Post restrictions, BUG is still the best deck in the format. Lately the deck has gotten a bad reputation. “It’s only good because of Karn and Dredge” they say. They’re using faulty logic to arrive at conclusions such as “there is no longer a reason to play BUG”. Here’s reason number one to play bug: Force of Vigor.
Workshops and Outcome are still dominate strategies in Vintage. Artifacts will always be at the forefront of Vintage. It isn’t Karn that made BUG great, it was Force of Vigor. Take a look at the Force of Vigor spoil thread. “Green is good now”. Shops will still be 20-30% of the meta and Force of Vigor still dominates it. I don’t see anyone hitting the necessary number of green cards without Deathrite Shaman and Tarmogoyf. Fastbond is unrestricted and people are trying wacky things. What disrupts these wacky things for zero mana? Force of Vigor.
Reason number 2 to play BUG: Deathrite Shaman and Narset. There’s less Missteps so DRS is going to resolve on turn one. This is very meaningful in the blue mirrors because BUG is just going to be more reliably casting Narset on turn two and grind out long games with DRS abilities. People overlook the fact that Karn has been absent and Jeskai has been seeing more play before the restrictions yet BUG still commands half of every top 8. This is because BUG is a good Vintage deck that plays all the best blue cards in conjunction with DRS. (DRS is banned in Modern and Legacy. It’s that good)
Reason number 3 to play BUG: Veil of Summer and Thoughtseize. With the restriction of Mental Misstep, everyone thinks they can play DPS. That just isn’t the case against BUG. Historically, BUG has always been strong against storm because it can attack the deck on multiple fronts. It has discard in Thoughtseize, which is very effective, it has all the best counterspells including the miser Mental Misstep. It has disruptive permanents such as Leovold, Narset, and Ashiok. It has mana denial elements in Assassin Trophy and Wasteland. And it has graveyard disruption through Deathrite Shaman. Then it has all of the broken card advantage spells to retool. BUG is the kind of deck that wants to trade its opening 5 cards with the opponents 5 cards. That is something that DPS has a hard time recovering from because it doesn’t play Delve spells, planeswalkers, and the like. The final nail in the coffin is Veil of Summer, which has been quite amusing against Storm. It’s the perfect counter to Duress.
Reason number 4 to play BUG: Dredge. People are willing to admit that BUG is good against dredge, but they don’t seem to think Dredge is part of the new meta. I think it will be because it’s still too strong even without 3 Trolls. People sideboard 10 cards for dredge so it’s unreasonable to think it will go away.
It’s common knowledge that BUG loses to the “go-wide” strategies of Young Pyromancer. I don’t buy that argument because if BUG is the better control deck, which it is, it can just play a board wipe such as Toxic Deluge. So I’m finding it difficult to discover a reason NOT to play BUG. It just dominated Vintage more than any deck ever for a period of a month+.
Yesterday I went 4-1 in my first league post restriction. My only loss? The mirror...
last edited by desolutionist