinker, Thirst, and Academy.

Definition of synergy from a dictionary: "the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects."  In other words any positive interaction between two cards is synergy.  Not just interactions that reach an arbitrary plateau of power level.

However, instead of soft counters like Mental Misstep and Daze, this deck plays Chalice of the Void as its early disruption. Chalice has its pluses and minuses, but in most cases it is superior to Misstep/Daze. It can lock the opponent out of the game whereas Misstep and Daze are highly conditional, easily played-around, and generally dead against some decks and many situations. And while the Merfolk deck plays Null Rod as extra disruption, this deck plays more artifact mana, which makes it faster than the Merfolk deck, and hopes to replicate some of that disruption with access to Chalice.

I think you are misunderstanding the reason they are running daze and mental misstep.  Those cards cost 0 mana and counter spells after your opponent has spent mana.  Netting positive tempo.  Chalice of the void costs mana when you play it on anything other than 0 and your opponent will not spend any mana to cast spells into it.  Netting negative tempo.  There is also another major drawback of chalice.  It is a double edged card.  When you play it at 0 you have locked yourself out of your moxen.  When you play it at 1 you have now locked yourself out of your own needle, cage spellbomb.  At 2 your revokers and time walk... so on so forth.

This deck has arguably more disruption than decks like Delver and Merfolk because these decks mostly rely on soft counters that are highly situational and get worse as the game progresses. This deck is about trotting out hard counters like Chalice and Archmage that can actually lock the opponent out of the game, backed up by Force and Wastes and Revokers.

Their decks are designed to win on turn 4/5 and in the first few turns of the game those "soft" counters act like hard counters.  Wastelands and null rods also function to allow these "soft" counters to act like hard counters for a longer period of time.  As such they have no need for a cards like archmage and chalice because those cards incur far too much tempo loss in order to play.

In the hands of a skilled pilot, this deck has the capability to beat anything the format can throw at it, and often with ease.

Also, I have tested this deck pretty heavily against nearly every Vintage archetype and based on testing against competent opponents, this deck is only unfavored against faster aggro-control decks (RUG Delver and Merfolk). It basically has no problem dispatching Shop decks, Dredge decks, Oath decks, Confidant/Jace control decks, Storm combo decks and the other major players in Vintage.

I was curious to test these claims that you have made and after putting this through my gauntlet, I have decided that these claims are overblown.
 
Playing tinker, illusory angel, or chalice on turn 1/2 and not having it countered or removed were the only games I even felt like I had a chance to win.  If I lost the die roll and my opponent played bob, lodestone, or any number of other strong turn 1 plays I felt rather helpless to do anything. This drew me to realize that almost all of the disruption pieces in this deck revolve around your opponent not resolving anything and as such it is extremely difficult to deal with resolved threats.  Psionic blast could be a possible solution to this.

Cards like trinket mage, and glen elandra felt out of place since the deck doesn't have any way of generating significant card advantage.  My opponent was able to take the 2 for 1 to force or use other removal to get rid of a trinket mage or glen elandra, and still stay ahead in card advantage.  Gush could be a possible solution to this.

Both issues could also be addressed single handedly by playing Jaces, which is something that the mana base is more than capable of supporting.

[MTGFan]

Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

Are they?  I ask since you seem to have taken most suggestions with hostility.

Top is never really -1CA. I think an argument could be made to say it is in some cases -VCA, as there are some matchups where it can be less than stellar, but that can be said of many cards.

The definition of card advantage involves a card being in hand or creating board presence.

When SDT is in hand, it is neutral and doesn't affect CA. When it is played, it creates no board presence outside of being a generic permanent and whatever utility it provides you as a deck filter, and thus is -1 CA both on the board and from the hand.

Compare SDT to something like Pithing Needle that is -1 CA when played from hand but can immediately recoup that as +1 CA by shutting down an opponent's permanent. A needle can come into play and immediately affect the board by naming something like "Jace" that is already in play, thus generating card parity with the opposing named card, or by preemptively creating virtual card advantage by naming an important strategy that the opponent was hoping to play later. SDT can do none of this - its sole utility lies in whatever you gain from filtering your library. It can never do anything but decrease card advantage by depleting a card from you hand to do nothing in terms of board presence.

Lets also not forget that it adds to your Academy Mana, can be sac'ed for Tinker, Can be tapped as a permanent for Tangle wire, turn on metalcraft for opal, and counts for affinity (if that comes to the forefront). If it eats a misstep it was a 1 for 1.

Adding to Academy mana, saccing for Tinker, tapping for Tangle Wire, turning on metalcraft for Opal are all things that ANY artifact can do. I can fetch an Ornithopter and achieve the same result. This is not something special to SDT. Again, the ONLY value you can extract from SDT is its value as a card filtering tool, which means it creates no board presence and generates no potential card advantage or even card parity.

So if you want to make the argument that in some cases its less than great, that's a fine argument. That is also what the sideboard is for.

I think that SDT is actively terrible outside of combos with Counterbalance and Terminus and the like. Anybody who plays SDT as a Trinket Mage target who is not also playing either of those two cards (or something similar that creates a combo effect) is playing a suboptimal list.

I think you have more than illustrated your point that you should not be playing SDT.  It is a fairly skill intensive card and if played improperly will not be optimal.

I can assure you my skill level in this game is higher than that of most of the people on this board. Your card power level analysis skills are less than optimal if you don't understand the strengths and weaknesses of SDT, as you clearly don't.

Also SDT has a lot of synergies in vintage such as fetchlands, dark confidant, repeal, topdeck tutors, voltaic key, cheap counterspells, tinker, Thirst for knowledge, tolarian academy,... There even used to be a combo deck that could draw it's entire library and generate infinite storm with it.

SDT doesn't have synergy with those cards. Synergy is creating a combo with something like Counterbalance - i.e. creating a lock by being able to counter most 1cc and 2cc spells just by the combination of the two cards. SDT + fetchlands, SDT + confidant, SDT + tutors, SDT + key is not synergy, it's just making SDT less crappy in a vacuum. And Tinker/Thirst/Academy benefits can be had by virtue of being any artifact. That is not anything special. I could play Ichor Wellspring or Ornithopter and receive those benefits. More accurately, I'd rather be fetching real card-advantage producing disruption pieces with Trinket Mage like Pithing Needle, or Engineered Explosives, or Grafdigger's Cage, and STILL getting all of those benefits from being paired with Tinker, Thirst, and Academy.

Definition of synergy from a dictionary: "the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects."  In other words any positive interaction between two cards is synergy.  Not just interactions that reach an arbitrary plateau of power level.

Why can't we assign our own striations to determine power level? The power level of the synergy between SDT and, say, Dark Confidant only mitigates a negligible downside to an otherwise powerful creature. That synergy is clearly inferior to the hard-counter-lock potential of a synergy between SDT and something like Counterbalance.

However, instead of soft counters like Mental Misstep and Daze, this deck plays Chalice of the Void as its early disruption. Chalice has its pluses and minuses, but in most cases it is superior to Misstep/Daze. It can lock the opponent out of the game whereas Misstep and Daze are highly conditional, easily played-around, and generally dead against some decks and many situations. And while the Merfolk deck plays Null Rod as extra disruption, this deck plays more artifact mana, which makes it faster than the Merfolk deck, and hopes to replicate some of that disruption with access to Chalice.

I think you are misunderstanding the reason they are running daze and mental misstep.  Those cards cost 0 mana and counter spells after your opponent has spent mana.  Netting positive tempo.  Chalice of the void costs mana when you play it on anything other than 0 and your opponent will not spend any mana to cast spells into it.  Netting negative tempo.  There is also another major drawback of chalice.  It is a double edged card.  When you play it at 0 you have locked yourself out of your moxen.  When you play it at 1 you have now locked yourself out of your own needle, cage spellbomb.  At 2 your revokers and time walk... so on so forth.

Soft counters are great in the early game, and Merfolk *hopes* to win the game by attacking in the early game. Many times it does. But if opponent can withstand the attack through creatures of his own, or control tools, or anything else, then Merfolk's disruption is virtually worthless later in the game. Chalice and company are effective in both the early game *and* the late game.

This deck has access to far more mana far more quickly (Tombs, artifact mana) than Merfolk and can just as reliably cast Chalices and the like.

This deck has arguably more disruption than decks like Delver and Merfolk because these decks mostly rely on soft counters that are highly situational and get worse as the game progresses. This deck is about trotting out hard counters like Chalice and Archmage that can actually lock the opponent out of the game, backed up by Force and Wastes and Revokers.

Their decks are designed to win on turn 4/5 and in the first few turns of the game those "soft" counters act like hard counters.  Wastelands and null rods also function to allow these "soft" counters to act like hard counters for a longer period of time.  As such they have no need for a cards like archmage and chalice because those cards incur far too much tempo loss in order to play.

Designed to win on turn 4/5... which doesn't always happen. And there are plenty of decks that shrug off soft counters and situational counters like Mental Misstep. Very few decks shrug off Chalice and Archmage.

In the hands of a skilled pilot, this deck has the capability to beat anything the format can throw at it, and often with ease.

Also, I have tested this deck pretty heavily against nearly every Vintage archetype and based on testing against competent opponents, this deck is only unfavored against faster aggro-control decks (RUG Delver and Merfolk). It basically has no problem dispatching Shop decks, Dredge decks, Oath decks, Confidant/Jace control decks, Storm combo decks and the other major players in Vintage.

I was curious to test these claims that you have made and after putting this through my gauntlet, I have decided that these claims are overblown.
  
Playing tinker, illusory angel, or chalice on turn 1/2 and not having it countered or removed were the only games I even felt like I had a chance to win.  If I lost the die roll and my opponent played bob, lodestone, or any number of other strong turn 1 plays I felt rather helpless to do anything. This drew me to realize that almost all of the disruption pieces in this deck revolve around your opponent not resolving anything and as such it is extremely difficult to deal with resolved threats.  Psionic blast could be a possible solution to this.

Cards like trinket mage, and glen elandra felt out of place since the deck doesn't have any way of generating significant card advantage.  My opponent was able to take the 2 for 1 to force or use other removal to get rid of a trinket mage or glen elandra, and still stay ahead in card advantage.  Gush could be a possible solution to this.

Both issues could also be addressed single handedly by playing Jaces, which is something that the mana base is more than capable of supporting.

I can't take anything you posit as testing results seriously because there is a serious bias in play here. You are an unreliable pilot of this deck as you have a vested interest in proving me wrong in this thread, and thus your play during testing will be skewed, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Not only that, but you have no experience with the deck and don't know how to correctly respond to situations within games. Your problems with Dark Confidant stem from incorrect use of removal that the deck features, and inaccurate assessment of Dark Confidant's true threat level. This deck doesn't care about Confidant - and even welcomes its life loss effect on opponent's life total - if it has shut down other avenues of attack (jace, tutors, yawg will, etc).

The only way to glean real results from testing is to see this deck perform in a tournament, or to have completely unbiased (not you nor me) pilots testing this repeatedly against the major archetypes. As it stands, we have two biased opinions (yours and mine) that stand at opposite ends of the spectrum.

[vaughnbros]

I can assure you my skill level in this game is higher than that of most of the people on this board. Your card power level analysis skills are less than optimal if you don't understand the strengths and weaknesses of SDT, as you clearly don't.

Sure is.  Clearly your knowledge and analysis level is so great that it overcomes all empirical evidence collected by every other person in the world.  With this great gift that you have been given I would advise that you better focus yourself on greater questions of philosophy and science like "What is the true meaning of life?" instead of "how to optimize my mono blue vintage deck?"

I can't take anything you posit as testing results seriously because there is a serious bias in play here. You are an unreliable pilot of this deck as you have a vested interest in proving me wrong in this thread, and thus your play during testing will be skewed, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I do not seek to prove you wrong on this deck at all.  I was attempting to enlighten you on why your analysis was off on some cards.  In my original post, which is below for reference, the only thing in this message that could be construed as negative is some of the the constructive criticism that I gave.
 

Why no Mystical Tutor? And why no Mana Drain? i think 2-3 Drains and a Tutor would fit nicelly here in place of Glen Elendra.

Mana Drain was something I tested but in a Tomb deck UU isn't as easy to come by. And I think this deck works better with the acceleration provided by Tomb (powering out easy Trinket Mages, Revokers, Angels)  rather than the ability to trade 1-for-1 via a counterspell.

I wonder if tomb is even worth it.  Since your curve tops out mainly at 3, if you have even a single piece of artifact mana tomb becomes unnecessary.  Cavern of souls seems like a big card for this deck allowing you play chalices more aggresively, and pushing your super powerful creatures, like glen elandra, through opposing counter magic.  If you stick with this same mana base and UU is difficult to get clique and true-name should be reconsidered.

No sensei's top or fetches seems like a mistake while running trinket mage since its the main trinket mage target against half the field.  Top is such a great card with mage since it turns him into a serious card advantage engine.  Without top or other card advantage, tinker-bot seem like rather poor card choices.  You are just as likely to draw the bot as you are the tinker.  Is the added variance really worth it?  

With the beatdown plan such a strong part of this deck's strategy I would also consider adding a tutorable equipment.  Bonesplitter, Skullclamp, Sigil of Distinction, all come to mind as options.

The sideboard needs some work.  You should have a second EE for shops+creature decks, its pretty much your only tutor target in those match ups.  Energy flux is kind of a nonbo when you are playing 14 main deck artifacts, and even more in the board.  Is gremlin mine really good enough?  The only thing it kills that trinket mage doesn't trade with is lodestone.

Overall its a very cool deck that brings back memories of ones from long long ago.

Note the final note of my post was a statement of pure excitement about the deck.

Not only that, but you have no experience with the deck and don't know how to correctly respond to situations within games. Your problems with Dark Confidant stem from incorrect use of removal that the deck features, and inaccurate assessment of Dark Confidant's true threat level. This deck doesn't care about Confidant - and even welcomes its life loss effect on opponent's life total - if it has shut down other avenues of attack (jace, tutors, yawg will, etc).

I have played and won countless numbers of games in my time playing magic in general over the last 16 years, and playing vintage competitively for the last 4 years.  I am fairly certain this experience gives me the ability to pick up a deck and play it.  If you would like to elaborate on some tips that I may be missing on how to play the deck that would be wonderful though.  I am an academic and as such am always anxious to learn.

[WhiteLotus]

For a deck to be playable in vintage it must a) have a strong gameplan and limit opponent's interaction b) interact with the opponent and limit their gameplan. Your list looks like it does none of those things very well.

Can you explain how it does none of these things well? Chalice does not limit the opponent's gameplan? Force of Will, Phyrexian Revoker, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Glen Elandra Archmage, Vendilion Clique, Trinket Mage (fetching any number of silver bullet answers) don't do this either!? Are you familiar with any of these cards? May I suggest you look them up in magiccards.info?

You claim that your deck "basically has no problem dispatching Shop decks, Dredge decks, Oath decks, Confidant/Jace control decks, Storm combo decks and the other major players in Vintage." but how does it do that with only 4 fows and inferior win conditions ?
Every aggro based strategy in the format is usually a deck that impedes broken decks ability to win very strongly (Bug Fish, hatebears) or uses interaction to create tempo while they use a fast clock to win (delver, merfolk)

Inferior win conditions? This deck plays some of the most efficient creatures in the game. It plays creatures with lots of utility and disruption, or the second most efficient blue creature (in terms of p/t+ability to cost ratio) in the game (Illusory Angel).

This deck has arguably more disruption than decks like Delver and Merfolk because these decks mostly rely on soft counters that are highly situational and get worse as the game progresses. This deck is about trotting out hard counters like Chalice and Archmage that can actually lock the opponent out of the game, backed up by Force and Wastes and Revokers.

Also SDT has a lot of synergies in vintage such as fetchlands, dark confidant, repeal, topdeck tutors, voltaic key, cheap counterspells, tinker, Thirst for knowledge, tolarian academy,... There even used to be a combo deck that could draw it's entire library and generate infinite storm with it.

SDT doesn't have synergy with those cards. Synergy is creating a combo with something like Counterbalance - i.e. creating a lock by being able to counter most 1cc and 2cc spells just by the combination of the two cards. SDT + fetchlands, SDT + confidant, SDT + tutors, SDT + key is not synergy, it's just making SDT less crappy in a vacuum. And Tinker/Thirst/Academy benefits can be had by virtue of being any artifact. That is not anything special. I could play Ichor Wellspring or Ornithopter and receive those benefits. More accurately, I'd rather be fetching real card-advantage producing disruption pieces with Trinket Mage like Pithing Needle, or Engineered Explosives, or Grafdigger's Cage, and STILL getting all of those benefits from being paired with Tinker, Thirst, and Academy.

Your posts towards other people trying to give some input to help you are sometimes pretty condescending.

Also, do you honestly think that people who play vintage don't know about the cards you mention when they are played in successful archetype (except Archmage) some even across formats ? What are you trying to accomplish when you suggest that I Look them up, discredit me ?

You keep bragging about how you have awesome play skills and card analysis, but in my experience people who are good at something don't need to say it since it's usually pretty obvious that they know what they're talking about. On the other hand people that feel the need to justify themselves usually have something to compensate.

Anyway back to the topic

I'm sorry to disappoint you but Tendrils of agony, Time vault, Blightsteel colossus, Griselbrand, Emrakul, Workshop's robots, armies of zombies are all vastly superior to your own win conditions.

I also don't see how your disruption package is less situational then delver's, all your artefact answers are situational. And only 4 counters that cda you when you have (almost) no way of refilling your hand seems very fragile.
Chalice is a good card no questioning that, I just wonder if it's really what you want instead of a real counter package since it's hurts you also a lot more than it hurts a deck like Workshop.

Also delver's creatures are way more efficient than yours (see Delver and Goyf) and merfolk's creatures grow pretty fast and are uncounterable + unblockable most of the time.
Glen eldra archmage seems pretty inefficient compared to say cursecatcher. And it just get's worse when you compare it to the other 4 drops in the format (Gifts, Jace, Lodestone, Smokestack ...)

Synergy isn't a combo or an engine^^ It's merely two cards that interact favorably with each other like repeal and SDT do (Stack the drawing ability of top, then repeal it in response. You draw two cards and sensei now being in your hand doesn't go to the topdeck).

SDT is not card disadvantage it's a cantrip^^
Anyway I think you're failing to grasp the fact that SDT is good because of all those interactions mentioned not just one of them and It doesn't seem like you realize than sdt gives you virtually + 3 cards in hand if ever you need one of those cards at any given time and when you don't want any of those you can just use a shuffle effect to avoid having dead draws. It's pretty similar to having an at will ponder, do you think ponder to be bad?

[xouman]

SDT is amazing -providing you have some ways to shuffle your deck (fetchlands, tutors, trinkets...) , playing a deck aiming for midgame-lategame and assuming that tempo is not a main factor. Well, lots of decks fall out of that place, but in a deck like bomberman, SDT is great. Besides those factors, bomberman benefits from confidant and trinket synergy with top, even auriok benefits!

COTV is another massive card. I love it. But it involves tempo loss (unless set to 0), being proactive means that opponent does no have to waste cards/mana/tempo into it and of cours if played badly (or with nasty topdecks) could hose the same player that played it. I played several times a cotv at 1, having my opponent twice CC1 costs than me and I lost because I drew 3 cc1 nearly in a row and not one from him. Still, a COTV at 2 damaged lots and lots of decks in vintage, at least until abrupt decay got printed.

Regarding this deck: i started a similar idea, with grand architect and manybe etherium sculptor. then i got to the point where I wasn't sure if I should play master transmuter, treasure mage and fatties or tempo/mana denial. so i abandoned the idea :p But all those ideas featured a playset of lodestone golem. Any deck with ancient tombs and wastelands wants golem imho. it wins matches by itself.

while I respect revokers, cotv would be great at 2, so i'll drop them for CC1 or CC3 cards. maybe missteps/flusters to protect our menaces.

[MTGFan]

I can assure you my skill level in this game is higher than that of most of the people on this board. Your card power level analysis skills are less than optimal if you don't understand the strengths and weaknesses of SDT, as you clearly don't.

Sure is.  Clearly your knowledge and analysis level is so great that it overcomes all empirical evidence collected by every other person in the world.  With this great gift that you have been given I would advise that you better focus yourself on greater questions of philosophy and science like "What is the true meaning of life?" instead of "how to optimize my mono blue vintage deck?"

Where is the empirical evidence gathered which involves testing of this deck? I doubt anyone has tested this in an unbiased manner, and few have even played this deck competitively aside from myself.

I can't take anything you posit as testing results seriously because there is a serious bias in play here. You are an unreliable pilot of this deck as you have a vested interest in proving me wrong in this thread, and thus your play during testing will be skewed, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I do not seek to prove you wrong on this deck at all.  I was attempting to enlighten you on why your analysis was off on some cards.  In my original post, which is below for reference, the only thing in this message that could be construed as negative is some of the the constructive criticism that I gave.

You fail to respect the seriousness of this deck and its strategy. You see everything through the lens of the established Vintage player leaning on Gush strategies, on Dark COnfidant strategies, and the like. Chalice of the Void + Revoker + disruption is just as powerful if not more powerful, and yet your inborn bias prevents you from seriously analyzing this.

Why no Mystical Tutor? And why no Mana Drain? i think 2-3 Drains and a Tutor would fit nicelly here in place of Glen Elendra.

Mana Drain was something I tested but in a Tomb deck UU isn't as easy to come by. And I think this deck works better with the acceleration provided by Tomb (powering out easy Trinket Mages, Revokers, Angels)  rather than the ability to trade 1-for-1 via a counterspell.

I wonder if tomb is even worth it.  Since your curve tops out mainly at 3, if you have even a single piece of artifact mana tomb becomes unnecessary.  Cavern of souls seems like a big card for this deck allowing you play chalices more aggresively, and pushing your super powerful creatures, like glen elandra, through opposing counter magic.  If you stick with this same mana base and UU is difficult to get clique and true-name should be reconsidered.

No sensei's top or fetches seems like a mistake while running trinket mage since its the main trinket mage target against half the field.  Top is such a great card with mage since it turns him into a serious card advantage engine.  Without top or other card advantage, tinker-bot seem like rather poor card choices.  You are just as likely to draw the bot as you are the tinker.  Is the added variance really worth it?  

With the beatdown plan such a strong part of this deck's strategy I would also consider adding a tutorable equipment.  Bonesplitter, Skullclamp, Sigil of Distinction, all come to mind as options.

The sideboard needs some work.  You should have a second EE for shops+creature decks, its pretty much your only tutor target in those match ups.  Energy flux is kind of a nonbo when you are playing 14 main deck artifacts, and even more in the board.  Is gremlin mine really good enough?  The only thing it kills that trinket mage doesn't trade with is lodestone.

Overall its a very cool deck that brings back memories of ones from long long ago.

Note the final note of my post was a statement of pure excitement about the deck.

Not only that, but you have no experience with the deck and don't know how to correctly respond to situations within games. Your problems with Dark Confidant stem from incorrect use of removal that the deck features, and inaccurate assessment of Dark Confidant's true threat level. This deck doesn't care about Confidant - and even welcomes its life loss effect on opponent's life total - if it has shut down other avenues of attack (jace, tutors, yawg will, etc).

I have played and won countless numbers of games in my time playing magic in general over the last 16 years, and playing vintage competitively for the last 4 years.  I am fairly certain this experience gives me the ability to pick up a deck and play it.  If you would like to elaborate on some tips that I may be missing on how to play the deck that would be wonderful though.  I am an academic and as such am always anxious to learn.

The only way we can truly test this is to run this deck, piloted by myself, through a gauntlet of decks piloted by you or someone else proficient in them. If you want, we can set up some playtesting time on Cockatrice (my primary mode of playing Vintage as I am mostly a Legacy player without access to Power9) and run this deck through your gauntlet.

[MTGFan]

Your posts towards other people trying to give some input to help you are sometimes pretty condescending.

I wanted serious discussion of a serious, competitive, borderline Tier 1 deck. The tone of the comments in here was patronizing - i.e. "aw,. what a cute deck, how about some <insert ridiculous casual card suggestion> or <insert frequently played card that has no place in this deck>"

Also, do you honestly think that people who play vintage don't know about the cards you mention when they are played in successful archetype (except Archmage) some even across formats ? What are you trying to accomplish when you suggest that I Look them up, discredit me ?

You keep bragging about how you have awesome play skills and card analysis, but in my experience people who are good at something don't need to say it since it's usually pretty obvious that they know what they're talking about. On the other hand people that feel the need to justify themselves usually have something to compensate.

Anyway back to the topic

I'm sorry to disappoint you but Tendrils of agony, Time vault, Blightsteel colossus, Griselbrand, Emrakul, Workshop's robots, armies of zombies are all vastly superior to your own win conditions.

Tendrils of Agony requires a deck built around it. That is a hidden cost that many fail to see. You can't win with Tendrils unless you build your deck to build up storm count. Anything built to generate storm count opens itself up to many more avenues of disruption than an aggro-control deck. If you weigh hidden costs equally with explicit costs, you will not necessarily consider Tendrils a superior win condition to creature beatdown.

Time Vault again, is like Tendrils in that it incurs hidden costs (drawing each part of the combo without the other, or falling prey to Null Rod and other artifact hate).

I play Tinker->Inkwell that could just as easily be Tinker->Blightsteel, but I simply prefer immunity to Jace and targeted Bounce, as well as Force of Will pitching.

I've played many Workshop decks over the years and the #1 reason NOT to play any kind of artifact creature win conditions is that Vintage is to heavily tuned to beating artifacts. Every deck has a strong plan, often maindeck, to demolish artifact creatures. By playing mostly non-artifact win conditions, your creatures are immune to Hurykls Recall, Naturalize, Ancient Grudge, and the like, that would otherwise blow you out of the water.

Armies of Zombies, again, means you have to play Dredge, and the hidden cost here is that you get owned by prevalent graveyard hate. Graveyard hate does almost nothing to this deck.

An example of a blow-out tactic against this deck would be Llawan, Cephalid Empress. But who plays that? Very few. But look at people's decks and sideboards and ask yourself, how many are prepared to deal with artifact creatures, and dredge tactics? Every single one. Playing non-artifact creatures and playing resilient, redundant threats makes this deck superior to Dredge and Shops because it completely evades commonly played hate. If everyone started SBing 2-3 Llawan, then yes, this deck would fall right in line with Dredge and Shops as one that incurs a hidden cost. But that's not happening any time soon.

I also don't see how your disruption package is less situational then delver's, all your artefact answers are situational. And only 4 counters that cda you when you have (almost) no way of refilling your hand seems very fragile.
Chalice is a good card no questioning that, I just wonder if it's really what you want instead of a real counter package since it's hurts you also a lot more than it hurts a deck like Workshop.

Artifact answers in this deck are situational but tutor-able. That is the ideal combination if you are looking at situational answers. Playing 4 Daze or 4 Spell Pierce is highly situational but not primarily tutor-able - you are opening yourself up to lots of virtual card disadvantage if you draw them when they are inapplicable. Drawing a singleton Cage, or singleton Spellbomb happens more rarely and if it does, it can be mitigated by things like Thirst for Knowledge or by Spellbomb cycling ability.

Also delver's creatures are way more efficient than yours (see Delver and Goyf) and merfolk's creatures grow pretty fast and are uncounterable + unblockable most of the time.
Glen eldra archmage seems pretty inefficient compared to say cursecatcher. And it just get's worse when you compare it to the other 4 drops in the format (Gifts, Jace, Lodestone, Smokestack ...)

Delver plays a light manabase with only 1 mana lands, with only 3 artifact accelerants. This deck plays 4 two mana lands plus the full complement of artifact mana plus Tolarian Academy. Its ability to generate mana is far greater than any Delver deck. If you understand this, you will see that a 2U creature in this deck is nearly as easily cast as a U creature in a Delver deck. Efficiency is highly contextual and dependent on the manabase being played in the deck.

A 3U creature like Archmage is a piece of cake to cast in a deck with this kind of manabase. Obviously, this same creature would be very inefficient in a deck with a manabase like Delver's. But in this deck, it's the equivalent of a 1U creature in a Delver deck. And the net effect of the Archmage in play is vastly superior (against non-creature decks) to any creature that Delver plays.

Synergy isn't a combo or an engine^^ It's merely two cards that interact favorably with each other like repeal and SDT do (Stack the drawing ability of top, then repeal it in response. You draw two cards and sensei now being in your hand doesn't go to the topdeck).

Yes, and you can grade the level or power of interaction. All SDT does with fetchlands is filter better. SDT with Counterbalance creates a soft lock. There is a world apart in power between those two synergies.

SDT is not card disadvantage it's a cantrip^^
Anyway I think you're failing to grasp the fact that SDT is good because of all those interactions mentioned not just one of them and It doesn't seem like you realize than sdt gives you virtually + 3 cards in hand if ever you need one of those cards at any given time and when you don't want any of those you can just use a shuffle effect to avoid having dead draws. It's pretty similar to having an at will ponder, do you think ponder to be bad?

You seem to fail to understand that card quality and filtering are only really plus strategies in a deck that makes the most use of individual card quality - i.e. a deck full of singletons and probably a deck trying to assemble a combo. In other decks, with multiple redundant threats, simply filtering the top 3 cards of your deck provides no card advantage, and provides unneeded card quality, because typically every threat is nearly as good as the next.

[vaughnbros]

I can assure you my skill level in this game is higher than that of most of the people on this board. Your card power level analysis skills are less than optimal if you don't understand the strengths and weaknesses of SDT, as you clearly don't.

Sure is.  Clearly your knowledge and analysis level is so great that it overcomes all empirical evidence collected by every other person in the world.  With this great gift that you have been given I would advise that you better focus yourself on greater questions of philosophy and science like "What is the true meaning of life?" instead of "how to optimize my mono blue vintage deck?"

Where is the empirical evidence gathered which involves testing of this deck? I doubt anyone has tested this in an unbiased manner, and few have even played this deck competitively aside from myself.

I was clearly referring to your analysis on SDT, where there are dozens of tournament victories and even more top 8's that contradict your claim that it is only good in a deck loaded with singletons.  I'll entertain your diversion though.  Where are have you been playing this competitively?  I mean if your claims on your play skill are true and the deck is as good as you say it is there certainly must be a number of top 8's and tournament wins you could point me towards.

You fail to respect the seriousness of this deck and its strategy. You see everything through the lens of the established Vintage player leaning on Gush strategies, on Dark COnfidant strategies, and the like. Chalice of the Void + Revoker + disruption is just as powerful if not more powerful, and yet your inborn bias prevents you from seriously analyzing this.

This one gave me a pretty good laugh.  I of course have no idea how good Chalice of the void + revoker can be because I only play gush and dark confidant strategies.  Its not like I've played both revoker and chalice extensively in white trash, TMWA, RW aggro, workshops or anything like that.  And I mean I have no ability to think out of the box at all, why else would I only play top tier decks like the one I currently have sleeved up, dredge that transforms into cavern humans post board.  

Good luck working on the deck by yourself though since my input or anyone else's for that matter is clearly not respected by you.

[MTGFan]

I was clearly referring to your analysis on SDT, where there are dozens of tournament victories and even more top 8's that contradict your claim that it is only good in a deck loaded with singletons.  I'll entertain your diversion though.  Where are have you been playing this competitively?  I mean if your claims on your play skill are true and the deck is as good as you say it is there certainly must be a number of top 8's and tournament wins you could point me towards.

Have you ever heard the phrase "correlation does not imply causation"? Basic entry level statistics, and it applies perfectly here. These decks are winning in spite of an inferior Trinket Mage target residing in their 75. They are paying an opportunity cost to fetch SDT that is simply not great enough to deter the force of their combo from prevailing. That doesn't mean that SDT is any good as a Trinket Mage target in a deck that does not build synergy for the Top with any other piece.

This one gave me a pretty good laugh.  I of course have no idea how good Chalice of the void + revoker can be because I only play gush and dark confidant strategies.  Its not like I've played both revoker and chalice extensively in white trash, TMWA, RW aggro, workshops or anything like that.  And I mean I have no ability to think out of the box at all, why else would I only play top tier decks like the one I currently have sleeved up, dredge that transforms into cavern humans post board.  

Good luck working on the deck by yourself though since my input or anyone else's for that matter is clearly not respected by you.

Look, just because you've played Card X in Deck Y before doesn't necessarily mean that you are an expert on applications of Card X in Deck Z. All of those decks you listed are fairly suboptimal strategies that don't play the best color in the game - blue. There is a world of difference in a deck that plays the best spells in the game (Force, Tinker, Recall, Walk, Thirst, etc) along with the best mana sources in the game (Artifact Mana + Academy + Ancient Tomb + Islands) from some aggro deck trying to make do playing primarily sources of the *worst* color in the game (red) or the second worst color in the game (white).

And Dredge that transforms into Cavern Humans? That's not thinking outside the box - that's just playing one established, linear strategy and side-boarding into another rather than trying to preempt hate.

Again, if you really want to do any kind of testing of this deck to disprove my claims, I am free to test against your gauntlet of decks (established archetypes, obviously, no specialized deck lists intended just to beat this with maindeck Llawans or something) on Cockatrice. It's not in-person tournament results or even in-person testing but it is more than adequate to do a general assessment of a deck's strengths and weaknesses against the metagame.

[vaughnbros]

I was clearly referring to your analysis on SDT, where there are dozens of tournament victories and even more top 8's that contradict your claim that it is only good in a deck loaded with singletons.  I'll entertain your diversion though.  Where are have you been playing this competitively?  I mean if your claims on your play skill are true and the deck is as good as you say it is there certainly must be a number of top 8's and tournament wins you could point me towards.

Have you ever heard the phrase "correlation does not imply causation"? Basic entry level statistics, and it applies perfectly here. These decks are winning in spite of an inferior Trinket Mage target residing in their 75. They are paying an opportunity cost to fetch SDT that is simply not great enough to deter the force of their combo from prevailing. That doesn't mean that SDT is any good as a Trinket Mage target in a deck that does not build synergy for the Top with any other piece.

In statistics I have a bachelor's, am studying for a masters, and have years of experience in the work force, but thank you for the lesson on correlation.  Trinket mage into sensei's top is the primary method for beating other blue decks.  Without sensei's top you are significantly hurting those match ups.  It essentially guarantees that every card you draw after you play it will be of higher quality than every card your opponent draws.

Again, if you really want to do any kind of testing of this deck to disprove my claims, I am free to test against your gauntlet of decks (established archetypes, obviously, no specialized deck lists intended just to beat this with maindeck Llawans or something) on Cockatrice. It's not in-person tournament results or even in-person testing but it is more than adequate to do a general assessment of a deck's strengths and weaknesses against the metagame.

In real life tournament play has an unparalleled intensity to it.  I could play 50 games on cockatrice and it wouldn't be worth a single one in person.  The biggest reason is that everyone is playing with money and pride on the line.  Not only do you win cards or cash when you do well in a tournament, but your name is eternally immortalized in a TO report.  With these stakes everyone's play is elevated to a level that allows you to truly evaluate the power of not only the deck, but your own play skill as well.  While cockatrice may be a decent predictor of how good a deck is, it performing well there shouldn't be the primary efficacy point since you don't gain anything from a deck being good there.  From personal experience I've had a number of decks that have played extremely well on cockatrice that have been terrible in person, and decks that have been sub par on cockatrice, but amazing in person.  Although you've showed your bias against white as a color, white trash was a deck that I designed and was never any good for me on cockatrice.  Yet in real life it's turned into one of the most effective budget decks in all of vintage.

[Chubby Rain]

Have you ever heard the phrase "correlation does not imply causation"? Basic entry level statistics, and it applies perfectly here. These decks are winning in spite of an inferior Trinket Mage target residing in their 75. They are paying an opportunity cost to fetch SDT that is simply not great enough to deter the force of their combo from prevailing. That doesn't mean that SDT is any good as a Trinket Mage target in a deck that does not build synergy for the Top with any other piece.

This is simply not true. The "Bomberman" on the East Coast, Justin Kohler, has cut Brainstorm from his list in favor of a second SDT, because in his nearly two years of testing Bomberman, playing it in tournaments, and winning numerous tournaments, he has reached the conclusion that the card is incredibly strong in the deck. http://tcdecks.net/busqueda.php?nombre=Justin%20Kohler. You argue that correlation does not imply causation, but to my knowledge have not tested the deck in a sufficient capacity to access whether or not SDT contributes to Bomberman's success. Justin has. I have. You also have a distinct misunderstanding of strengths and weaknesses of the Bomberman shell. Bomberman is essential a U/w control drain deck based around Jace, value creatures, and more counterspells then almost every other deck in the format. The combo is there to close out the game or randomly steal games. Decks have cut Auriok Salvagers and have done quite well; for example, the Blue Angels list put two people in the top 8 of the 80 person NYSE (a $100 buy in tournament that gave out the power 8 as prizes) and one person in the top 8 of Vintage Worlds.

Good luck with the list. If you would like to play against Bomberman or Blue Angels on Cockatrice, my name on there is the same as on here.

[MTGFan]

Updated original post with some preliminary match-up discussion and modified notes.