Post by theshop on Nov 7, 2010 0:48:38 GMT -6
I saw this forum and thought it would be a cool place to put out the basics that all players should know about starting in the Vintage format!
Imagine yourself sitting down against a well armed opponent. You are packing the power of trickery, the power of the trees, the power of evil : Oath of Druids. Your opponent is truly armed- he represents the opposite end of the spectrum, powerful artifacts and mastery of the machine: Stax.
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A look at a Vintage Matchup- Nature VS The Machines
You start the game with a Zendikar Sac land for a forest, then drop a powerful mox sapphire. You cast the most powerful card in your deck, Oath of Druids itself.
The artificer walks directly into your trap by casting a Metalworker, off of his most powerful card-Mishra's workshop.
As you start your turn, your oath triggers. The result is a Sphinx of the Steel Wind on your second turn. This is truly a surprising result!
You draw for the turn: a Nature's Claim. You lay a wasteland, and sacrifice it to remove the Workshop. Sphinx smashes in. Fortune truly favors you as you cast Claim removing his Metalworker on his upkeep.
The life totals are now 18 to 25. You are winning.
The artificer has a trick up his sleeve yet. Much to your surprise, he plays a second workshop, a mana crypt, and a sol ring. He taps all of these to hardcast a Duplicant! Suddenly, your gameplan is starting to slip. The fear...
On your turn, you trigger Oath of Druids again. This time, Terastodon enters play. You choose to destroy Oath of Druids, your forest, and your mox. 18/18 worth of creatures standing ready to destroy your opponent's 6/6. You pass the turn in anticipation of a fantastic future attack. Nature will not be denied. It will find a way.
Your opponent thinks long and hard. He has now taken 3 damage from his crypt and is only surviving at 15. He knows better than to attack. He weighs his options and simply lays a land and passes. His hand does not contain the necessary responses.
You can hardly draw a card before turning your whole side of the board sideways. The Artificer loses his duplicant to your Elephant and takes 9. He is now at 6 life. You lay a land and pass. If you can hang on for one more turn... Your heart beats faster...
The tinkerer dodges a mana-crypt hit. He looks at the top card: a Steel Hellkite, which he plays immediately. Unfortunately, this is not enough to delay his demise. Your elephants crash over his corpse on the next turn and you win.
Congratulations! This is what a game of Vintage feels like. When both players are adequately prepared for the game, the games are actually very fair, the decisions are often difficult, and the cards played are not all from before 2000.
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The cards that won this game were Nature's Claim, Terastodon, and if the Steel Hellkite had come down 2 turns earlier...he may well have won the game. All of these cards were printed in the last two years!
I firmly believe that if players understand Vintage, that a player who drafts and plays standard is probably more prepared to play than someone who jumps straight into Vintage upon joining the game.
A few concepts for beginners:
1) Disruption in other formats takes the form of cards that destroy creatures. Wrath of God and cards like Terminate are your bread and butter. In vintage, the same rules apply. You must create some meaningful form of disruption inside the first 2 turns. Vintage disruption takes a few common forms: free counterspells (force of will, misdirection...maybe even commandeer!), discard (duress, thoughtseize...maybe even mind twist or Balance!), artifact destruction (Nature's claim, ancient grudge...etc), and finally permanents that disrupt (everything from sphere of resistence to gaddock teeg and the new leonin guy who prevents searching libraries.
2) Just like in all other formats, card advantage is very key! Unlike other formats where a larger creature kills many smaller ones, or a wrath of god kills multiple creatures to create advantage - Vintage creates advantage in some different ways. Draw spells (ancestral recall, fact or fiction, skeletal scrying, Gush...etc) are the most obvious. Other card advantage spells are a little less obvious, like chalice of the void! You will find that in Vintage, most decks will win the game by creating an insurrmountable amount of card advantage (for instance: ancestral recall + regrowth + ancestral again! + yawgmoth's Will + ancestral again!....you are having an amazing and statistically unlikely game...but it does sometimes happen!)
3) Kill conditions in vintage are very narrow and most decks only devote a few slots to actually winning. If you can keep a lethal Tendrils of Agony, Tinker for Darksteel Colossus, or Oath revealing Iona, shield of Emeria from occuring - you will last more than the stereotypical first turn kill.
A last note to leave you guys with today: First turn Duress with a force of will to back it up usually means the game will last long enough to give both players 4+ turns. Similar results can be maintained though other cards.
If you take nothing else away from this article, take this: Vintage can be extremely exciting and even balanced. If new players learn how to disrupt in vintage as well as they have in other formats, anyone can win.
I hope this garners a little interest so that you too can sling the most powerful cards ever printed and go for the long game!
Let the games begin!
Nick
Nr12286@aol.com
PS- I hope everyone is doing well and that there is great participation at all the other events! Please see the Vintage forum for my post on potentially starting a tournament.
Imagine yourself sitting down against a well armed opponent. You are packing the power of trickery, the power of the trees, the power of evil : Oath of Druids. Your opponent is truly armed- he represents the opposite end of the spectrum, powerful artifacts and mastery of the machine: Stax.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
A look at a Vintage Matchup- Nature VS The Machines
You start the game with a Zendikar Sac land for a forest, then drop a powerful mox sapphire. You cast the most powerful card in your deck, Oath of Druids itself.
The artificer walks directly into your trap by casting a Metalworker, off of his most powerful card-Mishra's workshop.
As you start your turn, your oath triggers. The result is a Sphinx of the Steel Wind on your second turn. This is truly a surprising result!
You draw for the turn: a Nature's Claim. You lay a wasteland, and sacrifice it to remove the Workshop. Sphinx smashes in. Fortune truly favors you as you cast Claim removing his Metalworker on his upkeep.
The life totals are now 18 to 25. You are winning.
The artificer has a trick up his sleeve yet. Much to your surprise, he plays a second workshop, a mana crypt, and a sol ring. He taps all of these to hardcast a Duplicant! Suddenly, your gameplan is starting to slip. The fear...
On your turn, you trigger Oath of Druids again. This time, Terastodon enters play. You choose to destroy Oath of Druids, your forest, and your mox. 18/18 worth of creatures standing ready to destroy your opponent's 6/6. You pass the turn in anticipation of a fantastic future attack. Nature will not be denied. It will find a way.
Your opponent thinks long and hard. He has now taken 3 damage from his crypt and is only surviving at 15. He knows better than to attack. He weighs his options and simply lays a land and passes. His hand does not contain the necessary responses.
You can hardly draw a card before turning your whole side of the board sideways. The Artificer loses his duplicant to your Elephant and takes 9. He is now at 6 life. You lay a land and pass. If you can hang on for one more turn... Your heart beats faster...
The tinkerer dodges a mana-crypt hit. He looks at the top card: a Steel Hellkite, which he plays immediately. Unfortunately, this is not enough to delay his demise. Your elephants crash over his corpse on the next turn and you win.
Congratulations! This is what a game of Vintage feels like. When both players are adequately prepared for the game, the games are actually very fair, the decisions are often difficult, and the cards played are not all from before 2000.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cards that won this game were Nature's Claim, Terastodon, and if the Steel Hellkite had come down 2 turns earlier...he may well have won the game. All of these cards were printed in the last two years!
I firmly believe that if players understand Vintage, that a player who drafts and plays standard is probably more prepared to play than someone who jumps straight into Vintage upon joining the game.
A few concepts for beginners:
1) Disruption in other formats takes the form of cards that destroy creatures. Wrath of God and cards like Terminate are your bread and butter. In vintage, the same rules apply. You must create some meaningful form of disruption inside the first 2 turns. Vintage disruption takes a few common forms: free counterspells (force of will, misdirection...maybe even commandeer!), discard (duress, thoughtseize...maybe even mind twist or Balance!), artifact destruction (Nature's claim, ancient grudge...etc), and finally permanents that disrupt (everything from sphere of resistence to gaddock teeg and the new leonin guy who prevents searching libraries.
2) Just like in all other formats, card advantage is very key! Unlike other formats where a larger creature kills many smaller ones, or a wrath of god kills multiple creatures to create advantage - Vintage creates advantage in some different ways. Draw spells (ancestral recall, fact or fiction, skeletal scrying, Gush...etc) are the most obvious. Other card advantage spells are a little less obvious, like chalice of the void! You will find that in Vintage, most decks will win the game by creating an insurrmountable amount of card advantage (for instance: ancestral recall + regrowth + ancestral again! + yawgmoth's Will + ancestral again!....you are having an amazing and statistically unlikely game...but it does sometimes happen!)
3) Kill conditions in vintage are very narrow and most decks only devote a few slots to actually winning. If you can keep a lethal Tendrils of Agony, Tinker for Darksteel Colossus, or Oath revealing Iona, shield of Emeria from occuring - you will last more than the stereotypical first turn kill.
A last note to leave you guys with today: First turn Duress with a force of will to back it up usually means the game will last long enough to give both players 4+ turns. Similar results can be maintained though other cards.
If you take nothing else away from this article, take this: Vintage can be extremely exciting and even balanced. If new players learn how to disrupt in vintage as well as they have in other formats, anyone can win.
I hope this garners a little interest so that you too can sling the most powerful cards ever printed and go for the long game!
Let the games begin!
Nick
Nr12286@aol.com
PS- I hope everyone is doing well and that there is great participation at all the other events! Please see the Vintage forum for my post on potentially starting a tournament.