Spiderman;276237 said:
Since you've been looking at your cards, have you been looking at Vintage results lately? 13NoVa seemed to say a couple of months ago that the Vault combo hadn't been making strong appearances, but maybe things have changed since then?
You mean the combo with Key? All the Tezzeret decklists I've looked at are still using at least one Key, but it's I guess more like a contingency or for when you've already got Vault out. Or do you mean the Tezzeret deck itself as a combo?
I don't consider it to be a combo because Tezzeret does everything by himself. You fetch Vault with Tezzeret, so you don't need it in your hand or anything. You untap it with Tezzeret. You fetch Key and your army of other artifacts with Tezzeret, then after taking some large number of turns, you win with Tezzeret. It's all Tezzeret, Tezzeret, Tezzeret. That's not a "combo" when you only need one card to be in your hand or in play. There are plenty of genuine combo decks that use several cards, but we don't say Legacy's Aluren deck requires a six-card combo because just playing the Aluren and Imperial Recruiter fetches the rest from your library. Same thing with Vintage's (now defunct) Hulk Flash. It's a two-card combo, but it is pulling four more cards from your library to get the kill. Wow, digression. Anyway, Tezzeret also doesn't usually play like a combo deck. It plays more like a control deck.
Okay, I totally got off-track there. When did 13NoVa say that Tezzeret hadn't been making strong appearances? It's certainly not dominating, but, like he said in this thread (post #26), it's definitely playable in Vintage.
And yes, I've been following Vintage more and I actually do think Tezzeret is an archetype that's waning a bit. Still makes more appearances than anything with Elspeth.