As some people may have noticed in recent weeks, Vintage Magic seems to be reverting to the way it looked this time last year. The top combo deck is a Long variant. The top aggro deck is Mishra’s Workshop/Goblin Welder based, but without things like Survival of the Fittest ruining the manabase. Why has the metagame done a sort of shift backwards?
The culprit is Control Slaver, and here’s why.
Nearing the end of September’s Waterbury tournament (with an attendance of 186) I was chatting with Rich Shay, Control Slaver’s creator* and primary proponent. Apparently the slew of Control Slaver decks in that metagame that were losing games were losing to random aggro. Decks like Food Chain Goblins or Oshawa Stompy were the biggest threats to Control Slaver’s dominance as an archetype, and Rich knew it.
Jacob Orlove, a moderator on The Mana Drain and general all around nice guy, shared his thoughts on Control Slaver. The deck he references is his personal invention, Worse Than Fish. Those who’ve seen it in action know the name isn’t necessarily true. Jacob’s list runs many more diverse and, well, threatening threats than the typical Fish builds seen in Top 8s around the world.
“The problem is that Control Slaver sides in stuff like Lava Dart and Old Man of the Sea in addition to Salvage. The game simply stops being about huge activated artifacts. Combined with their card drawing, I’ve had very, very few post-sideboard games where Null Rod actually mattered. Oxidize was actually better a lot of the time, simply because it accomplished the same effect for half the mana.
I’m not saying that Rod is a bad card, just that with Fish dominating for so long, there’s no place for Rod to shine, because every deck has adjusted for it.”
Jacob also mentioned that stopping Control Slaver with Null Rod was similar to trying to stop Psychatog with Moat. It works just fine until they care, at which point they kill it.
What does this have to do with Rich Shay comments about his deck losing to stacks of goblins or fatties? Simple. People are using the wrong angles to attack Control Slaver.
People have forgotten the fundamental rule about hate decks:
As you increase the number of hate cards, you decrease the number of threats.
And this has been going on longer than Control Slaver has existed, though Rich Shay victories in New England and at Origins have certainly sped it along.
Let’s look at a typical Control Slaver list.
Control Slaver, Richard Shay September 2004 Waterbury Winner
1 Platinum Angel
1 Pentavus
4 Goblin Welder
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Blood Moon
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Cunning Wish
2 Mindslaver
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Darksteel Citadel
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
5 Island
Sideboard:
3 Lava Dart
3 Old Man of the Sea
1 Mogg Salvage
1 Blood Moon
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Sphere of Resistance
1 Shattering Pulse
This deck is, from a strictly theoretical level, extraordinarily powerful. Individual cards in this deck hold absurd power levels, and it’s backed with a very solid draw engine as well as four goblins that allow one to cheat the drawbacks of almost every bomb in the deck.
As a control player, what do you counter? You can try to stop the draw engine, only to be overpowered by bombs. Or you can try to stop the bombs, only to be out-countered. In that respect, this deck is much like Hulk. And it has the same weakness.
Low mana curve aggro can crush both of these decks. A decent clock with a little bit of disruption is enough to keep the game state feeling early until the final points of damage kick in.
Running with this theory, I decided to test an old favorite of mine: Bombs over Baghdad, the original Vintage Madness deck**.
Bombs Over Baghdad, 2k4 Redux by Ben Kowal, original list by Adam Bowers
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Arrogant Wurm
3 Roar of the Wurm
2 Anger
2 Wonder
1 Darksteel Colossus
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
2 Deep Analysis
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Tinker
1 Crop Rotation
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Time Walk
3 Fiery Temper
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Diamond
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Taiga
2 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
2 Riftstone Portal
1 Strip Mine
Sideboard
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Artifact Mutation
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
3 Ray of Revelation
1 Crucible of Worlds
My results? Apparently the Germans love these Quick and Dirty reports, so here’s one.
Round One, Control Slaver
Game one I get owned by Platinum Angel.
Game two I own with early beats.
Game three I win after he resolves Tinker.
Round Two, 5/3
Game one I keep a shady hand and lose.
Game two I kick the crap out of him with early beatz.
Game three I Mutation his Crucible and then win.
Round Three, Tog
Game one I hit him for like 14 on turn 2.
Game two I Tinker for Colossus, and Wheel into Time Walk.
I draw in.
T8, Workshop Aggro
Game one I play poorly.
Game two he plays poorly.
Game three I Mutation a Memory Jar on my turn, and he wisely decides not to give me a new hand in response. Then I win.
T4, 5/3
Game one I play a ton of dorks and his Juggernauts get owned by Fiery Temper.
Game two I Mutation like twelve things.
Finals, 5/3 again
Game one I get platt0wned again. I hate that.
Game two I school him with lots of guys.
Game three I Mutation a Juggernaut and the tokens kill the other Juggernaut.
I didn’t get to test against Control Slaver in the tournament setting as much as I liked, but the results against Workshops were surprisingly solid.
I’ve gone off on a tangent however. The point is, the older decks have fewer problems with Control Slaver because they have already worked through the style of deck that Control Slaver is, and are prepared with a slightly more strategically sound theory. Don’t address the cards. Address the life total. A well-built burn deck could topple Tog with little difficulty last summer. A well built FCG or Madness deck will cripple Control Slaver this year.
Oh, and what do you play at SCG Richmond? Here’s a deck I expect will address the life total more effectively than anything else you could be playing right now.
5/3, David Allen and Team Short Bus, 2nd at GenCon World Championships
4 Juggernaut
2 Su-Chi
1 Triskelion
1 Duplicant
1 Sundering Titan
4 Goblin Welder
1 Gorilla Shaman
3 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Tinker
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
2 Fire / Ice
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Volcanic Island
3 Shivan Reef
2 Polluted Delta
Sideboard
1 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Trinisphere
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
3 Hydroblast
————————-
Ben Kowal
Moderator on www.TheManaDrain.com
Team Short Bus
bkowal at gmail dot com
*Though technically the deck’s creator is Germany’s Kim Kluck, not giving Rich Shay credit for his work with Control Slaver is like not giving Smmenen credit for Long.dec. I felt adding this was necessary to give Kim credit where credit is due, but I still consider this to be Rich’s deck.
**Many think that the original Vintage Madness was Andy Lambe’s Virtual Insanity, or a completely different deck altogether. My criteria was the earliest successful list, and in terms of Adam’s deck versus Andy’s deck, Bombs over Baghdad predates Virtual Insanity by between four to six months. The difference between the two? Andy’s deck replaces the draw sevens with Careful Study for increased consistency, but dramatically decreased overall power. I felt then and I still feel now that the draw sevens are strictly superior, but again, I want to give credit where credit is due, and Andy is one of the madness pioneers of the format.