At the time I’m writing this article Rochester is about one week away, which means it’s time for that obligatory help article to get people both in the mood for the tournament and to prepare them for what’s going to be present. This gets to be a super special version though, because we have an added element to accommodate for: the presence of the SCG Shooting Stars!
This may seem like one of the most daunting tournaments in a very long time thanks to that presence, but you should treat it no differently than you treat your average high profile tournament. There will still be a dense concentration of people you can beat if you play properly, and that includes the guys wearing the t-shirts. The biggest weapon you can have against these competitors is familiarity with the format, so let’s get down to brass tacks.
Short Bus Severance Belcher, by Team Short Bus
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Mana Severance
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Duress
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Goblin Welder
1 Recoup
1 Pentavus
1 Mindslaver
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Island
2 Snow-Covered Island
2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
This is the maindeck, probably card for card, that I feel most comfortable running. I don’t believe this deck needs any introduction, but here it is all the same: Your gameplan is to play a control game (like New England Psychatog builds or properly piloted Control Slaver) outdrawing your opponent until you can find an opening to set up the win, which is usually fueled by Tinker, Gifts Ungiven, or sometimes just finding a combo piece and a tutor. The most common way to win with this deck is to find Tinker and get Pentavus with it, putting your opponent on a quick clock that’s very difficult to remove. Pentavus is the primary reason I prefer the Short Bus build to the recently unveiled Meandeck version, as Darksteel Colossus is sketchy in a field of Fish decks maindecking bounce and Swords to Plowshares, and control decks running Goblin Welder or even Duplicant in the case of one Jeff Anand, a Vintage player who has made the cut to top 8 in both Syracuse and Chicago. You can bet he’ll be present here, too.
I used to assume this deck had no bad matchups, but I’ve revised my statement after testing against Aether Vial/Chalice of the Void Fish. Jacob Orlove’s Worse Than Fish is considerably more difficult to beat than the U/W build, which I believe is because a quick clock with something like a Wild Mongrel carrying Umezawa’s Jitte is much more dangerous than a Meddling Mage naming one of your draw spells or Tinker.
Worse Than Fish v3,
by Jacob Orlove
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Gaea’s Skyfolk
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Aether Vial
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Brainstorm
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Island
4 Tropical Island
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
This list doesn’t match what was most recently in Jacob’s thread on TheManaDrain.com, but I got it straight from the horse’s mouth just now. The biggest strength of this deck is to act like Fish, but with goons that actually kill people instead of standing around and being annoying, such as Meddling Mage. Also, unlike Bird Sh*t, it doesn’t have to run the worst manabase in history or garbage like Mental Note. This deck has a really good matchup against Stax, which I can see being much more common in the near future with very solid lists presented in the Workshop capital of the world, Richmond, Virginia. I’ll get to those in a moment, but first let’s continue looking at Worse Than Fish. This deck also does particularly well against Mana Drain-fueled archetypes such as both builds of Gifts Ungiven, Control Slaver, and Psychatog. While the latter two will be few and far between, Gifts Ungiven is likely to be especially common.
So what does this deck lose to? You can bet you’ll be having some hard times against what little hard combo will be showing up. Decks like DeathLong and Dragon could be a nightmare for you, despite being good matchups for almost everything else on the floor. Likewise, hardcore aggro will give you fits. Something like R/G Beatz, Sligh, or Food Chain Goblins will absolutely ruin you.
Creatures (31)
- 3 Goblin Vandal
- 4 Goblin Recruiter
- 4 Goblin Matron
- 4 Goblin Lackey
- 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- 3 Goblin Warchief
- 1 Goblin Sharpshooter
- 4 Goblin Piledriver
- 1 Gempalm Incinerator
- 1 Siege-Gang Commander
- 3 Goblin Ringleader
- 1 Skirk Prospector
Lands (18)
Spells (11)
Sideboard
This is another one of those decks that needs no introduction, however seeing it this late after the Food Chain prime is somewhat odd, and it’s definitely strange to see multiple Kiki-Jiki in the maindeck. Joshua Silvestri, a writer right here at Star City, already wrote a very detailed and intricate primer here that explains the various Recruiter stacks and how to play the deck. The only thing left to point out is how ridiculous Kiki-Jiki can be, since at the time that primer was written, Kiki-Jiki did not exist. Kiki is very amusing, because almost any goblin you copy has some ridiculous broken effect. Here are some of the best ones:
Copy Goblin Lackey: End of turn, make a Lackey. It’ll exist until the next end of turn. Untap, make a third Lackey, swing with all three, and put your entire hand on the table. Zaun reportedly did this more than once at Richmond.
Copy Goblin Ringleader: Reveal four cards and put most of them in your hand, at instant speed. Sounds good to me!
Copy Goblin Piledriver: Target player dies.
Copy Goblin Matron: The closest thing to Demonic Tutor that Red realistically has access to.
Copy Siege-Gang Commander: Randomly generate a bunch of free goblins and damage.
Copy Goblin Recruiter: Stack goblins again, in case you screwed up or came across a Food Chain after stacking for only two or three goblins.
Even copying Warchief is pretty good, since it will reduce the cost of your goblins by an additional mana.
I’ve been told Josh Silvestri does not believe the Kiki-Jiki to be an optimal inclusion, but I feel quite to the contrary. From what I saw of Zaun’s play in Richmond, when he was using Kiki-Jiki correctly, people were dying a turn or two faster than they should have been. The triple Lackey thing is absolutely outrageous and needs to be abused to keep up with the combo-control decks like Gifts Belcher.
You can also expect to do really well against Stax with this deck, since everything except Zaun’s Red Elemental Blasts are permanents, you run a ton of basics, and most of your guys are cheap and make more guys. You can expect to get steamrolled by combo however, and any control player with a solid hand has a good chance of holding you off or racing you.
Stax, by Kevin Cron
1 Black Lotus
3 Chalice Of The Void
3 Crucible Of Worlds
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Smokestack
1 Sol Ring
4 Sphere Of Resistance
1 Trinisphere
2 Gorilla Shaman
2 In The Eye Of Chaos
2 Chains Of Mephistopheles
2 Seal Of Cleansing
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Crop Rotation
1 Swords To Plowshares
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Balance
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
4 City Of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Tolarian Academy
This is so far my favorite Stax list. Though south of the Mason Dixon not running Goblin Welder is inexcusable, this far North it’s not a problem. In the Eye of Chaos vastly improves an otherwise iffy Sensei Sensei matchup, since it prevents Cunning Wish for Rebuild, which is what most of the games came down to in testing for us. I also really like the Chalice of the Void presence in the maindeck, since anyone who’s played Mono-Blue should know how stupidly unfair it is to drop a Chalice before your opponent gets a turn, cutting them off from mana fixers like Brainstorm or even just their mana acceleration. The Swords to Plowshares and Seals of Cleansing look to me to be the weakest link in the deck, and probably the best place to fit in whatever cards you think the maindeck is missing. Likewise, though Chains of Mephistopheles is all sorts of cool, it’s probably shy of optimal, and you could fit other things here as well. I don’t personally know what I’d be cramming in to the maindeck, but I know I’d be cutting that Swords pretty much immediately if I played Stax.
One thing I definitely have to grant to this list is that it does much, much better against Mana Drain powered decks than most versions of Stax ever have. There are lots of non-artifact annoyances like Chains and In The Eye making Rack and Ruin less effective, and the presence of multiple Gorilla Shaman effects can really make for a rough time paying for Sphere of Resistance affected spells. In stark contrast, you’ve got very little game against anything aggro, since you lack Tangle Wire and you’re based on controlling permanent count. A deck like Food Chain Goblins or even Vial Fish will run you over no matter how many Plows you run. If you seriously want to prepare for these decks, you should maindeck something like Pyroclasm instead of Plow. I don’t think it would make the matchups much more winnable, but it certainly has to be at least somewhat stronger.
Salvager Oath, by Dan Emmons
4 Oath of Druids
2 Auriok Salvagers
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Seal of Cleansing
1 Timetwister
1 Balance
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
3 City of Brass
1 Underground Sea
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Island
1 Plains
This is a deck I haven’t seen mentioned too much on Star City yet, though I can’t understand why. This deck has been doing very well in New England recently, and you can expect a large number of people to pilot it. The beauty lies in the simplicity – You only need to resolve Oath or Tinker and suddenly you win. Both spells are cheap, easy to protect, and kill your opponent absurdly quickly, giving it a powerful advantage over the old Meandeck Oath lists. The question, “is the trade-off of resiliency worth it?” was answered with a resounding yes when Dan Emmons proceeded to make every top 8 in rapid succession with this deck.
You can expect a fairly abysmal Stax matchup, but most of your control matchups are fairly solid, and you can typically beat the crap out of decks like Vial Fish and Food Chain Goblins on the virtue of spells like Oath alone.
How can one decide which deck to run?
The five decks above are the only ones I would even consider piloting going in to Rochester. No other deck can compete with these five routinely (aside from U/W Vial Fish, but that’s really just Worse Than Fish with more disruption) and as such packing something else is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
The first step towards picking a deck is to anticipate what else will be there that you’ll have to beat. You can bet people who read Star City and are low on money and time will be playing Food Chain Goblins or Vial Fish galore, due to the simplicity in learning those decks, and the overall inexpensiveness of the staples. As such, tempting though it is to run Stax, I feel it’s too risky because these decks will overpower you in the early rounds and ruin your tiebreakers too much to make the Top 8. Even if you do make it, you won’t win, because at least two people will Top 8 with those decks and will beat you in the quarters or semis.
I also wouldn’t bring Food Chain Goblins, just because anything but a stellar hand will have a tough time outracing well-played Combo Control like Shortbus Severance Belcher. Though you have the advantage in the Vial Fish matchup (which I expect to be omnipresent), losing to the most common Mana Drain deck in New England would be a pretty bad plan for success. Though, if you feel Food Chain to be your calling, run with it. It’s by no means impossible – In fact, Brass “Andy Probasco” Man piloting SSB was Mike Zaun’s first round win at Richmond!
Speaking of SSB, piloting this deck can be either a joy or a nightmare. Familiarity with how control mirrors work gives you most of the ground you need to play this deck correctly, but far too many people think they understand and really just don’t. If you’re 100% confident in your control playing ability, this is the deck you should be playing. It leaves lots of room for errors, but it also leaves lots of room for you to outplay your opponents, without sacrificing any ground in the “oops, I win!” department. Thirst for Knowledge is the best draw spell in the format right now, and Tinker is the best broken card. This deck abuses them about as well as Control Slaver did, but this has the advantage of being much faster, giving it advantages not only in the control mirrors you’ll see all day this far north, but also advantages in aggro matchups, giving you an easy to access combo kill that you can routinely pull off before the aggro deck goldfishes, barring high concentrations of Wasteland lovin’ or multiple Force of Wills.
Salvager Oath and Vial Fish are both difficult to take a real stand on. Both of these decks are powerful (Fish deceptively so) and both have good chances against most of the field. Given the choice between the two, I’d go with Worse than Fish, given that it’s much more difficult to adequately hate out than Salvager Oath. Whichever you decide you’d like to run assuming SSB is out of your reach economically or difficulty-wise, you should still have a strong shot against the field if you play well.
The Shooting Stars
I can confirm at least one Shooting Star will be running the first decklist in this article, because I’ll be sporting a t-shirt of my own. Anticipating the others will be difficult, however.
A vast majority of the participating pros will play something they’re familiar with, such as Zaun playing Food Chain at Richmond. For this reason, seeing more pros with Food Chain shouldn’t be surprising. Some pros might also have strong attractions towards Oath of Druids-based decks, or Gifts Ungiven fueled control decks. I do not anticipate any of the professional players to be sporting things that are exclusively Vintage for those reasons, so things like Worldgorger Dragon is right out. The only exception to this rule would be Storm Combo, which I anticipate to be very attractive from the outside looking in, until they test it out and realize how weak it is in comparison to everything else.
The most important thing to remember here is that they’re just normal players like you or me, albeit probably better than most in the room, and considerably more confident than most as well. Don’t be intimidated by this! Remember that you’re more familiar with the format than they are, and as such they’ll be in a world of wonder the entire day, whereas you’ll be completely on top of your game.
Bonus Section! Anticipating the Canadians
I decided I should write an entire separate section for this, since the Canadians appear to be some of the most rogue deckbuilders on the planet, in addition to the strongest players of underrepresented archetypes like Dragon. Though it’s very difficult to guess what the Canadians have in store for us, we can definitely analyze what they’ve already played.
Worldgorger Dragon
by Ben Kowal, emulating Dan Rosu
4 Force of Will
3 Duress
3 Intuition
3 Lim-Dul’s Vault
3 Compulsion
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Worldgorger Dragon
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Eternal Witness
1 Memnarch
4 Animate Dead
3 Necromancy
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
This is your fairly typical two-color Dragon build. You can expect to see this as well as similar builds with Green for Xantid Swarm and sideboard options like Pernicious Deed.
Hyper-MUD
by Peter O. (Sorry Peter, I’m not even going to try to spell your last name again)
4 Lodestone Myr
3 Time Vault
4 Metalworker
3 Staff of Domination
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Crucible of Worlds
4 Trinisphere
2 Culling Scales
4 Well of Knowledge
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Mishra’s Workshop
3 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Rishadan Port
This is a deck that was posted on The Mana Drain a long time ago, but never really caught on. I honestly don’t expect this deck in large numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it, myself. The obvious thing to draw is that it’s a workshop deck with as many win-the-game combos crammed in to it as possible.
Bomberman
by Lany Chabot Laroche
4 Auriok Salvagers
4 Aether Spellbomb
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestrall Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Disenchant
4 Sword to Plowshares
2 Trinket Mage
1 Balance
4 Meddling Mage
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Sol Ring
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
5 Island
3 Plains
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
This looks like a particularly weaker version of the powerful Salvager Oath, but I would still be ready to see a version like this. I’d be very surprised to see it after round 4 though, seeing as the Oath build is just better in every conceivable way.
Well, that completes this article. I hope this helps you pick up the best choice for you, and perhaps you’ll even win a piece of power and some t-shirts on the way!
Ben Kowal
Team Short Bus
Vintage Slacker