If you really tried? If dedicated yourself to anti-Shops anti-MentorCantrips?

So i don't totally know what i am doing, but i was brewing around (on paper) and came up with something like this. This is an excercise and thought experiment but i'm not not serious about making a real valid attempt at making this as viable as possible. It may be garbage, and if so, it may be unsalvageable, but we don't build decks for no reason so there should always be something to learn.

Creatures: (18)
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Dark Confidant
3 Grim Flayer
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Sulfur Elemental
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Manglehorn
3 Ramunap Excavator

Hand Disruption: (10)
3 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Chains of Mephistopheles
3 Liliana of the Veil

Removal: (8)
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Abrade
2 Ingot Chewer
2 Sudden Shock
1 Snuff Out

Tutors: (4)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Green Sun's Zenith

Mana: (20)
5 Lotus, Sol Ring, Moxes
2 Bayou
2 Badlands
1 Taiga
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wooded Foothills

The goal here is to get ahead in mana with the set of 4x Deathrite Shaman and 1x Dryad Arbor, which is fetchable with 2x Green Sun's Zenith.
Dark Confidant provides card advantage that dodges Chains, and while i have 34 cards at 0-1 mana, i have a lot of 3-mana spells. He dodges damage with support provided by the filtering Grim Flayer can provide, who can attain Delirium by himself, but i have a fair amount of various spells and sac-lands to get him there.
Flayer also pitches lands for Ramunap Excavator so i can draw actionable spells when i want and play from my 'second hand' for lands. Ramunap provides further support against Shop's Spheres and Wastelands, and i hope also provides me a Crucible to win those attrition wars since it seems Shops is not on Crucible.
There's some Sulfur Elemental for White Weenies and some awful temple-dwelling spiritualist that makes terrible 1/1s. The elemental is not totally terrible vs non-white decks, as he still is an uncounterable 3 power flash dude and knocks Jace flat.
Teeg and Manglehorn are extra flex for Green Sun. I'm not sure about Manglehorn on the whole. He sure does come down and poop on a Shops piece, but i also thought it stops some Fleetweel or if get the drop on Paradoxical he can stuff them up. Teeg works against Paradoxical, the spell, as well Force and Jace. Stops me from Casting Snuff out and of course Green Sun but that is acceptable.

The one-for-one 1cmc hand disruption is really sad against Mental Misstep, no doubt. Which is still marginally useful as it's easier to cast some Deathrites later perhaps. It is, however, generally perfectly acceptable against forms of combo still.
Chains is in there because of cantrips/JaceDack galore and variants of Paradoxical and maybe sometimes Griselbrand out of Oath, with some splash against metalcrafting Thoughtcast types.
Liliana is not the threat she is in Legacy, but she is still too good to not be an autoinclude if you are playing BRG grind. She may not be as scary as mentor and she does not destroy mentor, but Liliana lets you pitch lands for later use with Ramunap (you don't play your land drop from hand) and activate Flayer much easier, and if you get to grind for 2-3 turns against a blue deck, that feels just swell. She is very reasonable vs Oath if she can resolve, but that is not especially likely i feel, and doubly doubtful if they are on Griselbrand. She's garbage against shops because of their threat density/Precursor, Revoker, Ballista, and Hangarback.

The removal suite is built clearly around Monastery and artifacts. I tried to diversify very well against other decks.
2x Abrupt and 2x Sudden Shock give serious edge vs Mentor, although with Abrupt they may possibly get tokens instead of 1. I mean they can even 'counter' targeting Abrupt. Abrupt is also just regular amounts of powerful vs many things as a catchall. Dack, JVP, Oath, most creatures out of Shops even if not ideal, Paradoxical stuff.
Sudden Shock seems like such a Mentor card of course, but also can lay some serious damage against Shops. It may not seem like much with the two damage, but not only does it kill Revoker, it can destroy Ravager or Ballista before any activations or in response to an activation maybe targeting Factory. It can be played around, but maybe you poop on someone's day for a minute when they don't think you are playing such a thing.
Abrade is some serious flex i think. Mentor may dodge it if they are holding two spells, and it can be countered as normal. But it will kill it sometimes, so it's not totally dead, even though it shines a little more against shops, and of course has a splash against Paradoxical stuff and the few fair decks like Maybe a Leovold.
Grudge and Nature's Claim are just more diversification. Grudge is very specific and narrow but can be cast twice, which i value, and has bonus points for pitching cleanly to Lili or Flayer.
Snuff out is just fine as yet another removal vs normies, but 'free' casting against resisters in Shops makes this flexible there, and it also kills Eldrazi as well as dodge their Sphere a little.

Demonic and Vampiric just help along the way of a little card selection with the silver bullets, or helping ensure drawing Ramunap or the correct removal.
Green Sun's has more than enough targets to be fine to draw later in the game. It's got 2 silver bullet types but the standard engine-guys of Ramunap, Deathrite, and Flayer are there.

Mana is some standard restricted artifacts, regular duals and fetches, but also a set of Wastelands for grinding and taking out Shop, Bazaar, Academy, Library. I didn't set on any basic lands or go over 5 colored mana producing lands, and i do not know if that is correct. I want some number of fetches, but they are not great with Ramunap after you have pulled out your 'real' lands. It may be more correct to drop a fetch and something else for a couple extra 'real' lands, but it is also possibly very incorrect to do since Deathrite wants some lands to eat. Without a lot of practice, i cannot say right now that Deathrites are going to get there on the mana. They can Misstep, Plowed, or Revokered and absolutely none of that garbage is what we want.

I believe the sideboard includes a couple Sudden Shock and Ingot Chewers to replace each other when you find out which deck you are playing. There is the rest of the typical stuff, and some things like Tormod's Crypt are also sweet for a boost to Flayer.

Hey all, here at Eternal Weekend.

I unfortunately did not get to play in Vintage Trials today, but i wandered around both and took a look at everything.

I saw a handful of Shops and a lot of URW Pyromancers (not specifically sure if all were new Mentor decks or if there was some unknown cards). Something a little surprising to me was how much UBG Leovold decks there were! It made me think i might want one more creature removal spell in my deck (which might be easy, since usps had delays and i did not get my Sapphire).

Surely there were some Dredge and Paradoxical but i didn't notice at all any today, so so far seems possibly a little bit light. Saw an Oath and a white eldrazi.

Anyone here and want to share any info they noticed, what they are expecting, what they are playing, some general notes about sideboards?

I had difficulty selecting dredge hate because of transformative sideboards, so i have 2 cages, 3 board wipes varia ts, and an extra spot removal for large creatures (Hollow/Angler). Feel a little bit uncomfortable but so indecisive.

@drstreetmention If you don't pay the rest of the ability (sac/pay), your searched up artifact goes to the graveyard before seeing play.

It's a UU Entomb for artifacts if you want.

I build what i am passionate about and enjoy, so i am frequently casting pet cards and some random singletons. As a rule, there are a few cards in here i would probably be suggested to cut, but that i won't. That doesn't mean i am not looking for any help, insight, suggestions to add/cut because i still want to walk the middle of "some pet cards" and "some actual viability".

I haven't tested this, i hope that it is not faux pas to be posting here like this. I play 4 color control in legacy, although this is quite different (not just because of the moxes).

There is a lot more action in here than gas (no Preordain, for example), and i went with a little hard draw with Sphinx and 2 Painful Truths, rather than cantrip, to stay up in cards.

The standard plan is to battlecruise to victory. Deathrites, Leovold, Kess, Tasigur and Sphinx are the main attackers. A little Drain action for the Sphinx, but otherwise content to sit with DRS, a planeswalker, open mana, and patience as long as you can counter a critical spell and clear some Golems from the board.

Lands (14)
1 Library of Alexandria
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Volcanic Island
1 Bayou
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn

Restricted Mana (6)
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Moxes

Creatures (10)
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Leovold
1 Tasigur
1 Kess
1 Snapcaster
1 Consecrated Sphinx

Planeswalker (6)
3 Dack Fayden
2 Jace TMS
1 Jace VP

Removal (6)
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Abrade
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ancient Grudge

Card Draw/Selection (7)
2 Painful Truths
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Dig Through Time
1 Treasure Cruise

Counters (11)
4 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
3 Mana Drain
1 Flusterstorm

Good Stuff (2)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk

Other Stats
62 Cards
12 Creatures
7 Artifact
19 Instants
6 Sorceries
39 Permanents
28 Blue Cards
5 Green Cards (9 with Shaman incl)
10 Black Cards (14 with Shaman incl)
6 Red Cards

For one, i am not sure if the lands are correct the way that they are. I play the Badlands/Bayou for flexibility, but i might be more correct cutting them for another Trop and Volc? This is close to what i play in Legacy (3 sea, 2 Trop, 2 Volc, 1 Bads, 1 Bayou) and i have moxes here, but i didn't cut too far down so i can remain flexible on lands drops/fetches. That said, there are 3 Dacks, too, though. However, no Gush. Also really unsure of reliability in number of lands. Should i actually be adding 3 more lands maybe?

I believe the creatures are correct as is. I could be talked out of Tasigur i think, although he seems really strong for a cheap beater that lets you spend well the mana you leave up for counters. I guess i don't need to explain what he does, i'm just saying it seems to be where i want to be at, but also seems like i may not be activating his ability. I may not have 4 mana, or i may not have 4 mana when i have to attempt to counter a spell.

Is the removal count somewhat reasonable? I included maindeck Grudge since i will probably be able to cast it twice any game i draw it in and have targets, although of course mileage varies different decks. With uptick in Outcome and shops doing fine, might be where i want to sit. Abrupt Decay just seems ridiculous, great catchall. Does not hit Jace TMS, Precursor, or Eldrazi (which is also not huge portion of meta, though). Explosives seems incredible all the time, poop on tokens, moxes, Spheres/Hatebears/Revokers.

Is Krosan Grip okay right now with some Bargain uptick? Once an opponent knows you have it, you may be out of luck since they can activate any number of times with priority. But there is generally no reason to resolve Bargain and just say "10 cards", right? Instead activating it for 1 to see what you get? 3 mana is obviously a stretch just for that surprise though. But, possibly not totally dead against Shops, since you can kill Ballista or Ravager without any response.

Is the Drain + Sphinx okay? It seems good. Doesn't seem like a broken tier 1 strategy but doesn't seem embarrassing.

I also thought about Tinker + Blightsteel, but not sure if i have space, should make space, or be the same deck as Drain Sphinx. Could foresee a couple situations i hardcast Blightsteel with Drain, but eh.

Trying to assess how the counter suite should be modified, i do not feel it is optimal necessarily. I want extra game against Paradoxical, but i am also a fan of Drain. Because of adding Drains, i am at 3 Misstep and 0 MBT/0 REB.

I am a less soft to Misstep and Chalice than other decks, which is cool even though Chalice is restricted, but i also kind of put weight on DRS for mana and draining life.

I don't really know what the sideboard will exactly be.

1x By Force
1x Meltdown (is this card not favor? I think i like it)
2x Pyroblast
2x Flusterstorm
2x Mindbreak Trap
3x Pithing Needle
4x Leyline of the Void

Is just a random start. I mean i think there must be some number of Ingot Chewer and Cage for example.

Other cards i have been looking at:

Tinker + Blightsteel; I enjoy this, although i have 7 artifacts. With DT and card drawing, i should be able to assemble it. However, i cut it for now.

Preordain: Just playing more action spells than card filtering. Having 3 Dack and multiple rebuys of restricted cantrips helps. This is kind of just my style.

Kolaghan's Command: More a mainstay of the 4 color control in Legacy. With Thorn restricted, probably much more likely to cast this, and 3 of the modes seem just fine against artifacts. I don't mind the plan of grinding out shops until they have little board or cards in hand, and this can shoot down 2 creatures, but not all of them. Just have to watch for timing on Factory, but can force movement on Ballista and pop a Revoker.

Sudden Shock: Was much more interested in this with 4x Mentor decks. With the restriction, should i even play it at all? It does pop Ravager and Ballista but not really sure there's where i want to be with this spell.

Tutors: Vampiric and Merchant Scroll. I'm not really trying to peel through my deck for just 1 one of a small few game ending threats. So, not really trying either of these.

True Name Nemesis: I don't know, seems like a great threat. Vintage is not a format of Marsh Casualties and Toxic Deluge. Strongly considering it.

Yawgmoth's Will: I had this, and felt it was mostly just goodstuff. I didn't have a combo i needed to rebuy or assemble, and i didn't want to pay 3 to buyback on one spell.

Scavenging Ooze, Manglehorn, Ramunap Excavator, Trygon Predator: I like these, but i felt like playing more spell-based control and my creature selection fits that better. I could see leaning this way a little.

@john-cox They mean a 0/1 Drop of Honey selects itself as the lowest power creature. Which is different than Enchantment Drop of Honey which only blows itself up if there are no creatures.

@benjamin_berry said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

Just add an extra effect that's mostly irrelevant like. If ~ entered the battlefield from you hand gain 1 life.

Not mostly irrelevant, many decks will still play enough of these they gain a couple life. Strictly better duals seem ridiculous, since they are already bonkers anyway.

@xxhazardxx said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

"Tarnished Lotus"
Artifact
Tap, Sacrifice [this]: Choose one

Add three mana of any color to your mana pool
Or
Add <><><> to your mana pool

I don't see any point in deliberately printing awful cards like this though. It's really, really poor game design and just spits in people's faces imo. I don't see any way in which WOTC on purpose prints a card they know ahead of time needs to be banned/restricted, that is explicitly just better than the single best card in the game.

And it doesn't solve the price barrier problem, because now people will play 2 lotuses. I am fine owning a lotus and presuming everyone has 1 copy of this high variance bs power level card in their deck, but having 2 when your opponent has one is just so much worse than 1 to 0.

The above scenario is exactly the kind of thing i would not consider a 'new lotus' to solve. Players who want to play paper but give up because they cannot afford a lotus (lotus is not really the only barrier here, anyway) are not suddenly playing a $50 'new lotus' and competing just fine, when others have 2 in the deck now.

Both really violate the spirit of the reserve list, too, i feel. Mark has said as much regarding "strictly better versions" and that they have no intention of doing so.

@maximumcdawg said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

Yeah, it faces some practical problems; do you want every game to start with a deck check?

Well, you don't deck check your opponents at the start of every match to make sure they aren't playing 2 Black Lotus. I could probably play a lot of games against someone with two Lotuses in my deck, without them noticing. Am i mistaken in thinking this is actually not different?

@maximumcdawg said in The Reserve List - The Reddest Red Herring:

Memory of the Lotus 0 Artifact
When this enters the battlefield, choose an opponent. That opponent searches your library for a card named "Black Lotus." If the opponent can find the card, then you lose the game. Shuffle your library afterwards.
T: Sac for three $$$

Besides being broken and probably unprintable for poor game design, this also doesn't make you lose if you have the Black Lotus in your hand. You could tweak the idea to include that, the graveyard, exile, and 'on the battlefield'/'owns a Black Lotus on the battlefield'. It makes it a really bad black lotus, but that is still beyond overpowered. Like it seems 100% playable if you can't afford a Black Lotus.

I think certain power is going nowhere. Not the format we want bans in, i think 'strictly better' or 'strictly kind of different sort of' variants are really poor game design, i think combo bans are really bad.

Wotc should looks towards printing cards that don't obsolete power or replace power for those who can't afford it, but rather more cards that make it easier to play decks that don't contain power. A little extra creature action to pressure the planeswalkers and low Swords counts, a decently castable okay creature that has the awesome ability of Channel 1G: Discard ~this, destroy target artifact or enchantment/G for less than 3cmc.

I think Nimble Obstructionist is a great card, it may not be Vintage playable, but it sure is an incredible design imo. There could be more of those styles in the future, but unfortunately the others are not so great.

Abolish is great design, but doesn't work for the format because everyone is greedy and is allowed to play moxes and Dack Fayden and skip lands in favor of having 10 draw spells. Maybe something like that design works better instead of paying the mana cost it has the ability that you exile it and artifact you control to exile target artifact.

Some stuff to play with along those lines.

I don't exactly like the trend of printing good hate cards onto creatures at a low cost, but perhaps instead of a Null Rod creature (which would be just berserk, right?) you get some 1W 2/1 that allows players to only activate one artifact ability per turn.

There's just so many hate cards that crap on people's best cards already, they just don't necessarily play well when you want to cast your own power cards. So maybe hoping for more of the same is not going to help. You'd rather play Ancestral than Spirit, you know?

I think you don't want 4x of 2 duals, i think you want a couple duals and some fetches? A blue dual too, because of your cantrips.

Chalice is definitely missing.

Damping Sphere only hurts shops when it's down very early.

Mark already specified at least 3 times in the last 2 days they aren't going to. Technically it can't mean never since the game may be around for 10 more years, but it's kind of unrealistic to think of as possible design space.

Plus, PWs are characters and are special/unique. There's not really any reason to make non-legend walkers. It's as likely as making a legendary creature that's not supposed to be a 1-of and nameless.

edit: "It won't happen until maybe it does happen" - this doesn't seem to mean anything? That's true of everything if we are getting really technical. I can't begin to see how that's even a reason to believe that it will happen, much less makes it 'likely'.

I don't think a concession should be acceptable in this case (and most others where it affects other persons in such a way).

Speaking from a more rules-oriented position, I do not think that concessions exist to match fix and screw players like this. However, you cannot be forced to play a match, and no one could truly enforce such a rule anyway. This has always lead me to believe that using concessions for any reasons such as this example, or IDs, is simply an abuse of a system that can never truly enforce what i would consider 'fair play'.

Whether it is allowed in the rules or not, this does not change the fact that someone lost a top 8 spot they would have otherwise earned. After reading this whole thread, i still cannot see how someone can justify that outside of "the rules allow it".

The short of it is that the rules do not exist for people to scoop when they have nothing to lose, just to give their friend (or a stranger) a favor into the top 8. They cannot be 'fixed' to do so, but it is not my belief that WOTC structures their rules under any belief that "you should be able to ID/concede and propel someone into top8 who has technically done a little worse than someone else who had to play for their match". So i would consider someone in this position to be abusing rules, unethical, and not playing honestly.

I like, i'm not 'a bunch of creatures' plan so i have more removals and less creatures. Similar axis.

I don't think you really want Demonic Tutor? You have so many 4-ofs that Nissa's is functioning very similarly a portion of the time?

And yea, i believe you for sure want Teeg. Maybe you don't need Demonic as much as Teeg, but i could see shaving 1 Ramunap. We do not need his ability in multiples, barring tons of 1-for-1 removal, but you just have so many threats that Swords is surely going to be needed to be pressed on other guys you can bait with.

I think you don't want 4x of 2 duals, i think you want a couple duals and some fetches? A blue dual too, because of your cantrips.

Chalice is definitely missing.

Damping Sphere only hurts shops when it's down very early.

@john-cox They mean a 0/1 Drop of Honey selects itself as the lowest power creature. Which is different than Enchantment Drop of Honey which only blows itself up if there are no creatures.

@tittliewinks22 I see you are playing Dig even if not Cruise, just can't cast 2 delve spells?

Tendrils does seem sweet but i haven't even a little bit tried it. I'm not sure i know how to Gifts into a pile for Storm, but i did play Paradoxical the last few months.

Sol Ring does seem a great upgrade.

Did you ever try Noxious Revival? I dropped it and it helped me realize it wasn't that good because i started building better piles. Doesn't make me like it less though, heh, so still curious if you had a go with it or not.

@tittliewinks22 What does Manamorphose do in a deck like this? I don't play Modern at all but i see it in UR storm and thought it was only for storm count.

No Treasure Cruise? How are you liking Regrowth?

My build is like yours but i'm tinkering with a few things. I've got the same setup for being able to Gifts into Tinker Time Walk or into Key Vault, but i'm toying with a 5c goodstuff build that also plays Dack/Thief, Leovold, Kess, and Mentor, but it's very busy.

@serracollector said in Discard spells:

I do love the new Black stp for Artifacts and Eldrazi tho.

To what do you refer?

@drstreetmention If you don't pay the rest of the ability (sac/pay), your searched up artifact goes to the graveyard before seeing play.

It's a UU Entomb for artifacts if you want.

I'm firing up a Vintage league over the month of October locally, allowing proxies. About 7 solid so far up to maybe 12 depending on the next few days. We might do round robin, which sounds like a ton of matches, but this actually allows us to play at leisure over the month; each participant meets with each other whenever they can arrange that between the 2 of them, which isn't so hard given nearly every player is a regular attendee at one or more weekly events at our most popular local store.

@drstreetmention Leovold comes to mind. I played 4c control at EW last year with Dack/Thief shell (no tinkerbot and keyvault packages so i don't want to call it thieves, heh)

Thank you!

@tittliewinks22 Yes, duh. I missed that. For sure, +3 Yawg cards to play with, unlike Snap which, if it stays in play, cannot be used to flash something back a second time. Thanks for reminding me, i will definitely be picking up a copy.

Have you been playing Snap at all? How many copies each?

And if you have a list, i would love to see it.

@drstreetmention Unrelated sorry, but what was the 5c Thieves like? I haven't heard of a list but if you know it exists and can point it out i would appreciate it.