[Free Article] Vintage 101: Power Nine 2K16

[Islandswamp]

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/vintage-101-power-nine-2k16

Islandswamp looks at a few of the top decks from the fourth Power Nine Challenge Tournament!

Princess_Power's Monastery Mentor
Brass Man's Painter
JDPheonix's Dark Petition Tendrils
tsoat's Dredge

[Princess_Power]

I thought the article was great overall. I really like the review of the choice to review the dredge deck. It was also cool of you to review my deck!

I want to explain some two card choices ou commented on. The reason I did not play any Pyroblasts is that Pyroblast cannot counter Dark Petition. If DPS did not exist I would have played 3 Flusterstorm and 2 Pyroblast (though this loses the spell pierce which can counter oath).

I actually play bolt over Swords because Bolt can go to the face. I find that there are many spots where you can try for a surprisingly fast kill with mentor and bolt helps with this (amsuingly this often requires countering your own spells which I did twice  during the tournament). Bolt also puts pressure on storm's life total which is important. And, as you pointed out, bolt takes out planeswalkers. Let me go mu by mu and compare bolt to swords:

-Mentor Mirror: I think bolt and swords are about equally good. (the downside of bolt is that you can fail to kill mentor)
-Blue Control: I think bolt is much better since it speeds up your clock. The only real benefit of Swords is that you can kill blightsteel. Though I am ok trying to beat tinker with counters.
-Storm: Bolt is much better. Swords does very little (though you can use it to pump mentor)
-Painter: Bolt is slightly better
-Artifact Combo (Tezz especially): Bolt is obviously much better.
-Dredge: Bolt vs Swords doesn't really matter. Mentor is very likely to lose game1 and you board out all the creature removal vs dredge. Though if they have depths Swords is much better.
-Shops: Swords is much better if they have foregemaster/Wurmcoil. Vs Ravager/Trisk shops bolt is still slightly worse since it can fail to kill a giant Ravager. Vs Smokestacks control bolt is slightly better.
-Oath: Swords is better. Though its closer than it looks.

So anyway I think its unclear what the right mix of swords/bolts is. But I wanted to make any "tweaks" I could to make the deck better vs Storm.

[CHA1N5]

Princess_Power: how do you board vs. DPS?

[Islandswamp]

To Princess_Power: I am glad you enjoyed it, I had a feeling that you might 
Good job taking it all down. I thought the coolest thing you had going on was Wasteland. My Oath deck's Strip Mine has won me so many random games, having extras seems legit.

I know that the dredge deck was sub optimal but I like the fact that someone was able to top eight the event with a 200$ deck. I'd love for people to get into the format and cheap decks help people do that.

Thanks for reading, take care.

[p3temangus]

To Princess_Power: I am glad you enjoyed it, I had a feeling that you might 
Good job taking it all down. I thought the coolest thing you had going on was Wasteland. My Oath deck's Strip Mine has won me so many random games, having extras seems legit.

I know that the dredge deck was sub optimal but I like the fact that someone was able to top eight the event with a 200$ deck. I'd love for people to get into the format and cheap decks help people do that.

Thanks for reading, take care.

To your point on Undiscovered Paradise, it is currently broken online.  And by broken I mean it picks and chooses when it wants to return to your hand or not (tapped/untapped/whatever) it was very frustrating to both me and my opponent in a 2man queue last night.

[tsoatt]

My Dredge list was budget but, after playing against shops as much as I did I don't think I ever want undiscovered paradise in my dredge list. There were multiple times I had to cast spells two turns in a row and they were not free spells because of the taxing effects of shops. I would not have been able to cast them if I could not keep my lands in play.

[Princess_Power]

Princess_Power: how do you board vs. DPS?

Storm decks are currently quite homogeneous. So they are unlikely to have Xathrid Swarm or Dark confidant post board (people played Confidant with Gush so they could play it in DPS imo). Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is pretty slow so its probably the next best cut. As for what to bring in, you definitely want both null rods. I also think you want the shattering spree. One spree gives you 6 good outs to defense grid (4 FOW, 1 pierce, 1 spree) and spree can sometimes take out multiple pieces of artifact mana. Wasteland is ok vs DPS. DPS is very short on card advantage so it hates trading resources. But wasteland is not super great since you can mana flood and they always have a basic swamp, and maybe a basic island post-board. Ingot chewer is a consideration post board as another anti-Defense grid measure. But chewer is significantly less powerful than Shattering Spree. (This suggests maybe I should run 2 spree, 3 chewers in the sideboard. Spree is worse than chewer vs shops but I would bring in two sprees vs DPS).

On the draw I would board:
-4 Lightning Bolt
+2 Null Rod
+1 Spree
+1 Wasteland

On the play I usually board:
-4 Lightning Bolt
-1 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy (you can leave in Jace if you expect them to be usually well prepared vs wasteland)
+2 Null Rod
+1 Spree
+2 Wasteland (if you leave in Jace only bring in 1 wasteland)

some thoughts:

-I don't like bringing in Grafdigger's cage v DPS. The card only stops yawgmoth will. Mentor doesn't have a fast clock so storm can often just go Dark Petition->Necro. And They can go off without Yawg will regardless, especially since they can get empty post board (though empty can lose to mentor depending on the board state).

-Even though you board out the bolts vs DPS having them maindeck really helps game1. And I think that game1 is actually your best game vs storm. Game1 you have four flusterstorm, 13 total counters and they don't have many defense grid. Storm gets more out of their sideboard than you do imo (Defense grid is a house and I have no dedicated storm hate since the sideboard is so tight). So to win the mu you really need to focus on winning game1.

-If the deck had green you could run ancient grudges over shattering spree. Ancient grude imo is good enough that you are happy to maindeck it. And with a grudge main and 1-2 in the board the storm mu would be much better. As you could easily pressure their artifact mana and have a great answer to Defense Grid. But this requires changing the deck pretty fundamentally.

-If you actually expect Xathrid swarm I would leave in  2 bolts. And if they have Swarm probably they don't have defense gird (is this true?). So I would board:

-2 bolt
+2 Null Rod

[Islandswamp]

My Dredge list was budget but, after playing against shops as much as I did I don't think I ever want undiscovered paradise in my dredge list. There were multiple times I had to cast spells two turns in a row and they were not free spells because of the taxing effects of shops. I would not have been able to cast them if I could not keep my lands in play.

Please don't take my words as criticism, I'm actually working on building your dredge list as we speak because it did good and I can afford it easier without the undiscovered Paradise. I only mentioned UP because the general consensus is that you want it for the free fixing and landfall triggers.

[tsoatt]

My Dredge list was budget but, after playing against shops as much as I did I don't think I ever want undiscovered paradise in my dredge list. There were multiple times I had to cast spells two turns in a row and they were not free spells because of the taxing effects of shops. I would not have been able to cast them if I could not keep my lands in play.

Please don't take my words as criticism, I'm actually working on building your dredge list as we speak because it did good and I can afford it easier without the undiscovered Paradise. I only mentioned UP because the general consensus is that you want it for the free fixing and landfall triggers.

I completely understand. It did start out as budget for me but, as I played I liked the painlands much more because of how fast the shops decks are becoming.

[Islandswamp]

tsoatt:

I finished building your deck and I've been testing it out. Dredge is a lot more fun than I expected. Other than having a knack for mulling down to nothing in my hand it's been great 

Thanks to everyone for checking this out.

[RecklessEmbermage]

For me, the most eye-catching feature in the dredge list was the play set of mental missteps. Tsoatt has cut a bit into the engine and plays only FKZ as a pure dread return target to make room for misstep in the main. Is this common these days, to save sideboard space and improve the match-up against storm, or is it breaking new ground?

[vaughnbros]

For me, the most eye-catching feature in the dredge list was the play set of mental missteps. Tsoatt has cut a bit into the engine and plays only FKZ as a pure dread return target to make room for misstep in the main. Is this common these days, to save sideboard space and improve the match-up against storm, or is it breaking new ground?

I've been playing 4 misstep in dredge since shortly after it was printed, and I wasn't even the first one.  Misstep is very good outside of the storm MU as it hits Grafdigger's cage, and pithing needle without any tempo loss.  Hitting your opponents spells game 1 is a nice bonus too.

[RecklessEmbermage]

I've been playing 4 misstep in dredge since shortly after it was printed, and I wasn't even the first one.  Misstep is very good outside of the storm MU as it hits Grafdigger's cage, and pithing needle without any tempo loss.  Hitting your opponents spells game 1 is a nice bonus too.

Thanks for the clarification. It makes perfect sense, even before the restriction of chalice, since dredge has such a good game one against the field and can afford having a few bricks against an archetype or two. I dont play dredge and I guess I never saw it and thought about it before.

[UndeadBus]

I'd rather have Unmask than misstep in a game it serves the purpose of getting the card you care about out of their hand proactively and also sets up Cabal therapy to be that much better. You almost never want any bricks really even if the deck can afford them. Against shops is really the only match up where you don't want Unmask. But in that game Cabal therapy and misstep aren't really that good to begin with.

[Islandswamp]

I want to try out unmask but they're 20 tickets or more on mtgo and I have other cards to pick up first. I've been trying to cast cabal therapy sometimes instead of just flashing it back to get more value out of it and it's been a good tactic in sideboarded games. This is where unmask would shine I think.

I've been trying to learn dredge for an upcoming article and so far I have learned a lot about the deck. It's not as easy to play as it seems, at least in games 2/3.

[Holden1669]

I imagine that it is also somewhat harder in paper magic as there are a lot of triggers to miss.

[Islandswamp]

I imagine that it is also somewhat harder in paper magic as there are a lot of triggers to miss.

Absolutely. I have not played paper Magic in quite a while, that's something I need to change.