Since the Vintage board gets very little activity, I thought I'd post a deck I've been working on to see what you guys think of it. I call it Suicide Long.
Obviously I realize this is a hot mess and it's not intended to be exactly tournament worthy, although it goldfishes pretty well. I guess I'm just interested in what you guys think of it, and I'd like to stimulate some vintage discussion around here. Let the bad times roll. Feel free to ask if you have any questions about particular card choices, since there are some crazy ones in there.
The biggest question is, why Death Wish? Grim Tutor is cheaper on your life as well as lets you have yawg will in your deck. I certainly see the advantages of having a wishbox, but I am not sure if that advantage outweighs the disadvantage of not having yawg will in the deck.
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"An immense river of oblivion is sweeping us away into a nameless abyss." —Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse
The biggest question is, why Death Wish? Grim Tutor is cheaper on your life as well as lets you have yawg will in your deck. I certainly see the advantages of having a wishbox, but I am not sure if that advantage outweighs the disadvantage of not having yawg will in the deck.
how is this deck better than smennen's burning long?
How is this deck better than Doomsday?
how is this deck better than Grim long?
what matchups are improved over any of those decks? on paper it looks weak to Shops and fish while it doesn't seem particularly hot against blue decks either
Why play oath of druids without Griselbrand? Why play Death wish over Burning wish or Grim tutor?
26 mana sources are not enough for a storm deck.
why play subpar stuff like infernal contract and Meditate when you don't have Yawgmoth's bargain or mind's desire?
How do you protect your doomsday ? your deck looks like a weird cocktail between Burning oath and doomsday maniac, doomsday usually has a strong control package since it's an all in deck centered around one bomb whereas burning oath is a balls to wall combo deck that want's to throw bombs after bombs until one sticks, you see the contradiction between these two strategies?
I'll try to address some of these questions/concerns with a bit of backstory:
Essentially, the deck idea came about from me thinking about variations on Burning Long, and what advantages there could be to using Death Wish instead of Burning Wish. The answer I came up with was being able to wish for Oath. But Death Wishing for Oath to get Griselbrand to storm out puts you in lightning bolt range in the best case scenario, which obviously is an issue. So I considered Lab Maniac, which Burning Oath often brings out of the sideboard for shops matches (not to mention that maniac oath itself has had some, albeit limited, success on it's own). Lab Man brought up thoughts of doomsday (and incidentally I have had some decent results with an entirely different Maniac Oath/Doomsday hybrid). Since I was going for a more Long-like build with doomsday, I looked to the Legacy Doomsday deck for some inspiration, and ended up with Gitaxian Probes and an Infernal Contract, which gives me another way to draw into my Doomsday piles, which helps mitigate the occasional ill effects of Demonic Consultation (which also can play nice with Lab Man). As you probably are beginning to figure out, this was kind of a thought experiment gone awry but I ended up enjoying goldfishing it.
To more directly answer some of the questions:
-I'm not sure the deck is better than any of the existing forms of long. I think it gives you more options at any given time than other variants, but that advantage is offset by extreme life payments.
-I don't think it's that weak to shops (or not really more so than the typical long variant) since the plan remains the same: win with Oath.
-I haven't had problems with the mana, although I'm not entirely satisfied with Infernal Contract, and I may go to 2 Doomsdays. If I made these changes I may fit a Cabal Ritual or an extra land in.
-I had both Bargain and Mind's Desire in my original build and didn't really like them. They were both certainly powerful but I wasn't thrilled to see them a lot of the time. Necro got in over bargain since it's cheaper. I'd probably put Bargain back in before I put Desire back in, although Desire could be a decent wish target.
-Duress helps to protect Doomsday. These may become Cabal Therapy. Probes help me see what I'm up against so I know how to build piles (and could be good with Therapy). Doomsday is also a bomb here. You throw bomb after bomb, and finish with doomsday, or just stick one like normal and pretend to be Long. There is no strategic contradiction since I'm not trying to take the typical Doomsday strategy at all.
In the end, I realize this deck has plenty of shortcomings, which more than likely outweigh the advantages of being able to wish for anything. However I've enjoyed playing around with it, and I was curious what other people thought.
The reason I asked the question was not to say that it was inferior or anything like that. From historical perspective, after Burning Wish got restricted, Death Long was the combo deck that was played (using Death Wish, of course). After portal got legalized for Vintage play, Death Long became Grim Long. It is interesting to wonder what advantages you have by running a full Death Wish toolbox over Grim Tutor, there are certainly some. However keep in mind that if you don't utilize the toolbox to it's fullest potential, it would be better to run Grim Tutor over Death Wish.
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"An immense river of oblivion is sweeping us away into a nameless abyss." —Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse
I'm more curious as to why you're playing the full four Oaths and no critters outside of Lab Maniac - is it a bluff play? Seems you could surely slot an Emrakul in somewhere in the sixty.
I'm more curious as to why you're playing the full four Oaths and no critters outside of Lab Maniac - is it a bluff play? Seems you could surely slot an Emrakul in somewhere in the sixty.
What's he bluffing? The second activation mills him into oblivion and then he wins that draw step.
I'm more curious as to why you're playing the full four Oaths and no critters outside of Lab Maniac - is it a bluff play? Seems you could surely slot an Emrakul in somewhere in the sixty.
What's he bluffing? The second activation mills him into oblivion and then he wins that draw step.
Ooh - he uses it like a Hermit Druid activation like "1G: Dump your library". It was late last night, I must not've been thinking clearly.
Still, a single Emrakul would likely be worthwhile anyway.
The reason I asked the question was not to say that it was inferior or anything like that. From historical perspective, after Burning Wish got restricted, Death Long was the combo deck that was played (using Death Wish, of course). After portal got legalized for Vintage play, Death Long became Grim Long. It is interesting to wonder what advantages you have by running a full Death Wish toolbox over Grim Tutor, there are certainly some. However keep in mind that if you don't utilize the toolbox to it's fullest potential, it would be better to run Grim Tutor over Death Wish.
The intent in building the deck was to give myself as many options as posssible at any one time. The main advantage of Death wish over Grim tutor is that I can get anything from my sideboard instead of trying to pack it in to my deck. Of course having so many options can have downsides too, since it can be hard to see the right play, sometimes those options are useless, etc.
So I goldfished your list a Few times and to me it looks like lab maniac deck more than a storm deck, death wish is horrible it cost way too much mana, deprives you from having a sideboard and hurts a lot.
That deck looks like a bastard deck trying to do too many things at once and in the end doing all of them worse than the original decks, it feels like instead of trying to win the game your deck is actively trying to loose it by every means it can.
Of course I am no expert on how to play it since it's very different than any other Combo deck i've ever played, but it's just so all in waiting to do die to any well timed counterspell or removal spell on the maniac.
I think you are better off with 4 oath 3/4 doomsday no combo bombs and counters,
In my testing, the traditional rituals->wish->yawgwill->tendrils plan was actually the least common way for me to win. Knowing when to play more slowly (which probably sounds silly in a deck with no counters and 8 maindeck cards that halve your life total) is important. The deck can win in non-explosive ways that don't require Oath.
In playing around with it a bit more, I actually think you may be right that it needs a bit more mana. A couple times I got stuck wanting to wish for something and not being able to play it that turn. I think I'm going to swap 2 cards for 2 mana sources but I'm not sure what they'll be yet.
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4 City of Brass
2 Gemstone Mine
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Mana Vault
4 Dark Ritual
Wincons
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Memory's Journey
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Oath of Druids
3 Doomsday
4 Death Wish
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Necropotence
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Infernal Contract
Whatever is left
1 Chromatic Sphere
3 Gitaxian Probe
1 Brainstorm
4 Duress
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Windfall
1 Oath of Druids
1 Doomsday
1 Unmask
1 Silence
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Hunted Phantasm
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Meditate
1 Infernal Contract
Obviously I realize this is a hot mess and it's not intended to be exactly tournament worthy, although it goldfishes pretty well. I guess I'm just interested in what you guys think of it, and I'd like to stimulate some vintage discussion around here. Let the bad times roll. Feel free to ask if you have any questions about particular card choices, since there are some crazy ones in there.
I'll try to address some of these questions/concerns with a bit of backstory:
Essentially, the deck idea came about from me thinking about variations on Burning Long, and what advantages there could be to using Death Wish instead of Burning Wish. The answer I came up with was being able to wish for Oath. But Death Wishing for Oath to get Griselbrand to storm out puts you in lightning bolt range in the best case scenario, which obviously is an issue. So I considered Lab Maniac, which Burning Oath often brings out of the sideboard for shops matches (not to mention that maniac oath itself has had some, albeit limited, success on it's own). Lab Man brought up thoughts of doomsday (and incidentally I have had some decent results with an entirely different Maniac Oath/Doomsday hybrid). Since I was going for a more Long-like build with doomsday, I looked to the Legacy Doomsday deck for some inspiration, and ended up with Gitaxian Probes and an Infernal Contract, which gives me another way to draw into my Doomsday piles, which helps mitigate the occasional ill effects of Demonic Consultation (which also can play nice with Lab Man). As you probably are beginning to figure out, this was kind of a thought experiment gone awry but I ended up enjoying goldfishing it.
To more directly answer some of the questions:
-I'm not sure the deck is better than any of the existing forms of long. I think it gives you more options at any given time than other variants, but that advantage is offset by extreme life payments.
-I don't think it's that weak to shops (or not really more so than the typical long variant) since the plan remains the same: win with Oath.
-I haven't had problems with the mana, although I'm not entirely satisfied with Infernal Contract, and I may go to 2 Doomsdays. If I made these changes I may fit a Cabal Ritual or an extra land in.
-I had both Bargain and Mind's Desire in my original build and didn't really like them. They were both certainly powerful but I wasn't thrilled to see them a lot of the time. Necro got in over bargain since it's cheaper. I'd probably put Bargain back in before I put Desire back in, although Desire could be a decent wish target.
-Duress helps to protect Doomsday. These may become Cabal Therapy. Probes help me see what I'm up against so I know how to build piles (and could be good with Therapy). Doomsday is also a bomb here. You throw bomb after bomb, and finish with doomsday, or just stick one like normal and pretend to be Long. There is no strategic contradiction since I'm not trying to take the typical Doomsday strategy at all.
In the end, I realize this deck has plenty of shortcomings, which more than likely outweigh the advantages of being able to wish for anything. However I've enjoyed playing around with it, and I was curious what other people thought.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
What's he bluffing? The second activation mills him into oblivion and then he wins that draw step.
Ooh - he uses it like a Hermit Druid activation like "1G: Dump your library". It was late last night, I must not've been thinking clearly.
Still, a single Emrakul would likely be worthwhile anyway.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
The intent in building the deck was to give myself as many options as posssible at any one time. The main advantage of Death wish over Grim tutor is that I can get anything from my sideboard instead of trying to pack it in to my deck. Of course having so many options can have downsides too, since it can be hard to see the right play, sometimes those options are useless, etc.
In my testing, the traditional rituals->wish->yawgwill->tendrils plan was actually the least common way for me to win. Knowing when to play more slowly (which probably sounds silly in a deck with no counters and 8 maindeck cards that halve your life total) is important. The deck can win in non-explosive ways that don't require Oath.
In playing around with it a bit more, I actually think you may be right that it needs a bit more mana. A couple times I got stuck wanting to wish for something and not being able to play it that turn. I think I'm going to swap 2 cards for 2 mana sources but I'm not sure what they'll be yet.