Introduction

When [[Underworld Breach]] was spoiled, it was a "decidedly" Vintage printing in the opinion of most players - a modern attempt at fixing [[Yawgmoth's Will]] and imbuing it with the Escape mechanic. Legacy and Vintage players were already wondering if it might be banned or restricted before the card was released. So far, that reality has manifested in Legacy but it is a bit less certain in Vintage. For one, Vintage has a much larger degree of graveyard hate that can be leveraged due to the power of the Dredge deck. Two, the format in general has a higher power level and Breach is not necessarily superior to [[Paradoxical Outcome]], [[Doomsday]], or [[Dark Petition]] Storm. In order to be successful, a Breach deck needs to find its niche in the format and exploit it. So while the initial Breach strategies were build along the lines of traditional broken decks in Vintage with Draw 7's like [[Wheel of Fortune]] , a full set of Breach, and many restricted cards, these types of decks didn't put up results. The first decks that really did well were [[Sun Titan]] [[Oath of Druid]] strategies that looked to mill over and bring back Underworld Breach, then recast Time Walk repeatedly to win. An example is Notmi's Breach Oath deck from the Vintage Challenge. A couple of weeks later, I won a Vintage Challenge playing a Breach deck that essentially grafted the Breach combo into a Mentor shell that played more of a combo-control game plan enabled by the format's Cantrip-Delve draw engine. This approach is largely what has persisted in the metagame and what this primer is about.

The Combo

Legacy players will know this combo well, short-lived as it was. The gist of it in Vintage is using the ability of Underworld Breach to repeatedly cast [[Brain Freeze]] from the graveyard, first to mill yourself and fuel Breach, then to mill out your opponent, while recasting either [[Lotus Petal]], [[Lion's Eye Diamond]], or, in Vintage, [[Black Lotus]] to produce enough mana to execute the combo. The combo can be protected from the graveyard by using [[Flusterstorm]], [[Spell Pierce]], or [[Pyroblast]] and players should keep this in mind while executing the combo as [[Mindbreak Trap]] is seeing more play. A reminder that Underworld Breach does not allow you to pay alternate costs for spells and so [[Force of Will]], [[Daze]], and [[Gush]] have to be hardcast from the graveyard. Some specific circumstances to keep in mind:

• [[Ancestral Recall]] can target your opponent and can be used to win the game on your turn rather than passing the turn back to your opponent.
• If the opponent is running something like [[Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn]] or [[Gaea's Blessing]] that prevents decking, which is most common in [[Oath of Druids]] decks, you can navigate this situation by casting [[Nihil Spellbomb]] prior to Brain Freezing the opponent. Exile the opponent's graveyard with the shuffle ability on the stack.
• Alternatively, you can counter your original Brain Freeze (not one of the storm copies) and recast it from the graveyard to mill the rest of the opponent's deck. Cast Ancestral Recall targeting them to win the game before the shuffle ability resolves.
• If the opponent casts [[Veil of Summer]] and gives themselves Hexproof from your Brain Freeze, your options are to Time Walk so that the Hexproof expires and use Lurrus/[[Teferi, Time Raveler]]/[[Chain of Vapor]] to recombo, or repeatedly use [[Lightning Bolt]] or [[Seal of Fire]] to win. Or keep recasting Breach and Time Walk from the yard while attacking for 3 each turn with your Cat. You don't have to make it easy on the opponent if you don't want to...

Decklists

Pre-Ikoria

Four-Color Breach Combo

• ChubbyRain - Vintage Challenge 2/8/20
• ChubbyRain - Vintage Challenge 2/15/20

Grixis Breach Combo

• DiscoverN - Vintage Challenge 4/11/20

Post-Ikoria

Jeskai Breach Combo

• JPinter - Vintage Leagues 5-0, 5/19/20, VOD of Matches

To Be Continued....

This will be something I contribute to piece-by-piece as I have time, but someone had requested primers and I wanted to start producing some. Let me know if there are specific topics or questions to be addressed.

@ten-ten Comments like this aren't going to lead to more Vintage content, especially since this was probably not a cost-effective use of Justin's time, and more something he did for the community. If you weren't a particular fan, constructive criticism is going to get you more of the content you're interested in while still being respectful to the time and effort Justin invested in the coverage.

Second trophy with identical 75.

Will probably start brewing with Yorian + Omnath next but I think it is best in Legacy.

Regarding Panglacial Wurm, timing is difficult and I was trying to avoid scenarios where you drew cards that were dead if you didn't draw Panglacial Wurm.

@evouga said in [ZRN] Sea Gate Stormcaller:

@chubbyrain1 Heaven forbid we compare new cards to old cards! A completely useless form of analysis, to be sure. Every card exists in a complete vacuum and the 20 years of history and experience playing with similar cards is surely useless for drawing any inferences about a new printing.

How about we draw on our 20 years of history and experience actually playing Magic: the Gathering rather than making comparisons at the level of any literate person with an introductory knowledge of the game?

In the case of Sea Gate Stormcaller cards with similar functionality have seen play in Narset Transcendent and Chandra, something something fire, flames, or burning. They have different pros and cons which only serve to detract from the point of a comparison which is to highlight a specific point and in this case that is "yeah, we've played cards that copy the next spell in Vintage."

Why did we do that?

Well, in the decks that ran Narset Transcendent, such as John Grudzina's Top 8 list from Champs the year Brian Kelly won on Oath, it was because of the ability to double Dig through Time and other broken spells, which were not yet restricted. If you look at Chandra, which saw more fringe play in Potucek and my 4-5 color planeswalker brews, it was essentially there to force through game ending spells like Tinker, Yawg Will, Gifts Ungiven (was still restricted I think), etc. The point is that this type of effect requires significant upside to make the setup that you put into it worth it (Lance went into that part of the card quite well). And Vintage is still a format where doubling up on an Ancestral Recall will win you the vast majority of your games.

So the real cost of these effects is delaying casting your powerful cards to get a more powerful effect later. You can minimize the setup cost by running a bunch of powerful spells to copy so that you'll almost always have one (which is why Narset became less playable following the Dig restriction) but Stormcaller minimizes this with its restriction (Snapcastering back Preordain never feels like a good use of Snapcaster Mage so you are limited to Ancestral and situationally Time Walk, Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm, Demonic Tutor). Or you can play the maximum number of Stormcallers to try and always have a Stormcaller when you find your Ancestral. The issue with the later approach is that a 2/1 just really isn't cutting it in Vintage right now. Snapcaster still sees a lot of play according to Goldfish but only as a 1-of in almost every deck running it. It just matches up poorly against Ballista, Hollow One, and Dreadhorde, while providing a slow clock against the combo decks. And Wrenn is a headache and a half.

If you are running a card as a one-of, it makes more sense to run an effect like Snapcaster since you can play your powerful cards on curve, not knowing when you will see your one copy. I don't think you can reliably hold onto one of your 5-6 payoff cards while hoping to draw a 1-of, and I don't think a 2/1 body at this rate is great. While reasonably costed, I think this card falls outside the realm of most players' definition of playable.

Of course, I play jank and have a loose interpretation of playability. One interaction that is interesting to me is using Teferi, Destroyer of Other Formats with this card to have much more control over the trigger and get value out of the body. I did the same thing with Snapcaster Mage but a limitation was that it complicated sideboarding by preventing the inclusion of Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace. The additional upside is actually realized because the games go long, you can play out SGS on curve early, bounce with Teferi and then kick it later. Pretty hilarious with Mystic Sanctuary as a way to buy back a Time Walk which you can then copy twice. But that is seeking a specific interaction in a specific shell for a particular style of play (My win condition is the opponent's desire to do something else with their time). Again, I don't believe it is generalizable.

@thewhitedragon69 said in Thassa's Oracle:

It's been settled. Paradigm Shift is the Vintage-breaking tech of 2021!

Well, that seems like a rather bold declaration but I admire your confidence. I typically take the time to play cards and learn their intricacies, but even then seldom reach such a level of certainty.

My own take on Shift is a bit more tempered and can be summarized as “not a total dud”. The point of commenting here was merely to let the OP know their concept is playable if they wish to pursue it.

In an effort to keep discussion going on new decks and ideas, I'm trying to share some of the lists that I have been playing to success and my reasoning behind playing them. A card that interested me when Ikoria was printed was [[General Kudro of Drannith]], a B/W Human lord which in 2020 has much more text than it would previously. The incidental graveyard hate and the [[Reprisal]] ability are both relevant as they provide unique functionality. An interaction that has come up frequently has been using the graveyard ability to shrink opposing Tarmogoyfs in the BUG and 4 color matchups. Removing an artifact or a planeswalker can often turn them into a 3/4 and let your team through. The Reprisal ability was something I was interested in when UR Sprite Dragon was seeing a lot of play. That card is difficult to race and I wanted an answer that wasn't narrow in the main deck.

The first iteration of the deck trophied and can be found here: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3167642#online

I have played the deck in two more leagues, finishing 4-1 in both. You play a lot of grindy games. Wrenn is a problem, as discussed here, but I simply switch decks when Wrenn becomes popular, and all decks tend to wax and wane on MTGO. Vintage has been very dynamic lately. I wasn't a fan of the [[Kitesail Freebooters]]. I found them not as impactful and poor against the Bazaar decks that were seeing more play in the field. Similarly, Dark Confidant feels slow in this format and I only run a few. You are ironically playing from behind often against HollowVine and Dark Confidant is terrible in that matchup specifically. Deafening Silence has also been a card that has been horrible for me and I keep reducing the numbers on the off chance it demonstrates a shred of promise.

Regarding the Mayors, those are considerations for having access to active FoV on turn 1, which is important for the Shops matchup (a traditionally abysmal matchup) and against PO. I'm tweaking the numbers of other cards and I haven't run into a situation in which Kambal has been good (should probably just be more Sanctum Prelates). Surgical Extractions are necessary against the HollowVine decks. You can't beat 12-16 power on turn 1, with some having haste. You just can't. You need to stop that and Surgicals are the best option. Exile the Vengevines, and then realized that you are going to have to do a lot of combat math, smart blocking, and good sequencing to salvage the game at a single digit life total.

Heck, it's a Modern deck with Power. The games are going to be tough at times. The advantage is much of the field is poorly configured to deal with your threats (both the number and the fact they are uncounterable) and you get to leverage two of the most powerful cards right now in Wasteland and Force of Vigor.

The last list I ran was:

5-0'd

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3423382#online

If you are running a companion, you always have something to do with your Omnath mana and you don't have to run cards like Ugin that might be dead draws if you can't stick and Omnath.

As for particular tech, Sevinne's Reclamation is great, as a value card, as a mana sink for Omnath mana, and as a way to hit multiple land drops in a turn if you need to (used it against Dredge to get back Tabernacle).

Had several powerful sequences enabled by Omnath such as

• Companion Tax on Lutri, Ancestral, Lutri
• Omnath, Draw Narset, fetch, into play Narset, reveal and cast Time Walk (had an extra Blue)
• Sevinne + Flashback on multiple planeswalkers.

Omnath was also a Green card for Force of Vigor, which was pretty nice against the Golos Stax deck.

I favor this approach to a ramp deck that is all in playing Omnath, Locus Creation. While you might associate your build as a control deck, the presence of 28 or so lands really cuts down on your ability to interact with the stack and that will make things difficult in Vintage given the density of combo decks.

I also had experience playing Ugin in Vintage and this is not the metagame for it. The first times were during the Treasure Cruise era when I was trying to Drain a Cruise into an Ugin. The second time was a Rector Flash build with Narset unrestrict and a lot a Arcanist decks running around. Ugin does well against the URx decks that can't remove it while it just picks off all the creatures and walkers. Against Shops, Combo, and Dredge with Hollow One, Ichorids, Vengevines, it's not a good answer to the threats. Certainly not for the investment.

If someone argues that this isn't a true Omnath deck, I think a very reasonable approach is to try and explore Yorion next. But I did feel that Omnath gave a style of deck that had fallen out of favor a very real boost.

We did it, Reddit!

To pull from different threads:

• You can brew with anything you want, but let us know how successful you are.
• Oh, there are multiple league trophies with a card, but it was only a singleton in a deck that can only run singletons. Heck, it might as well have been Sedge Troll.
• Ah, well the card trophied a league and top 8'd a challenge a 4-of. Mocking comment with a Pig emoji. Have you considered playing the tier 1 option?

For a forum that occasionally has more posts from spambots than from actual people, this hostility to brews and the shifting of goalposts are unfortunate and detrimental, IMO.

@botvinik said in [ZRN] Omnath, Locus of Creation:

This is even more true if you as a player are better than your opponent whitch chubby seems to be in most cases.

I always find this reasoning odd. We aren't talking about someone else's results - we are talking about my own results. I played each and every game of every match and are describing first-hand experience with the card. You aren't inferring a card's merits based on LSV's play, whose rationale you aren't privy too. So you are attributing my success to my playskill, but denying that I have the level of insight to realize why I am having that success, and furthermore, that you have more insight than I do into the games and matches I actually played.

@botvinik said in [ZRN] Omnath, Locus of Creation:

@chubbyrain1

At this point we can probably agree omnath is reasonable to good in the deck you put together. This then leads to the natural questions:

1. do you think there is something better for that slot?
2. do you think omnath is good enough for other decks who do not have to go singleton?

@botvinik said in [ZRN] Omnath, Locus of Creation:

I have played exactly 3 matches with the deck omnnath did not impress me but it did not seem bad either. Seemed like an ok card in my limited experience. Hard to cast but while it is in play it is nightmare fuel for aggro shops.

So, this is a shift in perspective from where I think you were originally where you were much more down on Omnath's utility and asking what you could do with the mana generation. Which is good, it's why I put the effort into making this thread, to have this sort of dialogue and talk about how a card could evolve to see play based on how people use it, ideally getting different ideas and inputs along the way.

I actually don't care where people rank the card on the axis of "ok", "good", "reasonable", "Mentor 2.0" or whatever. Such rankings are I guess fun to discuss but have little practical merit when it comes to building decks. During deck construction, what matters is the card's functional roles. With that in mind, to answer your questions:

1. Omnath is the newest and perhaps best "Banedrifter" - card that enters the battlefield, generates both value and board presence. Vintage is a format that is becoming increasingly dependent both on board presence and on card advantage. For instance, you have the Bazaar decks that can generate 10+ power in a single turn and PO decks that can draw a ton of cards if you can't keep up with answers. The ability to have a threat that also generates value with card draw/mana generation/or even pitching to Forces, is really really strong. It's important to identify the role of your deck at certain situations. Like against HogaakVine, you kind of need to stick a Mentor or an Omnath asap or you are going to be overrun. The mana, life gain, body, and card are all relevant there. Against Combo, you may just need to pitch it to Force to not die. That's actually a pretty good use of a card. If you have to choose between pitching your non-blue win condition and Ancestral Recall against Doomsday on turn 1, you probably want to toss that 4/4 away.
   Very few cards have the same functional role. Mentor generates pure board presence (or is effectively a storm kill). It doesn't have the other variables and I actually board out Mentor frequently against Combo decks. Snapcaster, Arcanist, etc, all have less of an impact on the game, though Arcanist can be close. JTMS is not longer a great card at managing the board state. Oko does not fight along the card axis. The closest card is Uro and Uro is obviously insane in other formats but is limited in Vintage due to the unfavorable interaction with Moxen and other taxing effects on the graveyard such as Dig and Cruise. You can argue for more unplayable options like Dream Trawler or some Oath packages but those are very different decks. So no, I don't think there is a functional replacement for the card here.
2. Yes. There is only one of me. I can't build and play every possible shell in which I think a card might be viable. A reason I made this post was to try and convey my thoughts experiences and encourage others to brew decks they might enjoy with this card. It's not to convince people a card is an arbitrary metric of playable. People want to try it with Coalition Victory or Panglacial Wurm, don't let your memes be dreams... The companion mechanic had not been seeing a lot of play since the nerf and if I think a new printing can revive a previous archetype, I will often try to explore that.

@thewhitedragon69 said in [ZRN] Omnath, Locus of Creation:

@chubbyrain1 My point is that, with that list, if Omnath were pretty much any other blue cantrip (Uro, for example), the deck would have 5-0d.

You didn't play the games. I played the games and disagree with you. My opponent played the games and disagrees with you.

Also, I have put up more results than anyone else with Uro in Vintage. A deck with singleton cantrips lacks the card velocity to adequately fuel Uro and the two Delve spells. The 4 color manabase running two Triomes cannot reliably cast a late-game UUGG spell against Wasteland decks. I was running a Breeding Pool as a 5th Tropical island in my one Uro deck.

@stormanimagus

I think "good enough" is a judgement call that I find very difficult to answer in a vacuum. To begin with, sound doesn't transmit well without air, and I would likely be preoccupied with trying not to die. The other part is the value of playing extra lands from the top of your library depends on the number of lands you are running and the impact of those lands. I mentioned Elvish Reclaimer (not just in Vintage) because I thought it would be a shell that maximizes the value of Augur by running more lands and higher impact lands. Whether it is good enough given the competition at 3 is again contextual...

Specifically for Humans, I think you could increase value by running Horizon Canopy and Fetches. If you are on a 5c manabase (I know you mentioned GW without B or U), I really don't think you would get a lot of value playing additional Caverns, Mana Confluences, etc off the top.

@stormanimagus said in [MID] Augur of Autumn:

I'm surprised no one is discussing this card.

To be fair, not everyone has your predilection to GW Humans.

I think this card is good, but I think you will run into issues generating substantial card advantage against the matchups in which it matters most (eg, decks with removal that are capable of keeping you off Coven). I will also add that that it doesn't have to be Humans and decks that run Elvish Reclaimer can be strong as well since you gain value from the shuffle and extra lands.

@moorebrother1

I wish it didn't require mana to activate as that would allow you to curve out more effectively (saccing this on any noncreature spell for 2 mana, then recasting the 3-mana half, planning to win with Tinker or whatever the next turn), while also making it 2-drop disruption instead of 3-drop disruption.

As it is, I don't see it as unplayable (particularly seems interesting if you can get value by milling into it, like with DRC), but I think the impact isn't there. I kind of lump it together with Lavinia in terms of disruption/protection, but see Lavinia as more powerful given how it can win some games by itself.

You caught us.

The Blue Cabal actually wanted a 1U Enchantment with Flash that returned all artifacts you don't control to their owners' hand and prevented your opponents from casting artifact spells. It then was sacrificed at the beginning of your upkeep, but we thought that was reasonable since you could recast it with Lurrus.

Wizards thought it was too similar to Dress Down, and so we settled for Void Mirror. Then we all decided at the first Cabal meeting after MH2 was released not to play it. Forget why that was...

Oh, yeah. The card ended up being terrible. Whoops.

Well, fingers crossed for next time.

@lienielsen

I don't know what made a Gro deck "unleashed", but I do know that Dryad and Tog are poor imitations of Pyromancer and Mentor. If you want to go back further, then yes, you can pick whatever cards you want that were much worse than modern win conditions, and they probably needed Fastbond for additional closing speed and explosiveness. You also had 4 Brainstorms as well...

Decks had largely abandoned Fastbond well before Gush was restricted this past time.

Regarding Hammer, those results weren't the ones I'm talking about and I didn't say Hammer was nonexistent. MTGO metas change week-to-week and the previous week had zero copies of Hammer in the top 8, suggesting it is possible to answer Hammer with a couple more removal spells...

@botvinik

It was a holdover from Gush decks of previous eras that were reliant on Tendrils and so needed the storm count and the mana. Pyromancer and then Mentor didn’t need the help and so you had a gradual phasing out of Fastbond and other restricted cards (like Yawg Will) as people realized they were unnecessary.

Moreover, as decks became more controlling and tempo-oriented, Fastbond became a liability since it didn’t do anything much of the time. You just fought over the other spells and they lost the counter battles because they were down a card in Fastbond.

@lienielsen

You say that but Hammer Time put 0 decks in the top 8 of both challenges this past weekend and it doesn't look like decks were particularly warped to beat it. There might be more FoV, Fury, and EE, but those cards are pretty flexible. Contrast this with Vintage where Tabernacle is played in 58% of decks, often in SBs, and almost exclusively to deal with Bazaar's most explosive openers.

I don't know how or why the 7-card Dredge SB was created. I imagine the increase is SB Dredge cards coincided with the decline of fast combo which necessitated dealing with Dredge's gameplan as opposed to covering the games you weren't explosive enough to win before them with a small amount of hate.

In my experience, Vintage deck construction was very dogmatic and I remember restricted cards being played for no other reason than them being restricted for quite some time. Fastbond in Young Pyromancer/Mentor shells was definitely one that stuck around for longer than was justified.

@lienielsen

Dedicating 7+ sideboard cards is actually a pretty stupid thing to do when your most popular decks tend to be less than 5% of the metagame... You are likely to go through an entire event without using over half the cards in your SB.

Please understand that Vintage players (according to WotC) have decided it's more important to have Bazaar and Shops legal than it is to have a more diverse metagame like that in Modern. Legacy is somewhat similar with Brainstorm.

And not wanting to play Vintage because of Dredge would have little to do with how many SB cards it demands. The issue would probably be that the matchup involves limited decision-making and is largely determined by how many mulligans players are forced to make in SB games.

@protoaddict said in Initiative to help save Paper Vintage:

There are a fair amount of games in the format where 2 players could literally reveal their hands and top 2 cards of their decks and you can know that one player has won and there was nothing the other player could do about it.

It's funny, if I didn't read the rest of your post, I would have thought you were describing most games against Bazaar.

The gameplay of current Vintage is much more polarized than Modern, in my experience.

@madmanmike25

People were running when it was released, both in the maindeck and in the sideboard, and in various shells. It is possible there is a niche to be discovered but the issue is how play/draw dependent the card is, how poorly it matches up with other prison pieces (thalia/sphere invalidate it), and how much decks need to be warped to run it. Ironically, I think it ended up being best against Bazaar, but you had to resolve it against an 8 Force deck.

In general, the issue with these cards have less to do with what the card does and more to do with the deck you end up with trying to play them. If a card hates on most of the key strategies in the format, you are giving up many powerful options to try and break the synergy of the card, and then you end up with an inferior deck in the instances you don't draw the focal point of your deck.

Red Prison in Legacy circumvents this because it has redundant hate pieces that do not conflict. You can deploy a Chalice, Blood Moon, or Trinisphere reliably each game and they won't invalidate the other copies. Moreover, you have time to deploy them.

Hate decks in Vintage are often pinched because of the explosiveness of certain decks, especially on the play. Bazaar can dump 10 power on turn 1, Shops can HelmLine, Marit Lage, or Golos, Doomsday/Breach/PO, can all turn 1. There is a considerable incentive to run free interaction like Force of Vigor, Surgical Extraction, or MBT, but Void Sphere hurts the effectiveness of those cards. You also need to find redundancy in prison pieces and that is difficult, because as mentioned before, spheres allow players to spend colored mana on their free spells.

You might find it interesting to go back and look at the discussion surrounding Damping Sphere, which had a similar reaction from the community in terms of it being a hate piece with significant targets across the format. There are parallels even now as @Protoaddict it bringing unrealized metagame effects into B&R discussion. The quote I remember from Damping Sphere is "this should end any discussion about restricting Workshops".

To address @Protoaddict 's points, Simian Spirit Guide wasn't the answer. People were really doing fine with Golos/Combo Shops packages. Karakas, Bog, Urborg, Thespian Stage, etc gave you enough outs for the games you were on the draw AND your opponent had Void Mirror on turn 1. Those decks were prominent even when Mirror was popular initially because of their Bazaar matchups and the presence of Void Mirror did not stop that. In addition, the decks running Void Mirror were typically not the decks looking to end the game on turn 2-3, so you had time to use these answers.

I also find the argument of "not letting the Shops deck play Magic" not really compelling as that has been a focus of Shops decks in general for much of the time I've played Vintage. Granted, in the current state of the format, Bazaar and Combo generate far more nongames than Shops, but it would be better to be consistent.