Hello. I'm new to vintage and I recently acquired a large sum of money to buy in. I played combo decks in legacy and I was wondering what the best combo deck in vintage is. Is TPS good? If combo is bad, what's the best tier 1 deck? Thanks!
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There are, in my opinion, 2 main combo decks (what I consider to be pure combo decks) that are good enough to be competitive in any metagame. These are Burning Oath and Gush Doomsday. Here are the typical decklists for them.
There is also a version of Doomsday without the Rituals, and it plays a bit differently. Slower and more controlling, whereas the Ritual version can be more opportunistic and catch the opponent unawares.
Both of these decks have the capability of being competitive; I would consider them tier 1, but they take a hell of a lot of skill to play well. If you can do it, they're wicked fun.
Thanks! Oath seems fun. Is it basically disruption/control until you can oath for the win?
And how good is Dredge?
How good is the graveyard hate? In most metagame, there is a lot of hate and Dredge has a tough time but if there is only a little bit of hate, or none, then Dredge is awesome. Its only bad match-ups without graveyard hate are combos. It's still cheaper than the other combo decks.
Thanks! Oath seems fun. Is it basically disruption/control until you can oath for the win?
And how good is Dredge?
The Burning Oath deck is actually a Tendrils deck. You drop bomb after bomb, such as Mind's Desire, Draw 7's, Necropotence, and such, until 1 doesn't get countered, and try to hit 10 storm for a lethal Tendrils of Agony. The Burning Wishes are there to get powerful engines and answers from the sideboard. Oath is used to find Griselbrand, which acts like extra Yawgmoth's Bargains, drawing craploads of cards so you can storm kill. Also it can attack if need be of course. There's only really enough disruption to give you a chance to punch a powerful spell through.
That's the most basic explanation I can give. I don't claim to be an expert on it, although I've played it a bit. There is tons of info on it out there though, and it is very powerful. Also I can't think of a more fun deck in Vintage right now, but I'm not a fan of control decks to begin with so this appeals to me more.
I wouldn't recommend playing Dredge, simply because it can be very hard to fight through hate. If there is no hate, it kills like nothing else. If there is lots of hate for it, you won't have fun. Not to mention that if you have enough money for power and such you should go for the gusto, and get something that can be more competitive in any metagame.
The oath deck looks fun. I was wondering if someone can give me a quick guide on how to pilot it.
Well the deck's creator wrote a very thorough primer on it, but it costs 4 bucks. I can try to give you a brief overview, but you really ought to just play it yourself on cockatrice or something and figure it out.
You said you were familiar with combo decks in legacy, so I assume you have a general idea of how Storm decks work. Play a bunch of mana artifacts and rituals, draw cards, and cast Tendrils after you've played ten spells. That's the simple version. It's a little more complicated here since there aren't loops you can do with cards like infernal tutor and Ill-Gotten Gains like in Legacy, so it takes a bit more thought to squeeze out a win. You're main engines are your powerful card-drawing spells (Draw7's, Tinker/Jar, Necropotence, and Yawgmoth's Bargain), Oath for Griselbrand (who functions very much akin to Bargain) and Burning Wish, most frequently for Yawgmoth's Will, which will let you replay everything you've used already.
The deck relies pretty heavily on it's opening hand, so it's worthwhile to mulligan pretty aggressively. A good opening hand has plenty of mana, and a few good bombs like Oath, Wish, or Necropotence. If you're lucky, you'll have a Duress too. However, it topdecks pretty well so waiting to draw something good after all your spells have gotten countered isn't the worst thing in the world.
Once you have your opening hand, then you have to decide how to play it out. Maybe you play out all your mana, play a draw7 to refill your hand and try to wish for Yawgmoth's Will to go off. Or maybe you play slower, trying to bait out counters with Necropotence, and then using Oath to find Griselbrand for the win. Your lines of play depend quite a bit on what your opponent does, and you need to be constantly re-evaluating how you're both playing. But the most basic, general line is: <mana, bomb, repeat as necessary, Tendrils>.
The sideboard deserves mention as well. Most of it is Burning Wish targets.
Tendrils of Agony is the kill, and in this build you have to wish for it. Personally I like to squeeze one in the maindeck as well. This build has an Empty the Warrens maindeck, which COULD be swapped for a Tendrils, but probably should stay.
The Empty the Warrens in the board is so you can wish for a card that can be quite lethal even if you don't hit ten storm. 12-14 goblins is almost always enough to win, and sometimes even as few as 6-8 can do the trick.
Show and Tell is mainly to plop out Griselbrand if he is stuck in your hand.
Balance has a couple uses, but primarily it is to wipe the board against creature decks. Sometimes you have to use it to make an opponent discard their hand, which is not ideal, but Ok, since your topdecks are probably better than theirs.
Thoughtsieze is powerful disruption you can Wish for.
The rest of the board is anti-Stax. The Shattering Sprees can be Wished for if need be. The Ancient Tombs can provide extra mana to help play through things like Sphere or Resistance. The Lab Maniac gets swapped out for the two Griselbrands vs. Stax, especially on the draw. Most Stax decks don't have good ways to deal with it, and you can Oath it out and win without having to cast any spell besides Oath. This is good since it's very difficult to Storm out when all of your spells cost multiple extra mana.
That's about as thorough as I can be without writing a novel. Like I said, I'm not an expert on the deck by any means, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
I like to think that Workshop decks are the best in the format. They can give combo a difficult time, but are by no means unbeatable. That list running 4x Hurkyl's Recall is a little scary.
I like to think that Workshop decks are the best in the format. They can give combo a difficult time, but are by no means unbeatable. That list running 4x Hurkyl's Recall is a little scary.
Yeah, it's clearly metagamed to beat Shops, but Shops seems so omnipresent these days that it probably is necessary, although maybe not in the main. I think the Burning Oath list probably needs a Hurkyl's in the main. I would play some in the board too, since I think they're a better solution for a combo deck than Shattering Spree, although that list needs a powerful sorcery for destroying artifacts to wish for.
That too. If you were to take a card out for Hurk's, I would lean towards Empty the Warrens or Demonic Consultation. It depends on whether you'd rather have a backup wincon main, or a powerful tutor that will sometimes just screw you over.
d8dk32 - Your lists seem solid any reference where you got them? Or are they your personal lists - to me they look like they might be from Stephen Menendian? SM has promoted both of those archetypes and I think they are solid right now. They easily could be your creation, but just trying to reference them.
Aznseal - With all that said beware that the metagame can be very specific to your locale. In vintage you can be pre-sideboarded vs a variety of matchups, which can greatly effect your deckbuilding choices.
d8dk32 - Your lists seem solid any reference where you got them? Or are they your personal lists - to me they look like they might be from Stephen Menendian? SM has promoted both of those archetypes and I think they are solid right now. They easily could be your creation, but just trying to reference them.
The Burning Oath list is Menendian's I believe. At any rate he was the progenitor of the deck, though that specific list could be someone else's. The Gush Doomsday list looks like a riff on Menendian's, which doesn't play Dark Ritual. I prefer the ritual version, which I think was popularized by a guy named Josh Butker. Or Bunker. Or something. I hope I one of those was right, gotta give credit where credit is due. Incidentally, my main Vintage deck is something between these 2, an OathDoomLong sort of deck of my own design.
Your comment on Dredge brings something to mind, this is somewhat off topic. While most would view Dredge as a "combo" deck, I almost feel it's not. I feel that a combo deck is often defined by a combination of things working together. Often times you have to tutor for those two pieces (as in something like Vault/Key) and/or set up intricate decision trees to work yourself into the combo. Dredge only needs the Bazaar, I have seen people Mulligan down to only the Bazaar and win on turn 3 - thru Force of Will. Sure the "combo" requires Bridge From Below, but the decisions are not as complex as something like a Burning/Doomsday/TPS combo deck.
Not to downgrade Dredge, because after sideboarding it can be a much more complex game, deciding on how to play around graveyard hate.
With that said, Dredge is one of my favorite archetypes because it functions so differently from everything else.
What does tps stand for and I'm new to magic and wanting to proxy a homebrew t1 vintage list to troll them with, would 1 land Tolarian Academy be good?
Nungnum - TPS is an acronymn for The Perfect Storm - Originally I think a Legacy Deck, it has come to be used for a variety of deck that focus on the Storm mechanic, notably on cards like Tendrils of Agony and Mind's Desire.
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Burning Oath
4 Duress
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Tinker
1 Necropotence
1 Mind’s Desire
1 Yawgmoth’s Bargain
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Oath of Druids
2 Griselbrand
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
2 Mox Opal
2 Chrome Mox
1 Tolarian Academy
4 City of Brass
2 Gemstone Mine
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Show and Tell
1 Balance
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Thoughtseize
1 Nature’s Claim
4 Shattering Spree
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Laboratory Maniac
Gush Doomsday
4x Doomsday
1x Gitaxian Probe
1x Imperial Seal
1x Merchant Scroll
1x Ponder
3x Preordain
1x Tendrils of Agony
2x Thoughtseize
1x Time Walk
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Black Lotus
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Fastbond
1x Laboratory Maniac
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
4x Dark Ritual
3x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will
4x Gush
4x Hurkyl's Recall
4x Mental Misstep
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
4x Island
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Polluted Delta
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Tropical Island
4x Underground Sea
2x Nature's Claim
1x Necropotence
1x Rebuild
2x Xantid Swarm
There is also a version of Doomsday without the Rituals, and it plays a bit differently. Slower and more controlling, whereas the Ritual version can be more opportunistic and catch the opponent unawares.
Both of these decks have the capability of being competitive; I would consider them tier 1, but they take a hell of a lot of skill to play well. If you can do it, they're wicked fun.
And how good is Dredge?
Basilisk Collar? $5.00
Shooting down a baneslayer angel? Priceless
This is a pretty good idea of what all vintage is like.
How good is the graveyard hate? In most metagame, there is a lot of hate and Dredge has a tough time but if there is only a little bit of hate, or none, then Dredge is awesome. Its only bad match-ups without graveyard hate are combos. It's still cheaper than the other combo decks.
The Burning Oath deck is actually a Tendrils deck. You drop bomb after bomb, such as Mind's Desire, Draw 7's, Necropotence, and such, until 1 doesn't get countered, and try to hit 10 storm for a lethal Tendrils of Agony. The Burning Wishes are there to get powerful engines and answers from the sideboard. Oath is used to find Griselbrand, which acts like extra Yawgmoth's Bargains, drawing craploads of cards so you can storm kill. Also it can attack if need be of course. There's only really enough disruption to give you a chance to punch a powerful spell through.
That's the most basic explanation I can give. I don't claim to be an expert on it, although I've played it a bit. There is tons of info on it out there though, and it is very powerful. Also I can't think of a more fun deck in Vintage right now, but I'm not a fan of control decks to begin with so this appeals to me more.
I wouldn't recommend playing Dredge, simply because it can be very hard to fight through hate. If there is no hate, it kills like nothing else. If there is lots of hate for it, you won't have fun. Not to mention that if you have enough money for power and such you should go for the gusto, and get something that can be more competitive in any metagame.
Basilisk Collar? $5.00
Shooting down a baneslayer angel? Priceless
Well the deck's creator wrote a very thorough primer on it, but it costs 4 bucks. I can try to give you a brief overview, but you really ought to just play it yourself on cockatrice or something and figure it out.
You said you were familiar with combo decks in legacy, so I assume you have a general idea of how Storm decks work. Play a bunch of mana artifacts and rituals, draw cards, and cast Tendrils after you've played ten spells. That's the simple version. It's a little more complicated here since there aren't loops you can do with cards like infernal tutor and Ill-Gotten Gains like in Legacy, so it takes a bit more thought to squeeze out a win. You're main engines are your powerful card-drawing spells (Draw7's, Tinker/Jar, Necropotence, and Yawgmoth's Bargain), Oath for Griselbrand (who functions very much akin to Bargain) and Burning Wish, most frequently for Yawgmoth's Will, which will let you replay everything you've used already.
The deck relies pretty heavily on it's opening hand, so it's worthwhile to mulligan pretty aggressively. A good opening hand has plenty of mana, and a few good bombs like Oath, Wish, or Necropotence. If you're lucky, you'll have a Duress too. However, it topdecks pretty well so waiting to draw something good after all your spells have gotten countered isn't the worst thing in the world.
Once you have your opening hand, then you have to decide how to play it out. Maybe you play out all your mana, play a draw7 to refill your hand and try to wish for Yawgmoth's Will to go off. Or maybe you play slower, trying to bait out counters with Necropotence, and then using Oath to find Griselbrand for the win. Your lines of play depend quite a bit on what your opponent does, and you need to be constantly re-evaluating how you're both playing. But the most basic, general line is: <mana, bomb, repeat as necessary, Tendrils>.
The sideboard deserves mention as well. Most of it is Burning Wish targets.
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Show and Tell
1 Balance
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Thoughtseize
1 Nature’s Claim
4 Shattering Spree
2 Ancient Tomb
1 Laboratory Maniac
Yawgmoth's Will I covered.
Tendrils of Agony is the kill, and in this build you have to wish for it. Personally I like to squeeze one in the maindeck as well. This build has an Empty the Warrens maindeck, which COULD be swapped for a Tendrils, but probably should stay.
The Empty the Warrens in the board is so you can wish for a card that can be quite lethal even if you don't hit ten storm. 12-14 goblins is almost always enough to win, and sometimes even as few as 6-8 can do the trick.
Show and Tell is mainly to plop out Griselbrand if he is stuck in your hand.
Balance has a couple uses, but primarily it is to wipe the board against creature decks. Sometimes you have to use it to make an opponent discard their hand, which is not ideal, but Ok, since your topdecks are probably better than theirs.
Diminishing Returns is a draw7 you can Wish for. Not much else to it.
Thoughtsieze is powerful disruption you can Wish for.
The rest of the board is anti-Stax. The Shattering Sprees can be Wished for if need be. The Ancient Tombs can provide extra mana to help play through things like Sphere or Resistance. The Lab Maniac gets swapped out for the two Griselbrands vs. Stax, especially on the draw. Most Stax decks don't have good ways to deal with it, and you can Oath it out and win without having to cast any spell besides Oath. This is good since it's very difficult to Storm out when all of your spells cost multiple extra mana.
That's about as thorough as I can be without writing a novel. Like I said, I'm not an expert on the deck by any means, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Yeah, it's clearly metagamed to beat Shops, but Shops seems so omnipresent these days that it probably is necessary, although maybe not in the main. I think the Burning Oath list probably needs a Hurkyl's in the main. I would play some in the board too, since I think they're a better solution for a combo deck than Shattering Spree, although that list needs a powerful sorcery for destroying artifacts to wish for.
Basilisk Collar? $5.00
Shooting down a baneslayer angel? Priceless
Aznseal - With all that said beware that the metagame can be very specific to your locale. In vintage you can be pre-sideboarded vs a variety of matchups, which can greatly effect your deckbuilding choices.
Have fun.
The Burning Oath list is Menendian's I believe. At any rate he was the progenitor of the deck, though that specific list could be someone else's. The Gush Doomsday list looks like a riff on Menendian's, which doesn't play Dark Ritual. I prefer the ritual version, which I think was popularized by a guy named Josh Butker. Or Bunker. Or something. I hope I one of those was right, gotta give credit where credit is due. Incidentally, my main Vintage deck is something between these 2, an OathDoomLong sort of deck of my own design.
And I played a lot of burning oath and I love it.
Basilisk Collar? $5.00
Shooting down a baneslayer angel? Priceless
Your comment on Dredge brings something to mind, this is somewhat off topic. While most would view Dredge as a "combo" deck, I almost feel it's not. I feel that a combo deck is often defined by a combination of things working together. Often times you have to tutor for those two pieces (as in something like Vault/Key) and/or set up intricate decision trees to work yourself into the combo. Dredge only needs the Bazaar, I have seen people Mulligan down to only the Bazaar and win on turn 3 - thru Force of Will. Sure the "combo" requires Bridge From Below, but the decisions are not as complex as something like a Burning/Doomsday/TPS combo deck.
Not to downgrade Dredge, because after sideboarding it can be a much more complex game, deciding on how to play around graveyard hate.
With that said, Dredge is one of my favorite archetypes because it functions so differently from everything else.
/rant off