Vintage players have either grown to love or hate the card Gush, and the effect that it had on the metagame over the past half decade during the times when it was allowed to be played. When Gush (and Brainstorm, Flash, Merchant Scroll, and Ponder) landed on the Restricted List again on June 1 2008 many people were saddened by the news, as the "Gush Metagame" was one full of interaction, excitement, many interesting deckbuilding ideas, and of course the broken plays that Vintage players are accustomed to.

In January 2010 the Team ICBM Vintage extraordinaire tournament organizer and Vintage arms dealer Ben Carp decided to take matters into his own hands. He announced that in March (today) there would be an ICBM Retro Vintage Open tournament using the old Restricted List and card pool, with the following rules to mimic the metagame from early 2008:
1.  Gush, Brainstorm, Flash, Merchant Scroll, and Ponder are unrestricted. Gifts Ungiven is still restricted. Shahrazad is legal and unrestricted.
2.  Time Spiral, Personal Tutor, Dream Halls, Mox Diamond, and Chrome Mox are still restricted.
3.  The "M10 rules update" is NOT in effect. This means:
     3a.  Combat damage stacks.
     3b.  Tokens are "owned" by whoever controlled the effect that created them.
     3c.  Mana burn exists.
     3d.  No more simultaneous mulligans
     3f.  Wishes fetch RFG'd cards as well as SB cards.
4.  All errata updates after July 2008 are NOT in effect. This means:
     4a.  Illusionary Mask works the old way.
     4b.  Oath does not target.
     4c.  Time Vault/Voltaic Key does NOT work.
5.  Cards printed after Shadowmoor are not allowed. This includes Eventide, Alara Block, M10, Zendikar, and Worldwake.

Many locals were very excited about this, as the Key-Vault era has grown stale to a lot of people, and they enjoyed the Gush era. Deckbuilding strategy and technology is constantly changing and adapting, so it would be very interesting to see how the deckbuilding of today matches up with the metagame from nearly two years ago. Would the GushBond engine (Gush + Merchant Scroll + Fastbond) dominate, or would new technology and ideas trump the decks of yesteryear?

Check out the complete writeup with ALL decklists posted on Team-Pataners.com:
http://www.team-pataners.com/icbm-retro-vintage-open-1-results/

Awesome lists, this puts tears to my eyes.
Too bad I cannot post the lists to morphling.de because it would do chaos to the monthly card statistics, but I will post it to the news page. Thank you very much for this!

I dont know if the organiser of this event will organize this kind of event again, but this would be interesting to have a tournament without the june 2008 restrictions AND allowing cards of blocks after shadowmoor.

We could see how the new cards affect the power of existing archetypes against the "overpowered" gush era archetypes. This would be interesting for exemple to see how jace performs in 4 brainstorm control, how GaT, flash would perform against 13 spheres MUD/stacker, and how Bloodghast ichorid would be good in this metagame. It's a shame for me not to see those decks face to face. And that could be an argumentation for unrestrictions, showing WotC that the new cards can be another solution to balance the metagame.

This was definitely discussed.  We figured you would have to ban time vault for it to work, other wise every top8er would just play gush vault.

I totally agree to keep the power level errata on time vault. But it was more for all other archetypes, and to be able to correctly evaluate the impact of bloodghast, lodestone golem, Jace, etc...

for me, with all the new printings, there are alot of cards/archetypes that could be naturally balanced again if you ban vault. The only erxception is perhaps Merchant scroll, but brainstorm, ponder, flash, thirst, and even gifts should be unrestricted without Vault/Key and merchant. But to make things simple, the thing i would love to see is just no June 2008 restricts, and all cards allowed and vault banned.

We were thinking maybe no time vault, restrict either Scroll or Gush (probably Ben's choice) because one of those was almost certainly necessary, and unrestrict thirst.  I would vote scroll, and then see what happens.  So you'd have Bloodghast Ichorid, GAT, Tyrant Oath, 13sphere Mud, etc., along with any fringe Thirst decks (painter?) people might play. 

I think a very good idea for the next tournament would be to do this:
Restricted: Brainstorm, Merchant Scroll
Unrestricted: Burning Wish, Flash, Gush, Ponder, Thirst for Knowledge
Re-errated: Time Vault (so it works as it did in early 2008)
Sets allowed: everything that is currently allowed including Zendikar block

Would this format not be totally fair, balanced, and interesting? I think it would be a blast, and people that bitch that Brainstorm is too powerful would have no gripes.

Or, you could leave Time Vault the way it is and see if a G/W Null Rod deck featuring Rod, Canonist, Teeg, and Pridemage could take it down.  I think it'd have a fair shot.

Peace,

-Troy

I can guarentee you 100% if you ran a tournament where Gush *AND* Time Vault were legal, the final decks would look like this:


4 Gush
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Tendrils of agony
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
3 Quirion Dryad
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Force of Will
8 Duress

What about Regrowth and Fastbond?

No Bounce?

Yeah, you guys say stuff like that, but the fact is, there was ONE GushStorm deck in top 4.  ONE.  Other strategies are better.

You'd obviously play those cards.   I didn't post the whole deck.  If you wanted the whole deck.



1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Island
4 Gush
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoths Will
1 DTutor
1 VTutor
1 MTutor
1 Fastbond
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Quirion Dryad
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Misdirection

that deck is a thing of sublime beauty- I wish I could run it, darn restricted list!