Aether Vial

Throughout my Magic career, I have played many decks with Aether Vial. It is one of the cards I enjoy playing with the most. I played it when it was first printed in Affinity. I played it in Extended and Legacy Goblins. I played it in Merfolk and Death and Taxes. I've recently been playing it in Spirits and Humans. Fourteen years of playing this card and I thought I knew all there was to know about it.

I was wrong.

A 2004 era Goblins deck

This past week I've learned two things about the card that changed the way I think about it.

One-Drops with Aether Vial

The first piece of new information came from my favorite Magic player when I first started playing competitively, Jeff Cunningham. In his article about the top tier of Modern, he put forth a list with two copies of Thraben Inpsector in addition to the four copies each of Champion of the Parish and Noble Hierarch. In his words: "The Thraben Inspectors are included because I think standard builds of the deck are short on one-drops - this is because maximizing Aether Vial requires you to have another one-drop (besides itself) to play on Turn 2, and so it effectively doesn't count as a one-drop."

This seems fairly straight-forward and obvious, but felt like a revelation. Because Vial requires such a large portion of the deck to be creatures to be effective, the decks that play is are historically fairly aggressive. However many of these lists don't play more than four one-drops to vial in. Merfolk, Death and Taxes, Spirts, and even Legacy Goblins rarely play more than eight one-drops at most.  This is largely because the main strength of vial is in its repeated Sol Ring activations with two or three (or more) counters.

Humans plays a bit more aggressively than these other decks, and a card like Thalia's Lieutenant incentivises you to put as many creatures onto the battlefield before you deploy it. More one-drops in Humans is likely more correct than fewer. As Thraben Inspector also provides the late game card advantage you need to continue to take advantage of Aether Vial, its the perfect compliment one-drop.

Some notes here: Mutavault in Merfolk acts as a one-drop (or zero-drop) that makes the deck function with adequate aggression. Also the requirement for late game card drawing is likely why we are seeing the increased play of the card Horizon Canopy. Legacy DnT has Stoneforge Mystic and Recruiter of the Guard and therefore doesn't need as many copies.

With this knowledge, I played Humans at a PPTQ in Houston. I lost in the top 4 due to a poor mulligan decision, but overall I was very happy with the deck. It will be something I'll consider playing again in the future.

How many Aether Vial do you play?

The answer is obviously 4, right? Well, maybe not. Ondrej Strasky made the top 8 of GP Prague with a Bant Spirits deck sporting only 3 copies of Aether Vial.  It has been very interesting to look at the reasons behind the number.

Strasky's GP Prague Top 8 Decklist

The divide between UW Spirits with Aether Vial and Bant Spirits with Noble Hierarch has come down to a few key factors. Collected Company is a great card in conjunction with Spell Queller, but requires a bit more mana sources and a third color. Noble Hierarch solves those problems, but it is much more fragile than Aether Vial. You cannot keep one-land Hierarch hand with Spirits the same way you can keep one-land Vial hands. Also, the interaction between Phantasmal Image and Collected Company is not ideal, so you will have fewer instances of double Drogskol Captain in Bant despite what would seem to be more. 

I've preferred the UW version, largely because of my love of Vial. This Strasky version plays both Vial and Noble. In additon to Mausoleum Wanderer, the deck now has 11 solid turn one plays. The issue with running both is the amount of creatures required to play Collected Company.

The other Bant deck in the top 8 played 31 creatures. Frank Karsten set the minimum at about 22 creatures, though you clearly want as many as possible. What the Strasky list has decided on is that he wants 28 creatures (22 of which are non-Noble non-Image). With the requirements of 21 lands and 4 Path to Exile, that only leaves room for three Aether Vial. This also helps alleviate the problem of drawing multiple Vials when you don't need them.

One interesting thought: if the numbers you want are 21 land, 28 creatures, and 4 Company 4 Path, is the deck better at 3 Vials and 60 cards, or 4 Vials and 61 cards? Could this be a time to play more than 60 in order to get the right ratios for Collected Company? That will be something that may be worth looking into.

Old Dog, New Tricks

What this week has shown me is that you can still have success in Magic by questioning your assumptions about everything. I thought I knew it all about Vial, but I'm excited to try these new things in different decks. I had decided to focus on Humans since I felt it was a bit better than Spirits overall, but with the success of Spirits at the GP and these new innovations, I may return to Spell Queller and Co. for my upcoming PPTQs.

Thanks,

Ty