So Many Insane Plays – The Leyline Wars

Authors Note: I was in the final stages of polishing this article when the DCI announced the new B&R list changes. There wasn’t enough time to give the new changes the discussion they are due, so I’ll save that for next week. The subject of this article remains unaffected by the changes, so enjoy!

Vintage right now is incredibly exciting. The metagame is in a tremendous state of flux and no one can predict where the format will find equilibrium, if it even will. The large-scale tournament scene has slowed a bit, to allow for the Legacy Grand Prix. But the local tournament scene is bustling with energy and enthusiasm. Consequently, the format is defined by tremendous information gaps, perhaps better described as information chaos.

Any given local metagame has its own idea of what’s good – with Ichorid performing very well in certain locales and Flash doing well in others, and other decks doing well in other places. But none of this information is shared or experienced by the Vintage metagame as a whole. It’s true of Magic generally that players only agree when they have the same experience. It’s the large scale, major events that tend to provide the same experience to most of the players. What’s more, it’s only when we see a convergence in most of the major Vintage tournaments – similar results coming out of the Wateburys, the SCG P9s, and the Vintage Championship that you have anything resembling a consensus. It is my opinion, however, that Flash and Ichorid are upper tier decks. These are some of the best decks in the format.

In spite of all the uncertainty one thing is clear: Leyline of the Void has joined Force of Will as the epoxy that holds this format together.

For well over a decade, Force of Will has been the most played card in Vintage. It is a disruption spell of unparalleled magnitude. Unlike Duress, Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, or Tormod’s Crypt, Force of Will can stop your opponent before you’ve even had a turn. Backed up with cards like Mana Drain, Force of Will has been the defining card in the format.

What’s so unusual about today’s metagame is that Force of Will is less relevant. Ichorid is a deck that does its best to ignore Force of Will, since any relevant spell it plays (the few spells it actually plays) will be preceded by Cabal Therapy. The strategies that are burgeoning in Vintage have a new vulnerability: Leyline of the Void. These emerging archetypes both abuse and fear Leyline of the Void. Many of the struggles in Vintage will now revolve around the interplay of Leyline of the Void and the fight to remove it. To illustrate this dynamic, I have a feature bout for you to enjoy.

In today’s fight, we’ll put rookie Hulk Flash, fresh out the Legacy development farm, against the new and improved Vintage Ichorid, now faster than ever thanks to Future Sight. I plucked these two contenders out of Vintage tournament standings from the last two weekends.

In one corner, Vintage Hulk Flash. Ryan Trepanier, hot off of his Flash Top 8 at Grand Prix: Columbus, returned to his roots and piloted a Vintage Hulk Flash list to 4th Place in a 57-man tournament in his native Canada just last weekend. Here’s what he played:

On the other side of the ring, Ichorid. While many of us were slinging cards at Grand Prix Columbus, Vintage veteran and off-and-on Pro Tour player Rich Shay piloted his Ichorid list to 3rd place in popular New England tournament:

Note that Rich uses the Flame-Kin Zealot kill that is now growing in popularity in the Standard format, but has been widely touted in Vintage since Future Sight was spoiled. For those of you who play Standard, this deck should look familiar.

While I think there are ways that both decklists could be tweaked, they have proven themselves in combat and should provide plenty of insight into the new vintage dynamic that I call the "Leyline Wars."

Place yer bets!

Game 1

Ichorid wins the die roll 18 to 11.

Let’s take a look at Ichorid’s draw:

Dryad Arbor
Bazaar of Baghdad
Flame-Kin Zealot
Leyline of the Void
Flame-Kin Zealot
Bazaar of Baghdad
Chalice of the Void

The cardinal rule for playing Ichorid is to mulligan into Bazaar of Baghdad. Bazaar of Baghdad is the engine that fuels the insanity.

It plays out like this:

1) Mulligan into Bazaar and play it. Use the Serum Powder to help you find Bazaar if necessary.

2) Begin to dredge using Bazaar. On your second turn’s upkeep, you should be able to dredge up a significant part of your deck.

3) Flashback Cabal Therapy to clear out counterspells and removal

4) Dread Return. Flashback Dread Return on Cephalid Sage to dredge the rest of your deck. Then Dread Return Flame-Kin Zealot and attack with 10+ Bridge tokens to kill your opponent.

The problem with this hand and this list is that Rich Shay has gone below what I consider to be the minimum number of dredgers: 14. He has 12. In my extensive testing experience, running less than 14 dredgers unacceptably increases the number of games where you do not discard a dredger on turn 1.

The cost of this is very high. Manaless Ichorid can be built, post Future Sight, to achieve a turn 2 goldfish, barring mulligans to oblivion in search of Bazaar. Bazaaring on turn 1 and not discarding a dredger doubles the length of the game. Running those two additional dredgers to ensure that you don’t have that problem is definitely worth the two slots it costs.

On the other hand, Rich has added other elements to his deck that are included for good reasons. Dryad Arbor is here so that you can easily support a larger sideboard. Many other Manaless Ichorid list were forced to dedicate their entire sideboard to fighting Leyline of the Void, with 7 lands, 4 Chain of Vapor, and 4 Emerald Charm. Arbor Dryad serves double duty. It can provide you mana to play Emerald Charm, a forest to fuel Reverent Silence, and it can be sacrificed to the Dread Return and Cabal Therapy engine to generate men with Bridge and murder your opponent. By running Dryad Arbor, Rich found room for Contagion’s in the sideboard as well. Recent discussion on the mana drain suggests that the deck should also run Ancient Grudge as an answer to cards like Ensnaring Bridge and Platinum Angel.

So, how good is this hand?

Let’s take a look at it:

2 Bazaars
This is excellent. The general rule with the pre-Future Sight Ichorid lists was that double Bazaar put you into a turn 3 kill. Since post-Future Sight Ichorid now has a turn 2 goldfish, having an extra Bazaar helps protect you from Wasteland, but also helps us compensate from the lack of dredgers.

0 Dredgers
This is a serious problem. However, it is somewhat offset by the fact that we have two Bazaars and a lot of disruption.

2 Flame-Kin Zealot
These cards are dead junk that you typically draw with Ichorid.

1 Chalice of the Void
1 Leyline of the Void

At most, Ichorid lists run Chalice of the Void, Leyline of the Void, Unmask, and Cabal Therapy as their unrestricted disruption suite. With the recent changes in the Vintage metagame and the introduction of Future Sight, Unmask was cut to make room for other cards and Leyline of the Void has new importance. Having both Chalice and Leyline here should help compensate for the lack of Dredgers.

Specifically, Hulk Flash cannot win while Leyline of the Void is on the table. In addition, Chalice of the Void for zero shuts off about a quarter of Hulk Flash’s decklist, from Summoner’s Pact to Black Lotus.

If this hand had a dredger, it would be perfect.

Now let’s take a look at Flash’s draw.

Flash opens with:

Island
Underground Sea
Kiki-Jiki
Summoner’s Pact
Mox Emerald
Vampiric Tutor
Flash

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock, this hand is a turn 1 win (a turn 1 goldfish). Rather than explain why, let me just show you. It looks like this:

Play Island.
Play Mox Emerald.
Play Summoner’s Pact for Protean Hulk.
Tap the Mox and the Island to play Flash.
Put Protean Hulk into play and then to the graveyard.

Now, things get a little bit complicated if you aren’t familiar with the Flash combo. If you are, you can just skip below.

Find Carrion Feeder and Karmic Guide and put them into play.
Have Karmic Guide return Protean Hulk to play.
Sacrifice the Protean Hulk to Carrion Feeder.
Protean Hulk triggers – find Body Snatcher and put it into play.
Body Snatcher’s Comes Into Play Ability Triggers – discard Kiki-Jiki.
Sacrifice Body Snatcher to Carrion Feeder.
Body Snatcher triggers again – put Kiki-Jiki into play.

Tap Kiki-Jiki and make a copy of Karmic Guide.
In response, sacrifice Kiki-Jiki to Carrion Feeder.
The Karmic Guide copy’s trigger resolves, returning Kiki-Jiki to play.

Tap Kiki-Jiki and make a copy of Karmic Guide. In response, sacrifice Kiki-Jiki to Carrion Feeder. The Karmic Guide copy’s trigger resolves, returning Kiki-Jiki to play.

Repeat over and over again an infinite amount of times.

Now attack with an infinite army of haste(d) Karmic Guides and kill your opponent on turn 1.

Confused? Here’s what happens:

You play Flash and the Protean Hulk gets you combo parts. You need the Body Snatcher to help you combo out since you have Kiki-Jiki in hand. In short, you use Kiki-Jiki in tandem with Karmic Guide and Carrion Feeder to create a massive army of Karmic Guides. Since they are all Kiki-Jiki copies, they have haste and swing in for a turn 1 kill.

This is all well and good for a goldfish, but reality is not so amenable to goldfishing. Especially in Vintage.

The first problem is that we are not on the play. Any number of cards could just shut us down. A single Force of Will can cause us to lose the game because we have to play Summoner’s Pact before the Flash. If they Force of Will the Flash, we won’t be able to pay the Summoner’s Pact upkeep on the next turn.

Nonetheless, the hand is broken, so we keep it.

Before the game begins, Ichorid puts the Leyline of the Void into play.

Now things get hairy for the Flash player. Flash will probably have to Vampiric Tutor for Chain of Vapor to bounce the Leyline. That will delay our kill by at least one turn.

Turn 1:

Ichorid:
Ichorid drops Bazaar into play and activates it. It draws Bridge from Below and another Chalice of the Void. Shucks! No Dredgers.
It discards both Flame-Kin Zealots and the Bridge.

Ichorid plays Chalice for 0.

Flash:
Flash draws Force of Will.

Flash plays Underground Sea and passes the turn. Chalice prevents us from playing our Mox.

Turn 2:

Ichorid activates Bazaar on its upkeep. This may seem like an odd play with no dredgers in the graveyard, but it makes sense. If we draw a dredger, we can discard it on the upkeep and then use the draw step to dredge, maximizing the amount of dredging we can do this turn (assuming our dredger reveals more dredgers).

We draw: Ichorid and Golgari Thug, discarding Ichorid, Chalice, and Golgari Thug.

On draw step, we dredge revealing:

Leyline of the Void
Dread Return
Golgari Thug
Serum Powder

Ichorid plays the second Bazaar and activates it, dredging the Thug, revealing:

Street Wraith
Narcomoeba
Chalice of the Void
Narcomoeba

The Narcomoebas trigger.

For the second draw, we have no more dredgers, so we draw Dryad Arbor.

We discard the two Thugs and the Leyline.

The Narcomoebas are put into play.

On Ichorid’s end step, Flash taps the Underground Sea and plays Vampiric Tutor for Chain of Vapor. It’s not a strong play, but I don’t see anything better.

Flash draws the Chain of Vapor, plays Island and passes the turn.

Flash has three options: Chain the Chalice, Chain the Leyline, or wait. If we Chain the Chalice, we can play the Mox, but then we can’t Flash because of the Leyline. If we Chain the Leyline, we can’t Flash because we only have one mana left over. Our only hope is to try to survive one more turn.

Turn 3:

On Ichorid’s upkeep, you guessed it, dredge! Having fun yet? First we have to stack Ichorid’s trigger. Then we substitute the Bazaar’s drawing for dredging the Thug and reveal:

Cephalid Sage
Narcomoeba
Chalice of the Void
Narcomoeba

It’s a bit odd to have all Narcomoebas in play, but hey, you can’t complain.

One more draw left to use.

Dredge the other Thug revealing:

Stinkweed Imp
Golgari Thug
Bazaar of Baghdad
Leyline of the Void

I have to discard the Thugs and the Dryad Arbor.

There’s no way to stop Ichorid now. Watch.

Activate the second Bazaar, dredging Stinkweed Imp, revealing:

Street Wraith
Cabal Therapy
Dryad Arbor
Cephalid Sage
Cabal Therapy

Dredge Golgari Thug, revealing:

Dread Return
Serum Powder
Street Wraith
Cabal Therapy

Discard the two dredgers.

Put an Ichorid into play, removing a Street Wraith to do it.

Now we are finally at the draw step. Dredge Stinkweed Imp, revealing:

Stinkweed Imp
Golgari Grave-Troll (I’ve wondered where the big man has been! He’s like David Ortiz and Albert Pujol in the lineup).
Ichorid
Serum Powder
Bridge from Below

At this point, there are 18 cards left in the library.

1st Main Phase.

Flashback a Cabal Therapy sacrificing a Narcomoeba. Bridges trigger. Therapy resolves, naming Force of Will. We look at Flash’s hand and see the Force of Will but no other relevant cards.

Two Bridge tokens come into play.

Now we sacrifice both Bridge tokens and a Narcomoeba to Dread Return Cephalid Sage. Bridges trigger.

Cephalid Sage comes into play and triggers.

First draw we dredge the Grave-Troll, revealing:

Bridge From Below
Dryad Arbor
Ichorid
Dread Return
Bazaar of Baghdad
Ichorid

12 cards in library.

Dredge Stinkweed Imp, revealing:

Golgari Grave-Troll
Bridge From Below
Stinkweed Imp
Serum Powder
Leyline of the Void

At this point, there is no reason to keep going. We’ve hit all four Bridges.

Draw the third card – Cabal Therapy.

Discard the cards in hand.

Two Bridge tokens come into play.

Now, we sacrifice the Sage and the two Narcomoebas in play to flashback another Dread Return targeting Flame-Kin Zealot. 12 more Bridge tokens come into play.

No more wasting time. Attack with 14 Bridge tokens, Ichorid, and Flame-Kin Zealot for 48 damage.

This game was a classic Ichorid goldfish buffered by excellent disruption. If Ichorid had had just Chalice or just Leyline, Flash would have won this particular game.

Imagine:

Turn 1:
Ichorid: Bazaar, Chalice of the Void
Flash: Underground Sea, go

Turn 2:
Ichorid: Dredge, Bazaar, Dredge
Flash: Eot Vamp for Chain. Untap, play Island. Play Chain of Vapor on Chalice. Play Mox Emerald. Play Summoner’s Pact. Flash and Win.

Alternatively, with just Leyline:

Turn 1:
Ichorid: Bazaar go.
Flash: Underground Sea, Mox Emerald, go

Turn 2:
Dredge, Bazaar, Dredge
Flash: Eot Vamp for Chain. Play Chain on Leyline. Play Summoner’s Pact, Flash, and win.

I think this shows the necessity of being fast as possible. The fact that Ichorid didn’t discard a dredger on turn 1 was unacceptable. Ichorid could have had a natural turn 2 kill that would have mooted Flash’s attempts to remove the disruption spell so that either the Chalice or the Leyline alone would have effectively held Flash off.

What would have happened if Flash had been on the play?

This is the beauty of Leyline of the Void. There would have been almost no difference.

Imagine:

Turn 0: Leyline

Turn 1:
Flash: Mox, Sea
Ichorid: Bazaar, Chalice for 0

Turn 2:
Flash: Eot, Vamp for Chain of Vapor. Play Island. Chain the Leyline.
Flash can’t Summoner’s Pact because of the Chalice.
Ichorid: Dredge, 2nd Bazaar, Dredge.

Turn 3:
Flash: Unless Flash draws Protean Hulk, it has no plays.
Ichorid: Win

The real irony here is that playing first really didn’t matter.

The problem is that Flash can’t Summoner’s Pact until it removes the Chalice, so both Chalice and Leyline were effective regardless of who went first.

Now we turn to the sideboards. A small note. I substituted Tropical Island for Bayou in Rich Shay sideboard. The Bayou seems much better as you can play Cabal Therapy off your lands. I have no idea why he ran Trop. Second, I put 4 Leylines in Ryan’s sideboard (he knew he needed them).

So, for Ichorid, you need to find answers to Leyline.

You board:
+ 2 Bayou
+ 2 Wooded Foothills
+ 4 Reverent Silence
+ 3 Emerald Charm

– 2 Flame-Kin Zealot
– 2 Cephalid Sage
– 3 Narcomoebas
– 4 Dread Return

I’m not swearing that this is the best sideboard plan, but it made sense to me. We need to have cards that remove an opposing Leyline or we can’t win. The combo parts seem like the first cards to go. We can still easily win with Ichorids, Dryad Arbors, and Bridge tokens. It just takes longer.

If you disagree or have a better idea, sound off in the forums. Note that Arbors can serve to flashback Cabal Therapies and the one Narcomoeba can generate a large number of tokens.

From the Flash perspective, a lot of cards are simply dead. Here’s how it boarded:

– 2 Misdirection
– 4 Pact of Negation

+ 4 Leyline
+ 1 Echoing Truth
+ 1 Chain of Vapor

Game 2:

It’s not really that surprising that Ichorid won game 1. It has a ridiculous game 1 win percentage. The problem is that Ichorid has a heck of a time removing Leyline, or beating even Planar Void.

We shuffle up and Flash opens:

Summoner’s Pact
Flash
Summoner’s Pact
Flash
Polluted Delta
Body Snatcher
Ancestral Recall

That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. This hand is what we in Vintage technically refer to as “ridiculous.”

For those of you who didn’t pour over the decklist, let me show you the key trick that makes this hand just “asplode” (again, another technical term) on turn 1. This decklist has a maindeck Elvish Spirit Guide. If you Pact for ESG you can then use the ESG to play turn 1 Flash with the Delta. Since we have two Pacts, we can use the second Pact to find the Hulk.

But, we have a quandary. If Ichorid has turn 0 Leyline, this hand crumples like origami in the hands of a four year old. The Leyline will probably give them time to drop a Chalice, and then this game will resemble last game.

On the other hand, Ichorid doesn’t have the luxury of mulliganing into Leyline. It has to spend its resources single-mindedly digging for Bazaar. If often has to remove whole chunks of its library to find the Bazaar (via Serum Powder). The chance that Ichorid will open with Leyline is less than 40%.

In short, the only question is whether we’ll have to remove Leyline.

If not, this is easy turn 1 win. Pact up the ESG, Pact up the Hulk, play Flash, win.

If we do have to face Leyline, there is one saving grace: We have Ancestral Recall in our hand. It’s not Chain of Vapor, but we sideboarded in enough bounce spells that we have a decent shot of drawing one or a tutor to find one.

I don’t think we can realistically mulligan this hand to find Leyline, but I could be wrong.

Now we shift our attention to the Ichorid player. Let’s see what it’s drawn up.

Ichorid’s hand:

Ichorid
Cabal Therapy
Golgari Thug
Dryad Arbor
Emerald Charm
Serum powder
Emerald Charm

We have three options:

Keep this ugly hand
Mulligan
Use the Serum Powder

This hand violates the first tenant of playing Ichorid, so we know we aren’t going to keep it. The question, really, is whether we should mulligan the old-fashioned way or use the mulligan artifact. The reason not to use the Serum Powder is that two of our three Emerald Charms happen to be in hand here. If Flash opens with Leyline of the Void and we do as well, we won’t be able to remove their Leyline without killing ours as well. That means we had better be sure that they can’t combo out before we blow the Leylines. That’s tricky business and very hard to pull off.

Weigh that against the fact that if we don’t use the Serum Powder, we dramatically decrease our chances of hitting a Bazaar at all.

I use the Serum Powder and draw:

Ichorid
Street Wraith
Chalice of the Void
Leyline of the Void
Street Wraith
Bridge From Below
Chalice of the Void

Welcome to the Nightmare Scenario.

I call this the Nightmare Scenario because this hand is so disruptive that you are tempted to violate our cardinal rule for playing Ichorid. It not only has Leyline, but it also has Chalice of the Void. Moreover, the Street Wraiths give the illusion of having a greater chance of simply drawing the Bazaar.

If we were to keep this hand, just how fast would we be?

Assuming we play the Leyline and the Chalice, by turn 3 we could discard a card, presumably the Ichorid or Bridge. Then on turn 4 we could discard the other. The two Street Wraiths will fuel the Ichorids. This doesn’t seem so bad. Here’s how it might look:

Turn 1:
Chalice, go

Turn 2:
Draw, go

Turn 3:
Draw, discard Bridge

Turn 4:
Draw, discard Ichorid

Turn 5:
Return Ichorid, draw, discard a card (hopefully a dredger)
Attack with Ichorid, put a Bridge token into play.

Turn 6:
Return Ichorid again, attack for 5. Put another Bridge token into play

Turn 7:
Hopefully return Ichorid again, attack for 7.

Turn 8:
Kill the opponent.

Quite frankly, without Flame-Kin Zealot in the deck, you can’t really hope for a much faster clock than that. And with all the disruption we have and the time we’ll have to topdeck spells, it seems like it might just do the trick. That calculation was made without regard to any possible topdecks. We could theoretically draw a Golgari-Grave Troll and accelerate the whole process by several turns.

It’s likely that we could mulligan into a hand that is a couple of turns faster, but not without all of that juicy disruption. Our opponent could just drop Leyline into play and we’d be boned anyway. This way we know that they aren’t going to win in the first few turns either.

This is one of those rare instances where I decide to keep the hand without Bazaar. The chances of drawing into a Bazaar aren’t as bad as they look either. There are only 46 cards in the library and we have 2 Street Wraiths in hand, giving us really about a 10% chance of just drawing one on each turn. It’s risky, but it’s always going to be risky.

Before the game begins, Ichorid puts Leyline into play.

Turn 1:

Flash:
Ichorid cycles Street Wraiths immediately into Reverent Silence, Street Wraith, and then cycles the new Street Wraith into Cabal Therapy.

Flash plays Polluted Delta, break it for Underground Sea. Tap Sea for Blue mana and play Ancestral Recall, drawing:

Karmic Guide
Force of Will
Mox Emerald

Flash plays Mox Emerald and passes the turn.

Note that the Flash deck can’t win now unless we can get one of these creatures back into the library. The Body Snatcher is here precisely for situations like this; unfortunately we drew it and one of the combo creatures.

Ichorid draws Stinkweed Imp and plays Chalice for 0. Flash plays Force of Will pitching Flash. The Force here protects the ability to play Summoner’s Pact later on. Unfortunately, Ichorid has two Chalices. Another Chalice for 0 is cast and hits play.

Turn 2:

Flash draws a Delta and plays it. No plays here. Pass.

Ichorid: draws Bazaar of Baghdad. How incredibly fortunate. Ichorid plays Bazaar and activates it, drawing Chalice and Leyline.
Discard: Bridge, Ichorid, and Stinkweed Imp.

Eot, Flash breaks Delta for another Sea.

Turn 3:

Flash draws another Flash. Pass.

Return Ichorid to play removing a Street Wraith.

Ichorid dredges on upkeep, revealing:

Golgari Grave-Troll
Bridge From Below
Ichorid
Golgari Thug
Dryad Arbor

Dredge again:

Golgari-Grave Troll
Golgari-Grave Troll
Emerald Charm
Stinkweed Imp
Bazaar of Baghdad
Ichorid

Discard Therapy and the two dredgers.

Draw step: Dredge a Grave-Troll:

Street Wraith
Bridge from Below
Cabal Therapy
Chalice of the Void
Golgari Thug
Cabal Therapy

Attack Step: Swing in with Ichorid.

Sacrifice the Ichorid to flashback Cabal Therapy, naming Force of Will.

The Bridges trigger. We remove the Force of Will. Bridge tokens enter play. Flashback another Therapy naming Flash. The Flash player loses all of those Flashes.

Turn 4:

Flash draws Carrion Feeder. At this point, this game is a joke. Flash taps the Sea to play Carrion Feeder and passes the turn.

Ichorid returns three Ichorids removing three Street Wraiths. There is really no need to dredge at this point. Attack with three Ichorids and two 2/2 tokens. Flashback another Therapy naming Summoner’s Pact just to get more Bridge tokens.

Turn 4:

Flash lamely draws Merchant Scroll, scowls, and then scoops.

There you have it.

Ichorid wins!

Flash was completely cut off by Leylines. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to show you the interesting dynamic of Leyline mirrors. But you did get to see the power of Leyline. Two turn 1 kills were thwarted by Leyline. Ichorid didn’t win because it was the better deck, it won because it won the Leyline war. Leyline bought time to make Chalice effective, and Summoner’s Pact is apparently hosed by Chalice for 0 if you don’t have the Flash or can’t cast it.

I’ve been covertly matching up against MWS players, attempting to get a feel for the Hulk list. What I’ve discovered is that many post board games are Leyline Wars. Both players begin with Leylines in play. The game then flows around that primary constraint. It is a battle over the hand and the resources to remove Leyline. Cabal Therapy meets Force of Will. A turn later an Emerald Charm hits the stack. Will it resolve? Chain of Vapor complicates matters because you can copy it to bounce an opposing Leyline. Bouncing your opponents Leyline could result in your death if you are fighting Flash. Mulliganing becomes an even more essential tactical question.

It is a battle of timing, tactical skill, and design prowess. This dynamic is going to be crucial in Vintage, even after the new Banned and Restricted list changes. Flash and Ichorid are major players, even with 4 Gush in the format. Learning how to negotiate this essential battleground, learning how to master its nuances is going to be crucial to making effective plays in the new Vintage. This is part of the terrain upon which Vintage will be fought. I hope this article has given you a sense of what to look for and how to think about this important question.

Until next time,

Stephen Menendian