Vintage is not just about blue spells. There are also proactive strategies that exist in Vintage and they are very important in keeping the metagame balanced. Today I will introduce the most common decks built around the card Mishra's Workshop, which gave them their name 'Shops'.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/vintage-introducing-shops

For those interested I wrote a report from the latest Power Nine Challenge. This time I played with URw Delver and for some reason managed to place 10th which was the same place I managed with the deck last time :-). This deck choice was obviously totally wrong but it worked out for me ok.

Here's the link.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/power-nine-challenge-getting-consistent-another-top10-urw-delver

Before Eternal Weekend I started a series of Vintage articles aimed at new players that would like to venture to our world of Vintage. Here is a link to the third article of the series that was published yesterday.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/vintage-drawing-ramping-countering

Hello there,
there are many options how a Delver deck can look like but unlike other decks it is often usually a predator deck of some kind even though it has often more linear plan than other decks. You can either go for a very streamlined version or more fluid version that can play a control role. Splashing black usually makes you more control than then tempo.

The creature suite is not really that given. While you will most likely play 4 Delver of Secrets (it's usually 4 or 0), 4 Pyromancers doesn't need to be the case. I was often boarding out 1-2 Young Pyromancers in many games and it is to be seen if that might not be happening now as well. Note that without Gush this creature is kind of worse. So it depends on how many spells you can put in the deck and meaningfully use them.

Snapcaster Mage becomes very playable now but in order to get the most value out of this deck I'd still stick to a certain number of JVP. Since the deck is not that fast though now, maybe running Snapcaster Mage may be correct. I doubt it though. (so far I just board them out almost all the time...). I put Snapcaster Mages in because I want to have around 10 creatures that can swing. So if I won't find a better replacement I'll stick with this card.

The engine should be restricted spells + Preordain. You will need more though than just this and it is still to be seen what it may be. So far I tried all kind of tutors instead because I couldn't find anything better. The best card is actually Night's Whisper but is black which also a slightly different approach to how to play the deck. The cards I play now are 2 Spell Pierce, 1 Pyroblast, 1 Fragmentize, 1 Merchant Scroll, 1 Mystical Tutor. I'm still undecided about the two tutors. The other cards are doing their job well.

I wouldn't think Dack Fayden is necessary. At least not now before the metagame settles. It wasn't usually good even before. If you want a three drop Snapcaster Mage is better.

Mana Denial should feature Null Rod effect. Wasteland is a question. During the Shops/Mentor era it was actually good to play 4 Wastelands since that helped a lot, not only against Shops but also against other decks and even Mentor (if it wasn't the UW version). Some versions were very light on lands though so hitting occasional Tundra was good enough to win the game sooner.

Main deck hate is about to be seen. I'd run an enchantment/artifact hate main deck, otherwise I wouldn't bother. But a card like Smash to Smithereens might be ok though since it can deal 3 damage...(I run Fragmentize, but wouldn't run let's say Shatter....um or well a good artifact removal in those colors...that is)

As for Wasteland, if you play that as additional lands (spell slot) it is ok. Otherwise it can really put you behind. I tried to avoid running Wasteland as much as I could because I always needed every single blue mana I could produce to play cantrips and cheap countermagic. Wasteland was always messing with that plan. When the metagame changed a lot, wastelands became more of a necessity (see walking ballista and lands like workshop). I wouldn't say that wasteland is bad and I wouldn't say that wasteland is good either. It will depend on the decks that will emerge. By default I'd rather play without the card in my deck and I have 15ish lands available to me with a single strip mine being the additional land (15th land).

The same goes to Harsh Mentor, this card in diverse metagame is not good. Against some decks you need 4, against many you'd rather see anything else than a 2/2 that occasionally hits an opponent for 2 (fetchland usually). I did not think about how the deck should look like now though, so not sure what I'd play instead. Most probably some combination of JVP and Snapcaster Mage (I feel 1 would be the right number). I started with 3 Snapcaster Mages and that's certainly a number you don't want to run. Anyway Snappy is better than Harsh Mentor.

I play white because I expect Oath decks to be played so I rather have my Containment Priests ready (RIP and Stony Silence that is more difficult to get rid of...). Also play PTE to deal with some things like Blightsteel Colossus or Marit Lage.

Just build the deck and play with it. There are several different approaches but I would fall back on the Delver decks from when P9C started.

(By the way Abrade performed better than I expected, I like it more than Smash to Smithereens, but my deck was rather build against Shops by default)

I'm currently trying this. From there I will try to tweak it to suit my needs and the metagame.
http://stsungalters.com/temp/delver_urw.jpg

Hello everyone,
if anyone interested here is a report from the latest P9C.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/power-nine-challenge-grixis-therapy-journey

Those who read the thread under my tournament report have probably read part 1. I wrote a follow up article later but it took a while to be published (because in the meantime there was also part 2, a Vintage Daily report). So here is part 3.

Afterthoughts part 3 -> http://puremtgo.com/articles/deck-roles-proactivity-modern-vintage-urw-delver-journey-part-3

The original report -> http://puremtgo.com/articles/power-nine-challenge-getting-consistent-another-top10-urw-delver

and

Afterthoughts part 1 -> http://puremtgo.com/articles/afterthoughts-october-power-nine-challenge-part-1

@log I agree with you even though I had my say listening to you talk to PeAcH about Shops. I also expected a way higher number of Shops, mostly because I expected players from Germany to come and play (and there's a lot of Shops players there). Unfortunately they didn't come, similarly as others from France and vicinity due to mostly the reputation of BoM organizer (and whatnot).

I expected also Henrik, Niels and Simon to be on Shops and they play well. The problem wit up to date lists may also be because people don't want to play up-to-date Shops lists. I have Shops usually around and the version I was able to play was one that was acting more like a prison rather than aggro. Casting little creatures and attacking with them doesn't really appeal to me and I'd also wish to find something to interest me and I think this was the approach of many players there. I was playing somewhere at the lower tables (I don't want to offend anybody) but what I've seen there I could hardly call Vintage. There were so many weird things happening there, and also there were Shops around...'the theoretically easy deck to play'. The up-to-date lists are also something I'm not used to (it showed when I played with it).

It's true that the Vintage in Europe often looks like it got stuck in time and many players are a bit behind what is going on Magic Online or on the other side of the globe. At events here I often felt that I played with the same cards as online but the games were often totally different...One of the reasons may also be the fact that we have/had sanctioned Vintage events here mostly. This may be a reason why some players don't change decks, don't experiment and don't adapt.

Our local community started to follow a bit after I came and crushed their reality of what is Vintage. Some of the players felt that badly that they started wondering what's wrong and well it made them actually adapt a bit. In general....the consensus here is to play Vintage for fun. Most of the players were never good players in the first time, but they have access to Vintage cards so they can play Vintage. So when someone like me came there and beat them they felt that I'm from a different world and destroying something of theirs.

We should be glad that we can play paper Vintage even if Eternal Weekend/its organization was a big disappointment.

note: I'm talking about Vintage players in Europe...

@PeAcH @wappla: While I agree with PeAcH.... This is exactly something that has more to do with playstyle and the will to change roles when playing the deck.

I find the Sulfur Elemental too expensive to cast and not really good enough. While against Mentor it won't slow you down that much. It can reset a board and you can still win a game against Mentor. How often this scenario happens, is it worth it? Against White Eldrazi the card is good if the player plays Vryn Wingmares and Spirit of the Labyrinth but many decks don't even run these and it can't deal with new Thalia. I never boarded this against White Eldrazi later on. Just against Mentor and strange decks (and landstill). But there are players that used to play that card main deck!

In the end I cut all my Elementals and replaced them with Containment Priests. Those are more (mana efficient) and more versatile.

I also don't board Wear/Tear against (White) Eldrazi. When I need Chewers I have Chewers but if I play against Oath or Vault/Key decks I board in Wear/Tear. Fragmentize does not really help in this case.

Each of us will play the deck in a slightly different way and we all need different cards to make the deck work for us.

There is nothing like '2nd Tundra is a mistake'. Yes, it can be a mistake in your list but not for someone else who tweaks the deck a bit or has a different play style. Unless we are all perfect players we cannot say that a certain card choice is definitely a mistake. We all try to use our cards and our deck the best way we can. But sometimes we can't to the extent someone else can. So it is better if we play with something less efficient but something we can actually pilot the way we want and feel familiar with.

@p3temangus Thank you. After reading through TMD I came to the conclusion that no matter what I say it will most probably end up being flagged as subjective and without any kind of arguments behind my card choices or observations and I regret posting here.
The first article out of 3 I mentioned earlier is up on puremtgo.com (http://puremtgo.com/articles/afterthoughts-october-power-nine-challenge-part-1). It talks about URx Delver from my perspective and sums up what I already said partially here. If you want, you are free to check that out. (the second article is just report from the DE, part 3 talks about roles and proactivity from the URx Delver position. it was supposed to be one article but I had to divide that into 3 parts.)

As I already said I'm no proactive player. Having such a deck in my hands feels strange and that is why I decided to play Wear/Tear, Dack Fayden and Echoing Truth. It gives me options and that is something I need. There is already discussion on Fragmentize and Disenchant and it is very similar. The thing is Wear/Tear is hardly efficient unless you play it under very specific conditions. But the card won me so many games against Oath and Vault/Key decks (and some strange White Eldrazi builds) that I will stick with it most probably. I've played with Fragmentize since the card was printed and I always just want to cross it out in my decklist and put Wear/Tear in. I sadly watch my opponent going -> Tezzeret, Tinker -> Time Vault not being able to deal with it when I have Fragmentize in my deck. So if you are interested how I felt, I felt exactly this. Whenever I had Fragmentize in my hand it did not do what I needed it to do in this deck unlike in Esper Mentor where the card was solid.
EDIT: I know that most of the time many people see Wear/Tear as 2 mana artifact removal and 1 mana enchantment removal. During my games when I needed the Wear/Tear against blue decks I play it for 3 more often than you might think. Sometimes when I play Wear/Tear for 1 is because I want to bait out Misstep.

As for JVP. I started with 1 in my deck than played with 4 for few months. I started cutting those Jaces later though because it's not instant/sorcery. Even though it can replay instant/sorceries it often was taking up slots I needed for something else. If I were to play 4 of these I'd have to cut Pyroblast and Dack Fayden. When I had 2 in the deck I never had too many of them or too few so I decided that this is the right number. But well as with Wear/Tear there is nothing else I can tell you about that. It's my subjective decision, nothing I really pondered about. JVP on the other hand is VERY powerful card and I always want to play it over Young Pyromancer. It's a tough call to decide what card I want to play because both win games and if you play JVP and then Pyromancer it can be an overkill but sometimes it can go wrong. Having 4 JVPs main deck is also something that would change my SB plan and I'd rather avoid this...

As for Dack Fayden, on Magic Online the card hardly performed well even though it won the games when I played it. But JVP would have similar effect. Dack has an immediate impact though unlike Jace. But JVP outshines the card if the card sticks. In the paper tournaments I played Dack Fayden performed better and was my only way of actually catching up and helping me to win the game later. Only once I lost when my opponent needed to draw 3 specific cards and drew them with Ancestral Recall that I couldn't counter (my opponent got super lucky so I wouldn't count that...)
I don't know why I had different experience with the card online and in paper. Maybe because I played against more Oath and Landstill decks IRL where I usually prefer having Dack than JVP.

That single Echoing Truth is something that made me win games I couldn't have otherwise won and no other card would have won in those matches. It got rid of Moat, Marit Lage, army of hasty Zombies, Elesh Norn, Oath, Ensnaring Bridge, Fleetwheel Cruiser, Nahiri to name a few. I won those games. I even bounced my Pyromancer so my opponent with Griselbrand couldn't gain life, once I saved Jace this way because it was the only remaining card in my deck that could win the game. 10 turns later I milled my opponent with it. just because I had that Echoing Truth....I don't want to say the card is good and you don't need to play it if you have better cards to play and know how to use them. But if I look back at what Echoing Truth did for me ... I don't want to replace it.

Actually the most notable cards during my matches during this P9C and the SCG tournament I played in were basic lands. My opponents weren't happy about them at all.

I wanted to abstain from posting here. But I'll be around so if you want to ask me more questions or let me explain what I had in mind PM me. or message me somewhere else. I'll be happy to talk to you.

In order to have a follow up for my P9C Afterthoughts I needed to play more matches and if possible also play in several Vintage tournaments before the next P9C. I played in 3 different events (with 3-1 records) but decided to write a report from Vintage Daily event to promote it. There will be a follow up article sooner or later.

http://puremtgo.com/articles/vintage-daily-report-urw-delver-journey-part-2

That sounds great! I'd be up for it. I'm not entirely sure how many of us from our country can attend though (2 of us plan to attend Nebraska War but the rest didn't seem to be interested). I'll ask players around.

Bologna is easily accessed and very a nice city and usually cheap which would make it perfect for us to go. Both September and December seem rather too close (September because many people already had plans for July/August) and December because of Nebraska War being held in December as well.

(also would appreciate if Vintage would be held during the Modern event not Legacy since I'd also want to participate in that and many others most probably as well).

@log I agree with you even though I had my say listening to you talk to PeAcH about Shops. I also expected a way higher number of Shops, mostly because I expected players from Germany to come and play (and there's a lot of Shops players there). Unfortunately they didn't come, similarly as others from France and vicinity due to mostly the reputation of BoM organizer (and whatnot).

I expected also Henrik, Niels and Simon to be on Shops and they play well. The problem wit up to date lists may also be because people don't want to play up-to-date Shops lists. I have Shops usually around and the version I was able to play was one that was acting more like a prison rather than aggro. Casting little creatures and attacking with them doesn't really appeal to me and I'd also wish to find something to interest me and I think this was the approach of many players there. I was playing somewhere at the lower tables (I don't want to offend anybody) but what I've seen there I could hardly call Vintage. There were so many weird things happening there, and also there were Shops around...'the theoretically easy deck to play'. The up-to-date lists are also something I'm not used to (it showed when I played with it).

It's true that the Vintage in Europe often looks like it got stuck in time and many players are a bit behind what is going on Magic Online or on the other side of the globe. At events here I often felt that I played with the same cards as online but the games were often totally different...One of the reasons may also be the fact that we have/had sanctioned Vintage events here mostly. This may be a reason why some players don't change decks, don't experiment and don't adapt.

Our local community started to follow a bit after I came and crushed their reality of what is Vintage. Some of the players felt that badly that they started wondering what's wrong and well it made them actually adapt a bit. In general....the consensus here is to play Vintage for fun. Most of the players were never good players in the first time, but they have access to Vintage cards so they can play Vintage. So when someone like me came there and beat them they felt that I'm from a different world and destroying something of theirs.

We should be glad that we can play paper Vintage even if Eternal Weekend/its organization was a big disappointment.

note: I'm talking about Vintage players in Europe...

Congrats, man. Thanks for the report (It's not long, ever read my reports?). It's fun and well written and it allowed me to experience TMD Open even if I wasn't present since well I live too far to attend. So far TMD Opens were quite a mystery for me.

Erayo is pretty mean card...

@jcardshark (this is the correct decklist)

1 Library of Alexandria
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
4 Flooded Strand
1 Strip Mine
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Young Pyromancer
1 Monastery Mentor
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
2 Pyroblast
4 Force of Will
1 Gush
1 Time Walk
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ponder
4 Preordain
1 Gitaxian Probe
4 Mental Misstep
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Dig Through Time
1 Fragmentize
1 Tragic Lesson
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Stony Silence
2 Dack Fayden

2 Ingot Chewer
2 Containment Priest
2 Pyroblast
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Flusterstorm
1 Fragmentize
2 By Force
1 Stony Silence
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Rest in Peace

I'm not entirely sure who to ask but does anyone know if we also get Legacy decklists somewhere (outside the top 8 which was already very difficult to find?)

@kistrand just as any other bot. The good thing about Goatbots is that they buy cards usually earlier than other bots. All the strange stuff from treasure chests or something special like the Power Nine shows can be bought or sold to them from day 1.

the right bordered power is so beautiful!!! love

There were long 'discussions' about this on Facebook. The organizators of MKM Series claimed many things from Wizards not allowing them to get premier status, low attendance (true), that they were losing money or that Wizards is pushing them into Limited.

(getting 1 point from the Vintage and Legacy events felt really, really bad. Thanks to that I don't have enough points for another season)

I may have not organized a very big event like this yet, but all what they claimed as reasons to drop Vintage are things they could have just simply fixed instead of using that as an excuse (that's how it feels to me). Getting premier status for an event is not actually that difficult, the problem comes when Trials are involved because those have to be set in advance. That requires time and also more will from the LGS that would want to run them.

Vintage is dropped as an main event and there will be a 4 round Challenge event instead.

I don't think that Vintage is dying in Europe there were more and more players, they just had a hard time attending events.

BoM is actually the reason why Vintage started to die in the first place because they were really doing events for their profit in a harmful way for the players instead of trying to find some kind of balance between profiting and also making the players happy. That's one of the reasons many players didn't go to the first EW. They lost their trust and that is something that is very difficult to earn back.

The last several MKM events were seriously bad in terms of everything. Events capped at the prizes' treshold for example is something that doesn't look good, especially if you know that the place actually could hold about 80+ players more and at least those that got byes for the event could be let in. If you want many 'funny' stories just talk to me and I'll tell you how it looked like in Germany and Czech Republic.

JK is starting their own series instead of doing MKM. So we'll see how that will go. I'm not really sure how many players will be willing to come for the Vintage events though.
http://jk-entertainment.de/die-jk-series-kommt-terminplanung-und-alle-infos-bisher/

@didor Honestly I tried Mentor in all kind of decks from Landstill to Delver and in the Delver deck it didn't feel right. I often didn't have mana for it and I also hardly trigger Pyromancer triggers. Mentor is a card you usually want to win the game, but you will also have troubles casting it.

I run Mox Pearl though so that makes it a bit easier for me but in my original build running 15 lands Mentor was problematic. If you are running 4 Wastelands it may not be such a problem and might be a nice addition but from the 3 leagues I played in and faced many of the UR Delver decks...those decks are actually more aggressive than mine and really beatdown and attack resources. Those decks don't have time for casting Mentor often. In my version (see screenshot above) the card is actually more playable even though it may not seem like it at first sight.

Hello there,
there are many options how a Delver deck can look like but unlike other decks it is often usually a predator deck of some kind even though it has often more linear plan than other decks. You can either go for a very streamlined version or more fluid version that can play a control role. Splashing black usually makes you more control than then tempo.

The creature suite is not really that given. While you will most likely play 4 Delver of Secrets (it's usually 4 or 0), 4 Pyromancers doesn't need to be the case. I was often boarding out 1-2 Young Pyromancers in many games and it is to be seen if that might not be happening now as well. Note that without Gush this creature is kind of worse. So it depends on how many spells you can put in the deck and meaningfully use them.

Snapcaster Mage becomes very playable now but in order to get the most value out of this deck I'd still stick to a certain number of JVP. Since the deck is not that fast though now, maybe running Snapcaster Mage may be correct. I doubt it though. (so far I just board them out almost all the time...). I put Snapcaster Mages in because I want to have around 10 creatures that can swing. So if I won't find a better replacement I'll stick with this card.

The engine should be restricted spells + Preordain. You will need more though than just this and it is still to be seen what it may be. So far I tried all kind of tutors instead because I couldn't find anything better. The best card is actually Night's Whisper but is black which also a slightly different approach to how to play the deck. The cards I play now are 2 Spell Pierce, 1 Pyroblast, 1 Fragmentize, 1 Merchant Scroll, 1 Mystical Tutor. I'm still undecided about the two tutors. The other cards are doing their job well.

I wouldn't think Dack Fayden is necessary. At least not now before the metagame settles. It wasn't usually good even before. If you want a three drop Snapcaster Mage is better.

Mana Denial should feature Null Rod effect. Wasteland is a question. During the Shops/Mentor era it was actually good to play 4 Wastelands since that helped a lot, not only against Shops but also against other decks and even Mentor (if it wasn't the UW version). Some versions were very light on lands though so hitting occasional Tundra was good enough to win the game sooner.

Main deck hate is about to be seen. I'd run an enchantment/artifact hate main deck, otherwise I wouldn't bother. But a card like Smash to Smithereens might be ok though since it can deal 3 damage...(I run Fragmentize, but wouldn't run let's say Shatter....um or well a good artifact removal in those colors...that is)

As for Wasteland, if you play that as additional lands (spell slot) it is ok. Otherwise it can really put you behind. I tried to avoid running Wasteland as much as I could because I always needed every single blue mana I could produce to play cantrips and cheap countermagic. Wasteland was always messing with that plan. When the metagame changed a lot, wastelands became more of a necessity (see walking ballista and lands like workshop). I wouldn't say that wasteland is bad and I wouldn't say that wasteland is good either. It will depend on the decks that will emerge. By default I'd rather play without the card in my deck and I have 15ish lands available to me with a single strip mine being the additional land (15th land).

The same goes to Harsh Mentor, this card in diverse metagame is not good. Against some decks you need 4, against many you'd rather see anything else than a 2/2 that occasionally hits an opponent for 2 (fetchland usually). I did not think about how the deck should look like now though, so not sure what I'd play instead. Most probably some combination of JVP and Snapcaster Mage (I feel 1 would be the right number). I started with 3 Snapcaster Mages and that's certainly a number you don't want to run. Anyway Snappy is better than Harsh Mentor.

I play white because I expect Oath decks to be played so I rather have my Containment Priests ready (RIP and Stony Silence that is more difficult to get rid of...). Also play PTE to deal with some things like Blightsteel Colossus or Marit Lage.

Just build the deck and play with it. There are several different approaches but I would fall back on the Delver decks from when P9C started.

(By the way Abrade performed better than I expected, I like it more than Smash to Smithereens, but my deck was rather build against Shops by default)

I'm currently trying this. From there I will try to tweak it to suit my needs and the metagame.
http://stsungalters.com/temp/delver_urw.jpg

@p3temangus I'm obviously not a marine corp or anything but during the past few years of professionally selling Magic cards I shipped many orders to different ships and bases all around the world (takes long time till it gets where it should and tracking those shipments is certainly funny). Some people order from me regularly and I always wonder when do those people have the time to actually play Magic. I've been also sending larger quantities of FNM and Prerelease promos (some base in Afghanistan was one of those places) and wondered what someone would actually want to do with that in larger quantities. The thought of someone organizing an event didn't come to my mind...
The Americans living here that I know all started playing Magic while in the army...(that might be just a coincidence)

@elusive thanks for sharing^_~