Around a week and a half ago the Vintage community started buzzing with rumors that the April 4th Ban and Restricted list announcement would have “a major shakeup” to the format. After a week and half of speculation and discussion, we finally got confirmation from Wizards of the Coast what the next three months of Magic’s oldest format will look like. It turns out that “a major shakeup” was an understatement:
While I may disagree with the decision to only restrict Lodestone Golem, what’s done is done. All we can do now is try to figure out exactly what this means for Vintage going forward. As I had mentioned in a previous piece I wrote defending the newly restricted robot, the format was in a place where we had a rock-paper-scissors dynamic happening. Each deck that was seeing play had a natural foil that also regularly saw play. With rock getting its power drastically reduced we now have to worry about scissors running rampant. That is not to say that Mishra’s Workshops decks can no longer exist in some form. The deck will have to undergo a major reconstruction as it just lost its best card outside of Mishra’s Workshop itself, but it will survive. Whether or not it will still be at a level that can consistently perform well in tournaments or it will be regulated to Junk Hatebears status, aka a metagame deck that can do well but often doesn’t, remains to be seen. For right now it seems like blue players are poised to have a renaissance the likes of which hasn’t been seen since a decade ago.
“But Danny,” you say, “Vintage in 2006 was dominated by Gifts Ungiven; a group of blue decks that beat up every other blue deck so badly it caused Wizards to have to step in and restrict something.” Well about that……..
Mentor Control – Danny Batterman – 4/4/16
4 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
4 Monastery Mentor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Dig Through Time
2 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Gitaxian Probe
3 Gush
4 Mental Misstep
1 Ponder
2 Preordain
2 Pyroblast
2 Sudden Shock
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Time Walk
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
2 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Strip Mine
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
-Side-
1 Aegis of the Gods
2 Containment Priest
1 Disenchant
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Flusterstorm
1 Karakas
1 Ravenous Trap
2 Rest in Peace
2 Shattering Spree
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Tormod’s Crypt
One could make a very strong argument that Monastery Mentor decks were the best deck in the format prior to the April 4th changes. They occupied basically the same percentage of the metagame as all of the Mishra’s Workshop decks combined, and unlike its artifact based counterpart there is no real good way to combat it. Mentor is way too compact of a win condition, and the deck will simply leverage the fundamental brokenness of Gush to outclass every other fair non-Gush deck played against it. The way this deck used to be kept in check was a horde of different robots alongside Sphere effects. In fact Ravager Shops was so good at keeping Mentor in check that a lot of its recent success before the restriction can be directly attributed to Gush decks warping how fair blue decks get built. With Lodestone out of the picture Ravager Shops basically ceases to exist, so we need to look for new ways to beat public enemy number one. What are the best ways to do that with a fair blue deck you may ask?
Honestly, I don’t know
The reason every single blue deck in the format has to drastically warp around Mentor and other token strategies is because of how fundamentally broken Gush is. This is a brokenness that exists beyond the gameplay effect of having a free card draw spell and goes all the way into how one constructs their deck. By playing Gush in your starting 60 one is allowed to play fewer lands that someone who isn’t since casting Gush in the midgame guarantees that you can still hit your land drops while drawing into more low cost threats. Mentor decks certainly are not the first to apply this deck building principle (it traces all the way back to Hall of Famer Alan Comer’s Miracle Grow deck), but they are the most effective at it in Vintage today. The kicker is that because Mentor is so effective at both going tall and going wide you need a way to deal with both Monastery Mentor and the tokens it leaves behind. You can use Supreme Verdict to sweep all the monks away, but they’ll just draw into another. You can hopefully hold the army of Ojutai at bay with a Moat, but the deck has enough disruption to make sure that it either won’t resolve or it can force through a way to get it off the battlefield. Even Oath of Druids, a deck traditionally used to keep creature based strategies in check, can have a hard time dealing with Mentor simply because how effective the monks are at killing through a Griselbrand. Sadly the best option to beat Gush if you want to play fair is just to play Gush yourself and hope to draw better in the mirror.
Of course, if that’s not your style you can always channel your inner Cedric Phillips and Storm them out of the building:
Dark Petition Storm – Danny Batterman – 4/4/16
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Cabal Ritual
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Dark Petition
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Timetwister
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1 Black Lotus
2 Defense Grid
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Bayou
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
-Side-
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Nature’s Claim
1 Rebuild
1 Sadistic Sacrament
1 Spring Cleaning
1 Toxic Deluge
2 City of Solitude
2 Defense Grid
3 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Island
This is actually the scariest thing about Vintage allowing only one copy of Lodestone Golem. Historically it was Workshop’s job to keep all of the broken decks like Storm in check because the blue control decks were never up to the task. The matchups can be close, but more often than not Storm runs the fair blue decks out of counterspells through a combination of its own disruption and must-answer threats, or in modern day Vintage a mismatch of disruption vs threat (Pyroblast vs Dark Petition, Flusterstorm vs Defense Grid, Mental Misstep vs any bomb that isn’t CMC 1, etc). Workshop decks were much more difficult to deal with simply because the Spheres that disrupted your game plan never went away. Now if the Shops opponent never presented any real pressure a Storm player could simply wait until they had enough lands to cast Hurkyl’s Recall at the end of their opponent’s turn and then go nuts. Lodestone Golem was a huge problem to that plan since not only was it a very quick clock with a sphere on its back, but more often than not a Storm player would have to cast the critical Hurkyl’s Recall in the middle of combat in order to not take lethal damage. Astute Shops players would read into this, not cast anything (nor needlessly animate their Mishra’s Factories), and just redeploy a few spheres in their post-combat main phase. That’s why over the years I have always tried to include a haymaker like Pulverize or Serenity in my Storm sideboards as a way to clear the board without putting lock pieces back into my opponent’s hand. Without the regular threat of a 5/3 smashing your face in I don’t think Storm can reliably go back to the EoT Hurkyl’s plan. It also means that Storm gets to dip into a color it hasn’t really touched since the release of Dark Petition: Green.
Dipping into Green allows us extraordinary flexibility for our sideboard options. As blue decks start shifting away from Shops hate and more towards Storm hate in the board, savvy pilots will play disruptive permanents like Arcane Laboratory, Ethersworn Canonist, or even Counterbalance as compared to bringing in more counterspells that just get stopped by Storm’s regular plan of discard + Defense Grid. Being in green gives us tools like Nature’s Claim, or in the case of Counterbalance Abrupt Decay/Krosan Grip, to deal with all of the restrictive artifacts and enchantments that may start seeing heavy play. Now similar effects also exist in White, but Green gives us another game breaking effect against blue decks: City of Solitude. The ability to shut down not only spells but abilities from things like Tormod’s Crypt or Deathrite Shaman goes a long way towards locking up a game, and being an enchantment means City is even more difficult for most decks to interact with. 2G is also much easier on the manabase than something like WW for Grand Abolisher; the closest effect in another color. I also used splashing Green as an excuse to go a little deep in the sideboard. Spring Cleaning may not be the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of “an efficient enchantment removal spell”, but I wanted a card in green that could hit multiple Leylines without blowing up a City of Solitude if I have one in play. Considering all of the other cards that do that have a converted mana cost of four and suddenly Spring Cleaning doesn’t seem as bad. Worst case scenario it’s a way to blow up an enchantment that can’t get hit by Mental Misstep. Seeing how Enchantments were staring to become the go to way to try and interact with Storm, I definitely want that effect in my 75 right now.
So if Mentor and Storm are the perceived top dogs in the format right now, the next logical question becomes “how do I beat them both?” Now that the stopgap of Mishra’s Workshop has been removed is there any strategy that can boast being favored against both decks, and if there is why hadn’t it seen play before? It turns that such an archetype does exist! Just like Storm it was held in check by Workshop decks, but now that MUD Mages have gone into hiding I believe this very well could be the best Week One deck in our new format. What deck am I talking about?
Doomsday – Danny Batterman – 4/4/16
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dig Through Time
4 Doomsday
2 Duress
2 Flusterstorm
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Gush
4 Mental Misstep
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ponder
4 Preordain
1 Rebuild
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Fastbond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
-Side-
2 Trygon Predator
3 Xantid Swarm
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Nature’s Claim
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Forest
Ignoring the palpable irony here, I really believe that Doomsday might secretly be the best deck in the format right now. The issue I always had with Doomsday before now is that it basically had the same matchups across the format as Storm with two very notable exceptions. The first was in the combo mirror. Because a majority of your disruption is reactive Doomsday can actually interact with other combo decks on the turns where they topdeck or cantrip into the business spell, and you could keep them off balance for long enough so you got to combo first and win. The second area where Doomsday differed from Storm was against Workshops. Because you are on average a much slower combo deck with fewer sources of fast mana the Workshop deck has more time to set up their lock pieces and find pressure to kill you before you bounce their board. Now that there will be 75% fewer Lodestone Golems, the point about Storm getting more time to successfully resolve a EoT Hurkyl’s applies here as well. Doomsday doesn’t even need to land its namesake card in window as Trygon Predator is extremely devastating against a deck that plays only artifacts. If this is going to be anything like when Chalice of the Void got hit you may not even need to worry about Shops showing up in large numbers for the first month or so, which only makes things even better for Doomsday. The one downside of Doomsday is actually winning with the deck. I believe the decks namesake card is the single hardest thing to resolve correctly in Magic, and even though it gets easier in Vintage it’s not something you can pick up cold. If you can get your reps in quickly you can definitely reap the rewards in the upcoming weeks.
The only lingering question left about Vintage itself is what happens to Workshops decks? While I don’t know exactly what direction the decks will go in, I do know that there are plenty of options available. I think for the first few weeks or so the format will be relatively robot free, but after the dust settles someone like Roland Chang, Will Dayton, Nick Detwiler, the Forino Brothers, or Will Magrann will find the best way to attack the metagame and Shops will take its rightful place. If you want something to catch people off guard in the meantime though, try this:
Two Card Monte – “Shaman” Ben Perry – 3/20/16
4 Goblin Welder
4 Painter’s Servant
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Mental Misstep
1 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Black Lotus
4 Grindstone
4 Helm of Obedience
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Memory Jar
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Mana Confluence
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
-Side-
2 Containment Priest
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Balance
3 Nature’s Claim
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Defense Grid
1 Trinisphere
The last thing I want to touch on about this ban list is the effect it had on the Vintage community itself. I bring this up because many of my closest friends and peers are members of this community, and many of them are extraordinarily upset. The thing they are upset by isn’t specifically the restriction of Lodestone Golem (although some people are legitimately upset about that), but the perception they have that Wizards of the Coast doesn’t listen what they have to say. This has been stated multiple times in this past week, but many people who play Vintage play it exclusively. To them, Vintage is Magic, and a majority of the Vintage community was happy with the way things were. All of the articles published in the past week defending Lodestone Golem’s importance to the format written by both Shop players and Blue players were met with near universal praise, and people felt that the data we have access to (via real life tournament results and MTGO Dailies) didn’t show the kind of results that warranted a restriction. This holds especially true if you broke down “Shops” into its distinct archetypes, as each variant of Shops had specific ways to attack it (Hurkyl’s Recall being great against Ravager Shops but terrible against Terra Nova for example). To me, these issues are more important to address than any future restrictions or unrestrictions, as I want to nip any potential rift between Wizards of the Coast and the Vintage Community in the bud. My proposed solution:
The Vintage Community Liaison Team
What this would be is a group of people who can serve as a waypoint between Wizards of the Coast and the Vintage community. A precedent for this has already been set with Alex Ullman as the Pauper Community Liaison. This way Wizards has access to people who regularly play the format (as they don’t have the manpower to play all of those games themselves), and the Vintage community has a say in what happens with the format. As opposed to Pauper, I believe Vintage needs a team of people in order to best ensure objective results. The only question now is who should be on it? This is a tricky be pretty tricky because these people would need to understand Vintage on a fundamental level, be easy to communicate with, and be willing to set aside their own personal preferences for the good of the format. To that end, I propose the initial three members of the Vintage Community Liaison team be, in alphabetical order, Nick Detwiler, Andy “Brassman” Probasco, and Dr. Rich Shay. The team would also need a point of contact at Wizards of the Coast, and thankfully Ethan Fleischer fills that role perfectly as both a designer and a lover of Vintage. The specifics on what the team would do and how members would be added could be worked out by Wizards during its development, but I believe the sooner we get this in place the better it will be for Vintage as a whole.
So that about wraps everything up. With a format who’s card pool is as wide as Vintage it’s hard to predict exactly everything that’s going to happen, but that’s half of the fun. All of the lists I provided should be a good starting point, so I hope they bring you success at whatever event you play in next. Until next time!
Danny Batterman
https://twitter.com/dbatterskull
