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Budget in VintageBy Jank Golem on June 11th, 2007 · Filed in Vintage (Type 1) · 19 CommentsOne of the most common misconceptions about the Vintage format is that it cannot be played on a budget. This simply is not true. Budget viable budget decks are available and most unsanctioned Vintage tournaments allow 10 proxies or fake cards. This allows players to get into the Vintage for around the same cost as other formats. Even in sanctioned Vintage without proxies, you can still play without power or other extremely expensive cards. It is true however that most archetypes in Vintage can simply not work without power or other expensive cards. Control, Combo and Prison do not work unpowered without sacrificing all of their speed and resilience. The one archetype that can work without power is Aggro Control, also known as Fish.
Unpowered suggestions: -1 Mox Pearl -1 Mox Ruby -1 Mox Jet +1 Badlands +1 Flooded Strand +1 Windswept Heath The Mountains Win Again, aka TMWA, is metagamed towards control decks and aggro control decks. It is not meant to be played in field full of combo or Stax, although the deck can be adjusted to an extent. The idea behind TMWA is to simply hate out your opponent with silver bullets and build enough tempo to overwhelm them with creatures. Glad you spent all your money on Grim Tutor now? The best way to explain TMWA is to explain its silver bullets card by card to show their purpose against various decks. Pyroblast holds off your opponent’s draw spells or breaks through a counter wall for the low price of one red mana. Hide/Seek can hit a Tinker target or remove a win condition in a Flash deck before it is even played, and the lifegain from Seek makes a Tendrils of Agony kill much more difficult. Aven Mindcensor is the new toy for Fish from Future Sight, and its casting cost is slightly high but its effect is huge vs. archetypes with many search effects like combo and control. Bloodfire Dwarf may look unusual at first but it solves one of the decks key problems an early Empty the Warrens, Bloodfire Dwarf is also yet another removal spell for the deck. The pairing of Chalice of the Void and Null Rod balance speed and power level, Chalice gets down early to prevent a fast win and Null Rod comes down later as a more resilient disruption piece. Dark Confidant provides a long term draw engine which control must answer or be destroyed by card advantage. Since The decks three tutors lets it run a redundant consistent deck, but still have silver bullets for certain matchups. TMWA tends to destroy aggro simply because it runs big beaters like Jotun Grunt and a more creature removal then any other deck in the format. This makes it an appealing choice for semi competitive metagames with smattering of Tier 1 decks and budget decks. An opposing aggro decks best hope is to attempt to cut off TMWA from its colored mana sources via Wasteland or Stifle on Fetchlands rendering them unable to cast any of their removal or creatures. Fast combo can be trouble, but if you can prevent them from winning in the first few turn you can lock with them down with your slow, albeit good disruption. TMWA shares many ideas with Standard decks making it a good choice for players making the switch over to Vintage. In summary TMWA is a hate deck more so then other fish decks it has no core cards to build around, it simply ebbs and flows with the metagame. This is very important to keep in mind when building the deck. More discussion about this deck can be found here. The next deck we are going to take a look at is U/W Fish. Here is the list Paul Johnson piloted to 5th at Untouchables on May 26, 2007. Unpowered suggestions: -1 Black Lotus -1 Mox Pearl -1 Mox Sapphire -1 Ancestral Recall -1 Time Walk +1 Plains +1 Polluted Delta +1 Island +1 Daze +1 Null Rod Everyone's favorite draw engine. U/W/B Fish plays differently then TMWA, it focuses on mana denial and tries to answer any deck or situation rather then playing narrow hate cards. Stifle, Null Rod, Wasteland, all cut off the mana supply of other decks. Wasteland answers dual lands, Mishra’s Workshop and all sorts of other juicy non-basics. Stifle is amazing when it hits a Fetchland, not only denying mana but building tempo. Daze is amazing here because it builds off the mana denial elements and because of this it is often a hard counter. Icatian Javelineers serves as food for Ninja of the Deep Hours and doubles as removal for small creatures. Just as with TMWA Jotun Grunt is the decks clock, and Dark Confidant is one of the decks draw engines. Duress, Force of Will, Meddling Mage and Echoing Truth are the decks flexible hate cards, answering a wide variety of threats. The mana denial elements mentioned above could also be included in this list but the extent that you run them can vary. These versatile hate cards are what differentiates this deck from TMWA. These hate cards form the core of U/B/W Fish making it more stable and less reliant on metagaming. For this is reason it is often said U/B/W Fish has no “bad” matchups, it is a stable deck with slightly favorable or slightly unfavorable matchups against the whole field. Metagaming and play skill can give you an edge over the other players. The deck is fairly simple to play however; the player must be knowledgeable of the metagame to make accurate choices with Meddling Mage. There is no easy way to become good playing Meddling Mage, but practice and familiarity with the metagame makes it significantly better. U/B/W Fish is a great choice for competitive area with few budget or random decks. More discussion on the deck can be found here. The last deck we are going to review is Ichorid. Ichorid doesn’t fall directly under the Fish archetype but it still borrows some concepts from Fish like tempo and cheap disruption. In addition Ichorid is one of the cheapest decks to build in a 5 or 10 proxy metagame. Here is the list Rich Shay played to 4th place at ELD’s on May 19th 2007. Unpowered Suggestions: This deck needs four Bazaar of Baghdad to function, you can simply not do without them. Aside from Bazaars though the deck is very cheap making it great for a 5 proxy metagame. It's almost like Wizards made this card just for Ichorid... One of the first things you will probably note is this deck only runs four lands, Bazaar of Baghdad, which is the centerpiece of the deck. Bazaar is the cheapest and most efficient way to dredge so the mulligan plan is simple, mulligan until you hit Bazaar or until you have a single card in hand. There are acceptations to this rule, for instance it would be better to keep a hand of only Chalice of the Void and Leyline of the Void, because the disruption given by them would allow you to see more cards then if you had just mulliganned. Once you find a Bazaar, Golgari Grave-Troll, Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug serve as your dredgers. Narcromoeba, Ichorid and Bridge from Below are the decks creatures effects, along with attacking they can flashback Cabal Therapy and Dread Return. Cephalid Sage and Flame-Kin Zealot are the decks primary Dread Return targets. Sage digs further into your deck and Flame Kin is your final win condition used with an abundant amount of Zombie tokens to win the game. Some other Ichorid builds also run Sutured Ghoul and Dragon Breath as Dread Return targets; the issue with the kill is that you need both Dragon Breath and Ghoul in your graveyard at the same time making it more conditional. The sideboard for Ichorid is one of the most important parts of your deck. The entire sideboard should be devoted to dealing with the different kinds of graveyard hate you might encounter. Some of the more popular hate spells are, Leyline of the Void, Yixlid Jailer, Honor the Fallen, Pithing Needle and Tormod’s Crypt. Your sideboard should be individually tailored to the hate cards you expect to encounter. The sideboard in the above list is metagamed to beat Yixlid Jailer and Leyline of the Void. Contagion takes care of Jailer and other problematic creatures you might encounter. Reverent Silence and Emerald Charm are directed towards Leyline of the Void. Dryad Arbor opens up more room in the sideboard for cards like Contagion because you can split your mana sources between the sideboard and maindeck. Dryad Arbor can also be sacrificed to Cabal Therapy or Dread Return pre board. Ichorid is a good choice in any metagame, but is much stronger in an area with little graveyard hate or predictable graveyard hate that your sideboard can be tailored against. More information about Ichorid can be found here. Remember that Fish decks are metagame decks, so keep your metagame in mind when you construct a deck. The lists reviewed are great points to start from and the overall card choices are solid for any version of the deck. Hopefully this article helped you recognize that budget decks can be played in Vintage and can compete with expensive powered decks. By Jank Golem on June 11th, 2007 · Filed in Vintage (Type 1) · 19 Comments |
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