Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Vintage is Great!

If you've never seen vintage play, you're missing out on some of the hypest games in magic.

I've been going through the backlog of the Vintage Super League for just that reason. In one of my favorite games thus far, Randy Buehler won a match over Kai Budde with Dredge. Up to this point, Dredge (which I'm still getting accustomed to writing instead of Ichorid, the name I was introduced to) had something like an 0-14 record in the VSL. It won games, but not matches, and even in the video description they call it the "Dredge curse".

Now I love Dredge, because it ignores the fundamental rules of magic: you don't need mana, you don't really need lands - save one - and you don't need to cast spells. And I love seeing it do well, and thinking of it as a top-tier deck. But losing that many matches in the VSL makes me think it's just not.

They say Dredge's win rate is directly proportional to how much people prepare for it. When people sideboard against Dredge, they're favored to win - especially now that Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace exist. But Dredge did win a big tournament - whose name I can't remember right now - watch the VSL to get it. But maybe the competition in the VSL is just that much higher that Dredge can't do well.

Or maybe the pervasiveness of Shops decks with T1 Wasteland/Grafdigger's Cage was keeping Dredge back. Less of a problem now that Chalice of the Void and Lodestone Golem have been restricted.

Either way, Randy chose to pilot Dredge against Kai Budde's UGw control deck with maindeck Rest in Peace. And he won in the most ridiculous way possible.


No comments:

Post a Comment