Grim Long: All Your Questions Are Belong To Us

I have received some criticism recently that my articles are too opaque — that they are self-referential, insular, and parochial. So I’m going to try and write about Vintage at a more basic level, reducing the amount of slang and short-hand I use.

So let me tell you what the heck I am talking about.

Grim Long is a combo deck that is designed around Yawgmoth’s Will. Long was a deck inspired by Mike Kryzwicki and Mike Long which I tuned to perfection and caused the restriction of Lion’s Eye Diamond and Burning Wish. The idea behind Long.dec (and its successor, DeathLong) is simple: build a combo deck around Yawgmoth’s Will, using Wishes to find it out of the board, and generating enough storm in the process to fuel a lethal Tendrils of Agony.

The legalization of Portal was a special moment for me. I’ve had a Grim Long list built since early 2004, waiting and ready for the moment that I thought would never arrive. That moment arrived — and although the Vintage metagame has undergone many twists and turns in the intervening years, I knew that I had to play Grim Long. I was pleased to make the top 4 at the most recent StarCityGames.com Power Nine with Grim Long at its first (and hopefully not last) outing. This article will explain the tweaks I made to the deck, how to pilot it correctly, and describe the major matchups.

The legalization of Grim Tutor from Portal makes the deck vastly superior to the predecessor, Death Long. Death Wish takes half your life and three mana to find Yawgmoth’s Will (or an efficient answer to some hate card). Grim Tutor takes only three life and three mana to find Yawgmoth’s Will, permits you to run Yawgmoth’s Will in the maindeck, and can be replayed with Yawgmoth’s Will. Grim Tutor is vastly superior to Death Wish. I won’t waste too much time explaining why, simply because it’s not relevant. Just accept that it is, and we can proceed.

Aside from that, I won’t compare Grim Long to its predecessors. This deck exists in a different field and has its own mechanics. As a result, I am going to explain the deck and its internal workings from scratch.

But before I do, let me show you the decklist:

The Concept and Its Place in Vintage
Grim Long is built on two fundamental premises: that Yawgmoth’s Will is the best card in Vintage, and it’s the best engine to fuel Tendrils of Agony It provides a tremendous storm engine by replaying most of the cards you’ve already cast, and it accelerates you while protecting your storm kill.

Generally speaking, in Vintage there are four basic archetypes. First, there are the Mana Drain decks. Although they used to be purely control decks in the traditional sense, a spate of new cards (and a greater intensity in development) have pushed these decks into hybrid combo-control strategies. Gifts Ungiven is basically a card that finds Yawgmoth’s Will so that the Gifts player can replay Tinker (for Darksteel Colossus) and Time Walk — or, alternatively, just play a bunch of spells and then Burning Wish for Tendrils of Agony. The Control Slaver deck also focuses on Yawgmoth’s Will to accelerate its combo of using Mindslaver and Goblin Welder to lock the opponent down while it infinitely Mindslavers you (using Pentavus, if need be).

Both decks are blazingly fast and can combo out as early as turn 2 or 3 with a strong hand. I also lump Oath of Druid decks in the Mana Drain category, although strictly speaking, they may or may not have Mana Drain. The principle is the same — a blue-based control deck with a win condition that can come online and finish the game in the space of a turn or two.

The second archetype is the Mishra’s Workshop decks. These decks share a number of components like Goblin Welders (generally speaking) and cards like Trinisphere and Smokestack. Some of these decks run Juggernaut, but they are otherwise lumped into the category “Stax.”

There are several Stax variants out there: One of the most successful is Robert Vroman’s “Uba Stax” which uses Uba Mask, Goblin Welder, and Bazaar of Baghdad to exploit powerful synergies. Others are more traditional, like the deck that Roland Chang won the Vintage Championship with this year. That deck uses Tangle Wire, Smokestack, Crucible of Worlds, and Goblin Welder for an old-fashioned lock.

The third archetype is the category of decks I’ll just call “Null Rod” decks. These decks don’t necessarily run Null Rod, but they tend to be underpowered tempo decks like Fish. They usually run Null Rod, but sometimes they just run Chalice of the Void. They are frequently not running the format’s common acceleration like all of the Moxen.

The fourth, and final, archetype is the storm combo decks. These decks almost always run Dark Ritual. Decks like The Perfect Storm, Doomsday, and Long are classic examples of storm combo.

Obviously, there are decks that don’t fit into these categories; Worldgorger Dragon combo is a good example. But generally speaking, it is safe to break it down into those general categories.

The one unrestricted card that really does a lot of the work for this deck is Dark Ritual. Dark Ritual is the equivalent of what Mana Drain or Mishra’s Workshop in the previous archetype. Dark Ritual is the unrestricted accelerant that fuels powerful Yawgmoth’s Wills and helps build storm.

Dark Ritual is certainly the backbone of the deck — but it’s a much weaker backbone than it has ever been. Mishra’s Workshop is a reusable land. Mishra’s Workshop is no longer as vulnerable as it once was to Wasteland; the printing of Crucible of Worlds made that clear.

And these days, Mana Drain doesn’t just counter a spell; it fuels a monster Gifts Ungiven, a draw spell, or heaven forbid, Yawgmoth’s Will. The Mana Drain decks in this format — the blue-based decks that abuse Mana Drain — are faster than they have ever been.

The one advantage which storm combo has generally over the other decks is that it is built around Vintage’s most broken card pool.

Look at these cards:

Necropotence
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Mind’s Desire
Yawgmoth’s Will

That’s the reason to play this deck. True, decks like “The Perfect Storm” (a slower, two- or three-color storm combo deck) have these cards as well — but this deck gets to play with all of the broken cards, and has the best Mind’s Desires of any deck in the format.

I put those four cards in a category of their own because they, unlike almost any card in Vintage, basically assure victory upon resolution.

One of the ideas behind the deck is that you have a threshold density of insanely broken spells that you can steal games the same way that a restricted Trinisphere steals games for Stax.

A Mind’s Desire for anything more than four is almost guaranteed to put you over the top. It might automatically win you the game by revealing cards that permit you to win on the spot — but if not, it should generate enough card advantage through free spells that you should eventually be able to win.

Now that you have an idea of what this deck does and where it is situated in the metagame, I can move onto some of the specifics. Rather than present an exhaustive primer on this deck, I am going to write the rest of this article as an FAQ (frequently asked questions).

If you have questions about the history of this deck or want to know more than what is contained in this article, I strongly suggest you check out the many articles I’ve written on the archetype in the past:

1) Introduction to the original Long.dec and basic explanation of the mechanics of the deck

2) Long.dec vs. Control Matchup Analysis

3) Long.dec vs. Workshop Decks Matchup Analysis

4) Meandeath (DeathLong) Introduction and Summary of the Basic Game Plan against Control and Workshop

5) How to Mulligan with Meandeath (Deathlong) and optimize your Plays

6) Sideboarding with Deathlong (Meandeath)

The Grim Long FAQ

How did you like Imperial Seal?
Originally, I felt that Imperial Seal was simply too weak to justify playing in the deck. A not infrequent play is to use a Mystical Tutor or Vampiric Tutor on your upkeep to get a card like Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall. The fact that Imperial Seal is a sorcery-speed spell means that if you spend your turn 2 playing it and have no other threat, you basically gave your opponent a free turn to do whatever they want. And you’ve also alleviated any pressure you applied on turn 1 by causing them to use a Force of Will. By turn 3, they undoubtedly will have found another Counterspell. I also felt that Imperial Seal was just much weaker than Grim Tutor.

But taken together, the little reasons to run Imperial Seal become overwhelming. First of all, it is another tutor to find Yawgmoth’s Will, Ancestral Recall, Mind’s Desire, and answers like Hurkyl’s Recall. Second, you can play it on turn 1 to set up a really broken turn 2 play like Mind’s Desire or Duress, or just to bait some other spell so that you can get a more broken spell to resolve. Third, Imperial Seal has great synergy with cards like Draw-7s and Brainstorms. You can go: Land, Dark Ritual, Imperial Seal, Draw-7 and be guaranteed to see a card you are looking for. The same is true with Necropotence and Yawgmoth’s Bargain.

Although I was definitely skeptical at first, there was never a moment where I wanted to cut Imperial Seal after I first put it in.

For old Long.dec players, this deck represents a paradigm shift. Imperial Seal seems like a terrible addition to Deathlong, and it would be. The difference is that this deck is not Deathlong. Yawgmoth’s Will is actually less central. The quantity of Tutors means that you can abuse cards like Ancestral Recall, Necropotence and Mind’s Desire more frequently, and you should. Imperial Seal is certainly a skill-tester… But if you fetch Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, or Yawgmoth’s Will, you can rarely go wrong.

Have you considered Burning/Death Wish as a one of to grab answers to problem cards like Arcane Lab, and also to grab another Tendrils should it be removed, or if you somehow miscalculated and lost your one copy on a Will turn that didn’t finish off the opponent?
I have certainly considered it. I ran one Burning Wish for precisely that reason for some time. However, let me break down the arguments.

First of all, I think there is no reason that you can’t run answers maindeck. I think that if you are afraid of Arcane Laboratory, then run a Chain of Vapor or two maindeck.

This maindeck is very flexible, and you should view it as such. I ran one Xantid Swarm and one Hurkyl’s Recall because I felt that would be the most effective combination of maindeck “sideboard” cards. For a long time, I was running one Chain of Vapor and one Hurkyl’s Recall… And I think that Burning Wish is a poor substitute for simply having a bounce spell in the mainboard. The bounce spells are never dead, since they synergize with storm generally, and more specifically with a busted Mind’s Desire. They can also help generate mana when comboing out.

I can’t imagine a situation where you’d cut a Tendrils.

I cut Demonic Consultation from the deck because first of all, you can’t afford to play with a card like that even with two Tendrils maindeck (and I think one Tendrils is the way to go). Second, you are never going to remove a Tendrils with Necropotence, since Tendrils fuels your Necro. Third, I cut Chrome Mox from the deck, so there will be no temptation to imprint it. Fourth, the only way I can see you wanting to find another Tendrils is if you are in a Memory Jar and it is in your face-down hand… And in that case, just go off with Mind’s Desire and play Time Walk + something like Yawgmoth’s Bargain. You should have no trouble winning before your opponent gets another turn. Fifth, if you’re running a card because you miscalculated, why not just make sure you get it right the first time?

And finally, even if your Will didn’t finish off your opponent, it likely put you so far ahead that you can win shortly after (or at least stay ahead of your opponent). For the uninformed, Yawgmoth’s Will is often called “Yawgmoth’s Win” because a Vintage player rarely loses after it resolves.

I don’t think that running a Burning Wish maindeck is a bad idea; I just think it’s very inefficient, given how tight the deck already is. I’d rather just run the card that Burning Wish is going to find in the mainboard, and my tournament experience reflects this. There was never a time I wanted Burning Wish.

How many Grim Tutors do you feel are needed? Having access to them in the early game is obviously important, but four seems to flood your hand. As you ran three at Chicago, I’m guessing you felt that’s the right number, but I’d like to hear how you settled on that.
It isn’t so much that I don’t want to see Grim Tutor so much as it is too expensive to run four of. Grim Tutor eats away at your mana base pretty viciously. It is not particularly easy to cast and can often eat up an entire turn just playing it if you don’t have Dark Ritual.

The reason I went down to three Grim Tutor is because I realized after some serious testing that this deck has far more ways to find Yawgmoth’s Will than any Long variant before.

Consider:
Yawgmoth’s Will is now in the maindeck
Demonic Tutor
Mystical Tutor
Vampiric Tutor
Imperial Seal
X Grim Tutors

As compared with:
4 Death Wish
1 Burning Wish

And in original Long.dec:
4 Burning Wish

In testing, I had too many tutors and not enough ways to capitalize on this fact. I decided that I would rather have Regrowth than the fourth Grim Tutor, because Regrowth provided another way to replay Ancestral Recall (and a backup way to grab Yawgmoth’s Will if it is countered). Testing with this configuration proved satisfying.

You have twice as many ways to find Yawgmoth’s Will as before — do we really need more?

Cabal Ritual has been at times amazing, and others a bit lackluster. I’ve currently switched one for the Chrome Mox in the board. What are your opinions on this?
I added Cabal Ritual into the deck for one important reason: I felt that the deck needed another way to capitalize after resolving a Draw-7. Playing a Draw-7 and then passing the turn is often likely to cause you to lose — especially against a control deck like Gifts or Control Slaver.

Imagine this scenario:

Turn 1:
Land, Duress

Turn 2:
Land, Dark Ritual, Wheel of Fortune

You have one black mana floating. If you see one Mox in your Wheel of Fortune hand with Cabal Ritual, you may very well be able to just play the Cabal Ritual for Threshold and win on the spot.

The weekend before StarCityGames Chicago, Randy Buehler test ran the deck at a local tournament in Washington and won yet another piece of power. When asked, he said that he never cast Cabal Ritual without threshold, but could see going down to one in the maindeck. I honestly wasn’t sure what the proper number of Cabal Rituals was — but once I felt like cutting Chrome Mox and Crop Rotation, the two Cabal Rituals became a perfect fit. Randy pointed out that there may be situations where you want to tutor for Cabal Ritual, and I found he was right. Therefore, I would never run this deck without at least one.

Chrome Mox, I was frustrated to discover, just ate up too many business spells. Old DeathLong loved Chrome Mox because you could throw a dead Wish on it… But there are no dead cards in this deck. If you’re imprinting an Elvish Spirit Guide, then the only benefit of Chrome Mox is that you add to your storm count.

The only reason I ran Chrome Mox in my board was to sideboard in against Stax on the play. I’m not sure it’s worth the spot, but I can’t think of anything better.

One other thing to remember about Cabal Ritual: even if it doesn’t have threshold on the way “in,” it mostly likely will on the way “out.” What I mean by that is that if you play an early Cabal Ritual, say like this:

Turn 1:
Mox, Land, Cabal Ritual, Necropotence to which your opponent plays Force of Will…

A few turns later, you may play Yawgmoth’s Will and your first spell after the Will may be Cabal Ritual with threshold. So even if you don’t play Cabal Ritual with threshold on the way “in,” meaning before Yawgmoth’s Will, it will often have threshold the turn you resolve Yawgmoth’s Will.

Why? Because Yawgmoth’s Will is not something you just play immediately. It is something you build up to. You wear down your opponent’s resistance, and in the process you build up a graveyard with Brainstorms, threats, Duresses, and even Dark Rituals.

Also remember that old Long variants couldn’t use Cabal Ritual very efficiently because the Wishes removed themselves from game. I ran one Cabal Ritual in my first DeathLong variant that I ran in the Waterbury of January, 2004. (For the uniformed, the Waterbury is a very large quarterly Vintage tournament in Waterbury, Connecticut.) I played the deck to the astonishment of all immediately after Burning Wish and Lion’s Eye Diamond was restricted. I was 4-0 in the Swiss until I lost to Jacob Orlove and Rich Shay…. And my match loss to Jacob was due to a mistake where I played a mid-game Dark Ritual into a Chalice for one. I needed the Dark Ritual so that I could up storm later in the game.

How does this deck differ to Deathlong in terms of the way it’s played? What you do if one of your Win conditions gets removed. Is the deck better without the extended deck (sideboard)?
There are two really important things to say about this.

Taking the last question first, the deck isn’t necessarily better, but it can’t remain static. If you are considering playing this deck, you would make a mistake just netdecking what I played in Chicago. Death Wish permits a lot of inherent resilience to hate that doesn’t really require much metagaming. With this deck, you need to pack your answers into your maindeck, so you need to be thoughtful about the sorts of solutions you want to include. You need to anticipate what your opponents will think your deck has in the way of solutions and tweak correspondingly.

In terms of how you play it, the deck is significantly better. You have to mulligan less, and you don’t eat away at your life quite so quickly now that you don’t have to rely on Death Wish. Death Wish for Xantid Swarm in Death Long cost half your life; with this deck, it only costs three life.

A hand like this would be wretched in Death Long:

2 Death Wish
2 Dark Ritual
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Mox Pearl
2 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine

But substitute the two Death Wish for Grim Tutor and you have a keepable hand, not an auto-mulligan.

The Old Long had to play cards like Brainstorms and Draw-7s and other threats before really being able to use the Death Wish – > Yawg Will play… But The use of Grim Tutor over Death Wish permits you to Tutor up cards like Ancestral Recall, Mind’s Desire, and even cards like Tinker before you ever want to see your game-ending Yawgmoth’s Will. Overall, that means that this is a much stronger deck.

As I’ve already said, less games need to be concluded with Yawgmoth’s Will because the tutors permit you to abuse Mind’s Desire more as well as find and play Ancestral Recall with much greater frequency.

I’m interested that you consider Ancestral to be more important to the deck now. Do you generally use it as a draw spell, or simply bait that’s great to Will back? I tend to use the Portal tutors to set up a Desire or to protect a Draw-7 for the win. Fetching Recall has always seemed a bit weak to me, as I’d rather spend a little more to see twice as many cards — or for that matter, I’d simply Will.
Sometimes it simply has to do with the quantity of mana available to you.

For instance, let’s say you have played two threats on Turn 1 and 2 respectively, and both have been countered.

On turn 3, your hand and board look like this:

Gemstone Mine (with two counters)
City of Brass
Underground Sea
Mox Pearl

And your hand is:
Grim Tutor
Elvish Spirit Guide

You have worn your opponent down and they have been forced to counter you Turn 1 and 2 threats. You can Grim Tutor on this turn and play a three-mana spell — but if you get Yawgmoth’s Will, there is nothing in your graveyard that would permit you to start up the storm chain again since you would be out of mana. You could get a Draw-7…. But your opponent is spent and getting a Draw-7 would refill their hand. It would only be worth it if you would win on the spot.

On the other hand, you can get Ancestral Recall. Ancestral is going to keep you ahead of your opponent, and will likely draw you one or two more threats.

As far as I’m concerned, it depends on how fast you think you need to react. If you think you can get Yawgmoth’s Will and play it next turn for the win, then by all means do so. But if you feel that waiting a turn is too risky, then getting Ancestral Recall and resolving it may well be the correct play.

Ancestral Recall is the most efficient threat you have, so you can tutor it up and then play two threats on another turn with only four mana. That alone makes it very strong bait. However, I tend to use it as a genuine draw spell. I think that Draw-7s, including the superior Tinker/Jar combination, are very risky. Helping your opponent see seven new cards is risky no matter what the scenario is.

In the scenario above, Tinker may be the correct play only because you have Elvish Sprit Guide. However, it is not inconceivable that if you have already played two threats and fueled them with mana of some sort (probably a Ritual or two), you probably don’t have much left in your hand beyond the Grim Tutor.

Smmenen-san, I would like to ask you one thing: why don’t you use Fastbond? Your mana base allows you to run it, and Fastbond + Draw-7 on the first turn (well, not so exceptional) gives you a so huge advantage your opponent will have a hard time to recover. I actually really like your Draw-7 list (the old one), and while enjoying it I am continually trying to change some cards to improve it.

Regarding the lands, you have:
1 Underground Sea
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Forbidden Orchard
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass

What about this combination?
1 Tolarian Academy (of course)
3 City of Brass
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta

You lose the multicolor lands to get the fetchlands. I find Fetch very good in this deck, since they have a very good synergy with Brainstorm, and thin you deck to allow you to draw the needed card on your next Draw-7. They allow you to get the right color at the right time, maybe stronger in front of Wasteland and are re-usable after a Timetwister. Shouldn’t this make GrimLong more stable?
At StarCityGames.com Richmond, I immediately began sleeving up Grim Long and I tested with both a mana base that looks something like what you have and with the mana base I now have.

If there is one thing I learned at GenCon, it’s that mana bases simply don’t matter as much for non-Mana Drain decks. Look at the GenCon Top 8; those mana bases are terrible! Hale ran five-color Dragon, while Andy ran Gifts Ungiven on almost no basics and only fourteen lands.

Mana base stability only matters for certain decks. The marginal benefit of added colors and color consistency is far, far more important than vulnerability to Wasteland in a deck like this, and the GenCon Top 8 verifies this.

I think the compelling reason to test Fetchlands was to see how it might support Threshold with Cabal Ritual. Unfortunately, I think that potential upside is very marginal.

The net effect of using Fetchlands is to make the deck less stable, because a deck like this relies on power for stability. Power in Magic is derived, in part, through additional colors. Being able to cast Xantid Swarm or Wheel of Fortune at will is important.

Now it’s possible that a multicolor fetchland mana base is viable for this deck, but I never discovered it. The volcanic Island and Tropical Island underscore my point. Suppose you open a hand that has Volcanic Island as its only mana and you’re holding Duress, Dark Ritual, Necropotence? With only eleven mana, it is to be expected that you are sometimes going to have one-land hands. Having three lands that do not produce black is not acceptable to me.

Why don’t you agree with Team GWS, who says that Draw-7s are absolutely terrible, and just win-more cards”?
Because they aren’t “win-more” cards.

First of all, I take issue with the whole concept of a “win-more” card. You want to include all of the cards that maximize or optimize your chances of winning. Anything that helps you win-more by definition assists in maximizing your ability to win. A “win-more” card means “a card that is not necessary in order to win.”

An example of this, in my view, is running a maindeck Tendrils of Agony maindeck in Meandeck Gifts. Instead, I run Burning Wish. I have never encountered a situation with Meandeck Gifts where I needed the Tendrils to win. It would make winning easier, but never was it actually necessary.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the Draw-7s are:

Wheel of Fortune
Timetwister
Tinker
Memory Jar
Windfall

They are called Draw-7s because they basically draw you seven new cards.

Admittedly, Draw-7s are much weaker than they’ve ever been… But that doesn’t mean we should throw them out. What it means is that we need to be more judicious in choosing which to include and in deciding how to play them.

The strongest Draw-7 is now Tinker by far. There are two important reasons why this is the case: First, you can Tinker up Memory Jar and then pass the turn. Then the opponent will pass the turn back and you may untap and crack the Memory Jar with full mana available. Second, Memory Jar doesn’t refill your opponents’ hand in a way that will enable a Gifts or a Slaver player to go off.

To illustrate the danger of Draw-7s, here is one of the first test games I played in preparing for StarCityGames Chicago.

I was testing against teammate Joe Bushman and I won the roll. When we test, we alternate back and forth. This was game one of our testing session that night and he was playing a Slaver list that made top 8 at GenCon.

Turn 1
City of Brass, Mox Emerald, Time Walk

I untapped and played:
Gemstone Mine, Dark Ritual, Windfall.

I looked through Joe’s graveyard and I saw a Mox Emerald and Mana Crypt and nothing else relevant.

I draw:
Necropotence
Dark Ritual
Duress
Imperial Seal
Three irrelevant cards

What do you do? Remember, Joe hasn’t had a turn yet.

My first thought was to Duress him and pass the turn, thus setting up a Turn 2 Necropotence. Necropotence is very difficult for a control player to beat, and if it resolves, I almost always win. But there’s one risk: if I Duress him, he will draw one more card and be able to possibly Brainstorm into another Force of Will if I take a Force of Will.

I reasoned that it would be better to Duress and then Necropotence in the same turn, if my goal is to resolve Necro. Since Joe had not yet had a turn,, I felt that there was little risk he would do anything threatening. Therefore, I decided to play Imperial Seal for another threat to make sure that I won before he would get a second turn.

What happened next blew my mind.

Joe played Mox, Land, Time Walk. He then Vampiric Tutored for Black Lotus and played Yawgmoth’s Will. He replayed the Mana Crypt and Mox that Windfall had dumped into his graveyard, and Vampiric Tutored for Tolarian Academy, Brainstormed into it, and played Academy and Time Walk again.

He did some other things I don’t remember and then took his third turn in a row. This time he Tinkered up Mindslaver and Slaved me. Remember that Necro in my hand? He played it for me and then ate all of my life with it.

Joe killed me basically on his first turn, and he was greatly aided by my Windfall in more ways than one.

Two important lessons:

1) Draw-7s are extremely dangerous against Control Slaver and Gifts decks. At GenCon in the qualifier tournament, the Swiss champion played TPS against me while I was playing Gifts Ungiven. He played a Draw-7 on Turn 2 that won me the game.

2) Control Slaver is a very, very scary deck. This is your worst matchup — and although it’s highly winnable (and even significantly favorable), it requires such a level of intensity and perfection that the matchup actually is even. The Control Slaver player doesn’t have hard decisions at all, and you will have many. This makes for a very tough match.

So to summarize: Draw-7s are not “win more” cards, but they are risky and require precision and forethought.

But even if you decide that Draw-7s are not for you, I can not understand why anyone would cut Tinker/Memory Jar. Memory Jar is very castable in this deck off of Dark Ritual, Mox, Elvish Spirit Guide, or two Dark Rituals; Tinker is even easier to cast. Not running that combo seems as bad as not running Ancestral Recall.

I’m not sure if Steve agrees with this, but I think you should look at Draw-7s as a back up plan. It’s great to resolve one on the first turn, but it should be your main goal, since it easily disrupted. But it’s the best thing you can wish for. After playing out your whole hand and seeing all your bombs get dealt with, the Draw-7s refill your hand for just a lousy three mana. (Five mana if it’s a Jar, but Jar wins more games than any other Draw-7.)

My question is, why not maindeck Darksteel Colossus? Didn’t you expect a lot of Aggro-Control… Or do you think you don’t need the Colossus to win against it?
This was something I struggled with until the last couple of testing sessions.

On paper, there are very compelling reasons to run Darksteel Colossus. It’s is a very powerful card to Tinker up, and almost every Vintage deck that runs Tinker should consider running Colossus. In fact, Tinker–Colossus can be thrown in almost any Vintage deck, including Stax, Fish, Slaver, Gifts, and almost anything that has Moxen and blue spells.

One of the powerful things about running so many Tutors is that you have that many Tinkers. Against Fish, there is almost no better threat you can run than the Tinker–Colossus combo; it’s easy to resolve and doesn’t get hosed by cards like Null Rod. They can drop a turn 2 Null Rod, and you can go, “Elvish Spirit Guide, tap two lands, Tinker” and win in two turns.

There are two important reasons why I chose not to run Colossus maindeck.

First, Fish is the decks best matchup. This is the matchup you want to play against the most. This fact may seem counterintuitive, but in my experience, the matchups run like this:

Best matchups to worst:
Best
Fish
Combo
Stax
Mana Drain Combo-Control (Control Slaver and Gifts)
Worst

Combo is almost a bye for this deck, except for Belcher — which can be a really tough matchup, depending on who wins the coin flip. The matchup I fear the most with this deck is Mana Drain-based decks like Slaver and Gifts, for reasons I’ll explain later.

Fish has such a terrible clock that even cut off of a number of resources, you should have little trouble winning before they can finish you off. Duress will always be able to take Null Rod and Force of Will and the only really threatening card they run is Chalice of the Void — but even then, it is a small matter to play around it with the mana diversity and “Chalice for one” is harder for them to cast (although it’s more devastating_.

Mostly I’m interested in how you play the Tutors themselves. I’ve found that they just seem to chew up too much mana when I’m not already going nuts unless played very carefully. I like putting Cabal Ritual in and taking Chrome Mox out especially for this reason, I hate looking at a hand and knowing I can get to nine storm and tendrils in hand with BBB floating.
The cards you tutor for are highly context-sensitive. Cards I frequently tutor for are:

Black Lotus
Ancestral Recall
Mind’s Desire
Yawgmoth’s Will

Almost all of your tutors get these cards. The card you tutor for depends upon what you think can resolve, what you are trying to do, and how much mana you have.

At SCG Chicago, I opened a hand like this against Oath:
Mox Emerald
Sol Ring
Tolarian Academy
Brainstorm
Windfall
Dark Ritual
Yawgmoth’s Bargain

Turn 1:
I went Mox Emerald, Sol Ring, Academy, Time Walk and Brainstorm. I Brainstormed into more black spells, including Vampiric Tutor and Grim Tutor.

I played Windfall and he Force of Willed it.

Turn 2:
I had to draw through the last card I Brainstormed back, but then I drew Gemstone Mine.

I played Gemstone Mine and I Duressed him and took a Mana Drain. He played Oath on his turn.

Turn 3:
On my upkeep, I was going to Vampiric Tutor for Black Lotus; I saw that he had no Mana Drain, so I was going to drop Yawgmoth’s Bargain and even be able to Grim Tutor for Yawgmoth’s Will as backup. Unfortunately, he Force of Willed my Vampiric Tutor but even so, I was still able to drop the Bargain and win though.

In testing, I had a hand like this in one of my games against Joe Bushman:

I played a Turn 1 threat, which got Force of Willed, and my hand turned to crap. I drew Imperial Seal on the third turn, and decided against using it for anything simply because I felt like this game was pretty lost anyway, and my best bet would be to draw some threats and then use the Tutor to find another threat which I could then play all in one turn.

After three more turns, my hand looked like this:

Hurkyl’s Recall
Chain of Vapor
Mox Pearl
Mana Crypt

And I had a Tolarian Academy in play.

My next draw was Mind’s Desire. Thinking about it, I should have Imperial Sealed for it — but fortunately, I drew it, which made it all the more obvious that I should have Sealed. Alas, at that point in my testing, I was not attuned to thinking of Mind’s Desire as an Imperial Seal target. It was a revelation to me.

Your list is only a few cards different from your last one. Because you already have written another article on GrimLong to SCG, you should point only the main differences with the old list.
The last list I posted on this site was flawed in one important way: It had two Tendrils of Agony. The most cursory testing proved this to be a horrible flaw. Drawing a Tendrils when you don’t need it is pretty bad. I think the list I posted was otherwise pretty solid, but Defense Grid is just not enough anymore.

The list I posted was just untuned because it was a straight conversion from Deathlong to Grim Long. The changes I have made sense reflect an attempt to optimize some of the new synergies in Grim Long, such as the inclusion of Regrowth.

The second-least discussed topic is mulliganing. I tend to mulligan extremely aggressively with combo, as thanks to Draw-7s it’s entirely possible to win turn 1 off a four-card hand. But just keeping hands with bombs and mana isn’t necessarily enough. Do you keep the Black Lotus, Wheel of Fortune, four-land hand against a deck you know runs Force of Will?
I have discussed the mulligan extensively in an article on Deathlong (Meandeath), and what I said there applies here: the key is to think about all of the factors which are in play.

Let me throw out an example — your hand is what was given above:

Wheel of Fortune
Black Lotus
Gemstone Mine
Underground Sea
City of Brass
City of Brass

Now, here are the considerations you need to think about:

Is your opponent playing with Force of Wills? If you know that your opponent is not playing with Force of Wills, then this question becomes pretty simple — you can play it and it will resolve.

Did your opponent mulligan? If they did mulligan, then that slightly decreases the chance they have Force of Will, and it should increase your willingness to keep a hand like that.

Is your opponent playing first? If you are on the draw, then you will see more cards more quickly, making it more likely that you will be able to follow up on Turn 2 with another threat if the Wheel is countered.

Is your opponent a strong player? If you have played game one or game two, did you see your opponent make mistakes? If your opponent is a weak player, then that would make me slightly more willing to keep a hand like this. If your opponent is highly competent, then that would make me less likely to keep it.

Who won game one? If you won game one and this is game two, then I would be more inclined to keep this hand because you can play the odds. The odds of your opponent having Force of Will are only 40%. Therefore, you should be more likely to play the odds and hope it pays off.

Do you have a mana-stable hand? If your hand has mana stability, then you can top deck threats which become immediately useful if the Wheel is countered. That means I would be more likely to keep the hand. For instance, suppose that instead of having four lands, your hand was:

Wheel of Fortune
Black Lotus
Mind’s Desire
Memory Jar
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Grim Tutor

That hand is far riskier than the hypothetical hand proposed — because if the Wheel is countered, you need not only castable threats, but you need mana as well!

All of these factors, and more, should go into your decision making. When you are actually in a tournament, you should consider each factor a plus or a minus that should incline you towards either keeping the hand or mulliganing it. Sometimes, each of the factors will weigh towards keeping the hand or mulliganing it. For example, if your opponent has mulliganed to five and made several blatant play mistakes game one, then I’d probably keep it. But if your opponent keeps a seven-card hand with a big grin, and played flawlessly and won game one, I’d probably mulligan that hand.

As a general principle though, I think it is a bad idea to keep a hand like this against control:

Black Lotus
Mana Crypt
Elvish Spirit Guide
City of Brass
Mox Pearl
Mox Emerald
Windfall

This kind of hand is begging to get Force of Willed and then simply lose. I would probably only keep it if most of the factors I’ve identified suggest that I should.

I think these suggestions are great for a starting point. What I would really like to see is matchup analysis against the top decks in the format such as:

Stax
Gifts
Slaver

Then, ideally you’d move on from there with sideboard for those matchups and continue with the sideboard slots you recommend changing. Also, what do you feel about the singleton Xantid Swarm slot, and would it become something better and more useful in the future?
I’ve already talked a bit about the Gifts and Slaver matchup, and it’s really important that you play very carefully and have experience with the match. You need to have a sense of which threats are critical and what sort of mana requirements you are going to need to execute your threats; having a multiple Gemstone Mine draw against a Slaver deck is going to be problematic.

The way to beat these control decks is not simply to just overrun them, but to wear them down a bit and then overpower them. It’s like hand wrestling with someone who is very strong. You are stronger, but it is going to be exhausting pinning them down.

Slaver and Gifts will counter you and try and combo out before you can. You must avoid walking into a Mana Drain. To win, you are going to need to be thinking ahead: you need to factor in the consequences of what will happen if a spell gets countered, and you need to also consider the likelihood of a spell getting countered. As such, it’s very important for you to pay attention to the number of cards they have in hand. If you have experience with Gifts and Slaver, then this is much easier to do, but if you don’t use math.

Your opponent has a 40% chance of having a Force of Will in their opening hand; if they Brainstorm, that increases by a little bit. If your opponent has Force of Willed already, then do not assume that they have another one next turn.

For example, suppose the game goes like this:

Turn 1:

Grim Long:
Mox, Mox, Land, Draw-7:
Force of Will, pitching a blue spell.

Slaver:
Fetchland for Volcanic Island, and Goblin Welder (four cards in their hand)

Now think: why would they play Goblin Welder?

That means they have no Brainstorm and probably have Thirst. That means if they probably also have a Mox, which they forgot to play. I would assume that they do not have another Force of Will with great confidence.

Turn 2:
You Brainstorm and set yourself up for a solid turn 3 play.

Slaver:
Land, Mox, Thirst for Knowledge. They discard Pentavus.

At this point, I would continue with my assumption that they do not have another Force of Will. It is possible that they do, but I would say it is less than 50%. It is very likely, however, that they have a Mana Drain. Now is your time to go for it.

It is more likely, however, that they would play their second turn like this:

Slaver:
Land, Mox, pass. They should have three cards in their hand. If you think they are setting up a Thirst For Knowledge, then I would play as if they do not have Mana Drain.

If they are playing Thirst — which you assume because they played Welder — then that means several things:

First of all, in a three card hand, they have a Thirst. Second, they probably have an artifact. If they don’t have an artifact, then there is a chance they’ll be forced to discard two cards to Thirst, and therefore their Drain is less threatening. I would not presume one way or the other if they have Mana Drain in this situation, simply because it doesn’t matter. If they do, they Drain you and there is nothing you can do about it. Not playing the spell would permit them to Thirst immediately and potentially save them some time.

I could go through lots of illustrations like this. The point is that these decisions are highly context-sensitive. Every little thing matters: if they Brainstormed, did they get to shuffle afterward? How much acceleration did they play? Did they mulligan? You can make some base assumptions at the start of the game and then adjust them as the game progresses. That’s how I play it anyway.

Against Stax, however, you don’t have to worry about countermagic. It is the opposite experience.

Stax will hit your mana pretty hard, but it won’t limit your threats at all. This is both a burden and tremendous boon. It’s a burden, because you will literally be inundated with options… But the upside is that it is a complicated Mensa puzzle, but one that is eminently winnable.

People forget that Trinisphere is restricted — a decision I still consider a mistake — but the fact of the matter is that I played DeathLong at GenCon, a Friday night top 8 in an eighty-man field where lots of decks had four Trinispheres in August of 2004. I felt that I had a chance with Deathlong against TriniStax.

Compared to Trinisphere, every other lock part looks pathetic. Sphere of Resistance and Chalice of the Void are simply not strong substitutes for the power of Trinisphere. Uba Mask helps Grim Long out a lot — Brainstorm becomes Ancestral.

My sideboard plan against all Stax decks was as follows:

+ 2 Hurkyl’s Recalls (one maindeck)
+ 2 Elvish Spirit Guides (two maindeck)

That way, post-sideboard I have:

3 Hurkyl’s Recall
4 Elvish Spirit Guides

That only works for one tournament, but the idea is this: Why would Stax ever play Chalice for two? I have almost nothing in my deck that costs two. Chalice for one stops a lot, and Chalice for zero stops a lot. After that, Chalice for three is the best since it stops Will and Draw-7s. I can still drop stuff into Chalices and Desire and try to win with three-mana spells if Chalice 0 and 1 are in play, but you can’t if Chalice 3 is down.

Therefore, the logical thing to do is to play Hurkyl’s Recall. Chalice 2 cuts Stax out of Spheres and Null Rods if they drop it early.

I have tested all the Stax matchups quite a bit since I thought Stax would be predominant. My opinion of the Grim Long Stax matchup is pretty straightforward. Stax doesn’t stop any of the spells you can play – it just attacks the mana. I am much, much more afraid of Control Slaver and Gifts because they can counter you and the combo out first.

Against Stax, they can do nothing if you go first and they can’t counter your answers either. The trick is to be smart about the answers. I knew that people wouldn’t know my list and therefore I could get away with just Hurkyl’s Recall against Stax. I was right.

I played Stax in the top 4 of Chicago and lost because my opponent had Turn 1 Trinisphere in both games two and three… And I still almost broke it. In game one, I made a pretty big play mistake and as a result I was locked under:

Trinisphere
Sphere of Resistance
Chalice 1 and 0

I misplayed twice in the mid-game. I misused a Windfall, and I also played too many Moxen — so when he played Gorilla Shaman, which I foresaw, I had to waste my Hurkyl’s Recall on my own Moxen. He dropped Trinisphere immediately afterward. I had Brainstormed into a ton of land, so I knew I could play under it, but he then dropped Smokestack. I forced him to add a counter and knew that my only game plan was to force him to sacrifice the Stack before he found Crucible. I figured my chances of breaking this lock were about 20%. He fed the Stack for about ten turns and then sacrificed it. That turn, he said he drew the Crucible (he also had no mana to play it), so I played three lands and Regrew the Hurkyl’s Recall, which I played on his next turn’s end step.

I had little trouble winning at that point. Sphere and Chalices didn’t cut off Hurkyl’s or Regrowth.

In Game Two I kept this hand on the draw:

City of Brass
Sapphire
Mana Crypt
Hurkyl’s Recall
Windfall
Two irrelevant cards

He opens with a turn 1 Trinisphere.

I stay in the game, and eventually I get two Elvish Spirit Guides and Hurkyl’s — but I made some mistakes, discarding my Tendrils on Turn 1 which got Tormod’s Crypted, so I had no way to win even if I could break his lock (which I was otherwise in a position to do). I was just playing to see what else was in his deck at this point.

Game three was really disappointing. I felt very strong. I was on the play and packing tons of hate.

I draw my hand and see:
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Sol Ring
Dark Ritual
Elvish Spirit Guide
Regrowth (I should have sideboarded this out)
Tendrils of Agony

I can’t keep that hand.

I mulligan into a six-card hand with no mana.

I mulligan into a five-card hand with:

Gemstone Mine
Brainstorm
Ancestral Recall
Two irrelevant cards

I go, “Gemstone, Ancestral” — and of course he goes, “Workshop, Trinisphere.” Soon he got all the lock components down.

Eventually, I built up a hand with, “Land, Elvish Spirit Guide, Elvish Spirit Guide, Hurkyl’s Recall”… But I had nothing to follow it up with. If I had Black Lotus and a Draw-7 or Mana Crypt, Mox, and a Draw-7, I could have won… But I didn’t have enough time, as he beat me down with Shaman.

So I got Trinisphered all three games, and if I hadn’t have gotten 3sphered on Turn 1 in both games 2 and 3, I think I would have had a real shot — especially if I didn’t have to mulligan to five in game three.

If I had won that match, I would have had an epic match against Vroman. He knows what he needs to do to beat me: he needs to rely on Null Rods and Chalices. The problem is, I think my strategy trumps his. His deck doesn’t attack the board sufficiently because he has no Sphere of Resistance. Therefore, I can just rely on Hurkyl’s and Elvish Spirit Guides to clear the way and then combo out.

I’m not being sarcastic or facetious when I say that Stax is a pleasure to play against. It is a mental relief from the sort of stress involved when you’re playing against Control decks. There are more options, but less decision trees. It’s more like complicated goldfishing than actual Magic. Even though it would be tough, I would enjoy playing nothing but Stax all day.

The Stax list that won GenCon has absolutely nothing on Grim Long. Roland only ran four cards that are relevant in the maindeck: One Trinisphere and three Spheres of Resistance. He can Tinker up the Trinisphere, but he has no Chalices or Null Rods maindeck. I found in ten games of testing that I beat Roland Chang Stax 10-0.

Stax decks are tuned and ready to beat Control decks. Imagine this hand from Stax:

Mishra’s Workshop
Mox Pearl
Smokestack
Crucible of Worlds
Tangle Wire
Gemstone Mine
Goblin Welder

A fantastic hand, no? But that hand autoloses to Grim Long. Yet it is precisely the kinds of hands that opponents will keep against you all day when they don’t know what you are playing.

The bottom line is that you need to test the matchups. Without experience, you simply cannot play a deck like this. Each card has important nuances that require past experience to draw upon in deciding what the correct play is.

The upside is that this deck is here to stay. Grim Long is a real contender. I have waited a long time to play with Grim Tutors and that day has arrived. We have a good combo deck to play with, let’s take advantage of it.

Before I leave, though, there is one thing I want to impress upon you once more: This deck should be continually evolving. You need to surprise opponents with different solutions. If your opponent expects Hurkyl’s Recall and you play Rebuild on them, that’s probably enough to win a game and possibly the match. Continue to change cards and play around with the mainboard. Have fun and good luck!