TagVintage

This article has been in the works with Stephen Menendian, a.k.a. Smmenen, the Paragons’ other law student, for several weeks now, but I wasn’t home mornings (evenings in the United States) because of my law internship. Then Gush got restricted – so hell, we did the games on the last day of my internship, at 2:30 a.m., and with me loaded with tequila from the mini-party with Joey, the other intern. Interesting? Definitely.

Certainly something was broken in Growing ‘Tog, and it cannot be denied that the sheer size of its men made so many decks unplayable. If restricting Gush is your solution, though, you have to justify it due to synergy with other cards since it just isn’t that powerful on its own. (The closest analogy is Frantic Search.) The problem, however, is that you have no other alternative except for Psychatog, unless you want to ban Fastbond, which is impossible because Tolarian Academy, Memory Jar and Yawgmoth’s Bargain would have to go first… And it may well be that restricting Gush still doesn’t stop the deck.

Dream Halls single-handedly demonstrated how easily a”without paying its mana cost” ability can be abused, as Zvi demonstrated in the old Type II with his infamous monstrosity. Now fast forward to 2003. Dream Halls has long since been restricted, thanks to crazy Time Spirals and other brokenness. In Type I, what can you do with a Dream Halls-esque Storm card and every zero-cost mana artifact and one-mana blue manipulation spell ever printed? You can stand a damn good chance of breaking the format.

We experienced a pure motherlode of Type I tech thanks to Legions and its creatures, so I’m sure you could hardly keep your pants on while awaiting Scourge. But seriously, there’s one card in Scourge that I think is so good that it might have the potential to make it into”The Deck”… And today, I’m going to test it out to see how it works.

Today, we explore the most basic of all blue-based aggro-control decks. It’s called Fish by default, but you also know it as Merfolk and Skies. Fish, as we noted last week, suffers from the classic weakness of having weenies that are pathetic in combat. If you’re playing control or combo, however, that doesn’t really help you, because you’re not going to do a lot of that. Examining a game against Fish will help you analyze the more complex aggro-control decks we’ll move on to later.

When a beginner sees creatures, especially weenies, he usually labels a deck”aggro.” When he sees control elements, especially counterspells, he usually labels it”control.” Aggro-control decks, however, have creatures and counterspells. The problem with misidentifying an archetype, as usual, is consequently not knowing how to play against it, much less sideboard.

Taking a page from other blue-based decks from High Tide to Forbiddian, Roland added red to his deck in anticipation of the mirror, and went 7-0 at the last Dülmen, beating two other Growing ‘Togs. To make room, he even removed Berserk, figuring he wouldn’t need to slip past as many blockers. This is the deck that many people are now claiming is almost unbeatable. It proves, they claim, that Gush is broken.

Wizards pointed Type I players to Illusionary Mask when they introduced Morph trigger creatures. Building a deck around Mask, though, requires a bit of work, and you need to Mask out a really good creature to make all that worth it. So far, the standard is set by Phyrexian Dreadnought, and it’s a very tough one.

If Keeper is really the best deck Type One has to offer, then we need to explore its weaknesses. We need to find ways of defeating it. Even the toughest nut can be cracked, and I will show you how to crack this nut in five easy steps.

If there’s a weenie that caught people’s attention and even held some for quite a while, it’s Caller of the Claw. The logic went like this: Four power for three mana is mediocre by Type I standards (look at Phyrexian Negator). Four power for three mana in green just doesn’t cut it. But six power for three mana? Things start looking up.

The first annual The Mana Drain Northeast Championship was a huge success. We got a total of seventy-seven people, which is the second largest Type 1 tournament in recent memory. It was an even better success because I won it.

If people complain about Mishra’s Workshop, it’s because they haven’t read all the articles on how to play against TnT (or how to build tight decks in the first place). The more intelligent protesters, though, shout out against the deck’s real power: Survival of the Fittest. DCI’s reasoning on Entomb is as scary as it is senseless, because if you believe they’re serious, then Survival should have been the target because it draws every turn with Squee.

In this age of instant opinion polls and online message boards, the single most dangerous thing in the world is an uninformed opinion. The DCI just proved it isn’t immune, either.

The DCI stopped restricting cards in other formats and just bans them if it absolutely has to, because restrictions add an undue random factor. Many games might feel like topdecking a bomb in Onslaught Sealed, for example. Thing is, this actually makes Type I fun and different, which begs the question: Should we change the banned and restricted list, even if everything seems to be fine?

“Morph trigger” is actually Echo in reverse. You get the ability and a creature by paying a lot of mana spread over two turns. Now, compare Bone Shredder to Skinthinner. With the Urza’s Legacy predecessor, you get the Terror ability you need up front, then decide if you can spare 2B for a puny 1/1 next turn. With the new Legions version, you have to pay for the 2/2 before you can pay 3BB for the Terror you really wanted.