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By: stsung, Ren Stefanek
Jun 21 2017 12:00pm
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In my previous article - Vintage post-restriction - STsung exploring Paradoxical Outcome part 1 - I talked about the Vintage metagame prior to Gush and Gitaxian Probe getting restricted. Post-restriction we entered a world of chaos which was the ideal time to start brewing or start gaining experience with something new, be it cards or decks. Since I bought a playset of Paradoxical Outcome long time ago (an actual preorder and I don't do that often!) and still hadn't even touched those cards, it was finally time to figure out where the power level of the card is on a line between 'broken' and 'bad'. It was clear it would be close to the 'broken' end but how close? I started putting a deck together that at first couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a combo deck or a control deck. That resulted in me trying to find out what win condition or win conditions are good for the deck and which approach is either better or suits me more. It took some time exploring the deck and all possibilities and I'd like to briefly comment on that.

First, I should probably comment on Paradoxical Outcome itself. At first I was very afraid that when this card would get countered it would mean game over for me. I've played enough with ANT and I feared a similar feeling when I felt whenever I was stopped mid-combo or even just lost that one ritual I needed. To my surprise this didn't ever happen. When Paradoxical Outcome got countered it wasn't such a problem in most cases. Often I even played the card just to lure a counterspell out. It often netted me a card! Because often my opponents were forced to play Force of Will and pitch a card.

Playing Paradoxical Outcome right into Pyroblast is not a good thing but no one wants to do that unprepared. At first the card seemed too powerful to me but later I also played matches in which I never cast it. While I wasn't really glad about that kind of outcome I also won those games without needing to cast the card. In several games I played I also noticed that it was actually a bad decision to play Paradoxical Outcome. After this short experience with with the card I have to accept the fact that the card is not as overpowered as many people think. I wouldn't say the card is fair either but it comes with a price. The deck needs to be built around it to some extent and that means the deck can be hated out. Pyroblast and By Force are certainly good examples of such cards if I omit Null Rod effects and cards like Energy Flux. Due to Null Rod effects being widely played the deck needs to run cheap bounce or removal for these cards. Since Paradoxical Outcome often allows you to win on the spot I went with just the bounce cards. While I started with Echoing Truth and Hurkyl's Recalls I had to admit that I needed something cheaper and something that can deal with enchantments as well. That is why I have Chain of Vapor and Steel Sabotage in my deck (the cards need to be cast through Sphere effects). I'd like to also note that this spell costing 4 mana makes it not ideal draw engine for some decks. I can still imagine wanting to play Thirst for Knowledge and Compulsive Research instead. Thirst for Knowledge is a card that needs a bit more support in a deck but is worth it if one feels like supporting it. 3 mana is easily castable and can be a reason why not to play Paradoxical Outcome in more controlling decks. Compulsive Research may sound very strange but in a more proactive control deck - which Monastery Mentor control decks are - the card is actually most probably the best choice. I was thinking for a long time which card to play and I've seen 1 or more copies to be run by other players and wondered why. It's actually easy to figure out. My initial experience with Gush decks without Gush was abundance of mana sources and I had no idea what to do with my lands. Playing a draw spell for 3, keeping two new cards and discarding 1 land sounds good.

My deck was originally supposed to be a control deck running more permission and having one single win condition in the form of Salvagers or Emrakul. The deck was supposed to be mono blue so I could support Mana Drain and this was a limitation I set that led to the deck you saw earlier. This notion of mine though limited me in deckbuilding and resulted in a deck that is probably not the best in the current metagame. In my first matches I realized that Monastery Mentor kills more often than other cards so I tweaked it a bit more to support Mentor as the win condition. This didn't require many changes but it meant for example, cutting Mana Drain completely. If I were to pursue running Monastery Mentor than I would consider running red. This color would give me access to Pyroblast, By Force and possibly Dack Fayden. This may not seem as much but if you look at my deck and imagine Mentor deck running the cards I mentioned you can probably see why these cards are important. With a robust mana base like this By Force can be a very potent spell and Pyroblast is an ideal card to deal with cards like Paradoxical Outcome, Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Tezzeret the Seeker. Dack Fayden might once again be a card that will see more play because it will probably have more targets for his minus ability and looting is always good even without Gush. Dack Fayden would be one of the last cards I'd be including in the deck but if there was still room for it I'd put it there.

Monastery Mentor is still a very powerful win condition so there is no reason not to focus on that as the primary win condition. I don't want to play 4 Mentors but still, 1-2 copies just wins games. Was it correct to keep this card unrestricted?

My next win condition was Emrakul, the Promised End. While the card always ended the game it did not end it immediately. In a way it did because people usually just concede but it wasn't the 'I cast Tendrils for 20 and you are dead' scenario. There are possibly things that can go wrong even after you cast this creature and Mindslaver your opponent. I've been there. Even after you make your opponent totally powerless, they top deck Timetwister and kill you. Also, whenever I landed Emrakul I also had other means of winning the game. Often Emrakul cost me 8-10 mana and sometimes I wasn't able to counter back because of it. That is the reason why I often chose to play Monastery Mentor first and if by a chance this card wouldn't make it I'd cast Emrakul then. That is why I put the card in the category of 'win more' cards and abandoned it. If I were to play Emrakul somewhere I'd put it in a Landstill deck where the card always performed very well for me and I never wanted to cut it from the deck (but Consecrated Sphinx works too).

I opened with Black Lotus, Mana Crypt, Island, Tezzeret the Seeker fetching a Mox and Time Vault clutching in my hand a Tundra and Hurkyl's Recall. My opponent though played Black Lotus, Mishra's Workshop, Phyrexian Revoker naming Tezzeret, Null Rod and Sphere of Resistance. I didn't draw a third land and lost.

Tezzeret the Seeker, Time Vault, Voltaic Key are the cards that I was trying next (I practically just added them to the deck). I learned that my threat density is actually relatively low and I didn't have the means to end the game on the spot. All the win conditions needed some time. For that I decided to go this route but my deck already deviated from the 'control' route. Anyway I put these cards in and started to see how the cards would fare in a deck that doesn't run tutors and practically is dependent on Paradoxical Outcome to resolve. To my surprise it wasn't as bad as I expected but I increased the number of Monastery Mentor cards to 2. Time Vault/Key was good against decks that threatened to kill me in one turn and Monastery Mentor was good at dealing with the rest of the decks. I had a series of matches in which I haven't seen a single Mox and I wasn't able to cast Paradoxical Outcome. In some of those matches I still managed to win thanks to either Monastery Mentor or Tezzeret the Seeker and I started thinking if I should add some other draw engine.

Sometimes you Tinker into Blightsteel Colossus and win.


Sometimes you hardcast Blightsteel Colossus and win.

I didn't add another draw engine in the end but rather added another threat (or dead cards) instead - Tinker and Blightsteel Colossus. I figured that I wouldn't have that many problems to actually hardcast the Colossus since I was hardcasting Emrakul in previous games too (my delirium count wasn't usually high 2-3). Tinker alone is a tutor that can get Time Vault or another artifact I'd need. I was actually surprised that I fit these cards in and that it actually proved to work. On the other hand I also felt that it would be better if my deck would go in a different route completely. I was missing black a lot in the deck. I missed my tutors and I missed my Yawgmoth's Will. When trying to kill someone with Monastery Mentor I often realized that I could have just cast Tendrils of Agony at that moment and that would have won me the game (note that I lost many games when I had Mentor and many monks in play).

I was testing Tendrils of Agony but I did not expect to win against Shops with this card (I expected Griselbrand to do the job), it just happened though...

For that reason I decided to build a second deck and I filled it with tutors and my win conditions which meant I had to cut most of the creatures, keeping 1 Trinket Mage, 1 Snapcaster Mage and Blightsteel Colossus. A very strange deck came out of it but I had lots of fun with it and if I weren't making misplay after misplay I actually think that this deck would do better than my Human concoction. While I was playing with this deck I was wondering about my sideboard as well. My previous sideboards were often focused on dealing with artifact hate and Shops in a way so I was thinking if I wouldn't want to try a transformational sideboard (Oath package). This one would be the best though against creature decks and Shops. This tactic is not that strong anymore since Shops can often kill their own creatures or be dealing damage with Vehicles, not only with Mishra's Factories. After I played with it for a while though I realized that I actually want to focus on the blue decks because those actually run cards I can't deal with. I should still be able to win through Pyroblasts and By Force so I may in the end still keep the Oath cards in my sideboard.

Game 3 I won thanks to Griselbrand though...

There are many options how this deck can win. We all will be playing blue in Paradoxical Outcome but we can add other colors. Each color has something to offer. The most straightforward options are: black can offer Dark Confidant and tutors, red has good means to deal with an opposing PO deck with cards like Pyroblast or By Force, white offers Monastery Mentor and the best removal, green shouldn't be omitted either. It is a tricky color and creature heavy usually. Among those there are good PO targets though. How about Eternal Witness or Manglehorn? Creatures have a special place in Vintage and I'd never considered running too many of them but how about Cloud of Faeries or Vendilion Clique? There are no limits your imagination. It is up to you to find what you prefer and what works for you. Depending on the win condition the deck can find itself anywhere on the combo-control scale.

You also need to figure out to what decks or cards your deck folds to. For example, my worst experience was playing against Grixis Thieves because I couldn't deal with Notion Thief, it practically shuts my deck down and Dack Fayden also hinders my attempts at killing someone with artifacts (if I happen to still have some cards in my hand after these two thieves end up on the table). In general I had a good experience against non-Paradoxical Mentor decks but I have to say that Pyroblast and By Force was giving me a very hard time.  I actually want to play more Hurkyl's Recalls than the one main deck. The Shops matchups proved to be good. My deck can win usually if it can manage to play Hurkyl's Recall through Spheres or manage to play Monastery Mentor that does not immediately die to Walking Ballista (hence Pithing Needle on Ballista). Null Rod/Stony Silence cards are not usually a problem against decks that don't combo off and kill you but cards like Energy Flux are a real pain but one can play around this card or keep the Moxen in hand and one turn simply combo off. It doesn't change the fact that this is very annoying card to play against. I did not feel so badly staring at the card when I was on Shops!

This sums up my experience with the Paradoxical Outcome deck. It was a nice journey and I'd recommend it to anyone. Try things out, even if it doesn't work it will give you experience that will come handy when playing a different deck be it your own build or a net deck. Just don't forget to have fun! If you are new to Vintage or are considering Vintage, this is the perfect time to join the Vintage players on Magic Online (due to the price tag of the Power Nine and the fact that the metagame hasn't settled yet).

Thank you for reading
S'Tsung (stsung on Magic Online and stsungjp at Twitter)

4 Comments

The problem I have with PO by Paul Leicht at Wed, 06/21/2017 - 14:06
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The problem I have with PO decks is they seem ultra complex to play. One wrong play and it is over for me. Also not a card that is easy to home brew with.

Not easy to homebrew? You can by stsung at Wed, 06/21/2017 - 17:22
stsung's picture

Not easy to homebrew? You can play anything with that card! Or rather the card doesn't limit you that much as Thoughtcast/Thirst for Knowledge does. This simply needs nonland permanents which you need to be able to cast.

PO decks are complex to play, that's true. But how complex, that's another question...a game can go awry very fast in Vintage no matter what you play.

Homebrewing winning decks is by Paul Leicht at Wed, 06/21/2017 - 20:23
Paul Leicht's picture

Homebrewing winning decks is always hard. Hence the term "rogue" to romanticize it because it IS unusual for a homebrew to win. PO Homebrews seem much harder than other decks. That said I understand what you mean about being able to play it in a wide variety of deck types. The question is: Does it work if you just treat it as you would any draw spell?

You treat many draw spells in by stsung at Thu, 06/22/2017 - 03:33
stsung's picture

You treat many draw spells in a different way so I'm not really sure what you mean with this. But I'd say no because it requires more building around than other spells. You need to support it and take advantage of it and then it becomes broken.