From Friday to Sunday of this week, Eternal Weekend is taking place, giving Legacy and Vintage enthusiasts a chance to play in large events and battle for glory. Vintage Champs kicked off Friday, featuring 420 players. After a long and grueling 10 rounds, the top eight was established, showcasing 8 distinct archetypes! This level of diversity is nice to see in a high stakes event.
Of the eight archetypes to make it to the top cut, one in particular stands out. A mono-black Scam brew boasted an undefeated 8-0-2 record prior to a quarterfinals loss. Not only is the deck an unusual choice for Vintage tournament, but the decklist features zero cards from the original Power Nine (for more information on the Power Nine, take a look here!) This is an incredible feat in Magic’s most powerful format.
Scam Package
For a deck that doesn’t run sources of broken fast mana like various Moxen or a combo kill, it’s essential that you have efficient disruption at your disposal. Otherwise, you’re bound to fall far behind in short order.
Fortunately, this deck has plenty of ways to mess with the opponent’s gameplan. At a baseline, your primary strategy actually shares a lot in common with Legacy Scam prior to the Grief ban. Grief is a free source of interaction that strips your opponent of their best resource. By pairing Grief with Reanimate, you’re able to take away your opponent’s two best cards on turn one without needing any extra acceleration.
You do have to pitch a black card from your hand to cast Grief in the first place, so you aren’t actually far ahead on resources in the exchange. However, getting to select your opponent’s two best cards to have them discard is a huge swing in your favor, especially when you factor in the 3/2 body with Menace that you add to the board.
Unsurprisingly, a full playset of Thoughtseize makes an appearance in this decklist as well. These discard spells do a good job paving the way for you to land one of your premium threats.
To further maximize Reanimate, Troll of Khazad-dum is a solid inclusion that has also been banned in Legacy. Troll is big, extremely difficult to block down, easy to get into the graveyard, and dodges some typical removal spells like Fatal Push.
Support
Most of the rest of the cards in this deck commonly show up in Legacy mono-black shells. For creatures, Dauthi Voidwalker and Orcish Bowmasters are elite options. Dauthi Voidwalker attacks well, messes with opposing graveyards, and sometimes, you can set up a spot where you nab one of your opponent’s cards with Thoughtseize or Grief after landing Dauthi Voidwalker and then get to sacrifice it to cast your opponent’s bomb.
As for Orcish Bowmasters, it’s a solid punisher against decks with lots of card draw. In a format ruled by blue decks with Ancestral Recall, this is a must have.
Rounding out the creatures, we have Barrowgoyf and Boggart Trawler in the three-drop slot. Boggart Trawler doubling as a land is nice, and using Dark Ritual to accelerate out a turn one Barrowgoyf puts a lot of pressure on the opponent.
For creature removal, Fatal Push is as good as they come. Psychic Frog is one of the strongest threats in Vintage, so having a cheap answer is essential.
You also get to play the full playset of Wasteland. Tagging Mishra’s Workshop can be the difference between winning and losing games.
Finally, there are a handful of one-of restricted cards that are featured in the decklist. Landing Vexing Bauble against other decks that rely on zero-mana accelerants is strong, as is countering an Ancestral Recall with Mental Misstep. These cards aren’t core to your gameplan, but they’re certainly worthy inclusions.
Thriving Without Power
While mono-black Scam isn’t exactly a revolutionary archetype, seeing it overperform like this in Vintage without any pieces of power is simply amazing. This deck did an incredible job against various Lurrus of the Dream-Den decks throughout the Swiss rounds, showcasing that even if you can’t shell out a ton of money for Black Lotus or Mox Jet, you can still succeed.
Mono-black Scam is surprisingly well positioned and is well suited to put up a fight without some of Magic’s most broken cards. Against Lurrus decks, if you’re able to strip your opponent of Swords to Plowshares, your copies of Troll or Barrowgoyf threaten to take over the game.
Orcish Bowmasters is a great tool versus Paradoxical Outcome as well as The One Ring out of Mishra’s Workshop decks. Null Rod thrives out of the sideboard against the artifact decks, too, without affecting you much at all. A turn one Dauthi Voidwalker off Dark Ritual will singlehandedly hose Dredge in game one if it sticks, and then you get Leyline of the Void for reassurance in games two and three.
You are at the risk of getting combo killed on turn one if you lose the die roll since you don’t have access to Force of Will. For the most part though, Grief, Thoughtseize, and various hate cards give you a chance against the field.
Making top eight of a 420-player competitive event is no easy feat and considering that this entire deck is worth less than the price of a single Mox Jet, there’s a lot of appeal here for Vintage enjoyers that don’t want to break the bank. If you’ve been waiting for a time to immerse yourself in the format, now’s a good opportunity.
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