Introduction

When [[Underworld Breach]] was spoiled, it was a "decidedly" Vintage printing in the opinion of most players - a modern attempt at fixing [[Yawgmoth's Will]] and imbuing it with the Escape mechanic. Legacy and Vintage players were already wondering if it might be banned or restricted before the card was released. So far, that reality has manifested in Legacy but it is a bit less certain in Vintage. For one, Vintage has a much larger degree of graveyard hate that can be leveraged due to the power of the Dredge deck. Two, the format in general has a higher power level and Breach is not necessarily superior to [[Paradoxical Outcome]], [[Doomsday]], or [[Dark Petition]] Storm. In order to be successful, a Breach deck needs to find its niche in the format and exploit it. So while the initial Breach strategies were build along the lines of traditional broken decks in Vintage with Draw 7's like [[Wheel of Fortune]] , a full set of Breach, and many restricted cards, these types of decks didn't put up results. The first decks that really did well were [[Sun Titan]] [[Oath of Druid]] strategies that looked to mill over and bring back Underworld Breach, then recast Time Walk repeatedly to win. An example is Notmi's Breach Oath deck from the Vintage Challenge. A couple of weeks later, I won a Vintage Challenge playing a Breach deck that essentially grafted the Breach combo into a Mentor shell that played more of a combo-control game plan enabled by the format's Cantrip-Delve draw engine. This approach is largely what has persisted in the metagame and what this primer is about.

The Combo

Legacy players will know this combo well, short-lived as it was. The gist of it in Vintage is using the ability of Underworld Breach to repeatedly cast [[Brain Freeze]] from the graveyard, first to mill yourself and fuel Breach, then to mill out your opponent, while recasting either [[Lotus Petal]], [[Lion's Eye Diamond]], or, in Vintage, [[Black Lotus]] to produce enough mana to execute the combo. The combo can be protected from the graveyard by using [[Flusterstorm]], [[Spell Pierce]], or [[Pyroblast]] and players should keep this in mind while executing the combo as [[Mindbreak Trap]] is seeing more play. A reminder that Underworld Breach does not allow you to pay alternate costs for spells and so [[Force of Will]], [[Daze]], and [[Gush]] have to be hardcast from the graveyard. Some specific circumstances to keep in mind:

• [[Ancestral Recall]] can target your opponent and can be used to win the game on your turn rather than passing the turn back to your opponent.
• If the opponent is running something like [[Emrakul, the Aeon's Torn]] or [[Gaea's Blessing]] that prevents decking, which is most common in [[Oath of Druids]] decks, you can navigate this situation by casting [[Nihil Spellbomb]] prior to Brain Freezing the opponent. Exile the opponent's graveyard with the shuffle ability on the stack.
• Alternatively, you can counter your original Brain Freeze (not one of the storm copies) and recast it from the graveyard to mill the rest of the opponent's deck. Cast Ancestral Recall targeting them to win the game before the shuffle ability resolves.
• If the opponent casts [[Veil of Summer]] and gives themselves Hexproof from your Brain Freeze, your options are to Time Walk so that the Hexproof expires and use Lurrus/[[Teferi, Time Raveler]]/[[Chain of Vapor]] to recombo, or repeatedly use [[Lightning Bolt]] or [[Seal of Fire]] to win. Or keep recasting Breach and Time Walk from the yard while attacking for 3 each turn with your Cat. You don't have to make it easy on the opponent if you don't want to...

Decklists

Pre-Ikoria

Four-Color Breach Combo

• ChubbyRain - Vintage Challenge 2/8/20
• ChubbyRain - Vintage Challenge 2/15/20

Grixis Breach Combo

• DiscoverN - Vintage Challenge 4/11/20

Post-Ikoria

Jeskai Breach Combo

• JPinter - Vintage Leagues 5-0, 5/19/20, VOD of Matches

To Be Continued....

This will be something I contribute to piece-by-piece as I have time, but someone had requested primers and I wanted to start producing some. Let me know if there are specific topics or questions to be addressed.

@ten-ten Comments like this aren't going to lead to more Vintage content, especially since this was probably not a cost-effective use of Justin's time, and more something he did for the community. If you weren't a particular fan, constructive criticism is going to get you more of the content you're interested in while still being respectful to the time and effort Justin invested in the coverage.

Second trophy with identical 75.

Will probably start brewing with Yorian + Omnath next but I think it is best in Legacy.

Regarding Panglacial Wurm, timing is difficult and I was trying to avoid scenarios where you drew cards that were dead if you didn't draw Panglacial Wurm.

@evouga said in [ZRN] Sea Gate Stormcaller:

@chubbyrain1 Heaven forbid we compare new cards to old cards! A completely useless form of analysis, to be sure. Every card exists in a complete vacuum and the 20 years of history and experience playing with similar cards is surely useless for drawing any inferences about a new printing.

How about we draw on our 20 years of history and experience actually playing Magic: the Gathering rather than making comparisons at the level of any literate person with an introductory knowledge of the game?

In the case of Sea Gate Stormcaller cards with similar functionality have seen play in Narset Transcendent and Chandra, something something fire, flames, or burning. They have different pros and cons which only serve to detract from the point of a comparison which is to highlight a specific point and in this case that is "yeah, we've played cards that copy the next spell in Vintage."

Why did we do that?

Well, in the decks that ran Narset Transcendent, such as John Grudzina's Top 8 list from Champs the year Brian Kelly won on Oath, it was because of the ability to double Dig through Time and other broken spells, which were not yet restricted. If you look at Chandra, which saw more fringe play in Potucek and my 4-5 color planeswalker brews, it was essentially there to force through game ending spells like Tinker, Yawg Will, Gifts Ungiven (was still restricted I think), etc. The point is that this type of effect requires significant upside to make the setup that you put into it worth it (Lance went into that part of the card quite well). And Vintage is still a format where doubling up on an Ancestral Recall will win you the vast majority of your games.

So the real cost of these effects is delaying casting your powerful cards to get a more powerful effect later. You can minimize the setup cost by running a bunch of powerful spells to copy so that you'll almost always have one (which is why Narset became less playable following the Dig restriction) but Stormcaller minimizes this with its restriction (Snapcastering back Preordain never feels like a good use of Snapcaster Mage so you are limited to Ancestral and situationally Time Walk, Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm, Demonic Tutor). Or you can play the maximum number of Stormcallers to try and always have a Stormcaller when you find your Ancestral. The issue with the later approach is that a 2/1 just really isn't cutting it in Vintage right now. Snapcaster still sees a lot of play according to Goldfish but only as a 1-of in almost every deck running it. It just matches up poorly against Ballista, Hollow One, and Dreadhorde, while providing a slow clock against the combo decks. And Wrenn is a headache and a half.

If you are running a card as a one-of, it makes more sense to run an effect like Snapcaster since you can play your powerful cards on curve, not knowing when you will see your one copy. I don't think you can reliably hold onto one of your 5-6 payoff cards while hoping to draw a 1-of, and I don't think a 2/1 body at this rate is great. While reasonably costed, I think this card falls outside the realm of most players' definition of playable.

Of course, I play jank and have a loose interpretation of playability. One interaction that is interesting to me is using Teferi, Destroyer of Other Formats with this card to have much more control over the trigger and get value out of the body. I did the same thing with Snapcaster Mage but a limitation was that it complicated sideboarding by preventing the inclusion of Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace. The additional upside is actually realized because the games go long, you can play out SGS on curve early, bounce with Teferi and then kick it later. Pretty hilarious with Mystic Sanctuary as a way to buy back a Time Walk which you can then copy twice. But that is seeking a specific interaction in a specific shell for a particular style of play (My win condition is the opponent's desire to do something else with their time). Again, I don't believe it is generalizable.

On actually playing this, you cast any instant or sorcery, get a Treasure, sac that Treasure to cast Flusterstorm, then redirect the copies at the original Flusterstorm so your initial spell still resolves.

Storm-Kiln turns your extra Flusterstorms into Rituals, lets you Breach combo without other mana sources, and functions as a pseudo-Sprite Dragon if they clamp down on the graveyard. You can also run it in more generic Blue decks where it fuels pretty broken combo turns with Flusterstorms and other restricted spells. It plays well with another very powerful Strixhaven card in Expressive Iteration.

@thewhitedragon69 said in Thassa's Oracle:

It's been settled. Paradigm Shift is the Vintage-breaking tech of 2021!

Well, that seems like a rather bold declaration but I admire your confidence. I typically take the time to play cards and learn their intricacies, but even then seldom reach such a level of certainty.

My own take on Shift is a bit more tempered and can be summarized as “not a total dud”. The point of commenting here was merely to let the OP know their concept is playable if they wish to pursue it.

The format is changing, set after set. Decks look different than they did a year ago, different than they did 5 years ago, different than they did 10 years ago. What kills formats is when they become homogenized or consolidate around very few strategies - Affinity, Caw-Blade, Oko, etc... When players have few competitive options, a significant percentage will not enjoy those options or will get bored of them quickly.

Vintage has undergone considerable selection bias so that the current player base either tolerates or likes Force of Will, the Power 9, Shops, and Bazaar. Legacy has a similar issue with Brainstorm, LED, and Chalice. Wizards has said they maintain the B&R for Legacy and Vintage for the current players in those formats and that's why they don't hit those cards. They've essentially been grandpersoned in. It doesn't make it right, but bringing this up every friggin time there is a B&R discussion changes nothing when it's clear WotC isn't going to change their stance and there's not a really compelling reason for them to do so.

New cards don't get the same consideration. They are untested in the context of Eternal formats, and untested cards don't deserve a certain period of time to breath when it comes to a game, especially since B&R is the mechanism Wizards has proposed for fixing these problems. Some cards just have interactions that after a few actual reps in the format are clearly problematic, and MTGO can generate considerable data very quickly. We already have 1387 matches from the weekend Challenges over the past 3 weeks and we missed one of the challenges. This ignores how quickly cards and decks get iterated in between challenges during the leagues.

I would also add that Wizards can't hope to match the Hive Mind when it comes to testing. Play design is 9 members split across Standard, Draft, and Sealed? Who knows what other obligations they have as well. Even if other teams are responsible for testing, they are still having to ban cards in Standard, like Oko, Veil, Field, and Once upon a Time. These are cards that emerged pretty quickly as overpowered, the critical flaw in Oko being that the teams underestimated the power of Oko's +1 ability (Melissa DeTora metioned that on stream). Similarly, the Companion mechanic was a missed attempt to balance the deckbuilding restrictions with the benefit- you can comb Maro's tweets for that. It's hard to balance for three formats, let alone all formats, especially with the current approach to card design.

I think we have to accept these limitations and recognize that, in the absence of large beta testing like other games have, cards will get restricted or banned (hopefully in other formats and not Vintage again - Companion is a rather unique example). The goal should be to expedite the process and promote transparency (would love to see Wizards data and design process for the cards).

In an effort to keep discussion going on new decks and ideas, I'm trying to share some of the lists that I have been playing to success and my reasoning behind playing them. A card that interested me when Ikoria was printed was [[General Kudro of Drannith]], a B/W Human lord which in 2020 has much more text than it would previously. The incidental graveyard hate and the [[Reprisal]] ability are both relevant as they provide unique functionality. An interaction that has come up frequently has been using the graveyard ability to shrink opposing Tarmogoyfs in the BUG and 4 color matchups. Removing an artifact or a planeswalker can often turn them into a 3/4 and let your team through. The Reprisal ability was something I was interested in when UR Sprite Dragon was seeing a lot of play. That card is difficult to race and I wanted an answer that wasn't narrow in the main deck.

The first iteration of the deck trophied and can be found here: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3167642#online

I have played the deck in two more leagues, finishing 4-1 in both. You play a lot of grindy games. Wrenn is a problem, as discussed here, but I simply switch decks when Wrenn becomes popular, and all decks tend to wax and wane on MTGO. Vintage has been very dynamic lately. I wasn't a fan of the [[Kitesail Freebooters]]. I found them not as impactful and poor against the Bazaar decks that were seeing more play in the field. Similarly, Dark Confidant feels slow in this format and I only run a few. You are ironically playing from behind often against HollowVine and Dark Confidant is terrible in that matchup specifically. Deafening Silence has also been a card that has been horrible for me and I keep reducing the numbers on the off chance it demonstrates a shred of promise.

Regarding the Mayors, those are considerations for having access to active FoV on turn 1, which is important for the Shops matchup (a traditionally abysmal matchup) and against PO. I'm tweaking the numbers of other cards and I haven't run into a situation in which Kambal has been good (should probably just be more Sanctum Prelates). Surgical Extractions are necessary against the HollowVine decks. You can't beat 12-16 power on turn 1, with some having haste. You just can't. You need to stop that and Surgicals are the best option. Exile the Vengevines, and then realized that you are going to have to do a lot of combat math, smart blocking, and good sequencing to salvage the game at a single digit life total.

Heck, it's a Modern deck with Power. The games are going to be tough at times. The advantage is much of the field is poorly configured to deal with your threats (both the number and the fact they are uncounterable) and you get to leverage two of the most powerful cards right now in Wasteland and Force of Vigor.

The last list I ran was:

5-0'd

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3423382#online

If you are running a companion, you always have something to do with your Omnath mana and you don't have to run cards like Ugin that might be dead draws if you can't stick and Omnath.

As for particular tech, Sevinne's Reclamation is great, as a value card, as a mana sink for Omnath mana, and as a way to hit multiple land drops in a turn if you need to (used it against Dredge to get back Tabernacle).

Had several powerful sequences enabled by Omnath such as

• Companion Tax on Lutri, Ancestral, Lutri
• Omnath, Draw Narset, fetch, into play Narset, reveal and cast Time Walk (had an extra Blue)
• Sevinne + Flashback on multiple planeswalkers.

Omnath was also a Green card for Force of Vigor, which was pretty nice against the Golos Stax deck.

I favor this approach to a ramp deck that is all in playing Omnath, Locus Creation. While you might associate your build as a control deck, the presence of 28 or so lands really cuts down on your ability to interact with the stack and that will make things difficult in Vintage given the density of combo decks.

I also had experience playing Ugin in Vintage and this is not the metagame for it. The first times were during the Treasure Cruise era when I was trying to Drain a Cruise into an Ugin. The second time was a Rector Flash build with Narset unrestrict and a lot a Arcanist decks running around. Ugin does well against the URx decks that can't remove it while it just picks off all the creatures and walkers. Against Shops, Combo, and Dredge with Hollow One, Ichorids, Vengevines, it's not a good answer to the threats. Certainly not for the investment.

If someone argues that this isn't a true Omnath deck, I think a very reasonable approach is to try and explore Yorion next. But I did feel that Omnath gave a style of deck that had fallen out of favor a very real boost.

To pull from different threads:

• You can brew with anything you want, but let us know how successful you are.
• Oh, there are multiple league trophies with a card, but it was only a singleton in a deck that can only run singletons. Heck, it might as well have been Sedge Troll.
• Ah, well the card trophied a league and top 8'd a challenge a 4-of. Mocking comment with a Pig emoji. Have you considered playing the tier 1 option?

For a forum that occasionally has more posts from spambots than from actual people, this hostility to brews and the shifting of goalposts are unfortunate and detrimental, IMO.

Dack is currently seeing play in 24% of decks at 1.9 copies per list.

I didn't participate in this discussion but starting with a flawed premise is unlikely to generate useful analysis no matter the frame.

@lienielsen said in [STX] Storm-Kiln Artist:

Yeah magecraft is an insane ability for Vintage. Brainfreeze now functions like a Cabal Ritual on steroids. So if this is replacing ritual effects, then you must be relying on Mana Crypt,Vault, Sol Ring to power him out? And then hope he doesn’t get bolted

Those mana rocks are great and Bolt is not very effective against this combo.

On actually playing this, you cast any instant or sorcery, get a Treasure, sac that Treasure to cast Flusterstorm, then redirect the copies at the original Flusterstorm so your initial spell still resolves.

Storm-Kiln turns your extra Flusterstorms into Rituals, lets you Breach combo without other mana sources, and functions as a pseudo-Sprite Dragon if they clamp down on the graveyard. You can also run it in more generic Blue decks where it fuels pretty broken combo turns with Flusterstorms and other restricted spells. It plays well with another very powerful Strixhaven card in Expressive Iteration.

Justin and I have been playing with it.

The card is insane, one of the top Vintage cards in the set.

The rogue deck in which I envision this card is Channel - Lich's Mirror.

It fetches Channel and Tinker (for Mirror) in your main color, which makes it likely the best unrestricted option. I had attempted something similar with Spellseeker and Transmute Artifact but the UU requirement created a bottleneck on Blue mana so this is an upgrade.

And yes, I know this isn't a very competitive shell. Not really the point, IMO.

@thewhitedragon69 said in [LEG] Greed:

To be fair, I wouldn't shit on the deck if he 5-0 with Greed as a 1-of if he could explain why every time he drew it, it was THE card he wanted to draw, or why it was better than other options. I don't have issues with people posting good records and showing how the card was critical to the result. If the OP ran a ritual storm list with a greed, went 5-0, and could explain the scenarios where it won him games, was better than other options, or was at least as good as any other card when he drew it in multiple stages of the game....that's perfectly fine reasoning.

What I DO dislike is when people play a 1-of and 5-0 a league (and maybe went 3-2, 1-4, whatever the other 90x they played it) with a solid 59 card deck with a 1-of that was irrelevant or inferior in those 5 wins and holds up that record as proof that "card X is good." When someone runs a tuned Workshop list with a singleton Burning Wish (with no red mana), 5-0s, and then says "see, I 5-0d; Workshop Wish is baller," that's where I take issue.

From experience, you would ignore all the scenarios they described and the posts where they literally went through other cards that could be played in that slot to rail against your own personal interpretation of what they wrote even though they tried to correct you multiple times.

http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/3248/zrn-omnath-locus-of-creation/43
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/3248/zrn-omnath-locus-of-creation/61
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/3248/zrn-omnath-locus-of-creation/70
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/3248/zrn-omnath-locus-of-creation/79
http://www.themanadrain.com/topic/3248/zrn-omnath-locus-of-creation/83

Yes, that post from BrassMan was about me. The only one who I can see that I annoy (probably consistently) is Chubbyrain. I've actually had a lot of good discussions on TMD, but for some reason I tend to get snarky/snippy with Chubbyrain.

Could you share some pointers on how to successfully annoy people from the site? Asking for a friend.

To pull from different threads:

• You can brew with anything you want, but let us know how successful you are.
• Oh, there are multiple league trophies with a card, but it was only a singleton in a deck that can only run singletons. Heck, it might as well have been Sedge Troll.
• Ah, well the card trophied a league and top 8'd a challenge a 4-of. Mocking comment with a Pig emoji. Have you considered playing the tier 1 option?

For a forum that occasionally has more posts from spambots than from actual people, this hostility to brews and the shifting of goalposts are unfortunate and detrimental, IMO.

Took one try to get the trophy with this card.

Straight UB, leveraging Yawgmoth as a way to cash the Pest tokens into cards (better than Clamp as it gets around Leyline of the Void). Pretty nice that the life gain from the tokens cancels out the life loss from Yawgmoth's ability.

The card has a lot of text and it's difficult to convey what makes it good, but others have remarked that Witch has been surprising when they played the list.

@thewhitedragon69 said in Thassa's Oracle:

It's been settled. Paradigm Shift is the Vintage-breaking tech of 2021!

Well, that seems like a rather bold declaration but I admire your confidence. I typically take the time to play cards and learn their intricacies, but even then seldom reach such a level of certainty.

My own take on Shift is a bit more tempered and can be summarized as “not a total dud”. The point of commenting here was merely to let the OP know their concept is playable if they wish to pursue it.

@protoaddict said in Thassa's Oracle:

Paradigm shift on the other hand seems like a total dud to me because you also have to remove your graveyard and it's only other utility is force pitch.

Ironically, I just top 8'd the 76 person Vintage Challenge with Esper Shift... Being able to pitch your combo pieces to Force of Will when you need to is good, actually.