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.
Casting costs are relatively important in Type One, for more purposes than just evaluating how much mana you need to put in your deck (especially since cheating on casting costs is the primary goal of many if not most Type One strategies). Its actual import reveals itself through the usefulness of other cards: Powder Keg, Smother, Engineered Explosives, Pernicious Deed, as well as the classically sidelined counterspells, Prohibit and Spell Blast. Other cards ranging from Overload and Plaguebearer to Gorilla Shaman and Chalice of the Void also care very much about this aspect of a card. Today I’m going to break down a whole slew of numbers that will make you a better Vintage player for knowing them.
Today Steve wraps up his massive Psychatog Primer with complete matchup and sideboarding advice for every major deck in the format.
My mission today is to expand on my perception of White’s problems, and to use Shining Shoal as an example of a weak fix (hopefully pointing us toward ideas for better ones). In the process, you will discover why creatures are the worst card type in Magic, and hopefully achieve a state of enlightenment.
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 this continuing deck primer on one of the oldest decks in Vintage, Steve takes a look at all of the components that make Multi-Colored Control successful, and includes a tournament report from a recent event where he put his updated build to the test and landed squarely in the finals.
When Stephen Menendian writes an article, the Vintage world pays attention, but when he writes a deck primer, the whole of the Magic world often stops by to see what new tech exists. Today Steve updates Dr. Teeth for the new Vintage era. How many colors should you be playing? What should your Cunning Wish sideboard look like? Your opponents will be reading this article, can you afford not to?
As part of our continuing effort to bring you the lastest tech in Type One deckbuilding, today StarCityGames.com presents our newest Featured Writer, noted French deckbuilder Mattieu Durand. Matthieu’s topic du jour is a new version of an Auriok Salvagers control deck that seeks to abuse the power of Gifts Ungiven, complete with card-by-card analysis and matchup information.
Trinisphere wasn’t broken, but it was restricted anyway for contributions of “making the game unfun.” Is fun a viable reason to ban or restrict a card? Oscar Tan has his own opinion on this one and he’d like to hear yours: Did Wizards of the coast screw up when they restricted Trinisphere?
Whether or not you like B&R list debates in Type One, this last one was more like hammer to the forebrain than a regular old discussion. Since this debate was arguably at least as intense as November 2003, lots of people were flailing around looking for support for their contentions. Unlike that past incident, which happened before I started my articles, this time there was a concentrated supply of data besides morphling.de’s deck database. I got cited all over the place and learned a great deal about what sort of information you folks want and need to see. As a result, I’ve tried to overhaul my presentation to give you as much information as you can handle.
Those of you who are familiar with our Power 9 Event Coverage probably know all about the infamous Brass Man, a player adept at deckbuilding, amusing one-liners, and utterly smashing Stephen Menendian(s). For those of you who have not heard of this colorful character of Vintage, follow along today as he introduces his very saucy version of Gifts Ungiven Control that uses Goblin Charbelcher and Mana Severance as a combo win condition. If any of this sounds confusing or counter-intuitive, this excellent article is just a click away, prepared to explain the whole thing.
I’ve been on the forefront of 4-color Control’s design for years now. Over those years, I had slipped into the habit of tweaking the deck to survive, popularizing it, letting it get invalidated (either by hate or a substantial environment shift), then again tweaking the deck to survive. That is, until I felt that the format was too broken for it to even consider. Thankfully I don’t think today’s environment is too broken, and I have a new build to show you that has tested very well.
With Syracuse in the books, the eyes of the Vintage community now turn to the next Star City “Power Nine” tournament in Chicago! Can Kevin Cron successfully defend his Syracuse title? Will new archetypes emerge in the wake of the Trinisphere restriction? Can anyone stop Team Mean Deck? These questions, and more, will be answered at the 3rd stop in the 2005 Star City “Power Nine” Tournament Series; Chicago! Make plans to attend!
In the meantime, check out the Vintage Decks To Beat for March 2005!
Phil Stanton’s articles are almost impossible to explain in short blurbs, but they always include numbers, they are always about Vintage, and they always give you crucial information about some part of the Vintage metagame. This time Phil takes a look at the different compositions of card types in Vintage Top 8s, including how many land/mana sources each deck runs, the amount of countermagic and disruption seeing play, and how much potential most Vintage decks have to damage themselves. If I haven’t explained that this article is really really cool then I have failed, but don’t let that stop you from reading this article, as it should be an enormous boon to every Vintage deckbuilder that reads it.
This past weekend Randy played in his first tournament since 1999… and won. Even better was that it was an unsanctioned 12-Proxy Vintage event with a Black Lotus as the grand prize. We sent our crack reporter JP Meyer off to a secret resort on the island of Maui (also known as “R&D’s Winter Home”) to ask Randy about his tournament experience, what deck he played, how R&D looks at Vintage and his thoughts on the format as a whole.
