Today I am going to talk to you about how I got into Vintage and how you can too if you are so inclined. To put things into perspective I played my first recorded tournament in Jan/Feb 2011 (as far as I can remember). There are a couple of events at the now closed Meta Games forums which have me (in last place obviously) from my first few tournaments. That means I have only been playing this format for just over a year and am still loving it.
The first thing that ever got me into Vintage was actually something that I watched a lot of when it was weekly thing. The Magic Show is/was a fantastic thing that came out that I would watch every Friday and in some spare time I had I looked up earlier episodes and ran upon episode 17: Vintage Voyeur.
Though Evan is very caustic about the monetary cost to playing the Vintage format this was the first thing that I ever saw that mentioned Vintage and whenever someone asks me about Vintage I remember this little video. Of course it is full of mistakes, not every deck uses 8/9 power cards, not every deck bar Goblins runs 4 FOW and Trickbind is not used almost at all in Vintage, I could go on but I still love this little video and the Magic Show as a whole.
Of course I immediately went and looked up Stephen Menindian and found his article on The Perfect Storm. I took a few minutes, ripped up many pieces of paper and wrote out the entire decklist on what was now 60 sheets of paper about the size of matchbox and with no idea how to actually play the deck I shuffled them up. Not expecting much I draw my 7 and see written on one piece of paper "Black Lotus" and "Necropotence" in the other. Obviously I had to look up what both those cards did. I proceeded to incorrectly draw most of my deck as though I had Yawgmoth's Bargain and played out the net few turns and beat the goldfish on turn 3. From here my love for Tendrils of Agony was born.
I was hooked
I spent the next 6 months (as well as building a Venser Control Standard deck) and bought a few cards here and there until I was about 20 cards off the ideal deck (for an outdated TPS list) with some of my own brilliant inventions like substituting moxen for Spellbook (Vintage master there) and eventually come January/February 2011 I wanted to play in a tournament. At least I knew what all my cards did by then. Of course I came last, but I did take a game from everyone I played except for one and I even beat dredge (he did mulligan to 1 in the first game and I started with Leyline of the Void game 2)
Over the course of last year I built myself from the bottom rung (last place everywhere) to a somewhat competent Vintage player. I took 9th at Eternal Masters running a almost powerless deck (I borrowed a Mox Jet) and missed on breakers. I have placed well at at some smaller tournaments, built my own deck with some success and have been trying to help others at least understand the format even if they don't play it.
Where to Go
If you were interested in playing or at just interested in Vintage there are a few things you can do:
-Talk to people who play: This is the easiest, if you are reading this you probably know me and my E-mail is on here and you are welcome to contact me. If you are in Melbourne, Games Lab and Good Games Dandenong both run Vintage tournaments monthly and if you go and give people a heads up on mtgau.com or the Good Games Forums and you should be able to borrow cards/ a deck from someone (as of writing the Good Games Dandenong tournaments seem better for this.) Even if you don't want to play and just want a little introduction, many Vintage players will be happy to talk with you.
-The Mana Drain is the Vintage forums. Many different players with different views post here and while it may not be the most lively of all forums you have seen there certainly is valid discussion here about both the format and decks. At worst it is a massive resource for deck building and vintage strategy.
- Morphling.de If you want deck lists for top 8's round the world morphling is the place to be. You can even look up certain cards and see how popular that have been in the past month/6 months etc. It even has the odd tournament report.
What to Play
Mark Hornungs recent article series where he plots out many of the major archetypes in Vintage, they have not been finished yet but they have been very good thus far.
When someone asks me "What deck should I play?" I respond with "How do you want to win?" You can play so many different types of decks in Vintage at the moment. What you have to start with is an idea on how you want to win the game and then have an idea on how you want to reach that endgame. Do you want to win by slowly knocking down their life total? Taking all the turns? Make 23 goblins and then make them lose 44 life in one turn to spite them? Attack in with Emerakul? Attack with a lethal swarm of Goblins? Create huge artefact monstrosities? All of these are viable and do win games.
You are able to seperate decks by win conditions/Pillar cards or how they approach the game.
You can choose a reactive control style deck such as Landstill and Jace Vault which tend to want to counter your spells reactively and set up an overwhelming board position though either grinding out your resources or taking all the turns. These decks want to keep you off your game via the use of counterspells and grind out out of the game. These decks can be made more proactive (Turbo Tezzeret) but still are at their core Reactive Control Decks.
Proactive Control decks want to stop what the opponent is doing while providing a real clock for the opponent. They will either deny their opponent their resources or their spells while putting down threats. Stax lists and most Fish variants deny their opponents game plans via Strips, Spheres and Counterspells while providing a clock via creatures.
Raw Aggression decks are characterised by wanting to beat your face as soon as possible with little care for what the opponent is doing. At the moment, there are only 2 playable deck in this catagory: Little green men (Elves) and little red men (Goblins). Both decks seem to be happy doing their own thing. I personally think that goblins is quite well positioned at the moment in the Melbourne meta because most decks need a few turns to set things up and Goblins puts a very quick dampener. Who cares that you preordained into tinker when my dudes are swinging in for lethal.
Combo represents many things in vintage however and while many decks have combo's exist within them (vault-key etc), a combo deck is a deck with the express purpose of pulling off that particular combo. These combo decks can look similar to decks in the other areas (Reactive control/Bomberman). Many game winning combo's are viable in vintage: Helm/Void Auriok Salvagers/Black Lotus, Hexmage/Dark Depths, the list goes on.
Fun Times
I just wanted to share couple of fun stories from the past few Vintage Tournaments
1) My opponent has chalice of the void for one and my creatures have been beating him down to 8. He has a lethal return swing and I draw Tendrils of agony for turn. I play Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual Dark Ritual and Tendrils of agony for the win tapping all my lands and my Jet to do so.
2) Isaac Egan activates his Sensei's Divinging top and puts the tinker in his hand putting thetop on top of his library. He casts the tinker sacrificing a Mox and searches his library for BSC, He realises halfway throuh that BSC is in his hand and that the only artifact left in his deck is the sensei's diving top on top of his library.
3) I am playing reanimator and draw my 7 (on the play), throw them back and draw 6, throw them back and draw 5. I keep those 5 and go land, Ritual, Entomb and exhume my gin gitaxis. Game win.
Until next time
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