Fun New Format Idea

[Crispin Bateman]

Go here: http://forum.magicmadhouse.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=114

Read it. :)

That is all.

[Thomas David Baker]

Alright, here's my first draft decklist:

MASQUES: Brainstorm

8TH: Merchant Scroll
7TH: Duress
6TH: Vampiric Tutor
5TH: Brainstorm
4TH: Dark Ritual
ICE AGE: Brainstorm
SCOURGE: Tendrils of Agony
URZA'S SAGA: Yawgmoth's Will
FUTURE SIGHT: Pact of Negation
ALLIANCES: Force of Will
MAGIC 2010: Ponder
MAGIC 2011: Voltaic Key
MAGIC 2012: Ponder
FIFTH DAWN: Serum Visions
RAVNICA: Watery Grave
ZENDIKAR: Spell Pierce
ONSLAUGHT: Polluted Delta
SHARDS OF ALARA: Ad Nauseam
MIRRODIN: Chrome Mox
TEMPEST: Dark Ritual
LORWYN: Thoughtseize
SCOURGE: Brain Freeze
DISSENSION: Infernal Tutor
ALPHA, BETA, UNLIMITED: Ancestral Recall, Demonic Tutor, Time Vault
MIRAGE: Mystical Tutor
VISIONS: Vampiric Tutor
URZA'S LEGACY: Tinker
ARABIAN NIGHTS: City of Brass
PLANAR CHAOS: Extirpate
WORLDWAKE: Jace, the Mind Sculptor
MIRRODIN BESEIGED: Blightsteel Colossus
CHAMPIONS OF KAMIGAWA: Sensei's Divining Top
ANTIQUITIES: Hurkyl's Recall
NEMESIS: Massacre
ODYSSEY: Standstill
NEW PHYREXIA: Mental Misstep
LEGENDS: Mana Drain
HOMELANDS: Merchant Scroll
GUILDPACT: Leyline of the Void
INNISTRAD: Snapcaster Mage
DARKSTEEL: Echoing Truth
SCARS OF MIRRODIN: Nihil Spellbomb
CHRONICLES: City of Brass
+ 13 Swamp
+ 12 Island

Anyone got an Ancestral Recall and a Time Vault I can borrow? :)

[Crispin Bateman]

Chronicles isn't legal (just thought I'd throw that in there).

Love that I read your decklist and thought 'My God, he has an Alpha Ancestral' and then read the last line. :) 

[Ben Titmarsh]

Ad Nauseum seems a bit risky Tom, it's not exactly a natural partner with Blightsteel Colossus!

[Thomas David Baker]

I can't decide between Reanimator/Tinker/Storm/Vault-Key hybrid or just max out on Dark Rituals and Storm.  Probably the latter is better without 5 Moxes and a Sol Ring.

[Crispin Bateman]

Tinker seems weak in a deck with what, five? artifacts to sacrifice. In fact, the whole Time Vault thing feels very weak here when you are using your unlimited slot for time vault. In a storm deck, wouldn't having a mox/lotus just be more consistent to your main strategy in that slot? Also, you can take Demonic Tutor from revised, which you seem to have missed, giving you another mox slot (if you can get hold of them).

Are you building a deck you can actually build though? Or is this just an idea on paper. There's no real point suggesting your Alpha slot is an Ancestral/Mox/Lotus/Time Vault if you can't put your hands on an Alpha one of those (same with Beta).

As a complete side issue, I think you are way off base using Vintage as a jumping off point for deck design. Aggro strategies are going to be that much more viable in this format, and I don't think a deck of this type is going to be consistent with weak mana fixing over 71 cards. Sure, you have access to a lot of tutors, but I think you might be run over by the time you settle down to storm out. It's not going to go off turn one or two particularly often, especially when the only counterspell backup you really have is a singleton Force of Will. 

[Thomas David Baker]

Ah, I misunderstood your "Other than you have allocated a card for revised which you can't have, you get the idea".  I thought you were saying Revised was not included not that the card I had allocated was invalid.

Perhaps with not enough fast mana/mana fixing across the 71 Vintage Storm is not where it is at.  Dark Ritual has been printed 11 times though.

Just to be clear I have no intention of playing this deck - I have no idea where I would get an Alpha Mountain let alone an Ancestral Recall.  It's just a mental exercise.  My initial thought was 71 was less cards than in a Vintage maindeck + sideboard.  But perhaps the lack of mana-fixing/moxes makes that bad starting point.

I don't actually like the idea of playing the kind of deck I could actually assemble in a format where Black Lotus and Ancestral Recall are legal, especially if I have to do weird things like get a basic land from each of Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revied, Invasion, Torment, Judgment and Weatherlight as a sort of difficult-to-assemble entry fee.  It's fun to think about though.

Bit more affordable:

EVENTIDE: Figure of Destiny

ZENDIKAR: Goblin Guide

TORMENT, M12: Grim Lavamancer

CONFLUX: Hellspark Elemental

PLANAR CHAOS: Keldon Marauders

VISIONS: Fireblast

M11, M10, 4TH, REVISED, ALPHA, BETA, UNLIMITED, REVISED: Lightning Bolt

EXODUS: Price of Progress (not good?)

LEGENDS: Chain Lightning

NEMESIS: Flame Rift

CHAMPIONS OF KAMIGAWA: Lava Spike

TIME SPIRAL: Rift Bolt

ZENDIKAR: Arid Mesa

TEMPEST: Cursed Scroll

SCOURGE: Sulfuric Vortex

+ 22 Mountains

But that's only 45 cards.  Needs 26 more sub-par burn spells.  Shock, Burst Lightning, Galvanic Blast, Shrine of Burning Rage, Stromkirk Noble, ...

What does the affinity/Tempered Steel deck look like?  Too concentrated in a couple of blocks to be any good?

[Crispin Bateman]

There's still a four of max limit, so just because dark ritual has been printed 11 times, you can only play 4. Same with lightning bolt, above.

I don't see an issue with power being legal, with the set restriction, you can only have three points of power and only then if you own alpha and beta power, which practically no one does. Reality imposes restrictions that the mental exercise doesn't. Reality states that the odd player will have a single piece of unlimited power in their deck, and bully for them; one card in 71 is bad odds for it making a major impact on the format.

As for alpha mountains; Magic Madhouse list them for 99p, hardly breaking the bank.

I don't think any of the 'normal' decks filters across particularly well, which is why I like the idea; it will, by design, have its own unique meta game.

Keep thinking...

[Kieran Symington]

I do like the idea of this format even though I'm not entirely sure combo decks can work in it without access to multiples of key cards! Still, there's always Mono-Red (which also has the advantages of being super-cheap to play and having the only basic land in Arabian Nights!).

[Tom Reeve]

I'd almost be surprised if any decks that weren't combo decks were top-tier. There are a lot of tutors, and a lot of combos that can be trivially accessed via single cards. Not necessarily Storm combo, but Reanimator or more esoteric things. Gifts/Unburial Rites/Elesh Norn/Sphinx of the Steel Wind/Iona/Intuition, tutors for Gifts, Intuition as a backup to Gifts (with a flashback discard outlet like Faithless Looting or Cabal Therapy to get your reanimation target in the graveyard), assorted tutors and cantrips... I think you end up with a lot of decks that look like bad Vintage combo decks that are still way more consistent than the aggro decks (as the aggro decks can't invest as much cards/time in durdling and finding combo pieces. There could be some kind of fish/hatebear deck, I guess?

[Tom Reeve]

(Plus all the obvious stuff like Exhume, Reanimate, Life//Death, Entomb, Buried Alive.)

[Crispin Bateman]

Worth noting (as this is being discussed in various places) that there's been one change to the format for balance reasons which is to count Alpha, Beta and Unlimited as ONE SET. Thus you can have only one mox OR Lotus OR Time Vault or whatever. A lot of people suggested this and in the end I bowed to the sensible idea. There's still plenty of room for silliness to occur, it's just not going to happen with four copies of Demonic Tutor. ;)