Illusions-Donate in Legacy
One of the best deck designers in Vintage turns his eye toward the burgeoning Legacy format and finds that this largely dismissed combo deck has more game than anyone thought.
The Arcborn Virus
Less than a year ago, Mike Long released a deck dubbed The Suicide Virus. The immediate reaction to this deck was incredulity. Most readers dismissed the deck as “a pile.” A few players tinkered with it before moving onto something else. Regardless of what people thought at the time, no major structural improvements to the deck have been published since. Since then, I have been furiously working in my secret Vintage laboratory pouring creative energies into improving this deck and today I’m set to unveil my latest creation.
Playing Gifts Ungiven in Vintage
The two biggest threats to Gifts Ungiven decks in Vintage are Control Slaver and Stax. Today Steve breaks down both of those matchups as well as dissecting some important changes in Gifts decklists that will let players better compete in a metagame that is prepared for them.
The Many Flavors of $T4KS: Learning CronStax and Preparing for GenCon
Aside from Gifts Ungiven, the best deck in Vintage right now is clearly the very tricky Stax archetype and it has been for some time. Today Steve completely exposes the origins of Stax, the strategy behind the deck, and gives you all the keys you will need to win your next Vintage event, whether it be a local weekend tournament or the Vintage World Championships at GenCon.
Talking Vintage Tech with Randy Buehler
This would normally be a Premium article, but we have made this available to all readers of our site. Premium members should consider this a Premium article for the day that everyone else gets to read. Non-Premium members – consider this a sample of what you would see on the Premium side of the site nearly every day. And just to blow your minds, it includes statements like the following: “I’m actually growing to hate Mana Drain. It’s probably the worst card in the deck right now and I sideboard out 3 of them with some regularity.” What deck is Randy Buehler referencing and what other insights does the Director of R&D have for Magic players everywhere? The answer is only a click away.
Fine, Just Ban It Already!
After a great deal of deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that it is now necessary to move past restriction and simply ban one card in Vintage. This article will focus on the arguments for and against banning this particular card, which may very well be the best Magic card of all time.
The Vintage Roundup: A Look Ahead
Stephen looks at the issues and strategies coming up for the rest of 2005 – including a look at the overall metagame, the deck that requires the least skill to pilot (and why this matters), how to use Gifts Ungiven properly in Meandeck Gifts (it’s not what you’d think), and his take on Pithing Needle. All that, and a brief look at the potential pitfalls of the 2006 Vintage Season!
Surveying Legacy
With the announcement of Legacy Grand Prix, I began in earnest to look at Legacy once more. I watched part of a Legacy tournament at Origins and I searched through the major Legacy forums and Legacy websites. I fully intend on playing in the Legacy Grand Prix, and what’s more, I intend on breaking the format.
Finding the Gifts Deck
Gifts Ungiven was just an overhyped, underpowered Fact or Fiction clone. Or that’s what we thought in the beginning. Now it’s the engine for most of the best control-combo decks in Vintage, but what build is the correct one? As usual, the conclusions I come to in this article may be a bit off the beaten path, but man do they make a good deck.
Preparing for Rochester
Having trouble deciding what to play in Rochester? You probably should be… the results of Richmond probably add to the confusion. Hopefully, I’ll be able to shed some light on the situation, giving you some guidelines for your deck choice at what will surely be the hottest American Vintage tournament of the year.
SCG Daily – Vintage Food for Thought: OMG, a Budget Deck!
I am struck with deck ideas all the time. Most of them are crap and I acknowledge that. However, it is critical to document your ideas. Most of my good ideas have started out as a crap idea that I shelved and then something strikes me and suddenly I get an “aha” moment and the idea clicks. Today’s deck is one such example.
SCG Daily – Interactivity in Vintage
Probably the most interesting article I’ve read all year is Mike Flores’ article on Interactivity. WARNING! ALERT! WARNING! I’d like to talk about Interactivity and Vintage. That means boring Magic theory to those of you who couldn’t care less. For those that do care, let’s parse what Master Flores has had to say on the subject and see how that applies to Vintage as a whole.
SCG Daily – The Keys to Making Top 8 in Vintage Tournaments
Pure Magic would be a world where there were no card pool constraints on a person’s deck choice, where there were no time limits, where everyone has perfect information as to the decks in the metagame and where no one made play mistakes. Unfortunately, Vintage, as defined by the rules of Magic and the banned and restricted list, doesn’t exist. What exists is a particular variant of Vintage called Tournament Vintage. It is essential to tournament success that you focus upon the actual features of Vintage tournaments, not just the features of the format as defined by the rules. In this article I am going reveal all of my secrets – all of the tidbits of knowledge I’ve picked up from my experience in Vintage tournaments.
SCG Daily – How to Test for Vintage
There are numerous elements involved in proper Vintage tournament preparation. This article is going to concisely focus on just one: testing.
SCG Daily – What Vintage Does and Does Not Need
Welcome to the first Vintage daily series! This week I have been given a platform to rant. I will delve into five topics that I would not normally write about because they aren’t worthy of a full-length article. To begin the week, here is a list of ten things Vintage could really use more of and things that Vintage really does not need (even though we might think we do).