Preparing for the Star City Power Tourney in Rochester
June 10, 2006
If you’re a serious Type 1 player, you should know
all about the Power Nine Tournaments that Star City
Games hosts throughout the year across the United
States. Players from all around the world attend
these events, hoping to leave the event with a new
piece of power or two. These events also help define
the top teams and deck constructors, such as Team
Meandeck, who have spawned many decks just because of
their reputation, and ICBM, with their well-known Oath
of Druids build.
Since I just recently started getting into the
Vintage scene again (I keep dipping in and out due
to fluctuations in interest around here) I decided
that I was going to head to the Star City tourney in
Rochester, NY. While this is easily a little under a
fifteen-hour drive from my home in Wisconsin
according to Google Maps, I don’t have a problem
with that since I enjoy the format so much.
Unfortunately recent events came up and I will not
be able to attend, which upsets me since I really
wanted to go. However, that doesn’t mean the people
that are already going shouldn’t be prepared. I
compiled this list of decks that may, and probably
will be, played at Rochester starting with the deck
that I was going to bring.
Oath of Druids
While there are many different versions of this deck
in the mainstream, they all have the same strategy
in mind while playing: Get an Oath of Druids into
play, give the opponent tokens viaForbidden
Orchard, then attack every turn with the
Angel of
Wrath or
Boros Archangel. Different builds run
different cards in the sideboard based on what the metagame looks like, but the most common sideboarded
Oath target is
Simic Sky Swallower (previously
Pristine Angel before Swallower’s release), which
basically says ‘eat me’ to all the different sorts
of removal being played in the format. Other Oath
targets include
Woodripper, who can take out
multiple artifacts with little problem,
Darksteel
Colossus, which is an all-around fat trampler, and
Ancient Hydra, a beast that can easily machine-gun
pesky creatures.
There are many different versions of this deck, but
the two that have the largest reputation (at least
in my area) are the GWS and ICBM versions. GWS Oath
is built for digging through the deck via
Impulse,
Thirst for Knowledge, and any other cheap draw
spells that it can get its hands on in order to get
the cards it needs to win the game. ICBM Oath is
built more for control, with cards such as
Rushing
River and
Chalice of the Void in the main to shut
down the opposing board.
While both of these versions of Oath of Druids are
powerful in their own way, it is my personal opinion
that ICBM Oath is a better choice when it comes to
deck construction. There is just so much more that
you can do in the ICBM version of the deck that you
cannot do with the GWS build.
Stax
Stax, previously known as The Four-Thousand Dollar
Solution, is a lockdown deck in its entirety. The
deck runs easily the best land ever printed for mana
acceleration,
Mishra’s Factory, to power out a gross
amount of mana very early in the game. Before its
restriction it was not too uncommon to see a Stax
player’s first turn go “Mishra’s Factory into a
Trinisphere”, which is why it later got restricted
to one a deck, due to the game-warping power a turn
like that did to decks that didn’t run Factories of
their own. The deck’s main control card is
Smokestack, which slowly eats away at the opposing
board while you prepare to finish them off with a
kill condition such as
Karn,
Duplicant, or
Sundering
Titan. Top the deck off with
Goblin Welder so you
can keep your broken artifacts in play longer in
exchange for an occasional Mox and you’ve got
yourself one spicy Stax Sandwich.
Another build of the deck, UbaStax, is a deck that
abuses the word ruling when combining two
Uba Masks
with a Goblin Welder. Simply put, after the opponent
has drawn his card but before the draw phase ends,
you would use the Goblin Welder to take the Uba Mask
they have in play and replace it with a copy in
their graveyard. Because using a card’s name in the
effect box only means it’s talking about itself and
not other copies of it, the Uba Mask that removed
the opponent’s draw from the game is no longer in
play, so that player would not be allowed to play
any of the cards that the first Uba Mask removed and
denying him of all his draws (providing the UbaStax
player doesn’t do something stupid).
While Stax is still a powerful deck when built
properly, the current Vintage metagame just doesn’t
seem to have a place for the deck at the moment,
mainly due to the other decks that are being played
which are faster and more consistent than Stax.
Meandeck Ichorid
Based off of Extended’s Friggorid, a powerhouse deck
that abuses the dredge ability then revives multiple
Ichorids every turn to defeat the opponent, Meandeck
Ichorid uses the same concept of dredging to get the
graveyard filled with cards, but with a different
twist. Instead of using cards such as Tolarian
Winds, the Type 1 version of the deck uses
Bazaar of
Baghdad as its key draw-to-dredge machine. Given the
proper hand, this Vintage deck can dump almost its
entire deck by turn three and win shortly after.
Team Meandeck’s creation also runs
Ashen Ghouls,
which are treated almost exclusively like four extra
copies of Ichorid in the deck.
Meandeck Ichorid entered Type 1 at the last Star
City Games Power tournament in Richmond, Virginia
when it was created to defeat the expected-Stax
heavy formats which it did with flying colors.
Because Stax is built to shut off the number of
spells the opponent plays, it has no way of stopping
a swarm of creatures that don’t need to be cast at
all and disappear just as fast as they appear. While
the deck is powerful, I don’t see it being played
unless Stax is running around in prime condition.
Control-Slaver
When I first began playing Vintage, I would always
be confused as to what the difference between Stax
and Control-Slaver was. I understand now that I have
actually studied up on the deck. The purpose of
Control-Slaver is mainly all about
Mindslaver. As
soon as the card is resolved and sacked, they would
do the best they could to screw with the opponent’s
tempo, forcing you to use
Ancestral Recall on them,
using
Force of Will on your own cards, and simply
putting you in a really bad position. The deck can
also return Mindslaver via Goblin Welder and take
control of all of the opponent’s turns, providing
there are plenty of artifacts still in play. After
that, the deck would typically win with a creature
such as Pentavus,
Triskelion, or any other way they
see fit.
While the deck is powerful, being able to control
the opponent’s turns just doesn’t seem appealing to
me as a player, since I actually enjoy having other
people playing in the game against me. If I end up
playing this deck ever I’ll have to homebrew it into
my own version because of this, though chances are
I’ll end up leaving the Slavers in because they are
that good. The deck doesn’t necessarily need the
Mindslaver in the deck to win, but there’s no real
reason not to run the card.
Fish
Fish is the only deck in Vintage that does not have
a cookie-cutter deck list because the list is
changed based on what the tournament scene looks
like. If the format is heavy on Oath decks, cards
such as
Rootwater Thieves are placed in the main to
make sure the most dangerous threat (usually Akroma)
isn’t in the deck to beat them down. Tournaments
heavy on Storm Combo will usually result in having a
couple
True Believers mainboarded to make sure the
opposing
Tendrils can’t hit you. The only surefire
part of all of the Fish decks is that they run four
copies of
Aether Vial. That way, they can put uncounterable creatures into play while still
leaving mana open for other spells and abilities.
Playing Fish requires you to have really good
metagame analysis. If you put the wrong cards in the
deck you could end up having dead cards in your deck
and lose a lot of matches because of it. It’s not
really helpful to have Rootwater Thieves if you’re
playing Food Chain Goblins, now is it? If you have a
good grasp of figuring out what you’re up against,
then go right ahead and play Fish.
IT (Intuition-Tendrils)
I actually was able to see Intuition-Tendrils while
it was still in the testing phases of GWS at a local
Mox tournament. These are the kinds of decks ill-knowledged
people are thinking about when they say that Vintage
is all about whoever wins the coin flip. Given the
proper hand, Intuition-Tendrils has the ability to
go off and win on turn-one with mana from
Dark
Rituals,
Cabal Rituals, cast a
Yawgmoth’s Will to
replay all of those spells, then play a
Grim or
Demonic Tutor, fetching a Tendrils of Agony and
winning with an incredibly large Storm Count.
Because of the deck’s ability to say “I win” without
much effort, it is considered
one of the better combo decks currently in the
format, right alongside The Perfect Storm.
The only serious problem I see when it comes to IT
is that it revolves heavily around resolving a
Yawgmoth’s Will and hoping the opponent doesn’t hit
their graveyard with a Tormod’s Crypt in response.
The deck can win without casting a Yawgmoth’s Will,
but only if the person using the deck is smart
enough to realize that the Chain of Vapor in the
deck is used to help bump up the Storm count by
bringing back multiple Moxen and not just to get an
opposing threat off of the board.
Worldgorger Dragon
For those who don’t know how the deck works, you win
by targeting a
Worldgorger Dragon with an “Enchant
Dead Creature” such as
Dance of the Dead,
Necromancy, or
Animate Dead. This returns the Worldgorger Dragon to play. Then the Dragon’s
ability triggers, removing all your permanents from
the game. Since the card that revived it is gone,
the Dragon returns to the graveyard, and all the
cards you removed return to play untapped. Tap all
the lands for mana in response to the enchantment,
re-target the Worldgorger Dragon with the revival
card, and repeat that until you choose to target a
win condition such as
Shivan Hellkite or Ambassador
Laquatus and filter all the mana through it for the
win (the latter doesn’t work too well due to Oath of
Druids, which is why it isn’t used much anymore).
I have a love-hate relationship with this deck. I
love the fact that it can win by simply getting a
Worldgorger Dragon into the graveyard then hitting
the dragon with an Animate Dead, but I hate the fact
that the deck has been kicked out of the format with
people running
Tormod’s Crypt in their sideboards.
It also doesn’t help that sophisticated players know
how to put the dragon’s ability on the stack then
get it off the field with a
Rushing River or
Swords
to Plowshares, which will force you to lose all of
your permanents and leave you in an incredibly bad
situation. I don’t think a lot of Dragon is going to
be there, but it’s more than likely going to be
played.
So many
decks, so little time
You can see the reason why I love to play Type 1
right now. There are so many cool things you can do
there is no way you can be upset with it. If you
like Aggro, you can play Food Chain Goblins. Combo,
The Perfect Storm or Intuition-Tendrils are right up
your alley. And there’s many more than the ones I’ve
listed, such as Kobold Clamp, URWana, Gilded Claw,
and much more. Vintage is the only format where you
can get away with all of this brokenness and still
have a good time doing it. For those of you heading
off to Rochester this week, I hope you don’t scrub
out and I wish I could be there with you.
d is resolved and sacked, they would
do the best they could to screw with the opponent’s
tempo, forcing you to use