Dust off your Moxen and find your Graveyard hate. It’s that time of year again. Eternal Weekend is about one month away. If you don’t have power it’s a bit past time to start thinking about going “all in” on a set.
For the next few weeks I’ll cover some of my all time favorite decks from the format. In this article though I’m going to gloss over Vintage as a whole and maybe dispel some myths.
“Isn’t Vintage just a turn one, you either have it or you don’t format?”
No way! That’s been a stigma that Vintage has dealt with ever since since you could play Black Lotus, Land, Channel and Fireball. Vintage games generally last much longer than turn one. Access to so much free mana means access to counter measures and combo hate from all across the multi-verse. Not every deck is looking to win on turn one. Most decks that can win on turn one, choose to wait to unleash their combo until they can guarantee a win or if there is no other way to prolong the game. Between Mental Misstep, Force of Will, Leyline of Sanctity, and Leyline of the Void, not to mention Thorn of Amethyst, and Trinisphere just playing a combo blindly into the darkness is generally not a great idea.
“But I need to spend $5000 in power just to compete!”
That’s not totally true. There are whole decks that don’t use any power. Shops and Dredge don’t NEED power to work. Most decks just benefit from access to Blue power and Moxes. It certainly helps to have power. That’s obvious, but at Eternal Weekend there’s even a prize for best unpowered decks. So you can even hope to compete without all those fancy spells and artifacts. Aside from that, most local tournaments (ASIDE FROM MY LOCAL STORE) offer their tourneys with some number of Proxies. Generally this number is between 10 and 15, but some places even offer Unlimited. These are a great place to start and get an idea of what kind of deck you want to play.
“I hate playing against counterspells!”
Well, I can’t tell you that won’t happen. But not every deck is all blue spells. Frankly, some decks don’t really care if the opponent is playing counterspells. Dredge isn’t even playing spells, not traditionally at least. Some decks like Shops actually just brick every spell in your deck so paying 3 extra mana for a Force of Will sort of defeats the purpose.
“What should I play?”
That’s a tough question. I normally start by asking what Legacy deck you play. Between existing Dual lands and play style I might be able to help you come up with a deck that includes cards you have and plays you are used to. Delver is a deck you can play in Vintage. BUG Control is too. I can’t tell you for sure what deck you’ll like to play, but my advice is to pick something that makes you feel like a powerful wizard. Personally, I play Apple City Vault. Why? Because it’s full of restricted cards, has the ability to win on turn one but can disrupt my opponent’s plan with counter magic and has game vs Shops and Dredge after board. I feel like I’m playing Magic in a way that I shouldn’t be allowed to.
Everyone wants to play Magic on their own terms. Vintage, in my opinion, is Magic in it’s purest form. When I take all the rest of the turns for the rest of the game, for better (I have a win condition) or worse (I have a Mana Crypt) I’m having a great time.
Next week I’ll talk about Shops and Dredge, Two decks I hate to play against, but have a huge respect for their elegance, and their better pilots.
Zac Clark is the Founder of Hipsters of the Coast. An avid gamer since his early teens, Zac can often be found in Brooklyn either playing games or taking photos. When he’s not drawing extra cards, wrathing boards and countering spells, he’s taking pictures of other peoples good times and listening to 90’s Music.