The Magic Show #17 - Vintage Voyeur

[The following is a transcript of the video, which you really should check out.]

“Hi kids, I’m Vintage! I’m just like you, except older. Much older. No, older than that! Getche bra on tight and ye panties in a bunch – it’s gonna be a wild ride!”

Thanks Oldy McCarderson, I appreciate the introduction. What we’ll do today is take yourself, who may or may not have played a Vintage game in your life, and show you want this format is all about.

First off, we need to talk about money. Money makes the world go round. Money makes Magic go round. “Cards not sellin’, cards not made…” know what I’m saying?

You see, when Magic first started they didn’t know what the in the hell they were doing (see: Homelands). They made insanely powerful cards that could just win in no time! Richard Garfield, our favorite game designer, created the game with the idea that people would want to ante cards and only have one or two copies of powerful spells like Black Lotus and Balance.

Well, turns out he underestimated the power of geeks. And if there’s one thing we like, its collectables. Yes, you and your Star Wars figures – pristine in the box, I hope – will be with you until you die. And that mint beta Black Lotus? Well damn, you’d rather send your momma into slavery before you let that thing go. It’s worth a used car now, you know.

Now, Vintage players are usually older because older people have careers and salaries and can afford Power 9 sets, playsets of Mishra’s Workshop, original dual lands, and other oddities I won’t get into.

Good thing is, Vintage tournament organizers are no dummies. They want you to play in their tournaments, so that’s why proxy cards are allowed. Proxy cards are fake copies of actual cards you can’t afford. The problem is there is usually a ten-proxy limit. If they upped the proxy limit, game states would look absolutely silly as you’d see a whole play area filled with basic lands with little words scribbled on em. If they lowered them, no one could afford to play.

The reason there’s that magic number ten? Because there are eight cards you play in almost every vintage deck:

5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall

Why these eight? Because they’re the most busted cards in all of Magic, that’s why. Free mana, Lots of free mana, cheap turns, and cheap-cheap-cheap card advantage. There’s no question – these guys are the best.

So you’re left with two cards. Which two would you like to pick?

How about Library of Alexandria and Mana Crypt? Or what about those expensive dual lands or Mana Drains or your sole copy of Strip Mine…?

Let’s back up a second. Let’s talk about the "glue" that holds Vintage together: Force of Will. This innocent-looking uncommon from Alliances is now priced at $30 for a mint copy (just be glad it wasn’t rare). It was $25 just a few years ago, and $20 before that. So if you want to play in this format, buy your set today and get it over with. You’ll never play with four cards as much as you will in this environment. It is the most played card in Vintage for a reason, as it can disrupt Turn 1 wins and degenerative combos and, well, hell, it’s a free counterspell! They just don’t make ‘em like this any more.

If you’re not running Goblins, you’d better have four of these. But that cuts deep into your already-allotted eight slots. So what are your choices then? Isn’t there a cheaper alternative?

Hold on there, partner. “Cheap” is not something you really want to approach as a Vintage player. There’s a word for cheapskates in Vintage, and that word is loser.

There’s really no such thing as a “budget” Vintage player. Just get it out of your head. You’d have more fun trying to build “budget” Extended decks. I play Magic, you play Magic, you know how the business works: cards are worth more money than the paper they’re printed on, but to have the fun you crave you’re going to need to spend money to make it happen.

The upshot of this is the fact that Vintage changes very infrequently. There will need to be some incredibly influencing cards in upcoming expansions to make Mindslaver be sub-par, or Tendrils of Agony not be the preferred win condition of most combo decks.

Of course, I say this as one of the most powerful hosers in a long time debuts: Trickbind. This is an uncounterable, unrespondable way of completely nullifying an opponent’s win condition. Now you’re playing with power!

Or… not? “Swing with Xantid Swarm, combo your face?” You’ll find these caveats pepper every Vintage article like a zits on an adolescent.

Nevertheless, investing in Mishra’s Workshop, for example, gives you the right to play with this card until you die. In five years, there will be a Mishra’s Workshop deck. In ten years, there will be a Mishra’s Workshop deck. Hell, our own madman Patrick Chapin – when not growing out a fierce mane and crazy homeless-man beard – is confident that he-who-has-the-Mishra’s-Workshop-in-their-opener is the winner. Now who are you gonna trust, me, or The Innovator? He’s the frickin’ Innovator, folks. The man knows of what he speaks.

Of course, there are “signs of discontent” amongst the Vintage players, some who say that – gasp! – Mishra’s Workshop should be restricted!

But on the other hand, you have all of these people who’ve dished out hundreds upon hundreds of dollars amassing playsets of this card, players that would, undoubtedly, freak-the-hell-out were the word from on high come that Workshop needs restrictin’. Now this was normally synonymous with Trinisphere, and with the latter restricted due to its insane power in a place where no one actually plays with spells that cost three or more, you could imagine how unfair the Workshop-Trinisphere opening really was.

When you purchase something as pricey as a Mishra’s Workshop, think not only how long you will use it, but take into consideration what would happen if you weren’t able to use four of them in the future. And whose head you would want on a stake should that happen.

So we have the monetary investment and the fun payoff. What else is interesting about Vintage for people who’ve never looked beyond Extended for broken combinations?

Well, there’s the community. And better yet, there is the literature. There are some truly awe-inspiring articles being pumped out on a regular basis by our own Stephen Menendian, and recently Jonathon Wang, trying to convince you Standard guys how much fun the format can be.

Oscar Tan, a guy so dead-set on the brilliance of the format he wrote over a hundred and fifty articles on the format, which, even by a fair estimate, would mean over 300,000 words (that’s like four novels), giving you a step-by-step guide on going from Vintage newb to Vintage ru…barb. Or something. Couldn’t make the rhyme happen that time (heh).

So there’s the cash premium of the format, the fun of the format, the pundits of the format. Now whatcha got left to do? Play the format!

Here are some of the most powerful, or, at the very least, most popular decks in Vintage:

Meandeck Gifts
Pitch Long
Stax
Slaver
Bomberman
Fish
Goblins

Let’s take a quick look at some decklists for these. Note, I took all of these decklists from the Vintage tournament that occurred last September, on my birthday even (the 24th):

First place was, as you’ll see quite often in these tournaments, Meandeck Gifts.

Gifts

Mike Pise

1st Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Creatures (1)

1 Darksteel Colossus

Lands (14)

Spells (46)

Sideboard

Gifts Ungiven is basically “go fetch four cards, and get a least three of them.” Virtually any pile with Recoup is a win for you, and its ability to draw, make mana, and combo out with both Tendrils of Agony and Darksteel Colossus plus Time Walk means it’s a double-barreled ass-kicker.

It also should also be said that this deck is incredibly difficult to pilot, and only the “masters” of Vintage can truly excel with it. The myriad of decision trees is quite daunting for the newcomer.

Up next is Pitch Long. Now this refers to the Tendrils of Agony combo, one that was developed with the help of the notorious Mike Long and the other half refers to Pitch spells, such as Force of Will and Misdirection, that keep it from being completely destroyed by a random Mana Drain. Here’s that list:

Pitch Long

Mike Herbig

2nd Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Lands (11)

Spells (49)

Sideboard

Stax is up next. This gets its namesake from Smokestack, which, when combined with something like Tangle Wire, is just ridiculously unfair. And hey, that’s what this format is all about! It runs a full complement of Mishra’s Workshop, it runs Karn, it runs this really cool enchantment that nobody remembers called In The Eye of Chaos, and it usually kills you with Juggernaut, a creature that many people wanted to restrict Back In The Day. And no, I ain’t kiddin.

So let’s take a look at a sample list, which took 23rd in the event in question:

Stax

Adam Barnello

23rd Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Creatures (9)

Lands (19)

Spells (32)

Sideboard

‘Slaver is next, named for the enormously powerful Mindslaver. Have you noticed that Mirrodin block seems to get a lot of love from Vintage players? I guess when you design an extremely overpowered block and make it all colorless, then you get a few – ah, what do they call them… ah yes – balance problems. Now Mindslaver isn’t unbalanced, but throughout Mirrodin you tend to find things that wrecked format after format: Standard (Skullclamp), wrecked Extended (Affinity) and wrecked Vintage (Trinisphere).

The idea for how this deck wins is simple: It Mindslavers you. Normally one activation is enough to ruin another player’s gameplan – the juiciest when you play their combo deck for them on themselves – and it runs other important artifacts like Triskelion and Sundering Titan, along with the ever-important Goblin Welder.

Here’s a Top 16 list from last September:

Control Slaver

Arend Kraehling

16th Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Creatures (5)

Lands (16)

Spells (40)

Sideboard

Bomberman is up next. This features Auriok Salvagers from – guess what block? – Mirrodin, of course, along with Trinket Mage, which should just say “I gets a Black Loti, boss”. Once Salvagers are out and Black Lotus is in play, you can create infinite mana by recurring the Black Lotus over and over. Then you normally Cunning Wish for Brain Freeze and finish the job. Pretty simple, and lots of fun.

Here’s the sixth place list of Bomberman:

Bomberman

Elias Vaisberg

6th Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Creatures (7)

4 Trinket Mage
3 Auriok Salvagers

Lands (17)

Spells (36)

Sideboard

Fish is up next. This is basically the White Weenie of the format. And you know what I always say about the ‘ween (Friends Don’t Let Friends Play White Weenie), but you can’t deny its overpowering nature against many decks. Creatures as simple and powerful as Meddling Mage and True Believer can give decks such fits that they are set back a turn just so they can deal with them. It runs a full set of Force of Will (your pal and mine) along with three Stifle – perfect for those Storm triggers. I’m guessing this would be replaced with Trickbind nowadays.

This build took 3rd place in the tournament:

U/W Fish

Dave Feinstein

3rd Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Creatures (16)

Lands (19)

Spells (25)

Sideboard

Next we have Goblins. Ah, Goblins. They’ve got a great clock, great synergy, and are pretty cheap to boot (at least, comparatively). Which is why they get such love from the player base. And hey, while Pitch Long doesn’t always get that winning hand, it’s hard to say the same about Goblins. They just play guys and turn ‘em sideways.

At 4th place, this Goblin build was just behind Blue/White Fish:

Goblins

Ashok Chitturi

4th Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 09-24-2006

Vintage

Creatures (31)

Lands (19)

Spells (10)

Sideboard

But beyond these seven decks there is plenty room to innovate and explore. Take, for instance, two-land Belcher. This is a fun deck that can win on turn 1 and turn 2 consistently. Of course, should you be interrupted in any way you can royally screw yourself in all kinds of horrible ways, but hey, it’s fun.

Let’s take a look at the Belcher list that Vanessa Acevedo piloted last December:

Two-Land Belcher

Vanessa Acevedo

16th Place at Star City Games Power 9 Series on 12-11-2005

Vintage

Creatures (12)

Lands (2)

1 Taiga
1 Bayou

Spells (46)

Sideboard

One of my favorite pastimes is simply goldfishing Pitch Long or two-land Belcher. You can learn a lot about how Magic works (and also how it shouldn’t work) by learning how cards generate mana, card advantage, and in what order certain cards need to be played to win games.

As you work your way up the Vintage experience totem pole, per se, you learn that there isn’t always a definitive answer to “should I keep this hand” or “that matchup is unwinnable.” Very rarely are things truly concrete in Vintage. This makes new articles and analysis so exciting. This makes the tiny, tiny tweaks each deck gets when a new set is released all the more appealing.

While Wizards of the Coast says they’re not making cards that focus on Vintage, I definitely would attest that they don’t turn a blind eye toward it. Randy Buehler plays in large Vintage events, and that is definitely a good thing for the present and future of the Vintage format.

So until next week, keep on keepin’ on. Thanks for watching.

Evan “misterorange” Erwin
dubya dubya dubya dot misterorange dot com
eerwin +at+ gmail +dot+ com
In loving memory of BJ Kilpatrick. 1977 – 2006