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Feature Article – The Masters of the Vintageverse

Read Feature Articles every Monday and Thursday... at StarCityGames.com!
Monday, May 24th – The five individuals I chose to talk Vintage with in this article are clearly five of the most revered Vintage card-slingers ever to answer this metaphorical ‘call of the wild’: Luis Scott Vargas, Paul Mastriano, Rich Shay, Stephen Menendian, and Tommy Kolowith.

Vintage is an unusual creature. I imagine that to players unfamiliar with its frantic pace, complex decision, and unbelievably powerful spells that the first impressions of this curious format must inspire a similar sense of awe to the earliest sailors glimpsing a whale for the first time. An unfathomable beast, the likes of which nobody could have imagined, surfaces and spouts a column of water high into the air while the bewildered onlookers stare in wonder at the uncanny sight they are beholding. Then as quickly as it came, the monster vanishes below the waves, and only the imprint remains. Yet, each of these primitive seafarers must have reacted differently to their encounter with the colossus. Some, after observing the goliath, decided their disposition was better suited for tilling farmland, while others reacted to the moment of abjection with an immediate urge to go whaling.

The five individuals I chose to talk Vintage with in this article are clearly five of the most revered Vintage card-slingers ever to answer this metaphorical ‘call of the wild’: Luis Scott Vargas, Paul Mastriano, Rich Shay, Stephen Menendian, and Tommy Kolowith. Whether you are an aspiring leviathan slayer, or an agriculturalist acutely fascinated with high-seas mythology, it is my sincerest hope that the shared thoughts and experiences of these individuals will inspire a better understanding of Vintage.

As is the case with all monsters, the fact that Vintage is strange and different, leads to it being misunderstood. At first glance the lumbering frame of the whale seems as though it cannot possibly be part of our world, but once we learn more about it we realize that it is a legitimate, functioning part of the ecosystem. Vintage functions in a similar manner, in that it is a microcosm of Magic: The Gathering.

1. What makes Vintage special within the context of all the other Magic Constructed formats? What role do you think Vintage has, and what role do you think it should have.

The answers of all five adepts varied, although each answer overlapped on a few key concepts that I feel are defining characteristics of Vintage.

Luis Scott Vargas eloquently stated: “You get to use awesome and powerful cards like Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall. These cards are part of the game’s history, and they deserve to be played.”

Vintage is distinctly different from everything else because it is the only format that allows players to use these incredibly powerful and iconic cards to be used. The fact that Vintage allows cards that are off-the-charts powerful to be played (albeit, only one copy per deck) is the single most defining characteristic of the format.

The two former Vintage World Champions Steven Menendian and Paul Mastriano were quick to point out that Vintage is an important part of the M:TG universe because, unlike in Legacy, cards do not get outright banned in Vintage due to their power-level; instead they are merely restricted to one copy per deck. Whether you are an avid Vintage player, or you never play a game of Vintage in your entire life, this simple but understated fact affects the experience you have playing Magic as it ensures the cards you purchase will always have a home somewhere.

In a world without Vintage the value of cards would fluctuate far more dramatically than they already do. Remember those four Tarmogoyfs that you reluctantly paid $80.00 apiece for to play Extended or Legacy? Now imagine—and this is a hypothetical situation—that Tarmogoyf gets banned in both formats. The $320.00 investment you made in playing the game is virtually reduced to zero, because there is no demand for cards that cannot be played. Not convinced? Consider this: the most powerful Magic card EVER printed is virtually worthless.

More unbelievably than Ancestral Recall and Black Lotus, this card too exists:

Contract From Below, and its brethren of logistically impossible tournament cards (that require you to gamble, or physically perform actions), that cannot be played in Vintage have very little monetary value because there is little or no demand for these unplayable cards. The existence of Vintage is a virtual insurance policy ensuring your cards will be able to be played in the future. Yu-Gi-Oh! Does not have an actively supported Vintage format where every card remains playable, and when a card gets banned it is then unplayable. In Yu-Gi-Oh! it is not uncommon for cards that once held $50.00 price tags to end up as bulk. Dollar bills are backed up by faith in the United States—Magic cards are backed up by Vintage. Vintage says: “You’re Welcome.”

Rich Shay and Tommy Kolowith both responded to this question by emphasizing the unique “community-aspect” that Vintage affords its loyal supporters. Tommy Kolowith, who has recently translated his success at Vintage into Pro Tour experience, commented that: “Vintage events have a more relaxed and friendly atmosphere than other tournaments. It isn’t to say that Vintage isn’t competitive, because it is. The emphasis is on socializing and having fun, rather than just winning.”

Rich stated that: “Every tournament has a Top 8, but Vintage is the only format where the entire Top 8 goes out to dinner together afterwards.”

In the Midwest, grassroots Vintage events such as “The Meandeck Open” and “R.I.W. Hobbies Power Tournaments” are always punctuated by parties of twenty or more enjoying dinner together and sharing a tale about a timely Yawgmoth’s Will at Thurman’s or Outback Steakhouse. Vintage is a comparatively smaller format than Standard, Extended, or Legacy, which means that there are less people who play it and fewer large events, which means that Vintage enthusiasts end up getting to know a larger percent of their community on a friendly level.

“The best reason to play Vintage is the community. I know that there are great Magic players in every format, but Vintage has always been especially close-knit. You might never play in a Vintage Grand Prix. But you do get the chance to hang out with some awesome people, during and after the tournament.”Rich Shay.

2. Are proxies a good thing?

Vintage is defined by the old powerful cards; unfortunately many of these iconic staples are extremely expensive and can cost several hundreds of dollars per card. The overwhelming monetary cost of acquiring the coveted Power 9 is a gigantic barrier that makes it difficult for potential new players to enter into playing Vintage. One way tournament organizers have tried to alleviate this monetary burden is through allowing players to utilized some number of “proxy” cards in their decks. A player who does not own Black Lotus can write “Black Lotus,” on a basic land, and for the entire tournament the proxy Black Lotus functions as a virtual Lotus. Most proxy tournaments allow for players to use somewhere between 10-20 proxies, although some organizers have been so adventurous as to allow for an unlimited amount of proxies. One very important distinction between proxy tournaments and non-proxy tournaments is that the use of proxies is not supported by the DCI, which means that events that allow proxies can never be sanctioned.

The question of the positive/negative effect proxies have upon Vintage is a hotly contested issue, and unsurprisingly the response from my expert panel was as interesting as it was varied.

The staunchest proponent of the proxy system was Rich Shay. Rich argued that proxies make Vintage a more accessible format:

“Reducing the entry cost to play is important in getting new players interested in Vintage.”

The biggest obstruction most new players face when getting into Vintage is that the scarcity of the older cards makes acquiring powerful staples (particularly the Power 9) a very expensive endeavor; keep in mind that this investment would need to be made ‘up front,’ before the player had ever gotten to play in a Vintage tournament!

Hypothetically, let’s say that after seeing a helicopter that I began to consider the possibility of becoming a helicopter pilot/enthusiast. It is unreasonable that I would buy a helicopter before I’d ever taken a test flight. What if it turns out that I’m afraid of heights, or I always get terrible motion sickness? It is unreasonable to expect people to make a substantial investment in something that they haven’t gotten a chance try first.

Second, if I was considering flying helicopters, I wouldn’t want to test drive a Ford Focus in order to determine whether or not I liked flying. The allure of flying is that you get to soar through the air; obviously driving a car is not going to give me an accurate representation of what makes flight an amazingly unique experience. The allure of Vintage is that you get to play the powerful old cards and the reason people become interested in the format is because they want to play with these cards. If people are limited to ‘testing’ out the waters of Vintage in an environment where they must play ‘un-powered’ against ‘powered’ decks, they don’t get an authentic Vintage experience. More likely than not, they will have a bad experience and not want to play.

The whole helicopter analogy is my random example, but it makes sense in conjunction with Rich’s perspective. Proxies allow new players to get into Vintage, to learn the format, and to gain familiarity without:

1. Having to spend thousands of dollars upfront.
2. Having a bastardized and unpleasant first impression of what it’s like to play Vintage (i.e. playing an Extended Faeries deck against a ‘powered-up’ Mana Drain deck).

The other four players shared a similar perspective that questioned whether the short term gain proxies have offered Vintage actually outweighs some of the long term costs they have had on the health of the format. One thing I found interesting was that every player said they were initially in favor of the proxy system. It seems very intuitive that lowering the initial cost to enter the format would allow Vintage to draw from a deeper pool of players, and that the health of a format is derived from how frequently and it what magnitude people play it. However, it seems that the institution of the proxy system created an initial burst of enthusiasm for Vintage in North America in the mid-2000’s that has been slowly dwindling ever since.

LSV pointed out that in Europe where proxies are not allowed in many major tournaments the format continues to grow in popularity, despite the high entry cost. He also seems to suggest that owning the cards is an important part of the Vintage experience, and that because people work to acquire the Power 9 that the very fact that they have the cards keeps them interested and engaged in the format:

“At first I thought proxies were a necessary evil, but my opinion on that has changed somewhat. After a few visits to European Vintage events, where they get 300+ people, the majority of whom have power, I think that proxies probably have been a net negative on the American Vintage scene. By allowing proxies, people are far less invested in the format, and I don’t just mean financially. Someone who never owns any of the cards they proxy cares less about the format, as a general rule, and that leads to less devoted followers over time. Unfortunately, at this point it seems hard to transition the American scene into one without proxies, so proxies it is. That means no sanctioning and no official support, but it is what it is. Note that I don’t want to deny players access to Vintage, and allowing people to play who otherwise couldn’t is a great thing that proxies do, but the long term health of the format was probably damaged by the usage of proxies.”

Steven provided me with additional insight into the full effect that owning the cards has on keeping players interested in the format. He expressed that the most important element of preserving the long term health of Vintage is that the format retain its players. Vintage has many intrinsic qualities that make it good at having a loyal and long term player base. People generally don’t make large investments in hobbies they only intend to do short term. Secondly, the cards that require a high investment to buy are always going to be good in Vintage. Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Black Lotus and the Moxes are as essential to Vintage today as they were ten years ago. Steve explained how owning cards creates interest an interest in the format the keeps players coming back:

“Even when player hasn’t attended a Vintage tournament in a while, even if they haven’t played in a year, there is always the opportunity that when they run across their old cards rummaging through their closet, under their bed, etc. that the desire to play again will be rekindled. It is less likely that they will play again if they own the actual cards, than if they don’t.”

The problem with proxies that players hit upon is that it creates a situation where owning the most powerful (and most expensive) cards in the game becomes completely unnecessary. At the advent of the proxy system StarCityGames.com and other tournament organizers offered Vintage players the opportunity to play in Vintage tournaments to win Power 9 cards. The obvious, and I would assume intended, outcome of this arrangement is that players who didn’t have Power 9 would be able to try out the format without having to put all the money down upfront, and then they would be able to win the cards they needed to fill out their decks. The problem is that people realized that they could win it, and so long as the proxy system existed they could just sell the expensive cards for cash. As it became more apparent that proxies were the new way of the future, players who already owned older cards were more willing to sell them in a pinch—because they knew that they would still be able to play with proxy version of the cards.

Steven said: “I admit that that there is a long-term cost to proxies, but I suspect — although am not certain — that that cost has already been incurred. So, I think it’s too late to rewind the clock. I support proxy tournaments. Europe has our Power, and it’s not coming back.”

Paul Mastriano suggested that the best way to get the best of both worlds (gaining new players and retaining old ones) is to achieve equilibrium between proxy tournaments and non-proxy tournaments. If there were enough proxy tournaments to entice potential new players to “test-drive” Vintage, and enough non-proxy tournaments to make owning the cards a worthwhile investment for Vintage enthusiasts, such a balance would ultimately create a situation where Vintage would be able to recruit new players as well as better retain the ones that it already has. All the players expressed skepticism that North American Vintage would ever be able to completely return to the days of consistent sanctioned non-proxy events. Interestingly, nobody brought up the possibility of allowing Collector’s Edition or International Edition cards in sanctioned play. Another topic for another time…

3. Do you agree with how the DCI’s management the Vintage Restricted List in the modern Vintage era?

Let me first say that each individual that I interviewed for this article politely prefaced their responses to this question with a phrase similar to this one:

“I know that the job of the DCI is really difficult, and I don’t want to rag on them, but…”

I’m going to take this opportunity to frame this segment in a very particular way so that we are all clear, because based on the manner that my panel answered I feel it is very important that a few things are mutually understood. First, all five were reluctant to answer this question because they have nothing but the utmost respect for the difficult job that the DCI has done over the years. These individuals understand that the powers that be do everything that they can to provide players with the most pleasant experience possible. Luis Scott Vargas, Paul Mastriano, Stephen Menendian, Rich Shay, and Tommy Kolowith are not trolls—they don’t get up in the morning and publically whine on every forum that the card of the week MUST be restricted, banned, or publically burned in town square. All five are extremely talented Vintage experts and thoughtful Vintage theorists (in my opinion they are the five best, which is why I picked them), and I very much appreciate that they reluctantly agreed to share their thoughts on this issue with me.

The overwhelming consensus on this issue was that although the DCI had the best of intentions in mind, that the Vintage Restricted List has been mismanaged over the past years in one way or another.

Steve framed his answer in a very thought provoking way:

“Since Type 1 and Type 1.5 became Vintage and Legacy, and were given their own respective Restricted/Banned Lists [in the days of Type 1 and 1.5 they shared a common list, where the only cards banned in Legacy were the ones restricted in Vintage], only three cards have been banned in Legacy: two for “Power Level Errata” Flash and Time Vault, and, one for logistical reasons, Shaharazad. With regard to Legacy the DCI has taken a ‘hands off’ approach that has let the players solve metagame problems, which has led to a complex, interesting, and enjoyable evolution of the format over time. Now in comparison look at how many cards have been Restricted in Vintage during that same period: Burning Wish, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Trinisphere, Gifts Ungiven, Thirst for Knowledge, Merchant Scroll, Gush, Brainstorm, Ponder, Flash, and Shaharazad was banned. Why the disparity between in handling the two different Eternal Format card pools? I find it unsurprising that the format that is given the opportunity to evolve and adjust over time will appear healthier, more interesting, and more enjoyable than one that is constantly being tinkered with by outside forces.”

Steve points out the tendency to interfere with the natural evolution of Vintage through constantly altering the card pool for deck construction via restrictions. The DCI has restricted five times more cards in Vintage than it has banned in Legacy in the modern era. Also, the only cards to be banned in Legacy are cards that ‘changed’ from what they were when the list was initially created—if Time Vault and Flash worked when the list was conceived, it is reasonable to me that they would have been banned from the start. With regard to the other powerful Legacy staples that players have ranted and raved should get the axe at one time or another—Lion’s Eye Diamond, Sensei’s Divining Top, Tarmogoyf, Goblin Lackey, Aether Vial—the DCI has left these cards alone, let the metagame evolve, and for the most part Legacy enthusiasts seem to really enjoy the format.

The Vintage experts all recalled being confused with the announcement that Gifts Ungiven was to be Restricted and Gush was to be Unrestricted, while Merchant Scroll was left alone.

Luis was by far the most supportive of the changes the DCI has made to the list, but even he thought there had been a few critical missteps:

“For the most part, I agree with many of the decisions the DCI has made, but there are some I don’t really like. I never understood why they unrestricted Gush, which led to a massive purge that hit Brainstorm, Merchant Scroll, Gush, and even Ponder. I was sad to see the sweet Blue cards go, but really all of them should have been restricted, except for Ponder. Ponder is good, but I don’t know how much it had to go, and it seems very jarring for those who don’t know the format to see Ponder sitting alongside Necropotence, Ancestral Recall, and whatever else on the Restricted list. I also think that there are a few cards that could be unrestricted, like Ponder, Fact or Fiction, Gifts Ungiven, or Frantic Search. The four-mana Blue spells may seem powerful, but especially with the advent of Spell Pierce, I really doubt they are restriction-worthy.”

Rich, Paul, and Tommy also commented that the knee-jerk restriction of the ‘Blue five’ seemed ridiculous at the time, and that it would do well to be undone. There seemed to be an agreement that restricting five cards at the same time was overkill. The effect of restricting even one powerful card in Vintage has a multiplicity of implications, not only in the short term, but also in the long term future. Blue was very dominant during the ‘Gush Era,’ just before the ‘Blue five’ were nixed; one thing that people overlook, that Tommy and Paul pointed out was that just before the restrictions were made Mishra’s Workshop decks were performing very well. “9 Sphere” decks were able to take advantage of the fact that “Gush-bond” decks generally played with very few lands and relied heavily upon chaining lots of cheap spells together. Rich was quick to point out that Painter’s Servant/Grindstone decks that played a slew of main deck Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast was also a strong meta game response to Gush. These two archetypes sprang up in the weeks just before the DCI elected to restrict five cards all at once, and had they left things alone it is very possible that, like Legacy, Vintage would have been able to correct itself over time.

All five agreed that Merchant Scroll needed to get the axe when it did, as it was the chief offender putting the blue decks over the edge, and had been for some time. Would “Flash” have been too good without Merch? Would Gush have dominated without Merch? Would Gifts have still been the best deck without Merch? We can debate it until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is we will never actually know how the metagame would have unfolded because it wasn’t given the opportunity. If all of these other archetype defining blue cards hadn’t have been so hastily restricted it is also possible that there would have been other decks that could have competed with Tezzeret and maybe Thirst for Knowledge would still be around today. There is no way to tell what could have happened, but the players seemed to agree that it would have been fun to have found out.

All five players also agreed that:

Trinisphere
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Merchant Scroll

Should have been restricted and should stay restricted.

All five players also agreed that Ponder should be unrestricted.

I was surprised that Rich, Tommy, Paul and Steve were very supportive of bringing back the other four blue cards hit during the mass restriction; the exception was Tommy who wanted Brainstorm, Ponder, and Gush back, but wanted no part of Flash.

You may be thinking: “BRAINSTORM!? YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME!?”

No, seriously.

Rich made a really good point in defense of Brainstorm:

“Vintage is a format that, ultimately, is played by people who play Vintage. And many of those people enjoy playing with cards like Gush and Brainstorm. I’ve heard several players say they stopped playing Vintage because they couldn’t play with Brainstorm. But I never heard anyone say they avoided playing Vintage because of having four Brainstorms. Vintage players tend to look back on the Gush era as a golden age. There are a lot of players who put down the format after the B+R list killed that era. But I don’t know anyone who started playing Vintage because Gush and friends were nixed.”

There seemed to be a consensus among the experts that I interviewed that the problem with blue decks arose from the DCI’s misevaluation of the cause of the dominance of Gifts Ungiven decks. Gifts got the axe while Merchant Scroll was allowed to fly quietly (or, obviously?) under the radar—and then, to make things worse Gush (a card that was even more obnoxiously enabled by Merch) was unrestricted. Essentially, this maneuver replaced one degenerate Merchant Scroll enabled deck with a new one—and lots of people were rightfully annoyed. In the words of The Who: “New boss, same as the old boss.” Restricting “EVERYTHING” blue seems to be an act of frustration, or at least a misunderstanding of what the problem actually was. To quote the Who, yet a second time: “We won’t get fooled again…” Ponder getting the axe is as ludicrous to me as the scene in Family Guy where Adam West stabs the ocean with a knife, and contently prattles: “You won’t be hurting anybody else ever again…” At the very least, the panel was in agreement that bringing back some of these cards would increase interest in Vintage as well as make the format more interesting.

4. How do you feel about the new and improved Time Vault existing in Vintage?

The answer to this one was unanimous.

“Time Vault is by far the most powerful combination one can run. It is very hard to justify a Blue-based control or combo deck that doesn’t run Vault-Key, since all those decks already run Tinker, Demonic Tutor, Mystical Tutor, and Vampiric Tutor, and assembling Vault-Key is just so easy. On the other hand, I wouldn’t necessarily ban Time Vault, since I own a Beta one. Er, scratch that. I wouldn’t ban Time Vault because it is definitely a strategy that can be fought successfully. Null Rod-based decks like Fish, which is now sporting Qasali Pridemage, Trygon Predator, or Thada Adel, Inquisitor, is good against most Vault decks, and definitely helps keep them in check. Stax decks also do a good job assaulting the decks that try and use Vault-Key, and even though Vault might be the best, something has to be the best, and I don’t think it is oppressively good.” Luis Scott Vargas.

Luis summed it up pretty accurately. Yes, Time Vault is obviously really good, but it isn’t so good that it can’t be beaten if you have a plan. Steven was quick to point out that while Time Vault is one of the very powerful cards in Vintage that it isn’t: “More powerful or format defining than either Yawgmoth’s Will or Tinker.”

The experts also brought up one of the key points from the first question, that Vintage is a place where all the cards are available to be played with, and that this principle also suggests that Time Vault deserves to be tapped for turns. Tommy pointed out that in the past month Time Vault decks seem to be on the decline, one explanation for this could be that people are solving the problem of how to better play against it and beat it.

“It’s not like two card combos that win the game are something new to Vintage, Helm-line and Painter-Grindstone also exist.” Paul Mastriano.

5. What is the most common misconception that non-Vintage players have about the Vintage format? And, why is this line of thinking wrong?

Rich, LSV, Steve, Paul, and Tommy all immediately responded to this question with the same answer.

“To say that Vintage is a turn one, coin-flip, and non-interactive format is simply not true.”

All the guys agreed that some people get the impression that because the cards are really broken that games of Vintage are little more than one person goldfishing on the first turn, and that such a misconception is a product of people not understanding how Vintage works. One thing that makes Vintage different from any other format is the amount of free mana acceleration (Moxen and Lotus), which obviously speeds up the rate that a player can potentially reach critical mass. The thing that people who are not familiar with Vintage fail to realize is that Vintage deckbuilding recognizes that things are going to be faster and as a result features more ways to interact quickly. Secondly, all five players confirmed that turn one kills are far from being the rule in Vintage—decks more realistically aim to hit critical mass on turns 3-4.

Paul described the primary difference between Vintage and other formats as:

“In Vintage you may play less turns than other formats, usually four or five, but you still make the same number of decisions, if not more decisions, than you would get to make during the course of a game of Legacy or Standard. Since it is understood that decks are faster, you have more ways to interact quickly.”

LSV echoed Paul’s thoughts on the subject:

“The number one misconception about Vintage is that all the games end on turn 1 or 2. That is just not true, and anyone who has played any amount of games can attest to it. Granted, when Gush and Merchant Scroll were unrestricted, the format was much more like that, so it is good that they are gone, but right now most games are of reasonable length and very interactive. Some matchups aren’t very interactive, to be sure, but the vast majority are, and anyone who enjoys tournament Magic will enjoy Vintage. The games are quite skill intensive and fun, and I think most people who have the wrong impression of Vintage just need to watch or play some to see that.”

Steven made the subtle observation that in his personal experience games of Vintage have a greater tendency to go to extra turns than Legacy or other formats. One interpretation of such an occurrence would certainly be that the games are not in fact quickly decided by turn one combos, but that there is a lot of play between opponents.

I’d also like to share a story that Rich Shay told me about Vintage. He said that years ago he was playing in the finals of a Waterbury tournament against Flash with a Gush-bond deck. Flash (which doesn’t exist anymore) is a good example of the type of deck people associate with degenerate turn one kill decks. Anyway, Rich said that he got Flashed with double counterspell backup on turn 2 of both games. He said that his initial reaction was of frustration, and helplessness: “What was I supposed to do about that?” After he cooled off and thought about it more reasonably he came to the conclusion that he could have built a better sideboard for dealing with Flash by playing with more Leyline of the Voids and possibly Leyline of Singularity. The conclusion he reached, which is a very reasonable one, is that because the card pool is so expansive, no matter how degenerate the aggressive strategy, there is always a cheaper and more efficient answer to the problem. Flash may have been able to win on the first or second turn—but, Leyline prevents such a maneuver even faster than that—it stops Flash before the game even starts!

6. You have a ‘magic wand’ and can change anything, even impossible things, to make Vintage better: what do you change?

Some wanted bigger, better supported tournaments:

Rich Shay: “I’d have Wizards sponsor a Vintage Grand Prix.”

Tommy Kolowith: “I’d bring back the Star City Games Power 9 Open.”

Some embraced the most taboo of topics:

Steven Menendian: “I’d abolish the reserve list and make the old cards available.”

Luis Scott Vargas: “Reprint power. If power was available to everyone, at a reasonable price, the popularity of the format would increase exponentially, as the large price barrier (even with 10 proxies) is the biggest hurdle to overcome, and one of the reasons Vintage will never have a Grand Prix or PTQ season (both of which would be awesome). I realize this is not going to happen, but hey, you did say magic wand.”

And one wanted to go back to basics:

Paul Mastriano: “I’d go back in time and have the whole proxy thing never happen.”

I interpret these responses to fall into the two biggest concerns that Vintage players have about the future of their format:

1. If Vintage is going to continue to thrive it needs tournament organizers to support large quality tournaments to create and sustain interest in the format.
2. Card availability is a growing concern among players that creates a cloud of instability surrounding Eternal formats.

7. What is a realistic change you think would help to make Vintage better?

Rich Shay: “Un-restrict Brainstorm, Ponder, Gush and Flash.”
Steven Menendian: “Fix the Restricted List.”
Tommy Kolowith: “Un-restricting Brainstorm, Ponder, and Gush would probably generate more interest in the format and lead to better tournament attendance.”
Paul Mastriano: “Un-restrict Brainstorm, Flash, Ponder, and Gush.”

I’d say this is pretty straightforward….

Luis Scott Vargas: “Possibly phasing out proxies, much like Steve advocated in one of his articles a while back. I am afraid that the proxy system may be too entrenched at this point, but if we could get the American Vintage scene to even be a fraction as active as the European one (which by and large does not use proxies), that would be awesome. A Vintage SIDE event at GP Madrid had almost 200 players; that’s more than the Vintage Champs here in the US!”

8. If you were going to play Vintage tomorrow, what deck would you sleeve up?

Paul: Elephant Oath.
Rich: Elephant Oath.
LSV: Elephant Oath.
Steve: TPS
Tommy: TPS

My advice to anybody planning on playing Vintage tomorrow would be to prepare for these archetypes.

And because I know everybody loves decklists so much…

This is a revision of LSV’s decklist from the Vintage side event at GP: Houston. LSV said that he got the initial decklist from Rich Shay, and then Rich revised the list for me to include two copies of “See Beyond” from the new Rise of the Eldrazi expansion. Rich said that he hasn’t gotten a chance to test out See Beyond yet, but that it seems so good that it could easily be a three or four of in the maindeck of this deck.


And here is a Steve’s decklist from his third place finish at a the last Meandeck Open.


I would like to thank Rich, Steven, Luis, Paul and Tommy for taking time out of their busy schedules to talk about Vintage with me. The article was a pretty big undertaking—it isn’t easy to coordinate five interviews and then write an article about it, but it was certainly a lot of fun to do. I hope all of you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Cheers…

Brian DeMars