Ichy Topics

The funny thing about this blog is, I write a couple to get ahead of the game, and then in a couple days they’re gone again. It’s voracious, I tell you.

So now I’m stuck once again without a set topic. I know I said that I’d come up with some of my ideas for Invitational cards (in fact, I think I unfortunately claimed they’d be the best Invitiational cards ever. Ever!) but that’s a lot harder than it sounds. Most of my ideas are either beyond broken, unplayably bad, or just stupid and uninteresting. So you’ll just have to wait.

I think I need a development team.

It really gives me a newfound respect for Wizards R&D. I suppose they have an organized process for the whole thing, and they do still make mistakes periodically—Jitte anyone? No? What about Skullclamp? Yawgmoth’s Will?—but they make a whole bunch of useful cards every three months and repeatedly come out with very balanced sets.

Anyway, this is for a later time.

My cousin Jeff has been trying to figure out a new deck to play in Vintage. After trying Dredge-based Dragon Combo for a while we realized that it would be better to just play regular Dragon Combo (with the Force of Wills, Duresses, and draw spells that help it go off in the face of control decks) or to play a more dedicated Dredge-based deck like Ichorid.

At one point we even had Ichorids and Ashen Ghouls in the sideboard of Dragon, but that was pretty bad, since the deck was noticeably more consistent when you ignored the combo aspect and just played it more aggressively. Dragon, I guess, just doesn’t need any help beyond its 5- or 3-color builds, and Ichorid really hates getting terrible dredges that include huge red creatures that don’t dredge and can’t be removed as Ichy food.

So Jeff had Vintage Ichorid (Vichorid?) proxied up last night, using approximately Stephen Menendian’s build from the Richmond StarCity tournament. He couldn’t find Brainstorms, so he used Breakthroughs instead, which seemed okay, but I can see where Brainstorm would be better. Brainstorm cycles for blue, allows you to dredge and draw cards, and puts dredgable material back on top of your library.

I didn’t actually play the deck myself, but I played against it with UB Fish and with Oath, and it seems pretty good. Like, real good. Really hard to stop with a counter-control deck anyway, and I hear and assume it does well against Stax, though I have no firsthand proof of that.

The only times I won against it with Oath, I got out a relatively early Oath and swung through for the win, both times on the back of Time Walk. I was probably 2 and 5 against it, though we weren’t playing with sideboards and my Oath still isn’t quite tuned yet anyway. I’m not making excuses because I definitely lost big, but I want to put the numbers in perspective.

In one game with Oath, I kept a hand with two Duresses, two Moxes, a Null Rod, and a Wasteland on the draw. Jeff drops Bazaar of Baghdad, Mox Sapphire, Lotus Petal and his hand into the graveyard with Breakthroughs for 2 and 0. He probably got 40 cards into his graveyard that turn. I play two Moxes, a Null Rod, and Wasteland the Bazaar to shut down his board, and then I die drawing nothing else useful while his dredging continues to pull up Ichorids for the win. It was depressing.

Of course against Ichorid with a sideboard I can take out my Duresses and counters for graveyard hate and creature stopping. I hear Caltrops are pretty good against x/1 attackers, and I could use Thirst for Knowledge or some other draw spell to find them or my Oath for the win. I’d probably use something a little more flexible, though, like Darkblast or something, since I don’t see me stopping a lot of rampaging Welders or Mox Monkeys with Caltrops. Also, I would have killed to have Echoing Truth or Echoing Decay maindecked.

A lot of people were worried about the Oath-Ichorid matchup because of Cabal Therapy, but that never really bothered me. The only thing that would hurt if he Therapied me for it would have been Oath, and I rarely held it in my hand because I either played it or never saw it. Why bother taking my Force of Will when you don’t have to cast spells anyway? Also, it doesn’t matter that Cabal Therapy makes a great outlet for Orchard tokens because Ichorid is still a creature-based deck that will keep Ashen Ghouls in play, and I can always play more Orchard Tokens.

Basically, with some better maindeck answers, I think I’m okay with Oath versus Ichorid.

UB Fish was an interesting choice as well. I’m definitely not used to dealing with that much combat math in Vintage, but it’s okay because the answer to “Does Ichorid kill this fish creature?” is usually just a straight-up yes so anything beyond that is useless.

Basically, beyond the maindecked singletons of Echoing Truth and Darkblast, which I never saw, my build of Fish has two good answers to Ichorid. When Menendian was asked why he played a deck that rolls to Withered Wretch, his answer was, “Who the hell plays Withered Wretch.” Well, that’s me. I have four of them in the main deck, and I also have a single Jitte, and both of those are pretty good against Ichorid.

I don’t remember how many games we played of Fish versus Ichorid, but I think we may have ended up even thanks to (and this time I’m making excuses because my deck really should wreck graveyard strategies) some terrible draws on my part.

In the first game, I drew two Wretches in my opening hand and another one a few turns later and I couldn’t find either the second black mana source or the Aether Vial I needed to get them into play until it was far too late. In the end I just got swarmed. I did, however, manage to avoid the Cabal Therapy for Wretch.

Yes, in this game, Jeff had a really good target for Cabal Therapy even on first turn, but it really didn’t matter since I either drew Withered Wretch on the turn after he called it, or I was able to Vial it in or otherwise avoid the discard.

Strangely, my Withered Wretches seemed to come in groups. I had three in the first game and two in at least two other games. The rest of the games I would draw and draw and never see them, which was super lame because this was also the first game where I’d upped the Wretch count to four instead of three. Apparently I have better luck with three, so I’m thinking of dropping one of them back to the sideboard in favor of Black Lotus.

So the night as a whole was Jeff’s, and I think if we had played sideboards it might have gone much the same way as my sideboard answers would have been countered by his answers: Pithing Needle on Wretch, Tormod’s Crypt, and Wasteland; Null Rod for Crypt and Jitte.

The problem is that he has to draw and be able to play his sideboard cards, which can be rough for him since much of the time he’s playing without a hand or many lands. It seems like it might be first turn or never unless he slows the deck down by a couple of turns to set up some defenses.

This is the way I think it will be for a while. Vichorid will do well and become more popular and winning until the hate for it becomes unbearable and it dies down like Dragon did. Then the hate will die down for a while before people remember that Ichorid was pretty good once and start playing it again. Tormod’s Crypt will get maindecked in multiples, and decks running black for graveyard hate will get some attention, especially if they can win against Gifts and Slaver.

I have a feeling that Oath and Fish will make a resurgence during this period as well, actually. And I don’t think I’m saying that just because I’m playing both of them. With some different creatures, Fish should be able to stand against Ichorid in the combat arena (with enough drawing it can throw chumps in the way of Ichorid until there aren’t enough black creatures to remove), and if Oath can tune itself and speed up it should also have a good game.

The other deck that’s coming back? Workshop Aggro, the one with the big creatures, maybe even “The Jester,” which is a stupid and contrived name, running Jester’s Caps as a control card. That’s the other deck I’m looking for. If it can draw enough cards and prevent enough counters to keep pace with things, it’ll be a winner in the coming months.

Plus, who doesn’t like swinging with a 7/10 quintuple-Stone Rain? It’s Titanic without the water!