So Many Insane Plays — The Mean Deck Solution to the Vintage Metagame

On February 23, Patrick Chapin threw down the gauntlet:

Seriously, if you want to maximize your chances of winning in Vintage Magical cards, I highly recommend spending your efforts perfecting the hybridization of Gifts and Long, which is much like perfecting the Ruy Lopez…

Play proficiently with said deck, and you will be the winner.

I don’t mean to be cynical, but I really feel like we, as a team, would really fare a lot better if we would all unite our efforts into perfecting Mean.dec. There is always time to play around with fun ideas like Blue Stax and Green Goblins, but let’s get all our heads together and figure out how to make a deck that utilizes all the best cards, which:

1. Are mostly Blue.
2. Use as many of the Over-Powered 9 as possible (Brainstorm, Merchant Scroll, Mana Drain, Gifts Ungiven, Force of Will, Dark Ritual, Grim Tutor, Mishra’s Workshop, and Bazaar of Baghdad). I think we can build a deck that uses most, if not all, of the first 7.
3. Uses cards that win the Gifts and Long match-ups, like Duress main and Pyros/graveyard hate side.
4. Combos out game 1, but becomes more controlling games 2 and 3.
5. Wins with Tendrils of Agony or Empty The Warrens.

I took Chapin’s challenge seriously. Assuming he’s right, how do I accomplish most, if not all of these objectives? To a certain extent his goals are obvious in the ideal, but difficult to implement. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of fusing Gifts and Long before, or contemplated how to make Merchant Scroll synergize with Long’s aggressive components, but I had never figured out how to make it “click.” Merchant Scroll never worked well in a Long shell, despite several attempts. How do you fuse the two decks without diluting Long or without making the deck too top-heavy or overly “linear”? How do you put Grim Tutor and Gifts Ungiven in the same deck when they compete for the same mana? How do you stuff all those cards together while running a smooth, coherent game plan that isn’t totally reliant on Yawgmoth’s Will and therefore hosed by cards like Tormod’s Crypt?

These were the design challenges that were met and answered. I’m proud to present:

The Mean Deck

Stephen Menendian

Test deck on 06-24-2007

Vintage

Creatures (1)

1 Darksteel Colossus

Lands (14)

Spells (45)

Sideboard

This deck is an attempt to perfect the hybridization of Gifts and Long, and asserts to be the final evolution point of the two decks. This is the Mean Deck.

In my article “Offshoots and Ladders” on February 12, I documented the evolution and development of the Gifts and Long archetypes. I pointed out that people were finally connecting the two archetypes strategically. We saw attempts to bridge the divide between Gifts and Long. The card pools were converging.

However, there were two problems. First of all, the decks at the center weren’t really true hybrids. They were either wedded to Gifts Ungiven or Grim Tutor, and fell clearly to one side or the other of the spectrum. The decks that lie truly in the middle, on the other hand, were awkward fusions that appeared more an amalgam of good cards rather than something that resembled an actual coherent Vintage deck. They were Frankenstein’s Monsters rather than decks that made sense in their own terms. What the Gifts/Long hybrid needed was a strong, synergistic, and coherent plan.

My epiphany came when I realized that we were too wedded to both Gifts and Grim Tutor. Trying to fit Grim Tutor and Gifts into these decks was holding us back. The most powerful engine wasn’t Grim Tutor or Gifts, it was Merchant Scroll. It was Merchant Scroll that made Meandeck Gifts unique and enabled a full complement of Gifts. Merchant Scroll is the most powerful unrestricted tutor in Vintage. It’s cheap, it’s powerful, and it’s flexible.

The Meandeck Gifts plan was intended to resemble this basic structure, as I explained when introducing that deck:

The game plan of the deck is this:

Step 1: Scroll up Ancestral and Resolve it
Step 2: Play Gifts and Resolve it
Step 3: Combo.

What we’ve discovered is that Step 2 can be bypassed or replaced. In a sense, I’m cutting the Gifts Ungiven – and all its logistical problems – for Necro and Bargain and the fact that a good deal of the time you can just directly tutor up Will and win after resolving Ancestral Recall.

This has several advantages. First, we are much more resilient to Tormod’s Crypt. It’s not hard to win the game if you can resolve Bargain. With Necro, you have to use it pretty conservatively, but it isn’t that hard to set up the win that way either – with or without Yawgmoth’s Will.

Yet, Scroll is going to be just as powerful as ever. In a double Scroll hand your first Scroll is for Force of Will, and your second for Ancestral Recall. If you’ve already resolved Ancestral, Scroll for Mystical Tutor is your next play. It’s UU1 Blue tutor for Yawgmoth’s Will (admittedly putting the Will on top of your deck though). It can find Force of Will to protect you or bounce to answer a threat on the board.

You can envision this deck either as a Pitch Long variant, a Meandeck Gifts variant, or even a Ritual Gifts variant (a descendent of MDG), and all of those would be accurate.

Personally, I think of this deck as Meandeck Gifts that has cut Gifts for Black enchantments. Specifically, we’ve cut Mana Drains for Duresses and 4 Gifts Ungivens for Necropotence, Yawgmoth’s Bargain, Fact or Fiction, and Timetwister. The only remaining differences are the Dark Rituals over Mana Vault, Recoup, and a 15th land. This deck is designed to play the aggro mode of Meandeck Gifts. Since Mana Drains were used to fuel Gifts Ungiven and provide a control role, they no longer make sense here. Duress is just as effective at protecting your bombs as Drain and Dark Rituals make up for the mana boost Drain once provided.

Zvi Mowshowitz wrote a seminal article entitled “Who’s the Beatdown II?” explaining how the best deck in any given match isn’t simply the deck that adopts the proper role, but the deck that can achieve both roles. That’s what this deck does. This deck can do that because it is super efficient. Do not misunderstand me, I’m not just talking about mana cost, but power per mana. Necro/Bargain/Will are three of the most uber-powerful cards in Vintage. It turns out that you can run a threshold amount of bombs and hyper efficient tutors like Scrolls and max out on interactive cards.

The main tutoring target is Scroll for Ancestral. With 4 Duress, 2 Misdirection, and 4 Force of Will, you should have little trouble resolving Ancestral. Once that is done, you will be ahead in terms of both card advantage and tempo. You shouldn’t have that much trouble maintaining that advantage long enough to find some route to victory. Even Scroll for Brainstorm in lieu of Scroll for Mystical should be a good play at that point.

Now that I’ve provided a general overview of the deck’s purpose and game plan, I will try to provide some details on how to pilot the deck. But first, I want to make two background points.

The first thing you need to understand is that this deck operates at a high degree of difficulty, requiring a highly skilled pilot. This is a deck that the most experienced and skillful Vintage players should consider running. The reason is simple. This deck is designed to offer the pilot a maximum amount of opportunity to outplay your opponent while utilizing the best possible card pool available.

Too often, interactive decks in Vintage are underpowered. Nonetheless, skilled pilots are able to perform well by outplaying their opponents. This is one reason that many of the best Vintage players traditionally have preferred to pilot Mana Drain decks despite having more powerful options available to them. Mana Drain decks offer pilots maximum opportunities to choose their own lines of play and capitalize on opponent error.

On the other hand, many of the best players in Vintage have chosen non-Drain decks as their weapon of choice to maximize their card power. Stax and Combo are examples of this. These players succeed by learning matchups through extensive playtesting and experience. Despite their skill with these decks, most of which require a great deal of intuitive understanding, experience, and tactical brilliance, most of the work is done before the games begin or without regard to the decision the opponent makes. Once a hand is drawn, the correct line of play is often derived from the range of possible options rather than as a result of player interaction. In addition, these decks are often susceptible to an opponent’s more broken draw. They rely on matchup percentages to smooth out irregularities. As an experienced Grim Long player, I recognize that Grim Long is a very, very difficult deck to pilot properly, but it is designed to beat other decks rather than engage the opposing player. You anticipate opposing strategies and tactical plays and you make tweaks or in-game decisions to defeat them. The skill involved is difficult puzzle solving.

The interactive decks, on the other hand, seek to force interaction as a way of providing opportunities to outplay the opponent. It should be noted, however, that purposely interactive decks have an advantage the longer the game goes — both because of the tactical advantage of design as well as the fact that their opponents will be less experienced in those situations.

This deck attempts to fuse the two approaches. The Mean Deck is intentionally interactive, highly decision-intensive, but also is built around the very best cards in Vintage.

The second point I want to make about playing this deck is that it is highly customizable. My teammates have each adopted their own version of this deck, running Mind’s Desire, Cabal Ritual, Burning Wish, and other solid choices. Part of maximizing your play skill is playing a list with which you are most comfortable. This will give you the opportunity to make decisions consonant with your skill set.

Although I’ve written extensively about Gifts decks, Gifts piles, and card choices, many players have complained that I didn’t provide enough detail about how to play the deck. I’ll try to correct that omission here.

The first thing to keep in mind is that your hand will be the most significant factor in your decision tree. Although this deck has a general game plan, articulated above, there is always going to be a range of possible hands. In some situations, you may get a hand that is extremely aggressive or extremely controlling. In those cases, you need to make cost/benefit decisions based upon risk assessment as to the correct line of play. Comboing out on turn one with an explosive hand is something you should pursue if the hand truly lends itself to it. Do not get bogged down in trying to interact if you have drawn “the nuts.” By the same token, just because you have drawn some explosive elements, do not feel that you have to “go off.”

Let your hand guide your play, but don’t let it play for you.

The lines of play you choose will be chiefly determined by what you see in your opposing deck. You need to figure out rather quickly what sort of resistance you think you will face. If you will be facing countermagic from a deck that could potentially combo out, you need to leverage your Misdirections and card advantage to stay ahead until you can successfully combo out through their resistance by resolving a major bomb. If you are facing Workshop decks, you will need to leverage your tutor power, such as Merchant Scroll, to find answers in early Force of Wills and Rebuild. You’ll also need to fetch out basic lands to establish your mana base. If you are facing Fish, you need to begin to activate your Scroll into Ancestral engine and prepare for a hard fought attrition war. You need to think about threats such as Tinker for Colossus, Dark Ritual into Yawgmoth’s Bargain, and ways to pull off an early Yawgmoth’s Will. All of your resources will need to be brought to bear against Fish.

The major early cards in this deck are Brainstorm, Merchant Scroll, and Duress. As a general matter, you want to play a Duress on turn 1 if possible. This will give you information you need to evaluate future lines of play. It will also enable you to take the most powerful card from their hand. A Brainstorm should also be played early, turn 1 if possible. Brainstorm gives you an opportunity to hide your best card from a possible turn 1 Duress, but it also gives you an opportunity to play accelerants that can fuel other turn one plays, such as Mox Jet into Duress. For that reason, I prefer playing turn 1 Brainstorm rather than Brainstorming in response to their Duress or on their end step. Merchant Scroll is also an important turn 1 play. Scroll for Ancestral is your standard play, but it should not be undertaken if you expect to be immediately Duressed. Also, you don’t want to be looking for Ancestral if you don’t have a reasonably good chance of resolving it when you play it. If you have multiple Scrolls, Scrolling for Force of Will is a good play. That enables you to play another for Ancestral and resolve it on turn 2.

An early, built-in awkwardness is the presence of Dark Rituals. If you don’t have early Necropotence or turn 1 Timetwister, Dark Ritual may be a dead card in the first two turns. It doesn’t pitch to Force of Will or Misdirection and isn’t efficiently used to cast Duress or Merchant Scrolls. If you run Mind’s Desire in the Mean Deck, then it gets somewhat stronger, but this still requires some setup. Nonetheless, the failure to draw a Dark Ritual within the first few turns can also be a source of great frustration. This deck can find Yawgmoth’s Will very quickly and Dark Rituals help make any Will lethal. The great balancing act of the deck is managing your hand in the early game to alleviate any early awkwardness. This is one of the reasons that no one has built this deck before. The general assumption is that Grim Tutor is better suited to abusing Dark Ritual than Merchant Scroll, especially in the absence of Gifts Ungiven. As you come to see how Dark Rituals naturally integrate themselves into the course of a game, their presence in your hand in the early game will lose its initial irritation.

The general mid-game and late game play of this deck resembles Meandeck Gifts sans the Gifts decision-making. If you were an avid Gifts player, then most of the tactical decisions should come easy. In terms of knowing “when” to go off, here is my rule of thumb. Imagine the fastest you could go off and then imagine the slowest you could slow roll your opponent, then try to find a middle course and stick to it.

Yawgmoth’s Will
Do not be afraid to play an early Will just to recur Ancestral and some disruption or search (Duress and Brainstorm for instance). Putting yourself ahead in card advantage is worth the use of an early Will. Gifts was more reluctant to make this play because it wanted to win the turn Will resolved. This deck has cards like Bargain and Necro to ensure that the tempo and card advantage gained from an early Will can be channeled productively into a storm kill. Secondly, you can run Burning Wish in the deck to replay Yawgmoth’s Will a few turns later if you need to do so. A very important and common play with Will is to Scroll for Mystical Tutor for Yawgmoth’s Will. This is the blue Grim Tutor.

Necropotence
This isn’t Grim Long. Necropotence is very powerful, but needs to be used carefully. It may be helpful to think of Necro as a Fact or Fiction every turn. You should be drawing roughly six cards or so and wear down your opponents resistance. If your opponent is spent and your hand is empty, go for eight or nine cards. If you both have lots of cards, just grab five.

Yawgmoth’s Bargain
As with most decks, this card is a game winner. However, this isn’t a true combo deck. You will often be drawing countermagic and mana/search. Don’t try to go all in unless within your first 7-8 cards you think it’s going to work. It’s perfectly okay to pass the turn with Bargain in play.

Timetwister
This is your backup play. This is the mid-to-late game play you make when you have both used up lots of resources and there aren’t many other outs. By this time, a great deal of your mana base will be on the board. Your library will be thinned and your Timetwister should either be lethal immediately or on the next turn. The trick will be fortifying your position after resolving Twister so that your opponent doesn’t win in the meantime. The other major, but much less frequent play, with Timetwister is turn 1 Twister. This is an automatic play that produces incredible card advantage and forces your opponent into a hand they didn’t choose. Keep in mind that this is also a tactically disruptive play against decks like Ichorid that can buy a few turns of time.

Mind’s Desire
If you run Mind’s Desire, this is a card you’ll want to set up with Rebuild or Chain of Vapor. It requires some skill and experience, like Timetwister, to know when to time and when it will be lethal. Brian Demars claims that this is a must-include.

Fact or Fiction
Initially, Fact was recommended by teammates as another inclusion. I dismissed it on the ground that you’d rarely Scroll for it. I tried another approach and inserted Fact into opening hands. What I discovered is that Fact is a worthy inclusion as a restricted bomb that you will irregularly encounter in the course of your game. Ideally, you do not want to spend a Ritual on it. Playing Fact on turn 2 or 3 with Moxen and mana is the most powerful play. However, if you have already played Ancestral and you don’t feel that Scroll for Mystical is the right play, feel free to find Fact. Fact is another card that you can play to reinforce your position once you’ve resolved Ancestral.

Impulse
Brian DeMars came up with this card, and it’s a pretty incredible option. It’s a decent Scroll target and essentially a tutor. Consider it as a one-of, at least.

Tinker– Darksteel Colossus
In addition to Tendrils, the Mean Deck needs another path to victory. Losing to Hide/Seek or a Duress with Necro in play is not acceptable in Vintage. In addition, you want two different paths to victory so that if one is shut out, the other is available. Tinker–Colossus is an alternative path to victory that worked well in Meandeck Gifts, and it works well here. Tinker synergizes with Yawgmoth’s Will when comboing out by finding Lotus. Tinker is also amazing as a very early play that can just randomly win the game (although the complaints aren’t as frequent, people used to argue that Tinker should be banned because of its power with Colossus). Turn 1 Duress, turn 2 Tinker can probably seal a game by itself. With Tinker in the maindeck, Platinum Angel becomes a sideboard option for Ichorid and Flash. The danger of running Tinker is that you’ll be tempted to include Memory Jar, moving this deck further away from the traditional MDG game plan. I have also noticed that with the explosion of Empty the Warrens into the metagame, decks may be more vulnerable to Colossus then they previous have been. Not all of the cards that answer Empty the Warrens deal with Colossus (Powder Keg, Engineered Explosives, etc do not).

Burning Wish
If you don’t run Tinker — Colossus, I suggest running Burning Wish. If you do run Wish, I also advise that you put a Time Spiral in your sideboard along with Empty the Warrens and another Tendrils. Burning Wish is very powerful in the deck, enabling you to recur Yawgmoth’s Will (rare, but sometimes done because early Will’s are expended to replay key spells to maintain your position).

Mana Drain
My initial disruption suite for this deck was 4 Force of Will, 3 Duress, 2 Mana Drain, and 2 Misdirection. After testing for a while, Mana Drain proved powerful. It was a nice Scroll target and randomly useful. It also forced opponents to play around it despite just having one or two. If you don’t run Tinker–Colossus, I suggest running one Drain and one Burning Wish. The problem with Drain is that it won’t come up when you want to see it. In addition, you’ll be cutting it most post-board games for Red Elemental Blast. It’s an option, but one I ultimately did not include. Post-board, you load up on Red Blasts and they fill the role that Drain would play. One of the other reasons I cut Mana Drain is that you simply need a basic Swamp to beat Stax and SS. Otherwise, you fold to Wasteland.

Misdirection
This is another option I run primarily to protect Ancestral Recall. Some of my teammates have dropped it for more acceleration in the maindeck, a move I understand. It’s personal preference.

Cabal Ritual
There is a really good argument to run at least one Cabal Ritual. I mean, paying two mana for five Black is pretty good, no? My teammates sometimes run two over the Misdirections.

Out of Gas?
If you’ve played Ancestral Recall and your hand is just mana and counterspells, do not worry. You are ahead in terms of card advantage. This goes not only for this situation, but also generally. When piloting the Mean Deck, do not panic if you’ve run out of gas, but are holding plenty of disruption. If you are ahead in terms of card advantage, you will probably win the game, but you need to be patient. Counter your opponent’s relevant spells and wait until you topdeck the Brainstorm or tutor that will end the game. All you need to do is leverage your card advantage to buy time, trading on a one for one basis, and you won’t lose. In fact, I’ve Merchant Scrolled for Mana Drain before in a situation like this rather than go for Mystical Tutor just yet on the assumption that I’ll topdeck the card I need before my opponent can break through my counterwall. This deck has a high number of interactive cards. There will be situations in which you are out of gas, but the time you guy will help you establish resources so that when you do find the relevant card, you can go off with ease. In some situations, it is not at all a bad idea to just sit on Brainstorm and use the draw step to dig into your library before using Brainstorm to search even deeper. If your opponent isn’t pressuring you and you have a decent handle on the game, don’t rush to Brainstorm.

All is Lost?
If you are in a bad position where your key cards have been countered and you don’t see any easy path to victory, be patient. This deck, more so than most, can deliver the win just when you least expect it. I’ve been Extirpated facing down Null Rods and Dark Confidant only to Brainstorm into Rituals and Tendrils at the last minute. Alternatively, Burning Wish for Empty the Warrens can turn around a seemingly intractable game state, buying you plenty of time to recover. Trust in the deck.

Match-ups

Ichorid
The good news is that this deck has, in my testing, a 40% win rate against Ichorid. One of the games I lost in my ten-game set was due to Ichorid having Lion’s Eye Diamond so that it could Cabal Therapy me three times on turn 1, forcing me to discard my Mana Crypt and Timetwister after I Forced the first Cabal Therapy. Post-board, you bring in Pithing Needles, Tormod’s Crypts, Fire/Ice, and Platinum Angel. You’ll still have a hard fought battle, but definitely winnable. They may run Ancient Grudge for your Angel, so be aware of that. You want to look for hands that are either extremely explosive or heavily disruptive.

Storm Combo
In the combo mirror, the more disruptive combo deck almost always wins. You have the very best combo cards in Necro and Bargain as well as more disruption in 4 Duress, 4 Force of Will, 4 Red Elemental Blasts, Misdirections, and Merchant Scrolls to find Forces. Even the most robust combo decks like Grim Long and Grim Long variants such as “GWS Long” will have a great deal of difficulty in this match. Be looking to counter Dark Rituals if you think they will be used to fuel Cabal Ritual to kill you with Tendrils and just storm or for Duress + threats.

Control
Control doesn’t exist in the post-Gifts metagame, but this deck was designed in February. This deck has an absolutely incredible Drain Tendrils match and Gifts match. Our team testing against Gifts and Drain Tendrils put up absolutely incredible numbers. We are virtually undefeated against both decks. In my December tournament reports for this site, I’d come to understand that the Gifts mirror was won not by the player who established control as per the traditional understanding of proper role assignment, but by the player who managed to move into the aggressor role first. The Mean Deck is like the Gifts deck that is always on offense, but almost as powerful on defense, and in some ways (Duress), more powerful. This deck destroys four Gifts decks. Similarly, Control Slaver is blown out by this deck. Post board, you bring in Red Blasts and Tormod’s Crypts and watch them squirm.

Fish
Fish is an easy matchup, but only if you know what you are doing. This match is full of pit traps. First of all, Duress is crucial. It will provide you valuable information and take their most relevant cards. Second, patience is critical. Do not rush to combo out or you will lose. Slow play them and then overpower them. Even if they counter your bombs, you’ll see have just enough bit of juice to win. My Fish matchup is very favorable. Massacre is a huge bomb here. SS is much trickier than plain Fish, but still very beatable. Your Red Blasts are huge, and Massacre can wipe their board. Establish your manabase and then go at them. Just be aware of the disruption suite they wield.

Stax
No matter how you slice it, Stax is going to be hard. If the Stax player is very competent, it is a 50-50 match. If not, you’ll have a solid edge. The most important principle for beating Stax is to hang your hat on your basic lands. Your Swamp and two Islands are critical resources. Your Merchant Scrolls are a huge advantage, as are the Dark Rituals. I’ve packed plenty of answers in the sideboard for this match, but the Stax player can always just get lucky with In The Eye of Chaos and Trinisphere. You need to expect that you’ll be playing under Sphere of Resistance for most of the match. In game one, you’ll want to either Scroll up Ancestral and try to go off or play bombs like Necro, or you’ll be playing to the beat of their drum, and you’ll have to Scroll up Rebuild and bounce their lock parts in order to go off. Post-board, you have more answers that you can deploy. The key to this match will be effectively deploying your basics to the board.

Bomberman
Although the Mean Deck was designed for a pre-Future Sight environment, I tested this matchup quite a bit. With the advent of Aven Mindcensor, this matchup becomes quite tricky for the inexperienced. You need to be anticipating Aven Mindcensor. If your opponent play early Trinket Mage and then finds Black Lotus, expect either that they have Drain or Aven Mindcensor. The good news is that Aven Mindcensor is not that bad. Most of the time, you can Scroll up Ancestral before he hits. Alternatively, if he hits, he’s slow. You need to think about how to dig as deeply as possible with Mindcensor in play. If you have a Fetchland and a Brainstorm, you may want to wait a couple of turns to try and Brainstorm a land on top. Alternatively, you may want to wait to Brainstorm and Scroll so you can find key bombs and be assured to find a Blue spell. If you are holding Tutors, you can try to bait your opponent into playing Mindcensor when you are able to address it. They will want to use Mindcensor to stop your spells, if possible and without losing too much tempo. Just be prepared to see a Mindcensor drop onto the table when they have 2W available. Play carefully, and this matchup is actually not that difficult. You probably want to bring in at least one Massacre post board.

Flash
This matchup is also tricky. The Mean Deck was designed for the pre-Future Sight metagame. Flash is a new metagame player that can win by overpowering you with Pacts and Force of Wills. Post board, you’ll have many more tools with Red Elemental Blasts, Pithing Needles, and Tormod’s Crypts in addition to your existing disruption suite. You Needle the Carrion Feeder.

GroAtog
Once again, the Mean Deck was designed before Gush was unrestricted. I tested this match anyway. This is an incredibly tight match. Unfortunately, in terms of consistency and disruption, they probably have the advantage. While you are trying to assemble the hand that resolves Ancestral and powers out Ritual insanity, they will be drawing cards and disrupting you with minimum expense of resources and maximum punch. Duresses are a key part of your game plan. You both have dead early cards. Early Dryads do little if you can combo out quickly, but your Rituals need to be comboed with broken spells or Necro and Bargain will quickly lose all utility. Your best bet is to overpower GAT.

At the time of the Future Sight pre-release, the Mean Deck was the best deck in Vintage. The introduction of the Flash deck and GAT has disrupted the Mean Deck’s position and dominance as the evolutionary endpoint of Gifts and Long. The irony, of course, is that Gifts was restricted at the moment that it became obsolete. Unfortunately, because StarCityGames.com didn’t have a venue until June, this deck has been kept under lock and key since February. I only hope that if the Vintage community had seen this deck before then, then the DCI could have all realized that Gifts was not in need of restriction. This is the grandchild of Meandeck Gifts and Gifts doesn’t even make the cut. C’est la vie.

Since the rapid changes in the Vintage metagame have completely unsettled the metagame that the Mean Deck was designed to solve, it remains to be seen whether the Mean Deck will be among the best decks or play second-fiddle to unleashed GroAtog and Flash decks. If and when GAT and Flash are dealt with, either by metagame opposition or restriction, the Mean Deck will be waiting to claim its crown.

Stephen Menendian

(With gratitude to my teammates and special thanks to Patrick Chapin for inspiring and motivating me to design this deck and to Patrick, Brian DeMars, and Paul Mastriano for co-developing the decklist and helping tune it. It would not be what it is without their valuable input and insight.)