As much as I dislike having my text edited periodically into something other than proper English, I felt compelled to write a rebuttal to Craig Olson's article on his Vintage theories for two main reasons: He mentions me by name (which I find amusing because I have really dropped off the face of the Earth lately, Magically speaking; this leads me to suspect I know Craig under a different name) and because his experience is so different from my own.

Let me begin by telling you what I face at a typical tournament at Richmond Comix, so as to best illustrate what I mean when I say that I have a diverse metagame. Typically, I can expect to see Keeper, Sligh, Suicide, Stacker 2, Parfait, Stompy, the Old-School Expulsion, the Funker, Forbiddian, Stompy, Zoo, Fish, and Reanimator. If it exists, I have probably come across it at one time or another. Actually, we have had sixteen-person tournaments where everyone there had a different deck archetype. It is positively crazy at times, and has reduced me to a stack of about thirty-five cards from which I create my sideboard, based largely on guessing what will be there before each tournament. Some of our players do not even have pet decks; rather, they play something different every month. One such individual has won the last two events with a Mask deck and a W/G Oath deck of sorts. As a player, I have to be able to contend with Juggernauts, Price of Progress, and Sinkhole. Oh, and the periodic Verdant Force leaping from the graveyard into play. Most players have a set of the Nine or at least what they need for their deck, so there is no shortage of power either.

So what does a player hoping to win bring to such a metagame? In my mind and my experience, there is hands down no better deck for a random metagame than Keeper. I actually stopped playing the Old School Expulsion after several months of dominance when our metagame began to have decks that required the diversity of Keeper to stay competitive. Now, I will naturally share a decklist and a typical sideboard of what I have been using so as to give some frame of reference for the discussion that follows.

"The Immortal"
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
4 City of Brass
4 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
1 Undiscovered Paradise

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Misdirection
1 Teferi's Response
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Braingeyser
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Morphling

1 Balance
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismantling Blow

1 The Abyss
1 Mind Twist
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Chainer's/Diabolic Edict
1 Demonic Tutor

1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire/Ice

1 Sylvan Library
1 Regrowth

1 Zuran Orb

Sideboard:
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Moat
1 Circle of Protection: Black
2 Powder Keg
1 Timetwister
1 Scrying Glass
1 Aura Fracture

This is a slightly out-of-date version, and I have recently made some changes to the main deck to improve it in terms of my personal play style and metagame needs - but I think it is sufficient to get my point across. Simply put, this deck wins where I play, very often and very easily. True, I will be the first to admit that Keeper will sometimes just utterly fail you by drawing fourteen mana sources in a row, but that is just Magic.

To illustrate this point, I did not play Magic at all this summer since I was in Connecticut and had a different wealth of activity from which to choose. Max Payne and Neverwinter Nights were sufficient gaming outlets, and were far more conveniently located than the nearest hobby shop thirty miles away. Because of this semi-forced hiatus, one of the first things I did upon returning to Virginia for good was have some friends over for some playtesting so as to reacquaint myself with the game.

As it turns out, four months is a long time to go without playing, and to have your first game back against Suicide is fairly discouraging. We played a series of unsideboarded games, and I lost the first two after doing some very stupid things that I will not recount here. Unsideboarded, however, I won the next three once I regained my footing and began to play closer to the level to which I am accustomed. The same thing happened with the Keeper mirror matches later: I lost the first two and then closed out with a four- or five-game streak, all unsideboarded. If memory serves, I went 50:50 unsideboarded against Sligh with four Prices of Progress main.

This is why I am always very confused and concerned whenever I hear people saying that Keeper is not as good a deck as I have found it to be. After all, I can not imagine that there is anything particularly different in my playing ability from some of the naysayers. With that in mind, I often find my answers in theory and deck construction. To illustrate this, I will reprint Craig Olson's Keeper for comparison.

"Bloodmoon Keeper"
Mana - 28
4 Moxes (no Emerald)
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Islands
4 Islands
1 Swamp
4 City of Brass

Permission - 10
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
1 Counterspell
1 Misdirection

Utility - 8
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Balance
1 Abyss
1 Zuran Orb
3 Diabolic Edict
1 Fire/Ice

Creatures - 4
2 Morphling
2 Gorilla Shaman

Card Advantage - 7
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Stroke of Genius

Tutors - 3
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sideboard:
4 Red Elemental Blasts
2 Blood Moon
2 Planar Void
2 COP Red
1 COP Black
1 Masticore
1 The Abyss
1 Disenchant
1 Disrupting Scepter

What can I say? In my mind, I see a few serious problems here, but I also know exactly why he had the experiences that he did - I would go so far as to say that I could do the same for almost everyone at GenCon who played Keeper and had bad days against aggro, save for the people who had poor luck or faced lucky opponents.

So what is wrong with this deck? Well, the first obvious thing is that while a Balance is present, there is not sufficient white mana to be able to cast it when it is needed. This deck runs only six sources plus the Black Lotus, whereas my deck has nine plus Lotus - fifty percent more white sources. The unfortunate lack of Swords to Plowshares anywhere in the deck can hurt as well, but the lack of Aura Fracture is something that screams out to be locked down by Back to Basics. While I am sure I could nitpick every card until the deck looked exactly like mine, there is not really much of a point to that. Everyone plays what they think is the best deck for them at a given time.

However, I would be remiss not to mention that Misdirection and Divert can protect Gro's creatures from Diabolic Edict, but not Swords to Plowshares.

Here is the real problem, and I quote:

"The deck is designed to beat Keeper, hold its own against Mono Blue, and do well against everything else in the field. It's as versatile of a deck as I can make. I thought that this deck had no really bad match-ups; with basic land I am less vulnerable to Back to Basics and I can sideboard Blood Moon against other Keeper decks. I don't run green, so no Regrowth and no Emerald. Keeper is best when it is denying mana and resources; that's why I ran four Wastelands and two Gorilla Shamen, and that's why Blood Moon was in the sideboard... But, ironically, that's why I failed in my quest to win a tournament."

Does anyone else here see the problem besides the fact that you do not capitalize the letter following an ellipsis unless you are beginning a new sentence, in which case four periods are required? (I do here at StarCity, and while we're here, we play by my rules - The Ferrett, who's also well aware that you Do Not Capitalize Every Word In A Title, and is also kindly keeping some similarly minor boners in this article from seeing print) I fear that Craig may not be the master of the metagame that he claims to be - at least not for GenCon. More importantly, I think that he is guiltier of not keeping up to current trends than he accuses me of being. In a sixty-person tournament, you can expect a large amount of Sligh, Suicide, and other relatively inexpensive decks to make a showing, especially with a large prize support.

Craig says that a third of the field was Keeper. Therefore, his deck was built to beat one third of the field, and hold its own/do well against the remaining two-thirds - that does not sound particularly promising, does it? Keeper is not at its best anymore when denying mana, because all of the cards that are good for that are only good against other Keeper decks. Dwarven Miner, Blood Moon, and Wasteland are useless against mono-blue, Suicide, and Sligh, and are not wonderful against Zoo. Craig has chosen to stick to an older methodology of deckbuilding that has really gone the way of the dodo since the release of Urza's Saga, rather than working within the modern metagame.

Mana denial as a major strategy in Keeper is a thing of the past, because it is vital that those sideboard slots be devoted to dealing with other decks. If you look at my sideboard, there are no cards that are good against only Keeper, whereas Craig has two"wasted" slots and no copies of the incredibly powerful Powder Keg. My version has several cards to board in against aggro and has a better mana base with only four Strip Mines instead of five, which are only useful against other Keeper decks. In my opinion, it was not the Keeper archetype that had problems here; it was an outdated deck theory that failed.

If the normal Keeper deck at GenCon had the same kind of philosophy guiding it, then it is no wonder they had problems. Frankly, I think that Craig must in fact be an excellent player to have had some successful finishes in an environment for which his deck was not suitably prepared.

Craig saw what was happening, and he even saw why:"Keeper is best when it is denying mana and resources; that's why I ran four Wastelands and two Gorilla Shamen, and that's why Blood Moon was in the sideboard... But, ironically, that's why I failed in my quest to win a tournament." But he drew the incorrect conclusion from this evidence. He decided that Keeper as an archetype was the problem, and not his excessive anti-Keeper main deck and sideboard coupled with inadequate removal. He almost got the theory right in his second version by adding more removal (maybe a bit of overkill there, eh?), but he left in the devotion to Keeper-hate, mana denial, and the lousy mana base that went with it and were the major problem with his build in the first place. At this point he would have been better off switching to the Old-School Expulsion, which would have accomplished what he was aiming for better than what he ended up using.

In the spirit of Craig's article, I will finish with my own summary of the Vintage metagame:

1. Keeper, properly built and sideboarded, is the best deck for a random metagame because it beats everything and has no genuinely bad matchups.
2. Aggro is so overly metagamed with Keeper hate that it tends to not beat mono-blue or less hate-filled aggro decks (which have a tougher time against Keeper), so mono-blue tends to dominate as it will beat the aggro decks that knock out Keeper early on.
3. Combo decks are generally too much of a pain to play unless you like ending a tournament with a headache, but there are a few very good ones out there. The just have problems against mono-blue, which the aggro players are not beating because they focus too many slots on Keeper.

A smart player with an aggro deck these days will worry less about crushing Keeper and think more about beating mono-blue, because a good aggro deck can often steal two games from an even slightly sloppy Keeper player anyway, whereas mono-blue is a very forgiving and less skill-intensive archetype. The mana-denial and non-basic hate is only good against one deck for the most part - and it is not useful at all against the deck that aggro really needs to think about defeating.

Keeper is still the best deck for a random metagame, and it is one of the top decks for a known metagame as well. It really is just that good, despite the critics. It is the deck that I will always bring to the table unless I know what I am going in against. However, you would never catch me playing it at an event like GenCon simply because it would be too expected and get hated out.

I have total confidence in my ability to beat any deck with Keeper, but I do not have confidence in my ability to have adequate brain power to play as well as I would need to do win an event with sixty or more people. There is simply not enough oxygen in a room full of people to fuel my mind, and not enough healthy food to fuel my body for that long. The deck would not fail me, but I would fail the deck after a certain threshold that does not exist in simpler decks.

That is just a metagame call on my part - at GenCon, I would have played Stompy. If a third of the metagame is Keeper, mono-blue is doing well, and all the aggro decks are filled with Keeper hate, Stompy is the deck to play. You beat Keeper often enough to get past the first few rounds, you beat up on Sligh, laugh at Price of Progress and Wasteland, and can race mono-blue better than any deck but Suicide.

Sometimes, you have to go in a completely different direction when you have so clearly defined a metagame as GenCon. For a generally random or unknown one like I have to contend with stick with Keeper, but with that kind of predictability especially after the first few tournaments there were better options from which to choose. I will probably never have cause to back down from my stance that Keeper is the best deck overall, but I would never foolishly limit myself to only playing that deck when another is called for by the metagame.