Interesting question. I'm not a judge and I'm not sure, so I should have not bothered answering probably.

That said, this is an opinion for the sake of speculation:

converted mana cost is 3, mana cost without other cards factoring in is 3 (what you're referring to: by paying 1 and 4 life I think the mana cost is still 3 because phyrexian mana is paid with life), total cost without other cards factoring  is equal to mana cost therefore 3;  and is not affected by Trinisphere.

Following with another example: Immolating Souleater; I think that by paying 2 life or more to activate its ability when it is in play adds 1 or more phyrexian mana to the mana pool (that is... life is a mana cost!), that is emptied once the activated ability is put on the stack. Does it make sense? Otherwise the mana pool would stay empty and I'm not good enough to analyze the implications over multiple phases.

But also the reduction thesis has its value, or rather the notion of phyrexian mana cost =/= mana cost.
 

Note that mine was not a decklist, just a selection of cards to put forward an idea (still credit to OP). I selected what I liked in the original GU list, then added on the fly. Reshape came to mind before Transmute Artifact, even If I do know the card.

But my question stands for T.A. too and in general: isn't the fact that multiple Tinker effects are not often played odd, in decks with combo like vault-key and painter-stone (two valid examples)? With odd I mean that since T.A. or Reshape are lacking the sinergy inherent in the Tinker-Bot pairing, it seems to me that people are refraining to include these cards even when they would actually be very helpful, that is when focusing strictly on said combo... like I tried to do with my modified GU list containing the painter-stone one.

Just being creative here, I don't think the whole green part based on NO to be competitive.

Yes this is better although in rare circumstances, I know the card. And your opinion about its possible inclusion is...?

Hello Beder. I think your GU version of the deck is the most interesting and innovative. But I would like to see your take on a list that focus more on the combo and less on large numbers of tiny creatures, and with GSZ. Probably leaving out some Gaea's Cradle and looking also elsewhere for green mana.

In a deck more or less starting from this core (raw, open to cutting and adding)...

1 Gaea's Cradle
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Forest
1 Island
4 Tropical Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Dryad Arbor

7 Artifact Mana (Black Lotus, 5 Mox, Sol Ring)

6 open slots (with draw engine.. but not Skullclamp here. Intuition/AK sounds good to me.)

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Painter's Servant
2 Grindstone
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Natural Order
1 Tinker
1 Reshape

1 Iona
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Progenitus

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Crop Rotation
1 Regrowth

...what do you think, instead of Trinket Mage that is slow and doesn't fetch Painter's Servant, of Reshape? Basically NO for aritfacts and Tinker #2 or more (well... for painter-stone combo at least), I'm still wondering why it doesn't see much use.

W.

Reweave
Instant - Arcane 5U
Target permanent's controller sacrifices it. That player reveals cards from the top of his or her library until he or she reveals a card that shares a type with the sacrificed permanent. The player then puts that card into play, then shuffles his or her library.
Splice onto Arcane: 2UU
82/306
Rare

It's blue, it's an instant, has limited disrupting power, is a bit costly...but in Vintage combo can be good. I've seen this baby in action.
Any build here?

W.

Hi Aicoped (sp?)

I like your tentative deck. The most solid deck with Crucible built-in I've seen so far.

Many are wrongs in saying Keeper hasn't to use combo cards. This is not a combo route, it's just adding other broken cards, a thing Keeper always liked. This will be the evolution of Grim Keeper of some years ago.

I found while facing a variant of this deck that the Keeper player doesn't actually look for combo pieces. They are just there and will pop up eventually. And you have to deal with them, otherwise there is an additional "inevitable" incoming danger, as someone calls it, that may cause your loss even if keeper has failed to obtain full control. Not like combo decks, but very high enough given that this is "the" control deck and this is enough to keep you busy. And the combo is obtained with control cards.

If you already had green for fastbond all for the better. The only part I dont' like in your deck is the black part, with s.scrying and death wish. Seems you're too confident of getting infinite life.

I'm testing a version with the CoW combo and Stroke of Genius instead of S.Scrying. And Sylvans instead of some Brainstorms (back ot the past here...). Regrowth has always been in my deck, despite the common (non)sense.


W.

As a self-proclaimed newbie, expecially a Reap-Lace newbie since I've never tried the deck, seeing a thread where 6 replies out of 9 are of the kind "go play deck y rather than this" is quite annoying for someone looking to learn something.

Can this thread remain devoted to fine-tuning the deck posted? I would be very interested in that.

W.

Hi HuntedWumpus, I read your last decklist and I'm finding it improved, I'm happy to see it's giving better results.

Now, imho (as I've already pointed out, given my personal view of Void.dec) you should do the last big step away from suicide...at least in playtesting if you have the possibility.

Drop the 4 Hymn to Tourach,  add 2 Sinkhole and 2 maindeck Naturalize.
Permanent hate is my translation for Void. I'd also drop 1 Deed for Vampiric Tutor.
Mana base and sideboard would then be fixed according to these changes.
Note that these are suggestions on the fly, not even a bit of playtesting. Dropping hymns can be too much, perhaps.

Anyway, I'll see if I can put a personal Void list together eventually.

BTW, Zherb thanks for clearing the thread.
W.  

Not T1 material? Awful?

I bet a lot of people here is just writing "following the general consensus of the thread", or even worse is just writing the opposite thing he's thinking.

My opinion is that this is a great card, a "revolutionary kind" of card that begs to be broken. I'm not saying it will be an easy task given the actual level of certain T1 decks. But I bet this will be T1 material!

Imho a deck that runs 4 wasteland and 1 strip is enough to warrant a 1 slot inclusion of Crucible if mana denial is an objective.

W.

Eh, I hope the thread wasn't moved due to my comment.
(altough probably this is the best thing that could happen to you...the way these forums are moderated still doesn't convince me, but I should judge in the long term only).

I think you can get useful infos in this forum as well.

I understood your point about playstyle. I also think that a single card is enough to change a deck.

Yet, all the cards listed besides the two voids are suicide cards (and you also aren't left with an optimal suicide build).
Void must differentiate itself from suicide, otherwise it will be superseded by suicide itself. Just try the matchup. Your 3 voids and your playstyle won't make the difference, imho.

Altough it's undisputable that suicide and void are blending. The real question is if Nether Void is still a playable card, and therefore if it fits in.

W.  

Disclaimer: I didn't read the previous monster thread.


It's a nice decklist, but my first impression is that if you get rid of the Voids, you're basically left with a Bg Suicide.

For any Void.dec, I'd go further with the mana denial theme, dropping the 4 Hymn to Tourach and the Specters (but still including duresses and twist of course) and exploring new permanent-hate cards.

Also Skeletal Scrying and Chains doesn't fit well together.

My two cents.

W.  

Yes ok, I got it. Almost.  

W.

Thanks for answers. Sorry if I'll sound as an hardhead...

Number #2 is also clear to me, now. The instant card previously in my hand will already be in the graveyard when I'll get the mana. Eventually, I will be able to play it with LED mana if it has, for example, a flashback cost.

Madness is also clear.

About number #1: if I get it well, the mana from LED can only be used on madness cards, flashback cards, permanent cards already in play, some other effects that I'm probably skipping.
I can't use the LED mana to play *any* kind of direct spell I could have in my hand, regardless of type (my hand being the hand that I'm going to discard for LED, not counting eventual effects that can put a card in my hand later, after the discarding and while LED mana is still floating).

W.

Edit: from pseudo-pseudo-english to pseudo-english  

Simple questions, hopefully simple answers for simple mind  

Once I have LED in play, can I:
1.
- cast a spell (put it on the stack, let's say Necropotence)
- sacrifice LED for black in response, discard the hand, get the mana, resolve the spell on the stack?

2.
- sacrifice LED, discard the hand, get the mana
- cast an instant spell from my hand in response before discarding it?

Thanks,
W.

Nice to see so much italian action!

Tell me, what's the average age of the 134 tournament players in your opinion?

Were there many full powered deck?

Being a retired player (sort of) this report really helps me a lot by giving me a glimpse of the metagame I'll face, should I partecipate again in a T1 tournament. All those T1 cards sitting on my shelves...
Just to give an idea, in mt last tournament I lost to a Stasis deck while playing a Land's Edge BR deck.... :shock:

cheers,
Wizbane

Hi! No, no don't worry I don't think mine is better, just...different.

Rather than aggro-lock (does it fit?) I prefer the control-lock route. That's why I quoted cards such as Necro, Future Sight, Ivory Tower (I know...waaay slower), or referred to Eastman control. I don't have a definite list sorry. I'm the kind of builder that favors coolness over brute efficiency...and in fact I never won a tournament in my days.

Ophidians seemed odd to me because once Zur is in play you stop drawing. But in the aggro route they can make sense.
I recognize the usefulness of threats once Zur has landed in your build.
For the same reason opponent threats are so annoying when playing a control-lock version...

The only point I'm in disagreement is the Ivory Tower one (well ok, in your build it would actually be a wasted slot).

Once the lock is in play you don't have to "mantain" anything. 6 cards in hand, Zur and Tower in play and if your opponent don't have a way of killing you already in play or in hand it's game (90% of the times, there are other factors).

My usual play: 1) Ivory tower  2) Carefully timed Zur's Weirding
It's like a two card combo, but it's situational.  Playing with many reactive counters/disruptions in a control-lock build makes the timing of playing Zur's Weirding and having 6 cards in hand easier. If your disruption > opponent's threats, you win.
But this statement don't apply to the whole decks as in a common control vs aggro matchup, but just to the moment in which you play Zur.
This open the possibillity to an immediate victory but also to tragic losses.
This is also why I like this card.

ciao
Wizbane

Reflection Weirding...weird enough.  

I don't have a clue about who or what team reflection is (if there are cheerleaders I might get interested...), but know that Zur's Weirding is my signature card. Since the Ice Age (literally).  

And I'm a very disappointed retired gamer/lurker/deck builder, because my signature card rather than become an established bomb in time, has always been somewhat ignored, even reprinted in basic sets...basic...what an offense by WotC. This card alone deserved the status of Enchant World, because nothing as this card has the ability to !change! the game as we know it. Regardless of time, regardless of metagame. I'll not even mention what I think about the new art in 8th edition. My wet dreams about having a brand new foil Zur's Weirding in my sleeves has been abruptly formatted as soon as I saw the art. But enough ranting.

I like your tentative deck. But having splashed Zur's Weirding in nearly every deck of the last xx years (just slightly more used to it than just everyone else), I'd say that your deck suffers a lack of focus. I mean: there are elements of all of the three mainstays of every Zur deck...Life, Putting Cards in your Hand, Controlling the hand of your opponent. But as experience has showed me, a deck with all these three aspects is less focused and less competitive than others. You are forced to stick with two at most usually.

Life is there...altough Exalted Angels are not my first choice. A Zur's Weirding deck without at least 1 Ivory Tower is not a Zur deck. Think about it...it's the most cool lock of the world when you're lucky. And i'm very fond of Balance and Zuran Orb too. Old school here.

Putting Cards in your Hand. Nice intuition about Impulse but I don't see them maindeck. However the black is already there but where are Necro and the mandatory 4 Dark Rituals? And Mind Twist? For the sake of all things black put Mind Twist in!

Wait, I understood the premise of your deck building. I'm just inviting you to think about something new (old..) rather than altering a surpassed bluish deck.
I like Mind Twist, but I play Mana Drains. Then I play a lot of blue, so I play Future Sight...etc. I have a completely different concept of a Zur deck.
Ophidians??? mah  

I don't give a list , but will gladly lurk around to see some comments.
An idea I can give if you want an alternative Zur deck...splash it in Eastman control (Keeper with Chains) and watch the fun begins...

Cheers
Wizbane