Alright, so I was recently turned on to the amazing combo of Painter's Servant + Grindstone. I have a deck built at the moment, but it is open to change and experimentation. I see a lot of people take in the red/blue direction, but I chose to start mono black, focused completely on tutoring the combo out. Oh and if I added a color it would definitely be blue.
This is what I have so far:
The *'ed cards are restricted, yes I am aware, but the deck isn't tournament-ready yet anyways. I am in the process of getting a play set of servants, so adding 3 more would take care of one of the restricted cards. Some strategies I was considering to help tutor them out would be like adding Buried Alive and Exhume to the mix.
Playing testing it exactly as is, it hasn't taken more than 6 turns to invoke the combo, but when playing with a friend he was able to exile my only servant once so it was an obvious loss. So, I need some sort of defense against exiling. Also, I have no way of dealing with cards like Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker, or Nullrod.
... basically you could say any reasonable sideboard would wipe me out.
I know adding blue could help deal with a lot of things, but at the same I feel like it would take away the quickness of the deck.
some blue cards I had in mind were Argivian Restoration, Intuition, Veldalken Engineer, Reshape (along with like Ornithopters perhaps), Artificer's Intuition, Fabricate, Tinker, and Trinket Mage.
So yeah, that's kind of a long post with some not-so-amazing flow, but there you have it. Any ideas are welcome.
While Painter/Grindstone is a fine combo, your understanding of the format is colored probably by other formats - but Vintage is different. It's not so creature dominated, certainly you will get beaten down by a Timewalking Blightsteel Colussus or Slash Panthers & Phyrexian Metamorphs but more often then not you will be facing decks where the killing of creatures is irrelevant or difficult.
With that said, removal like Rend Flesh, Infest & Death Stroke are far too inefficient and very often just dead cards in your hand. If you are playing in a power poor environment then maybe they are justifiable, but you would be better suited playing removal such as Dismember & Doom Blade - putting such things as Infest and Damnation into the sideboard.
Good job on your initial post using card tags, but try to use deck tags too.
Now let's talk about the Elephant in the room, this is vintage and if you plan to not play artifact hate (which is sparse in black) then you should play these artifacts (as a minimum) - Sol Ring(you have it), Mox Jet, Black Lotus. They will all help you cast and activate your combo sooo much quicker. The reason I call them the Elephant, is that everyone should see them in their deck. The probable reason you don't mention them is that you don't have access to them, if so then you might ask for your post to be moved to the Non Proxy Budget forum. If you have access to them or have access to proxies, then by all means you should add them. Other artifacts to consider include Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, Lotus Petal and other Moxen.
More talk about your Black spells, Raise Dead's goal is to get back your Painter's - Reanimate and Exhume do the job much better and quicker. Dance of the Dead is fine, you could also consider Animate Dead and Necromancy (as it dodges Chalice set at 2, Spell Snare and can be cast as instant). If you are in Black and looking to occasionally reuse things out of your graveyard then Yawgmoth's Will should be included. Certainly Buried Alive is fine, but Entomb is instant Speed and 2 less mana.
With that said, you have another problem, you said that in most cases you have the combo by turn 6. In Vintage you are dead on turn 3 unless you have someway to disrupt your opponent. Black is one of the best colors to do this, hand disruption in the form of Thoughtseize, Duress and Hymn to Tourach are all reasonable considerations. If you do add Blue then you can add Counterspells to the mix of disruption. The other result of adding is that it allows you to cast/activate your combo with less fear of disruption.
thanks for the insight, I will take all of this into consideration. I do own a few of the elephants, but definitely not all... however I think there are some reasonable substitutes available
build blue around grindstone and painters servent. then put alot of counter spells and 4 gifts ungiven along with 4 trinket mages to search out grindstone. 4 ponders and 4 brainstorms and for lands you wanna make sure to have 4 academy ruins for when you use gifts ungiven to search out ur grindstones and painters servent to bring them back to your hand(cuz the other player is going to get one rid of one of them if not both)...i also find having 4 early frosts nice to have in your sideboard just if you decide to use them also 4 winter orbs would be good idea cus you really only need 3 lands to win the game.:cool2::thumbsup:
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This is what I have so far:
Swamp x22
Volrath's Stronghold x 1
Diabolic Edict x2
Dance of the Dead x1
Deathstroke x1
Infest x 1
Innocent Blood x 1
Smother x 1
Raise Dead x 2
Rend Flesh x 1
Stir the Grave x 1
Victim of the Night x 1
Grindstonex 4
Painter's Servant x 1
Demonic Tutor x 4 *
Rhystic Tutor x 4
Shred Memory x 3
Vampiric Tutor x 4 *
Dark Ritual x 2
Ensnaring Bridge x 1
Sol Ring x 1
Wall of Tanglecord x 1
The *'ed cards are restricted, yes I am aware, but the deck isn't tournament-ready yet anyways. I am in the process of getting a play set of servants, so adding 3 more would take care of one of the restricted cards. Some strategies I was considering to help tutor them out would be like adding Buried Alive and Exhume to the mix.
Playing testing it exactly as is, it hasn't taken more than 6 turns to invoke the combo, but when playing with a friend he was able to exile my only servant once so it was an obvious loss. So, I need some sort of defense against exiling. Also, I have no way of dealing with cards like Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker, or Nullrod.
... basically you could say any reasonable sideboard would wipe me out.
I know adding blue could help deal with a lot of things, but at the same I feel like it would take away the quickness of the deck.
some blue cards I had in mind were Argivian Restoration, Intuition, Veldalken Engineer, Reshape (along with like Ornithopters perhaps), Artificer's Intuition, Fabricate, Tinker, and Trinket Mage.
So yeah, that's kind of a long post with some not-so-amazing flow, but there you have it. Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks!
With that said, removal like Rend Flesh, Infest & Death Stroke are far too inefficient and very often just dead cards in your hand. If you are playing in a power poor environment then maybe they are justifiable, but you would be better suited playing removal such as Dismember & Doom Blade - putting such things as Infest and Damnation into the sideboard.
Good job on your initial post using card tags, but try to use deck tags too.
Now let's talk about the Elephant in the room, this is vintage and if you plan to not play artifact hate (which is sparse in black) then you should play these artifacts (as a minimum) - Sol Ring(you have it), Mox Jet, Black Lotus. They will all help you cast and activate your combo sooo much quicker. The reason I call them the Elephant, is that everyone should see them in their deck. The probable reason you don't mention them is that you don't have access to them, if so then you might ask for your post to be moved to the Non Proxy Budget forum. If you have access to them or have access to proxies, then by all means you should add them. Other artifacts to consider include Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, Lotus Petal and other Moxen.
More talk about your Black spells, Raise Dead's goal is to get back your Painter's - Reanimate and Exhume do the job much better and quicker. Dance of the Dead is fine, you could also consider Animate Dead and Necromancy (as it dodges Chalice set at 2, Spell Snare and can be cast as instant). If you are in Black and looking to occasionally reuse things out of your graveyard then Yawgmoth's Will should be included. Certainly Buried Alive is fine, but Entomb is instant Speed and 2 less mana.
I think that adding Blue is a fine idea, it allows you to delve into Tinker, Transmute Artifact, Ancestral Recall, Timewalk and Counterspells. But those may be more Elephants. Underground Sea/Polluted Delta.
Cut Wall of Tanglecord. No explanation.
With that said, you have another problem, you said that in most cases you have the combo by turn 6. In Vintage you are dead on turn 3 unless you have someway to disrupt your opponent. Black is one of the best colors to do this, hand disruption in the form of Thoughtseize, Duress and Hymn to Tourach are all reasonable considerations. If you do add Blue then you can add Counterspells to the mix of disruption. The other result of adding is that it allows you to cast/activate your combo with less fear of disruption.
Other cards to consider cutting, that I haven't specifically mentioned: Stir the Grave and Rhystic Tutor.
Sorry for the longwindedness, good luck.