Thanks Brian for taking this for a spin. Watching you play - especially seeing how you board, is so insightful. I highly recommend Justin's side of the round 1 match as well. I love the disdain that drips through the video for my deck, and really appreciate that Brian thumped him with it. :)
@@sagemodzel I did. And in that testing I quickly learned that Atraxa is the only good hit in the deck for it. It kinda functions with Archon, acting as just an Edict and Bolt, but the way Flash works with Griselbrand there is no opportunity to activate the draw 7 before the Flash sacrifice.
Hi. I'm Noah (Stormanimagus), the "hatebear" play you faced round 4. I do agree that structurally you are favored, but I don't think it's 95% at all. I'd say it's probably more like 60/40. The reason being that I don't NEED lotus openers to function vs. you. I have often even found some lotus openers to be a trap because the payoffs just aren't good enough and you end up going all in with too many of your cards. Mox into Cavern into Thalia is perfectly respectable if the follow up can be more squeeze and more pressure. This deck runs all 5 moxen, Mana Crypt, AND Lotus, so, with all due respect, I think you're a bit incorrect in your assessment of what the deck can do and when it can do it by.
For real, if you have any interest in Magic history, which you probably do if you're here, I can't recommend The Resleevables series enough. I don't always agree with their recollections or conclusions, but it's a great show, and a font of information if you're newer and of nostalgia if you're an old-head.
Are there enough castable artifacts to support a Tinker package? I don't Vintage nearly enough to know. 4 Moxen plus a Lotus seems light to me at a glance. The monster suite also take a pretty big downgrade if one of the current ones has to become a Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and while an early Citadel could be game winning, mid-to late game there will be plenty of spells off the top that would kill us to cast. I totally think this is an area worth exploring and experimenting, but the above concerns were why I didn't go that route out of the gate with this deck.
i agree, i was brainstorming possoble cuts however. you usually see a mana crypt as well in tinker decks, and very often they are sacrificing moxen to tinker for their target. but notice i didnt suggest taking out threats for the addition of sphinx.
also since it is a one of tinker you usually dont have to be extremely artifact dense to pull it off. a lot of vintage mulliganing circulates on fishing for the god hand because getting a 5 card hand with black lotus can make up for the lack of two other cards often enough
Match 1, even if he still would have been at 18, Sheoldred more than likely would have still gotten it done. Sure he can take infinite turns, but that means he also has “infinite” draw steps
5:38 Put swamp on bottom. Play Underground Sea, Lotus. Sac Lotus for BBB, Vampiric Tutor for Entomb. Tap Underground Sea and Brainstorm into Entomb (plus other cards), Use another black mana to cast Entomb on a monster. Drop Mox Pearl and tap that and use your last black mana to Shallow Grave monster into play Turn 1?
This line exists as you describe, but it is all-in and disruption anywhere along the way of any kind is just about game ending for us. The opponent revealed a Lurrus, so we know there's a ton of permission in the deck. I think the risk is too high to just "jam and hope" in the face of all that.
In round 1 I think you should have actually not fired off the strip mine on academy or held it in hand because with their plays they showed that they didn't really need blue mana at the time. Saga was definitely one of their most powerful draws and you would have had that under control with the strip mine.
Academy is a juicy target and enables a lot of stuff. No guarantee Saga is even in the opponent's hand. Hindsight? Sure, it'd have been nice to hit the Saga. In the situation though, hitting the Academy seems fine (maybe even provably) correct.
also 1:12:14 cant you cycle lorien revealed post draw to grab underground sea and have both black sources for entomb reanimate? I mean you wouldn't have force up anymore and knowing after the fact that they had 2 forces it wouldn't have mattered anyways but still might've been a better line as to not give them an extra draw for countermagic
Was there any thought in Match 1 game 1 to bottoming swamp and trying to t1 Underground Sea, Lotus, mox, crack lotus for BBB, Vamp for entomb, tap sea to brainstorm, entomb for atraxa, tap mox and spend last floating B for shallow grave? It leaves you with one card after the brainstorm and is weak to force but it makes him have it and probably sets you up really well if it works? Not a vintage gamer, im sure there was a good reason to bottom pearl and try for a longer game but I just saw the line and was curious
I guess the issue of this deck in vintage is that vintage is a 1 card format. Tinker, bazaar, oath, workshop are all cards that pretty much work on their own in their respective decks, you don't need to draw something else that's useless on it's own to make them work. the support they need is extremely non-intrusive so to speak.
Hedging against the devastating downside of a Needle off of a Saga ending your ability to play the game vs half the time your fetch not being able to get exactly basic Swamp seems good to me. That said, both scenarios are very much edge cases, so overall I think we're talking about fractions of a percent in theoretical win rate either way. However, in this specific video, at 42:45 Brian was able to try and bait a Needle on a dangling Delta, which probably would've been less desirable had the deck been built as you suggest.
1:02:29 reanimate works though right? reanimate archon go to 3, gain 3 off its trigger and they sac a creature. you're at 6 and can block all but one of their attackers, none of which do more than 6 damage. and after that you gain 3 life a turn from swinging with archon
He couldn't do that because I had an Archon of Emeria in play. He had cast his 1 spell that turn. By the time his next turn cycle rolls around his reanimate kills him.
As someone trying to make the jump from Legacy to Vintage, could you dive deeper into the concession at 27:05? They did not have a win presented, just tons of advantage. Would you have conceded at Eternal Weekend there or was that a low-stakes thing?
They were not just at an advantage, but an overwhelming advantage. Their line from there isn't 100% deterministic, but pretty close. At that point we've shown the opponent nothing about what we're doing. Probe would've given them that info. Scooping before Probe resolves prevents them from having the information on how to sideboard properly, increasing our chances of winning game 2 quite a bit at the expense of punting a few percentage points on a highly unlikely epic comeback where they fizzle in game 1.
one question I have though is why are the basic islands snow covered? I can imagine there being some marginal upside like not getting hit by an unmoored ego effect but then wouldn't you go 1 snow 1 normal? there must be something I'm missing
When I first built the list Ice-Fang Coatl was prevalent in Legacy. If you Reanimate one out of the opponent's yard, it might as well have Deathtouch. Yes, it has been years since I've seen an Ice-Fang but why close the door on the possibility? Until they print a card that punishes snow basics over regular basics, there is zero downside. Weigh that against any upside, no matter how slim it may be, and it is mathematically wrong NOT to run sno-co's. Also, they're cooler. Literally.
