Hello again, and welcome to...

The Eternal Spotlight.

Magic Online - Vintage and Legacy

The Curse of the Deuce.

So, I've been playing as many daily events as I can find time for, which isn't all that many compared to the MOCS grinders out there. I'm doing Vintage Daily Events on the weekends, and I'm playing the 9:30pm E.S.T. time slot. I'm very happy that I'm able to play in them, but I'm a little frustrated that I haven't won anything since the first one I played. So, that's four in a row that I couldn't crack two wins. It's the curse of the deuce, as I call it, and yes, it is most assuredly a double-entendre.

I played Oath the weekend before last, and this last weekend, I played two different decks: Jeskai Mentor, and Delver. The night I played Delver, I got stuck playing against Workshop decks twice, and things didn't go so well in those matches.

It was in rounds one and four that I faced the brown menace. Round one, I was pounded by Montolio, and managed a pretty sweet misclick in game two that shattered any illusion of a chance at comeback. I meant to click on a Mox Ruby and use my Strip Mine as a Stone Rain on my opponent's Mishra's Factory, and I ended up using the Strip Mine for mana instead. I don't know what causes plays like that, other than just carelessness, but it's something that I have to watch out for.

In round four, I managed to win game one (on the draw, no less). I actually felt pretty confident about that last round, because that is a matchup that should be easier after sideboarding, but my deck fell apart. In game three, I was so far behind, my opponent cast a Sol Ring when he had a Chalice of the Void set on one, and I still had no chance. When your opponent is beating you so bad, that they can afford to just throw their cards away carelessly, it tends to be a kick in the metaphorical junk. I wasn't very cordial, and said a few snide comments that I later regretted. Being that my one of my stated missions in life is to not be a jerk, I looked up that player the next day, and offered my humble apology. It turns out that he's a pretty nice guy, and we chatted a bit. That made me feel a bit better about it.

In the second Daily Event, I ran Jeskai Mentor, and won a mirror match 2-0 round one. My deck did what it was supposed to, and my opponent quit fairly early in game two, probably thinking that my hand of three cards had more than just one spell. I did have a Dig Through Time, so I was fairly certain that I had the game anyway.

Then, in round two, I faced Dredge, and was killed on turn two, after losing the die roll. Game two, I drew my hate cards, and I won easily.

Game three, I had to mulligan to five to get one land and a Grafdigger's Cage, but I did get lucky and top-deck my miser's Strip Mine for his (Bazaar of Bagdad). Things were looking up at that point. Eleven turns later, I finally drew my third non-land card, a Monastery Mentor. I had my life total chipped away slowly by a couple of hard-cast dredge creatures, so the Mentor was pointless at that time anyway. A game like that one, that ends on turn 11, is painful to watch. It sort of feels like a slow-motion train wreck, you're crashing slowly, and there is no way to stop it. I feel that it was pretty unlikely that I bricked for as long as I did, I had six card filter spells, and five draw spells left in my deck that I could have hit to get me where I needed to be. I played well and did everything that I could, and that's what matters. However, I'm now 1-1, and I need to win the rest of my matches to get anything.

Round three, I'm paired against Landstill. I know this going into the match, because I've played this player before, and this is the deck that they always seem to play. I remember hearing about this particular Landstill build and player on Yawgmoth's Soap Opera, so I knew that I was up against a competent player.

Game one, things go my way, and I'm able to grind out a victory with a Monastery Mentor. At this point, I'm very much alive for a 3-1 finish, so I get started sideboarding for the next game. I'm feeling pretty good about my chances at that point.

Game two, my first Mentor eats a Sudden Shock, which is likely the best answer to Monastery Mentor that is available in any format. I learned a lesson, which is to try to save a proactive spell when you finally resolve a Mentor. I did have a couple Counterspells saved, a Mental Misstep and one other that I can't recall, but casting those involves passing priority. Once you've passed priority, your opponent is free to cast Sudden Shock, and you can't even respond to get a token at that point. If you have even a Mox in hand, you can play it to get at least one token before your opponent has an opportunity to cast Sudden Shock.

Later on in game two, two of my Tundra's had been eaten by Wastelands. I drew another mentor and fetched for a land, realizing then that I was out of white mana in my deck. I had a Mox Pearl left in the deck somewhere, but instead of risking going to time, or just flat out losing to my opponent's man-lands, I elected to go to game three.

Game three did not go well. I had a poor hand, and I was quickly buried underneath a pair of Standstills, the second of which prompted me to concede. I'd had enough at this point, and I dropped so I could get some sleep before work the next morning. Sure, I could have played it out, but I didn't feel like it was worth it at that point. I had one or two cards left in my hand, and I was short on lands. Sleep seemed like a welcome respite at that point.

In summation, while I'm glad that I've been able to find time to play in some tournaments lately, not winning anything has been discouraging. I switched from Oath of Druids to Delver and Mentor-based decks so that I'd have something to play that was more consistent. I suppose two wins are better than none, but I'm still not satisfied with that. I'm going to keep pounding my head against the metaphorical wall until something finally gives. Giving up is not an option.

I've learned from my mistakes along the way, and those mistakes have been occurring less and less as time has passed. That's a good thing. I think it's only a matter of time before I find my groove. After all, I've been mostly been running well in my practice matches, and most of those people are playing in the same tournaments that I am anyway.

I think that I should make myself focus my practicing more, with an emphasis on matches that give me trouble. Going into a Daily Event with Delver after only having played it once might have been a bad choice, after all. I've had a lot of experience with Delver decks in Modern and Legacy, but Vintage is a different animal. I feel that I did well with the deck considering all the factors that lead up to the event. For instance, I did win my mirror match, and mirror matches can be some of the toughest ones to face with any given deck.

I'm still unsure of which deck to play, as both the Mentor deck and the Delver deck have been testing well. Delver is considered to be the best overall deck in the format by a lot of players, so my instinct tells me to play that. Of course, the additional mana sources in the Mentor deck makes matches against Mishra's Workshop feel a little better, and those decks are quite prevalent. I'll have to keep playing with both lists to find my answer.

Here's the Delver list and the Jeskai Mentor list that I played for reference. The Delver list was slightly different for the Daily, one less Dack Fayden, one more Delver of Secrets, and the Pulverize was an Ancient Grudge. I noticed that YouHaveNoGame runs one Pulverize, and I too want to cast a free Shatterstorm against a Workshop deck.

Monastery Mentor was discussed at length last week, so this week, the deck tech will feature Delver/Pyromancer.

Vintage U/R Delver Deck Tech

Delver of Secrets is a card that I've discussed at length in my articles several times. As a matter of fact, if you've been following my writing at all, you'd know that I've played Modern RUG Delver, Legacy RUG Delver, and Legacy BUG Delver. I love Delver of Secrets, and I don't mean the creature itself, necessarily. After all, it's Insectile Aberration that people actually love and fear. When I say I love Delver, I mean that I love the concept behind those decks. I love tempo decks, and I love control decks, and I love aggro decks a little bit, too. When you can play all of those archetypes in one deck, without diluting it into a mismatched hodgepodge, it's a beautiful thing.

A lot of decks can be thought of as an automatic transmission. These decks have one primary drive function, you just start it up and get going. Vintage Delver is the stick-shift. You, the pilot, will be changing gears yourself as you carry on your way. Piloting this deck takes a keen understanding of which role to play in what matchups, and at which times, and you need to know when to shift gears. The principles behind Mike Flores' "Who's the Beatdown" are not only at work here, they are integral.

The deck itself is full of reactive cards, mostly in the form of countermagic. Occasionally, some of the reactive cards can also be used proactively, and these are the Lightning Bolts and Red Elemental Blasts. With such a reactive core of cards, most other decks can't hope to win a counter-war against you.

The proactive cards in the deck include Young Pyromancer and Delver of Secrets. These creatures put the "aggro" in aggro-control. They are the decks win conditions, plain and simple. Young Pyromancer also pulls double-duty, as the tokens that it creates can easily be used defensively.

The other non-land section of the deck are your card manipulation spells. These cards let you draw more cards, and draw better cards than your opponents. Hopefully, you use these cards to defend your position after establishing an early board presence. An early Delver or Pyromancer, backed by the abundant Counterspells, should chip away at your opponent until victory is achieved. Cards like Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, and Gush create enough card advantage through raw card draw and elemental token production that you should be able to overwhelm the opposition.

The mana base here is constructed with the principles of the Turbo Xerox decks, and Gro decks of days past. Just like with Delver decks in other formats, this list uses the most miserly amount of land possible to create "virtual card advantage". Simply put, you'll draw less lands and more gas as the game goes on. The one-for-one parity of each player's draw step will naturally progress into a disparity (in your favor) as your opponents likely draw far more dead cards (in this case, lands) as the turns pass by.

Another facet of playing a mana-light deck such as this is that the low land-count creates a high average spell density of the cards left in the library. This is a key factor in enabling blind Delver-flips, and it also provides for a wealth of instants and sorceries to fuel the deck's four Young Pyromancers.

Single-Card Spotlight - Dack Fayden

Since last week, many of the cards discussed are the same, or facsimiles of cards featured in Vintage Delver, I'm not going to discuss as many single cards in that same amount of detail. I thought about covering Young Pyromancer, but I feel like I'd be repeating everything that I have already said about Monastery Mentor.

So, instead, I picked Dack Fayden, the greatest thief in the multiverse.

Dack is back, hide your Lodestone Golems!

Dack Fayden is one of the best, if not the actual best planeswalker in Vintage. Costing only three mana is important, as games are quicker in Vintage on average, and many decks run a smaller amount of mana than decks in other formats. The abilities on Dack are highly relevant, even though his ultimate isn't one that I've ever really needed or tried to achieve. Let's break him down:

+1: Target player draws two cards, and discard two cards. Aside from any Notion Thief shennanigans, Dack's looting ability fits right in with the concept of the Vintage decks it's played in. Being able to draw two extra cards each turn, while ditching unneeded lands and situationally dead cards, helps create better card selection and fuels the deck's delve spells.

-2: Gain control of target artifact. Are there any good artifacts in Vintage to steal?

Just to name a few...

Dack's artifact-stealing ability is very strong, and it's good against artifact-based decks like Workshops. Stealing random Moxes never hurts, either. Sometimes, when your opponent is having mana-trouble, Dack can act like a Stone Rain by stealing mana rocks. You can also force people to waste their Black Lotus if they have one sitting on the table.



−6: You get an emblem with "Whenever you cast a spell that targets one or more permanents, gain control of those permanents." I've never unlocked the achievement of getting a Dack emblem, but I imagine if you did get one, it would be somewhat useful. The one problem, the only card that can target something without also destroying it is Pyroblast. Most things that you could target with Lightning Bolt will die before you can gain control of it. If any readers have put Dack's ultimate to good use, please let me know!

In my limited playtesting with Delver and the matchup against Shops, having the ability to steal a Lodestone Golem seemed pretty good. Dack Fayden feels right at home in Vintage, and the Delver and Mentor shells that typically house him are the perfect fit. I opted to play two copies of the planeswalker in my list, as a slight hedge against the high number of brown decks in the format.

Playing with Delver Pyromancer

I don't claim to be a complete expert with this deck, but I do have a good amount of experience with the general archetype across multiple formats. I've gained some knowledge and picked up a few tricks along the way. I had a habit of winning Delver mirrors when Treasure Cruise was legal in Legacy, and my experiences piloting the deck in practice games have been positive ones.

Young Pyromancer, much more than Delver of Secrets, is the true heart of this deck. Frankly, I think that the deck would more appropriately referred to as "UR Pyromancer". In an optimal game, Insectile Aberration is a powerful and efficient win condition as a 3/2 flyer for one blue mana, that it certain. The truth is, however, that the fast clock provided by the flying Wild Nacatl is also quite fragile. Trading one for one with a Delver keeps both players at parity.

If you've played your Pyromancer correctly, a one-for-one trade with a removal spell will not bring your opponent back to parity. There will likely be some number of elemental tokens left behind, which puts your opponent that far behind.

I'm sure that most people reading this understand card advantage. Cards generally trade one for one, leaving the players more or less at parity throughout a game. Now, we all know that players can get ahead by drawing extra cards, or killing multiple cards with a sweeping effect like a Wrath of God. Young Pyromancer offers a different route to card advantage. With an active Pyromancer, all of the one-for-one trades create an elemental token in the process. I feel that this is the reason that a card like Lightning Bolt, which is generally not strong enough for many Vintage decks, is perfectly serviceable in this list.

The point of all of this talk about Young Pyromancer is to emphasize the idea that the card needs to be more that a (Grizzly Bear). Whereas dropping a Delver and having it get sniped immediately is certainly not a great outcome, to waste a Young Pyromancer in such a fashion is simply a tragedy.

It is imperative that you have some sort of plan for resolving your Pyromancer. You need proactive and reactive cards in your hand when you finally get the Pyromancer to the battlefield, so that the worst-case scenario still includes creating some number of Elemental tokens. The Delver deck is light on lands, and even lighter on creatures. Personally, I try to treat resolving a Pyromancer the same as any other important bomb. I prepare to protect the creature, and help it grow immediately. If you fail at this objective, you will likely have a rough time closing out a game.

Switching Gears

Knowing when to shift between an aggro or control roll is important. Against some decks that it may be more important to hold up a Counterspell than to tap out for a threat.

In my last Daily Event match against another Delver deck, there were times that my opponent was able to get out ahead of me with an early board presence. Knowing my role was elementary at that point, I needed to focus on a control role until I could claw my way back in the game.

Against a combo deck that has the potential to go off before you do, taking a controlling stance is likely the right choice. If your opponent is on Landstill, then it's time to get aggro. You don't want to play into their game plan of dragging the game out until both players keel over from exhaustion.

Picking Your Battles

Knowing which cards to target with a counterspell, and which cards are worth fighting over is one of the toughest things to understand when you're playing a blue deck. I see a lot of players get jumpy and try to counter the first card that they see being cast. A good player knows how to play a bait spell, so play smart.

I've spoken about this in past articles, but I'll again use the idea of blowing a Mental Misstep on an opponent's turn-one Preordain. Unless you somehow know that they are using that Preordain to dig for something of the utmost importance (a mana source, for instance), then waiting for a better use for your Misstep is likely correct. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather have sandbagged a few Mental Missteps so that when my opponent taps out, I can likely resolve my Ancestral Recall unimpeded.

Using the right counterspell can be difficult. Force of Will is both an extremely valuable card, but it's also a form of card disadvantage. Being able to counter any spell at any time is of vital importance, however, knowing which opposing spells are worth two of your cards to stop isn't always easy.

Sometimes, countering an opponent's draw spell is the right play. As a matter of fact, if the opportunity cost of countering an opponent's draw spell is low enough, then it is most likely the correct play. What I mean by this is, what do you need to do to counter the draw spell? If your only answer to a Gush is to cast Force of Will, then you have to think about it before spending two cards to stop them from drawing two cards.

If the Gush was the last card in my opponent's hand, and I had the Force, plus a card to pitch, and additional cards to play afterward, then spending the two cards is probably correct. This is because you're leaving your opponent with a hand of only two lands, while you have another business spell to keep up with their next draw step.

If the Gush was the last card in my opponent's hand, and I had the Force, plus a card to pitch, and additional cards to play afterward, then, in my opinion, spending the two cards is probably correct. This is because you're leaving your opponent with a hand of only two lands, while you have another business spell to keep up with their next draw step.

If the opponent played Gush with one unknown card left in their hand, and left one blue and one red mana floating as they returned two Islands to their hand, then casting a Force on that Gush (with presumably no mana untapped) becomes a harder choice. Why is this so? If you guessed "because I am leaving myself open to getting blown out by a Flusterstorm, Spell Pierce, or Pyroblast, you're correct.

The point here is that we all know that we'd prefer that our opponents are not able to keep resolving draw-spells such as Gush or Treasure Cruise. The knowledge of when to fight over stopping that draw spell is where the complicated matters begin.

A lot of your decision to attempt to counter this hypothetical draw-spell will be based on the context of the play, including things like the number of cards in each players hand, the current board position, and what spells have been played so far in the game. If you're low on countermeasures, and you counter a Treasure Cruise, you could leave yourself open to a Electrickery blow-out. If you're close to closing a game out with the creatures you have on board, switching to a mode of protecting your board position before all else is likely in order. Granted, there is always the chance that your opponent draws three cards, and rips two outs off the top, then becomes able to bludgeon their way through your meager defenses. You have to make that call, based on what cards they might have, and how likely or unlikely it is that allowing them a few more cards will tip the scales in their favor.

When I play my blue decks against other blue decks, I feed my opponent bait spells often. I'll also do things like save a bomb like Ancestral Recall for the end of a Counterspell battle, so that I may resolve it after my opponent has wasted resources fighting something else.

I've picked up the trick of casting some spells early on in the game, and in response to an opponent's fetch-land activation. If that fetch land is their only untapped land, then casting a spell with their fetch ability on the stack means that the only spells they can respond with would be Force of Will, or Mental Misstep. Granted, Misstep and Force are both four-ofs in most decks, but if you can make the opponent waste two cards on something that isn't that important, you've gotten rid of one of the most powerful counters in their deck.

So, to recap this segment, you have to pick your battles. Even with a huge amount of counters, you can't just counter everything that someone will throw at you. If you know which cards are important to pick a fight over, then you'll do much better. Wasting the wrong card on a threat will come back to haunt you later in the game. When something like a Yawgmoth's Bargain comes down, and you're left holding only Flusterstorm, you'll truly understand the value of a Force of Will.

Quantum Fluctuations

Variance, Magic, and you.

Variance is a quality of Magic: the Gathering that is both elusive, and often misunderstood. Our rational brains wish to predict outcomes, and we often short-cut this thinking process and expect similar outcomes to ones that we've experienced before.

For instance, when we play a deck with ample mana-sources, and we expect to not suffer the dreaded mana-screw. The stone-cold truth is that a in a truly random setting, there will occur configurations of our sixty-card piles that do not contain any lands in the top ten (or more) cards. Period. It's unlikely, but it does and will occur, to you and to me.

Deep inside, we get that mana-screw happens. We know that sometimes we are so unlucky, that the probability our latest bad-beat occurring is incredibly low, even though it always seems to happen. So, why is this so frustrating? That, I'm afraid, is the million-dollar question. The simple fact of the matter is that Richard Garfield intended for there to be this variance in Magic. If this wasn't the case, the game wouldn't have been designed to be played with cards in the first place.

I know that personally, I don't like to blame anything but myself for my failure to win a particular game. So, whenever I end up losing, I blame myself. While choosing to take your own inventory and owning up to your mistakes is an important part of life, sometimes we all need to just laugh about the fact that we drew bricks for ten turns and lost a sure thing. I've had games where I counted my outs, and came up with 18 as the number of different cards that I could draw to win the game. I don't think that I need to explain that not hitting one of 18 outs was a frustrating experience. I, for one, need to heed these words more than many of you reading this. I tend to beat myself up over these losses, and to dwell on them far past the point of being of any use. This is not only counter-productive, it's a good way to make yourself miserable.

I haven't always dealt with frustration very well. In particular, during this winter, as the days grew shorter, so did my fuse. I found myself going on tilt more often, and more quickly. I'll state today, as I did last week, that I don't like that fact, and that I'm seeking cognitive self-change. That is to say, that I'm consciously making myself deal with all of this in a better way.

There have been times where I played a deck like Reanimator against friends, and I crushed match after match, usually on one of the first two or three turns. My opponent's never batted an eyelash, and they just kept on going. The games like these, where you get the lucky hands all day long, should stay fresh in my memory. It's easy to forget this and act like you're always on the wrong side of these bad-beats.

Do you ever think about how often you get such a fortunate opening hand that it must feel crushing for the other player? I thought about some of the crazier opening hands that I've had, and it must feel terrible to sit through them on the other side. Vintage exacerbates these phenomena, because of the restricted list. The randomness that can be injected into a duel through the power nine can lead to some literally unbeatable hands. Legacy has these as well, they tend to happen slightly less infrequently, but they certainly occur.

The point to all of this, is to show that everyone, especially myself, has been on both sides of this story. It's easy for me to let my competitive nature cause me to get upset when things don't go my way. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and writing about it has helped me process all of it. I know that I can't be the only person that feels the way that I do, because when people have gone off on me for winning a match in a tournament, they've been just plain awful about it. Things have been said to me that were well beyond a sarcastic remark, to the point of harassment. So, I know that a lot of us could use a little help in dealing with being on the wrong side of Lady Luck.

I'll quickly share a story that happened today. I was playing a match of Vintage this morning, and I lost a match in three games. Even though I was frustrated, after the match I sent my opponent a message saying "good game", and then we ended up having a conversation. We got along, and talked a bit. I went from being very annoyed at losing, to being happy that I'd met another friend through playing my favorite game.

I'm not sure why this worked so well, other than being friendly might have changed my attitude, but I suggest this tactic to anyone who ever feels upset with a loss. Not every opponent is going to talk to you and be friendly, but it's worth a shot. Also, if your opponent reaches out to you, please try to at least give a short reply. When you're getting crushed, and you tell someone "good game:", then they appear to ignore you, I think that it makes the situation markedly worse. You probably wouldn't give someone the silent treatment after a match in a paper event, so keep that courtesy in mind when playing online. Nobody expects you to trade life stories, but a basic level of politeness is the least you can do.

Some might argue that in its current state, the chat feature and other social aspects of Magic Online are not in a good place. I would have to agree with that statement, after all, I sometimes don't even see that my opponent has sent me a message while I'm playing a match. I remember some questions of the MTGO survey from several months ago asked if the program feels social or not. Maybe WoTC knows that the social aspect of paper Magic is very important, and they have plans to improve upon the current situation. Let's hope so. With Lee Sharpe listening to people, I think that the chances are pretty good.

So, be kind to one another. It's more important than anything else. Life is too short not to.

This week, I've been listening to the latest episode of "So Many Insane Plays", the Vintage podcast by Kevin Cron and Stephen Menendian. I know that I bring it up nearly every time I write about Vintage, but I just have to mention that their strategic content is amazing, It's on another level compared to a great deal of Magic-related content out there today. Every episode is full of substance, and this one is even more so.

In the latest episode, Kevin and Stephen speak in great detail about Gitaxian Probe. They delve into the topic at a very deep level. They get so deep, that making puns about them "probing the issue" would detract too much from how serious I am about my positive opinion of the episode. I've thought a lot about my card choices, and I try to be very analytical and methodical in my comprehension of specific cards, but this episode goes even deeper. Issues were discussed that I had never really thought about, and I learned a lot. I was going to add a breakdown of Gitaxian Probe to this article myself, but I think that it's a deep enough topic to wait until I can devote more time and space to the topic. Besides, I'm not even finished listening to all they had to say about the card, so there is still more for me to learn.

If you are the type of person that truly enjoys getting deep on strategic subjects, I suggest you do a google search and listen to this episode yourself. You will not regret doing so.

One more thing, I'm still working out the formula for creating this column. This week, I didn't include the little metagame breakdown from last week, since I didn't receive any feedback suggesting that someone was glad that it was included. If people do want to see me do that segment each week, then I'd be glad to bring it back. Did the lack of a Legacy deck list in this week's article disappoint anyone? Again, I will add more Legacy content each week if that's something people want to see.

Well folks, that's all the time I have for this week, and as always...

Thanks for reading!

Joseph G. Fiorini, Jr

Islandswamp on MTGO

Follow me on Twitter!

P.S. I'd like to give a special thanks to the following: Winter.Wolf, for taking the time to help me with my article formatting, and being a great guy, and another to TurboK, who has been a great example of the type of attitude we need more of on Magic Online! Both of you rock! You too, Joshua!