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.

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.

@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.

@marland_moore Thank you! I've been more a passive observer right now because of school but I still try to keep tabs on the format and occasionally put together brews that I goldfish in the Practice Room.

To contribute more to this thread, Vintage is going to be a broken format because of the restricted list. It has the Moxen, it has Ancestral, it has Bazaar. Karn, Chalice, and Narset are unique because of how they attack the fundamental aspects of Vintage in a one-sided manner. They are good cards in other formats but they are substantially more powerful in Vintage. Because of the Moxen. Because of Ancestral, Draw 7's, PO, Bazaar, Cruise, etc. They create game states where 1 player is still playing Vintage and the other is playing Legacy with dead cards. And that has an extremely warping effect on the format. Before Karn was restricted, every deck that had fast mana was playing it. Even DPS. The most played creature when Chalice was legal was Ingot Chewer with even LSV playing it in Oath. And Narset created a pretty significant skew towards UGx as creatures were the most effective way of winning the Narset battles.

Unrestricting these cards won't really create a more broken Vintage but it will accentuate current trends. Urza's Saga mirrors already have a play-draw skew as one player gets to activate the Saga twice then grab a Needle or whatever. They would have larger constructs and more of them. Throw in a turn 1 Chalice or Karn and it would be impossible for the player on the draw to win the Saga mirror. Chalice is particularly brutal with Hollow One and Bazaar can pitch redundant copies. That deck was perhaps the strongest in UX when I played. Ragavan can get countered by Misstep but it also is protected by Misstep. It leads to a pretty rough mirror in that you need both the removal spell and enough Missteps to stop the opponent. Decks also wouldn't have to choose between Gush and Ragavan. They could easily play both if they wanted to.

It think of the cards listed, Lodestone Golem and Mentor would be among the safest unrestrictions as they enter a more crowded field of power-creeped win conditions. Mentor's competition used to be Young Pyromancer and that is a card that has become fringe. Witch was popular initially but became a bit outclassed with MH2. I don't think Mentor is as farfetched as you seem to think.

@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:

Have put a couple of leagues into developing this, most recently picking up a trophy with the UG version here:

# UG Grow-A-Titan
## Matthew Murray
Business (6)
2 Brazen Borrower
2 Uro, Titan of Nature
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Sylvan Library
Spells (31)
4 Preordain
4 Growth Spiral
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
2 Force of Negation
1 Misdirection
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Flusterstorm
1 Spell Snare
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Mental Misstep
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
1 Gush
1 Dig Through Time
1 Treasure Cruise
Mana (23)
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
4 Mystic Sanctuary
4 Tropical Island
2 Snow-Covered Island
Sideboard (15)
2 Hydroblast
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Ravenous Trap
3 Force of Vigor
2 Nature's Claim
3 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

I have been experimenting with Mystic Sanctuary since its release, first by just throwing it into Arcanist shells that release weekend on MTGO (wasn't very hard to find on MTGO then), and later building around it more with the RUG Walker list that used Wrenn and Six. A key synergy is Gush and two Mystic Sanctuaries lets you recur the instant or sorcery of choice from your graveyard, whether Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, or something more boring. However, you are limited by the number of lands you can play in a turn.

Fast-forward a bit...In fooling around with Vintage Unleashed, I started with a Gush-Fastbond deck and was incredibly impressed how powerful that engine has become with the addition of Mystic Sanctuary. Sanctuary means you keep Gushing for as long as you have life points and you can recur whatever you want - you don't need to make use of the format's unrestricted Yawgmoth's Wills. I was winning with Hedron Crabs, Lurrus, and infinite Time Walks at that point but the shell is malleable. With the change in the companion rule, I was consider Uro - the life gain from Lurrus was helpful as it made up for the Fastbond life loss and allowed you to go infinite.

And that brings us to the current approach. Growth Spiral was being talked about as in the context of the Arena PTs as both something player's thought was busted (it's the internet and I have no opinion really on formats I don't collect data or play in) and were sick of since it's been in Standard for nearly two years and good the entire time along with Wilderness Reclamation (that one makes more sense to me...). And for better or worse, if cards are great in Standard, they are generally powerful enough to be fringe playable or better in Vintage. That's just the state of power creep in recent sets.

Growth Spiral fulfills the function of being able to play additional lands in the Sanctuary recursion engine (as does Uro for that matter). It does that while pitching to all three Forces in the deck, ramping up to 4 Islands, and cycling. As a card, I was very impressed by it. There are also fun things you can do like Daze back a Sanctuary, Growth Spiral it into play at instant speed to put a Mental Misstep or Misdirection on top of your library, then Gush into it or otherwise draw it at instant speed. The main
consideration though is these additional land drops mean you just get to take a bunch of consecutive turns and win the game. I took 8-9 turns on stream last night during which my Landstill opponent killed my first Brazen Borrower, but I was able to find, play, and attack for lethal with the second Borrower. Both Uros had already been pathed.

By no means is this a finished product. There are other color combinations - I typical start minimalist to identify certain needs and then add colors that I think will help plug in the gaps. For instance, I started with a Bant version for Swords and Mentor, because I thought I would want Swords to deal with threats like Sprite Dragon and Mentor to win the game. After a 3-2 league, Mentor wasn't necessary since you take so many turns that you can literally attack with a 3/1 flier, and Swords was mostly clunkly in my hand without Dack Fayden to filter. I figured a bounce spell was enough to buy time against Sprite Dragon and Brazen Borrower could condense the slot while allowing me to cut White. I didn't get to play against Hatebears or Eldrazi, which would have presented more of a challenge for a deck without Swords.

Oh, and you need a bunch of lands to maximize your explore effects and the odds of having three Islands for Mystic Sanctuary. I cut Black Lotus to help find the slots, but I recognize that not everyone will be interested in this, regardless of the reasons behind it. Just keep in mind that deck design involves balancing competing elements so if you trim lands, that has an associated cost. I actually went from 20 lands to 21 after the first league because I thought it was too few.

The format is changing, set after set. Decks look different than they did a year ago, different than they did 5 years ago, different than they did 10 years ago. What kills formats is when they become homogenized or consolidate around very few strategies - Affinity, Caw-Blade, Oko, etc... When players have few competitive options, a significant percentage will not enjoy those options or will get bored of them quickly.

Vintage has undergone considerable selection bias so that the current player base either tolerates or likes Force of Will, the Power 9, Shops, and Bazaar. Legacy has a similar issue with Brainstorm, LED, and Chalice. Wizards has said they maintain the B&R for Legacy and Vintage for the current players in those formats and that's why they don't hit those cards. They've essentially been grandpersoned in. It doesn't make it right, but bringing this up every friggin time there is a B&R discussion changes nothing when it's clear WotC isn't going to change their stance and there's not a really compelling reason for them to do so.

New cards don't get the same consideration. They are untested in the context of Eternal formats, and untested cards don't deserve a certain period of time to breath when it comes to a game, especially since B&R is the mechanism Wizards has proposed for fixing these problems. Some cards just have interactions that after a few actual reps in the format are clearly problematic, and MTGO can generate considerable data very quickly. We already have 1387 matches from the weekend Challenges over the past 3 weeks and we missed one of the challenges. This ignores how quickly cards and decks get iterated in between challenges during the leagues.

I would also add that Wizards can't hope to match the Hive Mind when it comes to testing. Play design is 9 members split across Standard, Draft, and Sealed? Who knows what other obligations they have as well. Even if other teams are responsible for testing, they are still having to ban cards in Standard, like Oko, Veil, Field, and Once upon a Time. These are cards that emerged pretty quickly as overpowered, the critical flaw in Oko being that the teams underestimated the power of Oko's +1 ability (Melissa DeTora metioned that on stream). Similarly, the Companion mechanic was a missed attempt to balance the deckbuilding restrictions with the benefit- you can comb Maro's tweets for that. It's hard to balance for three formats, let alone all formats, especially with the current approach to card design.

I think we have to accept these limitations and recognize that, in the absence of large beta testing like other games have, cards will get restricted or banned (hopefully in other formats and not Vintage again - Companion is a rather unique example). The goal should be to expedite the process and promote transparency (would love to see Wizards data and design process for the cards).

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.

Notable other interactions:

• To @Wagner's point, this breaks the symmetry of LED + Echo of Eons. You can stockpile cards if needed (Keeping a Force floating during Echoes seems solid)

• This card is functionally similar to Daredevil in the Riddlesmith deck. It might be an upgrade as it is an artifact for Opal and compatible with Lurrus if you are so inclined.

• Can't combo with LEDs in Vintage but plenty of restricted artifacts to ramp. Map + Academy + Candelabra for shennanigans? Interesting, at least.

@john-cox Yes.

Targeting yourself an arbitrarily large number of times is used in Legacy to combo with Magecraft (Sedgemoor Witch and the BG life drain creature).

@blindtherapy I'm not sure if this has changed but MTGTop8 didn't always contain every list in every event the last time I tried to use it. I think it depended on users inputting results and that typically only happened if someone cared enough to do so (like with decks they were personally interested in). The data from Goldfish is very different...

@marland_moore Narset was not restricted because it was just "unfun". It was present in 7/8 Eternal Weekend top 8 decks and the metagame was completely warped around the card. I designed the RUG control deck piloted by Ryan Eberhart and Jeremy Pinter and Justin designed the RUG PO list, both with the goal of fighting Narset battles (with Oko and Pyroblast). People thought Shops, Bazaar, and non-Narset decks could take advantage of this but it didn't happen. Turns out Narset plus hate is good against Bazaar and Oko plus Vigor is good against Shops.

Regarding the Impulse ability, I can't tell you how many games were over after the -2 hit Ancestral, Tinker, or some other restricted card or key answer. You often had to answer the Narset and whatever they found, which if it happened early in the game (eg, your board and hand were undeveloped) was difficult if even possible. Unrestriction makes an early Narset much more frequent. I'm really not sure why you keep mentioning Saga - it takes two turns to make a Construct and attack, which is even slower than playing a creature.

To return to unrestriction, the first thing listed on the B&R page is that it exists to promote diversity within a format. I would argue that @Macdeath's list is most in keeping with that and would be much more in favor of those unrestrictions.

To be fair, I doubt Flash would be dominant. One of the downsides of Oath is the dead draws and inconsistency of a two-card combo in a format with a large number of answers. Hulk requires a larger number of slots dedicated to it which will limit the protection package and Rector is vulnerable to improved and more prevalent graveyard hate. It would be a deck with a pretty high turn 1 win rate and play/draw disparity as being on the draw exposes the combo to Flusterstorm and 1 drop interaction while being on the play just exposes you to Force.

Would also add that Hullbreacher is played in about ~25% of decks and much less effective against Archon than Griselbrand or Niv-Mizzet.

@ian-mars

I wasn't expressing much of an opinion on Saga or Ragavan, I was just pointing out that if you don't like the play patterns of Saga or Ragavan (like OP), unrestrictions such as Misstep and Chalice might exacerbate those play patterns. The format could still be defined by Saga and Ragavan, but those decks would then take advantage of Misstep and Chalice.

While the position that "people should play different decks" makes sense on the surface, it doesn't really happen when those mirrors are "decks that run fast mana" and "decks that draw cards" in a format that has been defined by fast mana and drawing cards. I think Narset was in 7/8 decks the Eternal Weekend before it was restricted. People just warped their card-drawing decks around dealing with Narset and that reduced the diversity of the format.

@marland_moore Thank you! I've been more a passive observer right now because of school but I still try to keep tabs on the format and occasionally put together brews that I goldfish in the Practice Room.

To contribute more to this thread, Vintage is going to be a broken format because of the restricted list. It has the Moxen, it has Ancestral, it has Bazaar. Karn, Chalice, and Narset are unique because of how they attack the fundamental aspects of Vintage in a one-sided manner. They are good cards in other formats but they are substantially more powerful in Vintage. Because of the Moxen. Because of Ancestral, Draw 7's, PO, Bazaar, Cruise, etc. They create game states where 1 player is still playing Vintage and the other is playing Legacy with dead cards. And that has an extremely warping effect on the format. Before Karn was restricted, every deck that had fast mana was playing it. Even DPS. The most played creature when Chalice was legal was Ingot Chewer with even LSV playing it in Oath. And Narset created a pretty significant skew towards UGx as creatures were the most effective way of winning the Narset battles.

Unrestricting these cards won't really create a more broken Vintage but it will accentuate current trends. Urza's Saga mirrors already have a play-draw skew as one player gets to activate the Saga twice then grab a Needle or whatever. They would have larger constructs and more of them. Throw in a turn 1 Chalice or Karn and it would be impossible for the player on the draw to win the Saga mirror. Chalice is particularly brutal with Hollow One and Bazaar can pitch redundant copies. That deck was perhaps the strongest in UX when I played. Ragavan can get countered by Misstep but it also is protected by Misstep. It leads to a pretty rough mirror in that you need both the removal spell and enough Missteps to stop the opponent. Decks also wouldn't have to choose between Gush and Ragavan. They could easily play both if they wanted to.

It think of the cards listed, Lodestone Golem and Mentor would be among the safest unrestrictions as they enter a more crowded field of power-creeped win conditions. Mentor's competition used to be Young Pyromancer and that is a card that has become fringe. Witch was popular initially but became a bit outclassed with MH2. I don't think Mentor is as farfetched as you seem to think.

@stormanimagus And Mystic Sanctuary. It will be glorious.

Unrelated to this card specifically, I do like that they are building in incidental graveyard hate into otherwise strong cards in a way that doesn't feel like it is just tacked on (eg, Territorial Kavu). The Blue mythic is pretty interesting.