Vintage Champs Breakdown!

I’m sadly out of touch with my longtime favorite format, Vintage. The simple problem is that there just aren’t enough events to play in, even small local
ones, and I’m not able to keep up two different collections between real cardboard and the digital version. That makes it rather hard to confidently decide
what I want to be playing at Prague Eternal next weekend, especially as the Vintage metagame, like the Legacy one, has been quite shaken up by Khans of
Tarkir all-star Treasure Cruise.

Luckily the Eternal Weekend happened just last weekend and included the closest equivalent to a Vintage World Championship we are likely to get. And it’s
painting a pretty crazy picture, at least for someone like me who’s used to “traditional” Vintage with blue control decks centered around card advantage
fights, Mana Drains, and a random Tinker/tutorable combo finish to end things. There’s none of that in the whole top 8! Instead we have just three
archetypes taking up all of the slots.

Choosing Brown

Shops

Nam Tran

6th Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (17)

Lands (19)

Spells (24)

Sideboard

Shops

roland chang

5th Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (18)

Lands (18)

Spells (24)

Sideboard

The one traditional major player in the Vintage metagame that has made it into the Vintage Champs top 8 is, unsurprisingly to me, the Workshop prison deck.
Workshops is one of the most ridiculously powerful decks in the format, and its biggest weakness in my experience is that it can be tough for the deck to
catch up on the draw if the opponent has managed to get their artifact mana into play before you can start deploying lock pieces.

The deck punishes the propensity of the Vintage format to run relatively few lands (due to the presence of the Moxen) by using the reusable Black Lotus
that is Mishra’s Workshop, Ancient Tomb, and its own artifact acceleration to deploy a multitude of Sphere-effects or just overwhelmingly powerful artifact
threats early enough to keep the opponent from even meaningfully participating in the game.

The main differences between Nam Tran’s list and Roland Chang’s are the choice of “endgame”– Metalworker + Staff of Domination versus Kuldotha Forgemaster
– and how dedicated both players are about their prison-strategy – Roland has more Sphere-effects in Thorn of Amethyst, whereas Nam has Crucible to be able
to fully lock people with Wasteland and Strip Mine.

I personally like Roland’s list better simply because the additional Spheres give it a higher chance to just keep opponents from ever playing anything at
all, giving his list a higher chance to enact what I perceive to be Workshop’s most powerful gameplan. I’m far from a Workshops expert though – if I play
Vintage, I want to play blue spells – so take these observations with a grain of salt.

Is This Legacy?!

U/R Delver

Ryan Glackin

8th Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (10)

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Dack Fayden

Lands (14)

Spells (34)

Sideboard

Temur Delver

Christian Griffin

7th Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (12)

Lands (13)

Spells (35)

Sideboard

Temur Delver

Ryan Eberhart

4th Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (9)

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Dack Fayden

Lands (14)

Spells (36)

Sideboard

U/R Delver

Dario Moreno

2nd Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (10)

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Dack Fayden

Lands (15)

Spells (33)

Sideboard

Well, if there was any more need for proof that Treasure Cruise is the real deal, half the top 8 being what is essentially a souped up Legacy deck should
be ample. U/R Delver loses the extra copies of Ponder and Brainstorm but gets to compensate with access to Mental Misstep, Gush, and the restricted
brokeness that are Time Walk (man is that card good with Young Pyromancer) and Ancestral Recall. The result is a deck that intentionally loses most of
Vintage’s trademark mana acceleration and can play both an aggressive Delver-based tempo game and a very powerful control game just because of how many
extra cards you get to draw between Gush and Treasure Cruise.

One amusing side effect of this way of deckbuilding and the nature of the Vintage format is that Chalice of the Void is going to be a lot less backbreaking
than we’re used to from Legacy, at least in game 1: the default mode for Workshop decks to play Chalice is for X=0 to shut of opposing acceleration, not
X=1 (which would crush this deck).

These lists range from very tempo-focused like Ryan Glackin’s with little in the way of maindeck countermagic other than the eight best free spells and two
Pyroblasts to Christian Griffin’s somewhat combo-controlish list with its thirteen pieces of countermagic and the usually absent Mystical Tutor to tutor up
either maindeck bullets like Ancient Grudge or Time Walk to insta-win with Pyromancer in play.

The deck is quite unusual in that it concedes access to a number of Vintage’s most broken effects – extra Moxen, Yawgmoth’s Will, Tinker, the black tutor
base, just to name a few – and instead relies on cheap cantrips, a low mana count and an overwhelming draw engine coupled with cheap, super-efficient
threats and free countermagic to create its own kind of broken draws. The last time I’ve seen this happening? Ca. 2003 Vintage when we finally figured out
that Gush is quietly totally busted thanks to Roland Bode. This U/R deck, while looking underpowered by traditional Vintage standards, might just be the
heir to Gro we haven’t seen since playsets of Gush and Brainstorm parted company in all the formats.

The one thing I find extremely surprising in these lists, especially those already playing green and more than two Gush, is the absence of the single copy
of Fastbond. Yes, it’s extremely random because you can’t tutor for it, and it doesn’t do much for the deck unless you’re already Cruising and Gushing, but
I played Super-Gro (no black) for a tournament or two way back when. Just running into the Fastbond naturally won a boatload of games because you suddenly
and unexpectedly could really start going off in a way the deck usually can’t. That seems like a good pay out for investing a single cardslot in your
sixty.

Enter The Demon

Oath

Mark Tocco

1st Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (3)

3 Griselbrand

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (15)

Spells (40)

Sideboard

Oath

Harry Corvese

3rd Place at Vintage Champs on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (2)

2 Griselbrand

Planeswalkers (1)

1 Tezzeret the Seeker

Lands (16)

Spells (41)

Sideboard

I already mentioned that I don’t understand why Oath of Druids wasn’t the primary form of creature control in blue control decks in Vintage way back in spring after playing the deck in the last Prague Eternal
event, and I can’t say I’m surprised to see Oath decks being the closest thing to actual big blue Mana Drain decks in this top 8. Instead of mucking around
with Snapcaster Mages and Dark Confidants, you get to play a two mana card that forces your opponent to never play a creature again and almost always wins
the game with suspend one once you find your Forbidden Orchard.

Access to such a cheap effect that only asks you to resolve a single spell to implement gives the deck a much more powerful plan against the Workshop decks
than any traditional (Grixis) control deck has access to, and I’d argue it is also more powerful than having Dark Confidant (or no real draw engine, the
other alternative) in blue control mirrors.

Add the influx of Legacy-style Delver decks with Treasure Cruise in the Vintage Champs event – from the coverage it sounded as if there was a lot of that
present – and it shouldn’t be the slightest surprise that a deck that has access to 1G “your opponent can’t win the game anymore” against them while still
being a broken blue control deck ended up winning the event.

Yes, there are cards like Grafdigger’s Cage, Leyline of Sanctity, and other hate that shut of the Oath of Druids itself. But that’s the beauty of the Oath
deck. Ever since regular blue combo-control decks have had all their good draw engines restricted away from them, the Oath deck is pretty much just as good
as they are at playing the countermagic/Yawgmoth’s Will control game as they are. Mark Tocco has chosen Jace, the Mind Sculptor and a lot of Show and Tells
to give himself this backup plan if Oath is disabled, Harry Corvese relies on Tezzeret the Seeker and the Time Vault + Voltaic Key combo to do the same
thing. I personally like Harry’s choice better – I’m just not a big fan of Show and Tell and had really bad experiences with it in the last Prague Eternal
event – but I don’t have enough current Vintage experience to be confident in that judgment. I will say, however, that the Eternal Weekend results should
make the mirror match much more likely and relying on a card that might allow both of you to put a Griselbrand into play seems worse than having a
plan to just take all the turns.

Given that “Oath is just so bad in control mirrors because you can outdraw them and kill them after taking complete control” was what kept Oath in check in
the past – mind, I’m talking before Griselbrand was even a thing – it seems reasonable that these two lists represent what blue control should look like
right now.

Ninth On Breakers

Gushbond

Jacob Hilty

9th Place at Miscellaneous on 10-26-2014

Vintage

Creatures (1)

1 Blightsteel Colossus

Planeswalkers (2)

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Lands (13)

Spells (44)

Sideboard

Before we move towards more general observations, take a look at the list of one Jacob Hilty, who unluckily drew himself into ninth place (and therefore,
other than tiebreaker luck, might easily have found himself enriching the top 8 by another archetype).

Finally one deck that is playing all the broken cards (no, the draw sevens don’t count. Those are actually terrible). All the mana artifacts, Fastbond,
Gush, Yawgmoth’s Will, Tinker, Tolarian Academy— this deck has it all. Even the Oath of Druids I have talked about so much above are present, if only in
the sideboard, to give the deck yet another broken angle of attack when the opponent is either foolish enough to play creatures or mean enough to try and
make all your spells too expensive to cast.

The deck is all built around using Fastbond plus the Gush engine (including multiple Regrowths to serve as extra copies of Gush) and/or Yawgmoth’s Will
(the two do work together quite well) to get to the ten spells necessary to kill your opponent with Tendrils of Agony – nice Oath you have there waiting to
trigger. If that is for some reason not an option (Can’t find the Fastbond? Your opponent insists on having multiple Sphere effects in play?), you still
have Tinker to find Blightsteel Colossus and mise them. Note that that is particularly efficient if you can find your Time Walk.

It’s somewhat sad that Jacob drew himself out of top 8, not only for him, but all of us as having him in the top 8 would have been worth a lot moving
forward. Because, from a theoretical point of view, looking at the decks above, a list like this is one of the first places I’d go to attack the Vintage
Champs top 8 metagame. You have all the tools to overpower Oath with card drawing – the traditional best plan of beating that deck as I’ve already alluded
to – you’re fast enough to punish the U/R Delver lists for running so little along the lines of hard countermagic and have access to Oath of Druids
postboard to punish workshop players (as well as further putting the U/R deck behind). In short, I could easily have seen Jacob slice through that top 8
like a hot knife through butter had he been part of it.

What Now?

So what does that mean for anybody preparing for an upcoming Vintage event? Well, first and foremost, you need to be ready for Oath. In the past,
the deck flew somewhat under the radar, but given these results and the known propensity of Vintage players to enjoy their blue control decks, I’d expect
Oath to see a lot more play now that the cat is out of the bag and the metagame is made so favorable for the deck by the influx of Treasure
Cruises.

For the Oath players themselves, that means you need to find some tech to win the mirror – just relying on drawing more Forbidden Orchards than your
opponent seems a little too random for my tastes. Maybe that means you need to play with Wastelands to make winning the Orchard war more likely, maybe it
means you pack weird old school tech like Spawning Pit or maybe you set up your deck to simply not rely on Oathing postboard in the mirror. I’m not sure
what the answer is, but it’s pretty clear you’ll need some kind of plan.

For everybody else, make sure you have your Grafdigger’s Cages handy. The stock of Nature’s Claim and Abrupt Decay also rises as a way to fight both Oath
and Workshops and so does that of Pithing Needle as Griselbrand is a lot less scary if it’s only an oversized Baneslayer Angel and naming Bazaar of Baghdad
is a nice way to keep Dredge in check.

Speaking of Dredge, I’m unsure if these developments are good or bad for the deck that doesn’t want to use any mana to cast its spells. On the one hand, if
the rise of Oath might mean even more Grafdigger’s Cages floating around in sideboards. On the other hand, the deck is already used to dealing with huge
amounts of hate in postboard games so the additional Cages are already very much business as usual anyway. If the expected prevalence of Oath of Druids
meant that graveyard hate becomes unified into starting with four Cages for just about anybody, that would make boarding the correct anti-hate pieces much
easier.

As to the impact of the Cruise Delver deck, as much as it pains me to say it, I think the traditional Grixis Vault Key deck is just dead unless someone
finds a way to allow the deck to harness the power of Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time to match its draw-capabilities of old. Oath does what you do but
has a better plan against Workshops, Dredge, and Delver. The Delver deck can actually out-control you due to its superior card advantage while also
presenting a fast clock you somehow need to deal with and none of your other matchups have actually improved compared to the pre-Khans situation.

To talk about one archetype I haven’t even mentioned yet, the Sultai Fish deck that was such a successful option in the last year or two, is another deck
that could be able to take advantage of Treasure Cruise (judging from how easily the card slots into the Legacy version) but is also another deck that
should be hurt by the rise of Oath.

And speaking of Fish, the actual Merfolk deck that is at the origin of that moniker just looks terrible to me now in spite of winning Vintage Champs last
year. Your power derives from presenting a fast clock and eschewing a lot of the powerful cards in the format to take full advantage of what Null Rod does
to your opponent’s manabase. Similar to Legacy, I don’t see how you’re actually doing that any better than the U/R Delver deck already is. You invest a lot
more slots and mana into establishing your clock without being any faster in closing out the game and you also have a worse draw engine (even if you decide
to run your own Treasure Cruises simply because your deck contains more permanents) and at best the same amount of disruption but no removal. Add all those
Oaths and this seems like a terrible time to sleeve up Lord of Atlantis.

Good? Bad?

Well, the shake-up is real. Khans of Tarkir is easily the most impactful set since Return to Ravnica in Eternal formats, and I’d argue that it actually
outperforms it simply because of how powerful its new additions are.

Amusingly enough, I kind of like what it has done to the format in spite of invalidating the archetype I’ve traditionally preferred to play
(Will-Drain-control). My favorite thing about Vintage has always been that a lot of the games revolve around card-advantage and counter-wars with both
players throwing a ton of resources around early to try and work themselves into a favorable position and spiral the card advantage out of control into a
win.

With Treasure Cruise pushing people towards doing less broken things early to do more ridiculous things a turn or two – aka an Eternity by Vintage
standards – later (U/R Delver) and the early broken blue deck (Oath) being traditionally weak to the opponent just focusing on stopping Oath and drawing
cards, it sure feels like I’ll get to play a lot more of these kinds of games in the near future.

I’m not sure what solves this kind of metagame – as mentioned, the Gush combo deck looks like a good starting point – but that just makes things even
sweeter. Unexpected crazy things happening is one of the things that make Vintage such a sweet format, after all. So I have no idea if what I’ll be
bringing to the Prague Eternal Vintage event will even be any good, but I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun and a ton of awesome games!

P.S–I decided to write about Vintage this week before the final cards of this year’s Commander product were spoiled, and even now that I’ve seen them, I
doubt there is a full review article worth of cards in there anyway. That being said, I definitely want to take the time to say this:

Thank You, Wizards of the Coast!

Finally, those annoying Griselbrand decks aren’t the only ones that don’t have to deal with a hatebear on the level of Ethersworn Canonist. It’s been about
time for at least a year now. The additional splash damage on Elves is also a nice way to help out the white-based creature decks (Maverick, Death and
Taxes) to find ways to survive the pointy-eared menace.

And who knows, with the influx of Oath in Vintage and the fact that this also shuts down the dredge deck if you can get it down before they’ve started
making Bridge from Below tokens (not to mention Tinker for Blightsteel Colossus), the little Priest that could might actually prove to be an extremely
relevant player in Magic’s oldest format too. This lady plus Null Rod is a pretty tough nut to crack for any Tinker/Time Vault deck seeing as winning with
planeswalkers can be kind of tough when your opponent has a board full of creatures.