MTG Salvation

I'm looking to get back into the Vintage swing after a 3 yr abscence from the Northeast Vintage scene. This past weekend, I invited a friend over to do some in-depth testing. I built a Vintage gauntlet of 5 decks (which will be 8 by the end of the week) consisting of decks that have places well in the region to get a sense of the push and pull of some of the match-ups, especially with regards to using the new cards that have come into the format since I last played. I will be using this thread to post the match-up lists and analysis of each game, both pre and post-sideboard, as a log of the in-game analytics within the match-up. I should be getting the BUG list I faced this weekend, at which point I will post both that list and the 4C Keeper list I played for this weekend. I hope to get in 15-20 games for each different match-up and share it with you all here. I invite very one to chime in on the lists, or specific comments or questions with regards to play or in-game experience. My teammates are looking to refine their lists (BUG fish, shops, Humans) while I am looking to sharpen my play skills to best play against these lists in preparation of the NYSE, Jersey, and Bloomberg summer tournaments coming up.

The lists I have put together are:
Vintage gauntlet

Keeper 61
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Wear/Tear
1 Balance
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Snare
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ral Zarek
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
2 City of Brass
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Mountain
2 Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire

Sideboard
2 Pithing Needle
4 Grafdiggers Cage
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Mindbreak Trap
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Hurkyls Recall
1 Dismember


1) Joshua Butler – Espresso Stax (Counter, Sac, Tap, Fade) - built
Lands (18)
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
Artifacts (32)
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
4 Serum Powder
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Tangle Wire
4 Smokestack
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Thorn of Amethyst
1 Trinisphere
Creatures (10)
4 Lodestone Golem
3 Phyrexian Revoker
2 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Duplicant

Sideboard (15)
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
2 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Razormane Masticore
1 Maze of Ith
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrall Vale

Joshua Butler: Doomsday
4 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
3 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Doomsday
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Gush
1 Brainstorm
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Time Walk
4 Preordain
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep -4
2 Spell Snare
3 Thoughtseize
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
2 Steel Sabotage

Sideboard
2 Flusterstorm
3 Ravenous Trap
2 Darkblast
2 Steel Sabotage
1 Swamp
4 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Mana Vault

Benjamin Jones - Oath
2 Griselbrand
4 Oath of Druids
4 Force of Will
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Show and Tell
1 Time Walk
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Sol Ring
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Black Lotus
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Brainstorm
3 Mana Drain
2 Abrupt Deay
1 Misdirection
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Mental Misstep
2 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
4 Forbidden Orchard
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Island

Sideboard
1 Forest
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Flusterstorm
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Toxic Deluge
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Show and Tell
2 Nature's Claim

Isaac Foote - TPS
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Imperial Seal
1 Grim Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Mind's Desire
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Windfall
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Time walk
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ancestral Recal
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Memory Jar
1 Tinker
2 Repeal
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Opal
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Lion's Eye Diamond-

1 Tolarian Academy
1 Swamp
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn

SB
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Blightsteel Colossus
2 Flusterstorm
2 Extirpate
1 Pithing Needle
2 Island
1 Swamp
2 Rebuild
2 Hurkyl's Recall

Berderndern's BUG fish list
[spoiler]4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Dark Confidant
2 Trygon Predator
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Time Walk
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
2 Spell Snare
3 Spell Pierce
1 Flusterstorm
1 Swan Song
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Mystic Remora
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerals
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus

4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
2 Verdant Catacomb
2 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Island

Sideboard
2 Steel Sabotage
3 Nature's Claim
1 Trygon Predator
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Yixlid Jailer
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Thoughtseize
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Forest
The other lists to be built are:
Mono-Red Bazaar Shops
Landstill
Dredge
I'm also looking to add Grixis and a Welder Control deck to the gauntlet as well, opting to build Keeper over Grixis due to the list just looking bad-ass.

I just got in from work (it was an early night due to kitchen maintenance). I will post the horrid 75 i ran as well as the 75 i intend on running when i get up in the morning.

Already done.

Just a quick recap of the games:
Berderndern is playing his BUG fish list and I select a random deck - 61 card Keeper. I will acknowledge that I haven't played blue decks since 2008 (I began playing shops in 2007 and never looked back). Berderndern won the die roll, so we exchanged game 1's with him starting first and going back and forth with game 1s. Games 1-3 were very lopsided with the BUG Fish list winning the first three easily. I found myself struggling with keeping hands and I mulliganned 4 times in the first 3 games, with a double mulligan coming in on the play. I won game 4 on the back of a very well played Gift pile, where I forced a misplay on the piles, baiting him to think I had Yawg Will in hand. Game 5 was again a loss, but not a blow-out like the first 3 games. I noticed that with the abundance of counterspell options, and the interplay between them. I also figured out how the 61 card list pulls ahead.

Most blue lists run confidants. This one does not. Essentially, Jace takes the place of Confidants, but to stabilize, it resets the game with Balance, which allows it to pull very far ahead. All the advantage gained by Confidant is erased with a single spell, usually with a planeswalker on the table to clean up after its cast. I also like the maindeck wear/tear as a tutorable out to a lot of the splash damage of the format.

I sideboarded:
- 3 drain, -1 Mindbreak Trap, -1 spell Snare, -1 wear/Tear, +2 Red Elemental Blast, +2 Pithing Needle, +1 Viashino Heretic, +1 Lighning Bolt

After this, we played game 2 and 3's with Berderndern on the play and switching back and forth between starting first. We played 10 games and the record was 8-2 to 61 card Keeper's advantage. The thought process was to remove the drains for answers to both make his spell snares dead cards and fight the confidants and Deathrites off the stack, overwhelming his missteps. It also allows me to gifts for an answer more efficiently (which did not come up in any of those 10 games). I also did not muligan as often during the 10 game set, but I base than more on getting more familiar with the list to plan a few moves ahead. I know it seemed insignificant, but bringing in the Viashino Heretic was awesome, not because it was blowing up moxen left and right (it wasn't) but because nothing other than a pumped Scavenging Ooze can attack into it. It defended Jace very well in those games.
I only mulliganned 4 times in the 10 game set. One thing I will say is that this deck is not as forgiving blue control lists with with Confidant, and even though you dont run him, you will lose almost as much life due to getting hit with things that do fall through the cracks. A deathrite hit me for 16 one game as I was starving for card draw or tutors to get an answer, and hit me for 14 another game before I was able to seal the deal at 5 life left.

I was having mana problems at the start, but they smoothed out as I played more games.

I was cursed with the infinite mulling in the sideboard games. i would like to test against keeper again as i feel te match is still in bugs favor...

i also am just going to proxy up my final list as playing around card availability is hurting me. if those 5 games i had remora, i had the jaceit should of been, the games would have played out differently.

edit: dat gifts pile doe

I would include a Dredge list in your gauntlet.

Quote from Beralt »

I would include a Dredge list in your gauntlet.

definitely what he said!

I'm already on it. Ill be looking for a Cagebreaker dredge list to reflect what would most likely be played in our heavy shop northeast metagame.

i'd probably go w/ the 1 that won BoM last yr then (pretty sure it was last yr)
i think it had 4 ingot chewers, along w/ 3 ichorids, 3 or 4 petrified fields & an ancient grudge main board

That would be the Cagebreaker variant... It used petrified fields and I bodies to grind out wins so that a waste+ crypt isn't game over, just a hurdle; as opposed toothed dredge lists that forgo I horita to get the clean efficient turn 2 kill. Cagebreaker is more resistant to hate than traditional lists. Personally, I am loving the usage of Firestorm in the board, such a great card. I'm glad it has a home.

Got in some testing today. Dredge vs TPS and Dredge vs Shops. Cagebreaker is so much better than I have it credit for. It has very interesting lines of play for the shop matchup, and the TPS matchup is a very weird matchup for it. Each is about as fast as the other, with TPS having the slight edge due to maindeck pieces that can act as hate.

the bug list has had a massive overhaul. also, can you send me the tps list when you get a chance. thanks bruddah.

http://legitmtg.com/competitive/the-vintage-advantage-running-the-gauntlet-in-vintage/

This article should help you.

Two days ago, we did the dredge vs TPS match-up. We did 6 games pre-board and 6 games post board (a shorter testing session due to how late we started). The game 1's are a coin flip. In game 2/3's the games are sti very close but TPs has a slight edge due to the silver bullets in it. The cagebreaker lists does not have access to Sadistic hypnotist. Dredge doesn't have much to bring in vs TPS, so the strategy was to diversify hate to not get everything rfg'd by a surgical extraction. The slow dredge plan works well, if you can play discard spells and protect them with missteps. The blue sombies (I forgot the name) are huge as being able to use bazaar twice just wins games.

I've gotten a ton of testing accomplished in vintage since the last post. The gauntlet has changed to keep up with the metagame. The gauntlet is now Expresso Shops (off by 1 card fom the above list), Metalworker/Forgemaster shops, Dredge, UR delver (due to the new Khans cards), Blue Angels, Rich Shay Night's Whisper Slaver, TPS, and Oath. Two of my friends have picked up decks themselves: Berderndern with TPS and Jay with Dredge. My buddy Noah has also flown into NYC during this period, so we've been able to test non-blue fish deckss, the hatebears archetype, and his Humans list can be pretty scary. I few things that I have seen are:

1) Blue has way too many toold in the shed. Many deck decisions can and should be driven by what you expect to see, as there isnt a best deck. Small decisions like "how many misdirections or flusterstoms to I put in" will give or take away real percentage points in a match-up.

2) The Fenton Oath deck that's gained in popularity isn't the best oath deck, it is a metagamed one. It plays 0-1 answers for anything in the maindeck. This deck assumes that a)you are not playing against G and B in the same deck, and thus are not worried about removal, and
b)you're facing creature heavy decks and thus have a reduced need to search for orchard, and
c) you can win before you can deck yourself.
It is a very greedy deck, and one tha I would not advocate playing if you're loking to learn or to master the archetype. I suspect that things will change anyway, as theyve recently spoiled a new delve Time Walk, so it may be feasible that the deck, especially the oath target(s) will change. 5 Time Walks allow the deck to take an angle where the opponent never gets another turn after Oathing.

3) Shops is brutal against Delver, especially since the inclusion of Treasure Cruise. Treasure Cruise, althou able to be easily cast through spheres, requires a hefty graveyard commitment, one that a person running it can't commit to if spheres are making it difficult to play your spells to get them min the yard to feed that Treasure Cruise. I think the format will catch on soon enmough, and many of these delve spells will be utilized in decks that don't have to work to mill. Oath is a perfect example.

4) Dig through time is a control and a combo card, not a tempo one. The best shells for them are UB decks, and the best use of them is tutoring through spheres. We've tested Dig as a singleton in TPS (yes you heard me right...TPS) and the results have been very good. It's much better than Gifts and sometimes Mystical in the deck, and has indirectly or directly been responsible for every game won when its been cast. There's only been 1 loss for its casting, and taking that kline of play was a misplay.

5) Cavern of Souls has really made Force of Will a terrible card. I cannot remember a point in time where FOW has been this bad in vintage. It really has brought non-blue fish decks back from the brink of extinction. In addition, it is one of the few outs that decks can have against Chalice of the Void. People dont give the card enough credit. The fact shops has abused it should speak to its efficiency.

6) Many decks are inclusing nihil spellbombs and tormod's crypt as ways to counteract Treasure Cruise. They are the wrong tools. At best, they may prevent one being cast for a turn or two. The best answers are preventative answers, and that requires blue decks going back to the drawing board. If you plan on playing Yawgmoth's will, you're going to have to accept that you'll be fighting Ancestral Recalls 1-5 all day. The best ansers are proactive ones where the splash damage is the inability to resolve a T Cruise, not the main focus. Cards like Spirit of the Labyrinth, Notion Thief, or chaning your gameplan from one winning through Will to one winning through Leyline/ Helm or rest in Peace/Helm are optimal. There is now a price for playing Will and time Vault, and that is possibly drowning from the card advantrage of Treasure Cruise.

Massive update -
Now that we've had bannings and unbannings, the gauntlet has been updated to reflect that. Here is gauntlet as currently constructed:

Vintage gauntlet


2) Semi-Finalist – Ryan Eberhart
“URw Delver"


3) Semi-Finalist – Joe Mackiewicz
“Bugs"


4) Salvager's Combo (building, not finished)



My deck - Joshua Butler – Espresso Stax - built





5) TPS - built






6) MARTELLO SHOPS - built



7) Oath - Built


8) RUG delver



I'll add the rest of the decks tonight or tomorrow, but dredge is there as well.

I wouldn't run 2 tendrils in the TPS list. In my experience with vintage storm drawing tendrils in your opener is not remotely good. It's good off of D7s granted but the times where your D7 whiffs because you drew card X over tendrils will be minimal in comparison to the games where you draw tendrils and wish it was something else. I'd run the 4th gitaxian probe over it in a heartbeat as probe is absolutely bonkers with topdeck tutors and the free peek + delve/will fodder pushes it even further. Also adds more consistency to the deck while naturally drawing tendrils over probe in and of itself does nothing usually.

This was the TPS list that I was running while T.Cruise was a 4 of. I've had success with it due to the fact that pyromancer can race a blightsteel during the 4x t . cruise era. With the 2nd tendrils, you could mini tendrils to buy yourself some life for the crackback, and then finish them off. It also ensures you didnt lose your tendrilsl if you tinkered for jar and didnt have enough storm to finish the job as they amount of countermagic you were fighting is ludacris.

I want to cut the second tendrils and bring blightsteel back into the main, but I fear that Monastery Mentor makes even more sense to keep things the same. Now that we have decklists, and I'm back to regularly scheduled testing this week. I can find out for sute what is correct. I'm not defending the change, but the change did make things run smoother, given the circumstances. As for Gitaxian Probe, it wasn't providing as much gas. The peek effect is great, especially with Imperial Seal in the main, but I cut it for more business spells, again, to provide the deck another must - counter to fight the overwhelming amount of countermagic I was facing out of the tempo decks, which normally were byes.

I also updated the dredge list with Mana Comfluences, which I have to add to the last update post above.

Ill be attending the Top Deck Games $1K vintage event this weekend. Ill let you know my deck matches and results after this weekend.