Back on Monday, I mentioned that I had a personal list of cards that caused one-sided routs to occur. A guessing game then ensued for the two unrestricted cards on my list. Only one person managed to guess both cards (Mana Drain and Chalice of the Void), though many got one correct and other named cards were just below the top 10 on my list. As a result, I felt I should give the top 15 cards of my list with some reasoning behind each choice.
I spend a large chunk of my articles trying to make people in Vintage better players. This sort of teaching process has been a real learning experience for me. First off, I’d like to say it’s a very rewarding experience to help people get better. Second, it’s way harder than everyone told me it would be. I can see why some forum posters write long elaborate posts, but never write articles. You have to be way more coherent to do it. Oh, I was going to tell you another tip to get better right? Into the fray we go!
Hi and welcome to the Daily with Josh Silvestri. It’s great to see you all here today. For Monday, I’d like to speak on one of my favorite Constructed formats, Vintage. For those of you who are curious about the oldest of formats, there is a lot to both love and hate about it. I’d like to devote today to briefly covering the ups and the downs of this place where “broken things happen.”
Tired of seeing the atrocities commited by Vintage players everywhere, Josh Silvestri steps to the fore with five simple rules that will help you become better at the game of Magic.
Let me explain something real fast for some of you… no, Regionals is not a Vintage tourney; yes it is Standard or “Type 2” as some call it. No I haven’t given up Vintage and I will continue to write about it. At this point I feel obligated to tell you that I do have an interest in other formats and I enjoy playing something non-broken from time to time. This is a report on my exploits at Regionals, contains zero Vintage material and well generally have me blathering on for a good 10 pages. You have been warned.
Welcome to the grab bag, boys and girls! Today I’ll be covering a number of topics including underrepresented cards in the current format and opinions about which decks are viable in the current metagame, so I hope you’re ready to take notes.
So here we are boys and girls, we’ve finally reached the end of this block. We all know what that means… more annoying and completely wrong guesses at what will be good. I feel it’s my duty to try anything like this once though, so I’ll give it a shot and will surely look like an idiot in a few months. Because this is a Vintage review only though, it’d be stupid to cover every card. I’m only reviewing cards that I think may have a place in some decks, a few mockable ones and ones the pique my interest.
Tired of the combo-control grind and looking for some aggressive decks to play at your local Vintage tournament? Take these for a spin and tell us what you think in our forums.
A while ago Kyle Boddy wrote an article on the concepts of momentum and inevitability, which was based off an article written by Flores. It was an interesting topic and really got me thinking about what inevitability actually means in different formats. Inevitability itself is hard to explain, since between two decks with similar strategies and speed, there is nothing truly tangible to argue one way or the other. It becomes completely dependent on the board state and resource position when two decks of similar types square off typically. Here’s my basic definition of inevitability…
My last article talked about the basic flaws in aggro decks and why they were historically annihilated. Now I’ll to try to help you out a bit when constructing an aggro control / combo deck for Vintage. We’ll start by breaking down some of the more successful aggro decks of the past and see what can be applied to today’s models.
Once upon a time, aggro decks actually succeeded in Vintage. Then people got smart and started playing the really good cards in the format instead of trying to simply beat for two every turn. Why do aggro decks fail today and what can be learned from these important flaws? That’s the topic we’ll be addressing today, class, so follow along.
In my last article I talked about simplistic decks to play, but some of you may have noticed something in common with the decks – they were all fully powered, save Spoils Dragon, which doesn’t really help the people lacking any power at all. So I’m here to help out with your problems. This will be mostly an educational article, but I’ve tried to keep it somewhat interesting for those of you with short attention spans. Even if you are fully powered, you should probably read this to know what you’ll be up against.
Let me start the article with this little explanation. I’m not saying play skill doesn’t count for anything in Vintage; otherwise the same people wouldn’t constantly place in tourneys. I’m simply illustrating that there are simplistic decks for those who are more inept or simply don’t want to think about what to play. In other words, tired of going X-2 at tourneys? Maybe it’s time to change to a more broken, albeit simpler, deck.
