Twenty-five.

Welcome to the twenty-fifth installment of "The Eternal Spotlight". That's 25 weeks of content for the eternal formats (mostly Vintage, who am I kidding?). I'd love to tell you that this is part of some long-term plan, but that isn't the case. I go into each week with a blank slate, and ideas creep into my head periodically throughout the week. Sometimes the ideas just come easy, and sometimes it's down to the wire and I'm still drawing a blank. As luck would have it, I thoroughly enjoy making these articles, so they're continuing indefinitely.

In the beginning, I had a view of Vintage that was incomplete at best, and grossly incorrect at worst. I'm sure that my game play bore that out as well. Things have improved, both in this article and on the gaming tables. I've learned a lot of it through trial and error (with an emphasis on error), but I've also continued to learn from the Vintage players who are far better and more experienced than I. That's the great part about this game, ask any skilled player and I'm sure that they'll tell you that their understanding of Vintage Magic is constantly evolving and improving. I'm not sure a perfect game exists, but it's something to continue striving for.

Anyway, today I would like to share some decks that aren't exactly your run-of-the-mill lists. These decks may or may not be found on Magic Online, but you should probably know about them anyway. I'd also recommend trying a deck like these, as you'll be able to surprise someone with a well-tuned but unexpected deck!

Here's a spicy deck piloted by Danny Batterman at Vintage Champs a few weeks ago:

Danny's deck is a lot like the Mono-Blue Belcher decks played in the Vintage Super League, but with the added consistency of Land Grant and Living Wish.

The "traditional" Blue Belcher deck has needed to run Expedition Map to find their one land, Tolarian Academy. This deck has instead four copies of Land Grant (a staple card of Legacy Belcher decks) to find Tropical Island. This ability is free, and adds four ways to go from zero to one mana in play. This is very important for a deck like Belcher because it only plays one land to maximize the potency of its massive belch. Traditionally the options were to either play one Academy as the single land and gain that massive amount of mana, or to play with the Land Grant/Tropical Island package. This deck gets to have its cake and eat it too, Living Wish fills the roll that Expedition Map plays in Mono-Blue Belcher by being a two-mana tutor for Academy. To add icing on that cake, it's only a two-mana sorcery instead of the three mana to play and activate an Expedition Map.

The utility of Living Wish doesn't stop their though, the People's Cannon also comes equipped with a mini wish-board. Wish targets in the sideboard include Kuldotha Forgemaster, or in a pinch I suppose you could wish for a (Mishra's Workshop). Either way, superfluous copies of Living Wish have uses, making the full-playset an all-around asset.

The rest of the sideboard includes Leyline of Anticipation, which serves to essentially steal the "play" from the opponent. You can cast all of your spells as an instant, and that includes the opponent's first upkeep. This deck also gets to play eight "Forces", two real Force of Wills and three Pact of Negation in the main, as well as a fourth Pact in the board. That's a lot of free counters! Timing rules allow the Belcher player to make a lethal activation of the namesake artifact in response to the Pact's trigger, so there is zero downside to casting Pact of Negation as long as it ensures a Goblin Charbelcher will resolve.

If you love killing opponent's on turn one, The People's Cannon is your weapon of choice. Wield it wisely, for if you wander down that path, you may not return!

Party like it's 1998!

Up next, I'd like to show you a deck that you might remember, as long as you're a dinosaur like I am!

For those of you who weren't playing Magic when Urza's Saga came out, it was somewhat of a dark time (unless you really LOVED combo decks). The Standard season was quickly dominated by a deck built around the ultra-powerful land, Tolarian Academy, as well as Time Spiral, and Mind Over Matter. In much the same way that Pros-Bloom traded cards for mana with Cadaverous Bloom and Prosperity, Academy Blue (as it was often called) traded cards for repeated untapping of the eponymous legendary land, allowing vast amounts of mana to be produced. Time Spiral had the same "untap" ability with its "free spell" mechanic, and it also served to recycle the deck and refill the hand. The end-game was a lethal Stroke of Genius, as cards like Tendrils of Agony and Brain Freeze were years away from release. Think about getting to storm: ten, now think about one of these Academy decks generating fifty-six mana to Stroke you out on turn one. That's a lot of mana...

Hrishi's deck does basically the same thing, but with an updated card pool for 2015. He's played this deck at the most recent NYSE, Vintage Champs 2015, and he recently 3-0'd a Vintage Daily Event with his creation. I'm a fan of this deck, because it looks exciting to play, and it carries a healthy dose of nostalgia for me.

Is this the right deck for you? That depends on how willing you are to learn it. This isn't like comboing out with a Time Vault (although you can just do that too with this list), it takes a lot of resource management and forethought. To win with Mind Over Matter, Time Spiral and Tolarian Academy, you'll need some practice understanding the nuances of the list, and which lines to take at any given situation.

There are a lot of cards that you could experiment in a deck like this, Brain Freeze, Mind's Desire, and so-on, but I suggest learning this list before making changes. Hrishi tuned this deck for a long time, and it's good to understand why each card is in the list before you monkey around with it. If you're interested in learning more about the deck, here's an excellent article written by the deck's designer.

What if combo isn't your thing? What kind of deck does Vintage have for you if you don't want to play Force of Will? Perhaps you don't have a full-set of power, what do you do then? Here's a deck that you could play in a non-proxy event and rack up some wins, even with making a few changes based on card availability issues:

White Trash!!!

This deck isn't what people think of when they think about Vintage, but I assure you that these decks are a lot stronger than people might think. While I would likely make some key changes to the list if I was playing it (Containment Priest instead of Grafdigger's Cage in the main comes to mind, this is a beat-down deck after all), this is a fantastic place to start. All this list needs is to be tuned to the expected metagame and it's ready to go.

The power in the deck is minimal (one mox and one Lotus) to the point that most opening hands won't even contain it. Swapping out a Mox Pearl for a Lotus Petal could perform a similar task, providing a turn-one two-drop creature. Even if you bought the power, MTGO prices aren't that high, it wouldn't be a lot more expensive.

Running eight Wastelands and a Strip Mine against a Mishra's Workshop deck or a Dredge deck must feel so wonderful. Those two decks don't play basic lands, so Ghost Quarter is always a Strip Mine. When the opposing decks are playing basics, this deck has Leonin Arbiter to make any type of fetching impossible.

This deck is sort-of in the Null Rod pillar, except that being in white this list gets the free upgrade into Stony Silence. Both Rod and Stony Silence are deceptively powerful. They can put a damper on most decks, and some decks outright freeze up and die if they can't deal with the Null Rod-effect quickly enough. In reality, the only decks that aren't hurt by a Null Rod are either playing the deck themselves, or they're named "Dredge". That's a comedic exaggeration, but the point is that it's an effect with broad-reaching applications.

If you like playing beat-down decks, but maintaining some control over the board state, then this is your deck. The mana-denial is hard to fight though at times, so be prepared in case you're ever facing one of these decks instead of piloting it.

In the months since I started "The Eternal Spotlight", Legacy has slowly taken a back seat. That isn't because I don't like Legacy, I've just been playing Vintage a lot more. Also, while Legacy doesn't get nearly as much content support as Standard and Modern, it sure gets a lot more than Vintage. Star City Games isn't promoting Vintage with its writers or by hosting events (although I've read there is one in the works), and Wizard's pretty much just promotes Vintage once a year with the Vintage Champs at Eternal Weekend.

Due to the turmoil of the online Vintage scene as of late, and owing to a desire to play in more tournaments, I've decided to remake a Legacy deck. I went back to an old favorite of mine, a fantastic deck full of Underground Seas and cantrips - Reanimator! Playing Oath has me hooked on Griselbrand again. I don't think I'll ever tire of drawing seven cards.

Here's my work-in-progress, half-budget, sub-optimal build of Legacy Reanimator!

I'm not really in-tune with the Legacy metagame at the moment, so I couldn't tell you exactly how well-positioned Reanimator is right now. I can tell you that with a strong hand, this deck is completely capable of beating any deck out there. The thing I've always loved about this archetype it the vast number of turn-one Griselbrands it can get.

My list could use a few improvements, namely 2-4 copies of Daze, but I haven't wanted to fork over the twenty-something tickets each copy would cost. That's a lot for a common, and I'm sure that Mercadian Masques will be "remastered" sometime soon. Still, the foundation is there, and the game-one plan of windmill slamming a Reanimate is still potent as always.

Since my list is an unproven test deck, I thought we'd take a look at a recent Reanimator build from Magic Online:

This deck list is sweet, if for no other reason that it contains baby Jace. Vryn's prodigy is a deceptively powerful creature/planeswalker, and it's already a marked improvement over the Hapless Researcher that some Reanimator lists have run in the past. While I was never a fan of Hapless Researcher (mainly as it is a bad Careful Study that can sometimes chump for a turn), the Telepath Unbound does so much more.

In this list, you get a repeatable loot effect, which is very powerful. It's cheap in this case, and the turn where he flips, you can flashback a key spell. This allows you do get double-use out of your cantrips or reanimation spells, serving as protection from discard and counters at the same time. Honestly, if I owned Jace, Vryn's Prodigy right now, I'd be jamming this deck and others all the time (I'm hoping it drops in price a little bit, but that might not happen soon enough). People have spoken highly of the card and put up results, I think that it's going to be a contender for a long time. The initial mana investment it so low, and planeswalkers are almost always powerful. Generally, it's the mana cost that sets planeswalkers back, plenty of them that aren't eternal-playable would be great in these formats if they didn't cost five mana or more. Four mana is pushing it, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor only gets away with is because it was printed with the four best abilities a 'walker can have.

I've made it my goal to provide Vintage and Legacy players something to read each week, and I've been able to make it work. Feedback is important though, so please, if there's something you'd like to see hit me up on Facebook or Twitter and let me know. Constructed criticism is welcomed as well. This is the best way for me to know if readers are getting something out of this process. As a rule, I'll talk to anyone who emails me. I'm not too cool or important to talk to people (yet).

That's all the time I have tor this week folks, thanks for dropping by. If you hadn't heard, Rich Shay and Stephen Menendian wrote an open letter to Magic Online and posted it on Reddit. The letter presented some ideas of how to improve the situation on Magic Online. I liked the ideas, I commend their efforts, but I do wish for a little bit more. The prize payout is still out of whack in my opinion, and I think that any Daily Event, six or twelve dollar price tag, should have better payouts than they currently do. The old payouts might have caused their own issues, but lack of incentive to participate wasn't one of them. You can read the letter for yourself here on Reddit.com.

Until next time, stay calm and don't blow that Force of Will, it's a trap!