This article is written to the player who does not play Vintage (Type 1), but would either like to get started, or is just interested in reading about the metagame of Magic's most powerful recognized format. This article will be written to players not familiar with Vintage Magic.

We'll be studying Vintage today. Why will we be studying Vintage today? Because Vintage is a fun and balanced format. Many who do not play Vintage do not realize either of these points. Right now, Vintage consists of around twelve (that's right, a number more than ten!) Tier 1 (ish) decks.

1) Ubastax
2) 5c Stax
3) Flame Vault Gifts
4) Tendrils Gifts
5) Control Slaver
6) Oath
7) TPS
8) Grimlong
9) Two-Land Belcher
10) Dragon
11) Workshop Aggro
12) Fish Variants

Some people will argue that one or more of the decks on that list are not Tier 1. Most people will agree that Fish is not good enough to consistently make it to a Top 8 in any large tournament, but enough Fish is played to have to metagame for it in a large tourney. The others will have arguments made for and against them on a pretty common basis. There are a few decks, however, that people will never question as being absolute Tier 1:

1) Stax Variants
2) Gifts Variants
3) Slaver Variants

I can hear you all now…

“Whoa! Slow down! What are all these decks? I've never heard of them before!”

There are enormous quantities of information on the Vintage Metagame. If you're interested in learning more, the best place to find information on the Vintage Metagame is on The Mana Drain. StarCityGames.com has been working with TMD (The Mana Drain) forever now, and has recently acquired them. You can find out about the different archetypes in Vintage, and what you might want to play if you're new to Type 1. Another good source is the good ol' StarCityGames forums on Vintage Deck Strategy and Discussion. TMD and StarCityGames are by far the leading authorities on deck construction and exploration in Vintage.

There are a ton of good sources to get acquainted with the different decks in Vintage. If you're a Premium member, you have access to oodles of great articles on Vintage, including Stephen Menendian's Stax Dissected, and Gifts Dissected, up for premium viewing.

So you've never heard of all these decks before, and you just want a brief synopsis of each deck? Okay. I will gladly do that in a later article (stay tuned!).

First, I want to answer some complaints about Vintage Magic, which is why most people don't get involved with the format. There are four major complaints about Vintage from players of other formats, all of which are very misinformed complaints.

1) Vintage is completely unbalanced. Combo is too good.
2) The games in Vintage are decided in the first three turns.
3) Vintage is too expensive to play.
4) The Vintage metagame is completely stagnant. You can't make new decks in Vintage.

1) Vintage is completely unbalanced. Combo is too good.
This couldn't be farther from the truth. Vintage is currently the most balanced format of Magic.

Again, I hear you… “What? More than Legacy?”

Okay, Legacy is the only other contender for the title of Most Balanced Format. The problem with Legacy is that it's still a new format, and new formats will go between swings of completely unbalanced states (like when no one knew how to deal with Goblins), and completely balanced states (the format right now). Combo has always been historically worse than Control, because Wizards does not like Combo being King in Vintage.

Vintage has twelve (count 'em: twelve) decks that are Tier 1, or very close to being Tier 1. There is no deck or archetype of deck that just dominates the format right now. Although it's argued that the Stax variants are currently the best (which I would agree with) they in no way distort the format so much that they can't be beaten... easily. They are actually the easiest decks to sideboard hate against, because they are full of artifacts and are permanent-based. Any deck right now that has countermagic and artifact-hate (or just straight up artifact hate) can completely demolish a Stax deck. Gifts, like Stax can be beaten in a variety of different ways, and Slaver is the same way. In short, we are in the Golden Age of Type 1 (Vintage) Magic.

2) The games in Vintage are decided in the first three turns.
Right now, the top four decks are all control based, and all want the game to last for at least four turns. Gifts is the only Tier 1 deck that can win in the first four turns with a combo, unless Slaver somehow super-lucks into an infinite Slaver recursion with Pentavus as early as turn 4 (which is near impossible), but they're actually still not winning on whatever turn they get infinite Mindslaver recursion: they're just controlling the game from that point on.

I don't even call Slaver control-combo, because the combo aspect of it is extremely unimportant. If they activate a Mindslaver, the game is pretty much over regardless of whether than can do it more than once (which they almost always can). If Slaver has the ability to activate Mindslaver at any point in the game, this means they have established control and are winning because of their established position on the game-state, not because they simply activate Mindslaver and win. Anything can happen in the Control Mirror, and swings are common due to random powerful topdecks.

Decks are primarily built on being control-based in Vintage, unless you are building a combo deck. Combo decks are doing better now than they have been recently, but for the past three years or so have been historically worse than control decks. Ubastax, probably the top deck in the format right now, usually takes more than twenty turns to kill someone. It wins by getting the opponent into a hard lock, and swinging with Goblin Welder (a 1/1) twenty times, or recurring Barbarian Ring with Crucible of Worlds enough for lethal damage.

3) Vintage is too expensive to play.
This third stereotype has been not occurring as much as it used to (thankfully), because people have been seeing with a five, ten, or even fifteen proxy limit being placed on most tournaments, Vintage is very economical to start playing. The most expensive deck to play in the format is unquestionably Ubastax.

Ubastax has fourteen high-end cards in it, which include the following:

1 Black Lotus ($500)
5 Moxes ($300 each)
4 Mishra's Workshop ($200 each)
4 Bazaar of Baghdad ($150 each)

Compare this to Belcher, which has six high-end cards in it:

1 Black Lotus ($500)
5 Moxes ($300 each)

A deck that has an amount of proxies somewhere in the middle, like Gifts (eight high end cards), can be seen here:

1 Black Lotus ($500)
5 Moxes ($300 each)
1 Ancestral Recall ($350)
1 Time Walk ($325)
4 Mana Drains ($80 each)

I don't consider Mana Drains high end cards, as they're only $80 each, and you don't actually need a playset of them to get to ten proxies; only two, if your other proxies (aside from two proxied Drains) are the eight high-end cards. I admittedly set somewhat low prices for high-end cards in most cases. However, every other card except for high end cards in these decks are almost always under $10, and in many cases less than $1.

If you were to build an Ubastax deck with fifteen proxies, you would end up spending around $200 dollars (or much less!) for a deck you can play for the next three or four years. However, when the number goes down to ten proxies, you're going to spend $800 dollars for the most expensive deck in the format to build, but around $300 to $400 for a Blue-based control deck. Ten proxies (the normal amount of proxies allowed by unsanctioned tournaments here in America) will get you a lot of deck-power for only a little cost. Gifts is far less than Ubastax with ten proxies, probably only needing about $300-$400 dollars to get you a good Blue-based control deck, which can transform into a large variety of other decks. With a small investment ($350) compared to Standard, where the cards rotate out every two years, you can have a deck that will always be good in Vintage, with some slight modifications and improvements.

For an example, Control Slaver, since it's creation over two and a half years ago, has always remained a staple of the Vintage Metagame, and is unquestionably Tier 1. If playing in a ten proxy tournament, one needs to only spend about $300-$400 to have a perfectly powered Tier 1 Slaver deck, which will continue to be good for years and years.

Many of my friends have stopped playing Standard because in order to play Standard, one has to purchase many cards at high prices (above $10) that fluctuate often. After Standard rotates out, prices drop dramatically, leaving you with cards that might only be worth half of what you paid for them (or, in many cases, less). Vintage is a one-time investment that you never have to pay for once you own the cards (or even just some of the cards, like four Forces and four Drains), and prices always go up. Force of Will is valued at around $20 right now and continues to rise, the same with Drains, Workshops, Bazaars, or Power.

Speaking on long-term investments, Vintage is the best format to play in terms of cost. Your cards always remain good, nothing rotates out, and prices only go up over time. If you buy a playset of Force of Wills for $80 today, they'll be worth $90 in a year, and $100 in two years. Compare this to Arcbound Ravagers, in which a playset would cost you $100 two years ago, but are worth maybe $5 individually today. You can also use many Vintage cards in Legacy, the most popular older format.

If you decide to play Blue-based control in Vintage (four Force of Wills, four Mana Drains) you have almost no limits on what you can build. Control Slaver and Gifts have 30-40 cards that are the exact same in both builds (with the different ones usually under $10), and both decks run basic Islands (usually four or five). Blue-based control frequently uses the same cards (Blue fetchlands, Brainstorms, certain draw cards, etc), and can be used in a wide amount of different decks. If you decide to play Workshop variants (like I've done), this limits your choices more than Drain-based decks, but it still allows you to play three or four good decks that will only evolve to be better in time.

4) The Vintage metagame is completely stagnant. You can't make new decks in Vintage.
While it's true that there is less innovation in Vintage than in other formats when it comes to completely new decks being made, you have to realize first of all why that is. The card pool is enormous in Vintage. When a new set comes out, it increases the amount of cards that we can reasonably choose from to add into our decks. Take for instance, Mirrodin. Mirrodin was huge for Vintage Magic. Giving us new cards (Mindslaver), bringing with them some brand new decks (Control Slaver). However, when sets of cards come out that are not very favorable to Vintage Magic (take for instance, Guildpact), we only have a few cards that we can choose from to innovate with (Shattering Spree, Quicken) because out of all of the cards in Guildpact which might be considered useful, strictly better cards apply from older sets. Even within Standard, there are many, many cards that are simply deemed unplayable because there are cards that are just simply better.

It takes a long time for innovation to catch on within Vintage too, because many Vintage players enjoy playing only a certain archetype of deck. For instance, someone who might be ripe with innovation in prison variants (like myself) is poor at playing Blue-based control decks, and so we don't discover new tech for Blue-based control, like Recoup (which is a card in the maindeck of every Gifts Archetype). Many pros understand the current Standard Metagame to appropriately play decks that cannot be handled by the small amount of cards within six expansions and a core set. However, no person can have a grasp on how every card in the entire history of Magic relates to one another and within a metagame this large. Even if everyone in the entire world played Vintage as their first Magic Format, innovation would be at least twice as slow as Standard's innovations come. However, I feel this is a positive, as it allows you, the normal player, to actually innovate!

As an example of this, I turn to experience. Recently, I discovered new tech in Ubastax that I posted on The Mana Drain - Tangle Wire. A mainstay of 5c Stax for some time, we Ubastax veterans had never thought to incorporate Tangle Wire into our builds because Gorilla Shaman was thought to have been simply better, as Ubastax is mono-Red. However, dis-synergy with Chalice of the Void set at one, and other concerns, made me think of a way to replace Gorilla Shaman. Although not strictly better, Tangle Wire is better in the current Vintage Metagame, and I fully expect most Ubastax players to run Tangle Wire in the maindeck soon. Robert Vroman, creator of Ubastax, is already doing so, as well as other huge names in the Vintage Community. Some have even taken out other pieces of the deck (Sphere of Resistance) for Tangle Wire, thinking that it is actually a stronger lock.

"Okay, I understand that Vintage is cool. Start teaching me about it so I can play."

Sure. I've already got it written, and will publish it shortly. Stay tuned for complete - and I mean complete - analysis on the Vintage Metagame!