Since I don’t give up easily and there is a Vintage event this coming weekend, I figured I would share the new deck that I have been working on and will be playing.
Do you remember my Legacy brew Squandered Jund featuring The Gitrog Monster and Squandered Resources? This weeks Vintage brew includes much of the same pieces while having access to all the broken cards that Vintage gives us access to in Fastbond, Moxen and Time Vault/Voltaic Key combo. Since the original posting of that article Splendid Reclamation has been printed and that gives us a great piece to recur all the lands that we have dumped into the graveyard for mana and cards.
Here is my second attempt at making a Vintage deck that works:
Squandered Resources
This time around I am sticking with two colors to make the mana much easier and streamline the deck a bit more. Black gives us access to tutors to find the pieces that we need and green gives us access to cards like Regrowth and Eternal Witness to return spent cards from our graveyard. Naturally both are required to actually run cards like Squandered Resources and The Gitrog Monster. Here I will address some of the key parts of the deck.
Creatures
Veteran Explorer is a general one-sided ramp card. Vintage has a lot of powerful lands with great effects like Library of Alexandria, Bazaar of Baghdad, Strip Mine, and Tolarian Academy. Running many of these lands combined with Moxen means that numbers of necessary lands tends to be lower and due to concerns for mana fixing, most decks are very light on basics.
We also have The Gitrog Monster and Titania, Protector of Argoth for their synergies with sacrificing lands and providing value. Being able to sacrifice lands to get shroud, mana and card draw, or 5/3 Elemental tokens, will help lock up the board and close a game easily while being able to find the answers that we need.
Emrakul, the Promised End is here due to her amazing ability to throw a wrench into the game plan of our opponent and set them up for a loss.
Removal
Abrupt Decay is our removal of choice for the maindeck and should be enough to handle most anything that needs to be answered game one, from Oath of Druids to Sphere of Resistance to Monastery Mentor.
Combos and Insurance
Alongside The Gitrog Monster and Titania, Protector of Argoth we have Fastbond to increase our land drops, Crucible of Worlds for easier access to lands, Splendid Reclamation to return all of the lands we have sacrificed to play, and Squandered Resources as a way to sacrifice lands to trigger both Gitrog and Titania while making mana and potentially running through the deck.
We also have Time Vault and Voltaic Key to take every turn once assembled. With every turn, you can assemble whichever kill condition that you prefer.
As a bit of insurance for a long game we have Elixir of Immortality to avoid milling ourselves. In aggressive matchups we are able to gain some life to buy a turn or two.
Sideboard
The sideboard is mainly built to handle the strategies that go wide like Jeskai Mentor and Grixis Pyromancer. The best way to keep those strategies in check are options like Illness in the Ranks, Night of Souls’ Betrayal, and Toxic Deluge.
Pernicious Deed, Krosan Grip, and Nature’s Claim are here as ways to interact much better with Mishra’s Workshop-based strategies. Naturally there is some overlap to hating on decks like Oath of Druids, which will likely never get a Creature into play without an Oath trigger.
There are four flex slots available based on what I think I may need for hate and it is likely that these slots will end up being four Leyline of the Void to target dredge and storm.
Creature tokens get -1/-1.
Initial Thoughts
So far in testing, the deck works well. I have high hopes and I am finally truly excited to play in a Vintage event with something that I actually came up with. Unlike Aggro Loam this deck has decent larger threats that can fight back against Thought-Knot Seer, Lodestone Golem and Reality Smasher. This gives us a non-combo way to get aggressive. We don’t actually need to combo to get ahead, and we attack on multiple axes as a result.
In testing, I found Mishra’s Workshop, Jeskai Mentor, and Oath of Druids are positive matchups. Dredge, Grixis Pyromancer, and TPS? Much worse. These quicker decks with more interaction are very tough to beat. Grixis Pyromancer has many different threats that I have to answer whereas Mentor is really the only card that I had to answer out of the Jeskai deck. Against Oath being able to easily answer Oath of Druids gave me the ability to easily come out ahead. With Workshop my threat in a 6/6 Deathtouch creature that slowly draws additional cards matches up favorably against most every threat that they run.
I am very excited to run this deck in the event on 11/17/2016 and I will be posting on Twitter with updates on my success or failure. Feel free to follow the results of an actual tournament scene where this deck will really be challenged to prove its merit in the format.
Happy brewing to each and every one of you. If anyone has an idea for a brew that they would like to see, I will gladly take requests and challenges on twitter. 🙂
Aaron Gazzaniga works part time at a game store and in his off time has been an avid magic player/brewer since 2003. Having begun in Odyssey Standard Block and always favoring control and prison style decks, we come to this moment in time where Aaron finally gets to talk about and share his ideas. If you want to contact Aaron tweet @aarongazzaniga