Everything has to start somewhere.
For the purpose of this page, I will devote most of my time covering things that interest me—and hopefully you, the reader.
For this initial post, I will be dealing with Magic: the Gathering. If you are clueless about this game, feel free to check out the Wikipedia article here, or visit the MTG homepage over here.
All things concerned, let's say you know the game and most of its nuances. If that's the case, let me bring up the topic of the day:
VINTAGE PLAY
I started hanging around MTG sometime in 2000-2001, during the Prophecy and Invasion block sets. But don't get me wrong, I had a ton of cards gathered up from the mid-1990s. For this reason, I was always more interested in vintage and legacy styles of play.
In essence, vintage is basically "all-cards-are-playable (minus gambling 'ante' related cards) minus-some-overpowered-restricted-cards." In other words, every black/white bordered card ever printed, aside from the ante cards (see Demonic Attorney, for example), are playable. The "overpowered-restricted-cards" that I'm talking about can be found on the vintage deck construction list here. These restricted cards are either too powerful or too easy manipulated into throwing games out of wack.
As for legacy play, pretty much all the banned cards in vintage apply for legacy. However, the majority of restricted cards in vintage are outright banned in legacy. Details can be found here.
Vintage and legacy styles of play are sweet because they allow me to keep my options open. When dealing with other forms such as standard or extended, a lot of older cards are pretty much thrown out the window, lest they're reprinted in newer sets. Not my cup of tea.
So, moving on. I would like to talk about a deck that I'm currently working on for vintage play. Let's say it's a casual vintage deck that I can use for playing against friends. Well, casual to start, but let's see if it can see competitive play one day.
The deck that I'm talking about is composed of these cards as of now:
Lands
Creatures
1x Progenitus
Artifacts
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Lotus Petal
1x Mana Vault
1x Sol Ring
Enchantments
Sorceries & Instants
4x Mana Leak
4x Impulse
2x Spell Pierce
1x Time Walk
1x Brainstorm
1x Ponder
1x Misdirection
Planeswalkers
...Before I get into anything, nope, I do not have a sideboard worked out as of yet. Why? Well, as I've said, this is going to be a somewhat casual deck for now.
Moving along, what is this deck? It is, in fact, a classic "Oath of Druids" vintage deck—based upon the staple and iconic Oath of Druids enchantment that this entire deck revolves around. The way this deck works is quite simple. As the player, you must have Oath of Druids on the field when one of your opponents controls at least one more creature than you. Here's where the land, Forbidden Orchard comes in. You can use the Orchard to add mana of any color to your pool, but as a bonus—especially in this deck—you throw a 1/1 creature onto your opponent's side. Now your opponent has one more creature on the battlefield than you, allowing you to throw Oath of Druids out into play and begin the path to victory.
Once your upkeep comes up with Oath of Druids in play, you virtually dump every card you have from the top of your deck until you find a creature, which you immediately throw into play. Given that this deck only has three creatures, two of whom have flying, haste and trample (Akroma and the Hellkite), the last being Progenitus, a 10/10 with protection from everything, your opponent can seriously have a 1/1 against your 6/6, 8/8 or 10/10 face-smasher. Even when that's not scary enough, you can tap the Orchard to throw yet another measly 1/1 on your opponent's side, thus allowing Oath of Druids to trigger for you once more on your next turn.
That's the gist of the deck: give your opponent more creatures than you, Oath up a massive face-smasher for the win. While all of this is happening, all the other cards—other than Forbidden Orchard, Oath of Druids and the creatures—serve distinct purposes.
Black Lotus, Lotus Petal, Sol Ring, Mana Vault and the five Mox pieces all serve as mana engines in addition to whichever lands you may have out. This enables the ability to throw out Forbidden Orchards and Oath of Druids on the first turn, allowing you to grab the aforementioned face-smasher on your second turn. Also, with more mana at hand, we go to the next important pieces of the deck.
Counter spells. Force of Will, Mana Leak, Spell Pierce, Misdirection and Chalice of the Void all serve to counter and lock down your opponent from messing with your plan. I opted for Mana Leak over Mana Drain not because of monetary differences (Mana Drain: $100+, Mana Leak: $0.25), but because you don't need two blue mana for Mana Leak, plus early game situations won't allow your opponent to pay the extra three mana to stop Mana Leak anyway. Yes, Mana Drain is deadly and powerful, but seriously, Mana Leak gets the job done.
Say your opponent throws onto the battlefield a Black Lotus, a white-mana land, a Mox Pearl, and say, a Mana Crypt on his first turn. He sacrifices the Lotus for three green mana, taps the land, Mox and Crypt for four more, and decides to hard-cast a monstrous Novablast Wurm, hoping to prevent you from ever having a creature on the field. Well, okay, you have one blue mana and another mana source left over from your first turn, specifically planning on using a cool Mana Leak because you don't have a trusty Force of Will at hand. Well, there we go. You play Mana Leak in response, your opponent has nothing left to tap for mana. The wurm never made it onto the field. Now your opponent lost his wurm, his Black Lotus is gone, his Crypt will probably now start wreaking havoc on him during his next turns, and you just successfully stalled your opponent big time while you can continue working on your game plan.
Similarly, I chose Spell Pierce over many other counter spell varieties for the same reason. Spell Pierce just targets noncreature spells, that's all.
We also have enabling spells, namely Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Brainstorm, Ponder, Impulse, Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor. These cards either manipulate the library, allow you to draw more, or find the cards you want and therefore give you a better card advantage. Jace, the Mind Sculptor falls into this category as well, since he pretty much acts like a free, constant Brainstorm (darn Brainstorm is restricted in vintage play).
Finally, we have situational spells. Nature's Claim and Ancient Grudge serve to clear out artifact and/or enchantment nuisances if you manage to let them slip past your counter spells. Then we have Krosan Reclamation and Gaea's Blessing. Krosan Reclamation's true role is simply to return your very limited creatures back into your deck so you can Oath them right back out. That, or to bring back Gaea's Blessing, if it by chance got thrown into your graveyard from someplace other than your library. Gaea's Blessing is the one card in the deck that prevents you from decking yourself into a loss. As soon as Gaea's Blessing hits the graveyard from Oath's trigger, you get your creature and then you shuffle Gaea's Blessing and everything in your graveyard right back into your library. Neat stuff.
And that's my classic Oath of Druids deck. It's a work in progress, as I am still waiting on some of the parts to come in. After that, it's a test run against friends. Maybe I'll throw in a sideboard by then (some Ground Seals, perhaps?).
Hope this first entry cuts the cake.
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