So Many Insane Plays – How to Build GroAtog to Win Vintage Tournaments

A month ago, I shifted my testing focus from the Mean Deck to GroAtog. When I offered a GroAtog list, I did so based upon testing I had done up to that point and my knowledge of GroAtog that I had played so many moons before. Today, as I write, I can speak with much more detail and know-how on the inner-workings of the deck, the cost-benefits of various card choices, and a greater insight into the matchups.

My goal in this article is to impart as much of that knowledge and insight as I can for one particular purpose: to help you win Vintage tournaments with this deck. In this article, the theory that I unpack will be the foundation upon which we construct our GroAtog decklists.

This is my treatise on GroAtog.

Josh Silvestri privately objected to many comments I made in my previous article. Specifically, he felt that my comments about GAT being a Yawgmoth’s Will deck, and my description of the GAT game plan as “Slip a Quirion Dryad onto the board and play as a Control deck,” was inaccurate. While I think that it is obvious that you slip Dryads into play as part of your game plan, and clear to anyone that GAT is a Will deck (his teammate Rich Shay wrote in a tournament report on GAT that Will was “central” to how he played it), people will always be there to disagree with whatever it is that you say. Part of it (not the whole of it) is an oppositional mindset. I call it Public Speaker Syndrome. Oscar Tan did a lot of good things for Vintage, but he frequently encountered disagreements that were not so much substantive as they were perceptual. But I welcome the disagreement. If you disagree with something I say in this article (and I say a lot, so there will be plenty of material for you to work with), speak up in the forums.

Let me start by saying that I believe that GroAtog is the best deck in Vintage.

This is no mere polemic or hyperbole. Nor is it intended to mean more than what I plainly say. I’m not saying that it’s unbeatable, or even the best deck for a given player to play. Let me unpack this claim for you and draw you into a vision where GroAtog reins supreme.

Let’s start with the basics.

1) Virtually everyone agrees that Blue and Black are the best colors in Magic, and particularly Vintage. Ancestral Recall and Time Walk alone assure Blue splashes wherever possible. That’s why they are called the “Power Blue.” Not only does Blue and Black provide the best disruption (Duress, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Misdirection, etc), it also provides all of the tutors and draw spells (Demonic Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Brainstorm, Fact or Fiction, Gush, Necropotence, etc). I’m not saying that Blue and Black are the only good colors, just that they are the deepest.

While zero-mana artifacts are arguably the best cards in the game, and particular lands like Mishra’s Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad are as good as Blue and Black’s best cards, they don’t produce decks that are as flexible or provide the depth of power that Blue and Black have. Mishra’s Workshop decks are good, but they don’t run Brainstorm or Force of Will. That’s a problem for those decks, and a reason why they may be excellent choices for making Top 8 but tend not to win tournaments with the same frequency as Brainstorm decks.

If you were to list out the best cards in Vintage, Black and Blue would have a disproportionate representation on that list. For example, there are 48 cards on the Vintage restricted list. There are 16 artifacts, 3 lands, 2 white cards, 2 Red cards, 4 Green cards, 8 Black cards, and 13 Blue cards. Clearly, Blue and Black are the dominant colors, followed very far behind by Green.

GroAtog is a core Blue and Black deck. GAT runs the three best Blue drawing spells that aren’t draw7s in Vintage: Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm, and then the third, Gush. GAT runs the full tutor suite that Black provides and the countermagic and draw that Blue provides. GAT gets to run the best of Black and Blue in whatever ratios it wants.

The fact that GAT is built around Quirion Dryad should not distract you or disguise the fact that GAT is a Blue and Black deck. It is a fortunate and synergistic thing that GAT is primarily Blue and Black. Quirion Dryad is a card that demands a heavy Green mana commitment, but very few additional green spells. Quirion Dryad wouldn’t be very good in a deck that was primarily Green. Quirion Dryad wants — no, demands – to be in a deck that is primarily built from other colors. Good thing that there are very few Green spells worth running in Vintage. Count the number of Green cards in the maindeck, you’ll see four Quirion Dryads and then restricted Green cards like Fastbond and Regrowth (sometimes).

2) Merchant Scroll is the best unrestricted tutor in Vintage. While this statement is probably more controversial, the current metagame is strong evidence of the truth of it. Almost every deck runs this card from Bomberman, to Flash, to GAT. It was the key engine in Mean Deck Gifts and now the Mean Deck. In Pitch Long and Grim Long, Grim Tutor is a stronger card, but Merchant Scroll is, in my view, a more powerful tutor than a host of tutors now restricted: Burning Wish, Gifts Ungiven, and Personal Tutor all spring to mind as weaker cards, often substantially so.

Merchant Scroll first finds Ancestral Recall to put a quick burst of energy into your stride and push you ahead in the game. That tempo advantage is used to fuel and dig deeper with Brainstorms than you normally would, see more goodies with Gushes, and have more resources to find and eventually play Yawgmoth’s Will. Scroll can be tutor chained with Mystical to find Yawg Win. Also, Scroll is flexible and can find an early counterspell or a bounce spell to save you in a pinch. Its casting cost makes it a perfect turn 1 play.

GroAtog has the maximum abuse of Merchant Scroll. Scroll is an incredible engine in GAT, as you grow Dryads with every Scroll. It finds Ancestral immediately, for which you have plenty of spells that protect, and then it finds Gush or Mystical, either being fine secondary Scroll targets. You can run cards like Fire/Ice or Brain Freeze as metagame utility answers that can be dug up with Scroll (Brain Freeze is there particularly for the Bomberman match). One thing that people don’t seem to understand is that the Scroll engine is a direct chain that ends with Yawgmoth’s Will. Scrolling up Ancestral helps you dig and find support so that you can find and resolve Yawgmoth’s Will before your opponent. GAT does this very well. Adrian Sullivan’s article on Singleton Tog should be read for people who are confused.

3) GAT has the maximum abuse for (but is not reliant upon) the “best” card in Vintage: Yawgmoth’s Will. No doubt about it: GAT is a Yawgmoth’s Will deck.

One difference between GAT’s Yawgmoth’s Will and Long’s Yawgmoth’s Will is that Long’s Yawgmoth’s Wills actually end the game, while GAT’s Yawgmoth’s Will may not immediately end the game, but will functionally end the game.

People often ask why not play Pyrite Spellbomb over Aether Spellbomb in Bomberman. This is a question asked by someone who has never played the deck. Aether Spellbomb “combos” by having you draw your deck, with all of your creatures in play with a lethal swing next turn. In contrast, Pyrite Spellbomb combos by having you actually kill your opponent on the spot. That would seem to suggest that Pyrite is just better than Aether. What that ignores is that Aether is much better in the early and mid-game before you assembled Black Lotus and Auriok Salvagers. It can bounce an opposing threat to help you survive until you can combo. The “combo” advantage of Pyrite over Aether is virtually nil, while the tactical superiority of Aether over Pyrite is great.

The way that GAT combos is similar. When it Yawg Wills, it will often end the turn with a full hand of countermagic, enormous Dryads, and plenty of mana on the table, with a lethal swing next turn. You may be gifted with one meaningless, futile turn, but just as when Salvagers “combos,” your turn is going to be a whole lot of nothing.

GAT is an absolutely brutal Yawgmoth’s Will deck that doesn’t need Yawg Will to win. It just makes things happen faster. It allows you to replay all the goodies and free spells you already played this game at minimal cost. Whereas you might have had a nice advantage, your opponent will have no chance to recover after Yawgmoth’s Will resolves.

In some ways, GAT heralded the modern era of Vintage by abusing Yawgmoth’s Will as no previous deck really had. Many of the restrictions since have been a direct result of Yawgmoth’s Will, most recently Gifts Ungiven. That we return to in some ways an even more abusive Yawgmoth’s Will deck is fitting.

4) GAT has inherent card advantage on every other deck. It has 19 mana (some run 18). Most “control” decks in Vintage have 25 and Stax and Combo run upwards of 30 (generally 28-29). This is why GAT rarely loses counter wars. When you consider the fact that on turn 3 it is replaying a land it Gushed up, you realize that it can do things no other decks can do. It can pack more good draw and utility and disruption into a 60-card package than anyone else. By playing Street Wraiths or Opts, and with all of the super efficient draw, it sees more good cards more quickly. This is why GAT has more Force of Wills (functionally) than any other deck in Vintage. People who aren’t familiar with the Gro concept don’t really “get this.”

5) GAT is the most consistent deck. This is related to the point above. Most Vintage decks have medium-sized variances. Decks like Grim Long have to mulligan at least 10% of the time. Decks like Ichorid have built-in mulligans. Even “consistent” decks like Meandeck Gifts had nontrivial mulligan rates. Hands such as this: Mana Drain, Black Lotus, Mox Pearl, Dark Ritual, Polluted Delta, Underground Sea, and Volcanic Island were not keepable hands. Alternatively, hands like this: Gifts Ungiven, Gifts Ungiven, Merchant Scroll, Time Walk, Misdirection, Recoup, Mox Emerald were not keepable hands either. Replace the Recoup with Brainstorm and the Mox Emerald with Lotus Petal and you still don’t have a keepable hand. You can’t risk Brainstorming into spells. In short, traditional Mana Drain decks can’t keep hands that have too much mana and just disruption, or no mana. Both hands would come up every once in a while. Workshop decks have to mulligan a lot as well. Almost every match I play against Workshop decks, they have the “nuts” one game of the match, a decent hand another, and then if I can force a third game, a mulligan to 5 that begins with a land or a Goblin Welder.

I remember a conversation I had with Marc Perez a couple of years ago about variance in Vintage. He described Belcher as the ultimate 0 to 100 deck. A deck that had enormous variance but an unstoppable kill with the “god” hand. He was a Fish pilot, and described Fish as a 40-60 deck. His scale was a synthesis of consistency and power. 50 described the variance of a deck and its relative power. GroAtog has the power of the most powerful Vintage decks, but the consistency of a Fish deck. It’s an 80-90 deck. You have Opts or Street Wraiths to thin out your deck, Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll for Ancestral, and Gush to help you dig. You don’t have to worry about having to cast spells like Gifts Ungiven or Yawgmoth’s Bargain, because nothing in your deck costs more than three. If you have two lands and a Gush, you can cast anything in your entire deck.

But the Gro concept itself means that you cycle through cards with greater “velocity,” to pick up a term that seems to have fallen by the wayside. (link to Flores deck on Velocity). As a consequence, Gro has more countermagic, more bombs, and an overall greater density than any other deck in Vintage. There is just not competing with it. You can play more powerful spells — spells like Bargain and Necro – but you don’t get the velocity and density and card advantage that Gro gets. You have to run more mana to cast those spells, such as Dark Ritual. You also will have to mulligan more frequently because your variance will go up. GroAtog should only ever mulligan for two situations: 1) you don’t have any land and 2) tactical mulligans for the particular matchup you face. Since you have 14 lands and several Blue artifact accelerants, we are talking about barely ever having to mulligan. With 4 Brainstorms, 1 Ancestral Recall, 3-4 Opts or Street Wraiths, and up to 4 Duress you should be able to keep one-land hands almost every time.

6) GAT is the most flexible deck. With almost no cost to the manabase, you can run four colors. This was actually the innovation that made GroAtog possible and the advance from Chapin Gro in late 2002. Before Onslaught, you were essentially stuck running a Blue and Green deck. Because the core colors are Blue and Black, and because of the printing of the Onslaught fetchlands, you can run whatever colors you want on a super-light manabase. The consequence of these facts are that you can run any cards in Magic. GAT has access to all of the good cards that the Vintage card pool offers.

Take a look at your possible casting costs:

0, 1, 2, 3, and maybe 4 if the card wins the game, but unlikely
U, UU, 1U, 2U, 3U
B, 1B, 2B, 3B
G, 1G, 2G, 3G
R, 1R, 2R

And then dozens of possible Gold card permutations. and Artifact Mutation as a strong sideboard contender. In addition, Pernicious Deed is a realistic good sideboard option

Artifact Mutation? Check. Psychatog is already an auto include. Ancient Grudge? Check. Sure, this deck probably can’t play a five-mana spell or Mishra’s Workshop, but you shouldn’t need to. It can run theoretically most of the best cards in Magic. This gives GAT incredible flexibility and resilience. Your card options are limited by your imagination.

Let me explain just a bit more. Vintage, the format, is defined by this enormous card pool. Part of the reason that, despite being so broken, Vintage requires so few restrictions, is that Vintage decks have so many options to answer whatever threats may emerge. Every threat has a million answers. Academy Rector can be Plowed, Extirpated, Coffin Purged, or Leylined out of existence. Take your pick. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You get the point. Being able to run four colors on a nineteen-card manabase means that your flexibility and ability to answer opposing decks is limited primarily by your design prowess. There are thousands of options. You shouldn’t be surprised that there is a solution somewhere. Often you just have to find it. Ever heard of Teferi’s Realm? ‘Nuf said. (Realm might actually be a fantastic sideboard card if the optimal Stax strategy involves relying more on Tog than on Dryads. It is an Enchant World so it can kill In the Eye of Chaos while taking out all of their artifacts on your upkeep, so you can combo out at your leisure.)

One final and related point: GAT is flexible not only in terms of design, but also in game-play. The number of paths you can pursue is great. Just as changing your deck design might be optimal, changing tactics can also help lead to stronger victories. This is why “Vintage outmodes tech” so quickly (credit to Talen Lee).

One of the biggest mistakes people can make with GAT is assuming that it is static, either with respect to design or in-game lines of play. One of the most important lessons of GAT as-the-best deck in 2003 was that, although GAT could be beaten, GAT would evolve around the threat it faced and once again emerge as the best deck.

GAT evolved in two different shifts in 2003. First, it adapted to fight Rector, and then it adapted to fight and beat Stax. First with Coffin Purge to answer Rector, and then with cards like Artifact Mutation to answer Stax. GAT has, in its color pool, the absolute best cards in Magic and the broadest range of options.

Part of the reason GAT is still going to be so good is simply a reflection of the fact that GAT has built in the best cards in Vintage. It abuses Yawgmoth’s Will as well as – if not better than – Long decks and certain Gifts decks. It is built around a light manabase that backs in maximum disruption, plenty of countermagic, and incredible spells.

As the metagame shifts, so must GAT change. While decks may temporarily be able to beat GAT, if they persist, that is the fault of the lack of creativity and ingenuity on the part of GAT pilots.

Those foregoing truths give rise to an irresistible inference: GAT is the best deck in Vintage.

What that doesn’t mean:

1) That doesn’t mean GAT can’t be beaten. GAT can be beaten. But, once it is beaten, and beaten repeatedly, GAT has a better ability to adept and then rebuild itself to come back and even the match, or even overtake its metagame threat. That’s because of the depth of design options available to the GAT player, and the ability to adapt to beat whatever threatens it. Moreover, even if another deck has a slightly favorable matchup over GAT, you’d be making a questionable decision to play that over GAT. First of all, GAT is going to be more consistent. Playing a Workshop deck as a “solution” to GAT? You will have to mulligan where GAT won’t. Even if you have a 55% favorable matchup over 10 games, in a short match of two-in-three, the edge almost has to go back to GAT. You take a big risk playing a non-GAT deck.

2) That doesn’t mean that GAT is the best deck to play. I think some players may have such incredible expertise with other decks may just want to stick with other decks. Two case-in-points: Dave Feinstein with Fish and Brian DeMars with Control Slaver. That isn’t to say that those players can’t play GAT and play it very well. But their long history with their respective decks gives them incredible insight into their particular builds. They probably are just as well off playing the deck they know inside out, the deck that other players aren’t prepared to play against, as they are in playing the best deck.

3) That doesn’t mean I can give you an “optimal” or correct list. As should be obvious by now (if you’ve read what I wrote), there is no optimal list. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to build an optimal list for your metagame and your playstyle. That’s what the rest of this article is going to attempt to do. I am going to provide a concrete methodology for building an optimal GAT list for YOU.

Based upon what I’ve said until now, I am going to make a prediction: Either GroAtog, or a very well-built and well-metagamed anti-GroAtog deck, will win the Vintage Championship at Gencon this year.

How to Build GAT to Win Tournaments

As I’ve explained up to this point, GAT is a decklist that should be dynamic and fluid. It should be in a constant state of flux, changing from tournament to tournament. Rather than work with a single list, my suggestion is that you follow this process.

Step 1:
Identify the metagame competitors. Draw up a list, in order, of the decklists you expect to face. One way to do this is to simply break down your entire metagame.

Let me do this by example. I built GAT for a local tournament here in Columbus. I expected 22 players. I anticipated the following metagame:

4-7 GAT
3-6 Bomberman
3-4 Hulk Flash
3-4 Stax
1-2 Ichorid
8 random decklists (Fish variants, Mono-Black decks, etc).

Given that generally 20-30% of any Vintage metagame is random bad crap that rarely does well, you just have to fill in the rest. Just take a look at the StarCityGames.com decklist database and scroll to the final pages of the Vintage decklist from major tournaments and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Or do a metagame analysis, like I’ve done here, and you’ll see what I mean.

Step 2:
Build multiple GAT lists designed to beat your anticipated metagame foes.
For my tournament, I built four decklists. I built an anti-GAT GroAtog, an anti-Bomberman GAT, and anti-Flash GAT, and an anti-Stax GAT. I’ll show you these lists later on in this article.

Step 3:
Begin to build a composite GAT list by synthesize your decklists. Begin by putting into a “composite” GAT list all of the unanimous card choices. Then I recommend putting in all the cards that made it into this list in the vast majority of your decklists.

Step 4:
Choose a tiebreaker based upon weighting your opponents by importance. For instance, if you expect to see more GAT and Bomberman than Stax and Flash, choose that as your tiebreaker between your remaining cards. Keep in mind to weight the importance of the fact that some decklists you expect to face in the Top 8 despite their frequency in the metagame as a whole. This is just as important as any other factor to weight when building your composite list. Finally, when choosing among final cards, make sure that you give some weight to the fact that you want internal synergies. I’ll elaborate on this later.

Step 5:
Build your sideboard to fill gaps. Make sure you have functional sideboard plans. You don’t want to go into a tournament with more sideboard cards for a match than you have the capacity to sideboard in.

Now you are ready to go. You may not win the tournament, but you have a better mathematical chance than anyone, based upon the information available to you.

The process I just elaborated may seem intuitive — after all, it’s probably how most players in one way or another actually approach deckbuilding, whether fully conscious of it or not. The difference is that I want you to actually do this, step by step. I don’t want you to just “build” a GAT list that you think will be good in your metagame. I want you to adhere to the process I’ve laid out, to the letter. The objection to my process may be that it ignores “personal preference” — that people should build GAT lists, as Rich Shay described, to suit their playstyle.

If you think about the process I’ve laid out, it actually amplifies one’s playstyle preferences. Here’s why. In step 2, you are building GAT lists YOU think will beat your individual metagame foes. By synthesizing what you think is your strongest build for beating any given opponent, your personal, subjective preferences are built into my algorithm.

You don’t necessarily have to go through this process before every tournament, particularly if your tournaments are relatively close together. But you should do this once and then again every few months, tweaking your lists in between. If you don’t go through this process every few months, your tweaks may lose sight of greater metagame shifts. In a few months, the metagame we know now will be very different. In fact, I can already see signs that Bomberman is bleeding out of the format almost as fast as it arrived.

I can already hear the forum harpies complaining about this process for a number of reasons. Let me preempt at least one line of questioning by explaining that I do not advocate this composite process for most decks. Decks like Meandeck Gifts had 56 cards set in the maindeck. Long decks have even more cards etched in stone. GAT is far more sensitive to the metagame. It doesn’t need all of the cards in the deck to do what it needs to do. This is a sort of process that I would only advocate for a handful of decks, GAT being one of them. However, it should be used with common sense too. If a card only shows up in one matchup but produces a huge advantage in that matchup with relatively low cost in other matchups, you may still want to include it. I’ll show you an example of this in a while.

My method is time-consuming. It will take you at least an hour (at least) to draw up the decklists, and then probably another hour to synthesize them. But that process will be helpful in more ways than one. It will force you to deconstruct your GAT list with some detail. It will make you intimately familiar with each and every card choice. When you sit down and actually play any given match, you’ll be much more thoughtful about it and more prepared, even if you’ve never tested it. It will bring you to a whole new level with GAT.

Let me show you how I followed this process in preparation for a recent local tournament. It’s a process I used here, but will be using again and again. Even if that doesn’t interest you, I suggest you read the next section anyway, because I discuss the various matchups in some detail.

Example of How to Apply the 5-Step GAT Design Procedure

The first thing I did was figure out my local metagame.

I decided that GAT would be the most popular deck. I expected 4-7 GAT lists, and most in the Top 8. So the Anti-GAT list would be very important. I also expected Bomberman in equal numbers, as JR Goldman, Juan Rodriquez, etc all played it — two people who Top 9ed at the most recent StarCityGames.com Power 9 tournament. Most importantly, I expected GAT and Bomberman to dominate our Top 8.

Third, I expected 3-4 Flash lists. We had one in the Top 8 last time, and another on the bubble. Moreover, Flash performed very well in other local tournaments around the country during the preceding weekend.

Finally, I expected Stax. Savvy metagame competitors would anticipate the surge in GAT and build Stax to fight it. We also had some regular Stax players in my area. I expected them to show up with Stax as they always do.

I initially expected just one Ichorid player until a teammate told me he’d be playing it as well. So out of 22 players or so, I expected roughly that metagame and the rest being random stuff.

I built up four decklists.

Before showing you the decklists, let me just start by saying that no matter what, I expected that twenty particular cards would be in every GAT list:

Decklist 1:
Anti-Bomberman GAT

4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
2 Misdirection
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Psychatog
4 Gush
4 Brainstorm
1 Brain Freeze
2 Cunning Wish
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Fastbond
3 Opt
1 Library of Alexandria
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus

Notes:

Fist of all, Duress isn’t very good against Bomberman. A turn 1 Duress is a nice play, but it won’t deal with their most annoying cards. It will just take their countermagic and perhaps draw. In the mid-to-late game, Duress is awful. I wouldn’t mind fitting in two Duress, but Mana Drain is just better after turn 2. I wouldn’t mind 4 Mana Drains, but I wanted the other cards more. The Tutors aren’t great in this matchup because of Aven Mindcensor, but they aren’t terrible either. If a Mindcensor is in play, you can wait a turn or two and almost always find something with Scroll, even if its just Brainstorm.

With more Mana Drains, Cunning Wish gets even better. Wish can find cards like Fire/Ice and can help you use your Mana Drain mana. Street Wraith is fine here, but in the mid-late game, which is usually where the game will head anyway, Opt becomes better. You’ll want the option of seeing two cards. Sleight of Hand is probably superior in principle, but since you’ll want mana open for Drain, Opt gets the nod. This deck doesn’t run Wasteland, so there is no need for a basic land here.

Brain Freeze should be in the main and in the sideboard. It’s not there for a combo outlet for yourself, so much as to screw the Bomberman player if they go infinite with Auriok Salvagers and Black Lotus. It’s an uncounterable bomb on them. Ha! Rich Shay came up with that gem. In addition, I’d put a Lim-Dul’s Vault in the sideboard to wish up. Note that I don’t have Vamp maindeck, primarily because of concerns with Aven Mindcensor… and because in this match, the life actually matters.

I’m still running Fastbond because it will provide a way to combo out if the cards come together. It’s not at its strongest in this match, but it’s not bad either.

In any of the slower matchups, Library of Alexandria is a tremendously powerful turn 1 play (or even mid-game play with Gushes).

No Regrowth. Since your tutor power is diminished, Regrowth is accordingly diminished.

Finally, I have lots of Psychatogs. I’ll talk about this matchup more next week, but in my testing, I’ve noticed some trends. If Bomberman manages to get a foothold on the game and take it late by disrupting you with bounce, countermagic, and Aven Mindcensor, they’ll clock you out with two Mindcensors swinging in a turn. Psychatog is very good here because he can race.

When I explain this to people (and I’ve mentioned this to some people at a local tournament and Rich Shay), they get confused. They don’t understand what I mean. I’m not saying that you blow your hand and graveyard to attack with Tog just so they can Spellbomb it. What I’m saying is that you attack for two or three damage a turn. Remove two cards to Tog in your yard, or discard an additional land from hand. They swing at you, you swing back. Eventually, swing for three damage a turn. Tog can amply race Mindcensor. If you have plenty of Togs, the Mindcensor blockage on your tutoring becomes irrelevant. You’ll see Togs. With your countermagic, bigger creatures, and superior draw in Gushing, and toolbox of solutions with Cunning Wish and Brain Freeze maindeck, this matchup is very nicely favorable. You can expect to get some men Plowed, especially post-board. But that’s partly why we have so many men here. They can stop a few of them, but unless they are infinite with Black Lotus and Salvagers, surely not all.

Decklist 2:
Anti-GAT GroAtog

4 Quirion Dryad
3 Psychatog
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
2 Misdirection
4 Gush
4 Brainstorm
1 Cunning Wish
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Time Walk
1 Fastbond
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
3 Sleight of Hand
1 Library of Alexandria
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus

Notes:
I purposefully designed this list with the constraint already in mind that I’d have my Submerges and Red Elemental Blasts in the sideboard. However, if GAT became a sufficiently large part of the metagame, I wouldn’t apply such a mental constraint.

Without Mana Drain, Sleight of Hand gets the nod over Opt. Note that I still think highly of Street Wraith, but a mid to late game Street Wraith is weaker than Sleight of Hand because you’d rather pay the one mana to see another card.

I can’t imagine playing the GAT mirror without 4 Duress. Hence the 4 Duress. Misdirection is also good, but at some point the card advantage starts to matter. In 2003, I played 4 Misdirection GAT lists, but with Red coming in from the sideboard, I don’t see the point of that as you’d probably be siding some out. The full tutor suite is present so you can combo out with alacrity, should the option arise.

Psychatogs are very good in the mirror. They pitch to Force, they grow Dryads, and they are a pain in the butt for opposing GAT players. They can also block very large Dryads and survive. I’d probably sideboard one out for Submerge and Red Blasts, but I’d try to keep at least two in.

Again, no Wastelands here, so no need for basic Island.

Decklist 3:
Anti-Stax GAT

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Quirion Dryad
1 Psychatog
4 Gush
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Fastbond
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
4 Street Wraith
2 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt

Notes:
This decklist very different from the previous two. First of all, the manabase is revamped and expanded. I added Mana Crypt and two basic Islands over Library. You must be able to beat turn 1 resolved Sphere of Resistance followed by Crucible and Wasteland.

Second, the disruption suite is very different. Duress and Misdirection are ineffective here. In contrast, Mana Drain is an enormous threat. This is because of the fact that Mishra’s Workshop decks power our expensive cards intentionally. I also have multiple Cunning Wish to take advantage of the use of Mana Drain and to tutor up an incredible bevy if solutions from Fire/Ice for Goblin Welders, to Ancient Grudge, Oxidize and Artifact Mutation.

Third, Opt and Sleight of Hand are terrible if your opponent plays turn 1 Sphere of Resistance. You want to be able to dig now and as deeply as possible. Street Wraith is very good here. Your life generally doesn’t matter in this matchup. You’re either going to be locked out or you are not. Wraith will help you cycle into more land without having to pay a Blue (or more if Spheres are in play). Street Wraith also combos well with Imperial Seal and Vamp here. A critical play will be resolving Fastbond. If you can resolve Fastbond, you can take the game.

The reason for the 1 Tog and 3 Dryad is that the first Chalice will probably be aimed at two. It will cut off your Dryads and your Scrolls and your Drains. The only upside is that it cuts off their Spheres. Your Wishes and Tog will be still work.

Once again, I could have gone overboard and put in maindeck Hurkyl’s Recall, but I decided to constrain myself and leave that kind of card, along with Red Elemental Blast, in the sideboard.

Decklist 4:
Anti-Flash GAT

4 Force of Will
4 Duress
4 Misdirection
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Gush
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Fastbond
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Cunning Wish
4 Street Wraith
1 Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tropical Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus

Notes:
Once again, as with the Stax match, I prefer Street Wraith here. This match is a dogfight that requires every ounce of mana on every turn. Your life is irrelevant. You want to dig to the good stuff immediately.

Second, Mana Drain is too slow here and Duress is a huge bomb. You want 4 Duress as the first card. Taking a turn 1 Flash means that they probably have to tutor up another Flash, which buys you precious time.

If they have the nuts, you probably can’t win as they’ll Flash and double counter-backup (imagine double Pact of Negation) to protect it. However, if you get a couple of turns, you can Scroll up Force and protect yourself with Duress and Misdirection to shield your Forces.

Your Tutors will be used to find Force of Wills. You’re Scrolls read FoW-5-8 unless you have an opening to go Ancestral.

Post board, you can cut the Imperial Seal, a Quirion Dryad, and the Regrowth to sideboard in 3 Red Elemental Blasts. You’ll also want Fire/Ice if they are running Green for Xantid Swarm. The Red Blasts will almost double your counter power. Unless they have Swarms (and they probably won’t), I find it hard to imagine how they can power through Forces, Red Blasts, Duresses, and Misdirections with any ease.

I’ve included the Island here over Library of Alexandria simply because you cannot afford to play turn 1 Library. You need to set up your defense immediately. Don’t even bother dillydallying with Dryads. Drop them into play when they come up and when you can, but you need to maximize your defense first. If you can win the first counter war, then you can go on the offensive and remain there, but don’t take unnecessary risks. You can win this match, but one slip up and you’re toast.

Post board, if you could bring in Leylines, I’d almost consider cutting all win conditions save maybe a single Tog. I mean, a powerful win condition is their Pacts. If you can let a Pact resolve on the stack and then apply another counter to the underlying spell, you can just win the game.

…

Now that I’ve shown you the decklists I drew up, I can show you the composite list. But first, I’d like to emphasize that I can’t sit here and claim that those are the optimal anti-whatever decklists. They are what I came up with two days before a tournament. I may have missed something, overlooked something else, and completely forgotten about another thing. Worse, I could just be mistaken about something. The point is the process. Even if you aren’t right about what matters, going through this process will improve your chances. If you turn out to be wrong, you’ll later know why. For instance, I have since decided that Imperial Seal isn’t very good in the GAT mirror. I’d probably run Regrowth in the slot instead.

In fact, aside from the Stax match, I’m really not that thrilled about Imperial Seal. Once Merchant Scroll is restricted, it will be auto-include, but until then, I’m not a big fan.

So, here is the GAT list I played (with some ex post facto modifications). The changes I made reflect the fact that the decklist I want to suggest to you should account for Ichorid.

Some explanations are in order.

First of all, the cards that were in all four decklists. These were the unanimous card choices:

3 Quirion Dryad
4 Force of Will
4 Gush
4 Brainstorm
1 Cunning Wish
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Time Walk
1 Fastbond
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor

3 Sleight of Hand/Opt/Street Wraith

19 Mana (although in different configurations)

So, 48 cards were in all four decklists. Those were easy insertions.

Then, there were cards that were in three decklists:

4th Dryad
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Misdirection
1 Psychatog
1 Imperial Seal

That left six card slots open, with ten cards that earned at least two “votes”:

The 2nd and 3rd copy of Psychatog was in the anti-GAT and anti-Bomberman list.
The 2nd Cunning Wish was in the anti-Bomberman list and the anti-Stax list.
4 Duresses were in the anti-Flash and anti-GAT lists.
3 Mana Drains were in the anti-Stax and anti-Bomberman lists.

A smattering of other cards earned one vote.

There were three questions remaining with regard to the maindeck:

1) How to decide to fill the six remaining slots from those ten cards.
2) Whether to run Street Wraiths, Opt, or the Sleight of Hand.
3) How to configure the manabase out of the 19 slots.

Once I decided the first question, the rest fell into place.

I thought about the metagame I expected to face. Clearly, GAT and Bomberman were the most important matchups followed by Flash and then Stax. Duress wasn’t bad against Bomberman, it’s just that other cards were better. I decided to try and split the difference. I selected a 2nd Tog, 3 Duress, 2 Drains, and no Cunning Wish. So I just went down the line of the remaining ten cards and cut one from each. That’s how my final list ended up looking like it did. Since I was committed to running Mana Drains (and the two Mana Drains ended up being perfect and fantastic), I had to go with Opt. Street Wraith technically won more “votes,” but the Blue cantrips were in the more important matchups. Hence, Street Wraith unfortunately got the boot. Finally, the basic Island was only necessary for the Stax matchup. It was only slightly better in the Flash matchup. Since I thought GAT was more important, I went with the Library. It too was fantastic in tournament play. Although I didn’t seriously entertain this beforehand, I suggest running 1 Island as well by cutting the 6th Fetch. That’s what I have suggested in the composite list above.

That left one question remaining, and it was a rather large one: how should I build the sideboard? The process I had already gone through answered this in large part. Berserk was a given. I knew that I’d want Red Blasts for the Flash match and the GAT mirror. I also knew that I’d want Submerge for the GAT mirror. In addition, Brain Freeze was such a helpful tool in the Bomberman match, a match were such tools are hard to come by, I knew I wanted to run it. Since it could provide another way to finish the opponent, it would earn its slot. I also knew that I’d want Fire/Ice for Bomberman.

With those eight slots out of the way, it came down to seven remaining slots.

Other GAT lists run Yixlid Jailers, Tormod’s Crypts, and Pithing Needle. That’s seven slots right there. That was unacceptable to me. I expected one Ichorid competitor. I knew that in my local metagame, I’d face it probably once in the Swiss, if at all, and then have a one-in-seven chance of facing it in the quarter finals, if it came to that. In contrast, I expected far more Stax and knew that I’d be playing against more Stax. What this meant is that I probably had to sacrifice the Ichorid match to make room for Stax. I intended to run 3 Pithing Needle. This would be the starting point of my anti-Stax strategy. Although I’ve included one Island in the composite list, I think that building your sideboard strategy around Pithing Needle makes the most sense to me.

First of all, with the basic Island, you shouldn’t have that much difficulty getting the Needle into play. Even if your Stax opponent plays turn 1 Sphere of Resistance, it will be difficult for them to keep you off Needle. The first Needle you drop will name Wasteland. After that, you can then begin to establish a manabase. Once you begin to build your manabase, you can then deploy every single solution you’ve brought in. Subsequent Pithing Needles are very powerful. First you can turn off Goblin Welder, and eventually, if necessary, other threats like Strip Mine. Needle also has the advantage of being immune to Red Blasts and In the Eye of Chaos.

Here is the most important reason to include basic Island: if you don’t have a basic land, a Wasteland can stop a Gush even with two fetchlands. You have two Fetchlands in play, they have a Wasteland. You break a Fetch. You find a dual land. At this point, if you go to break the other fetch, they can Wasteland your dual already in play in response. The only way to beat the Wasteland is if they are stupid enough to try to Wasteland it before you break your Fetch.

Once you can establish and build your manabase, then you can unload all of the other goodies you’ve brought in. Fastbond can join play and then you can really do some damage.

That left four slots. I have come to appreciate the power of singleton Tormod’s Crypt in Vintage, especially as a Gifts player. Tormod’s Crypt would be a powerful tactical answer to Long type decks that might still be around or to the Mean Deck, should I face it. I wanted to run it and see how it played. It wasn’t very good. If I had played against a Long variant, it would have been fine, but I’m not even sure it’s good in the GAT mirror. In the Gifts mirror, T. Crypt was a nice disruption spell. To use Mike Flores metaphor of vectors, it attacked your opponent’s strategy from a vector other than pure countermagic and draw. Once on the table, it had to be played around. However, in GAT, Tormod’s Crypt forces you into a control role, a role that you may or may not want to inhabit.

I ran Oxidize, Ancient Grudge, and Rebuild. I know that I’ve left myself extremely vulnerable to two particular threats: 1) In the Eye of Chaos and 2) Blood Moon. However, In the Eye can be indirectly answered by Wish for Red Blast, if necessary or directly by just playing men and attacking. As for Blood Moon, I have a basic Island that I can use to dig for draw that can help me find Moxen, if it comes to that. If Blood Moon becomes more prevalent, there are plenty of ways to combat it. Having your duals turn Red isn’t the end of the world. Fire/Ice and Red Blasts still work fine. A Blue Elemental Blast or Echoing Truth in the board wouldn’t be the worst use of a sideboard slot.

Again, this process is one you should go through if you haven’t yet. It will help you build a GAT list that suits your playstyle and give you a starting point for future tweaking. You don’t have to do it again every tournament, but every few months you should. Tweaking is important, but as the metagame revamps itself a few months from now or as new sets come in, it will be important to step back from the small tweaks and rebuild your list from scratch. As you play the deck more and more, you’ll also get better with it. The deck is easy to learn, but like most decks worth playing, difficult to master. Some people don’t even follow the simple rule before turn 2, don’t play Gush unless you have a Green card in play.

The crucial skill for Vintage GAT pilots will be to familiarize yourself with the absolute range of design options for GAT. Neither the sideboard nor the maindeck should remain static in a changing metagame — particularly something like GroAtog, which is so metagame sensitive. It is a stark contrast to something like Gifts or Grim Long, which forces its game plan over its opponent. Gifts lists change little as the metagame shifts — perhaps the bounce suite and the sideboard, but not much else. GAT demands a greater level of flexibility than many experienced Vintage players are probably used to. Get used to it.

Until next time,

Stephen Menendian

Bonus Section: Building GAT for the July Waterbury

One of the biggest Vintage tournaments is this weekend. For those of you who don’t know what the Waterbury is, you can read all about it here .

The Waterbury is the roughly semi-annual Vintage shindig that draws nearly 150 players per tournament. Most of the Northeast’s local tournaments feed into the Waterbury. To get a picture of those tournaments, I suggest you scan through these tournament results:

ELD’s Mox Tournament, June 30th

Myriad Games, July 1st

The Waterbury metagame will pretty much resemble the metagame that I’ve been discussing so far. However, instead of Stax, the major Workshop player is Ray Robillard’s “Staxless Stax.” The good news is that Ray is the tournament organizer of the Waterbury, but the bad news is that people will still be playing it so you’ll need to learn the matchup and understand how it differs from regular Stax.

What’s Staxless Stax?

Raymond Robillard – Staxless Stax

4 Goblin Welder
4 Sphere of Resistance
3 Crucible of Worlds
2 Powder Keg
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Coalition Relic
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
2 Gorilla Shaman
1 Trinisphere
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Memory Jar
1 Crop Rotation
1 Balance
1 Triskelion
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker
4 City of Brass
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Wasteland
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Strip Mine
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Sundering Titan
1 Karn, Silver Golem

Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Eon Hub
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Shattering Spree
1 Darkblast
1 Uba Mask
1 Triskelion
1 Jester’s Cap

In addition, Team Reflection has been brewing up some technology I’m betting some will play at the Waterbury: It is a Bomberman list with Magus of the Moon maindeck. You can take any Bomberman list and see how they might make this work. It’s my view that Bomberman is in steep decline. I think people are seeing that it is just not as good as GAT, or worth playing over GAT (although Josh Silvestri took great issue with this when I first made this claim).

Wastelands and Magus reinforces the need for the basic Island. It will be important in the Waterbury metagame. Because of the presence of Fish, I wouldn’t be so quick to cut down on the second Tog.

If you have a better sense of what the Waterbury metagame will look like, I suggest you tune the GAT list for that. So, build your GAT lists with those thoughts in mind.

Finally, I’ll leave you with some suggested sideboarding plans:

Ichorid:
+ 3 Yixlid Jailer
+ 3 Pithing Needle
– 2 Misdirection
– 1 Mana Drain
– 1 Psychatog
– 2 Duress

GroAtog Mirror:
+ 3 Red Elemental Blast
+ 2 Submerge
– 1 Psychatog
– 2 Mana Drain
– 1 Vampiric Tutor
– 5th card of your choice

Workshop Decks:
+ 3 Pithing Needle
+ 1 Oxidize
+ 1 Artifact Mutation
– 2 Misdirection
– 3 Duress