Paint it Black

Welcome to a very special episode of The Eternal Spotlight.

I've been writing Magic articles for over a year now, and it's been an incredible journey. I began my writing career here at PureMTGO, and I quickly became part of this wonderful group. Although we all only know each other through our online interactions, I really feel as though I've become good friends with many of the regular contributors to Pure.

My first article was about a Standard deck, and I was very proud of it at the time. After a two-month mini-hiatus, I began writing about Modern with an article on R/G Tron. Modern was my infatuation for the next few months, until bannings prompted me to jump headlong into Legacy. Legacy was the most fun that I had ever had playing Magic up to that point, but I always took peeks at the Daily Event results for Vintage, secretly wishing that I could be casting Black Lotus.

Once I took the plunge into Vintage, "Legacy Lessons" morphed into "The Eternal Spotlight". Twenty-seven weeks later, I'm still in love with Vintage. Quite a few people have been enjoying my Vintage content, and for that I am especially grateful. My writing has been making the rounds online for long enough to have caught the eye of other content producers. Last week, I was asked to write a series of introductory Vintage articles for another website, and I've accepted the position. What this means for this series is that I will not be able to always produce an "Eternal Spotlight" article each week. My new position is weekly, so it will likely take up a good-sized chunk of my free time.

Without PureMTGO, I'd never have been recognized by anyone in the industry. I owe a great debt to Joshua and Heath for providing me with an outlet for my creativity. Because of that, I will always strive to be a part of this community, even if I'm not around quite as much. This website offers such an incredible opportunity to aspiring writers, everyone involved should recognize this and not take it for granted. I've known quite a few Magic writers that were amazed at how sweet this gig is.

Thanks again, to all my readers. Thanks to Joshua and Heath and all of the writers here who make this community great. Magic Online is occasionally lacking in community feeling, but PureMTGO acts as a welcomed reprieve. This site is the hub of a lot of activity, from the casual commander player to the hardcore MTGO Grinder. Let's all continue doing what we've always done: making a great game have an equally awesome community.

Alright, here's what you came for, sweet Vintage decks!

Stay thirsty, my friends!

People have been trying to brew with Thirst for Knowledge ever since it was unrestricted. The major players have been Grixis Thieves and the Thoughtcast-fueled Tezzcast decks (as featured last week). Those decks are fine, and they've put up a few good results. They also are quite banal by this point. It feels like everyone and their brother is playing these decks. It's a good thing that there are a few mad scientists left in the Vintage community.

Vintage madman and deck-brewer extraordinaire Andrew "Brass Man" Probasco has a penchant for playing off-the-wall designs. Decks like Vintage Affinity and Jeskai Ascendancy have been championed by Brass Man for quite some time. Lately, he too has been on the Thirst Train, but he went in a different direction.

Check out this list he demolished a Daily Event with:

+ = Victory!

When I first heard that Brass Man won this event, I asked him what he had played. When he told me "Painter", I thought he was joking. I knew that Painter has been a deck in Legacy before, and I knew that it had seen some fringe play in Vintage before Thirst for Knowledge was restricted the first time. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't convinced that the deck would be that good at first.

Brass Man and I continued to speak about the deck, and he made some terrific points about it that made me change my mind about the archetype. It became clear that he had thought the idea through thoroughly, and at that point I started to be impressed by the concept.

One key thing that was explained to me is that this Painter list was designed to be a "Thirst deck" that could easily beat a Null Rod. The reason is that this deck has five main-deck answers to Null Rod and Stony Silence besides the counter-magic package. Painter's Servant and Pyroblast combine to destroy any permanent or counter any spell for only one mana.

All of the other Thirst/Time Vault/Tezzeret decks that I've played have struggled to find room for removal, but this deck doesn't have that problem. This makes Painter have a ton of game in a variety of matches. In addition to the obvious, there are a couple interesting interactions created by Painter that make me smile:

With Painter, you can Red Blast a land! Painter's Servant adds a color to every card in play or in the library, including lands. You can use your Pyroblasts to take out annoying lands like Mishra's Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad! This is because lands, which are normally colorless, suddenly begin to feel a little blue. When you think about all the other permanents that could be dealt with in this manner, Painter suddenly seems a whole lot better.

Painter lets you pitch any card in your hand to Force of Will! If you've ever struggled to find a blue card to pitch to your Force of Will, you know how irritating that can be. With Painter on blue, you can exile that worthless extra land to pay for Force! Trust me, it feels terrific to do that.

Vintage Painter also gets to take advantage of a Tinker/Blightsteel Colossus package. This is great for giving the occasional free win. Plus Tinker also finds Grindstone or Painter's Servant to win the game that way.

To ensure that we're able to find all of our key spells, this deck has an expansive draw-spell suite. There's Thirst, and also Gush. Plus one each of all the restricted goodies like Ancestral Recall, Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. There's enough card-draw here to keep pace with any deck in the format.

There's also plenty of room for control cards. Besides the Red Blasts (which act as removal and counters), these decks get to play Mana Drain and Force of Will. It's really amazing to have a deck with this level of consistency and all of these control elements.

Other prominent players have picked up this deck, and I think it's a real contender. The Atog Lord has been playing a Painter list based on Brass Man's design, with the same powerful combination of Thirst for Knowledge and Gush. All in all, Painter has a lot going for it. If you're really interested in playing a Thirst deck, you should give this one a shot. It isn't even very expensive to pick up Painter's Servants and Grindstones from MTGOTraders.

So long, and thanks for all the (BUG) Fish!

If you're the type to want to next-level the metagame and play a deck that beats Time Vault decks into the dirt, BUG Fish should be a great option. BUG decks have access to Abrupt Decay, Deathrite Shaman, and Null Rod, to name just a few. It's hard to take infinite turns when someone is packing Decays in their list. Ditto for activating an Oath of Druids.

While this list may not be perfect for your expected metagame, it's a good place to start. This is a first place list, so the designer obviously did something right.

Virulent Plague and Illness in the Ranks in the main deck is a little odd, but I'm sure the player expected a lot of token decks in this event. I'd swap those with the Null Rods in the sideboard right away, as there are a lot of non-delver decks being played on Magic Online right now.

Scavenging Ooze seems like a card that could do a lot of damage in this metagame. With enough mana, he can harm strategies from Delve to Yawgmoth's Will, and everything in between.

I'm not crazy about Liliana of the Veil in Vintage, but against the right deck it could be good. I'd probably bench her, or at least put her in the sideboard. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is a house in a deck like this, but I'd be tempted to try Jace, Vryn's Prodigy instead. Baby Jace is a value machine, and flashing back any of the spells in this deck is pure advantage.

The last card in the main deck that I'm not so thrilled about is Mystical Tutor (and really Vampiric Tutor too). Top-deck tutors are card-disadvantage and they're more at home in an unfair deck. There's no Tinker, or Time Vault combo here, so wasting a draw step is much more of a burden.

Can we re-release Tempest Remastered?

I've been considering playing a BUG Fish deck for a few weeks, the only thing stopping me is that I currently lack Wasteland on Magic Online. I happened to face one of these decks with my Oath list a week ago, and while I managed to win the first game I felt at a disadvantage for the rest of the match, The fact is that BUG is a great deck right now, and I'd recommend it to anyone who has the cards to play it. After all, Abrupt Decay) and Null Rod are also really good against Grindstone, so this deck might be even better than I expected.

Conclusion

The metagame in Vintage is still very much up in the air. Nobody seems that close to solving it as far as I'm concerned. A lot of the ideas that I've had have been overturned by play-testing. It's just as Wappla predicted, much of the theorizing has not been born out and what needs to be done right now is a lot of jamming games and reviewing data.

I am always going to be prepared for Workshop decks, but they do seem to have taken a bigger hit than I initially thought from losing three copies of Chalice of the Void. They're still in the upper echelons of the format, but I suspect they're no longer the "best" deck. Several prominent Shops players have even gone as far as to say that they're hanging up their Lodestone Golems for the time being. That's surprising, even to me.

I hope that you consider the two decks that I've featured, and I really hope that you test at least one of them. I think that they're both great options, and they are both a bit "under the radar". Hopefully that will make the field less hostile towards them.

Until we meet again, stay cool and play what you love.