Posts Tagged ‘Vintage’

Today is one of those days that you feel like a part of yourself has died. Well, it actually didn’t die alone, someone killed it. Yes, today the new Banned and Restricted list was published and Mystical Tutor has been banned in Legacy.

I’ve been playing combo decks that included Mystical Tutor for, at least, 5 years. Without Mystical Tutor the DCI just killed two archetypes in a shot: ANT and Reanimator. I haven’t read the explanations on why they banned Mystical Tutor (honestly I don’t care as I lost all my respect for the DCI long time ago) but I can assume the GP Madrid final has something to do with it.

The official June 18th 2010 Banned & Restricted List announcement reads as it follows:

With this announcement, I can say “bye bye” to my most fetish deck of all times:

So now, with the exception of Belcher, combo is dead in Legacy. Belcher… enough said. You can expect the new Legacy to be a totally aggro format (Zoo, Goyfs, Merfolks, Goblins, etc…), combined with Control and Agro-Control decks.

I don’t even feel like talking about the DCI doing nothing with Vintage. Vintage clearly needs some adjustments, and this was the most awaited list for many players. With Time Vault being über broken/timmy/stupid 2 card combo and MUD being the strongest deck of the format thanks to the über doped Juggernaut called Lodestone Golem, we’ll have to suffer 3 more months without any changes.

Welcome to the Goyf 2.0 era in Legacy!

The biggest european eternal party of the year, Bazaar of Moxen, is already going on these days. If you want to follow what’s going on during such a event, feel free to visit the official Bazaar of Moxen website! In there they’ll offer live coverage, pictures, videos, top8 decks, etc, etc…

Let me remind you a bit the prize structure:

Also, if you are spanish and would like to follow the results from the spanish armada, you should check the live coverage from Chapuzas @ La Universidad de las Artes Lúdicas.

I’ll keep posting news as soon as I get more info. Stay tunned folks!

Filippo Lietti, aka TroppoRicco, is one of those guys who deserves a special mention among the spanish MtG scene. Besides of being a top dealer, he loves to promote the game and travels anywhere in Spain/Europe to play and sell. Well, nowadays Filippo is going to open a new online store and to celebrate it, he’s organized this AMAZING tournament:

Additional information:

• Both tournaments are sanctioned and cost 30€ each.
• Saturday = Legacy.
• Sunday = Vintage.
• For further information, pre-registering and questions, please send a mail to mtgbarato@gmail.com

View Larger Map

I’ll keep updating with news, side events schedule, etc… etc…

Are you going to miss this HUGE event?

This is the second game from the semifinals between Guillem and Marc. Vintage VS Legacy! Do you think the zoo player will be able to defeat Guillem and force a 3rd game? Watch it yourself!

LCV6 April 2010 Top4 Guillem Ragull VS Marc Bertolín G2

More videos comming soon! Stay tunned and enjoy the fun!

So, we’ve moved onto the semifinals! Guillem now is facing a Legacy player who came to try his luck in Vintage with his zoo deck. The video has the same features than the last one from quarterfinals: HD quality, subtitles, music, etc… Hope you guys enjoy it!

LCV6 April 2010 Top4 Guillem Ragull VS Marc Bertolín G1

Do you guys think Marc will be able to win Guillem on game 2? Stay tuned and you’ll know the answer!

This is the third game from the quarterfinals between Guillem Ragull and Xavier Hurtado at last LCV6 tournament in Berga. This game is shorter but intense!

Feel free to comment the games!

Tomorrow I’ll start with the games from the semifinals. Again, stay tuned!

This is the second game from the quarterfinals between Guillem Ragull and Xavier Hurtado at last LCV6 tournament in Berga. This time I uploaded the video in HD quality and added some subtitles to it to make it easier for you to follow. Hope you guys enjoy it!

LCV6 #4 Top8 – Guillem Ragull VS Xavi Hurtado G2

I should have the 3rd game ready for tomorrow. So, stay tunned!

If you are a Vintage player you should know by now that the Catalan Vintage League, aka LCV, is probably the biggest Vintage league in the world. During the past 5 years, the LCV has done nothing but grow. This is a thing that we’ve been really proud of, as we’ve proven how solid a community can be year after year. We’ve never allowed the use of proxies and that has never turned against us.

Last Saturday the folks who organized the LCV6 March Tournament in Igualada made an excellent effort to organize one of the nicest tournaments I’ve been around lately. Excellent prizes, good place to play, legacy side event, good menu for lunch and more. All their efforts were rewarded with the pretty low participation of 52 players.

We were used to have 70 to 90 players per tournament during the past years, but 52 seems to be the best we can do so far this year.

So, why is the participation at Vintage tournaments dropping?

The answer to that question is actually one of the hot topics being discussed in many forums. I’m not the one that has the exact answer and solution to the problem, but I do have my own opinion and I believe some things need to change as soon as possible.

First of all, I believe that the format sucks. Why is that? Well, no matter where you looked last Saturday that all you would be able to contemplate was Fish, MUD, Tezzeret & Confidants. (Of course there were few rogue decks and few Oath & Dredge players around).

Fish is too fast and too powerful. The “Selkie” deck has great elements of disruption while being able to put you a decent clock thanks to the new Exalted mechanic. The release of cards like Spell Pierce has improved their strategy to slow you down combined with others like Daze, Null Rod or Wasteland.

MUD is overpowered thanks to Lodestone Golem. You can’t stop a first turn Golem unless you have Force of Will. Sure you can pack your main deck with cards like Ancient Grudge, Hurkyl’s Recall, Lightning Bolt or Ingot Chewer, but none will actually save your ass efficiently against Lodestone Golem. If you actually manage to survive the 1st turn Golem, then get ready for what’s coming after it.

Saturday, Joe Gallego won the tournament with MUD.

Then we find Time Vault/Voltaic Key/Tezzeret the Seeker as the 3rd contender to the throne. This archetype can’t compete with the previously mentioned ones unless they get good hands. Control decks can’t really control the games anymore. The amount of restricted spells combined with the lack of drawing abilities to find answers makes it really hard for players to rely on this strategy. I’m not saying that Tezzeret decks aren’t good, all I’m saying is that you need lots of good hands in order to succeed in a tournament like the LCV. Mana Drain isn’t what it used to be. There are games that you’d probably win if you reach the second turn. Problem is that, nowadays, being able to cast a turn 2 Mana Drain is almost impossible.

When asking around to other players what’s their opinion about Vintage now, they all agree that Vintage sucks and that it needs a wash. I do agree that we need something fixed to make Vintage funny to play again. We are losing players that are actually bored of this format and prefer to play Legacy.

The obvious call is to review the banned and restricted list.

If the rumors are right and they print this:

---

Eldrazi´s Temple
Land
Tap: Add one coloress to your mana pool.
Tap: Add two coloress to your mana pool. Use this mana only to cast coloress spells.

---

With that card printed MUD needs something restricted. The cards that come to my mind that could be restricted are:

• Mishra’s Workshop
• Wasteland
• Null Rod

Restricting Mishra’s Workshop wouldn’t be such a problem as they’d replace those 3 slots probably with the new land. Still, there should be a cut on the amount of x2 x3 mana producers if you don’t want to have consistently first turn menaces landing the board.

Restricting Wasteland would allow the control/combo players to be able to consistently get the third producer and cast answers to golems/spheres (Hurkyl’s Recall or Ancient Grudge). By restricting Wasteland, we also reduce the power of Fish.

Restricting Null Rod alone would mostly hurt fish and allow control/combo players to fight against them in better conditions.

What else should be done? Well, we can’t just simply make MUD and fish worse when we have a 2 card colorless combo that wins for four mana. So…

Banning Time Vault in Vintage is safe if the previously mentioned restrictions take place. Without 4 Null Rod, 4 Wasteland and 4 Mishra’s Workshop I believe the right call would be to ban Time Vault. We need to slow down the format by not abusing the stupidly good cards.

We saw Brainstorm, Gush, Ponder, Merchant Scroll and Flash being restricted all at the same time. That made a HUGE change to the format. We adapted and we learned how to play under the new circumstances. I believe now is the right time for another big change if we want Vintage to be more appealing to the players, specially the ones coming from Legacy, that will probably try Vintage some day.

This Friday the new Banned and Restricted list should be announced and I hope something changes, else we shouldn’t expect nothing but the fall of Vintage. Which makes me sad.

(I know, I know! The poster rocks!)

On the other hand, I think the problem isn’t just about restricting or banning some cards. I believe Wizards of the Coast should actually do something bigger in favor of Vintage. I’m not asking for a Vintage GP (although that would actually rock and gather more players than some standard GP’s…), but they should find the way to organize the Vintage tournaments around the world on a similar level than other formats. If Standard gets PTQ’s, GP’s, PT’s, etc…, Extended gets PTQ’s, GP’s, etc…, Legacy gets GPT’s & GP’s, why Vintage get no official tournaments?

Of course it’s hard to have Vintage as a competitive format, but I’m not asking for that exactly. I’m asking for a better organization of the Vintage events. C’mon! They’ve got great minds working at WotC, and I’m sure they could come up with something! We’ll have to wait few days and see what happens…

Regarding my performance at the tournament, I did pretty bad even though I had a deck prepared to beat MUD and Fish. My pairings went like this:

Round 1: 0-2 VS David Carbó playing  BWG Fish

Round 2: 0-2 VS Ramón Romero playing Faeries Fish

Round 3: 2-0 VS Juan Espinosa playing Noble Fish

Round 4: 2-0 VS Leticia Sevilla playing BG Dark Depths

Round 5: 1-1 VS Lluís Perea playing UB Tezzeret (featuring Thada Adel, Acquisitor on SB…)

Round 6: 0-2 VS Arnau Rovira playing Dark Tezzeret (Got killed G1 on first turn with FoW back up, and G2 second turn…)

The Top8 players and decks were:

• Tomas Winand (Iona Oath) vs Àlex Delgado (Dark Remora)
• Joe Gallego (MUD) vs Narcís Mir (URB Tezzeret)
• Rubén González (Dark Remora) vs Omar Nieto (Wizards Fish)
• Angel Gorriana (Tezzeret) vs unknown player (Dredge)

I don’t know how the semifinals went, but I can tell you that Joe Gallego won the tournament. So congratz to him!

This Saturday I’m going to play the LCV (Catalan Vintage League), finally! The guys from Igualada have prepared an excellent tournament with an awesome prize support, so I couldn’t fail to their effort. I hope the turnout of the tournament goes as they expected!

I expect a metagame with tones of Golem MUDS and Fish (Noble and UW), some Tezzeret decks (Dark Tezz, MUC, URB, etc…), some Storm Combo (Nauseam and DT), some rogue decks and few Dredge players.

For that, and with the precious help from Jason, I’ve build up this deck:

TP Chewer attack! v1.0, 13th March 2010. By Jordi Amat

Main deck:

2 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring

(24 producers)

1 Inkwell Leviathan
2 Sower of Temptation
3 Ingot Chewer

(6 creatures)

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
3 Spell Pierce
1 Tinker
1 Voltaic Key
1 Time Vault
2 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s will
1 Fire/Ice
1 Lighting Bolt

(30 Business spells)

Sideboard:

3 Ravenous Trap
1 Extirpate
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Claws of Gix
2 Duress
1 Razormane Masticore
1 Sundering Titan
2 Rack and Ruin
1 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Trickbind

A visual view of the deck:

(sorry for the bad quality… iPhone camera ain’t the best to do this type of pics and I was too lazy to scan the deck)

The deck is designed to have good match ups against Noble and MUD. According to Jason, Ingot Chewer is the best main deck answer against MUD while it works also great against many other decks like fish, dredge, or even at the mirror. The fish match we got it well covered maindeck also, as we are playing 2 Sower of Temptation, 1 Lighting Bolt, Fire/Ice and Tinker + Inkwell Leviathan.

The rest of the deck is designed to be solid. No Library of Alexandria to avoid suspicious hands and to be able to have a first turn Spell Pierce or a turn 2 Mana Drain. The 4 Volcanic Island allow me to play without having to worry for the red sources against MUD or Fish. I can easily lose one or two volcanics and the deck will still be able to cast Ingot Chewer, Lighting Bolt, etc…

Anyways, I’m not going to unveil all the secrets and reasons behind the card choices now. If the deck turns out to be competitive, I might write a longer article about it. So far, I’ll be testing it today and playing it tomorrow.

If you want to follow my performance at LCV tomorrow, you can follow me at Twitter (@piZZero). And on Monday I’ll hopefully have the report of the tournament finished. So, stay tunned!

Following our discourse on the potential Breaking of the Reserved List, the community and Wizards of the Coast seemingly need to contemplate a solution to the spiraling cost of older cards if Wizards’ feels that these prices are too high and would prevent a legitimate barrier of entry for newer players. If Wizards’ is going to respect the spirit of the Reserved List and not undermine it dramatically using the foil/premium loophole, what can be done to increase supply and thus lower prices on key Legacy staples? I would suggest that the first thing to do is to look at what cards are priced high, and look at those that are not on the Reserved List that could safely be reprinted without breaking the Reserved List.

So what are considered some Legacy staples that are not on the Reserved List that could theoretically be printed in future sets with little or no repercussion? There are quite a few cards considered staples that have risen to relatively high prices very quickly, so ignoring cards that have already been reprinted let’s look at some cards that I believe could all be reprinted in upcoming sets and aren’t too powerful for the current Standard and Extended constructed environments.
Force of Will – aside from Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Blue is relatively weak in Standard and Extended, and including Force of Will in a normal set as either an uncommon or rare would drastically increase the supply and reduce the price from about $35 to $5-10
Wasteland – with apologies to Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge, there isn’t very good land destruction available to mages right now in Standard and Extended, and by reprinting this as an uncommon the price would drop from the current $18 price tag down to about $2-3 (where it used to be for years), and would also help keep the overpowered Thopter Depths deck in check in Extended
Tarmogoyf – this beast is currently in the $65-70 range and isn’t even legal in Standard currently (when it was it tipped the scales at about $30)! It’s certainly not too broken for any constructed format, and as it was unveiled in Future Sight, the reasoning behind reprinting it could be that Future Sight was merely a preview of what was to come (more Tarmogoyfs, yippee!)
Orim’s Chant – while often decent and sometimes above average, Chant was never broken in Standard and Extended, and reprinting this would drop the price from about $14 to $5
Argothian Enchantress – certainly a powerful card, nothing about Enchantress would break Standard or Extended, but the price would certainly drop considerably if this $12 staple was reprinted
Exploration – currently hovering around $15, this would be powerful in conjunction with Life From the Loam in Extended, and could potentially be awesome with some kind of Landfall cards (which would actually make for a very interesting deck, but I wonder why we haven’t seen any of these interactions in Legacy if they had serious merit). Neither of these interactions would probably wouldn’t be format defining, and reprinting this Legacy staple would drop it to around the $3-5 mark I’d predict
Chain Lightning – if Lightning Bolt, Incinerate, and Lightning Helix are fine in Standard and Extended, I think it would be safe to say that Chain Lightning would also be safe (hopefully once something else rotated out), and reprinting this as an uncommon would drop this $10 staple into the $2 neighborhood
Imperial Recruiter – along the lines of Ranger of Eos, this card would be very fair in Standard and Extended, and reprinting it as a rare would probably drop the price from its current $120 price tag to about $5-10
Imperial Seal – Vampiric Tutor was not a problem when it was legal in Standard and Extended for the longest time, and a sorcery speed one would fit very well in today’s constructed environments. Reprinting this would admittedly do nothing for Legacy as it is banned there, but it would drop the price from $200+ currently to around $15, and would be a huge boon for Vintage players
Entomb – the unbanning of this Legacy bomb and recent success have driven this staple to around $30 and counting. This would not be too strong for Standard and Extended, and reprinting this in a future set would probably drop the price back down to around the $3-5 mark it sat at for quite some time prior to it’s unbanning for Legacy
Ancient Tomb – this could provide a useful but not broken accelerant in Standard and Extended, and reprinting this as an uncommon would drop the price from $5 to $1-2 moving forward

Reprinting all of the aforementioned cards fits would drop prices of these cards considerably, and I don’t believe any of them would be too powerful for Standard or Extended. That being said, here are a handful of cards that probably are too powerful for those constructed formats, but could be reprinted in a different way to ensure they are never in Standard or Constructed.
Loyal Retainers – this would probably be too good in the same Standard or Extended format where Entomb is legal (along with Iona), so I would lean towards making this Portal 3 Kingdoms uncommon a Friday Night Magic foil, which would heartily increase the supply and dramatically reduce the price, while keeping it out of those constructed formats
Price of Progress – I get the sense that the game’s designers have been trending towards getting people to play multicolored and rainbow decks in constructed formats, and with all of the other burn spells available right now in Standard and Extended I think this would be too good, so giving it out as a Friday Night Magic card instead would create foil copies of it and satiate the market demand
Dark Depths – having 20/20 indestructables crawling around Extended seems to be ok, but this would most likely be too powerful for Standard, so reprinting this as a Friday Night Magic foil would create plenty of copies, while reducing the price of this from $23 to about $5-10 in short order
Grindstone – having the Painter’s Servant and Grindstone combo running around a format like Extended would be too powerful and consistent, so reprinting Grindstone as a Judge foil instead would increase the supply enough to probably drop Tempest copies from $18 down to about the $6-8 range

So, what about all of the other awesome cards that are in Legacy that have high price tags? Running through Stephen Mendendian’s nice article The Complete Legacy Checklist, here are the main cards with a significant price tag that the Reserved List would preclude Wizards’ from printing:
Underground Sea
Tropical Island
Tundra
Volcanic Island
Scrubland
Bayou
Savannah
Taiga
Badlands
Plateau
Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale
City of Traitors
Gaea’s Cradle
Undiscovered Paradise
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Mox Diamond
Moat

That’s only about 17 relevant cards with a significant price tag for the format that fall on the Reserved List. There are handful of other smaller cards that are on the Reserved List (such as Humility, Cursed Scroll, Volrath’s Stronghold) that don’t see too much play and can generally be had for $5-10, but these are relatively affordable already so their isn’t much necessity in reprinting them. Many of cards above are Dual Lands that are integral to the format, but by most people’s best guesses and calculations there are around 340,000-360,000 copies of each Dual Land in existence, which I believe is more than enough to support a burgeoning Legacy population. That’s a full playset for nearly 90,000 players as it currently stands. Yes, I know that some people are holding on to more than a playset, just like some people are holding on to 150 Force of Wills. Magic was intended to be a collectible card game as we all know, and these things come with the territory.

The entrance cost has already been paid by a great number of players who wanted to jump into the Legacy format with the announcement of the two Legacy format Grand Prixs in 2010 and the continuing StarCityGames $5K Legacy series, and these are the primary reasons prices for certain cards have climbed so rapidly. Grand Prix Madrid 2010 just set the Magic tournament record with 2220 participants, and Grand Prix Columbus 2010 will probably clock in with around 1000-1400 participants. But after most players have already jumped in it appears many prices have leveled off. Cards like Tarmogoyf have already kind of hit that threshold and have begun cooling a little bit, but that doesn’t mean other cards won’t gradually rise or occasionally spike like they do for other constructed formats when some new deck tech is found. But is a $29 Savannah or $40 Tropical Island really a terrible thing, especially in the face of $45 mythic rares like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Baneslayer Angel that are commonly played in Standard? Is it a terrible thing to have a collectible card that you know will not be reprinted, and won’t rotate out of a format every two years and lose 85% of its street value (like most Standard cards)?

Every single card does not have to be affordable, nor has it been for about the last 10-12 years once more and more people started playing Magic. By slowly reprinting a large number of staples that are not on the Reserved List, Wizards’ can dramatically reduce prices for those staples while simultaneously lowering the barrier of entry to Eternal formats for a great many players. Doing this would allow for more player interest in older formats while avoiding a perversion of the original intent of the Official Reprint Policy.

Please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Thanks for reading!

Roger Riera (aka gRR!!) se ha vuelto a currar un análisis del metagame del último torneo de la LCV celebrado en Badalona. Como siempre, gracias por toda la información

Lo ha publicado en el foro de la Màquina del temps (en catalán):

LCV X (Octubre) – Metagame breakdown

Aquí teniu el deck breakdown del torneig d’octubre de la LCV4.

* Dades generals
Participants: 70 (=)
Promig de punts per participant: 10,47
Participants unpowered: 10 (-2) (14,29%)
Promig de punts per participant unpowered: 10,80 (superior al promig de punts per participant powered)

Un dato muy curioso directamente relacionado con el comentario en negrita de Roger:

Ichorid: media de puntos por (sub)arquetipo:

• 4 Manaless Ichorid (+1): 17,5
• 1 Mana Ichorid (=): 9
• 1 Fowchorid (+1): 13

Nos da una media de 15,33 puntos por baraja.

Parece increíble al ver estos datos:

Top 5 sideboards:
103 Tormod’s Crypt (=)
81 Pithing Needle (+11)
52 Extirpate (-1)
33 Swords to Plowshares (substitueix Red Elemental Blast)
32 Leyline of the Void
32 Rack and Ruin (-1)

Habrá que ponerse las pilas a la hora de montar el sideboard, esto no puede ser

En el Premium article semanal en Star City Games de Stephen Menendian, se ha publicado un remake de una baraja clásica: Parfait.

Como siempre, se ha abierto un thread de discusión en The Mana Drain sobre las posibilidades de la baraja en el entorno actual.

Esta es la lista que se ha publicado en el mismo foro:

10 Plains
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
4 Ethersword Canonist
4 Aven Mindcensor
4 Land Tax
4 Scroll Rack
4 Aura of Silence
3 Argivian Find
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Balance
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Zuran Orb
1 Trinisphere
2 Orim’s Chant
2 Abeyance
1 Enlightened Tutor

Sideboard:
2 Pithing Needle
2 Rule of Law
2 Moat
2 Orim’s Chant
2 Abeyance
1 Swords to Plowshares
3 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Jester’s Cap
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon

Solo es un ejemplo del posible impacto de Ethersword Canonist en Vintage. Faltará ver si esta baraja se convierte en un Deck To Beat.

Visto en los comentarios sobre el I Open Vintage Team Pataners:

By: Mimosin (thx!)

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