I know that most of you aren't really Vintage players like me. I mean, I look forward to tournaments where we get to play on green felt tables, smoke expensive cigars, and drink the finest brandies served by the finest buxom young cocktail waitresses while putting Tendrils on the stack twelve or fifteen times, but some of you might not be into the good life like that.
I also realize that you “Standard” and “Limited” players often have the impression that we Vintage players are snobbish and that there are definitely representatives, even vocal ones, who are.
This doesn't mean that we can't learn from each other, though. Right? I mean, I play Fish and I'd be way worse at the elusive “Combat Phase” if I didn't pick up a deck from a smaller cardpool and play that every once in a while. And you other players get to beat us in any format where creatures are viable, so we're good for your “Self Esteem.”
Plus, every so often some Vintage or Legacy player will play or face some current Standard staple, get ravaged by its simple goodness, and will try to incorporate it into a deck.
That happened this weekend (except I didn't get ravaged, I just witnessed it's power). And based on what I saw, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Coiling Oracle could be pretty good in a Vintage UG Fish build.
Check this out:
4x Coiling Oracle
4x Meddling Mage
3x Wild Mongrel
3x Ninja of the Deep Hours
4x Standstill
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
2x Stifle
2x Naturalize
2x Swords to Plowshares
4x Aether Vial
1x Time Walk
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Emerald
1x Lotus Petal
1x Black Lotus
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
2x Treetop Village
1x Faerie Conclave
4x Tropical Island
3x Tundra
3x Windswept Heath
Meddling Mage is an obvious choice, and I think for once that Daze is positive as well since, hopefully, the Coiling Oracle will make up for your lost land about a third of the time.
That's the thing that makes the Oracle fit into Vintage Fish is the possibility of dropping an extra land early. Fish is a tempo deck, which means anytime you make it seem like you took some extra turns-by, say, drawing extra cards or dropping extra lands-you're probably winning. The Oracle swings for damage and automatically replaces himself, and that's awesome.
I also hope that the Lotus Petal will be an all-star here as well. It gets a lot of flack in Vintage for being a non-permanent source of mana, but really, in this deck, any extra tempo boost could be huge.
It took me a while to decide on the contents of the slot currently being filled by Wild Mongrel. Obviously Mongrel is really good, especially if you can get a lot of card advantage from Standstill and Ninja(!). I think it's a metagame choice, but the Mongrel should give you a good game against the UW Fish that will be going around in the future. Other choices for this slot were Vinelasher Kudzu, Waterfront Bouncer, Spiketail Hatchling, Rootwater Thief or some mix of other utility creatures.
I went for the beats, though.
I'm almost tempted to run Trygon Predator over Naturalize too since, well, that guy repeatedly wrecks house, especially in Vintage. Think about how good this guy would be if Stax still got played semi regularly. As it is, he'll happily eat or crash into or steal or whatever he does to moxes and Pithing Needles and Mindslavers. Not to mention the fact that he has a solid body and flies.
The question is whether Coiling Oracle is good enough. At its heart, it's just a 1/1 guy that replaces itself and costs two mana, and that's not all that hot. In a format where your 1/1s are getting through for damage 90% of the time and the rest of the time they're killing Goblin Welder, Coiling Oracle seems pretty good. Plus, it's not just that he replaces himself; he puts a land into play, untapped, ready to use. And it's not like in Standard where you might have to return another land to your hand or pay life to have it come in untapped or anything.
Lands coming into play untapped are like taking an extra turn. Coiling Oracle is Time Walk on legs only you don't get the extra attack phase and you miss either your land drop or your draw step. That seems pretty good, especially since Time Walk is widely considered one of the more broken cards in the game since it breaks lots of rules so cheaply.
Basically it's like cheating.
Coiling Oracle is good in Standard because it's a solid card in a couple of solid colors. Coiling Oracle should be good in Vintage because cheating is the way of life in the format where any advantage, no matter how slight, can help push one deck over another.
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