EtW:  This card obviously screams powerful and definitely deserves its shot in gifts.  It definitely provides you with your beatdown plan as opposed to tendrils, but it doesn't fix the problem of having to storm out.  Tinker/ colossus is a fine backup plan for when storming isn't going to work due to some obnoxious board position or whatever.  Why can't they both be played in the same deck?  What made you opt for using it over tinker as opposed to along with?

Repeal:  I like repeal in this deck.  It moves stuff that keeps you from storming which helps you cast your etw and tendrils, but again I can't help but wonder why it can't be played along with chain of vapor.  Chain is hands down one of the best bounce spells in the format and one of the best answers to a tinkered colossus or titan.

Scrying:  How is scrying for you in this deck?  It doesn't seem like card for card as powerful as fof.  It also seems a little more random of a card to have just because you can't scroll for it. 

Twister:  Timetwister is cool!!!  I don't know if it is good, but it is definitely cool.  I will be trying this one a little more.  But if twister is good enough for the deck, why not jar as well?

Also, did you try: Gush? I.Seal? Burning wish?

This is what you get when you ask questions like the one posed:

"workshop should be retricted.

I dont think ritual  should be restricted, since its a core card for mono black decks. its not rituals faulthats its being abused with tendrils and yawgwill

maybe tendrils should be restricted, thats would stop a lot of combo decks, or it would make them more fair.
mana drain is good, but it still gives mana burn in the worst case scenario, so I dont think it should be restricted. its a counterspellafter all, not a combo card ( although the mana produced helps combosobviously)"

I think that the idea of a "draw engine" in gifts is pretty much unnecessary.  Instead of outdrawing slaver, try outcomboing them and see what happens.  Meandeck Gifts never actually sported any form of draw engine at all besides merchant scrolls and brainstorms.  It comboed out well though.  Gifts has remained only a two of because multiples are generally clunky. 

Moxlotus:
To be perfectly honest, I actually think that the three win conditions are necessary for the reason that it gives you options.  Gifts can set up a tendrils kill with will, a time vault flames win or even a tinker beatdown with timewalk.  That allows you to not get hosed in specific situations.  For instance, all the u/w fish builds in Michigan play stormscape apprenctice maindeck which is really obnoxious when you are holding tinker in hand... except that tinker can find time vault and the rest of your deck can find flames giving you the ability to combo out where there wouldn't have otherwise been a route to victory.  Another example with the same fish deck and their challices: you can easily time vault combo through a challice 0 but not necessarily tendrils kill or tinker.   I found that burning wish is the best, most reliable and easiest kill method.  Aside from that, tinkering up dsc and utilizing timewalk- a card already in your deck that doesn't really utilize extra slots for win condition- seemed good with the ability to randomly fag your opponent as well as be a reliable win condition in the face of hate.  Now the problem is that in actuality, most decks in vintage actually have ways to deal with both of those kill scenarios.  Adding a third option just gave the deck stability and speed.  A two card instant win combo has to be worth playing in a drain combo deck.

Most people, if they know me, know me for playing this awful deck: psychatog  , but gifts has been my passion especially for the last few months here in Michigan. The goal was to speed gifts up.  I have tried intuition/ak versions, severance/belcher, versions that look like drain tps or confidant control, Meandeck gifts, flame-vault, and Probasco style control.  I feel that the easiest, most reliable and efficient win condition is tendrils of agony.  Mana drain and gifts ungiven just combo into ten spells, two colorless and two black so well.  But before I discuss more on the win condition and card choices I present to you VAG Gifts Ungiven:

Protection
4Force of Will
4Mana Drail
1Echoing Truth
1Rebuild

Draw/Tutors
4Brainstorm
2Merchant Scroll
2Gifts Ungiven
Recall
Fact or Fiction
Frantic Search
Gush
Demonic
Vampiric
Mystical
Imperial Seal

Win Condition
1Flames Fusillade
1Time Vault
Tinker
1Dsc
1Recoup
Timewalk
Burning Wish
Yawgmoth's Will

Unfair Mana
10 Artifacts
Academy

Fair mana
5Fetch
4Underground Sea
2Volcanic Island
3Island
1Snow-Covered

Necessary Sideboard Cards
1Tendrils of Agony
1Deep Analysis
1Flames Fusillade


Who plays gush and frantic search?
The first thing I would like to discuss is the choice of gush and frantic search.  Gush is absolutely, undeniably amazing in this deck.  Its ability to add storm for free and do cute things with mystical, vamp and seal is one of the reasons this deck is usually faster than the average gifts deck.  I waffled on frantic search for a long time, but after a lot of testing and goldfishing I know that this card is an intricate piece of the puzzle when you are trying to go off.  It is at the very least free in nearly every situation and often nets you mana when Yawgwill-ing for the win since you almost always have academy to untap and infinite artifacts.  Both of these cards can be fetched out with the two merchant scrolls as well.  Merchant scroll was forced down to a two of in this list even though I am a huge supporter of as many as possible in blue control in general but gifts especially.  But sometimes scroll bogs down your hand, when just having a gifts that you would have scrolled for (for instance) is better. 

Even Ben Kowal thinks Imperial Seal is ass.....
Imperial seal makes the list because of your secondary win condition: flame-vault.  In testing I noticed that tormod's crypt is the most obnoxious card possible when trying to tendils out your opponent like you always would have otherwise.  I also noticed that while tinkering up a really fat team Meandeck member is fairly reliable, it isn't always as lethal or as bullet proof a plan as I would have liked.  Not as efficient and graceful as burning wish for tendils.  In testing a third win condition we quickly noticed that flame vault was the strongest third condition to add to the deck.  Flame vault is perhaps the most mana efficient and fastest win condition to set up the deck has, although it is fairly easily disrupted since almost every deck in the format has some form of bounce spell.  Plus it adds a two card instant win combo to the deck giving it outs and wins in situations where it had none before.  Flames is easy to find with the gifts and tutors in the deck but I always had trouble finding time vault before seal made the list. 

Twenty-six Mana and no Library?
Yeah that's right.  If there is one thing I know about gifts it is this:  Gifts is a poweful enough deck that when it has the ability to play any spell off the top, making its land drops every turn and hardcasting four mana sorceries with busted artifacts, it has a fairly easy time winning.  Gifts mana is a mess in general.  Players utilize pithing needle or *scoffs* tundras and sacred grounds  to combat land destruction, but in reality a solid mana base with plenty of basics and fetches is the best way to go.  Gifts always seems to have plenty of colorless mana between drain and artifacts, but sometimes colors are hard to come by.  Library doesn't make the list because it doesn't help cast gifts ungiven, yawgmoth's will, flames fusillade etc. 

How do I play this pile?
Well, it requires a combo mindset from the get go.  Mana drain is very lethal in this deck much like in meandeck gifts because of its combo nature, so drain for drain mana not to counter spells.  Mana drain ftw isn't always the correct plan of action though.  Much of the time you play out the combo role as you aggressively, but not recklessly, cast your bombs and draw spells.  To be perfectly honest this is the hardest of the gifts lists I have every tested or built.  It has a plethora of options while going off and only testing can tell you which routes are correct in any given situation.  But one thing to remember is not go give up when it looks like your down and out, and think hard about all of the card interactions in the deck when it looks like your just short of going off. 

Well I hope you enjoyed this and I hope I get time to come back and write more about it.  Been to busy lately drinking Jack Daniel's and smoking bowls with Demars and Minore....

P.S. Jeff Anand, as soon as your buddy pops your cherry get out to Michigan and we'll smoke you out fat.

I have been all over this intuition/ ak gifts nonsense since the last SCG Virginia when I sat down and talked to Smennen about it.  I think that the intuition engine is really strong for gifts because it just gives you raw cards in hand.  You can just use intuition/ ak/ scroll to draw a shit ton of cards and go off thereafter.  But I  definitely think that you need at least one copy of gifts ungiven maindeck because it is the best way to set up your win.  Intuition just isn't as good at it.  You can intuition for will, recoup and lotus but that isn't as good as getting academy, lotus, recoup, will.  Intuition doesn't set up the will nearly as well as gifts does.  With merchant scrolls already, I see no reason to be running three intuitions and not two and one or two gifts.  Everyone that says that gifts doesn't need draw is wrong.  Gifts needs draw because it is the best way to win against decks like slaver that have actual cards maindeck that hose you.  I don't see your need to play tundra just for sacred ground.  That can't possibly be good. 

How are you still in this thread?  Why does the peanut crowd from Colombus, Ohio feel it necessary to chime in on our trash talking thread?  The quality of the jokes is actually pretty savage, but of course you wouldn't get any of it because its all a bunch of inside jokes that people from MICHIGAN and CANADIA partake in because we all know each other.  Infidel Outsider! Remain in your own threads!

P.S. on tomorrow which is Saturday there is a savage alcoholic's party at my place in Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Anyone who wishes to attend give me a call @ 734 845 7063.

My personal fifteen most respected players in no particular order:

Kevin Cron, for solid results at every tournament I have ever seen him participate in
Steve Menedian, for working on a bigillion decks
Brian Demars, for always playing a subpar deck and winning with it
Jeff Anand, for being a motherfucking pimp
Mark Biller, for making slaver good
Benjermin Perry, for mulling to three
Robert Vroman, for innovating Stax
Paul Fisholo, for making Fish good
Peter O. - lack of an attempt to spell your last name, for solid play and deck construction

And the Entire Colorado Crew:
Bob Yu
Jim Gaffney
Fuckin' Lou
for being fucking amazing to hang out with.  The next time we do, I'll bring the bong.

And even
Kris Taylor
Jeremy (fuck I forgot your last name!)
Scratch

With Special mention going to the Fishiest.

Actually Brian, Josh Minore and I have been listening to Postal service/ deathcab while stoned out of our gourdes since before you were born.  So to answer your question, no we are not bandwagon pop lovers.

On a sidenote: I don't actually know of any more good side projects than the ones currently listed in this forum, but A Perfect Circle has a remixed CD called Amotive and its savage as all hell if you like any combination of Techno, Tool, and a perfect Circle.

"Smuggling it across the border" what do you think you are, Pat Chapin....  :shock:

The only rude thing I remember concerning type one at RIW was that one time I raped Ben Perry in the finals of a Recall tournament.  

No but seriously you can all have your talk about my girlfriend; I am perfectly comfortable with sharing.  Just look at how I share the prize with Demars after conceding to him round one and then winning out!  

As far as team Canada is concerned, I would worry about them but the fact is that if they come anywhere near making me worry about losing to them, I'll just keep up tradition and blatantly cheat and have the judge side with me.   :shock:

There are two reasons I won't worry about Meandeck.  Reason number one:  it's a long drive that no one in their right mind would want to make for less than the entire power nine.  Reason number two: last time they appeared they made a poor showing and then disappeared into the sunset.  Michigan Metagame is a little rough for those who normally test with JDizzle  .

I actually don't know who Gimbles is.  I haven't met him since I am always at the top tables. 

I'll show you ladies my next piece of power afterward if you want.  I'll even let you buy me a beer.

No, no no.  Not at all, Justin.  There are good decks.  It is just difficult to discern at times what is truly good and what is simply winning.  My point about Steve and his top eight with grimlong is that Steve probably could have piloted cs, gifts, stax, dragon or who knows what else to the same finish based on playskill.  That makes it difficult to tell how good grimlong is from an outside perspective basedon results alone.

Is there a lack of consensus on the fundamentals of vintage?  Clearly.  Is that a bad thing, not necessarily.  If I were to start a query thread asking players what the best card in vintage is or what the best unrestricted card was, how many dissentient ideas and opinions would show up?  This is a good thing.  If the people playing the format differ in opinion on the most important and basic assumptions laid out years ago by people like the paragons, then the format is sure to be interesting with many decks built on varying deckbuilding principles.  


This is exactly the opposite of what I am saying, actually.  We as a community absolutely do not agree on this framework for analysis.  If we did wouldn't we all be playing the same deck?  I don't believe this to be a negative thing at all.  The members of my team feel very strongly that the way we envision the format is correct.  We have a variance in the decks we play too: fish, tog, slaver, gifts, dragon, belcher, grimlong, but even with the multitude of decks we play one thing is sure:  we would never have built decks others have created.  For example, workshop aggro, choke oath, uba stax all things we would not have been working on based on our individual styles/ ideas about vintage in general.  

Workshop aggro we think is terrible, but we can be beat by it.  Uba stax we think is really good, but we can beat it playing the decks we are known for.  I think a lot of players have an affinity for a particular style of deck.  I generally stick to mana drains, but I wouldn't play an oath deck with drains because it plays differently from the other style of drain decks.  I understand gifts, slaver, tog, tps(when it wasn't gifts like it is now), because they have a similar feel as they progress through any given game.  I understand that style of deck.  Put workshop aggro or fish in my hands and you will wish you had a camera to record the trainwreck in progress.  My point is that players make decks work.  Brian Demars was playing 3cc for awhile and winning with it.  But in one of our local power tournaments, he was decimated by a less skilled player playing a good version of tog.  When he asked me why that happened and what he could do to fix it I said play a different deck.  It wasn't 3cc winning it was Brian.

When asked if I thought grimlong was a truly "good" deck I said no.  It is decent in my opinion, leagues above deathlong, but it wasn't grimlong that top eighted at Chicago.  It was Smmenen.  Good players win with bad decks every day.  Dan Carp kicked the crap out of me in the last round of swiss before one of the last few Chicago's playing a deck that I personally have no respect for.  It actually just came down to playskill more than anything else.  This has to be kept in mind for all sorts of things.  Playskill will carry a player to a top 8.  If a player won with march of machines in their deck, then clearly they could have put a better card in its place and done just as well. 

Basically players not agreeing makes our metagame interesting.  Why is New England a bunch of control mirrors?  Why is Europe behind by several months (or ahead depending on who you look at)?  Why is Canada completey random?  Regional ideas cause regional metagames.  People on the east coast U.S. have ideas descending from the Paragons of Vintage, Zherbus, Oscar Tan, Carl Winter, Steve Menedian.  I don't think there is any reason to be confused by seemingly random decklists.  Instead, just dismiss them and stick to what one and one's team know and feel is correct. 

I think that you would begin with a "How to Play the Game with feeling!" drama course.  You could teach us all how to orgasm over brainstormed cards.   

Edit:
Brian Demars would definitely teach a class on deck registry!

There is one thing I have noticed about Brian: he plays slaver with the same mindset as someone playing 4cc (back when 4cc was a deck) or stax.  His one fire ice is no more random than the *one* swords to plowshares in stax right?  Personally I don't like answers, expecially narrow ones which is why I don't play decks like this one.  I prefer to streamline as much as possible and play slaver as a combo- control deck.  This strategy is more easily disrupted than one that has "random" answers like maindeck echoing truth and fire/ ice, but is stronger when playing against something equally as streamlined like storm combo or gifts ungiven.  The fire/ ice works for him, but its not my thing and I can imagine the same goes for a lot of people.

At a local store last week, I watched someone open a pack of cards.  I don't even remember what kind of pack or what set because I wasn't really paying attention until he exclaimed, "What's this!?"  One of the cards that came out the pack had the magic back but was blank on the front....... I bought it for a dollar and now am wondering What is it?  What do I have and is it worth anything?  From the same store someone else said the same thing happened to them and had another one so I picked that one up as well.  Two of these things..... Any ideas?

Oh my god.  You are still on that "tog loses to slaver" kick.  Tog loses to mindslaver activations.  So does EVERY deck in the format.  Tog does not lose to slaver.dec, especially not the versions that are playable right now.  You don't have to believe me, but that is the last I'll say about it.

@cosineme:  Sol ring is good, but not as good as mana crypt.  Crypt is just busted and does everything that sol ring does but better.  And as you see by my last post, I actually played 6 fetch and 3 trop in that tournament.

This makes me think you have never played tog before.  Tog doesn't care about stp except in a few somewhat random situations where it would be really nice if tog could just win for you, and if the deck is doing what it is supposed to those situations never come up.  If dsc is plowed, by some miracle or misplay, you have virtually no chance of winning the game.  If this deck had like 10 artifacts, a rebuild and burning wish somewhere in it you might still be able to win, but to remove your only solid win condition is truly game over.  If one tog dies to swords there is probably at least one more to back him up. 


People probably are bored with tog they have been winning with him in all formats for awhile, but I don't think there is any special "way" to play against tog any different from playing against other control decks.  And I don't think tog is hosed as easily by welders or tormod's crypts as the other two drain combo decks in the format. 


Of these decks, meandeck gifts is the one you don't want to see as I have already said.  But TPS, ssb, most stax and fishies are all fine for you with the build I have.  In fact, I think decks that run duresses main as well as deep analysis, 4 wish and mindtwist have a worse game than my build from gencon against ALL of the matches you described. 

Every other decklist posted in this thread is a control deck.  That is evident by the speed of the cards it plays.  Four cunning wishes is too slow.  I was a huge fan of 4 wish some time ago, but that build of tog was a different deck.  Duress isn't utility enough.  Honestly, duress doesn't help you win any matchups that you have problems with playing tog.  Deep is clearly too slow and is misdirectable.  The cards in my deck are very streamlined and do one thing only:  try to win the game.  I don't duress my oponent.  I outdraw them and have a hand with a will and a bunch of forces and drains.  I don't wish for answers to fish guys;  I merchant scroll up a gush or a echoing truth in an absolute emergency, draw waaaaaaayyyyyy too many cards and wish for berserk.  The only cards I see that I wish I were somehow playing are rebs and shamans.  Shaman helps you combo by removing challice of the void.  Rebs are better protection/ counter than duress most of the time. 


Mark my words: when it does rear its ugly head over there, see if your cunning wishes help.  They will be far too slow and too costly against the decks playing challice......



There is still some question as to the mana base of this deck and I don't understand why.  Tog plays ALWAYS AND FOREVER:
5mox
lotus
crypt
If you somehow have room for sol ring too that might be cute but its no mana crypt.
5-6 fetches
4+islands
3-4 seas depending on how many black cards you insist on running
3-4 other duals, be it just volcs, just trops or some combination
0 strip effects- those are bad
0 boseijuice who hates that he has to come into play tapped- those make you think they are good when they work, but they are lying
0-1 Loa's In some crazy ass, control heavy metagame without fishes, fcg's or stax this guy can be pretty good
0 tundras- don't look at european deck lists... no offense  :lol:
0 bazaars- same logic
And a minimum of 24 manas and no gush is not a mana.  Oh, and don't play swamp...... sometimes I do bad things too.

Why did I play 4 trops?..... the honest answer:  Funniest Story Evar!

Brian Fucking Demars filled out my decklist... :shock:..... Why did I let the guy with two mox sapphires do that?  Because I was very tired, and I actually thought Mark Biller was doing it.  My decklist at gencon was probably wrong.  I had 3 trops and another fetch....... the irony......    



I used to play tog as a control deck a very long time ago.  Type two tog experience told me that if I could just keep from losing My win condition would become inevitable.  The win condition being draw spells into tog-walk.  My decks in the past have included maindeck fire/ice, 4 duress/ 4 wish builds, strip effects (shameful I know.....), Mindtwist, exposives etc....  It took me a long time to realize that In the End, all I want to do is berserk psychatog, and I was just taking too long to do it before. 

Unless your plains has a black and white kitty cat winking at you its no good......

I prefer very specific lands: foil saga swamps, Ed Beard apec islands, kitty cat plains or unhinged foil plains, I don't play with forests and arabian nights mountains.

You have to read the forum rules.... you have to start a post with more content and I am pretty sure asking questions isn't allowed or something.  A moderator will probably see this shortly.

About Tinker Vs. Tog: I agree that Tinker is a better card than psychatog, but I don't think collossus is.  Random turn one tinker adds inconsistency in that half the time you have a turn one tinker and the other half of the time you have an opening hand with darksteel collossus which can't even pitch to force of will.  With mystical and demonic in my list I did do some testing with tinker.  I don't like dead cards and I happen to be the most unlucky player evar because I draw Kevin 70% of the time and tinker only like 30. 

Clearly the win condition is will so it shouldn't matter, but sometimes the optimal game plan doesn't work out and tog swings for the win old school style.  Tinkering up a collossus at Gencon would have been a bad gameplan to have with welders running amok.  Again, I am playing gifts right now and I'm doing well with that too.  But Collossus isn't the strong point of that deck, it just adds a backup plan and a neat trick.  Gifts is the strength of the deck and winning in a single turn with tendrils of agony is far more efficient than tog or colossus, but requires much more setup and is in some ways easier to stop. 


These are the most commonly accepted misconceptions about tog.  Sundering titan and cow have nothing to do with the fact that tog needs a consistent mana base to win.  Every control deck in the format needs at least 10 basics/ fetches to not get hosed by stax and fish.  Slaver isn't even playing platz, but when it was there was no problem with that.  Against that deck tog needs to prevent tinker, will, and thirst.  Welder is a little beater without his backup and at some point he is either killed, shut off or trampled over.  Other decks abuse tinker better because they retrieve mindslaver which is broken, but if you want tog to be able to turn one tinker up a collossus then fit it in and DO IT.     It has no less capability there.  Togs will is as broken as every decks except for gifts at times.  Sometimes gifts doesn't need to timewalk to win which is pretty ridiculous, but as long as your opponent doesn't ever get another turn it really doesn't matter if tog does.


I could not have put that better.  The people that do well with tog understand how to switch roles and at which points.  It is all about "who is the beatdown" the whole time you are playing tog.  You can be the control deck and then suddenly switch roles to the aggro, or be in the aggro role and see a situation developing that will not allow you to combo out and change roles there. 

So many people don't actually understand anything about tog.  All of you bash on my deck and its "random" appearance at Gencon, but few of you know even what the deck does.  I have been doing well with Tog for a VERY long time.  This deck was PERFECTLY metagamed for the day.  I lost to dragon because I mis-sideboarded and forgot to deal with Xantid Swarm  :shock: . 

I would have written a primer for my tog list, but I figured no one would believe me and I wanted to use it at future SCG tournaments.  Until someone wrote something about it I had no reason to even mention it.  I won't try to convince you tog is good.  Right now I am playing a gifts variant.  But I will tell you a few things I have learned to be misconceptions.


This, Clown, is a clear misconception.  I don't mean to sound rude, but you didn't playtest this build of tog EVER.  Merchant scroll fulfills the same roll in tog as it does in gifts, only in tog it finds a greater array and more powerful cards.  The most notable of which are in THIS order:
Recall
Gush
Big AK
Echoing Truth
Cunning wish
Fact or fiction
Intuition

Merchant scroll speeds up tog in a way that hasn't been seen since the 4 gush era of magic.

This is true, in fact it happened more than once that day that I killed on turn 3.  Once was against U/W fish and the other against tps. 


Again, I will not try to justify my list, but I will say that it wasn't designed to beat gifts.  In fact the night before Gencon, I told Demars that my list lost to gifts straight up most of the time.  I did not expect gifts to be a big enough competitor going into that tournament.  My one pre-top 8 loss was to meandeck gifts piloted by the most savagely lucky player I have ever seen.  He won games one and three with extreme luck and not much else to aid him even after I outplayed him and raced to will in game three.

If you mean that both decks are Yawgwill combo decks than yes, however they both run on almost the same clock with gifts actually requiring more setup.  The colors are the same even if you play red as opposed to green cards.  The only green card tog needs to operate is berserk and 0-1 tropicals to fuel that.

Actually, tog spends very few turns and less mana than you would think winning, and it is actually the most efficient drain deck for one reason: it runs ZERO dead cards.  You can draw and draw into more useful spells every game without fail.  Gifts ungiven is equally as efficient when it has everything it needs, but sometimes you rip burning wish and have nothing to use it on or misdirection that can't necessarily counter the threat your opponent plays.  Again, I am playing gifts right now and I think it is wonderfully broken, but not more or less efficient than tog.  Both decks are actually combo decks and nothing more.  My list exemplifies the combo aspect of tog.


THE most common misconception about tog is that it loses to control slaver.  This isn't even remotely true.  I wish I had been playing against slaver in the top 8.  I would have crushed, dominated and moved onto a real matchup.  If you look at my maindeck and board I have 2 things on slaver:  a better draw engine, and more powerful answers to my opponents deck.  Again, I won't try to sell you tog or explain why certain cards even made it into my deck, but I will tell you that this isn't togs last top eight.

That is the funniest damn thing I have seen since "The End of the World."

Clearly having Josh Franklin logged in on my computer, so that I may make a hijacked post is quite amazing. There should definetely be an amazing comment about onelovemachine's girlfriend here, perhaps me drinking whiskey from her belly button or some other such tomfoolery, but I'm sure that you're much better at coming up with entertaining little thoughts like that. So, Ben, I'll leave you with this: It's been amazing hanging out with you, playing Magic and otherwise. I have no doubt that, even now that you've "quit," we'll continue to have amazing times together. That, and, of course, you'll clearly be doing my girlfriend, so I'm sure I'll be around. Peace.

~The other Josh

Sooooo Good!   
Listen, Bob is roughly the same height as me, but size?  Come on.... I am well known in the vintage community for my "size."  Bob is a specimen no doubt, but can he really be compared?

Screw you Ben Perry..........   Clearfly JDizzle is my only girlfriend.

First of all, I think the most important part of this whole experience should be, for you Fishman, the profound realization that as you put it:
"Its crazy how much we lose sight of how lucky we all are."
Sometimes I think I am truly stupid and self absorbed for having thousands of dollars invested into cardboard while others lack basic necessities. 

Kind, but misplaced words.  I hold no claim to fame.  The story, as told from my perspective, isn't so nearly so philanthropic as you would hope.  I give myself only the smallest amount of credit. 

When I first found the cards I looked only at a box containing pretty much junk.  I asked those anywhere within a fifteen feet radius if it was theirs, then quietly put it into my bag.  ZZZZIIIIIPPPPPPP!!!!!!  I slid off to somewhere random where I could be alone enough to inspect the entire contents of the box.  The first thing I see:  Lotus.  Suddenly MY head was swimming.  As I realized what a virtual gold mine fate had handed me.  Here's why I give myself any credit at all.  My initial thought was, "Someone lost a deck.  That someone is playing in this tournament.  That someone will assuredly begin looking for it as the next round starts, and when they do, I am going to make sure they get it back."  Pretty nice thought, huh?  Well we all would like to think that we would intend to give back something of such value lost in that way...... After all it is what we would want to happen to us if we lost our deck.  But that's not what happened.  Through the entire next round not ONE person mentioned missing cards, not having their deck to play for the round, or anything of the sort.  Suddenly, I don't have a someone to turn a deckbox into. 

The truth is that the longer I held on to that box, the more I coveted its contents, the more I felt that I had been dealt a winning hand in this situation.   "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"  and that box contained a whole shitload of power.  If I remember correctly it had 4drains, moxen, lotus, recall, walk and duals.  The  situation began to translate itself in my head:  money.  Money is something I had been struggling with as of late, so it is no wonder that when the opportunity arose to lay claim to a LOT of it my mind began to justify doing so.  Call it self preservation or pure unadulterated greed, there was a time when I had every intention of keeping that box of cards and never telling anyone about it. 

That's actually a very easy thing to do when there is no face to associate with the person losing cards.  After the round had ended there was STILL no talk about lost cards, at least none to my knowledge.  It wasn't until bumping into you on our way out of the tournament hall, that what's left of my broken and decrepit conscience began to churn and pollute my euphoric happiness with the concept of Justice in this situation.  The problem:  I had already resigned myself to keeping the cards, and now I had a face with which to associate the loss.  Dilemmas are the suck.

With a little help in the right direction from my friends, Mark and Brian, your cards found their way back into your possession intact and the rest of the story is as you know it.  But I flat REFUSE to be publicly recognized as a 'hero' if that isn't the way the story played out.  Besides, the truth is so much more interesante.......

I have written this against the advice of everyone I have spoken to on the subject.  My hope is to set the record straight.  I make myself look very bad by saying all of this and I am O.K. with that.  In fact, I don’t CARE about that.  If anyone claims that they wouldn’t have had those thoughts run through their head then I hope I have the opportunity to call them a Liar to their face….. Just as long as it is understood that I am only human.

Josh Franklin

Edit:  Jeff Anand is a stand up person.

All I know is this is the coolest quote evar:

Our relationship has existed outside of Magic for some time and it will continue to do so.  Quitting cards doesn't mean we can't get beligerantly (sp?) drunk together once and a while and at least catch up.   

Anyways, way to man up and keep in touch.

Josh Franklin

Hey, do NOT put me in the bracket of good players in your metagame, Demars.  Honestly, our metagame isn't bad but it isn't spectacular either.  There is no reason believe that ours is better than the east coast, west coast, European or even (cough*) Canadian metagames for type one.  Oh and by the way, the number of times you top eight means jack shit.  It is far more difficult to top 8 in some metagames than others......