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Main » Articles » Right-Angle Vintage

Right-Angle Vintage

Nat Moes
Posted on August 2, 2016
 Reddit

In Vintage Magic: The Gathering there’s a fair amount of discussion around “orthogonal” win conditions, the idea of having multiple ways to win a game that aren’t dependent on one another or the same conditions being true. It’s an important concept that shows up frequently in the format, sometimes as transformational sideboards and sometimes as additional main deck plans. Orthogonal plans might even be somewhat unintentional.

Orthogonal simply means approaching at a right angle. That is, not being in line with the primary strategy. The example I’ll give is near and dear to my heart: Goblin Charbelcher. The traditional R/G Belcher deck in both Legacy and Vintage uses Goblin Charbelcher and Empty the Warrens as win conditions.

Holliday Goblins ? Vintage | Nat Moes

It’s difficult to call Charbelcher and Empty primary and secondary win conditions because choosing between them is often just “which one is in my hand?” The idea is simply that, if an opponent is prepared for Charbelcher with Pithing Needle or Leyline of Sanctity, they can end up losing to Empty the Warrens. Likewise, sitting on Flusterstorm or Engineered Explosives for Goblin tokens could leave you in a smoldering Charblecher crater. Even Force of Will has very different results against Charbelcher than against Empty the Warrens.

Post-board options get even more interesting as the Belcher player can bring in Deus of Calamity. As a five-drop 6/6 creature, Deus dodges artifact- and token-specific answers, giving an opponent something else entirely to worry about. Someone planning on playing the control role who ends up letting Deus resolve with no spot removal available will end up losing, and quickly.

Obviously all of these plans lose to the appropriate answers applied correctly, but the idea is to keep the opponent off balance.

Orthogonal win conditions have been around since the beginning of Magic. You can look at Bertrand Lestree’s deck from the 1994 World Championship and Zak Dolan’s commentary on it and see that, although he planned on winning games with Channel into Fireball, Lestree could as easily attack with efficient creatures and burn, or use Mishra's Factory as a hard-to-answer attacker against decks with Counterspell and Wrath of God. Opponents had to beware spending a Counterspell on Whirling Dervish, for example (they couldn’t Terror it!), since they might need it to stop Fireball next turn.

However, the big change for Vintage came in 2004 when Tinker and Darksteel Colossus were combined as an orthogonal win condition that didn’t lose to the same kind of removal as other two-card combos or storm. Tinker-Colossus is compact and deadly, and most fully powered Blue decks could make room easily, planning on sacrificing the artifact mana they were playing already.

The idea of a Storm deck resolving one spell and winning with that, rather than counting on a series of many spells, is one that remains. Tinker may appear in the main deck to get Memory Jar, and then get a Blightsteel Colossus or other giant creature post-board. Storm decks have also played available efficient creatures: Pack Rat, Monastery Mentor, and Tarmogoyf are reasonable modern choices, but past decks have played things like Phyrexian Negator and Thrashing Wumpus! (You can read about a current Pack Rat Storm deck here .)

Oath of Druids is another option for storm decks looking to commit to an orthogonal plan, since it takes up more real estate in the decklist than adding a few creatures main deck or sideboard. Oath can enter the battlefield early against Workshop prison decks and dodges early-game counterspells like Flusterstorm and Mental Misstep. Being able to find Griselbrand also complements the storm strategy, rather than sidestepping it, although it can still win the game on its own for obvious flying, lifelinking 7/7 reasons. Jake Hilty, who played a Gush Tendrils deck with an Oath sideboard to ninth at Vintage Champs liked the strategy so much that he moved the Oath plan maindeck.

In the current Vintage metagame there are a few interesting examples. The first is Mishra's Workshop Aggro with Thought-Knot Seer.

Thought-Knot Shops ? Vintage | Andy Markiton

Before Lodestone Golem was restricted, most Mishra's Workshop decks were entirely artifact based. This made them especially susceptible to mass removal, particularly Hurkyl's Recall, as well as cards that read, “Destroy target artifact.” Opponents even played Lightning Bolt since it was so good at removing their best threat, Lodestone Golem, as well as most other creatures they played.

Wizards’ limiting Lodestone Golem to one opened up a spot in the deck for a middle-cost aggressive creature, and the recently printed Thought-Knot Seer was happy to fill in. Thought-Knot is more difficult to cast than Lodestone because it doesn’t take Mishra's Workshop mana, but it has the benefits of obviating Lightning Bolt and artifact removal.

No longer can opponents sit on Hurkyl's Recall, waiting for the perfect chance to turn the tables on a Workshops player. If Thought-Knot doesn’t exile the removal spell, it at least dodges everything artifact-specific, leaving a dangerous colorless attacker still on the board. Playing this non-artifact card actually made Workshops more difficult to fight, simply because Eldrazi are orthogonal to the otherwise linear strategy.

Another linear deck, Dredge, also employs orthogonal strategies, particularly in its sideboards.

Human Combo Sideboard ? Vintage | Gilberto Rivera

Mostly Mono Black Sideboard ? Vintage | Nat Moes

Dark Depths Sideboard ? Vintage | oddseidank

These are three different sideboards for similar main decks. All of them have the goal of changing the Dredge plan of graveyard-based Zombie hijinks into something completely different: Divining Witch combo with main deck Laboratory Maniac; Mono-Black Control with main deck Cabal Therapies; and Dark Depths combo. The hope is that, after losing Game 1 to Dredge, the opponent will bring in Leyline of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage, and other graveyard hate, leaving you free to win from an unexpected angle completely unrelated to the graveyard.

My favorite example of a transformational Dredge sideboard was played by Kevin Poenisch, who had to make some adjustments to his main deck as well. Postboard, though, he could cast Dragons!

Dredging and Dragons ? Vintage | Kevin Poenisch

I was sitting next to him for a Game 2 where Kevin’s opponent started with Grafdigger's Cage, and Kevin had a turn-two Nicol Bolas off of Black Lotus. His opponent’s only response was, “Well . . .  I guess I lose this game!”

It’s especially potent for Dredge and other graveyard-focused decks like Worldgorger Dragon combo to have a transformational board into a non-graveyard deck. Most Vintage players will go into a tournament with plenty, often six or more cards, of graveyard hate, simply because Dredge is so powerful. An opponent who brings in all those cards only to find the Dredge player on an orthogonal strategy is suddenly over-boarded. They may have brought in a half-dozen cards that do nothing in the matchup and taken out enough of their own important main deck cards that they can’t as effectively carry out their own deck’s plans.

In the past, Worldgorger Dragon decks often sideboarded into Oath of Druids, since it had the similar plan of resolving a two-drop enchantment and winning. Grafdigger's Cage made that switch less attractive since it works as well against Oath as it does against Animate Dead. Now it’s more common for Dragon to include the Auriok Salvagers combo, which still works through Cage, and even Monastery Mentor as a graveyard-free aggro option.

Other orthogonal plans simply mean doing something differently than what might be expected from a similar deck. For example, Two-Card Monte is a Mishra's Workshop-fueled combo deck (pairing either Painter's Servant and Grindstone or Leyline of the Void and Helm of Obedience); however, early plays from the deck might make it look like merely an unconventional artifact prison deck, like Five-Color Stax.

Two-Card Monte ? Vintage | Ben Perry

If the opponent makes the wrong call and starts worrying about typical Workshop plays, leaning on artifact destruction, or setting up a Wasteland-proof mana base, for example, they can end up out of position to defend against an early combo. Regardless, they’re almost certainly going to neglect playing around the two main deck Red Elemental Blasts and Pyroblast as counterspells and may mis-evaluate Goblin Welder, expecting it to produce low-impact, incremental advantages rather than to simply win the game when its ability resolves.

Two-Card Monte’s two combos also share some of the benefits of Empty the Warrens and Goblin Charbelcher. An opponent’s turn-one Pithing Needle could guess wrong on Grindstone or Helm of Obedience (or Goblin Welder!), and by turn two it could be too late.

Similarly, most Vintage Landstill lists play a heavy control game and then finish with Mishra's Factory. It can make for some long games. Switching out Factories for the Dark Depths-Thespian's Stage combo not only provides a different look for the endgame, it also can set up a potential quick win that can’t be stopped by counterspells.

Dark Depths Landstill ? Vintage | Matt Hazard

I like this deck a lot as it takes a deck that used to be a slow and methodical python and turns it into a cobra, ready to spring. As I mentioned, the Depths-Stage combo can’t be counterspelled, so a lot of decks will watch one piece of the combo enter play and just have to wonder how much time they have left. Assembling the combo under Standstill, forcing your opponent to give you three cards as they deal with a 20/20 monstrosity, makes it just that much more terrifying.

Adding an orthogonal win condition to a deck or taking an orthogonal approach to an expected metagame is useful beyond Vintage, of course, but Vintage decks are especially adept at adding such a strategy almost as an afterthought. It forces opponents to be considerate of all your options and can force them into uncomfortable situations where they’ve planned for one threat and suddenly have to deal with another. After all, no matter how unfriendly things seem to get, Tinker and the mighty robot du jour always seem to win games.

Thanks for reading!

Nat Moes

@GrandpaBelcher

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TAGS articles, strategy, sideboard, metagame, constructed, analysis, vintage, decklist, nat moes

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