Schmids Sick Synergies: Banned and Restricted Announcement plus Maralen Timewalk Primer

by Daniel Schmider

Editors’ note: If the user feedback is positive, we are considering making “Schmids Sick Synergies” a weekly installment. Make sure to rate the article and express your opinion in the comments section. Thank you.

About the author
My name is Daniel Schmider and I am a Magic player from Switzerland. I have been playing Magic since 1998 and began playing tournaments in 2004. I am an experienced tournament player and I have played in several PTQs and Grand Prix. Apart from competing in high-level tournaments, designing rogue decks is a passion of mine. I am intrigued by the challenge that comes with designing new decks and breaking a format. There are rumors that I discovered the turn 0 win in Vintage ;-). I don’t limit myself to specific formats though and I am also an avid Vintage player as well as a weekly drafter, where I try to sharpen my Limited skills.

Introduction
In this installment of Schmids Sick Synergies I will talk about the the latest changes to the banned and restricted list and will then show you a rogue deck for the Vintage format and give you in-depth information about the card choices and how to play the deck. At the end I will also show you a budget version of the Puca’s Mischief deck. But first things first…

Banned and restricted announcement
Good news everybody, Vintage is about to change, and unlike, so called Vintage innovator, Stephen Menedian suggested, Wizards did not unrestrict Gush, but restricted Thirst for Knowledge and reignited a whole bunch of other cards to fight the Mana Drain based decks supersaturation of the Vintage format. Editor’s note: If a card is restricted, you are allowed to play only one copy of said card in your constructed deck.

You can find the official Banned and Restricted Announcement here.

First of all, I’m actually very happy that Thirst for Knowledge has been restricted. When the card was printed in Mirrodin, I underestimated it completely. If you can’t discard an artifact, the drawspell does not produce cardadvantage, since you have to discard 2 cards plus the original Thirst for Knowledge, you end up cycling 3 cards for 3 mana. But if you can discard an artifact, like for example a Mox Pearl, Lotus Petal or even a Mana Crypt in the lategame, Thirst for Knowledge becomes a powerhouse. On top of that it can even be beneficial for you, if you have Tinker and Darksteel Colossus in your hand; you either have to cast a Brainstorm or a Thirst for Knowledge to get Darksteel Colossus back into your library. If you can do that and draw 3 cards in the process then this card is really broken. Don’t even get me started talking about the synergy with Goblin Welder…

Fortunately it is all good now, because the dream team Mana Drain plus Thirst for Knowledge is no more; or at least not so often. Unfortunately in Vintage every card can be found with various tutor effects, still the restriction makes it less likely that you actually have the card in your opening hand. All the various powerful but restricted cards are the reason why tutors are among the most important cards in the entire Vintage format. Wizards knows that of course, and decided to unrestrict three of them:

Crop Rotation
Crop Rotation is the best tutor for lands. Restricted lands can produce massive amounts of mana, like Tolarian Academy, can draw cards (Library of Alexandria), or can destroy other lands, like Strip Mine does. On top of that, the fetched land comes into play untapped, this means that Crop Rotation is virtually free to cast, and because it is an instant, a land that is about to get destroyed can still be sacrificed. All in all this is a very powerful card.

Enlightened Tutor
This is the best tutor for enchantments and artifacts. While enchantments are among the least used card type in Vintage, artifacts are included in almost every deck. A white deck can now search for Black Lotus and get a huge mana boost on turn 2, which is something usually only black decks can do. Parfait, a deck based on enchantments and artifacts, will profit a lot from this unrestriction. Maybe we will see a comeback of enchantments in Vintage – who knows.

Entomb
Finally we get to play four copies of the best tutor for anything that belongs into your graveyard. Entomb shines when it is abused in a deck like dragon combo, an unusual reanimator deck that creates an infinite loop based on Worldgorger Dragon enchanted with Animate Dead.
With Entomb, you only need three mana plus Bazaar of Baghdad to complete the combo and end the game. This can easily be accomplished on your first turn with Dark Ritual.

Grim Monolith
The fourth card they unrestricted is Grim Monolith. I don’t think anybody really cares about Grim Monolith, because it is worse than Cabal Ritual. This shows you how dominant Mana Drain decks were.

But that is now over. A new era has begun and finally you have some reasons to play green and white. I hope new decks will appear and new archetypes will form. Sadly, green and white are not included in today’s deck.

The king is dead. Long live the king.
As you can already tell, blue based control decks will take a hard hit from the restriction of Thirst for Knowledge. Nonetheless I will present to you a new version of a blue based control deck. First of all I will give you some general information about the Vintage format because you might not be that familiar with it.

In Vintage you have access to countless broken cards. This means that there is one basic rule: Either you try to be (very) fast, or you play Force of Will. But even if you do, there are some decks where a Force of Will won’t be enough to save the day. For example the Ichorid deck can kill you without even playing a single spell. If you can counter their Dread Return, it will buy you a turn or two, but there isn’t much you can accomplish with reactive approaches against this deck; it is fast, resilient to Counterspells and hand disruption and doesn’t care about cards like Tanglewire or Smokestack. Its entire gameplan relies on the graveyard and of course, the Dredge mechanism. Most decks try to fight it by dedicating a huge percentage of their Sideboard to graveyard hate, which is generally a good idea in Vintage.

Maralen of the Mornsong
I have found a different solution to stop Ichorid, and it is a card I stumbled upon while designing a standard legal land destruction deck. That card is Maralen of the Mornsong. Maralen of the Mornsong basically provides Grim Tutors for both players, for free. Unfortunately your opponent will most likely be the first one to get the effect, and that can be very risky, especially in Vintage.

However the tutor effect is not the only thing the card does. The first part of the card reads “Players can’t draw cards”. Yes that’s true, “Player’s can’t draw cards”. Only Possessed Portal does a similar thing – for 8 mana! And since Possessed Portal creates a replacement effect, Dredge can still be used with a Portal in play. The effect, Maralen of the Mornsong has on the game, is absolutely mind-blowing. It affects the very foundations the Eternal format is built on: Tutors, drawing cards and of course: Do something, or die – very fast.

When facing this card for the first time, most of your opponents will think something along the lines of: “Skip my drawstep and get a tutor for free? Fair deal.” But that is only half the story, and they will be very annoyed when they try to resolve their so beloved Ancestral Recall, which they just tutored up: you don’t draw 3 cards. You don’t draw any cards at all. (I am not kidding, but this happened several times during testing and even against experienced Vintage players due to the fact that they are not familiar with Maralen of the Mornsong.) This effect wrecks Dredge decks completely. Not being able to draw cards means that they don’t get the chance to dredge. Manaless Ichorid for example does not have a solution for Maralen of the Mornsong. They can keep their hand and discard the cards they tutor up, but there is no way they can get into the game again – they are crippled, while I get a free tutor per turn.

Fact is that Maralen alone can’t kill your opponent. If you tutor up a Timewalk-chain: Timewalk, Recoup, Burning Wish, Yawgmoth’s Will, Death Wish, Recoup flashback and so on, you do not only need tons of mana, you literally commit suicide, because you lose 3 life per turn, while she deals only 2 damage per turn. This means that Maralen needs some help.


Help? Did somebody call for “Sick Synergies”?
The easiest way to abuse Maralen would be to tutor up some 2 card combo, like Painter’s Servant and Grindstone, but I don’t like giving my opponent the same chance without doing anything about it. A different approach would be to tutor up Mindlock Orb, or do that via Tinker. This locks the library out of the game – and I like the idea a lot. But the presumably best synergy with Maralen’s effects is so obvious that they already printed it on the card itself:

“Maralen sent Veesa, Endry, and Iliona — the Vendilion Clique — on the gravest of tasks.”

In return, I was hoping for a flavor text on Vendilion Clique saying something like:

“The Faeries of the Vendilion Clique like to party hard with Maralen in their spare-time.”

But instead they printed Flash and Flying on the card, and there just wasn’t enough room left to fit in a flavor text too. But that is fine with me, because these faeries really need Flash to fulfill their “gravest of tasks”. Imagine your opponent searched for a Yawgmoth’s Will, you cast Vendilion Clique still in his drawstep and that Will goes back to the bottom of your opponents library without him drawing a card in the process. THAT is the gravest of tasks.

I will now show you what my final decklist looked like and then tell you how to play the deck and how to sideboard for the different matchups.

Maralens Timewalk

Deck by MaZe741 on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 16:48

• Black
• Blue
• Maralen of the Mornsong
• Schmids Sick Synergies

This is my version of the Maralen of the Mornsong deck. The decklist forms part of my latest feature article "Schmids Sick Synergies: Analyzing the Banned and Restricted Announcement and the Official Maralen Timewalk Primer"
It is a Vintage deck that assaults the opponent's hand and abuses Maralen of the Mornsong to quickly end the game.

Schmids Sick Synergies: Banned and Restricted Announcement plus Maralen Timewalk Primer

Article by MaZe741 on Tue, 06/23/2009 - 22:33

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In the second installment of "Schmids Sick Synergies" I will talk about the banned and restricted announcement and how it affects the Vintage format. In addition I will give you an introduction to a new rogue deck for the Vintage format and then I will condense the most important information from my playtesting sessions as well as explain in-depth how to play the deck. Check it out!

Main Deck (60 cards)		Sideboard (15 cards)
4	Polluted Delta	4	Dark Confidant
4	Underground Sea	3	Extirpate
2	Sunken Ruins	2	Tendrils of Agony
2	Volcanic Island	2	Dark Ritual
2	Bloodstained Mire	1	Umezawa's Jitte
2	Swamp	1	Trickbind
2	Island	1	Hurkyl's Recall
1	Strip Mine	1	Rebuild
3	Maralen of the Mornsong
3	Vendilion Clique
4	Force Of Will
4	Duress
3	Cabal Therapy
3	Arcane Denial
2	Stifle
1	Black Lotus
1	Lotus Petal
1	Mox Ruby
1	Mox Jet
1	Mox Sapphire
1	Pithing Needle
1	Ancestral Recall
1	Curfew
1	Time Walk
1	Extirpate
1	Demonic Tutor
1	Yawgmoth's Will
1	Tendrils of Agony
1	Recoup
1	Fact Or Fiction
1	Brainstorm
1	Ponder
1	Echoing Truth
1	Gifts Ungiven

Colors
Artifact	6
Black	14
Blue	20
Land	19
Red	1

Converted Mana Cost
0	5
1	15
2	7
3	7
4	3
5	4

Type
Artifact	6
Basic Land	4
Creature	6
Instant	16
Land	15
Sorcery	13

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Cards I don’t play

Tinker
The deck does not play enough artifacts to support Tinker - sad but true.

Burning Wish
Burning Wish is a solid card and it can enhance your Timewalk-chain. Unfortunately most of the time it is a win-more card that turns into a win-less card if you are unable to find red mana.

Shadow of Doubt
I considered Shadow of Doubt, but Stifle is much better.

Impulse
A card that will most likely replace Thirst for Knowledge in a lot of decks. Impulse still works with a Maralen of the Mornsong on the table. I however prefer Arcane Denial.

Gameplan
You want to attack your opponent’s hand from the beginning. Destroy his hand with Duress, Cabal Therapy or even Extirpate and when the time is right, drop Maralen. Make sure you resolve your carddraw (Ancestral Recall, Brainstorm, Ponder) before playing Maralen. If you manage to Stifle the Maralen trigger during your opponent’s turn, you can then search for Vendillion Clique and play it after your opponent searched for a card, then start Timewalking, or flashback Cabal Therapy and play another Clique. If your graveyard reaches critical mass, you can get Yawgmoth’s Will or Demonic Tutor to finish your opponent with Tendrils of Agony, since he will already be low on life.
If you don’t feel like going completely rogue, you can also replace Arcane Denial with Mana Drain. Most of the time I value the beauty of such synergies (Arcande Denial plus Maralen of the Mornsong) higher than the power of single cards. On top of that, Mana Drains are extremely pricey at the moment, it is ridiculous!

Deck info

Name:	Maralens Timewalk
Also known as:	D'ooooh
Format:	Vintage
Deck type:	Control
Original designer:	Daniel Schmider
Key cards:	Maralen of the Mornsong, Force of Will, Vendilion Clique
Matchups:	(Click on a deckname for sample lists!)
	Vintage Combo Decks, Vintage Control Decks
	Dredge, Fish
	Stax

Matchups and sideboarding strategies
Vintage is a very diverse format, therefore I won’t present a detailed matchup analysis this time. But I will give you a general sideboarding plan aginst the most played deck archetypes:

Combo
(Click on the title for a sample decklist)

Combodecks (Stormcombo and Painter decks) profit too much from Maralen, giving them a free tutor to get Black Lotus / Yawgmoth’s Will or just the Tendrils of Agony to win the game. You should side out Maralen and bring in Dark Confidant. Gifts Ungiven and Fact or Fiction are too slow. Side them out and bring in Trickbind and Extirpates.

Sideboarding
Out: 3 Maralen of the Mornsong, Gifts Ungiven, Fact or Fiction, Curfew, Pithing Needle
In: 4 Dark Confidant, 2 Extirpate, Trickbind

Dredge
(Click on the title for a sample decklist)

Dredge is still a hard matchup pre-board, because Maralen could enter the battlefield just a turn too late. All your hand disruption cards such as Duress and Cabal Therapy are basically useless. Tune your deck with Dark Rituals, Tendrils, Confidants and more Extirpates.

Sideboarding
Out: 4 Duress, 3 Cabal Therapy, 3 Vendilion Clique, Fact or Fiction
In: 2 Dark Ritual, 2 Tendrils of Agony, 4 Dark Confidant, 3 Extirpate

Control
(Click on the title for a sample decklist)

All control Matchups are highly favorable pre-board, and even after sideboarding, a lot of lists just can’t handle Maralen. If they try to Tinker, search for Clique first, then sacrifice it to flashback Cabal Therapy or use Curfew to deal with their Inkwell Leviathan and conveniently return a Vendilion Clique to your hand.

Sideboarding
Out: 3 Arcane Denial, 2 Stifle
In: 3 Dark Confidant, 2 Tendrils of Agony

Stax
(Click on the title for a sample decklist)

Stax? I don’t like Stax – it is a matchup that annoys me every time. I have played entire games against Stax without playing a single spell. Post board it gets better, because you bring in Rebuild and Hurkyl’s Recall. Don’t keep hands without Force of Will or Basic Lands, pick Smokestack with Duress.

Sideboarding
Out: Fact or Fiction, Gifts Ungiven, Recoup, Extirpate, Curfew, Time Walk (could be nice if you have the upper hand, but most of the time you don’t want to sacrifice for Smokestack twice)
In: 4 Dark Confidant (you want more permanents), Hurkyl’s Recall, Rebuild

Fish
(Click on the title for a sample decklist)

Fish is fine – They will most likely handle Maralen with a Swords to Plowshares. Maralen then reads: “Target player skips his or her next Drawstep, loses 3 life and pays W. You gain 2 life”. All you need to beat fish is enough mana to combat Daze and Cursecatchers.

Sideboarding
Out: Curfew, Recoup
In: 1 Tendrils of Agony, 1 Umezawa’s Jitte

I hope you liked my musings even if you aren’t a fulltime Vintage player. It’s time to say goodbye to Thirst for Knowledge. Time to find a different draw engine – or Maralen.

Puca’s Mischief redux
For those of you who requested a budget version of Puca’s Mischief; here it is:

I need to say that loosing Meddling Mage means that your Blades are a lot more vulnerable to Volcanic Fallout and other mass removal. And since Reveillark isn’t cheap as well, you really need to consider if this deck is worth playing as a budget version, even Pithing Needle had to be removed from the sideboard. Thistledown Liege is now maindecked and the deck plays much more aggressively, and you might still stand chance.

I hope you liked this article and you were able to profit a lot from it. Please leave your feedback in the comments section, where I would also be happy to answer all your questions. Have fun playing with the deck!

See you next week

Daniel Schmider

 

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