For a long time, Vintage has been a personal favorite format of mine. And of course, in the one format where blue gets every iconic and broken card you could possibly want and lands like Mishra’s Workshop and Bazaar of Baghdad are legal, my favorite decks to play are the ones that cast creatures and turn them sideways.
Since the format is defined by so few cards, it’s easy to exploit its weaknesses. This is why I like to play cards like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Lavinia, Azorius Renegade. However, there is one card that’s simultaneously one of the most powerful cards in the entire format and one of the least played: Magus of the Moon.
In order to understand how powerful Magus is, we have to look at the metagame as a whole. There are a few broad archetypes of decks in Vintage: blue piles, Workshop decks, Bazaar decks, and creature decks. These aren’t the only decks that have ever seen play (like the various attempts to make Fastbond work after its unrestriction) but these are the ones that consistently see the most play.
Of these archetypes, only a *few* creature decks (like White Weenie and Goblins) aren’t completely screwed over by a Blood Moon-type effect. However, since Blood Moon doesn’t contribute to winning the game directly and Force of Vigor sees a lot of play, Blood Moon itself isn’t a great card.
Enter Magus of the Moon. The sheer power level of cards like Ancestral Recall and Tinker means you see more copies of Flusterstorm than Lightning Bolt in an average deck, and since decks are allowed to play Wasteland and Strip Mine, players typically don’t need to worry about other types of nonbasic land hate. Combine that with the fact that artifact mana like the Moxen and Black Lotus are legal, and you get decks that end up playing maybe one basic land in the 75, if any.
All of this taken into consideration, if you land a Magus turn 1 against the average deck, you win, because the only realistic answers to a Magus in Vintage—Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, and Fury—are run in very small numbers, and often only in the sideboard.
This isn’t to say that Magus of the Moon has never seen any Vintage play—far from it—but to my knowledge any attempts at making a deck in Vintage solely based around powering it and other lock pieces/threats out as quickly as possible haven’t gone well. So I made one that I believe is fairly competitive.
But before I start breaking down the deck, I need to talk about one more thing. One concept that’s often discussed in cEDH is that of card quality. On one side of the spectrum, a deck like Tymna, the Weaver / Thrasios, Triton Hero tries to maximize card quality so that every card Thrasios scries to the top or every card Tymna draws is a card that has the least chance of being a dead draw in any given scenario.
Oftentimes, this means that Tymna/Thrasios doesn’t win the game very quickly. On the other side of the spectrum, a deck like Codie, Vociferous Codex literally only wants one thing, and it’s disgusting. It doesn’t have time or space to play good value cards, it wants to activate Codie, cast a one drop, and win as fast as possible. My Mono R Stompy list exists on the latter half of the spectrum. Since the format is so fast, I have to resolve my lock pieces and threats as fast as possible, and mulligan away the hands that can’t.
With all of that finally out of the way, let’s look at the deck and break down the categories of cards in it.
Lock Pieces
We’ll start with the lock pieces, because they affect what cards I use for mana production.
Magus of the Moon: I’ve spent half of this article explaining why it’s a good card, I don’t think I need to say more about it.
Chalice of the Void: Chalice on 0 (on the play) shuts down almost all fast mana, while Chalice on 1 turns off not only most of the rest of the fast mana, but also almost every commonly-played blue spell. And because we don’t play almost any 0-1 drops outside of fast mana, we can play Chalice without much risk of hurting ourselves.
Thorn of Amethyst: One of the main problems I was having in testing was shutting off my own spells with another commonly played stax piece, Sphere of Resistance. However, most of the threats in the deck are creatures, so Thorn works as an asymmetrical stax piece.
Trinisphere: When your deck is almost entirely fast mana and 3 drops, 3-Ball is a little bit strong. Just a little bit.
Damping Sphere: I tried a version of this deck with Null Rod, but I was running into the problem of hurting myself more than my opponent. Then I had to think of what Null Rod actually stops. Mainly, it hits Time Vault, PO Storm, and Shops decks. Damping Sphere hits the latter two; the former is admittedly still a bit of an issue, but Shattering Spree can help curb that, and the new Gerrard’s Hourglass Pendant can be added to stop it if it really becomes a problem. Overall, Damping Sphere gives us a 2 mana play that doesn’t hurt too much and still punishes most of what we wanted to hit with Null Rod.
Maddening Hex: While not necessarily a lock piece in the traditional sense, Maddening Hex is nonetheless a powerhouse of a card. With so many noncreature spells running around, including artifacts like the Moxen, decks will often cast multiple noncreature spells each turn.
One of the most popular wincons, Tinker into Bolas’s Citadel, tries to generate an insurmountable amount of card advantage (in the form of casting a ton of noncreature spells) to run away with the game. With Maddening Hex, your opponent can only cast on average five noncreature spells before they’re locked out of doing anything else for the rest of the game. (And if you think Mana Crypt flips were bad enough, wait until you hear people complaining about rolling 1s or 6s from Hex.)
Mana
There’s a dichotomy in this deck: it wants to play lock pieces, but also needs to play enough mana sources to power out those lock pieces. To that end, the deck plays a good number of lands and as many other fast mana pieces as is reasonable. Instead of breaking down every mana source that is in the deck, I wanted to point out a few that aren’t, and why.
Mana Vault: While it’s obviously extremely powerful, it ironically generates too much mana a lot of the time. With something like Sol Ring, you can use a Mox and a land to play one of your three drops and still have plenty of mana for the next turn. With Mana Vault, you get a good amount of mana but you then don’t have a good follow up, and you’re hitting yourself every turn because you can’t untap it.
Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors: The Sol lands are very powerful, don’t get me wrong. However, the deck needs a ton of colored mana sources to cast spells like Maddening Hex, and Sol lands don’t contribute to that. They also get Wastelanded pretty hard, and that’s not what you want.
Wasteland and Strip Mine: I hate to be a broken record, but the upside of destroying your opponent’s lands comes at too steep a cost. Your land count needs to be fairly high if you want to play around Null Rod effects, and these not being able to tap for red can result in leaving your threats stranded in hand. Plus, you have Magus—who needs other land hate?
A few other notes about the mana. Shatterskull Smashing and Simian Spirit Guide can pitch to Chrome Mox and Fury, giving them extra utility beyond their obvious uses. Chrome Mox is at four copies right now, but could easily be trimmed because of the large number of artifacts. And red mana is so important, I am, in fact, playing Lotus Petal. With a straight face. In a non-blue deck. Ok, moving on.
Threats/Interaction
Pyroblast: I mean, come on. If the Legacy version of the deck plays Pyroblast, there’s no way you don’t play Pyroblast in Vintage. Plus, it’s not completely useless if you can’t use it for its intended purpose.
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker: Yes, I believe this card is playable even in Vintage. With such low card quality, some of your cards are bound to be useless in any given scenario. Therefore, the card filtering of Fable combined with the creature it creates and the creature it flips into make the card a fantastic fit for the deck.
Legion Warboss/Goblin Rabblemaster: The best armies-in-a-can red can offer. While Rabblemaster can pump out the damage and has some favorable damage ranges if your opponent doesn’t deal any damage to themselves, I would go with Warboss if you can. Two of the most common Vintage creatures are Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Griselbrand, and forcing your whole team to swing into those is often game losing. At least with Warboss, you can save yourself with the final card we haven’t discussed. Plus, spreading out damage makes Swords to Plowshares and other single target removal hurt less.
Gut, True Soul Zealot: What an incredible card to finish off the deck. Considering the deck has so many ways to create tokens and redundant artifacts—and most opponents don’t have more than one creature on the battlefield at a time—Gut is a fantastic threat that synergizes with the deck while also being a menace to the Vintage metagame. On top of that, it triggers whenever you attack with any creature, so you don’t always have to expose Gut to blockers to create Skeleton tokens. If this card weren’t legendary, it would be the easiest 4-of in the deck behind Magus.
Gut, True Soul Zealot? How Much Money Do You Think I Have?
Ah yes, the biggest problem with the deck right now. The best threat in the deck isn’t part of Magic Online’s card pool, which is the main way to play Vintage. This means it’s generally reserved for Paper Vintage, which is… an expensive proposition, to say the least.
I have two solutions for this problem. The first is to replace him with other cards in the meantime. Whichever one of Goblin Rabblemaster or Legion Warboss you don’t have, you can just run the other one, and the deck will do just fine at closing out a lot of games.
The second solution is to instead play in the UOL Vintage League, where card unavailability isn’t a problem. The signups for the current season close on October 17th, so if you’re interested in playing Vintage, join our Discord and we can help you get started.
Sideboard
Alpine Moon: Sometimes, 4 Moons just isn’t enough. Alpine Moon’s most common targets are Bazaar of Baghdad, Mishra’s Workshop, Urza’s Saga, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
Fury: This deck’s biggest weakness is creatures, especially those that have at least 1 power and 3 toughness. Fury can not only kill such creatures, but it’s also a decent threat if you get enough mana to cast it.
Grafdigger’s Cage: Since this deck runs 6 Moons, it doesn’t actually need Leyline of the Void as graveyard hate. Therefore, it can run Cage as a way to also shut off Oath of Druids and Tinker for Sphinx of the Steel Wind and Bolas’s Citadel.
Unlicensed Hearse: And since we don’t have Null Rod, we can board in the second best card from SNC for Bazaar matchups. Fun fact: every single card in the deck that either is a creature or can make creatures can crew the Hearse.
Pithing Needle: While it can’t shut off Black Lotus, it can shut off things like Bazaar and Griselbrand.
Shattering Spree: Shops decks have an especially good time against this deck since they can easily break through a Moon effect and just play their cards anyways. Shattering Spree is here to stop that nonsense.
Dead // Gone: During testing, I realized the deck straight up didn’t have an answer to Serra’s Emissary naming creature; on top of that, Lavinia, Azorius Renegade, Collector Ouphe and Griselbrand are all very scary. Boom, clean answer to all of them.
There are other sideboard cards you can play, like Mindbreak Trap, Archive Trap, or even Null Rod, but that will come with more testing and playing your meta.
Playing the Deck:
Most of the conventional wisdom of playing the Legacy version of the deck carries over here. Most of your decisions are front loaded in the mulligan phase. As a rule of thumb, if your hand can’t do anything in the first two turns, or even the first turn in some cases, it’s a mulligan. This also means if your hand is missing something, you would rather need to draw a mana source than a card that does something, since the deck is over half mana.
Also, if you have the choice, putting down a lock piece before a threat is almost always right. This does come with the mind game of presenting the opponent with a lesser piece and hoping they counter that one instead of your better one, but that’s not specific to this deck. And if you don’t know which lock piece to play game 1, assume they’re gonna kill you before you have another turn and decide which lock piece makes it harder for them to do that with. Overall, you’d be surprised how much time even one lock piece buys you, and how overwhelming a threat like Goblin Rabblemaster can be.
Using my 75, here’s a brief sideboard guide for some of the more popular decks:
Blue Piles:
Out: 1x Shattering Spree, 3x Damping Sphere, 1x Chrome Mox (not vs Standstill), 1x Fable of the Mirror-Breaker (Not vs Standstill)
In: 2x Alpine Moon, 2x Dead // Gone (Not vs Standstill), 2x Unlicensed Hearse
Additionally, if you suspect they have Tinker:
Out: 1x Legion Warboss, 1x Shatterskull Smashing
In: 2x Grafdigger’s Cage
PO Storm:
Out: 4x Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, 1x Chrome Mox, 1x Simian Spirit Guide
In: 3x Shattering Spree, 2x Grafdigger’s Cage, 1x Pithing Needle
Aggro Shops:
Out: 3x Maddening Hex, 1x Pyroblast, 1x Trinisphere, 1x Thorn of Amethyst, 2x Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
In: 2x Alpine Moon, 3x Fury, 3x Shattering Spree
Stax
Same as Aggro Shops, but instead of Fury, you bring in Grafdigger’s Cage and Pithing Needle.
Doomsday:
Out: 1x Shattering Spree, 1x Damping Sphere, 2x Fable of the Mirror-Breaker
In: 2x Grafdigger’s Cage, 2x Unlicensed Hearse
Bazaar Decks:
Out: 3x Maddening Hex, 1x Trinisphere, 1x Shattering Spree, 3x Damping Sphere, 1x Chalice of the Void, 1x Pyroblast
In: 2x Alpine Moon, 3x Fury, 2x Grafdigger’s Cage, 1x Pithing Needle, 2x Unlicensed Hearse
Additionally, if you suspect they have Collector Ouphe:
Out: 2x Pyroblast
In: 2x Dead // Gone
Oath of Druids:
Out: 3x Damping Sphere, 1x Shattering Spree, 2x Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, 1x Legion Warboss
In: 2x Alpine Moon, 2x Dead // Gone, 2x Grafdigger’s Cage, 1x Pithing Needle
Creature-Based (Humans, etc.):
Out: 3x Pyroblast, 3x Maddening Hex
In: 2x Dead//Gone, 3x Fury, 1x Pithing Needle
If you don’t think the opponent has good activated effects, like if they’re Mono W Humans without Cathar Commando, you can board in Unlicensed Hearse instead of Pithing Needle.
The Mirror:
Out: 3x Pyroblast, 3x Damping Sphere, 1x Maddening Hex
In: 2x Dead // Gone, 3x Fury, 3x Shattering Spree
If you have any additional questions about the deck, or want to let me know about any testing you’ve done with the deck, be sure to let me know in the comments below or on Discord at UncleFlacco#0762. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you next Vintage League!
