I really hate to say this, but if you don't have power, and there are only 5 proxies, its going to be really rough running this deck. Slaver is a house of cards built on artifact acceleration, and without it it is significantly weaker. Not to mention, that probably means you don't have Strategic Plannings or Mana Drains (although I could be wrong), the later of which is incredibly necessary to compete. With only 5 proxies, and no power, I would personally just play Ichorid (who needs skill?).
That being said, I'll try to help you out:
No combo is extremely odd in the modern meta, but that could be a function of proxies or something.
To give you a general idea of strategy, the cards you want to be resolving are TFK and broken elements; use control elements to counter necessary cards. Against shops, you use Mana Drain to leverage tempo adavantage; the mana from it is as neccessary as the countering functino and will ususally get you over spheres etc. Against fish, drains are fairly weak, but try to counter what you can if its relevent. Other than that, there are lots of "tricks" that only show up in vintage, but there's too much theory and ideas for me to express here; do some digging in the archives here, on scg, etc.
Never, ever say the word "overrated" before one of, if not the, most powerful cards in the game. Will will actually litterally just win the game. Like, if it resolves, you just win the game the majority of the time, if you play it smart. Its just a disgusting card. To that end, URb is significanly better just because of will. Furthermore, magus is fairly ineffective now. It will usually hurt you as much or more than most other decks.
Typically, slaver doesn't "litterally" win the game, but effectivley does so. Against most decks, you can usually really screw them over. Its hard to explain a given instance of this, but its pretty common. Even if you don't leverage that much advantage, you can usually win through recurring slaver each turn. Usually, Slaver just adds inevitablity to the deck, really.
But honestly, given the proxies and given your poposed meta, I would highly, highly recomend Ichorid.
Okay, listen, maybe he's not being super nice about what he's saying, but you need to listen to WHAT YuanTi is saying.
Your deck is incredibly reliant on Slide, and quite slow from a strategic standpoint, while lacking sufficient disruption. Your only disruption is cabal therapy. This means that combo and hyper aggressive decks, like goblins, are just going to roll you. Even Dragon Stompy is just going roll you over before you can get up a sufficient defense, it seems.
From there, your entire deck is highly vulnerable to counterbalance when wielded by the fear. The fear is just going to drop balance, get a 3cc card on top and watch you squirm. Even if they don't, they're swinging with far faster and more efficient beats in the form of goyf. Yes you have removal, but not really enough, and you have such a low density of actual threats that they'll usually be able to overcome those. And you talk about locking them out or w/e, but decks like the fear are going to get things like academy/ee rolling in the large amount of time you're giving them.
Yes, existance of removal does not make a card back, but when you have a strategy completely centered around one card, and then lack real defenses against answers to that card, you are in trouble. You say your deck is alright without it, but it takes quite a bit of effort for your deck to sum up the resources to get those engines going, and in the mean time, every other deck has an extreemly prevelent threat, much more so than your 2 powered creatures for 3 mana, and those things are going to overwhelm you.
Furthermore, as YuanTi implied, you have no real draw or search engine, save lftl. What if you don't draw it? I mean, you really need to play it asap, or this deck isn't getting off the ground as opponents will be playing all of their cards. I mean, when you can't get a threat down before standstill, I've got to say that it looks like the deck is in trouble.
I mean, I don't want to sound to harsh, but you're really forcing us to by not really listening to our theoretical criticism. It just seems that, on a basic theoretical level, your deck is flawed, if you want us to help you, cut out the belligerent crap and explain your deck on a theoretical and meta based level, so that we can see where you're coming from, because obviously the majority of the responses you've gotten indicate that you either aren't presenting your ideas sufficiently or that there really is an integral flaw that you are ignoring, in either case better analysis is the solution.
EDIT: Having seen your response, you must admit that your testing is extremely limited, and therefore I regard it very skeptically. You've tested against a fraction of the metagame, and even then your analysis indicates incomplete understanding of the matchups. I mean, you act like finks is good agianst goblins, but it doesn't even hit until turn 3. You can't even answer lackey, I mean, they don't need a god hand exactly to kill you before you even start playing relevent spells. If you're using elder to kill vial, its already too late really. And how does slide keep goblins off of wort recurussion exactly? Against thresh, you seem to completely ignore any concept of tempo, which makes me doubt you even fully understand the concept, really. Even then, you're missing testing against large portions of the metagame, many of which probably have an even better matchup against you, when I'm not even convinced of your results so far.
Thinking outside the box is all fine and good, but what does Rushing River really offer that truth doesn't? For instance, rushing rivering two tops is less card advantage than truthing them, and costs more mana. Most decks now have streamlined threats, and diversification is more rare, in this vein, truth also deals with multiple tokens, and even if clasm does it better, more options is a benefit regardless. Even then, against something like combo, you're going to want truth more than river, as it deals with both tokens and things like tinker and other tricks, in addition to costing less mana and therefore being active faster.
I mean, I just don't see it. Originally, river was played because it circumvented misdirection and could bounce both oath angels. The prior is less relevent now, and the laster is irrelevent now. Furthermore, we have EtW and Bridge now.
That list is fairly standard fair for pre-plannings technology. Essentially, plannings replaces sensei's divining tops, vampiric tutor, and a welder.
Although top was originally hailed as the replacement for BS, in practice it has proven to be a huge tempo sink that very rarely accomplishes the same goal (I found this during testing, as did the innovators who built strategic slaver). Often, you didn't want to be spending the mana and time stacking the top cards, you just wanted to through most of them away; in this manner, top wasn't gaining the tempo it needed, it was not functioning like the bs/fetch replacement we theorized it would. Vampiric Tutor is a tempo trade as well, and since CS often boards this out, as do most non-combo decks that run it, its an easy cut. Being black and card disadvantage doesn't help its odds. The other welder is also easy to cut.
I disagree with Rushing River, I feel echoing truth is a much more obvious inclusion, having many more functions at a lower cost (importantly, etw tokens). Fire/Ice is alright, but the way the meta is shaping up, I'm not sure I'd want it. It can't kill painter, fish is on a downswing, and slaver decks are purposefully reducing the number of valid targets so that often it'll only be a 1 for 1 trade anyway; I'd prefer something like R&R more often methinks, or maybe some other meta specific card, depending on what the meta is looking like.
D3@D: Yeah, whisper saw play play, mostly be team reflection a few years ago, and even going through the gush unrestrictions; it is hardly a terrible inclusion, but I think if we had been forced to search for innovation and found plannings, it would have been run in whisper's stead even then. I can't be sure; as I said, whisper vs plannings is the most interesting debate, one which I really feel deserves testing, but I will say that in testing, it seems that more often is the case where I'm perfectly willing to through away 2 or more of the 3 cards, and digging the extra card has proven more important tempo wise. However, testing is fairly limited at this point, and I can't be sure of how often the extra card would be relevent.
Oh, also regarding shacklemagic's posted list; moreso than the planning aspect of neo slaver, I am impressed by strategic slaver's board. The wasteland/sphere aspect is incredibly strong right now, and very innovative.
Well, I hate to say never shackles. That kind of logic shuts off innovation, but strategically I think those points are sound until we have a reason to reevaluate them.
I don't think AK are a great idea in Slaver. It should be noted that my logic in this area is not unfounded; I don't know if you were playing at the time, but original slaver lists ran the full intuition/ak engine. This was eventually removed for several reasons. The engine itself is too slow, and thirst already serves this function late game. On their own, AKs are good late game, and okay midgame, but very poor early game. This is the key problem.
The function of planning is to BE an early game card. Its a card you want to play turn 1 for the tempo gain, and its primary function, from a strategic standpoint, is to create this early game tempo which otherwise makes slaver very clunky; that is, it smooths the deck out.
AK doesn't serve this function. It just strengthens the already strong late game. The first one cast gains negative tempo. This goes against what we want from a theoretical standpoint. We've lost brainstorm, and need something to fill its function in the deck; an early game tempo boost that smooths out an otherwise clunky design. Plannings does this effectively by digging 3 deep, getting the card you want, and being strong right off the bat, while simultaneously not bad late game, digging further. In this respect, I'm still of the opinion that it's position is optimal in regards to replacing it with AK. Whisper has some valid considerations, but its not-blueness and its slightly less tempo oriented nature makes me lean towards planning, but it does warrant research, methinks.
A lot of you seem to want to play cs like ca. This is inherently flawed theory regarding the deck's overall strategy, imo.
First of all, let me reiterate, 4 thirst, as of now, is mandatory; it's what makes the deck run smoothly and leverges mid to late game advantage and tempo crux to the strategy. Plannings is not analog to thirst, it is analog to brainstorm; that is, it shores up a big weakness of the above plan by gaining early game tempo- THAT is the point of planning.
When playing Slaver, you are playing a control deck, so rarely is welder good. Running 4 is just inviting you to draw multiples early game or something, which is actually tempo disadvantage. You rarely want more than one welder and you often DONT want more; they clutter up the hand and aren't really all that great until mid to late game, where they more compliment the draw engine. In this respect, the important things to resolve and cast aren't welders, they're thirsts and restricted elements; those are the cards that are actually good most of the time.
Like, playing turn 1 welder is fine, but you don't want more than one, you don't need it turn one, you often don't care about an early welder (it takes some effort usually to dump a bot, and you shouldn't be playing with that goal in mind anyway), and often its going to actually generate tempo disadavntage having a bunch of them in your deck by lowering card quality.
Most of your posts seem very much like you're wanting to play ca, not cs, from a strategic standpoint.
To recap, 4 thirsts is completely neccessary. 4 Plannings is optimal at the moment I think, but often boarded out, not neccessarilly neccessary as a 4 of, and while good, not as important to the strategy as thirst. Welders are sort of like an effecient morphling from older blue decks; they're good, and they eventually lead to you winning the game ideally, but you don't want a bunch of them and you don't want more than one in your hand and you don't want more than one on the field and you don't need to cast it asap, so why run 4?
I think you're thinking about cs in the wrong theoretical light. While eventually getting cards in the yard is cohesive to the strategy, it isn't the goal. That is, cs is not a welder deck, not in a traditional sense; cs isn't ca. That's why you don't really even want to run 4 welders, 2 is fine, maybe 3 if you really want to push it. Furthermore, getting the cards into the yard should be incidental, not goal oriented. In truth, however, cs functions as a control deck in most matchups, and can't afford to through away card advantage for tempo gains, particularly when you can directly compare something like plannings to ideas, in which case planning doesn't force you to sacrifice card advantage, while still giving you the digging. Usually, you the hand is being sclupted anyway, as thirst, tutors, bs, etc are cohesive towards this strategy, planning augments this. Careful study would through a lot of this away, in addition to being poor in the late game, etc.
Control decks don't through away card advantage needlessly, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
Except both of those are card disadvantage, which is the opposite of what a control deck wants to accomplish. The idea isn't to just throw cards into the yard, its to do so while either maintaining or gaining incremental advantage and tempo. Plannings doesn't gain advantage, but it does gain significant tempo. Both study and ideas are card DISadvantage, which is antithetical to the overall strategy of cs.
Strategic Planning is by far one of the more interesting elements I suspect will by extremely influential in the upcoming era of vintage.
Having tested it, its extremely flexible tempo generation; very much so, its a BS replacement in its strategic importance to Slaver and similar decks.
It's cost will be prohibitive, however, which sucks. This is why I liked brainstorm so much, in that it would be a similar function, but at a very low financial cost, making the format more accessable. But I digress.
Unfortunately, to play slaver now, many people would have to exceed 15 proxies, which seems very wrong to me. Furthermore, suitable replacements are limited. Of the ones mentioned, most are unacceptable. Night's Whisper is a replacement, and a strong candidate in my opinion. In exchange for slightly less tempo, it does gain literal card advantage. Another drawback is that it isn't blue, and not quite as synergistic with the overall deck design, nor does it dig as deep, which is the big advantage to planning.
The other options mentioned so far are all 3 mana sorceries, which isn't really acceptable. 2 mana is very good because it is commonly playable turn 1, which is optimally when you want to play it. Furthermore, even late game, it is easier to play around it and keep things like drain mana up. Options like Probe are bad because you are now investing 3 mana and not gaining card advntage, and while 2 mana is fairly easily accessable turn 1, 3 is not, and then becomes a mid game tempo drain.
Joshua, I cannot understand why you dislike Thirst so much, it is one of the most powerful elements of the deck and the crux to leveraging card advantage and tempo advantage from mid game all the way on; playing with cs, Thirst is comonly the strongest common element you will be playing, while against it is commonly one of the most targeted cards; these conditions exist for a reason. A cs player resolving thirsts tends to be winning, so I don't get why you're cutting one of the strongest and synergsistic draw engines in the game.
Therefore, I would recomend Night's Whisper as the budget replacement for plannings, and I think we should explore this archetype, and this tempo enabler further, as its power is fairly evident (two decks in the whole touramnet ran the card and they both top 4ed).
You don't back up your aguments, so its difficult to rebuttle effectively, neccessrailly, but I'll try anyway.
You say its "fine" to use patron wizard/voidmage prodigy, yet you don't explain this. Fine, I'll grant you that they are "fine", but I disagree that they are optimal. I mean, you are comparing a 3 drop that is dependent on not attacking and a mana funnel to one of the most efficient unrestricted sources of card advantage in the game and a card that solves very specific problems against other decks, both of which have the same power and create much more tempo, as your two cards actually inhibit tempo gain due to their nature (patron inhibits effective pressure, and voidmage inhibits development due to forcing you to keep mana open; conversely, mage/confidant both serve their function without further requirements, allowing for a much more tempo oriented game plan).
How are you supporting that your list is faster, more controlling, and more reliable? I would like your logic behind this, is from a theoretical standpoint, it seems very wrong. Building around a strategy is cool, fine, but not better by necessity, and in this case your entire deck is a tempo sink, save for a few basic elements.
To be specific, you run Jushi Aprentice? How is Dark Confidant worse than this? Dark Confidant serves the same function, except it has more power, it doesn't have to tap or use mana for its effect, and therefore can attack and apply pressure. Even for this, you only have to splash black, which is really quite simple; you don't even have to run less islands to do so, just turn some into undergrounds.
You run trinket mage, and yet your only targets are aether vial (and if mage is hitting play, there is no need for this), pithing needle, and a single mox/lotus. Why bother with this if you aren't going to capitalize on basic versatile targets like crypt, ee, etc.?
Now, my problem with patron is that, by the time it hits, its not going to do very much, if it hits, and if you're still alive at the time. At this stage in the game, combo has already proceeded to attempt to win, stax will most likely prevent you from casting it, or won't care due to superfluous mana, and control will either have the mana, or will be able to muscle past it, all the while you aren't applying any pressure due to the contraints of patron.
I mean, feel free to prove me wrong, but I don't see what exactly you're saying.
Even if that's the case, this isn't the place to be posting this kind of stuff.
What you want is a format that obviously isn't vintage. I mean, call it what you will, you aren't playing vintage, so this isn't the place for this discussion. If you want, I can move it to casual.
I don't know where you're getting your information from, but that's just about the opposite of what's happening. Combo is one of the most significant archetypes right now, with a plurality of top 8 slots in the past month.
Even if that wasn't the case, deed is poor for several reasons. It costs 3 mana, and then around 3-4 more to wipe stax's board. For this reason, it will never actually do that. Stax even allowing you to arrive at 3 mana means it was doing something wrong.
Against control, they're not just going to drop all of their moxen right away, and even if you do resolve this against their countermagic, its not even likely to do that much damage as card advantage is crux to control, not neccessarilly board advantage, and they could just combo out on you while you're tapped out for two turns.
Its alright against fish, but even then you have a 3 mana, stifleable, two turn mana sink; that is, there are more effecient weapons for this purpose.
All in all, its just too slow, and often too irrelevent.
You don't, stifle targets the ability, no the source. Helix's ability doesn't have shroud, helix does. The ability, therefore, can be stifled.
Furthermore, we don't need to discuss this card here anymore. If you want to, feel free to go to casual or something, but there is literally no way this card is going to see competitive play at all, let alone in vintage.
Look, by this thread's own creator's acknowledgment, not only is this a bad, and noncompetitive deck, but it is just something he pulled out of an old box, and he is looking at stax decks now. Unless someone seriously thinks this deck can get anywhere in vintage, I'm going to expect discussion on it to stop, or I will lock it.
That being said, I'll try to help you out:
No combo is extremely odd in the modern meta, but that could be a function of proxies or something.
To give you a general idea of strategy, the cards you want to be resolving are TFK and broken elements; use control elements to counter necessary cards. Against shops, you use Mana Drain to leverage tempo adavantage; the mana from it is as neccessary as the countering functino and will ususally get you over spheres etc. Against fish, drains are fairly weak, but try to counter what you can if its relevent. Other than that, there are lots of "tricks" that only show up in vintage, but there's too much theory and ideas for me to express here; do some digging in the archives here, on scg, etc.
Never, ever say the word "overrated" before one of, if not the, most powerful cards in the game. Will will actually litterally just win the game. Like, if it resolves, you just win the game the majority of the time, if you play it smart. Its just a disgusting card. To that end, URb is significanly better just because of will. Furthermore, magus is fairly ineffective now. It will usually hurt you as much or more than most other decks.
Typically, slaver doesn't "litterally" win the game, but effectivley does so. Against most decks, you can usually really screw them over. Its hard to explain a given instance of this, but its pretty common. Even if you don't leverage that much advantage, you can usually win through recurring slaver each turn. Usually, Slaver just adds inevitablity to the deck, really.
But honestly, given the proxies and given your poposed meta, I would highly, highly recomend Ichorid.
Your deck is incredibly reliant on Slide, and quite slow from a strategic standpoint, while lacking sufficient disruption. Your only disruption is cabal therapy. This means that combo and hyper aggressive decks, like goblins, are just going to roll you. Even Dragon Stompy is just going roll you over before you can get up a sufficient defense, it seems.
From there, your entire deck is highly vulnerable to counterbalance when wielded by the fear. The fear is just going to drop balance, get a 3cc card on top and watch you squirm. Even if they don't, they're swinging with far faster and more efficient beats in the form of goyf. Yes you have removal, but not really enough, and you have such a low density of actual threats that they'll usually be able to overcome those. And you talk about locking them out or w/e, but decks like the fear are going to get things like academy/ee rolling in the large amount of time you're giving them.
Yes, existance of removal does not make a card back, but when you have a strategy completely centered around one card, and then lack real defenses against answers to that card, you are in trouble. You say your deck is alright without it, but it takes quite a bit of effort for your deck to sum up the resources to get those engines going, and in the mean time, every other deck has an extreemly prevelent threat, much more so than your 2 powered creatures for 3 mana, and those things are going to overwhelm you.
Furthermore, as YuanTi implied, you have no real draw or search engine, save lftl. What if you don't draw it? I mean, you really need to play it asap, or this deck isn't getting off the ground as opponents will be playing all of their cards. I mean, when you can't get a threat down before standstill, I've got to say that it looks like the deck is in trouble.
I mean, I don't want to sound to harsh, but you're really forcing us to by not really listening to our theoretical criticism. It just seems that, on a basic theoretical level, your deck is flawed, if you want us to help you, cut out the belligerent crap and explain your deck on a theoretical and meta based level, so that we can see where you're coming from, because obviously the majority of the responses you've gotten indicate that you either aren't presenting your ideas sufficiently or that there really is an integral flaw that you are ignoring, in either case better analysis is the solution.
EDIT: Having seen your response, you must admit that your testing is extremely limited, and therefore I regard it very skeptically. You've tested against a fraction of the metagame, and even then your analysis indicates incomplete understanding of the matchups. I mean, you act like finks is good agianst goblins, but it doesn't even hit until turn 3. You can't even answer lackey, I mean, they don't need a god hand exactly to kill you before you even start playing relevent spells. If you're using elder to kill vial, its already too late really. And how does slide keep goblins off of wort recurussion exactly? Against thresh, you seem to completely ignore any concept of tempo, which makes me doubt you even fully understand the concept, really. Even then, you're missing testing against large portions of the metagame, many of which probably have an even better matchup against you, when I'm not even convinced of your results so far.
I mean, I just don't see it. Originally, river was played because it circumvented misdirection and could bounce both oath angels. The prior is less relevent now, and the laster is irrelevent now. Furthermore, we have EtW and Bridge now.
Although top was originally hailed as the replacement for BS, in practice it has proven to be a huge tempo sink that very rarely accomplishes the same goal (I found this during testing, as did the innovators who built strategic slaver). Often, you didn't want to be spending the mana and time stacking the top cards, you just wanted to through most of them away; in this manner, top wasn't gaining the tempo it needed, it was not functioning like the bs/fetch replacement we theorized it would. Vampiric Tutor is a tempo trade as well, and since CS often boards this out, as do most non-combo decks that run it, its an easy cut. Being black and card disadvantage doesn't help its odds. The other welder is also easy to cut.
I disagree with Rushing River, I feel echoing truth is a much more obvious inclusion, having many more functions at a lower cost (importantly, etw tokens). Fire/Ice is alright, but the way the meta is shaping up, I'm not sure I'd want it. It can't kill painter, fish is on a downswing, and slaver decks are purposefully reducing the number of valid targets so that often it'll only be a 1 for 1 trade anyway; I'd prefer something like R&R more often methinks, or maybe some other meta specific card, depending on what the meta is looking like.
D3@D: Yeah, whisper saw play play, mostly be team reflection a few years ago, and even going through the gush unrestrictions; it is hardly a terrible inclusion, but I think if we had been forced to search for innovation and found plannings, it would have been run in whisper's stead even then. I can't be sure; as I said, whisper vs plannings is the most interesting debate, one which I really feel deserves testing, but I will say that in testing, it seems that more often is the case where I'm perfectly willing to through away 2 or more of the 3 cards, and digging the extra card has proven more important tempo wise. However, testing is fairly limited at this point, and I can't be sure of how often the extra card would be relevent.
Oh, also regarding shacklemagic's posted list; moreso than the planning aspect of neo slaver, I am impressed by strategic slaver's board. The wasteland/sphere aspect is incredibly strong right now, and very innovative.
I don't think AK are a great idea in Slaver. It should be noted that my logic in this area is not unfounded; I don't know if you were playing at the time, but original slaver lists ran the full intuition/ak engine. This was eventually removed for several reasons. The engine itself is too slow, and thirst already serves this function late game. On their own, AKs are good late game, and okay midgame, but very poor early game. This is the key problem.
The function of planning is to BE an early game card. Its a card you want to play turn 1 for the tempo gain, and its primary function, from a strategic standpoint, is to create this early game tempo which otherwise makes slaver very clunky; that is, it smooths the deck out.
AK doesn't serve this function. It just strengthens the already strong late game. The first one cast gains negative tempo. This goes against what we want from a theoretical standpoint. We've lost brainstorm, and need something to fill its function in the deck; an early game tempo boost that smooths out an otherwise clunky design. Plannings does this effectively by digging 3 deep, getting the card you want, and being strong right off the bat, while simultaneously not bad late game, digging further. In this respect, I'm still of the opinion that it's position is optimal in regards to replacing it with AK. Whisper has some valid considerations, but its not-blueness and its slightly less tempo oriented nature makes me lean towards planning, but it does warrant research, methinks.
First of all, let me reiterate, 4 thirst, as of now, is mandatory; it's what makes the deck run smoothly and leverges mid to late game advantage and tempo crux to the strategy. Plannings is not analog to thirst, it is analog to brainstorm; that is, it shores up a big weakness of the above plan by gaining early game tempo- THAT is the point of planning.
When playing Slaver, you are playing a control deck, so rarely is welder good. Running 4 is just inviting you to draw multiples early game or something, which is actually tempo disadvantage. You rarely want more than one welder and you often DONT want more; they clutter up the hand and aren't really all that great until mid to late game, where they more compliment the draw engine. In this respect, the important things to resolve and cast aren't welders, they're thirsts and restricted elements; those are the cards that are actually good most of the time.
Like, playing turn 1 welder is fine, but you don't want more than one, you don't need it turn one, you often don't care about an early welder (it takes some effort usually to dump a bot, and you shouldn't be playing with that goal in mind anyway), and often its going to actually generate tempo disadavntage having a bunch of them in your deck by lowering card quality.
Most of your posts seem very much like you're wanting to play ca, not cs, from a strategic standpoint.
To recap, 4 thirsts is completely neccessary. 4 Plannings is optimal at the moment I think, but often boarded out, not neccessarilly neccessary as a 4 of, and while good, not as important to the strategy as thirst. Welders are sort of like an effecient morphling from older blue decks; they're good, and they eventually lead to you winning the game ideally, but you don't want a bunch of them and you don't want more than one in your hand and you don't want more than one on the field and you don't need to cast it asap, so why run 4?
Control decks don't through away card advantage needlessly, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
Having tested it, its extremely flexible tempo generation; very much so, its a BS replacement in its strategic importance to Slaver and similar decks.
It's cost will be prohibitive, however, which sucks. This is why I liked brainstorm so much, in that it would be a similar function, but at a very low financial cost, making the format more accessable. But I digress.
Unfortunately, to play slaver now, many people would have to exceed 15 proxies, which seems very wrong to me. Furthermore, suitable replacements are limited. Of the ones mentioned, most are unacceptable. Night's Whisper is a replacement, and a strong candidate in my opinion. In exchange for slightly less tempo, it does gain literal card advantage. Another drawback is that it isn't blue, and not quite as synergistic with the overall deck design, nor does it dig as deep, which is the big advantage to planning.
The other options mentioned so far are all 3 mana sorceries, which isn't really acceptable. 2 mana is very good because it is commonly playable turn 1, which is optimally when you want to play it. Furthermore, even late game, it is easier to play around it and keep things like drain mana up. Options like Probe are bad because you are now investing 3 mana and not gaining card advntage, and while 2 mana is fairly easily accessable turn 1, 3 is not, and then becomes a mid game tempo drain.
Joshua, I cannot understand why you dislike Thirst so much, it is one of the most powerful elements of the deck and the crux to leveraging card advantage and tempo advantage from mid game all the way on; playing with cs, Thirst is comonly the strongest common element you will be playing, while against it is commonly one of the most targeted cards; these conditions exist for a reason. A cs player resolving thirsts tends to be winning, so I don't get why you're cutting one of the strongest and synergsistic draw engines in the game.
Therefore, I would recomend Night's Whisper as the budget replacement for plannings, and I think we should explore this archetype, and this tempo enabler further, as its power is fairly evident (two decks in the whole touramnet ran the card and they both top 4ed).
You say its "fine" to use patron wizard/voidmage prodigy, yet you don't explain this. Fine, I'll grant you that they are "fine", but I disagree that they are optimal. I mean, you are comparing a 3 drop that is dependent on not attacking and a mana funnel to one of the most efficient unrestricted sources of card advantage in the game and a card that solves very specific problems against other decks, both of which have the same power and create much more tempo, as your two cards actually inhibit tempo gain due to their nature (patron inhibits effective pressure, and voidmage inhibits development due to forcing you to keep mana open; conversely, mage/confidant both serve their function without further requirements, allowing for a much more tempo oriented game plan).
How are you supporting that your list is faster, more controlling, and more reliable? I would like your logic behind this, is from a theoretical standpoint, it seems very wrong. Building around a strategy is cool, fine, but not better by necessity, and in this case your entire deck is a tempo sink, save for a few basic elements.
To be specific, you run Jushi Aprentice? How is Dark Confidant worse than this? Dark Confidant serves the same function, except it has more power, it doesn't have to tap or use mana for its effect, and therefore can attack and apply pressure. Even for this, you only have to splash black, which is really quite simple; you don't even have to run less islands to do so, just turn some into undergrounds.
You run trinket mage, and yet your only targets are aether vial (and if mage is hitting play, there is no need for this), pithing needle, and a single mox/lotus. Why bother with this if you aren't going to capitalize on basic versatile targets like crypt, ee, etc.?
Now, my problem with patron is that, by the time it hits, its not going to do very much, if it hits, and if you're still alive at the time. At this stage in the game, combo has already proceeded to attempt to win, stax will most likely prevent you from casting it, or won't care due to superfluous mana, and control will either have the mana, or will be able to muscle past it, all the while you aren't applying any pressure due to the contraints of patron.
I mean, feel free to prove me wrong, but I don't see what exactly you're saying.
Also, my name is Glix.
What you want is a format that obviously isn't vintage. I mean, call it what you will, you aren't playing vintage, so this isn't the place for this discussion. If you want, I can move it to casual.
Even if that wasn't the case, deed is poor for several reasons. It costs 3 mana, and then around 3-4 more to wipe stax's board. For this reason, it will never actually do that. Stax even allowing you to arrive at 3 mana means it was doing something wrong.
Against control, they're not just going to drop all of their moxen right away, and even if you do resolve this against their countermagic, its not even likely to do that much damage as card advantage is crux to control, not neccessarilly board advantage, and they could just combo out on you while you're tapped out for two turns.
Its alright against fish, but even then you have a 3 mana, stifleable, two turn mana sink; that is, there are more effecient weapons for this purpose.
All in all, its just too slow, and often too irrelevent.
Furthermore, we don't need to discuss this card here anymore. If you want to, feel free to go to casual or something, but there is literally no way this card is going to see competitive play at all, let alone in vintage.