Quite a lot of interesting stuff going on with Modern Master 2015. The biggest surprise for me now the set has been spoiled is that there is no Batterskull in the set, particularly given that Living Weapon appears elsewhere in the set (on Mortarpod etc).
I was mildly surprised that they included all the Eldrazi but it does make sense. Also, it seems like they've included a good number of ways to make them castable in the format, which is nice. Between the Ravnica Duals, Eldrazi Temple at uncommon and I believe there are Eldrazi Spawn as additional ramp in the set.
I'm fairly happy with the rarity-shifting in MM2015, mainly because the cards I care about have been shifted down. Big shifts upwards I find more offensive but Bitterblossom seems to be the only real example of a new upward shift and seems reasonable all things considered.
I enjoyed Adam's comment about the theme weeks of yore. I feel like themes was a nice idea but it's difficult to get everyone on board with any particular theme and to communicate to everyone who writes articles on the site sometimes. It was a nice idea but sometimes a bit difficult to accommodate.
The things that make several of the top decks so good; Low mana-counts, tons of cheap spells, a huge number of one-mana spells, a reliance on those one-mana spells to find the few threats and lands that they do play, all of those things make those decks soft to an efficient, redundant, mana and resource denial plan.
I think that you could probably make a deck that was really good against Workshops, but it would likely be a dog to all of the other top decks in Vintage.
From playing the deck, I've learned what types of hands will lose. It's not always easy to see, but sometimes the deck starts off good and bricks long enough that the opponent can get some board presence, and the game is lost.
A resolved Trygon or Dack (Especially Dack) when the shops player doesn't have an active Kuldotha Forgemaster is rough.
You know, maybe if Delver decks, and similar archetypes could get away with squeezing a playset of Wastelands into their build, they'd have a better shot.
Also, I had someone manage to resolve an Energy Flux against me and that was GG. Can't pay that tax with Shop mana!
Thanks for the shout-outs! Hope to see you in the daily later today, I might try out Martello shops to see how good it actually is! Maybe if the deck gets too dominant online something will get banned.
The one person who plays Standtill every time they play, is a Vintage Adept from the Mana Drain.
That just means that they are enough of an expert to have been given that title. There was (or still is) a test that one had to take to get there.
The point is that person is probably so skilled with the deck, that they are able to have good results. That doesn't mean that someone like myself could do as well.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try it, but it won't be an easy road to success.
Grixis decks with Key Vault aren't bad decks, and you get to play REB/Pyroblast, Dack, and Notion Theif.
Personally, I like to scour the listings for decks that have a lot of 4-0s and start from there.
I haven't tried any standstill decks but they don't appeal to me in any way and they also don't seem very good. The draw engine play by delver/mentor decks is better and more proactive.
Thanks for your input. I really like the decks running key and vault, which seems to be quite a lot of decks. I also like the Standstill deck and it is more affordable right now for me since I don't own Griselbrand at the moment. Any thoughts on Standstill?
Thanks a lot. There are plenty of previous articles to check back over if you click the banner at the top of the article. However, I plan on there being lots more content to come.
True. If I spent the 100's of hours since then playing magic instead of working I *might* be qualified for a PT again (and likely in debt from travel expenses). What happened instead was me making tons of money at my new job and buying a house. I'm OK with how this choice has ended for me. It's like I top 8'd a PT in real life instead of MTG.
Thank you! I actually think the Oath deck I'm playing is not very hard to play. When I started playing I made a lot of small mistakes. Most of them were things I'd notice right away. However, the deck allowed me to not be punished by those most of the time. To be fair, when you are very ahead and have 14+ cards in your hand it's hard to lose and easy to make those small mistakes but the deck was able to forgive those small mistakes often. So I think it's a good deck for a new Vintage player.
My only doubt about the deck is that it might not be sufficiently tuned. Maybe it could use a couple more blue sources along with Preordains and Digs and I wouldn't know what to cut. The OmniTell Oath plays those but I think that deck is way more inconsistent. It has many more combo pieces so it increases the odds of having cards that don't do anything on their own. Oathing Emrakul is not enough in several cases and one of the games shows exactly this. I never tested it but just watching VSL, I think it showed its inconsistency.
That doesn't mean my list is perfect. Mana Drain has its moments but it might not be what the deck wants and Jace is mainly good on turn 1 or 2 and it's nice to have as an out to some stuff and as alternative way to win games when you are taking infinite turns but that's more a matter of saving the clock.
I do like having the key + vault and I would never take them out and Library can be awkward but it can also win some games on its own. Even if it's awkward a bit more often than it wins games, I think turning some games from 50% to 90% is worth turning some games from 30% to 20%. And with just 3 slots that I see myself cutting (mana drain and 2 jace) I can't fit at least 6 cards (4 Preordain and 2 Dig).
I didn't know you had an Oath deck before. It seems like a lot of fun to play. I wasn't going to break apart the Delver deck, but I feel like if I'm going to play Vintage then by God I want to do broken stuff. Like absurdly awesome turn one wins and crap like that. What appeals to me the most about Vintage is how broken it can be and how most of the action takes place on the stack. Counter wars are intense, especially in Vintage because so many spells, if resolved, are game enders.
Thanks for your input, Joe. I know if Alexandrino can't help me then you were the next person I was going to ask, anyways.
I'd keep your Delver deck, but go ahead and try out other decks. I know it's not me you asked, but Oath is a good deck and can be really strong. I just started to have some of the worst hands I'd ever seen, and took an extended break.
Every deck in Vintage can do some broken stuff though.
There are a lot of ways you can go with Oath, the Mana drain is a good resource.
Nice work, Alexandrino! I have a question. I'm very new to Vintage (never played a daily. just the practice room and Ham On Wry IV). Would you recommend this Oath of Druids deck to a new Vintage player like me? If not, what would be a good deck that is competitive and also fairly easy to pilot until I can get more experience in the format? I currently have a RUG Delver deck but I feel since this is Vintage I should be doing broken combos or cheating in Griselbrand and/or Blightsteel Colossus. Seems like I'm missing out on a lot of the fun when I play my Delver deck. Thanks!
I think Thirst need to be unrestricted because it's not that powerful anymore. Maybe something should be done to dig/gush/some shops card but I also think those percentages just mean most people are playing it safe by choosing to play those decks. I still see other decks when I play fairly often and it's certainly possible to win with those other decks.
(I'm typing this on my phone from work. Please forgive any typos or nonsensical words.)
No ,I haven't played a daily in a long time. My schedule lines up poorly with their event times. That's neither here nor there though. Numbers don't lie. Pulling data for the last 2 months shows the cantrip/Gush/delve engine as roughly 30% of the metagame. Gifts is 8%, and Bob is virtually non-existent. So, for all intents and purposes, nobody is playing those cards, and the Gush engine is the reason why.
Gush is NOT balanced. Delver was arguably the best deck before Dack, Dig, Mentor, and Cruise. Those cards just put it over the top and helped popularize it. Ok, it is just random cards off the top of your deck. So is Ancestral. The power behind Gush is that it's free. The tempo loss is mitigated by the shell built around it, and is not infrequently an advantage when trying to land a 3 drop or facing a Wasteland.
Dig is abstractly more powerful. No argument there. It requires significant setup though. Cantrips and Gush are the cards that provide it. Take that away and Dig loses a lot of its oomph. Also, Dig fits into more strategies than Gush and does not actively harm diversity, and if you're in a position to delve past spheres, chances are your already winning.
What point are you even trying to make about TfK? Its safe to unrestrict. It's a "build around me" card, or have you never seen Control Slaver? It's not trying to serve the same purpose as Preordain. The whole idea behind my suggested B&R changes is to break up the Gush engine and provide more options. Restricting DTT will not accomplish the first goal and Thirst is one of the last nonsense restrictions left.
P.S. - If you want to promote discussion, lose the attitude. If you want to promote yourself, have fun with that. I don't have the time or energy to deal with arrogance and thinly veiled insults.
Facing shops, i'm happy drawing dig, and not so much drawing gush.
I'll be kind of sad without multiple dtt, but it is probably the right thing to do in the end.
One other thing, there sure is a significant difference between the t. P. Room and the daily events.
Sometimes, I can get some good practice in in there, because people who also play in the daily events are practicing at the same time.
Other times, I've won a bunch of matches and felt like I was in good shape for the Daily. Then I'd have a mediocre at best performance in the daily.
So, your point about free play rooms and tournament play having different metagames is accurate.
I have never seen your screen name in a Vintage daily before. Maybe what you are talking about is happening in the TP or cas-cas rooms (no one is playing Confidant and Gifts in the real world anymore)? Gush is not the culprit of all evil, it is perfectly balanced for Vintage. The cards that apparently put it over the top are Pyromancer, Mentor, Dack and DTT, but at the end of the day you get 2 random cards off the top of your deck and you set yourself back in tempo, which is a big liability against Shops. Drawing 2 random cards is not that strong by itself, getting to look at a fresh hand and pick the 2 best cards is, though. Not to mention the fact that you can Delve additional cards behind spheres, mitigating the mana disadvantage given by Stax.
And wtf did Thirst for Knowledge come from? Isn't that kind of a joke card? Isn't preordain just better to fix your early game, ESPECIALLY against a deck like Stax? Also, what are you going to throw away? You would have to build your deck around Thirst for it to wield any value, otherwise you pay 3 mana (100000 against Stax) to loot a couple of cards. Broken. It being still restricted is just an oversight by Wotc, and I'm sure when DTT gets restricted we will see another "prisoner exchange" like we did before with Cruise and Gifts (which obv sucks, or have you ever seen a list with more than 1 Gifts go 4-0 EVER?).
I think that monastery mentor and the ur delver deck get a lot less powerful if gush gets restricted.
I am still new to vintage, so my opinions aren't as well informed as others. I suppose if I'd never quit magic, I'd know more about the format, as I started in 95.
I completely agree about the lack of diversity and overall stale taste of the format at present. However, I'm not convinced that Lodestone and Dig are the cards that need to go. I've mentioned before that I think the real culprit is Gush, the rest of the engine just happens to synergize very well with that card and would be fine without it.
The first order effect of Gush is to relegate other blue decks. Engines like Dark Confidant, Gifts, and Thirst cannot keep up with the deck velocity or raw card advantage provided by the trifecta of Gush, cantrips, and Delve spells. The decks built around them fall by the wayside and blue becomes more or less homogenized.
So now we have a bunch of people on blue decks that want to play a ton of 1 mana spells every turn. What strategy naturally trumps that? Workshops. Shops is already an inherently powerful deck, maybe even the most powerful. With Gro decks being so popular these days, it no wonder Mishra's lands are also heavily played.
So, my counter suggestion on how we diversify the metagame:
1: Restrict Gush - It's been a problem every time it's been unrestricted, and the present is no different. Lock it up and throw away the key.
2: Unrestrict Thirst for Knowledge - With Gush out of the picture, I think we could see TfK competing with Bob, Gifts, and Fact of Fiction simultaneously diversifying blue and diminishing Workshops.
What about Hex Parasite as a SB card for Dack?
Good cast guys!
Quite a lot of interesting stuff going on with Modern Master 2015. The biggest surprise for me now the set has been spoiled is that there is no Batterskull in the set, particularly given that Living Weapon appears elsewhere in the set (on Mortarpod etc).
I was mildly surprised that they included all the Eldrazi but it does make sense. Also, it seems like they've included a good number of ways to make them castable in the format, which is nice. Between the Ravnica Duals, Eldrazi Temple at uncommon and I believe there are Eldrazi Spawn as additional ramp in the set.
I'm fairly happy with the rarity-shifting in MM2015, mainly because the cards I care about have been shifted down. Big shifts upwards I find more offensive but Bitterblossom seems to be the only real example of a new upward shift and seems reasonable all things considered.
I enjoyed Adam's comment about the theme weeks of yore. I feel like themes was a nice idea but it's difficult to get everyone on board with any particular theme and to communicate to everyone who writes articles on the site sometimes. It was a nice idea but sometimes a bit difficult to accommodate.
More likely restricted, but I don't know.
Here's what I've discovered:
The things that make several of the top decks so good; Low mana-counts, tons of cheap spells, a huge number of one-mana spells, a reliance on those one-mana spells to find the few threats and lands that they do play, all of those things make those decks soft to an efficient, redundant, mana and resource denial plan.
I think that you could probably make a deck that was really good against Workshops, but it would likely be a dog to all of the other top decks in Vintage.
From playing the deck, I've learned what types of hands will lose. It's not always easy to see, but sometimes the deck starts off good and bricks long enough that the opponent can get some board presence, and the game is lost.
A resolved Trygon or Dack (Especially Dack) when the shops player doesn't have an active Kuldotha Forgemaster is rough.
You know, maybe if Delver decks, and similar archetypes could get away with squeezing a playset of Wastelands into their build, they'd have a better shot.
Also, I had someone manage to resolve an Energy Flux against me and that was GG. Can't pay that tax with Shop mana!
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the shout-outs! Hope to see you in the daily later today, I might try out Martello shops to see how good it actually is! Maybe if the deck gets too dominant online something will get banned.
Oh, I should have added a link to my Logo as well! Good idea!
Keep up the good work, man
Oh, I should have added a link to my Logo as well! Good idea!
Keep up the good work, man
The one person who plays Standtill every time they play, is a Vintage Adept from the Mana Drain.
That just means that they are enough of an expert to have been given that title. There was (or still is) a test that one had to take to get there.
The point is that person is probably so skilled with the deck, that they are able to have good results. That doesn't mean that someone like myself could do as well.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't try it, but it won't be an easy road to success.
Grixis decks with Key Vault aren't bad decks, and you get to play REB/Pyroblast, Dack, and Notion Theif.
Personally, I like to scour the listings for decks that have a lot of 4-0s and start from there.
I haven't tried any standstill decks but they don't appeal to me in any way and they also don't seem very good. The draw engine play by delver/mentor decks is better and more proactive.
Thanks for your input. I really like the decks running key and vault, which seems to be quite a lot of decks. I also like the Standstill deck and it is more affordable right now for me since I don't own Griselbrand at the moment. Any thoughts on Standstill?
Let's restrict all cards so everyone is on an even keel.
Then we can play Vintage 100CS.
:)
Thanks a lot. There are plenty of previous articles to check back over if you click the banner at the top of the article. However, I plan on there being lots more content to come.
True. If I spent the 100's of hours since then playing magic instead of working I *might* be qualified for a PT again (and likely in debt from travel expenses). What happened instead was me making tons of money at my new job and buying a house. I'm OK with how this choice has ended for me. It's like I top 8'd a PT in real life instead of MTG.
Thank you! I actually think the Oath deck I'm playing is not very hard to play. When I started playing I made a lot of small mistakes. Most of them were things I'd notice right away. However, the deck allowed me to not be punished by those most of the time. To be fair, when you are very ahead and have 14+ cards in your hand it's hard to lose and easy to make those small mistakes but the deck was able to forgive those small mistakes often. So I think it's a good deck for a new Vintage player.
My only doubt about the deck is that it might not be sufficiently tuned. Maybe it could use a couple more blue sources along with Preordains and Digs and I wouldn't know what to cut. The OmniTell Oath plays those but I think that deck is way more inconsistent. It has many more combo pieces so it increases the odds of having cards that don't do anything on their own. Oathing Emrakul is not enough in several cases and one of the games shows exactly this. I never tested it but just watching VSL, I think it showed its inconsistency.
That doesn't mean my list is perfect. Mana Drain has its moments but it might not be what the deck wants and Jace is mainly good on turn 1 or 2 and it's nice to have as an out to some stuff and as alternative way to win games when you are taking infinite turns but that's more a matter of saving the clock.
I do like having the key + vault and I would never take them out and Library can be awkward but it can also win some games on its own. Even if it's awkward a bit more often than it wins games, I think turning some games from 50% to 90% is worth turning some games from 30% to 20%. And with just 3 slots that I see myself cutting (mana drain and 2 jace) I can't fit at least 6 cards (4 Preordain and 2 Dig).
well, in my opinion, turn one wins are rare, and playing a deck like that (like belcher, or tps) there are some inherent problems.
I did write an article about my oath deck, but I'm not as good with it as this alexandrino guy. :)
I didn't know you had an Oath deck before. It seems like a lot of fun to play. I wasn't going to break apart the Delver deck, but I feel like if I'm going to play Vintage then by God I want to do broken stuff. Like absurdly awesome turn one wins and crap like that. What appeals to me the most about Vintage is how broken it can be and how most of the action takes place on the stack. Counter wars are intense, especially in Vintage because so many spells, if resolved, are game enders.
Thanks for your input, Joe. I know if Alexandrino can't help me then you were the next person I was going to ask, anyways.
I'd keep your Delver deck, but go ahead and try out other decks. I know it's not me you asked, but Oath is a good deck and can be really strong. I just started to have some of the worst hands I'd ever seen, and took an extended break.
Every deck in Vintage can do some broken stuff though.
There are a lot of ways you can go with Oath, the Mana drain is a good resource.
I'll come up with my next deck the same way I pick which plays to make. Coin flips and Magic 8-balls. :)
Nice work, Alexandrino! I have a question. I'm very new to Vintage (never played a daily. just the practice room and Ham On Wry IV). Would you recommend this Oath of Druids deck to a new Vintage player like me? If not, what would be a good deck that is competitive and also fairly easy to pilot until I can get more experience in the format? I currently have a RUG Delver deck but I feel since this is Vintage I should be doing broken combos or cheating in Griselbrand and/or Blightsteel Colossus. Seems like I'm missing out on a lot of the fun when I play my Delver deck. Thanks!
I think Thirst need to be unrestricted because it's not that powerful anymore. Maybe something should be done to dig/gush/some shops card but I also think those percentages just mean most people are playing it safe by choosing to play those decks. I still see other decks when I play fairly often and it's certainly possible to win with those other decks.
(I'm typing this on my phone from work. Please forgive any typos or nonsensical words.)
No ,I haven't played a daily in a long time. My schedule lines up poorly with their event times. That's neither here nor there though. Numbers don't lie. Pulling data for the last 2 months shows the cantrip/Gush/delve engine as roughly 30% of the metagame. Gifts is 8%, and Bob is virtually non-existent. So, for all intents and purposes, nobody is playing those cards, and the Gush engine is the reason why.
Gush is NOT balanced. Delver was arguably the best deck before Dack, Dig, Mentor, and Cruise. Those cards just put it over the top and helped popularize it. Ok, it is just random cards off the top of your deck. So is Ancestral. The power behind Gush is that it's free. The tempo loss is mitigated by the shell built around it, and is not infrequently an advantage when trying to land a 3 drop or facing a Wasteland.
Dig is abstractly more powerful. No argument there. It requires significant setup though. Cantrips and Gush are the cards that provide it. Take that away and Dig loses a lot of its oomph. Also, Dig fits into more strategies than Gush and does not actively harm diversity, and if you're in a position to delve past spheres, chances are your already winning.
What point are you even trying to make about TfK? Its safe to unrestrict. It's a "build around me" card, or have you never seen Control Slaver? It's not trying to serve the same purpose as Preordain. The whole idea behind my suggested B&R changes is to break up the Gush engine and provide more options. Restricting DTT will not accomplish the first goal and Thirst is one of the last nonsense restrictions left.
P.S. - If you want to promote discussion, lose the attitude. If you want to promote yourself, have fun with that. I don't have the time or energy to deal with arrogance and thinly veiled insults.
Facing shops, i'm happy drawing dig, and not so much drawing gush.
I'll be kind of sad without multiple dtt, but it is probably the right thing to do in the end.
One other thing, there sure is a significant difference between the t. P. Room and the daily events.
Sometimes, I can get some good practice in in there, because people who also play in the daily events are practicing at the same time.
Other times, I've won a bunch of matches and felt like I was in good shape for the Daily. Then I'd have a mediocre at best performance in the daily.
So, your point about free play rooms and tournament play having different metagames is accurate.
David/ youhavenogame here:
@TheKidsArentAlright
I have never seen your screen name in a Vintage daily before. Maybe what you are talking about is happening in the TP or cas-cas rooms (no one is playing Confidant and Gifts in the real world anymore)? Gush is not the culprit of all evil, it is perfectly balanced for Vintage. The cards that apparently put it over the top are Pyromancer, Mentor, Dack and DTT, but at the end of the day you get 2 random cards off the top of your deck and you set yourself back in tempo, which is a big liability against Shops. Drawing 2 random cards is not that strong by itself, getting to look at a fresh hand and pick the 2 best cards is, though. Not to mention the fact that you can Delve additional cards behind spheres, mitigating the mana disadvantage given by Stax.
And wtf did Thirst for Knowledge come from? Isn't that kind of a joke card? Isn't preordain just better to fix your early game, ESPECIALLY against a deck like Stax? Also, what are you going to throw away? You would have to build your deck around Thirst for it to wield any value, otherwise you pay 3 mana (100000 against Stax) to loot a couple of cards. Broken. It being still restricted is just an oversight by Wotc, and I'm sure when DTT gets restricted we will see another "prisoner exchange" like we did before with Cruise and Gifts (which obv sucks, or have you ever seen a list with more than 1 Gifts go 4-0 EVER?).
Thanks Zach!
Vintage you say, hmmmm. Sadly I'm more of a vintage spectator than player but maybe one day.
Frankie
I think that monastery mentor and the ur delver deck get a lot less powerful if gush gets restricted.
I am still new to vintage, so my opinions aren't as well informed as others. I suppose if I'd never quit magic, I'd know more about the format, as I started in 95.
I completely agree about the lack of diversity and overall stale taste of the format at present. However, I'm not convinced that Lodestone and Dig are the cards that need to go. I've mentioned before that I think the real culprit is Gush, the rest of the engine just happens to synergize very well with that card and would be fine without it.
The first order effect of Gush is to relegate other blue decks. Engines like Dark Confidant, Gifts, and Thirst cannot keep up with the deck velocity or raw card advantage provided by the trifecta of Gush, cantrips, and Delve spells. The decks built around them fall by the wayside and blue becomes more or less homogenized.
So now we have a bunch of people on blue decks that want to play a ton of 1 mana spells every turn. What strategy naturally trumps that? Workshops. Shops is already an inherently powerful deck, maybe even the most powerful. With Gro decks being so popular these days, it no wonder Mishra's lands are also heavily played.
So, my counter suggestion on how we diversify the metagame:
1: Restrict Gush - It's been a problem every time it's been unrestricted, and the present is no different. Lock it up and throw away the key.
2: Unrestrict Thirst for Knowledge - With Gush out of the picture, I think we could see TfK competing with Bob, Gifts, and Fact of Fiction simultaneously diversifying blue and diminishing Workshops.