Going Down the Drain: Examining the Best (Mana Drain) Decks in Vintage Part 2

Part I of this article can be found here.

IV. Meandeck Oath

The Combo:

4 Oath of Druids

1 Gaea’s Blessing

1 Spirit of the Night

1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath

Countermagic:

4 Force of Will

4 Mana Drain

4 Mana Leak

2 Misdirection

Search/Draw:

4 Brainstorm

2 Cunning Wish

1 Ancestral Recall

1 Time Walk

4 Intuition

4 Accumulated Knowledge

5 Islands

4 Forbidden Orchard

4 Polluted Delta

1 Strip Mine

1 Tropical Island

2 Wasteland

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Mox Pearl

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Emerald

1 Mox Jet

1 Black Lotus

What’s the Plan?

There are few plays as well known and feared in Vintage as much as the simple:

Mox, Orchard, Oath. Of course I’m referring to Forbidden Orchard and Oath of Druids. Oath of Druids summons up two very angry and very large creatures which will soon make mincemeat of your opponent.

Why It Works:

The whole concept of Oath of Druids actually became Type One viable the moment Forbidden Orchard saw print. The two creatures my team chose for this deck was the large hasty men so that you can “seal the deal” as quickly as possible. This deck can deal 18 damage in two turns. Darksteel Collossi are simply too slow in comparison doing 24 damage in three turns. Alternatively, you can use Akroma and Ancient Hydra, which is about as fast as Darksteel Colossus, but strong in a Welder/Salvagers, etc field and is also a solution to cards like Platinum Angel.

The deck works because the combo costs only two mana: One Green and One Colorless. That alone is often enough to win the game as most of the decks in this format once again run creatures. But with a new land from Kamigawa, this combo is game ending by turn 3. For that mana you basically get what would have cost 17 mana if you were hardcasting your win conditions. That’s insane savings!

This uses the Intuition/AK burst to get a sizable leap in the game and combo out. This deck has a very strong early game and a very strong late game (where you get into a position of recurring AKs and keep drawing Intuitions to continually fuel them) but a slightly weaker mid game.

This deck, unlike Tog and Slaver, pwns Fish and the Null Rod Aggro-Control decks.

One of the themes of this article is that there are a number of key components in Vintage that are just combined and recombined into new configurations with stronger and stronger results. I’ll show you more of this later in the article. But for now, here is the first hybrid of a control-combo hybrid:

IV (A): Oath of Salvagers

Salvagers Oath

Thomas Lee

3rd Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 04-10-2005

Vintage

Creatures (3)

Lands (17)

Spells (40)

Sideboard

This deck just ups the ante and speeds up the combo at the price of mana base quality. It is also very vulnerable to cards like Chalice of the Void. It may also have too many creatures.

Advantages:

Oath as a concept has a lot of flexibility. The design options are nearly limitless. You can play with Intuition/AK. Doing so has good synergy with the Oath combo because Intuition doubles as tutors and AK is strong with Oath without needing Intuition. Oath can be designed to accomplish nearly any purpose. Take a look at what Aaron Forsythe did with Oath:

IV (B) Oath Variant: Storm Combo Oath

Matt Place and Aaron Forsythe

3 City of Brass

4 Gemstone Mine

4 Forbidden Orchard

1 Library of Alexandria

1 Tolarian Academy

1 Ancient Tomb

1 Eternal Witness

1 Mox Pearl

1 Mox Jet

1 Mox Emerald

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Black Lotus

1 Sol Ring

1 Memory Jar

1 Mana Vault

1 Lotus Petal

1 Mox Diamond

1 Mana Crypt

1 Lion’s Eye Diamond

1 Ancestral Recall

1 Time Walk

1 Timetwister

1 Force of Will

1 Tinker

1 Mind’s Desire

2 Hurkyl’s Recall

4 Brainstorm

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Windfall

1 Demonic Tutor

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Yawgmoth’s Will

1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Dark Ritual

3 Duress

1 Necropotence

1 Wheel of Fortune

3 Oath of Druids

1 Krosan Reclamation

1 Regrowth

Aaron discusses the deck in his article after playing it at the second StarCityGames Power Nine event. This deck is just another variant on the combo options: you Oath up Witness – put the Yawgmoth’s Will into your hand and easily win. My teammate Kevin Cron had already come up with a variant of this idea, but we couldn’t make it work efficiently and consistently enough to be better than the heavy control versions.

Disadvantages

The biggest drawback to Oath is that hate is amazingly simple to play. The biggest problem is that the combo is just too slow. Spirit of the Night and Akroma are generally fast enough against most decks. Ironically, the place where it is just too slow is against these other Drain combo decks.

Weaknesses

Cards like Seal of Cleansing are a real pain in the butt and can be lethal. If you have really been using that Orchard to play your spells and you were anticipating that your Oath would stick, you may be in big trouble when Seal resolves or if a Seal was resolved in anticipation of your Oath. Other players are using cards like Ray of Revelation, Swords to Plowshares, and Goblin Bombardment (that’s my personal favorite). All of these cards are excellent answers, but they are all imperfect answers too. That’s why, despite its weaknesses, Oath still retains a slight advantage. Mox, Orchard, Oath is such a strong play that overcoming it requires an immediate response. But if you try to attack the Oath, you may already have a hasty creature beat up on your opponent. If they Plow that critter away, then another is waiting to be summoned in its place. Plus, by the time you have already Oathed up the creature, your mana will be up to play cards like Mana Leak and Mana Drain.

Using Oath to support a unique strategy probably is doomed for failure. Oath is universally hated out. Everyone knows that Oath is viable and will have at least some sort of cards to deal with it. In order to win with Oath, you need to be able to win through the hate.

Two New Decks Heralding a New Trend

This is where we were a few months ago. At StarCityGames Syracuse, Team Hadley of the Northeast United States impressed the crowd by playing a new Drain combo deck using Sensei’s Divining Top.

Oh Sensei you so fine, Seisei you just blow my mind. Hey Sensei, Hey Sensei!

V. Sensei, Sensei – Divining Top Combo

1 Mana Vault

1 Sol Ring

1 Mox Pearl

1 Mox Emerald

1 Mox Sapphire

1 Mox Ruby

1 Mox Jet

1 Black Lotus

1 Mana Crypt

5 Island

2 Flooded Strand

3 Polluted Delta

2 Underground Sea

1 Tolarian Academy

3 Sensei’s Divining Top

3 Helm of Awakening

3 Future Sight

1 Intuition

1 Vampiric Tutor

3 Cunning Wish

4 Force of Will

3 Mana Drain

2 Thirst for Knowledge

1 Mystical Tutor

4 Accumulated Knowledge

1 Ancestral Recall

1 Frantic Search

1 Yawgmoth’s Will

1 Demonic Tutor

1 Merchant Scroll

1 Timetwister

3 Deep Analysis

1 Time Walk

Sideboard

3 Chalice of the Void

1 Rebuild

1 Echoing Truth

1 Blue Elemental Blast

1 Brain Freeze

2 Annul

1 Lim-Dul’s Vault

1 Flash Counter

1 Coffin Purge

2 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Stifle

What’s the Plan?

This deck just wants to draw its deck using Divining Top/Future Sight/Helm of Awakening, play a bunch of spells and then Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze (although the updated lists probably have a Brain Freeze maindeck) and then murder your library.

Why It Works:

Helm of Awakening, Future Sight, and Divining Top permit you to instantly draw your deck. How? Helm of Awakening makes Divining Top free. Future Sight permits you to play the top card of your library as if it were in your hand. When you activate the Top, the Top goes to the top of your library. With Future Sight in play, you can just replay the Top that has moved to the top of your library for free. Do this 45 or so times and you will have drawn your whole deck. At that point play Brain Freeze and win the game.

Advantages

Aside from the mechanics of the combo, why is this deck good? This deck has insane amounts of draw, a very synergistic combo, and, again, a combo that happens in one turn. It has plenty of bounce, multiple draw engines and potentially lots of answers. One thing that might make it better is a few Duresses in the main to further fight the control-hybrids, but it may not be needed.

This deck has perhaps the best “oops, I win” factor of any of the decks in this article. The deck is surprisingly good at getting Future Sight into play by turn 3, and if that happens and you see a Mox and a Top off the top of the library, all it takes is Helm and then the Top becomes lethal. Also, all the combo components except Helm are very strong by themselves. This deck’s speed and ability to just “win now” make it an attractive option for a Drain player who doesn’t want to wait two turns to kill the opponent. Plus, it has built it all of the cool Type One cards like Intuition and Thirst for Knowledge. Frantic Search is ridiculously powerful in this deck as well. It might be the coolest play in the deck.

Disadvantages:

This deck may be the weakest of the decks against non-Drain combo. It also has some suboptimal components such as Helm of Awakening, which don’t do much without the Top. Also, the key card is a really difficult spell to protect: Future Sight requires too much Blue to actually have enough mana to Mana Drain protect it easily.

Weaknesses:

First of all, Null Rod is very damaging. Second, Chalice of the Void set at zero before this deck gets a turn is also really strong. Chalice for 1 is also extremely problematic because it shuts down the combo.

And now we turn to the final and most crucial development in Drain Combo:

VI. Gifts Belcher

Gifts Ungiven Belcher

Ben Kowal

1st Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 04-10-2005

Vintage

Creatures (3)

2 Goblin Welder
1 Pentavus

Lands (15)

Spells (42)

Sideboard

It is teh hotness.
What’s the Plan?

The plan, simply, is to “Belch” someone with Goblin Charbelcher after resolving Mana Severance to remove all your lands from the deck.

Why Does it Work?

The deck does that by abusing Gifts Ungiven. Remember, Fact or Fiction is restricted in the format because it was ridiculously broken. There is talk that Gifts is better. Time will tell. Regardless, the standard Gifts is Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Will, Recoup, and Mana Severance. They’ll likely give you Recoup and Mana Severance. Then you can recoup the Yawgmoth’s Will and Tinker up the Belcher and win.

The real reason it works though is because of Recoup. Recoup permits you to really abuse Gifts and Yawgmoth’s Will because it doesn’t matter what they give you.

Advantages:

This deck arguably abuses Mana Drain and Yawgmoth’s Will even more than its predecessors. It is jammed packed with broken card draw and awesome disruption. This deck has plenty of tools to combat the other hybrid drain decks: It has Duresses and Red Elemental Blasts and an even better mana base. It also best abuses Mana Drain. I honestly think that some variant of this deck is probably the best deck in the format. I fully expect this deck to be a major player all year unless Gifts is restricted or Yawgmoth’s Will gets banned. This is not the last time you’re going to see it.

Perhaps the most attractive and daunting element of the deck is what I’ll just call the Doomsday factor. In my article on Doomsday, I went through 17 different stacks that you can choose to optimize your game plan. This deck arguably has more options than Doomsday. You can Gifts for some pretty strange piles in tough spots and your opponent is also very likely to screw up the split and give you some cards you want.

Recoup is very powerful and enables recurring Time Walk so that even if you can’t win just immediately, your opponent isn’t likely to get a turn before you do win.

The maindeck is highly malleable. This variant happens to run the Mindslaver components, but that isn’t strictly necessary.

Disadvantages

The only disadvantage is the sheer quantity of mana required to combo out and the fact that the optimal build hasn’t been revealed yet.

Weaknesses

This deck also has problems with Null Rod and Chalice of the Void for zero on turn one. Phyrexian Furnace is pesky, but can be dealt with without too much difficulty. This deck is very flexible and can run any number of threats to handle annoyances such as Null Rod though. The mana base needs to be improved so that it doesn’t lose to Wastelands, but that can be done.

Hybridizing the Hybrids

So we have noticed a distinct trend. Decks have tended to adopt a combo finish because winning now is better than winning later. Decks with a combo finish typically require and therefore have a more robust draw engine and are therefore better able to protect themselves.

There is another form of hybridization at work. Some of these Mana Drain decks are playing mix and match – taking components of one deck and recombining them in an effort to improve upon them. Consider Salvagers and Oath. I presented them as separate combos. But recall that I also posted Oath of Salvagers in which both combos were combined for a synergistic result. Remember my discussion at the beginning of the article where I spent some time describing how synergies – miniature combos – are a real sign of strength in these decks.

In this segment of the article I’m just going to cover some of the examples of this concept:

Gifted Salvagers

Stephen Menendian

Test deck on 05-15-2005

Vintage

Creatures (2)

2 Auriok Salvagers

Lands (16)

Spells (42)

Sideboard

2 Disenchant (Dismantling Blow)

2 Swords to Plowshares

1 Vampiric Tutor (Skeletal Scrying)

1 Gifts Ungiven

1 Shallow Grave

1 Echoing Truth (Ray of Revelation, Capsize)

1 Brain Freeze

1 Coffin Purge

2 Pernicious Deed

1 Library of Alexandria (Mind Twist)

1 Balance (Aether Spellbomb)

1 Duress (Cranial Extraction)

What’s interesting about these trends is that the decks are just merging. Gifts Belcher is often running a Slaver and some Welders – co-opting the strongest part of Control/Goth Slaver. Salvagers is putting itself into Gifts and Oath shells.

In the end, these decks will have to be thrown up against each other to see what disruptive parts are strongest, what wins, and what can be shifted to improve the matchups.

One point of this article is that the trend is rapidly accelerating. We are seeing more and more tools for Control to combo out and we need to be ahead of the curve. So while we may indeed be entering a combo summer, it’s combo fueled by Drain. Something that needs to be recognized is that the era of reactive control is truly over. If it were just Ritual Combo decks, I think reactive Disrupting Shoals might have a shot. However, these decks have more control components: REBs and Duress and all the same countermagic but they win now. Who knows what will be next. Maybe someone can put Oath, Slaver, Gifts, and Salvagers all in the same deck and make it work. Humor aside, you can see the direction of development.

Okay, so now the question is: Why?

The general reason for hybridization is that the decks with the combo finish tend to be better. The important idea is that the Mana Drain decks with the hybrid finish appear to be, in part, an attempt to compete with the archetypes that threaten its preeminence. They are stronger, more flexible and put up better results. If Masknaught makes mono-Blue bad, then why not play a Drain deck that wins before Dreadnought?

The point is that the development of Type One is a dialectic between non-Mana Drain decks trying to compete and the parallel improvement of Mana Drain decks has profound and important implications. For instance, any restriction that neuters a non-Mana Drain deck will result in a format with more powerful Mana Drain decks than existed before the pernicious influence of the then-banned decks was known.

This is precisely what happened. A year of Trinisphere forced the surviving Mana Drain decks to become brutally fast and efficient. Restricting Trinisphere unmasked this advance.

It’s time to face up to an uncomfortable fact. I can no longer deny that Mana Drain is the most broken unrestricted card in the format. People don’t want to admit it because Mana Drain is probably the most beloved card in the format. However, anyone who has been playing Vintage competitively for the last year knows, deep down, that Mana Drain is more broken than Dark Ritual or Mishra’s Workshop. The purpose of this article isn’t to rail against Mana Drain, but to trace a blossoming trend. Abusing Mana Drain has been a feature of Vintage nearly since inception. But designers have grown increasingly adept at using Mana Drain to insure that the game ends now rather than later. Instead of Draining into a card that merely draws a few cards that finds you answers, or power up an answer such as Moat, Abyss, or Jayemdae Tome, Mana Drain is used to power Thirst + Welder -> Slaver; Gifts -> Recoup, Yawg Will, Win; and Intuition, Accumulated Knowledge #3 and #4. You simply don’t win after those plays are made.

A Note On Boseiju

Given how strong these Drain decks are – Boseiju is going to be an increasingly prevalent sight. Simply put, expect it. This card has not yet reached the attention it deserves – but any card that ensures the resolution of Yawgmoth’s Will or Tinker is a real danger. The Gifts deck appears to be the deck best ready to abuse it. However, Oath may have some advantages in that it is the only one of these decks that actually runs Wasteland. Just be prepared.