I love Type One. My teammate Justin Walters said it best:
I love Type One. [In one important way] it’s the most ruthless format in the game. I love that if I blink for even a second, if I make just one mistake, the game can be over. I love that our decks are among the most complex in the history of the game, and that you can play any given matchup hundreds of times and still find yourself in new and unprecedented situations. I love that we have a format that, when the abomination that is Meandeck Tendrils was unleashed on it, more or less shrugged and said, “Yeah, I can handle that.” I love that our format is comprised of decks that smash themselves to pieces against each other in the first two turns, and that the rest of the game is a scramble to see who can scrounge up their remaining resources the fastest and take first advantage of the ensuing ruin.
After dipping his feet into Vintage waters at the second StarCityGames Power 9, Aaron Forsythe said something similar:
Vintage, in my mind, plays out like this. Each player has a deck that is trying to do some really unfair thing. Maybe that thing is a turn-One Oath off of an Orchard. Maybe it’s a turn-one Trinisphere with Wasteland and Crucible of Worlds or plain old Juggernaut. Maybe it’s some hideous combination of Tangle Wires, Smokestacks, and Goblin Welders. Maybe it’s a first turn Tendrils for 28. Maybe it’s a good old-fashioned Mana Drain into Mind Twist. Regardless, it’s something. When one of the two players manages to pull his “thing” off, the games aren’t that interesting. When the interesting stuff happens is when both decks are a card short of doing their nastiness; then the players are jockeying for position, testing for counterspells, and all that nifty stuff. The format is known and defined by that first class of games, but it’s worth playing for the second half. I was pleased to see that the interactive games came up more than you might guess from looking at the card pool.
He’s completely right and I’m impressed but not surprised that he picked all that up after a single tournament. Fortunately for Vintage, most matches have at least one very interesting and highly interactive game that takes up the vast majority of the match time. This trend is amplified now that Trinisphere has been restricted. Aaron is completely correct that most decks are trying to just “do their thing.” However, the combo decks that predominate and that are coming to dominate Vintage are, in fact, also Control decks fueled by Mana Drain and protected by Force of Will. But don’t let the countermagic fool you. These decks are not strategically interactive decks. They aren’t designed to engage the opponent beyond the time it takes to get UU up so that it can Mana Drain something of substance and resolve their brokenness. Nonetheless, when these decks face off, one of them will try to play the control role and the other will try to bait and switch. These are frequently fascinating games where timing is crucial.
Deciding to play the right deck is critical to Type One success. This article is going to provide a comprehensive overview of the six best Mana Drain decks in the format. It will trace the trends in development thus far and bring us to some very recent design innovations. The trend that was already in the making has suddenly blossomed at the same time as the restriction of Trinisphere, resulting in the most broken Drain combo decks ever. This article will also try to unpack the theory behind these trends as well.
The strength of these decks is forcing out traditional storm (formerly Academy) combo from the format almost entirely with the exception of Blue/Black TPS and a smattering of Worldgorger combo. Why play DeathLong (Meandeath) when Psychatog, Gifts-Belcher, and Diving Top combo out only a turn later (and often when the mana you just gave them from Mana Drain)? It’s difficult to beat Mana Drain combo decks when they are only a turn or two slower because the Dark Ritual-based storm decks need time to over power the Drain decks. A deck that wins the turn after it Drains doesn’t give you time.
That’s not all bad. Given the weight of eleven years of printings and a reasonably good job restricting egregious cards, it could be a lot worse. Drain decks are better than ever at comboing out faster and with a stronger finish. Before we can understand why, we need to look at how we got here.
Combo-Control Hybridization
In 2003, an astute observer noted that many “control” decks no longer seemed to fit the label. They felt more like combo decks with supped-up control elements. It wasn’t even that the control decks were finishing the game in a single turn. The embarrassingly late utilization of Yawgmoth’s Will in the modern variants of the “Deck” created a functional win in a single giant turn. What was happening was that the Control decks would, counter, draw, counter, draw and then in a single turn, win by, let’s say, Berserking a Psychatog. What was being observed was that many of the decks in Vintage were finding win conditions that “sealed the deal” immediately.
A tentative state of control was not good enough. You had to seal the deal or you might never get another chance. The point was that there was a clear trend toward what that observer called “hybridization.” Newer decks increasingly had a flashy combo finish, despite being in the shell of something entirely non-combo.
Another observer, around the same time, observed that Vintage was really about building decks with lots of combos. The point this person was making is that the threshold for viable decks in Vintage is so high and the card pool is so deep that you need and can build extremely synergistic decks. The deck that was being referenced was the predecessor to Stax, a deck called “Ducktape.” The designer could have just listed some of the synergies: Meditate and Smokestack, Goblin Welder and Smokestack, Tangle Wire and Smokestack, etc. Today’s decks reflect this even more so:
I. Psychatog
Take a look at Psychatog, one of the first “Combo-Control” decks in modern Vintage:
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
3 Deep Analysis
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
2 Duress
3 Psychatog
3 Cunning Wish
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Library of Alexandria
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Boseiju who Shelters All
Sideboard:
4 Old Man of the Sea
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Artifact Mutation
1 Berserk
2 Ground Seal
1 Lava Dart
Combos:
- Berserk and Psychatog
- Psychatog and Cunning Wish (using Wish as a Regrowth)
- Intuition and Deep Analysis
- Intuition and Accumulated Knowledge
- Brainstorm and Fetchlands
- Brainstorm and AK/Intuition engine
- Intuition and Yawgmoth’s Will
- Mana Drain and Intuition/AK might be the most important combo in the deck
What’s the Game Plan?
This deck tries to build up a giant Psychatog made lethal with Berserk.
Why it Works:
The deck works because the whole deck is nothing but card draw, broken spells, and countermagic. The deck basically wants to utilize Mana Drain mana to play Intuition when you have an Accumulated Knowledge (AK) already in hand. That way you are holding the so called “AK for 3 and AK for 4.” However, oftentimes the proper play is to Intuition for Deep Analysis – particular in these control matches. Deep Analysis costs more, but Intuition for AK with no AK in hand is only three cards. Intuition for three Deep Analysis is eight cards: four from the Deep Analysis that goes to your hand and four cards from the two Deep Analysis that are in your graveyard. After drawing some cards, the deck wants to just Yawgmoth’s Will to replay all that draw again. It then plays the Psychatog and Cunning Wish finds Berserk to make sure the rampaging Tog eats his way through an opposing defense while doubling his enormous power to lethal range.
This deck is not dead. It’s weakened – but that’s only because there are so many strong alternatives.
Advantages
This deck is still powerful, there is no doubt of that. Perhaps the strongest part of this deck is how well it plays control. In fact, I can think of no deck whose proper “role” (in terms of the Flores’ “Who’s the Beatdown?”) is control when playing against Tog. Playing Control against Tog is a losing proposition. There is nothing in this deck but counterspells, draw, and Wishes for flexible solutions. After board, this deck has up to four Red Elemental Blasts (REB) in the mainboard, 3 Wishes to find the remaining REB in the sideboard, 2 Duress, 4 Mana Drain and 4 Force of Will. Boseiju ensures that Mind Twist and Yawgmoth’s Will end the game and Library is a huge threat in the control mirror. By the time Tog hits, it will be far too late to do anything about it.
Disadvantages
I still think that Tog is very powerful, but most Vintage players don’t find Tog a very attractive choice. For one thing, it requires a lot of experience and very strong timing to play this deck well. Even experienced players can make critical mistakes. It isn’t that the deck requires a lot of technical skill – although it is demanding in that regard, the most critical skill is timing. It is very easy to miscue with a deck like this. Timing mistakes are often lethal because of this deck’s weaknesses.
Weaknesses
This deck has two, perhaps three, critical weaknesses. The first is its four-color mana base. Null Rod/Wasteland decks tear this deck apart unless you have Old Man of the Sea in the sideboard to handle them. The second weakness is just the fact that it is one of the slowest combo-control decks. My teammate Joe Bushman is legendary for his plays with this deck, which he has been playing since Gush was restricted. I’ve seen him get turn 2 kills, but that is very unusual. Most often, undisrupted, the deck will goldfish on turn 5, 6, or 7. Control Slaver, Oath, and Gifts all present faster goldfishes and are sufficiently aggressive and disruptive that it takes a really solid Tog player to have well thought out plans to fight them.
II. Control Slaver or Goth Slaver
For reference, here is a decklist:
“Goth” Slaver
4 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Goblin Welder
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Pentavus
2 Mindslaver
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
5 Fetchlands
4 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
What’s the Plan?
This deck wants to get you Mindslaver you. A lot. And if that doesn’t kill you, it will use Pentavus or Crucible of Worlds/Darksteel Citadel to get you into a Mindslaver lock and beat you down with some creatures.
Why it Works:
Thirst for Knowledge and Goblin Welder is a solid combo. A single Mindslaver activation can put any opponent nearly out of the game – or at least so far in the hole that it will take a lot of work to recover. Meanwhile, the Slaver player is actively applying pressure by drawing cards and doing broken stuff.
I’d like to point you to a recent article I wrote covering this archetype.
A few additional comments are warranted. First of all, this is one of the most consistently performing decks in the United States Northeast and the winner of the Gencon Vintage Championship last year is this archetype. Mindslaver is clearly insane in Vintage. Most decks in Vintage have the means of their own destruction when turned against themselves (just think about what Demonic Consultation can do).
This deck is probably the most prevalent deck in the format. Take a look at SCG Chicago – the last major Power Nine event. There were 24 Slavers – 22 were listed as Control Slaver and 2 as Goth Slaver. Compare that with the next most popular deck: Oath with 13 players. Now you begin to get a sense of the sheer quantity of people playing this deck. If you can’t handle this deck, don’t even show up.
Advantages
This deck remains very solid. There are flexible solutions to any threat: Goblin Bombardment for Oath, Rack and Ruin for Workshops, Sphere of Resistance for Combo, and Boseiju and Red Elemental Blasts for control mirrors. Slaving people for a game plan ain’t bad either. This decks mana base is also solid.
Disadvantages
This deck remains solid but its primary drawback, must like Togs, is just that it is old news. It is a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder that just added a few rungs in the last two months.
Weaknesses
However, this deck does have some problems against Null Rod and Chalice of the Void. Null Rod prevents you from activating Mindslaver. Your best plan is just to find Tinker and Tinker up a monster like Pentavus or Platinum Angel. Chalice of the Void is also a pain in the neck. If they have resolved it before your first turn, you may not even get a chance to play Tinker because you won’t have a Mox in play to sacrifice. If you have resolved a Mox, then Chalice of the Void for 1 will stop Goblin Welder from coming onto the board. Also, this deck has serious problems against Phyrexian Furnace.
I want to show one variant on this deck that will probably become very strong again now that Trinisphere is restricted:
II (A). Slaver Variant: TurboTitan
The First Division:
4 Goblin Welder
2 Sundering Titan
1 Mindslaver
Supply Convoy:
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Intuition
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
The Counter Attack:
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
The Decisive Rout:
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
The Battlefields:
4 Volcanic Island
4 Flooded Strand
1 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
The Reinforcements (The Sideboard):
2 Tsabo’s Web
2 Flametongue Kavu
1 Platinum Angel
3 Chalice of the Void
2 Rack and Ruin
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Fire / Ice
That list was taken from my teammate Doug Linn article “The Tournament of Northern Aggression – SCG P9 I Top 8“.
This deck is very similar to Goth Slaver – in fact it was derived from Goth Slaver. The difference is that instead focusing on slaving your opponent, he wants to use Titan to annihilate your mana base while it smashes for 7 damage a turn. This concept may be
III. Bomberman A.K.A. Auriok Salvagers Combo
This was the only list I could find that comes close to what I think a good Salvagers list might look like:
4 Flooded Strand
6 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Plains
4 Tundra
1 Black Lotus
4 Chromatic Sphere
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Sol Ring
4 Auriok Salvagers
1 Ancestral Recall
3 Brainstorm
2 Cunning Wish
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
4 Mana Drain
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
What’s the Plan?
The plan is to resolve Auriok Salvagers to recur a Black Lotus or Lion’s Eye Diamond, which generates infinite mana. With that infinite mana, the deck will recur an artifact cantrip such as a spellbomb or a Chromatic Sphere and then draw the whole deck. Once its done that, it can Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze or Stroke of Genius and just kill you. [Or it can just kill you with Pyrite Spellbomb… – Knut, taking the easy way out]
Why it Works:
The deck is housed in a solid control shell with Mana Drains to fuel Salvagers and Thirst for Knowledge as an excellent source of card advantage. The deck is surprisingly simple to combo with.
As soon as Salvagers saw print, this deck was already in development. I dismissed the concept as inefficient. Why have to play a four-mana white creature to get infinite mana when you can just play Animate Dead on a Worldgorger Dragon that you have deposited in a graveyard via Bazaar of Baghdad?
People experimented with various possibilities including using cards like Trinket Mage and Artificer’s Intuition. In my view, the best use of Salvagers involved just using the strong draw engine of Thirst for Knowledge and maybe even Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge:
This deck has lots of miniature combos:
- Salvagers + LED or Black Lotus = Infinite Mana
- Salvagers plus cantrip Artifacts
- Thirst for Knowledge and cheap cantrip artifacts
- Mana Drain and Salvagers
- Intuition and Salvagers
It’s okay that Salvagers really hasn’t found a solid home because it feels more at home in a Gifts Ungiven Shell and the next deck in our countdown. More on those later.
Advantages:
The combo only takes a single turn. The turn you resolve Salvagers if you have a Lotus or a Lion’s Eye Diamond in your graveyard or hand you win the game. Even if they counter the Lotus or LED, it only takes one more White mana and a Colorless to return the Lotus or LED to hand. So long as you have at least one artifact cantrip in your graveyard, that’s game.
Disadvantages:
The deck has to resolve a four-mana White spell. Playing a four-mana spell in this format that isn’t Blue or artifact is almost unheard of. The only non-artifact non-Blue spell that costs four or more that really sees any play is Yawgmoth’s Bargain. Resolving a Salvagers seems like it might be annoying because of that. Since it costs four to play the dude, you’ll need probably one more turn to untap to go infinite. However, Mana Drain clearly ameliorates this drawback.
Weaknesses:
This deck is seriously hampered by simple hosers such as Null Rod (which totally makes the combo worthless as well as the artifact cantrips) and Chalice of the Void (which stops LED or Lotus from resolving). However, this deck can run maindeck bounce and has Cunning Wishes to find answers. This deck also has serious problems with Phyrexian Furance, much like Slaver.
[Editor’s Note: Since this article was exceptionally long, we will bringing you the second half early next week.]