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Curious about Vintage? Confused by all the crazy terminology? Overwhelmed by the enormous card pool? I've written this article for you. I've put together, in a single place, a concise description of the top six decks in Vintage. Take a look…
Control Slaver
Strategy:
This is a tried and true control deck. It uses Thirst for Knowledge as an instant-speed draw engine, Mana Drains and Force of Will to help it resolve spells and answer opposing threats, and Goblin Welder to recur Mindslaver. Eventually, a massive Yawgmoth's Will can provide a sufficient number of Mindslaver activations to end the game. Power plays include Tinker and Yawgmoth's Will.
Strengths:
Although you will find many variants of this deck in Vintage reflecting the personal taste and preferences of each pilot, there can be little doubt that this is a premiere Vintage deck. The overwhelming power of the strategy and synergistic energy push this deck into the stratosphere. A single Mindslaver activation against virtually any deck in Vintage is probably a lethal blow.
This deck is extremely fast. It will “goldfish” at around a clip of turn 3 to 4 every game. A single Mana Drain on a mid-costed spell will turn into a flurry of main-phase activity for the Control Slaver player. Most importantly, this deck has the best Tinker of any deck in Vintage. Tinker is a truly potent threat that can find a range of monstrous “bots” or Mindslaver itself.
Weaknesses:
The primary weakness of this deck is twofold: First, it has a very weak early game against combo. Thirst for Knowledge, as a draw engine, is simply not fast enough to establish a quick defense. The second weakness of this deck is the fact that it is full of overcosted artifacts necessary to support Thirst for Knowledge. As such, this deck will have inefficient turn 1 hands that it will need Thirst or Brainstorm to fix. Imagine your hand is Triskelion, Mindslaver, Goblin Welder, and two Blue cards… you will understand what I mean.
Pitch Long
| Pitch Long A Vintage deck, by Paul Mastriano 6th place at a Worlds tournament in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States on 2006-08-13 | ||
Artifacts 1 Black Lotus 1 Lion's Eye Diamond 1 Lotus Petal 1 Mana Crypt 1 Mana Vault 1 Memory Jar 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring Enchantments 1 Necropotence 1 Yawgmoth's Bargain Instants 1 Ancestral Recall 4 Brainstorm 3 Cabal Ritual 1 Chain of Vapor 4 Dark Ritual 4 Force of Will 1 Hurkyl's Recall 3 Misdirection 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Vampiric Tutor |
Sorceries 1 Demonic Tutor 3 Grim Tutor 1 Imperial Seal 1 Mind's Desire 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Tinker 1 Windfall 1 Yawgmoth's Will Basic Lands 1 Island 1 Swamp Lands 2 Flooded Strand 4 Polluted Delta 2 Underground Sea Legendary Lands 1 Tolarian Academy | 3 Xantid Swarm 1 Chain of Vapor 2 Hurkyl's Recall 1 Rebuild 3 Duress 1 Massacre 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Island 1 Swamp 1 Tropical Island |
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Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Strategy:
This is the most fearsome deck in Vintage at the moment. The strategy is evident: play nine spells followed by Tendrils of Agony. How do you get there? Necropotence, Yawgmoth's Bargain, Tinker for Memory Jar, Mind's Desire, and draw7 spells like Timetwister help you see the cards you need to see. The primary engine is Grim Tutor in combination with Yawgmoth's Will. Beyond the power play - Grim Tutor for Yawgmoth's Will - other options are Dark Ritual, Grim Tutor (helping you find Black Lotus). Then another Grim Tutor can find the Yawgmoth's Will, which then recurs all of your mana and is used to find the Tendrils and play it.
Pitch Long protects all of its fearsome bombs with Misdirections and Force of Wills. It generally only needs to resolve one bomb to win the game, and it will open most hands with two bombs and a way to protect it. Thus, control decks will have to be able to muster three counterspells within two turns, or else possibly lose.
Pitch Long is a straight up modification of the deck I built: Grim Long
Strengths:
Pitch Long has a rock-solid manabase that is impervious to Wasteland abuse. It also is much, much easier to play than Grim Long. Almost any new player can pick this up and figure it out within a few games. You may not have the intricacies of some of the crucial plays all figured out, but this deck is sufficiently powerful that you'll be able to win anyway. It's a great way to make Combo accessible to the average Vintage player.
Weaknesses:
To master Pitch Long, you'll need to learn all of the little plays and consider all of your options. As good as many of the cards are, sometimes you'll just have a massive headache for all your troubles. Once in a while, the deck will crap out on you. The trade off of having an eleven-land manabase and higher threat density is that you'll sometimes just not get the mana you need. Also, this deck has weak matchups against Dragon Combo and Meandeck Gifts.
Stax
Strategy:
Fearsome Stax has been a serious Vintage contender since the days of GroAtog (think four Gushes with Quirion Dryad and Psychatog!). Roland Chang, Robert Vroman, and Kevin Cron have pushed this deck, over the last few years, into the upper tier of the Vintage metagame. The Stax strategy has always been to lock the opponent down as quickly as possible and win the game. Power plays include Mishra's Workshop, Trinisphere, and Balance.
Strengths:
Stax is not simply powerful… it is highly synergistic. Like Control Slaver, it is also highly personalizable. Robert Vroman made Top 8 at the Vintage Championship with his own Stax Variant: Uba Stax. Uba Stax uses Uba Mask to help lock the opponent down, while it then uses Bazaar of Baghdad to draw two additional cards a turn at no cost. Add Goblin Welder to the mix and you have an explosive combo. Waterbury organizer Ray Robillard has also found success in a variant that eschews the Smokestacks in favor of some more men and faster disruption.
The bottom line is that Stax draws upon the reusable power of Mishra's Workshop to win games in a brutal and lopsided manner.
Weaknesses:
Unlike virtually every major deck in Vintage, Stax lacks Brainstorm. It has no way to really fix its opening hands. However, this problem has been minimized by the fact that Stax design has been perfected. The major weakness of Stax is that almost every deck runs hate for it, it can't stop its opponent unless its had a turn to play lock components, and it lacks fixing power of Brainstorm.
Meandeck Gifts
I'm not going to spend more than a moment on this deck, a deck I created, since I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago and it won the Vintage Championship. You can find out plenty about it in my article archive.
Fish
| Fish Featured by Stephen Menendian on 2006-09-10 (Vintage) | ||
Artifacts 4 Aether Vial 1 Black Lotus 4 Chalice of the Void 1 Mox Sapphire Creatures 4 Dark Confidant 4 Meddling Mage 3 Ninja of the Deep Hours 3 Stormscape Apprentice 4 Voidmage Prodigy Instants 1 Ancestral Recall 4 Force of Will 3 Swords to Plowshares |
Legendary Creatures 3 Kataki, War's Wage Sorceries 1 Time Walk Basic Lands 1 Island 1 Plains Lands 4 Flooded Strand 3 Mishra's Factory 1 Strip Mine 4 Tundra 2 Underground Sea 4 Wasteland | Stats: Average mana: 1.25 Average creature mana cost: 2.14 Average creature power: 1.86 Average creature toughness: 1.33 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 3.33% Instants: 13.33% Lands: 30.00% Creatures: 30.00% Artifacts: 16.67% Legendary Creatures: 5.00% Sorceries: 1.67% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Strategy:
Fish has been a contender in Vintage for years. It is a great choice for people who are used to “fairer” formats and want to become acquainted with Vintage. It uses a mix of disruptive cards like Meddling Mage, Kataki, True Believer, Force of Will, and Chalice of the Void/Null Rod to win games against overbearing Vintage decks. Power plays include Meddling Mage and Jotun Grunt.
Strengths:
Fish is extremely consistent. The pilot is not likely to make many, if any, play mistakes. The Fish pilot shifts the burden of perfect play to his opponent. The key skill, however, is knowing what to name with Meddling Mage, and more importantly: having a great list. There are so many possible Fish designs that it takes someone who knows what they are doing to figure it out. Fish is always a contender and always seems to find a way to make Top 8.
Weaknesses:
If you play Fish, you don't get a good flavor for what fun Vintage can be. You are playing a “fair” deck in an unfair format. It also sometimes just can't deal with the threats the opponent plays. That's the tradeoff you make for playing a deck like this.
Ichorid
| Updated Meandeck Ichorid: Featured by Stephen Menendian on 2006-06-25 (Vintage) | ||
Artifacts 1 Black Lotus 4 Chalice of the Void 1 Chrome Mox 1 Lotus Petal 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Sapphire Creatures 4 Ashen Ghoul 4 Golgari Grave-Troll 4 Ichorid 4 Putrid Imp 4 Stinkweed Imp |
Enchantments 4 Leyline of the Void Instants 1 Ancestral Recall 2 Chain of Vapor 1 Crop Rotation 1 Vampiric Tutor Sorceries 4 Cabal Therapy 1 Imperial Seal 4 Unmask Lands 4 Bazaar of Baghdad 4 City of Brass 4 Gemstone Mine 1 Strip Mine | Stats: Average mana: 1.83 Average creature mana cost: 3.40 Average creature power: 1.60 Average creature toughness: 1.00 Deck Composition: Lands: 21.67% Enchantments: 6.67% Creatures: 33.33% Sorceries: 15.00% Artifacts: 15.00% Instants: 8.33% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Strategy:
The Ichorid plan is to dredge away most of its deck, attacking with Ichorids and Ashen Ghouls that continuously spawn from the graveyard. Dredging occurs by finding Bazaar of Baghdad and going to town. Turn 1 Bazaar of Baghdad can result in dredging your entire deck by turn 3. How? Bazaar discards a dredger (say Golgari Grave-Troll). On your next turn's upkeep, you can activate Bazaar… but instead of drawing, you dredge the Troll, which reveals another Troll. You then dredge that Troll as well. However, the ridiculous part is that Bazaar forces you to discard the Dredgers once more, even though the act of Dredging brought them back into your hand. Thus, when you go to your draw step, you can simply dredge instead of draw – that's 18 cards dredge in one turn! It won't take more than a few turns to find enough Ichorids to deal 20 damage. Power plays include Balance and turn 1 Bazaar of Baghdad.
Strengths:
Ichorid is an utterly unique concept to Magic: you can win without playing spells. Obviously, this is a huge strength as you can bypass so many of the most powerful plays in Vintage: counterspells and lock components. The deck is extremely fast and, what's more, extremely disruptive. I had to design it that way. Thus, although my original list only had Chalice of the Void and Cabal Therapy, I had to upgrade to Leyline of the Void and Unmask as well. Chain of Vapor is also necessary to deal with some pesky threats. But Unmask synergizes with both Leyline and Cabal Therapy. Also, the Leyline makes perfect sense: if you have it in your opening hand, you use it. But like most of the spells in the deck, you won't be playing it.
Weaknesses:
This deck has a few critical weaknesses. First and foremost, it generally loses to turn 1 Tinker for Darksteel Colossus. That's why I've included two Chain of Vapor in the deck. Second, it has a tough time playing through cards like Leyline of the Void and Tormod's Crypt. The latter slows you down by about a turn and a half if you know what you are doing, but that tempo loss is enough to cost you the game. Third, this deck is deceptively difficult to play. There will be about 2-3 very tough plays per game. Against the best decks piloted by the top players, you will have to make each choice correctly. Knowing what to play Cabal Therapy on is a critical skill that involves not simply deck knowledge, but game state understanding.
Dragon
| Dragon A Vintage deck, by Peter Olszweski 3rd place at a StarCityGames Power 9 Tournament tournament in Rochester, New York, United States on 2006-06-18 | ||
Artifacts 1 Black Lotus 1 Mana Crypt 1 Mana Vault 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring Artifact Creatures 1 Sundering Titan Creatures 1 Eternal Witness 4 Worldgorger Dragon |
Enchantments 3 Animate Dead 1 Dance of the Dead 3 Necromancy Instants 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Cunning Wish 1 Entomb 4 Force of Will 4 Intuition 3 Read the Runes 1 Vampiric Tutor Sorceries 3 Deep Analysis 1 Demonic Tutor 3 Duress Basic Lands 1 Island 1 Swamp Lands 4 Bazaar of Baghdad 1 Flooded Strand 4 Polluted Delta 1 Tropical Island 4 Underground Sea | 3 Chalice of the Void 2 Engineered Explosives 1 Sundering Titan 4 Xantid Swarm 1 Pernicious Deed 2 Echoing Truth 1 Repeal 1 Stroke of Genius |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Strategy:
Worldgorger combo has been a part of the Vintage landscape since it first appeared on the map at the first Vintage World Championship in 2003. The combo is powerful as it is elegant: an Animate Dead on Worldgorger Dragon creates a bounded loop that generates infinite mana for the controller. Within this loop, you can play cards like Intuition or use Bazaar of Baghdad repeatedly to “mill” your deck. Upon having done so, you may switch the Animate to a card like Shivan Hellkite, or simply use another animate spell mid-loop, like Necromancy, to bring Eternal Witness to the mix to return a card like Ancestral Recall to your hand ad infinitum. You can use Ancestral repeatedly to deck your opponent.
Strengths:
This new Dragon list is as fearsome as it is slick. The combo is easy to protect and easy to pull off. Intuition combos with Deep Analysis and Dragon components to create a fast and protected win. This deck has game against everything in the format and is a serious contender for the best deck status.
Weaknesses:
The only serious problem with this deck is that it sometimes craps on itself, and it has to bend over backwards to answer simple plays like Tormod's Crypt. Leyline of the Void is particularly devastating. This is a deck to watch.
…
There you have it! I hope you feel a little bit smarter, a little wiser, and I hope you have a lot more fun.
Until next time,
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