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Main » Articles » 5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on June 20, 2014
 Reddit

Vintage Masters is on Magic Online now, and that means just one thing: it's time to get into some eternal formats. What kind of absurd things does Conspircacy enable in Legacy? What does Vintage look like in 2014? Let's take a whirlwind tour of some of the most exciting things going on in eternal Magic.

The greatest thief in the multiverse is here, but is he ready to make a debut in eternal formats? People have high hopes for Dack Fayden in Vintage, where artifacts define the manabases of a significant portion of the top tier of decks. But what about Legacy? This week Caleb Durward took an opportunity to explore what Dack can do in a slightly less degenerate format where Dack is mostly exciting for his looting ability:

[Cardlist Title= Dak Cascade- Legacy | Caleb Durward]

Dack Fayden plus Punishing Fire is an absurd card advantage engine. Punishing Fire/Grove of the Burnwillows is a fine combination to run in Legacy right now, giving you ways to shut down decks like Elves, Delver of Secrets, and Deathrite Shaman. You can even just start sending Punishing Fires to the face against controlling opponents. Dack Fayden lets you forget all about that and just turn your Punishing Fires into extra cards. Awesome.

What about the rest of the deck? You've got the pretty traditional cascade engine of Shardless Agent powering you into Ancestral Vision and Thoughtseize. Deathrite Shaman lets you ramp into your more powerful late-game effects and gives you amazing utility against the field. But the most exciting thing about this deck is the possibility of Bloodbraid Elf into Dack Fayden. We used to see Bloodbraid into Jace Beleren in old Extended formats; is this similar interaction good enough for Legacy?

I'm excited to see what a midrangey deck like this is capable of in Legacy right now. You've got the tools to beat up on more aggressive fair decks, disruption against unfair decks, and Abrupt Decay to beat up on Counterbalance decks. The tools are there; now it's all about finding the right proportion.

It's been awhile since we've seen Tezzeret do anything in Legacy. Occasionally UB decks put up awesome results in Legacy, and Tezzeret the Seeker is insane in Vintage, but it's been awhile since we've seen something new and exciting. Recently, Joe Losset has put down his Entreat the Angels and has been brewing up something sweet that I'm excited to take a look at:

UW Tezzeret - Legacy | Oarsman, Legacy Daily Event

This is a more aggressive take on UW than I'm used to seeing. Not in the sense that you're planning on beating down. The difference is that you aren't looking to lock up the game with Sensei's Divining Top and Counterbalance; you're interested in jamming powerful spells and ending the game. You've got Ancient Tomb to power out your planeswalkers as early as turn two off of Signets and Talismans. You've got Chalice of the Void to just end the game against some number of combo and Delver opponents.

Most importantly, you have Tezzeret to start tutoring up game-ending singletons. Ensnaring Bridge for opponents on Show and Tell; Thopter Foundry plus Sword of the Meek for grindier matchups; just lands if you're still trying to set up for later turns.

What's really interesting to me is that Joe has picked some really interesting singletons for the sideboard. Helm of Obedience is a wombo-combo with Elspeth, Knight-Errant or Thopter Foundry. Lodestone Golem shuts down combo decks and applies pressure all at once. Ethersworn Canonist is an absurd sideboard card against combo decks like Elves.

This deck is exciting; it's a fresh, proactive take on Blue-White in a format where Miracles is the premier deck in those colors. Being able to use the same cards, Tezzeret and Transmute Artifact, to either slow the game down or get more aggressive is awesome, and the sheer utility this deck has access to is really exciting. While most decks are focusing on Brainstorm and Sensei's Divining Top to find their powerful one-ofs, you can just tutor them into play. That's powerful, and it's something I'm excited to see more of.

We've seen a couple of different takes on Dark Depths plus Thespian's Stage in Legacy at this point, but we haven't really seen it in the shell, that people expected it to take off in: Lands. There was a Jund Smallpox deck earlier this year and an Into the North ramp deck, but no actual Manabond plus Life from the Loam control deck. Gerry Thompson is looking to remedy that:

[Cardlist Title=Lands - Legacy | Gerry Thompson]

I've always been a fan of this deck because it's a super powerful shell that attacks from a completely different angle than most other decks in the format. You have utility lands to do literally everything and can just steal games by tutoring up those effects and using them over and over with Life from the Loam. Wasteland, Bojuka Bog, Glacial Chasm, and Grove of the Burnwillows are the primary targets if you're looking to slow the game down.

The difference now is that you're not trying with win with a Mindslaver lock or Creeping Tar Pit beats. Instead, you can make an instant speed Marit Lage and just kill your opponent. If they have a Swords to Plowshares? You've got three or four turns of life to play with while you set up another Marit Lage.

This deck is very powerful, flexible, and only gets better as people get more ambitious with their mana bases. You've got a little bit of a rough time against combo decks, but not as much as previous iterations. You've still got access to powerful sideboard cards, but now also a fast combo kill of your own to realistically race. I like where this deck is positioned in the current metagame, especially since the deck can be tweaked to shift your focus to other matchups just by changing the manabase.

So Vintage. It's a format of turn one kills off of Bazaar of Baghdad or [car]Dark Ritual, Smokestack locks, and Oath of Druids, right? That's what most players think if they haven't explored the format much, and it's not completely inaccurate. But Ari Lax's article this week shared a number of Vintage lists that show off some of the other aspects of the format. Did you know that there are decks that try to cast Restoration Angel in Vintage? I didn't.

[Cardlist title= UW Angels - Vintage | Ari Lax]

This is just a Blue-White disruption deck built for Magic's most unfair format. People are more than capable of killing you before you get a turn, and it's still fine to cast Restoration Angel instead of Jace, the Mind Sculptor. This deck is powerful because it's like Faeries. You leave mana up and you hope your opponent tries to play around the wrong things.

To be fair, there's a lot of things they have to worry about. Force of Will and Mana Drain to start with. Then they have to wonder if you have Snapcaster Mage for Mana Drain, Restoration Angel to beat down, or Fact or Fiction to reload. Maybe it's just Vendilion Clique. It almost doesn't matter; they can't play around everything and you give them plenty of opportunities to make mistakes.

You get to interact early and often, and will have all the options you could possibly need to interact on your opponent's turns. You'll always have more information than your opponent when making decisions and that gives them more chances to make bad decisions for you to capitalize on. Personally, I'm more interested in doing something more unfair, but I'm excited that a Blue-White tempo-ish deck can exist in the Magic's most degenerate format.

Ari Lax featured a ton of decks in his article this week, but the one that I was most excited about is Steel City Vault. This is one of the "Restricted List" combo decks that tries to do degenerate as early as possible. Instead of your end game being Tendrils of Agony or Dread Return, you're just trying to set up Time Vault plus Voltaic Key. Let's take a look:

[Cardlist title=Steel City Vault - Vintage | Ari Lax]

This is degenerate. You've got the "traditional" plan of breaking the symmetry of draw sevens with your powerful mana rocks. Imagine vomiting your Moxen and Sol Rings into play and then forcing your opponent to draw a new hand. Not only do you get another shot at hitting more mana and continuing your combo, you get to force your opponent to ship the hand they chose to keep in favor of one that they have to keep whether they want to or not.

On top of that, you can cantrip and sculpt your hand into something that can force through a Tinker or series of tutors into Ancestral Recall and set up your combo. You have free countermagic to force through your key spells and all the tutors you could possibly require to find the disruption, draw sevens, or combo pieces that you need to keep the combo going.

I haven't played much Vintage, but when I do I like to feel like I'm doing something incredibly unfair. How often do you get to win on turn one? Why would you pass up the opportunity? This deck plays some of the most iconic cards in the game and feels incredibly powerful. Sometimes the pieces don't come together. Sometimes you cast Timespiral with Tolarian Academy and produce a billion mana with your new hand. That's Vintage.

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TAGS articles, constructed, current events, vintage, deck lists, legacy, decks, commander, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks

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