http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-podcast-episode-56-conspiracy-2-and-the-evolving-vintage-metagame/

Kevin Cron and Steve Menendian review Conspiracy: Take the Crown, and take a look at the evolving Vintage metagame heading into the 2016 Vintage Championship, including the recent results of The Mana Drain Open 17.

0:01:00: Announcements: Eternal Weekend 2017, Understanding Gush 3rd Edition, Upcoming Events
0:20:00: Conspiracy: Take the Crown Mechanics
0:29:00: Sanctum Prelate
1:03:00: Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast
1:20:45: Kaya, Ghost Assassin
1:43:30: Leovold, Emissary of Trest
1:57:45: Subterranean Tremors
2:01:00: Recruiter of the Guard
2:05:00: The Mana Drain Open 17 Results
2:24:00: Metagame Update
2:30:00: Eldritch Moon impacts
Total runtime: 2:41:21

Apologies, all, for my audio. It was a Mana Confluence of events, but you all have the pay the 1 life.

This set has a really, really high ceiling. I think at least of the four cards we reviewed in Conspiracy are going to see Vintage play, and some of them might be tremendously impactful.

So excited for this. Got through the first hour on the way home from work tonight. 35 minutes on Sanctum Prelate and only 4 minutes on Recruiter of the Guard? The suspense is killing me!!!

Listened to this today on my flight. I think you're both dramatically underestimating how impactful Daretti, Ingenious Bastard is going to be on the whole format. Like you alluded to with Kaya (and Jace), Daretti also has 4 abilities, because it's -1 ability can destroy an artifact, or destroy a creature. This card is nuts. I think it will appear in more T8 decklists over the next 6 months than any other card in the set.

Also, Steve mentioned the 11th place deck a couple of times. It's a mutation of 2 Card Monte that utilizes Oath of Druids. Both Josh Potucek and JP Kohler have been playing this specific deck the past few weeks. It's a pretty cool hybrid, meant to trounce Gush token-maker and Workshop decks.

Well, I predicted Daretti would see healthy play. I don't know how "dramatic" you feel I underestimated it.

@Smmenen said:

Well, I predicted Daretti would see healthy play. I don't know how "dramatic" you feel I underestimated it.

I think Kevin said 3 and you said 5 appearances for Daretti. I'm thinking it is going to be a few times that number, minimum. The card does a lot for what the decks that can best utilize it. We're all reading the tea leaves here obviously, but I think this will easily be the most impactful new non-creature printing for Vintage since Dack Fayden (the brief Dig & Cruise experiment excepted).

@JACO said:

@Smmenen said:

Well, I predicted Daretti would see healthy play. I don't know how "dramatic" you feel I underestimated it.

I think Kevin said 3 and you said 5 appearances for Daretti.

Top 8 appearances in our data set. Many more tournanent appearances overall.

I wish you guys would of spent more time on Leovold. I truly believe it will be him, not Daretti, that is going to change a lot. Ppl will start adding Dr Shaman and one trop to their Grixis Pyro/Esper Mentor lists just to have this guy for the "blue" mirror since every blue deck runs X cantrips and draw. And although you guys hit on some major targetable effects such as targeted creature kill, discard effects (duress efx), and storm, you did miss out on at least 2 other big ones currently used, Oath/Orchard (both target pretty sure), and the (up to) 9+ stripmine efx that some thalia/MUD lists run. With the ability to draw everytime your targeted or one of your PERMANENTS is targeted is so good that maybe it is time to start running Misdirection and maybe even.....stifle (target my land with waste.....lemmme draw first....oh stifle, thanks gg). Also, this might be win more but I could see 4-5 color storm run this guy just to stop the blue decks from finding answers and because he simply just wins with ANY draw 7(and not gonna be hard to cast w a manabase of X cob X confluence X gemstone mine). Oh and Kevin, one of those cards that would be pretty bonkers with him that is otherwise considered garbage? Trade Secrets ftw.

These podcasts are always a nice treat for me, I'm glad you guys are producing it regularly.

It usually takes me a while to get through one due to my busy schedule, but I'll have some comments once I've heard more.

As good as Leovold may be, for the same CMC and less colored mana, you get to FLASH in thief, which not only has the same effect (plus draws YOU cards), but can also kill a planeswalker in surprise or blow out an opponent on a brainstorm/jace activation. And thief sees almost no play.

@Thewhitedragon69 said:

As good as Leovold may be, for the same CMC and less colored mana, you get to FLASH in thief, which not only has the same effect (plus draws YOU cards), but can also kill a planeswalker in surprise or blow out an opponent on a brainstorm/jace activation. And thief sees almost no play.

I think Leovold is three mana, not four. I'm pretty sure that Leovold is better than you're giving it credit for. People were playing Rayne storm Hate, Leovold can do that job too.

Ahh...thought NT was 1BU. Still, not to say Leovold is bad, NT still has the surprise advantage and can kill jace and blow out draw spells. It won't net you a card from being targeted, but it will ancestral you off an opponent's brainstorm...that's something. Yet NT rarely sees play.

The difference between 3 and 4 mana is huge as well as the difference in toughness. Like I said in the thread on Leovold, turn one fetch >dr shaman> turn 2 Leovold is gonna be one of the most common plays in Vintage in the upcoming months. Not to mention Legacy. I get to make your 4 brainstorms, ponders, preordains, and git probes completly useless AND draw cards when you bolt/sword/dismember/decay a dude, waste one of my lands, target me with singleton discard, or try to tendrils me? Yea, sign me up on that gravy train. Also as seen in a lot of decks lately, (brian kelly decks mainly) playing 4 colors off of a single dual X fetches and maybe one city of brass or cavern (dr shaman and leovold are both elves....) is completely feasible. Esper (mentor) and Grixis (pyro) both already play black and blue, splashing a tropical or 2-3 dr shaman (who technically doesnt even need green mana) should be extremely easy to do.

@Thewhitedragon69 Leovold is much more proactive than Notion Thief. The temptation to blow your opponent out by flashing in a Notion Thief is pretty strong. Leovold is more about slamming it down, and forcing them to answer for a loss. No deck can let this stick around without getting buried in card advantage.

Just a quick note, Montolio was 5-0-1 when he lost his final match falling to 5-1-1 and getting 9th place. This event was very strange because it was so close to being 8 rounds, so only Craig Masley and myself were able to draw into the Top8 at 5-0-1 and everyone else (5-0-1 and 5-1 had to play their final round).

I think Dredge's poor showing was mostly because the most experienced Dredge pilots in the field did poorly (Sullivan Brophy and Travis Compton). I don't know if this was because Dredge is poorly positioned or for some other reason.

Kevin, you're 100% right about my list. I took Montolio's deck from the N.Y.S.E. Open and cut 2 Witchbane Orb and 2 Relic of Progenitus from the sideboard for 2 Karakas, a 3rd Tormod's Crypt and a 3rd Dismember. As I mentioned in the tournament report I wrote, I played very little Vintage between the N.Y.S.E. Open and TMD Open 17 and felt that aside from the rise of Grixis Pyromancer that the metagame hadn't changed much if at all.

I really enjoyed all the strategic content in the podcast too. In particular, you guys easily convinced me I was undervaluing Daretti as mostly unplayable.

@Smmenen said:

Top 8 appearances in our data set. Many more tournanent appearances overall.

Yes I understand the predictive modeling part with T8 appearances. I just think the number of T8 appearances will be much higher than either of you predicted. Daretti is the most splashable card (mana cost-wise) from these 4 new playable cards, and addresses some key weak spots for the existing decks that can play it (ignoring anything else that can or should be built around it).

@JACO said:

@Smmenen said:

Top 8 appearances in our data set. Many more tournanent appearances overall.

Yes I understand the predictive modeling part with T8 appearances. I just think the number of T8 appearances will be much higher than either of you predicted.

Such as? Provide a number

@Smmenen said:

Such as? Provide a number

Oh, sorry. I expect probably at least somewhere in the realm of 15-20+ (not sure how many large enough tournaments there will be in next few months to qualify for the metric gathering). But if it doesn't reach that immediately I expect over the next 6+ months a massive breakout. You guys did not mention the interaction with Welder, or the most obvious (to me) interaction, with Baleful Strix. Grixis is arguably already the most potent blue deck at the moment, and this gives not only the Gush variants another strong tool, but also many other decks as well (even Oath), while never being dead. I think this is realistically the third best planeswalker (in Vintage) that's been printed to date, and I expect it to be all over Vintage Champs (and more).