[Editor’s Note: RexDart is continuing his Eternal Warrior series at MTGO Academy with which he joins us as a new regular contributor. He began this series at PureMTGO. You can find his first three pieces here, here, and here. –PlanetWalls]
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some Vintage. Remember when the Power 9 was added to the MTGO Cube, and the official announcement made us all believe Vintage was coming to MTGO this year? Since then, we’ve had complete radio silence from WotC on the subject. Do you think they understand how big this is going to be? Unless you live in New York, California, or Europe, you probably haven’t seen a Time Walk cast in sanctioned play since the turn of the millennium. There are more Duck Dynasty t-shirts at my local Wal-Mart than the total number of Moxes in the entire Midwestern United States. Vintage is the living history of Magic, and the future of Vintage is necessarily going to be online. But until then, we wait… and we play Classic.
Classic is a weird format. The card pool has evolved over the years as older sets were finally brought online. Right now, we’ve reached the penultimate stage, where Classic is basically Vintage without Power Nine. All the same strategies are there, but the absence of Moxen in particular makes some strategies subtly better and some subtly worse.
I came into this format from a recent Legacy background. There is a decent volume of information available about Vintage, but very little about Classic. Because of the aforementioned evolving cardpool, any older decklist or strategy article was likely to be outdated. Enderfall’s continuing article series on this website was one of the best resources available.
To make the transition into Classic easier, I chose my first deck to resemble Legacy decks I had played in the past. I found a Bant deck known in Vintage as “Noble Fish” and adapted it for Classic. The Vintage/Classic “Fish” deck is a UGx Aggro-Control deck with cheap threats, free countermagic, and a mana denial plan. It was a good choice for my playstyle, and proved to be a viable choice in the Classic metagame. I won a 40+ player qualifier tournament, earning a spot in the Classic Quarter Invitational. After adjusting my sideboard a little, I entered the same deck in the Invitational and finished Top 4.
My initial foray into Classic was a great success, but my ultimate goal — and the goal of this article series — is to prepare for the eventual transition into Vintage. To that end, I wanted to experience a broader range of archetypes. For the next qualifier, I decided to research the Blue Control decks of Vintage to experience those cards and strategies, experiment with various sideboard cards, and ultimately learn what could be successfully adapted for Classic. I also wanted to force myself to try something different, expand my horizons a bit.
Control decks in Vintage/Classic are not like control decks in Standard, or even Modern. It’s actually very difficult to effectively control all the things your opponent could throw at you in the eternal formats, so the general idea is to have a quick and powerful combo as your win condition to finish things quickly. Oath of Druids has always been a popular choice for that reason, but any blue deck can reasonably include simple combos like Tinker-Bot and Vault-Key.
In researching the recent history of blue-based control decks, one of the first decks I encountered was Grixis Control. Blue and black give you access to the most powerful restricted spells, combo finishes, great disruption, and a card advantage engine in Dark Confidant. For this reason, those two colors form the backbone of most control decks. Adding red gives you access to Lightning Bolt and Red Elemental Blast. This was a popular configuration in Vintage a few years ago, but was known for having a poor matchup against Shops, which might spell doom for the deck in the current Classic metagame as well. I built the following list and took it for a spin against some of the regulars in the Tournament Practice room on MTGO:
Grixis Control by RexDart
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On paper, I really liked this deck. It was versatile, had plenty of card advantage, and what I thought were a reasonable quantity of threats. But in several playtest matches, the deck didn’t seem sufficiently proactive. Maybe it was just a small sample size, but I had several games where I’d sufficiently fought off my opponent but then failed to draw a threat to close it out. Control decks in Classic need powerful win conditions because the power level of the format is very high. You have to shut the door on your opponent decisively or else risk letting him climb back into the game. The deck clearly could have benefitted from a Vampiric Tutor, which I did not own at the time I was testing the deck, but I’m not sure if that would have made the difference.
I included four copies of Thoughtseize with mixed results. Whether to play Thoughtseize in Classic control decks is a tough question. Thoughtseize can generally be used “offensively” to strip away an opponent’s answer card and clear the way for your own threat, or “defensively” to strip away one of your opponent’s threats. But in Classic, the “defensive” use of Thoughtseize is significantly weaker than in Legacy or Modern. In any situation other than Turn 1 on the play, it may be too late! In practice, I found that it was excellent against other Blue Control decks, clearing away a counterspell so I could land a planeswalker or resolve Tinker. That being the case, it may be preferable simply to run three or four copies of Duress in the sideboard for the control mirrors.
Perhaps the most interesting card in the list is Ral Zarek. I wanted to see if he had potential in place of simply running additional copies of Jace, The Mindsculptor. Ral can kill most of the creatures in Classic with his -2 ability, and his +1 doubles as a Voltaic Key for your Time Vault. I have to say the verdict isn’t in just yet on Ral; he showed potential, but more testing is needed.
Strangely, Ral wasn’t the card raising some eyebrows with my opponents. One of my opponents, a successful regular in the Classic community, suggested that Dark Confidant didn’t belong in the list. Dark Confidant is a staple of nearly all the Vintage Control decks I researched. I certainly realize that he is stronger in Vintage, where he is a Turn 1 play far more often than he is in Classic thanks to the presence of Moxen. I think “Bob” belongs in this list, but I did ask my opponent what he would suggest as a card-advantage engine in place of them, and his suggestion led me to build the next Blue Control variant I would test:
Welder Strix by RexDart
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Recurring Baleful Strix with Goblin Welder as a draw-engine — which is the suggestion I had been given — proved to be far-fetched. But Thirst for Knowledge was as good as advertised. This powerful draw spell is actually restricted in Vintage, but not in Classic. Intuition was also great, and I would like to find room for another copy. Not only does it enable the Goblin Welder strategy, but it also works nicely with Yawgmoth’s Will, and finally it can act as an instant-speed blue Demonic Tutor when I need a Goblin Welder or Force of Will. I had no trouble finding my win conditions while playing this deck, and I was initially very impressed.
The problem was that I was highly vulnerable to graveyard hate. Most players in Classic are packing 4-6 dedicated graveyard hosers in the sideboard for the Dredge matchup, and this deck suffers some serious splash damage as a result. As you can see, I felt compelled to put some cards in the sideboard designed to fight off my opponent’s hate cards, as if I were playing Dredge myself. Dredge has such a high win percentage in Game 1 that it succeeds despite all the hate, but I can’t say the same for this deck. While the deck was very fun to play, and I may run it at some point down the road, I decided to put it on the back-burner and keep looking.
As best I can tell, this next deck has never been popular in Classic, but if you have followed developments in Vintage for a few years it might look familiar:
Cobra Kai Dojo by RexDart
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Lotus Cobra has fallen out of favor recently, but there was a time when it was hugely popular in Vintage. In the span of a few months back in 2010, notable Vintage enthusiast/historian Stephen Menendian had gone from dismissing it as unplayable to calling it a “Black Lotus that attacks for two” and hailing it as the best weapon against opposing Jaces in the Blue Control mirror.
Compared to Vintage, Lotus Cobra in Classic is weaker in some respects and stronger in others. On the plus side, turning all your fetchlands into virtual Black Loti is insanely good. The lack of Black Lotus in Classic limits the potential explosiveness of a big Yawgmoth’s Will turn. But with Lotus Cobra in play, any fetchland in your graveyard will do the job quite nicely! Cobra helps fight through all the taxing effects from opposing Shops players, and minimizes the tempo setback of being hit with Wasteland or Strip Mine.
But on the downside, playing it Turn 1 is far more difficult without real Moxen. As you see, I chose to play four Lotus Petals to help power him out, but that is a very poor substitute for having an actual Mox that sticks around. If you have a Turn 1 Cobra, my Classic version has only 3 mana on Turn 2 off a regular land, and 4 from a fetchland. The Vintage version which plays Turn 1 Cobra off a Mox would have 4 mana from a regular land and 5 from a fetchland on Turn 2. In some hands, my Turn 1 Cobra is no better than a Turn 1 Noble Hierarch would have been. Once Moxes come online, I think the Lotus Cobra will have a time to shine, but we’re not quite there yet.
You might notice the one copy of Massacre in the sideboard. I am not sure if this has ever seen Classic play in the past, but I was very impressed with it. There are a lot of creature-heavy decks in the format right now, nearly all of which play white. Eternal players don’t always have the same instincts as Standard players do to avoid over-extending into board sweepers. There are a few decks known to play them, and if your opponent isn’t on one of those decks, you might get careless. A sweeper out of the sideboard can really catch an opponent off-guard, and Massacre is a free sweeper against Hatebear decks. It doesn’t quite hit everything, and probably won’t take down a Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary, but it hits all the utility creatures and can wreck their board. Alas, all decklists are public in the Classic Quarter player-run events, so the surprise element isn’t possible there.
During all this playtesting, I kept seeing the other members of the Classic community developing their own Blue Control decks in the Tournament Practice room. Could I have anticipated the metagame all wrong? I had originally been testing a blue-black Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas deck before all these failed diversions. If the metagame weren’t all Workshops versus decks hating on artifacts this time around, maybe Tezzeret had a window of opportunity? Here’s what I digitally sleeved up for the Classic Quarter Invitational Qualifier:
Club Tezz by RexDart
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This list is designed to be a control deck that is more proactive, and hopefully more in line with my play style. It has strength in both control mirrors and against creature decks, using Tezzeret’s -1 ability to fight opposing planeswalkers and protect my own. I biased the maindeck slightly towards the control mirror, so I loaded the sideboard with nice anti-creature spells like Perish, the second copy of Explosives, and a singleton Cursed Totem to help handle some of the recent changes in Hatebear strategies.
Oath had just won the Invitational, and if Oath proved to be popular, this deck had a great board plan. I could take out the four creatures and bring in Illness in the Ranks, shutting off Forbidden Orchard. That would also handle the Young Pyromancer decks I saw players experimenting with, should those prove popular.
Was this the most powerful option available? Possibly not, but I thought it was well-positioned, I had a very good idea how to play it, and Tezzeret is just so damn fun I had to give it a try. Part of becoming a better player is pushing your own limits, moving out of your comfort zone a bit. I’m not a very good control player, but if I always avoid control, how could I ever expect to be? In a few weeks, we’ll take a look at the league results and see how I did.
In the meantime, what do you think of these control variants? Are there any you’ve liked in the past that I didn’t include? Let me know in the comments!
You can find me on Twitter @cjwynes
Welcome and it’ll be great to have some regular content in those vintage/classic lines as I used to be heavy into those + Legacy, but I got to say as fun as these decks look (esp the cobra one) as I scroll down to each one I’m immediately depressed and put off by the sets of FoW tbh
@JustSin: Blue-based control lists in Classic tend to run a playset of FoWs if they’re playing enough blue to support them (and they usually are), but the card has lost a lot of power in the format since the printing of Cavern of Souls. I find myself boarding out between two to four FoWs in a number of different matchups just because suffering the card disadvantage of pitching something to FoW is worse than casting a Swords to Plowshares or even sometimes a Dismember or Abrupt Decay. That’s not to say that FoW is bad, but just that it’s not absolutely pervasive in the format.
Well, let’s not get TOO ahead of ourselves here!
Force is still the only out to the top two archetypes for decks that aren’t, well, running the top two archetypes. Any control or blue-based creature deck will need Force when it comes to Oath, Tinker, etc. Further, blue-based has precious little against some of the crippling Turn 1 plays of Shops. And since those decks make up approximately 95% of the field, I’d say Force is still pretty pervasive.
@huffy henry: Yes, but every time you cast FoW in those matchups, you’re 2-for-1-ing yourself just to have the opportunity to cross you fingers and hope they don’t play something even more horrible next turn (e.g., Trinisphere, another Sphere of Resistance, etc.). It’s true that FoW helps in these situations, but it’s not ideal; it’s only flexible enough to be decent against almost every deck.
The better solutions to Shop-based decks like Stax and Affinity are playing lots of lands, playing extra mana sources (like Noble Hierarch/Elvish Spirit Guide), and playing permanents you can force through which disrupt their game plan (Hammer Mage, Shapesharer, etc.). I’m not saying not to run Force, just that playing a 2-card answer to a single threat isn’t sufficient.
Thanks for the comments!
If I were playing control against a creature-heavy deck in Legacy, I would often suggest boarding out Force of Will, as would many Legacy players. But I think Classic is a bit less forgiving in that regard. I concede I’m not a great control player, so I could be wrong about all this. In theory, I agree with PlanetWalls, in that most creatures are best dealt with by cheap removal spells rather than by 2-for-1′ing yourself, and the control deck doesn’t usually mind the very slight tempo loss that occasionally entails. OTOH, Classic (and present Vintage) doesn’t seem to place that much value on attrition and raw card advantage, at least not compared to when I played Type 1 in the 90′s, so the theorycrafting about control decks may be a bit off.
If we were talking aggro-control or Fish, I would almost never board them out, because I generally want to use all my mana to deploy threats and still be able to protect my board.
For any blue deck in Classic or Legacy that can support it, I think playing four FoW in the main deck is the correct choice. I think if you looked at my finals against Enderfall earlier this summer, which he featured in his article and I featured in Eternal Warrior #1, you’d have to say that FoW was extremely important against Shops even if Noble Hierarch and Trygon Predator were just as crucial. FoW isn’t as good in control as it is in Fish, but still it’s never a dead card and it pulls your bacon out of the fire quite a bit.
The old adage about eternal formats is still essentially true: either you’re the person winning turn one, turn two, or essentially winning by then, or you’re the person who has Force of Will.
The 2-for-1 aspect of Force is true and it’s been debated many times over the years. And I definitely concede that Swords is more efficient at removing a creature from the game. However, there are many situations in Classic, especially, where Force is simply the card. The fact that Force is still what it is despite the 2-for-1 disadvantage shows how powerful it really is.
For example, it is certainly less efficient at removing a Lodestone Golem. However, as a blue player, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen Golem come down on turn one in addition to some sort of sphere effect. Toss in the other weapons – more spheres, Wasteland, etc – and all of a sudden you never get the chance to hit Golem with Swords. Let alone the second one they play. Especially if you are on the draw, Force is sometimes the only way you can combat that opening.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the artifact hate you guys have been bringing lately. Blue even has some cards that can help. But that only works if you can play them. Shops can hit 6 mana on turn one at times. On the draw, Force is infinitely greater than Swords, even at 2-for-1.
Against Oath, Swords is nearly meaningless. They will just get another creature. Force is much better here as well. It is certainly nice to remove a Blightsteel from the game, but you’ve just given your opponent 12 life and, unless they used Tinker, they have Emrakul coming next. I would rather Force the Oath.
I think the main difference comes in the type of deck you’re playing. If you play a bant build or Fish with red, then other options are certainly available. In mono-blue Force of Will is hands down the best card in the deck. In blue-based, it is still the powerhouse against many of the best decks. I find the ability to tap out to actually play a threat with the ability to Force is well worth the 2-for-1. Strictly it is a 2-for-1, but in tapped out situations, it can often serve as a huge blowout in your favor, as the opponent sometimes alters a game plan to force something down while you’re tapped out. One that happens, it’s off to the races.
If I’m playing against a Fish deck, then yeah, Force can come out. That’s the difference in deck philosophy. Fish decks win by aggregate force, not sheer power. I feel dirty if I have to Force a Noble Hierarch. I don’t feel dirty at all Forcing Golem or Wurmcoil. When the Fish guy adds two more creatures to the board next turn, the Force looks horrible. I’ll agree with you there for sure.
“The old adage about eternal formats is still essentially true: either you’re the person winning turn one, turn two, or essentially winning by then, or you’re the person who has Force of Will.”
I just don’t like playing a strategy where your only out is to draw Force and blue, especially when that only happens ~45% of the time. While I love Force nonetheless, my point is that you’re already relying on the natural variance in your opponent’s deck to cause it to fail some of the time. I’d rather play a deck that capitalizes on my opponents’ bad draws than cross my fingers and hope to draw FoW, even if I’m running FoW in the same deck that aims to do this. In this sense, I’d rather play some consistent answers that permit my opponent to flat-out beat me some of the time while giving me greater power when they stumble. And Classic players stumble a lot (few mana sources, a large number of combo pieces that do little to nothing when in hand, etc.).
>>where Classic is basically Vintage without Power Nine
Is it just me alone that feels Classic’s power level with the different unrestricted list and mana bases already makes it actually equal higher powered then vintage?