I have also been playing around with a blue splash in this deck, and it has felt pretty good. The big issue I've found is really that the deck is already so streamlined. There's like 2-3 flex slots in the entire deck.

Stitcher's is one of the best cards in the deck imo, I don't love putting in a replacement that has summoning sickness and requires to be tapped so you can't use it to cast gaak. I do think that mulling aggressively to bazaar is a trap. Bazaar is the best card in the deck, but it isn't needed in every game.

How would Ad Nauseam look nowadays?
I’ve pretty much just added back GitProbe and added a Collective brutality and Necro in place of the 3 Mental Missteps since it’s restriction, but could this list benefit from Thassa’s Oracle?

Interesting read.

By removing Ancestral Recall and Time Walk, do you think having blue at all in the deck is still worth it? Or is Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, Wonder and Deputy of Detention the major reasons for keeping blue.

What if the deck became strictly just GW survival at that point with Survival as the engine and a diverse set of hatebears (Gaddock Teeg, Grand Abolisher, etc)?

Curious to know which hatebears you are considering.

This thread is what makes this format great.

Beep bop boop! Great job JP guess I shoulda played the one Johnny had built !!

As the one that requests the Twilight Guardians version of La Isla Bonita in Matt's stream, I can't help but grin at reading this.

I value Therapy much more highly than you do, Bloodghast much more lowly, and I think Therapy + Narco is a generally faster way of accomplishing the same thing as Bloodghast in that configuration.

The other issue is Dakmor Salvage, which is either taking up more slots or decreasing your average dredge (or both).

I think the Bloodghast/Ichorid/Hogaak/Bridge configuration would be a fine thing to test but I'm not particularly drawn to it.

Edit: Can we map out the other alternative? I think it was cutting Dread Return from a traditional package

Edit 2: Just to clarify, when I say I value Therapy more highly I'm saying I think it has a disruptive effect from the graveyard as well as being a sacrifice outlet from the graveyard. This makes me reluctant to cut it for a disruptive card from the hand which has no particular graveyard synergy.

Depending on where you're based and if you play Legacy too, you should consider 4Seasons tournament instead of MKM. They do 4 events per year, announced well in advance, in the easily reachable and cheap Bologna, usually min 150p for Legacy and they started doing Vintage with 15 proxies getting a really good turnout last time.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! That was pretty much my take on it too, just wanted to see if i had the blinders on.

@vcf said in Drawing 14 - Vintage Champs 2018 Top 8 - 8th Place with "Grixis Thieves" or as I like to call it: Ocean's 75 by George Clooney:

happy to see so top scores and naming me 😍
Congrats!

I took some months ago Moatzu's list and changed abrade for goblin.
I'm also starting testing -4leyline, dredge has a lot of issues for it. Did you considered Yixlid Jailer?
I will also will test Tezzeret.

The thing i'm not super fan is 4 notion. How many times did you resolve drawing 14 in 11 rounds?

Thanks for the report and congrats again for your performance!

Thanks! Yes, I also took a look at Moatzu's lists too from online.
Yes, I have also considered Yixlid Jailer and love the card, as it can also clock dredge as hate piece. Not having played vintage in a year, I just took my dredge buddy's advice and played the 4x tormod's crypt.

Tezzeret was great, essentially a 1 card combo for vault-tezz infinite turns over 2 turns, or redundant vault-key piece.

The 4x notion thief may not be correct or optimal, but I was sure as heck gonna just jam it with draw 7s. I drew 14 4 or 5 times in the 11 rounds, but versus shops (3 of the rounds), you board out a lot of the combo pieces, so those rounds don't really count. I attempted to draw 14 4-5 other times, but was disrupted, twice in the top 8. So it isn't a hard thing to do. Most of the time, the notion thief is a must answer flash threat for blue decks so they have to trade counters/resources on it. Then there's the 2nd and or 3rd thief. Eventually, I trade resources off and easily set up vault-key for the win. I found notion thief to be more impressive than JTMS, due to it having flash. And it won beating for 3 a lot too. But yes, 4x notion thief may not be optimal. But my plan for the weekend was to have fun and try to draw 14. The top 8 was a cool side effect of it all 😃

You can see the 2nd game of the finals match between Joe and Joel here

awesome report! enjoyed the read.

Cheers @volrathxp - good to meet you as well! Ben was happy to have someone day 2 with his Bazaars, those things get next to no use by him.

@13NoVa right back at you! Next time let’s break into Top 8.

@hierarchnoble It is hard to know if the PO opponent is on 1-2 snapcaster or is playing towards a tinker on blightsteel which is very good against shops so i don't mind hedging my deck with 2 cages and cutting the chiefs. My opinion is both chief and overseer in this matchup are low value/ineffective at winning because what i'm trying to do is prevent them from casting their spells with my spheres and null rods. If they can't cast their spells through that disruption, they can't win, and i can close the game with anything at that point.

edit: cage is also good against the yawg will versions

And I need to quote Paul Mastriano because this event made me remember why I fell in love with Vintage and the Community:

“The best part about Magic is The Gathering”