Lately I’ve gotten complacent with the way things have been in Vintage. With Extended around, I figured it wasn’t worth thinking about; and in fact I’ve barely kept track of what was going on outside of two or three threads on TMD. Unfortunately, the drive to innovate in a format largely consisting of Fish and Gifts just didn’t appeal to me all that much.
However, playing in a format that was relatively fair, with only a few decks breaking the rules, reminded me of a lot of basic principles Vintage decks have skimped on for a while now. In fact the main reason aggro is succeeding at all in Vintage is because people still haven’t fully adapted or fixed the few basic principles these decks attack. That isn’t to say that people are just blatantly ignoring the weaknesses; it’s a matter of board space and deck-building philosophy that has slowly become “win faster and with more protection than the other guy.” In addition, Empty the Warrens has given Gifts and combo decks a huge boost of just randomly taking games by dropping 8-10 goblins on the table on turn 2.
The basic principles I refer to, principles that hamstring many decks like Gifts, are simple.
1. They rely too heavily on artifact and fast mana to cheat normal land counts. Hence hosers like Chalice of the Void and Null Rod still do the same amount of damage, if not more, than three years ago, because the land count has dropped so low.
2. Many Drain decks have become so streamlined that they rely entirely on Storm spells and Yawgmoth’s Will to carry the day. This strategy is excellent in the general sense, but can be completely shut down by people willing to make a narrow plan to foil you. Maindeck Tormod’s Crypt being a staple for many decks is evidence of that.
3. The number of ways decks have to replenish card advantage has dwindled dramatically. Current Drain and Ritual decks have become far more tutor-oriented than their predecessors. As a result, many of them only have Gifts Ungiven, Timetwister or Ancestral Recall to replenish card advantage (With Library of Alexandria usually being a non-factor against aggro, but will still occasionally be useful). This increases the strength of cards like Mesmeric Fiend, Duress, Unmask, and other discard-related methods of shutting the opponent down.
Right now, if I were going to take the most powerful aggro deck I could into a field, it would have to be Ichorid. Steve has written a great deal on the general deck construction and play style already. Not to mention the basic inventor of the manaless version, Albert Kyle, is on SCG and TMD, so you can his thoughts pretty often with a little searching. I’ll simply present my version and how I came to my current list.
Creatures (22)
Lands (11)
Spells (27)
My Ichorid listing, for all intensive purposes, is in the manaless vein. Instead of using cards like Ashen Ghoul and Duress I instead choose to simply increase my creature count via additional man lands. Despite having a low power count (which, even with every creature in the deck, is only 32) to charge up Sutured Ghoul, this Ichorid build still wins around turn three.
The combination of Baubles and man lands allow the deck to rely significantly less on having multiple dredgers from the on-set or have issues with using Cabal Therapy before casting Dread Return. A constant problem I was having with many of the earlier Ichorid builds was being on turn too slow in the face of a Crypt, or Empty The Warrens for ten or more. I would end up getting stalled out because I simply couldn’t dredge enough times in a single turn to go off ASAP and plow through all the blockers.
The lack of Petrified Field in my Ichorid list can be directly related to the fact that it was always too slow for it to do anything relevant in the deck. Out of all the games I played against Fish, maybe two or three of those times it actually did its job in a reasonable enough timeframe to let me win the game. Against Stax… well, if I were worried about Stax, I’d much rather just run Riftstone Portal and Ancient Grudge in the maindeck. In addition, Field never really meshed well with the plan of laying man lands down and winning the prize. So for all these reasons I chose to simply cut them to include the Nexuses in the maindeck.
As for my sideboard, it should be clear that I’ve completely given up on trying to deal with Leyline of the Void in a relevant fashion. Ultimately if I were expecting to run into it more than once at a tournament, I’d more than likely just run another deck. If I were forced to try and solve the issue, then I would probably move a few Tree of Tales into the maindeck, and use a combination of Emerald Charm, Ornithopter and Cranial Plating to get an alternate win set-up. Originally I took it a step further and even had included the SoLoMoxen in the board along with Arcbound Ravager. Ultimately it was fun, and sometimes it did get the job done, but it was very inefficient on the whole.
In fact, nearly every “answer” board I tried came up making me feel as if I had destroyed my board for a minimal gain against a single card, let alone archetype. Pithing Needle and Leyline of the Void are rather obvious additions to the board; and even Tabernacle is easily explained as an answer to Empty the Warrens in more early storm Gifts decks. Now for the funny looking stuff…
Petradon, Blinkmoth Nexus, and the two additional Dread Return are typically a combo package. They come in against certain Drain builds like Dry Slaver, and almost always come in against combo decks. Petradon may possibly be better served as Sundering Titan, but I hate taking the risk that a combo player just be using rainbow lands or sitting on Fetchlands until I’m done reanimating. Losing two lands combined with any other disruption is almost always backbreaking against a combo opponent. Often they simply can’t get enough colored mana from that point onward to combo you out before Ichorid just comes back and wins.
The idea is simply that you want to bring back a large hasty Petreadon or nine-power Ghoul or bigger, by turn 2 if on the draw and turn 3 if on the play. That gives you the best shot of winning in two turns, or winning in three and disabling the opponent in the meantime. In these cases, the Baubles are huge because they allow for a Dredge on the opponent’s upkeep to get creatures in the graveyard even faster than normal Ichorid builds.
Now, like I had mentioned earlier, there are a number of ways to hamstring current Drain and Ritual archetypes. Ichorid chooses to fight them by trying to limit mana, hand quality and just flat-out race at times. So now I want to present something at the other end of the spectrum, a deck that tends to plod along, shutting down control piece by piece until they no longer function.
Creatures (11)
Lands (17)
Spells (32)
When you take a look at this deck, it probably will remind you of either GAT or SS in how it’s been constructed. The concepts behind the deck are to completely cripple the opponent’s ability to plan out any real strategy. Despite the deck being limited in power or speed, it has an incredible amount of options and can attack decks on multiple levels.
Stifle, Trickbind, Null Rod, and Strips can dictate color usage and the total number of basics / non-basics to a high degree, especially considering the amount mana required to get Empty the Warrens or Gifts Ungiven online.
Tutors into Engineered Explosives or Echoing Truth can stop an early Empty the Warrens from taking you out.
Duress, Force of Will, and the Stifle effects will typically keep you in the game against combo and drag it out until your drawing comes online.
And so on. The basic principles are that your deck will allow you to out-control even control decks by essentially probing them and then attacking whatever area you think will cause the most damage directly. A number of games will be won and lost based on how you apply your resources, so I wouldn’t recommend many people just pick up and play the deck without practicing with it against Gifts and other Drain decks for a while.
Against aggressive decks like Fish, the main threat is Jotun Grunt, but you have an equal amount of 4/4 men at your disposal, as well as EE and Nimble Mongoose. So the general idea is simply to play control as best you can, save Forces purely for Grunt, always tutor for Explosives or Werebear, and just try to play as tight as possible. You can’t win an attrition war, so be careful when trading Werebear or Mongoose against opposing guys if you don’t have anymore in hand. Also note that Wasteland will almost always be more useful to you as your second mana source… all too often I see people strip a land and then get stuck with only one land left or stuck with two colors of mana, because they were banking on drawing out of it.
Mulliganing with the deck can be difficult at first, until you get used to running so few mana sources. Keeping one-land hands with cantrips is common enough, since half the deck can be cast off one Blue and the entire deck functions off two mana. The most difficult hands that I have to consider mulling tend to be the dual plus Wasteland hands that feature no cantrips. These are difficult to judge, because you have to typically rely on a land not getting destroyed and holding back on using your own Waste until you get established or hit a third land.
You’ll usually end up keeping those types of hands against Drains and Rituals, but Fish and Shops will typically force you to pitch them back. Of course then you have to consider Stifle, since if you can bait the Strip and Stifle it… well, you get the idea. Many of the most complicated decisions that have to made with the deck come from opening hands and knowing when to switch roles.
Remember, you’ll be playing a control role in many of your games until you’ve done enough damage to the structure of the opposing deck to not be completely exposed when laying your men down. If they just want to sit the whole time, then simply cantrip through your deck and resolve Duress so you can plan out a course of action. Anticipate the opponent and try to find the appropriate solution to his plan before you have to deal with it.
You’ll notice I didn’t give a board with the deck and that’s because it’s in constant flux. Right now I’m reasonably sure the board will be including the fourth Mongoose, another Engineered Explosives, Sword of Fire and Ice, and some amount of Energy Flux. The deck’s biggest issues are with U/W Fish and Shops, so the board should go a long way towards trying to fix those issues. As it stands, the threshold creatures are just better than everybody they run (save Grunt, of course), so a few Umezawa’s Jitte or Swords just make Confidant that much more lethal; while giving Werebear the opportunity to completely dominate a game.
And that’s it from me for now! Next week I’ll probably be back to TSP Block or my Yomi series, depending on my mood and how much more schoolwork* I end up having to do. Hopefully somebody got an idea or two from the lists presented and the way they attack the fundamental underpinnings of the format. And if not… um… buttons!
*I hate Bio so much; possibly more than working retail.
You exist, I exist
And other people disappeared
While I draw the beauty of a faint dream
I trace over my scars
Aya Hirano – God Knows… (Feat. in The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi)
Josh Silvestri
Team Reflection
Email me at: joshDOTsilvestriATgmailDOTcom