After
over 10 years of waiting, WoTC finally decided to bringing Vintage to Magic
Online through the release of Vintage
Masters next June. This is extremely exciting news as Vintage is one of the
most powerful and exhilarating formats of Magic the Gathering. For those of you
who are not familiar with this format, Vintage is an Eternal format that allows
you to run almost all cards that exist in Magic. Most notably you are able to
use the infamous Power
Nine in your deck. The power level of Vintage is kept in check by the
Restricted List in which certain over-powered spells are restricted to one per
deck instead of the normal four per deck. Being able to tap into the most efficient
mana accelerators, draw engines and utility spells Vintage maximizes the potential
of all existing Magic deck archetypes.
For
players that have not tried Vintage there are some misconceptions about the
format. First, the game always ends in turn one and there is nothing you can do
to prevent that. While many Vintage decks are capable of establishing a win
condition quickly (i.e. Tinker
with Blightsteel
Colossus), a turn one win does not occur often at all. This is because all
the opposing decks are packed with various answers to prevent the establishment
of these so called "turn one win conditions". If you have ever
observed a Vintage tournament match you will realize that very often a Vintage
game takes more than 6 turns before a winner is determined.
Second, there
are not enough deck varieties to make this format interesting. Vintage as a
format has evolved drastically in the past few years. All long term Magic
players would have noticed that the qualities of the new creatures have significantly
improved in terms of ability and power level (especially post Onslaught block),
compared to the creatures that were printed in the old times. Using powerful creatures
in combination with the existing powerful instants, sorceries, artifacts and
enchantments, Vintage in fact is a format that has the most innovative space. The variety of competitive deck types that can
be built in Vintage is extremely high. The recent Vintage top 8 reports actually
have equivalent if not more deck variance compared to Legacy and Standard
formats.
Due to
the scarcity of some the Vintage staples and the Reserve List of WoTC, Vintage
is currently a dying format in real life. Fortunately the Reserve List does not
apply to Magic Online, this allows the release of Vintage
Masters next year which will contain the highly sought after Power
Nine along with the reprint of many Vintage staples. This is a great
opportunity to revive Vintage by allowing more players to play Vintage and allowing Vintage players around
the globe to play against each other 24/7 through the Magic Online server. The
release of Vintage
Masters online does not necessarily mean you are able to buy into this
format cheaply, as we have not yet been told the exact rarity distributions of
Power 9 in the packs. However, one thing for sure is that Vintage online will
be much cheaper and more accessible compared to Vintage in real life. Even with
the potential high price of entry, being able to play competitively in one of
the most innovative and exhilarating formats of Magic is definitely worth the
investment.
For more
information on Vintage, I suggest paying attention to the Top 8 Lists of
Vintage tournamentw on Morphling.de and listening
to the Podcast "So Many
Insane Plays" by Kevin Cron and Stephen Menendian, one of the most
important pillars in Vintage.
Until next
time please enjoy the exciting live coverage match ups for the Vintage
Championships of Eternal
Weekend 2013 and Bazaar of Moxen
event this weekend!!
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