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Originally, I had hoped to write an awful lot more about each one of these decklists, but when you are writing about 12 decks, and the time is pressing, it was clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to deliver a dissertation about each and every list. Especially since I wanted to get the lists out before Christmas. As you might expect, it's hard to claim I was able to do any real testing of these decks in their classic form. In actuality I was able to get some testing in with a couple of decks while on Beta (with the firm excuse that I was also testing the interactions for constructed play – they are OK with this), but even so I think those decks underwent changes well after Beta was shut down, so it would be hard to claim they are all fully tested. With that being said, I think it's going to be very difficult now to create decks in classic that don't conform to one or another established archetypes already in Vintage. With so few missing cards, there aren't a lot of decks that require a full load of moxen. One such example would be to try and run a Tidespout Tryrant version of Oath – this practically requires real moxen to operate properly - but with most lists, the most powerful decks in the game are going to be built of the same engines that you would find in Vintage. By that token, Classic is getting to the point where we discuss not so much the viability of a deck, but the ultimate makeup of that deck. In a format that will become so tight, even moving one or two cards in or out of the sideboard can make a huge difference. With that in mind, I hope you understand that the following decklists are more of a guide to what to expect and how to build it, rather than a definitive, etched-in-stone commandments about the make-up of the decks. I'd like to thank whiffy penguin for helping me flesh out the lists and providing me with his insight, and GoblinLackeyisBlue for showing me his GAT list to compare.
This, my friends, is the elephant in the room. Prison decks have been tried before in Classic, but without access to a virtual Black Lotus worth of mana every turn from an unrestricted land, it's been difficult for them to keep pace in a world of Force of Will, Spell Pierce, Daze and Nature's Claim. Now, with the chances of landing one of the "sphere effects" on turn 1 heightened due to Workshop, it will make it difficult to play those cards at all. Indeed, it is my summation that this deck will severely warp the meta around it. Every deck will need a way to deal with a turn 1 Sphere of Resistance. For the unlucky ones, it might even be two such effects, or a Lodestone Golem ramming 5 points of damage down your throat each subsequent turn. I'm loath to call this deck Stax, because I honestly think to be a Stax deck you are running Tanglewire, but if you prefer to call it Stax, for the rest of the article, feel free to change all my references to Prison to whatever you please. This deck is by far the best positioned to take advantage of Mox Opal. Unlike other decks, playing a turn 1 Opal will likely bring immediate benefits (or at least the following turn), and Shop players will drool over the possibility of hitting Shop, Mana Crypt, Mox Opal, Lodestone Golem and Sphere of Resistance and using their stopwatch to time how long it takes the opponent to reach for the concede button. Of course, Trinisphere takes the cake as the ultimate opening, but as it was restricted, it's hard to hold out hope on that. As if playing 1, 2 or 3 more mana for all your spells isn't enough, Wasteland and Strip Mine are still going to be bashing away at the largely dualed mana base that will have to serve as the backbone for every other deck. Oh. And of course if it wasn't enough already, Smokestack takes fine advantage of the fact you'll probably have more permanents in play than your opponents. The hits keep coming from SOM as well, with Steel Hellkite becoming the one sided mana-smasher that will keep other decks honest. Other decks may try to hold on to Lotus Petals (or lesser moxen) to maintain a mana base that will help them operate under sphere effects but a single hit from Steel Hellkite might be leaving them in the dust And what would an all artifact-deck be without the dynamic duo of Voltaic Key and Time Vault? Key has a bazillion things to do in this deck apart from taking infinite turns - not the least of which is to untap Sensei's Divining Top and tap it a again for a two-for-none draw. Vault and Key are pretty much cameo appearances in every deck in Classic now. The sideboard simply cares about two decks – Oath and Dredge. If Oath gets uppity with a monster quick creature, it's Ensnaring Bridge or Duplicant to the rescue. You could try Leyline of Sanctity for varying mileage. For Dredge, which believe it or not still has to play spells, you have your standard array of Graveyard hitting cards. However, I was able to make room for Null Rod should someone be trying to race our sphere effects with Affinity or pull some other shenanigans, and Bottled Cloister handles something like Dark Times very well, in that your hand is never actually in your hand when they are trying to seek advantage via Smallpox and Duress effects. Of course, since you have no instants to play anyway, it's basically a Workshop version of Dark Confidant that costs no life.
The title might be DrainSlaver, but really, this decklist is a kind of place holder for all the other things you might do with Goblin Welder. Certainly, it's possible to make a Mono-Red version of the Workshop Prison deck except using Goblin Welder. Using unrestricted Thirst for Knowledge and perhaps Bazaar of Baghdad to fill your graveyard with artifacts, Welder can cheat them into play for nothing. The caveat there is of course that everyone is gunning for the graveyard because of Dredge, and that means that if we are going to use Welder, I think the better Welder decks will have to attack from two angles. Drain Slaver give us that angle. If the opponent attacks our graveyard, we can go to either Myr Battlesphere or Vault/Key via Tinker or Tezzeret, and of course, the unrestricted Thirst for Knowledge I talked about earlier helps you draw into these bombs. Also note the two Grim Monoliths in the deck. I'm consciously trying these out because I really think there is a possibility for them to work in favour of an environment where you are constantly looking to battle Workshop Prison. Having an extra 3 mana around can mean the difference between hitting a Gifts Pile and using your goblin welder as a blocker for a 5/3. If we lived in a world with power, quite honestly I can't see myself utilizing Grim, but we don't have access to that mana and Grim not only does what I already mentioned, but is a great Welder target. My quick testing with the card let me deduce 2 as the correct number, but it would probably the first two cards I'd remove when not playing Workshop prison in favour of something from the sideboard.
Oath's changes from MED4 come mostly on two fronts. The first is that I suggest that for all versions, you very definitely need some artifact mana. In this case, I'm going to go with Lotus Petal, as it doesn't cost another card like Chrome and Mox Diamond do, and we aren't running enough artifacts to make Mox Opal work for us. The reason you so badly need 2 mana on turn 1 is that if you are able to land an Oath on the play vs Workshop, all the spheres in the world won't matter when you can sit on Oath. The other change is to finally give way to the crutch that is Gaea's Blessing and to attack with Oath on another front. That front, of course, is by using the dump into the graveyard by way of abusing Yawgmoth's Will, Regrowth and Krosan Reclamation to give you a good chance of hitting Time Vault/Voltaic Key for the alternate win. There are of course, a lot of creatures which can be used in Oath. Terastodon is excellent for both being a huge beater who can get rid of problem permanents (or just turn some of yours into 3/3s) which is why it's included here, but that could just as easily be Emrakul, who'll wipe 6 permanents on the table when it attacks the next turn. The problem I see with Emrakul is that with Ensnaring Bridge out, he's just a 15/15 blocker. Terastadon turns Bridge into an elephant. And perhaps you might be scratching your head at Stormtide Leviathan. Well he's in there because of the next deck…
So what changes with dredge? Nothing. At least, nothing deck-wise. Where dredge shines is that fact that with Workshop in the meta making a mess of everything else, it calmly and coolly can win with next to no mana anyway, and do so fast enough that Workshop is unlikely to be able to take the onslaught. Where the difference lies is how Prison will react to dredge. Where as before dredge would usually bring in one mana answers, such as Nature's Claim and Chain of Vapor, to remove Leyline of the Void and other graveyard hate, if Workshop manages a Leyline AND a single sphere effect, they have the game pretty much locked up. The good news for dredge is that people's sideboards can no longer be dedicate to hating the graveyard as they once were, else they leave themselves open to the myriad of other strategies – notably anything running Time Vault.
As far as draw engines go, I think most people are aware at this point that 1 life for 1 card is so good we can't let people repeat it too often. That's why Necropotence is restricted, that's why Bargain is so good (and restricted in Vintage). And it's just one of the reasons why Fastbond is restricted. With access to Gush, being able to draw 2 cards for free and then replay the lands you just drew for more mana is nearly as insane as just paying 7 life for a new hand. Grow-a-Tog (GAT) actually gets it's name from older decklists which utilized Psychatog as a winner. And to be fair, that strategy may be close to as viable as the above list, because Fact or Fiction is not restricted in Classic. However, other than foregoing Psychatog in favor of beating for the win, the only changes to this more current decklist of note are the singleton Savor the Moment. Time Walk is pretty good even for one extra blue mana, and while it doesn't let you beat twice, if you play it in your pre-combat main phase and it resolves, you get an extra turn's worth of spells and you can use gush to bring back the lands to your hand to help play those spells. I think it's a piece of tech that is viable in Classic when there is no actual Time Walk to utilize, and this is possibly the only Gush enabled deck that it could work in.
As I mentioned the GAT list above, Gush is such a good draw engine, as well providing free mana, that it's perfectly possible to run a Storm list with it as well. The really great part about running a Gush Storm list is that you get to also run Force of Will – which can be a major downer for the person who thinks storm decks can't also afford to run counters. It also makes things much easier to run one of the most ridiculous spells ever invented – Mind's Desire. Basically, you are looking for the turn 3 win. This is a good turn in the format, where if you are going first Oath hasn't had much time to get anything out and if you are playing against Prison, hopefully you have the mana to go get hurkyl's recall for the rescue. You can, at that point, tap your lands (all for U), Gush them, replay 1 (or both if you happen to have Fastbond out), play a ritual and play as much else as you can for a Desire. You can also get the mana off of Lotus Cobra, who'll ramp you up even further with fetchlands. If you don't have that, Infernal Tutor + Lion's Eye Diamond for Yawgmoth's Will can still work for you, but I've removed some of that combo from the engine and cut it down to 2 and 3. This combo isn't as useful when you are holding onto counter magic.
I don't have an awful lot to tell you about this decklist except that I essentially took the storm list that the top classic player, SICKSICKSICKSICKSICKSICKSICK, has been running an made minor adjustments – namely adding a Mana Vault in there and removing the single Cabal Ritual to help fight against Prison. Quite honesty, while I think this deck was the best positioned in the current Meta, post workshop I think it might have to go some retro-fitting to be viable if Prison becomes as widespread as I think it might. For example, while Ray of Revelation is a wonderful spell when your biggest worries are Oath, Leyline of Sanctity and Leyline of the Void (cutting off your Will), it's to hard to have such a narrow answer when the threats to your deck are more diverse. It's also much harder to ignore Tinker and Time Vault as potential threats. I suppose I've really included the list as something that has been extremely successful in the old meta, but will have undergo a lot of change to work post MED4.
Jacerator was the end-result of Vintage tech that originally started with Tezzeret the Seeker as the centerpiece of a deck who's sole goal was to hit Time Vault. Since Tezzeret could untap Time Vault, it's pretty much game over the next turn, and so protecting that with all the tools at Vintage's disposal became a winning combination. However, once Jace, The Mind Sculptor caught on, people began to cut Tezzeret out of the decklists, as Jace provided all the control and card advantage one typically needed, and resolving one was practically as good as having Time Vault out any way. The game is over, ostensibly, once Jace gets a foothold, and so Tezz was removed and Jacerator became the defacto deck. This deck appeals in many ways to the way people played Keeper, an old 5 color decklist from days gone by, or BBS (Blue Bull Shit) from days not quite so gone by as the ones from Keeper. You are essentially playing to resolve a single winning spell and then riding control to the inevitable victory. The important part of the deck is the main decked Trygon Predators. These guys absolutely lay waste to non-Welder Workshop lists – that is unless they are able to resolve a Steel Hellkite. Often that matchup is a race to resolve Hellkite vs Jace, with the winner being whichever one can activate the abilities first. In essence, you've got game against most of the opponents you are likely to see. Oath is a bit of a problem in game 1, but your sideboard can bring in a lot of help. This deck is very configurable – so if you can guage the meta game, it's very easy to make small changes with the main frame of this deck. Versus other decks, you are basically playing the control game. The are several lesser tier-decks that this deck has problems with, for example, Dark Times can essentially keep you off the board forever and Hexmage will kill every Jace you try to land. Aggro decks can be a real pain, but then there aren't an awful lot agro decks to worry about.
This is yet another take on a Vintage list that once started off as a means to break Workshop decks. In fact, the lists are very similar in both design and overall strategy. Like Jacerator, you are trying to land Jace for a control win, but instead of Trygon Predator, you are using Lotus Cobra as a means to hit the mana needed to work around all those sphere effects. It also runs both Dark Confidant and Lotus Cobra… which means that there is a lot of fight for the 2cc slot, which makes Lotus Petal invaluable in hitting one of turn 1 and another on turn 2. Versus control, you want to hit Dark Confidant first. Versus Prison, you want to hit Lotus Cobra first. The list moves a lot faster toward trying to resolve Jace and as such normally runs 3 Jace over the usual 2 in most lists, since it's more likely to have the mana to hit an early top deck. A turn 1 Lotus Cobra off Petal means a fetchland turn 2 will land you enough mana to hit a turn 2 Jace. And that's not too shabby.
This deck is one of my favourites -I simply can't wait to play it come MED4. The concept is pretty simple. With Liliana's Caress out, discarding cards is painful. Why I feel this deck is so potent is on three fronts. Firstly, Leylines do nothing vs Liliana's Caress. You don't need your graveyard and you don't need to target anyone. That being said, a single Jar and Caress only does 14 points, so you are going to need either another Caress or another Jar or another something – and MED4 gave us that something… Wheel of Fortune. You can also use the awesomeness that is Windfall, which works wonders with Gush. The second is of course that getting so many draw 7s on your turn means you are going to be the one to find your Key/Vault first. And lastly of course, drawing into all the draw 7s also lets you hit Tendrils for a win as well. Now, there is something to be said for giving your opponent a new mitfull of cards. It's especially bad when you draw them into the Nature's Claim they need to toast your Caress before they have to discard at the end of the turn. However, that's why just as the Gush Storm deck does, you also run 4 Force of Wills. The sideboard is generally meant to hamper Prison. Getting Jar into play can get really tough when it costs 6 or 7. The extra lands and Rack and Ruin are great at keeping you in play. The silver lining against Prison is that if you do go off, there is literally nothing stopping you in their deck, as they run nothing that can be played on your turn.
I've included Noble Fish here for all the people who would like to play Merfolk. Don't play Merfolk. Freinds don't let friends play Merfolk. Noble Fish in Vintage's main power comes from being able to operate under a Null Rod. Well, without power online, in classic Noble Fish's main goal will be to operate with an Aether Vial. This is pretty much the only chance this deck has to defeat a Workshop laced meta, along with getting Noble Hierarchs out fo be able to resolve some of the creatures it can use in the mid game (see Trygon Predator) to play vs Workshop. Of course, the problem with not using Null Rod is that the deck is still incredibly weak in terms of overall power, and doesn't have a good plan once practically anything important resolves or activates.
This is a very important list in the new classic meta for one reason. It's cheap. If it wasn't for the 4x Wasteland, it'd be really, really cheap. Possibly cheaper than Dredge, and practically no one is gunning for it. Of course, the reason no one is gunning for it is that in terms of overall power level, the deck is a fair distance behind all it's competitors, but in terms of strategy, the deck already has game against Dredge with main deck Leylines and Oath with Diabolic Edict (however, this is a problem when Oath switches to Iona and names black. Where it doesn't have a lot of game is versus Shops, which hasn't been a problem up until now, and there isn't much fixing that, since black has very little in the way it can do versus artifact. Your best bet is to win the die roll, disrupt anything that might make it hard to land Hexmage and find Dark Depths as fast as possible. I've made a couple of changes to previous Classic Dark Times lists and Vintage Dark Times lists. First of all, Vintage lists will main deck Null Rod, which isn't a terrible idea in Classic but probably not worth main decking in Classic – so I shuffled them off to the sideboard, and swapped in the Leyline of the Voids. Secondly, Vintage lists will run a full compliment of Chalice of the Void, which seem really unnecessary in light of the fact they were only running them to hit chalice @ 0 to stop Moxen. So I included a Helm of Obedience - standard fare for a free win when you aren't running Null Rods and have Leyline of the Void. And of course, Sol Ring is too good not to run. It helps you play out several spells. Crucible of Worlds wasn't included in the lists I saw, which seemed a major oversight for a deck running 4 Wasteland, 1 Strip Mine and two win conditions which are actually lands. And lastly, Skeletal Scrying is simply a very useful card for catching up when you are down on cards and have exhausted your disruption suite in hand. Well, that's the 12 Decks of Christmas. I expect there to be a lot of work on these lists over the coming months and we'll just have to see where everything shakes out. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays! |
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