Painting the Town Blue: MSPaint 2015

[The Atog Lord]

I just went 4-0 in a Vintage Daily. I realize that this isn't exactly winning a Waterbury. But in this new metagame, I think that it is especially important to collect as much information as possible in order to understand what is happening. Therefore, I'd like to discuss the deck and its construction. I had constructed this deck in real life last night to take to Myriad. I over-slept and didn't make it. But at least I was able to play the deck online. Today I beat oath, Mentor, Workshops, and Delver. But the important part isn't 4-0'ing a Daily. The important part is considering the theory and cards behind the deck.

Back in the year 2008, Vintage Contraptionist Brassman created an extremely powerful Vintage deck. He realized that you can play Red Blasts maindeck in Vintage. They're good against a lot of the field. And if you combine them with Painter's Servant, they're good against everything. It was then that Brassman created a Painter deck. I called it MSPaint, based on its having Merchant Scroll. The name stuck and the deck was great until it was Restricted into oblivion.

You can play Time Vault, of course. Painter's Servant as a combo has two advantages. First, you can play multiple copies of each combo piece. And second, you can use your Red Blasts to great effect with the Painters.

With the new changes to the Restricted list, it was a great day for Vintage. Chalice no longer makes playing a full set of Moxen seem like a questionable idea. Dig leaving and Thirst returning means that full-Thirst Vintage decks are now once again able to return to the metagame. And the Delver decks, losing their Digs, are now no longer quite as effective at keeping the Big Blue decks down.

Now, my first thought was to build Control Slaver. However, Control Slaver has tended to thrive in an established metagame. The metagame is anything but established at this point. I tried Grixis Thieves next. While that deck is certainly potent, all of my builds ended up having too many three-drops and too few artifacts. I considered building the Tezz-Cast deck, but that seems far too fragile for my style of play. That's when I saw that Brassman had been taking down Vintage Online events with Painter. And, just like in 2008, I decided that Brassman was on the right track with Painter. I wasn't thrilled with his exact list, but I think the idea of Painter in this metagame is very interesting.

After some testing and brainstorming, here is where I arrived at for a list.

// The Win
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Tinker
3 Painter's Servant
3 Grindstone

// Control
4 Force of Will
4 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mental Misstep
2 Mana Drain

// Draw
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Gush
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Dig Through Time
1 Ponder

// Splash
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

// Mana
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

// Land
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Island
1 Tolarian Academy

// Sideboard
2 Shattering Spree
4 Ingot Chewer
2 Illness in the Ranks
1 Mountain
2 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Grafdigger's Cage

Tinker is especially strong in this since it can both assemble the combo and also create a Blightsteel Colossus. While there was a period in which having a Tinker monster was not ideal in the metagame, I think it has gotten much better now. First, we have a lot of Red Blasts to stop Dack from arriving. Second, this deck uses the Tinker win as its secondary win condition, rather than its primary win condition.

You might wonder why I am using Blightsteel instead of one of the other fine Robots available. Thirst for Knowledge changes the math here as well. Once you draw your Robot, you'd much rather that Robot find its way back into your deck. Well, Thirst lets you get your Blightsteel back into the deck easily. If you had instead drawn your non-shuffling Robot, making Tinker work again becomes much harder.

The control package includes Mental Misstep. Misstep stops all sorts of unfortunate things that can happen to Painter's Servant, such as Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares. It also stops opposing Red Blasts, which as you can see are often quite strong against this deck.

You will note what the control package lacks -- spot removal. This deck is very greedy and there are no maindeck Lightning Bolts. Instead, problematic creatures can be removed via Red Blasts once Painter has arrived. This has the downside of making opposing creatures much more difficult than it would be for a deck with actual removal. However,this leads the deck to having fewer inert draws and more counters. Ultimately, running more Red Blasts over Lightning Bolts is a function of this deck being a bit closer to the combo side of the combo-control spectrum.

Moving on to the draw. When Thirst became unrestricted, I had thought that the blue decks would break into two archetypes -- Thirst and Gush. Brassman thought otherwise, and was more clever and more greedy than I was. His builds ran four of each! I think that three Gush is generally sufficient for a non-combo deck (and I removed the Fastbond Brassman was using). That led to an extremely robust draw engine with more card advantage than most decks, and all of the good restricted control draw spells.

My maindeck has Yawgmoth's Will and Demonic Tutor. I'm not entirely certain that this is the correct splash, or that a splash need be used at all. Each color has something to offer, and using a two-color approach also has advantages. I think that opting for Black as our tertiary color gives us two extremely powerful cards, which help us assemble the combo and generate card advantage. I'm not sure that this is correct yet, but both of these cards have been quite effective so far.

Finally, on the manabase. I included all of the usual artifact mana. Because of the Painter combo, this deck can take advantage of plenty of colorless mana. Plus, Thirst for Knowledge lets us pitch excess Moxen. The right mix of land is not entirely straightforward. Usually, in a big-blue deck, I would strongly consider both Library and Strip Mine. However, this is also a Gush deck, and neither pair well with that draw spell. Tolarian Academy is so powerful that we still want to include it, despite Gush. After all, the Academy often taps to cast Gush anyway.

Finally, the sideboard. As with any deck in progress, the sideboard is up in the air. In my first attempts with Painter, I found that token-based decks were difficult. They could one-for-one and then use their tokens to fill the board. Our Painter/Blast plan works well against single targets, but isn't able to handle a board covered in monks and elementals. Enter Illness in the Ranks. That card solves that problem and combined with Cage gives us six cards that stop oath from functioning. Likewise, we have six cards against Dredge. Against the Thoughtcast decks, we have Shattering Spree.

There are many other areas for testing both maindeck and sideboard cards. This isn't a finished list. We're far too early in the metagame for that. Instead, this is one possible avenue for future deck-building consideration. This deck is powerful, proactive, and able to out-draw many decks in the format. But only time will tell if it turns out to be tier one.

Rich Shay

[serracollector]

Very well written. I really like this deck in the very current Thirst crazy meta. I wanted to run a deck myself running Thirst and Painful Truths utilizing the fact I no longer fear running Moxen and just going all in with a few opals. Dropping two Mox land Truths turn one seems good. With essentially all your removal at cmc one casting truths shouldnt be a prob w mana up. The black splash also allows for discard. I think its the right call atm. If it becomes mainstream we would see alot mirrors seeing who can stick a dack lol. I like it. 

[Smmenen]

Now, my first thought was to build Control Slaver. However, Control Slaver has tended to thrive in an established metagame. The metagame is anything but established at this point. I tried Grixis Thieves next. While that deck is certainly potent, all of my builds ended up having too many three-drops and too few artifacts. I considered building the Tezz-Cast deck, but that seems far too fragile for my style of play.

What about just a 2009 era Tezzeret deck?  Did you try something like that?

With this basic shell:

4 Force
4 Thirst
2 Tezzeret
1 Tinker/Will/Key/Vault/DT/Vamp/Mystical etc.

That deck usually has enough artifacts with the Key/Vault combo, and especially with 9-10 artifact accelerants, including Mana Crypt and Mana Vault. 

[The Atog Lord]

What about just a 2009 era Tezzeret deck?  Did you try something like that?

I haven't tried that yet. But, I think that it could be very effective. The difficult deck-building task I see for that deck is getting the removal just right. Do you want creature removal? How about a way to handle Null Rod and Stony Silence? Painter's Servant and Red Blasts solves that problem. With the Tezzeret / Time Vault shell, I suspect that something like Echoing Truth is needed.

[brianpk80]

Great job on the list and performance.  Additionally, the deck name is fantastic. 

[CHA1N5]

Thanks for the write-up, Rich.

[Islandswamp]

What about just a 2009 era Tezzeret deck?  Did you try something like that?

I haven't tried that yet. But, I think that it could be very effective. The difficult deck-building task I see for that deck is getting the removal just right. Do you want creature removal? How about a way to handle Null Rod and Stony Silence? Painter's Servant and Red Blasts solves that problem. With the Tezzeret / Time Vault shell, I suspect that something like Echoing Truth is needed.

That was my experience exactly. Sometimes that Tezzcast deck was just brutal, and then sometimes it folded right over and there was little I could do about it.  I had enough games that went well to make me want to keep working on that list, but a single main-deck Hurkyll's just never seemed to cut it.

[vassago]

I just went 4-0 in a Vintage Daily. I realize that this isn't exactly winning a Waterbury. But in this new metagame, I think that it is especially important to collect as much information as possible in order to understand what is happening. Therefore, I'd like to discuss the deck and its construction. I had constructed this deck in real life last night to take to Myriad. I over-slept and didn't make it. But at least I was able to play the deck online. Today I beat oath, Mentor, Workshops, and Delver. But the important part isn't 4-0'ing a Daily. The important part is considering the theory and cards behind the deck.

Back in the year 2008, Vintage Contraptionist Brassman created an extremely powerful Vintage deck. He realized that you can play Red Blasts maindeck in Vintage. They're good against a lot of the field. And if you combine them with Painter's Servant, they're good against everything. It was then that Brassman created a Painter deck. I called it MSPaint, based on its having Merchant Scroll. The name stuck and the deck was great until it was Restricted into oblivion.

You can play Time Vault, of course. Painter's Servant as a combo has two advantages. First, you can play multiple copies of each combo piece. And second, you can use your Red Blasts to great effect with the Painters.

With the new changes to the Restricted list, it was a great day for Vintage. Chalice no longer makes playing a full set of Moxen seem like a questionable idea. Dig leaving and Thirst returning means that full-Thirst Vintage decks are now once again able to return to the metagame. And the Delver decks, losing their Digs, are now no longer quite as effective at keeping the Big Blue decks down.

Now, my first thought was to build Control Slaver. However, Control Slaver has tended to thrive in an established metagame. The metagame is anything but established at this point. I tried Grixis Thieves next. While that deck is certainly potent, all of my builds ended up having too many three-drops and too few artifacts. I considered building the Tezz-Cast deck, but that seems far too fragile for my style of play. That's when I saw that Brassman had been taking down Vintage Online events with Painter. And, just like in 2008, I decided that Brassman was on the right track with Painter. I wasn't thrilled with his exact list, but I think the idea of Painter in this metagame is very interesting.

After some testing and brainstorming, here is where I arrived at for a list.

// The Win
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Tinker
3 Painter's Servant
3 Grindstone

// Control
4 Force of Will
4 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mental Misstep
2 Mana Drain

// Draw
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Gush
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Dig Through Time
1 Ponder

// Splash
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

// Mana
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

// Land
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Island
1 Tolarian Academy

// Sideboard
2 Shattering Spree
4 Ingot Chewer
2 Illness in the Ranks
1 Mountain
2 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Grafdigger's Cage

Tinker is especially strong in this since it can both assemble the combo and also create a Blightsteel Colossus. While there was a period in which having a Tinker monster was not ideal in the metagame, I think it has gotten much better now. First, we have a lot of Red Blasts to stop Dack from arriving. Second, this deck uses the Tinker win as its secondary win condition, rather than its primary win condition.

You might wonder why I am using Blightsteel instead of one of the other fine Robots available. Thirst for Knowledge changes the math here as well. Once you draw your Robot, you'd much rather that Robot find its way back into your deck. Well, Thirst lets you get your Blightsteel back into the deck easily. If you had instead drawn your non-shuffling Robot, making Tinker work again becomes much harder.

The control package includes Mental Misstep. Misstep stops all sorts of unfortunate things that can happen to Painter's Servant, such as Lightning Bolt and Swords to Plowshares. It also stops opposing Red Blasts, which as you can see are often quite strong against this deck.

You will note what the control package lacks -- spot removal. This deck is very greedy and there are no maindeck Lightning Bolts. Instead, problematic creatures can be removed via Red Blasts once Painter has arrived. This has the downside of making opposing creatures much more difficult than it would be for a deck with actual removal. However,this leads the deck to having fewer inert draws and more counters. Ultimately, running more Red Blasts over Lightning Bolts is a function of this deck being a bit closer to the combo side of the combo-control spectrum.

Moving on to the draw. When Thirst became unrestricted, I had thought that the blue decks would break into two archetypes -- Thirst and Gush. Brassman thought otherwise, and was more clever and more greedy than I was. His builds ran four of each! I think that three Gush is generally sufficient for a non-combo deck (and I removed the Fastbond Brassman was using). That led to an extremely robust draw engine with more card advantage than most decks, and all of the good restricted control draw spells.

My maindeck has Yawgmoth's Will and Demonic Tutor. I'm not entirely certain that this is the correct splash, or that a splash need be used at all. Each color has something to offer, and using a two-color approach also has advantages. I think that opting for Black as our tertiary color gives us two extremely powerful cards, which help us assemble the combo and generate card advantage. I'm not sure that this is correct yet, but both of these cards have been quite effective so far.

Finally, on the manabase. I included all of the usual artifact mana. Because of the Painter combo, this deck can take advantage of plenty of colorless mana. Plus, Thirst for Knowledge lets us pitch excess Moxen. The right mix of land is not entirely straightforward. Usually, in a big-blue deck, I would strongly consider both Library and Strip Mine. However, this is also a Gush deck, and neither pair well with that draw spell. Tolarian Academy is so powerful that we still want to include it, despite Gush. After all, the Academy often taps to cast Gush anyway.

Finally, the sideboard. As with any deck in progress, the sideboard is up in the air. In my first attempts with Painter, I found that token-based decks were difficult. They could one-for-one and then use their tokens to fill the board. Our Painter/Blast plan works well against single targets, but isn't able to handle a board covered in monks and elementals. Enter Illness in the Ranks. That card solves that problem and combined with Cage gives us six cards that stop oath from functioning. Likewise, we have six cards against Dredge. Against the Thoughtcast decks, we have Shattering Spree.

There are many other areas for testing both maindeck and sideboard cards. This isn't a finished list. We're far too early in the metagame for that. Instead, this is one possible avenue for future deck-building consideration. This deck is powerful, proactive, and able to out-draw many decks in the format. But only time will tell if it turns out to be tier one.

Rich Shay

ever since the announcement of tfk's return, I have had a painter deck sleeved up. good to know you had great results with it though. Is there any reason for pryoblast above REB? Or is it more like "its what I put in the deck" type of thing? Also I think my list is INF more greedy including fastbond and regrowth(which im not sure is even necessary, but i havent really played in years- feel free to educate me) and has 4x gush amd tfk. I also play the shitty 1cc top deck tutors- is this bad b/c misstep is essentially everywhere?

[The Atog Lord]

It's perfectly reasonable to play Fastbond, Regrowth, and the one-mana tutors. It's all a judgement call.

I run four Pyroblast since you can always cast them if needed. They let you build up to a Treasure Cruise or a Dig Through Time more easily.

[vassago]

It's perfectly reasonable to play Fastbond, Regrowth, and the one-mana tutors. It's all a judgement call.

I run four Pyroblast since you can always cast them if needed. They let you build up to a Treasure Cruise or a Dig Through Time more easily.

ah i smell what youre stepping in- Target whatever trying to cycle the hand a bit. Neat. Thats kind of cute in a pinch i guess. Thanks for the info

[The Atog Lord]

Here is what I took to the top eight of the 100-player Vintage tournament today. The list has not changed much -- there have been a few adjustments here and there, but the underlying concept hasn't changed. I'm going to continue to experiment with different concepts and ideas. They deck has been successful, and I don't think it has yet reached its ultimate form.

// The Win
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Tinker
3 Painter's Servant
2 Grindstone

// Walkers
2 Tiny Jace
1 Dack Fayden

// Control
4 Force of Will
4 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mental Misstep
1 Mana Drain

// Draw
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Gush
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Dig Through Time
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll

// Splash
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

// Mana
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

// Land
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
1 Tolarian Academy

// Sideboard
2 Thoughtseize
2 Shattering Spree
3 Ingot Chewer
1 Illness in the Ranks
1 Mountain
2 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Grafdigger's Cage

[Prospector]

Thanks for sharing.  Top 16 lists are now up

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/vintage-premier-2015-10-25

[Mike Kidney]

Thanks Rich for this post! Very well writen and tons of informations.
You wrote that

When Thirst became unrestricted, I had thought that the blue decks would break into two archetypes -- Thirst and Gush.

for me it would be very interessting what your thoughts were why Thist and Gush would not work together.
Best regards,
Michael

[Holden1669]

for me it would be very interesting what your thoughts were why Thirst and Gush would not work together.

I also wondered this. It seemed like a lot of people were assuming that Thirst and Gush wouldn't work together and I wasn't really sure why. I'm new to the format and I chalked it up to another thing that I just didn't get and which would become obvious at some point. I do get that most recent Gush decks along the lines of Pyromancer/Delver tend to be land-light and only play on-color Moxen but it seems to me that Moxen actually work well with Gush as they let you Gush more often and still play spells. Thirst implies a deck with higher CMC spells but if Thirst is at or near the top end of your curve it still feels like it might be low enough to pair with Gush. But again, I don't have a lot of confidence in this estimation. And I see that Rich has been trimming copies of Gush from his list.

[bencabrelli]

I played a variant of this deck recently but I had 2 Goblin Welder main as well as the Vault/Key combo and a Spellbomb main.  It seemed very powerful but not overly consistent.  I like Rich's list and will continue to test using this as the basis.  I'm trying a JTMS and a Divining Top over the 2 'Tiny' Jace.

[diopter]

JVP on Gush and the restricted blue cards is nothing short of insane in any list of course, but I have to think in this deck that JVP on PYROBLAST (counter their draw spell then kill their Jace) is unbelievable too.

Painter seems super easy to transform into out of the SB. Just going to have to think if there are any applications for this.

[Prkchpsndwiches]

As I was reading the first list I thought of SCM or JVP as options to recast blasts. I see JVP found its way in! I had built a "cute" deck of 8 blasts painter distorting lens and iso scepter that I took to your territory at the old Mr Nice Guy games years ago. Went 3-3 but had fun playing it.

In your 100 man did you run into a lot of Null/Stony? I expect them to increase in the post COTV meta. It has  not in mine yet though.

[Methuselahn]

Nice work! 

Have you considered Snapcaster Mage in place of a blast? So many targets for it.  Snapcaster looks like a fair replacement for unrestricted Brainstorm, which made unrestricted Thirst so great, back in the day.

Maybe bring in a welder game 2/3 to fight hate.  They seem good now that chalice is restricted.  That said, Ingot Chewer isn't as potent now that chalice is restricted.


The assessment of the metagame seems good.  Unrestricted Thirst, Restricted Chalice, who knows!?