Good piont.  I guess I just hate losing to myself which is a risk you take with a deck like Belcher.

How has Leyline of Anticipation been working out for you?  Do you only ever bring it in against Shops or are there other matchups where you birng them in on the draw?  What do you typically board out?

With 53 cards left in the deck (60 minus opening hand) searching for a 4-of with Spoils will do 20+ damage 14% of the time.  By comparison, Consultation for a 1-of with 53 cards exiles the card you're searching for 11.3% of the time.  I don't know about you but that seems a little too risky to me.

For reference with 53 cards remaining odds of 20+ damage: 4-of 14.0%, 3-of 23.3%, 2-of 38.3%, 1-of 62.3%.

To me at least, the fact that it can't be undone the same way damage can is part of what makes poison what it is.  I'm assuming that there will be ways to get rid of poison counters in the next set though, as Mirroden learns to fight off the infection.

I opened a Koth and an Indominable Archangel which were both awesome (although I never metalcrafted the angel).  Mimic Vat on the red replica made for one awesome win.  The double Glint Hawk Idol were definately MVPs though, I loves me some cheep flyers.

I was largely unimpressed by Infect in sealed.  No one I saw got a critical mass of Infect creatures so it seamed like the decks that played it were trying to do 30 damage instead of 20 or 10.  I guess it'll be more relevant in draft.

Graduated in Chemical Engineering and working for a mining company (copper and gold) so the call me a "Metallurgist".

Is it just me or is this really bad argument?  Having Lotus in your deck didn't force you to make a bad decision, you just made a bad decision.  I'm not an expert by any means but I'm pretty sure that making good mulligan decisions will win you more games than adding/removing any one mana source.

Respond to crypt/trap so you don't lose it...

Just curious, how exactly is the rating calculated?

Very nice report.  There seems to be a lot of good analysis and I can only imagine how much work it was to play through all of those games.  I'll definately have to read through this again to pick up all the tid-bits I missed on the first pass.

I think if you just take off the can't attack clause then these aren't too broken for Standard.  Even if they still are you could always rephrase it to "can't play non-creature spells" or "can't play instant or sorcery spells" etc. so it doesn't shut down their entire turn.  Both of those still seem worth it in Vintage where you're mostly worried about broken spells rather than creatures.

I also really like the idea of a card that is shock+duress+silence.

It is only a spell if it is on the stack.  Its return from the graveyard trigger puts it directly onto the battlefield where it is a permanent and Emrakul doesn't have protection from permanents.  Emrakul's protection does prevent you from hard casting Dragon Breath though since when cast it would be a colored spell targeting Emrakul.

If it is a sealed event isn't about half of the entry fee going towards the sealed product ($3/pack*6 packs=$18)?

Still, 50% payout on remaining take is pretty terrible.

If it comes up a lot you could before the tournament make "Trigger Tokens" for each of your different types of triggers.  Then just physically stack them to avoid confusion.

Edit: Simplified

Finals match in a mox tourney.  I was playing GRW Beats against Tezz.  The game was going pretty well, I had some board pressure and an Ancient Grudge in hand, I was set.  Until I completely punted by blowing up his two moxen in response to his Tezz.  Yeah, infinite turns later I was dead. 

24

I started in middle school (~98) and remember some of my friends parents not letting them play because they thought it was satanic or some other BS.  I quit when I went to high school (because only kids play silly games like Magic lol) but came back in college because of my roommates just in time for Ravnica.  I just got into Vintage in the past year or two.

Manamorphose isn't quite infinite since you draw a card each time but the up side is that you can draw your whole deck.

Unless you're expecting to play the mirror a lot I would move the Leylines into the board and play Unmask main instead.  Similarly unless you're really expecting maindeck hate you could move the maindeck Claims to the side to make room for Sapphire and Lotus as DubDub suggested for some more explosive openings.  If you did those two things then I'd probably cut the Traps from the board since in the mirror you'd already be bringing in your Leylines and Chain+Claim as Leyline hate.  Also, I prefer Iona over Terastodon but it seems the elephant has been seeing a lot of play lately so I'm not sure.

Make sure to practice post sideboard games as much as you can.  Game 1 may be mostly autopilot but games 2 and 3 tend to have a lot more decision making both in mulliganing and play.

Good luck getting into Vintage.

Typically Dredge will board out Dread Return (usually leaving 1) and Dread Return targets (Sharuum, Iona, FKZ, etc.  if you need a fatty just Return a Troll).  If you're using Bloodghast instead of Ichorid (rather than both) you can probably cut some Thugs if you have Darkblast and/or Salvage to keep the total number of dredgers up.  Also, Fatestitcher seems like something you could cut a few copies of unless you're bringing in Force and need the blue count.

You should go to the tournament reports forum and find the report from the last event at shop you're looking to play at.  There will probably be deck lists so that you can get a good idea of what people are playing there.  Find lists for Tezz, Oath (Iona and Dragon), Dredge, Shop, and Fish (Noble and BUG).  Then proxy up some decks and play a few games to see what fits your play style the best.  There is also tons of information on here in terms of primers and strategy discussion to get you started.  Good luck!

Merry Christmas to all!

Based on the position of the word player's in the first line of the first ability compared to the first line of the last ability it seems like there needs to be more to your first line.

Was there only one deck that overlapped on Spheres and Thorns, or were the decks running Spheres all running the full 8?

Why the Tropicals in the Dream Halls list?  What's green out of the board?

We had about 80 people in the pre-release here in Tucson, but no one opened any treasures.  We did have at least one foil Lotus Cobra though.

How is this any better than Leyline/Crypt?

I just downloaded it, but am having trouble getting started.  For instance when I go to the deck editor there is no list of cards.  I'm sure there is something simple that I'm missing.  I'm pretty inept at times.

Can someone write a quick step by step on how to get everything set up?  Just pretend I'm a total bone head, that way i wont have to keep asking questions.

I voted in the <$10 range.  I'd just prefer to play more often and I think that doing inexpensive FNM style tournaments would be the way to do that.  Then maybe add a larger Mox event once a month or so in the $20-25 range.

Tendrils for 20 is actually 10x Tendrils for 2.  Just sac in response to the last copy and regain the 18 that you last before the last one resolves.

@marske: I completely agree that 65% chance is still pretty good.  I just wanted to point out that its not nearly as close to 100% as was indicated in the earlier post.  Also, adjusting for the changing odds after each draw yields a 67% percent chance of hitting that black source in four cards.

Just for reference with a 23% shot at hitting a black source on any given card, the odds of not hitting a black source in 4 cards is 35% (0.77^4=0.35), so you really only have a 65% chance of drawing into the black source next turn.

After taking a day to digest the changes I don't have any problems with the way things will work under the new rules, however I don't think that the reasons Wizards gave for some of them are very good.

Mana Burn:
"Many players can't clearly distinguish between phases and steps."  That's part of how the game works, if you want to play at a competitive level (the only place these new rules make a difference) then you have to learn how the game works.

"Its existence impacts game play in a negligible way, whereas its existence impacts card design space somewhat significantly."  If it doesn't impact game play how can it impact card design?  The biggest limitation is in designing cards that care about life totals, but burning yourself to get more of an advantage form that card is a strategic decision (after all this is a strategy game) that will be removed because of this change.

"Discovering it exists, especially via an opponent manipulating his own life total for gain, can be jarring."  This negative situation will happen exactly once while learning the game and after that knowing the rule and potential situations where it matters will allow for a greater depth in game interactions.

Combat Damage:
"For starters, "the stack" is a difficult concept, even after all these years, so it is no wonder that many players go about combat without invoking it at all."  The stack is an integral part of the game and removing it from combat doesn't change this.  In fact removing the stack from combat will likely cause more confusion because now it doesn't apply all of the time.  Normally (because of the stack) you get a chance to respond to everything your opponent does, now the same thing is true except for in combat.  How is learning the rule and the exception any less "difficult" than just learning the rule?

"The intricate system via which combat is currently handled creates many unintuitive gameplay moments."  This happens in every part of the game not just combat and is due to the nature of the stack.  How can an Oblivion Ring that's not in play permanently 'exile' something?  How come his Lightning Bolt hit me first when I 'cast' mine before him?  If the intent was to eliminate unintuitive gameplay situations then something should have been done to change how the stack works.  If the intent was to make combat intuitive then this fails because there are still situations that don't make sense.  Why is my creature still blocked when the creature blocking it isn't there any more?

One last thing:
"To figure out exactly where the problems were, we got into the mind of the casual player—not the player knee-deep in regular sanctioned play or Magic Online, but rather the one who plays our game at home, at school, or at the small local shop."  These players that play without knowing the rules will continue to play without knowing the rules, changing the rules doesn't change that.  If these players decide they want to play competitively then they have to decide to learn the rules that go along with that.  The rules should be designed for the palyers that use them not for the players that don't.