I went with Darjeeling since that was my #1 on the list, but Oolong is the best.

I make this prediction before every big money event and its always wrong, but I’ll make it again here.
Eventually people are going to get off their asses and test the combo decks and learn how to play them.  They will also realize that the combo decks are fast powerful and easy to build with 5 proxies.
I predict at least 1 and possibly 2 storm combo decks in top 8.

This is minor since it doesn’t effect standings, but I think I can get a point off lumber crack.


Me vs Lumbercrack

Me first: Land go
Them: land jack
Me: dude go
Them:
If they kill my land I’m ahead on the damage race and win
If they kill my dude then I untap and play flux next turn drawing the game

so
They Attack putting Me to 19
I attack back putting them to 19 and holding flux in my hand
Me to 18
Them to 18
…
me to 3
I attack they go to 3. Then I cast flux. If they don’t blow it up I win the damage race now. If they do blow it up then it kills them and I win.

So I should be able to draw playing first against lumber crack.

What's up with parking, will spaces be easy to find? If we just park in the student lots will they give a a ticket and not let us graduate from rutgers till we pay (not a big thing for those of us who don't go there) or will they tow our cars?

Vise is crazy. Its fast, cheap, and out of control. It comes down early, and if you don’t have a moxen heavy hand the things you have to do to yourself to reduce damage wind up being so crippling that you lose anyway. Really, vise might as well be a 1 mana mindslaver a decent amount of the time since it  forces the other player to wreck their own hand.

I’m a mechanics guy at heart so I’m for whatever flavor gets the card into the master list. I thought the brain thing was pretty cool, but I’m not set on it.
That said, it seems like no one has any mechanical objections to the card at this point, so all we need to do is settle on name and flavor text and I can start the clock.

NAME as a place holder only refers to the card its on. The phrase "Cards named XNamehere" refer to all cards with that name. See evil eye of orms by gore. With two in play and current wording neither would work.

Also, you could draw more then 2 with this if you used other card draw end of opponents turn.

I like this card. I’m not sure exactly how powerful it is, but I’m fairly sure its not broken and its and interesting effect.

I’m not too worried about the infinite academy combo. The most compact one posted so far was Bram’s which involved this dude, 3 artifacts and an academy in play. That’s a 5 card combo, that involves a restricted card, that doesn’t even win the game by itself, gets hosed by wastelands, gets hosed by removal, and imposes the design constraint on your deck that you need to play with only 1 land.  It’s solidly worse than grim power and no one uses that any more. Because of that, I don’t think it needs a tap ability to balance its power level. If people think a tap is needed for flavor reasons, I’d be willing to do that.

Also, name and flavor are always changeable. I figured that since when the card is in play the land and set up of the world would be changing constantly that a flavorful way to represent that would be something that’s classically subject to lots of change. For example a brain in a vat would have the world change whenever the person/machine sending sensory input into the brain wanted to. Also the idea of brains in vats is a classic example in all sorts of philosophical problems. Last, disembodied brains are just cool.

Hmm I was afraid of making it too good. Although maybe I’m being paranoid. I was fearing 1 tropical island 4 land grants and 1 academy in a deck, where if you draw any of those six cards and this dude you get an academy next turn.  Although that might be too contrived to be any good so I’ll try the suggested changes.

Even color wheel issues aside I think this is still very good, and perhaps too good for a land. Lands are uncounterable and are hard to destroy in Type 2 where you can’t just throw a free set of wastes in every mono or 2 color deck. The effects that lands generate should tend to be fairly weak. Enchantment removal is a very powerful effect. This also creates a design constraint in that decks based around enchantments will have a tough time being strong or even viable with something like this around.

Black can't do this. This card is a uncounterable way to break the color pie.

Flying and fear are sort of redundant. Maybe use untargetablty rather than flying.

Well, it seems like there are some fairly strong objections to an effect that makes a mandatory shuffle each turn. On the other hand, I do like the polymorph land ability and want to do something with it. If it can’t be automatic then I need to make it an activated ability with a cost. Since activated abilities are more controllable I need to balance the card by making other aspects weaker. I think attaching the ability to a body that can be killed will be a good way to balance it.

How about something like this as a rough draft to work from

Name
U
Creature -- Type
1/1
U, discard a nonland card: polymorph target land, shuffle rather than stack to prevent abuse.

Its not even that risky, you know what's in your hand. If casting this will ruin your game then you wont cast it. This is like dim returns but it costs less mana, has less of a draw back, and is more easy to cast since it works off a ritual.

If the land itself has locus subtype then people will be able to get what Loci are from looking at the card as a whole. I don't think that should be a major worry.

Hadley mini report

I scrubbed out this weekend, so this is more of an excuse to give props than a how to succeed post, but people may find some parts of it of interest. I am posting it in the newbie forum since not much in here is particularly serious other then (potentially) a discussion of the slaver mirror and SBing around it in round 5.

Having not played in an actual tournament for over 6 months I realize that my schedule allows me to attend Hadley so I decide to swing by. JOrlove offers to lend me a deck (key since all my cards are at home) and so all I have to do is pick one. Using MSW I try a few game ones with doomsday, oath, stax, and crucible slaver and decide I like slaver the best. I ask Toad for some help with SB plans and try them out and am sort of ready to go.
Needless to say, my preparedness left something to be desired. The only match ups I felt I really knew were the mirror and oath.

Round 1
4CC
Game 1
He goes land go and I drop a first turn welder with intuition, thirst, ak, force etc in hand. Eot he plows my welder. I make a mistake here. Since my hand was good I should have just let the welder die and relied on my draw power to gain strategic superiority later. What I actually do is force to save the welder. Then he untaps drops some moxes and a lotus and twists away my whole hand. I don’t recover from that.
Game 2
I have a crucible, art land, and a slaver in my hand so I intuition for welder and set up the infinite lock fairly quickly.
Game 3
He goes land go. I can first turn tinker, but I think he has a plow so instead up getting pentevus I get crucible (I have a fetch in the grave). Next turn I play welder and it gets plowed so I feel good that I didn’t walk pentevus into it. Over the next 4 turns I thaw out a land each turn but despite that I draw 4 lands. I have a nearly full (5 cards) hand but its all worthless. He goes aggro with 5 decree tokens and there is nothing I can do to stop it. My last few draws were counters, but by then it was too late

Round 2
J Orlove with WTF
Game 1
I drain a river boa to power intuition AK3 AK4. After drawing 8 cards in a turn I untap and am able to get a win down.
Game 2
I drain the mana to drop a turn 3 crucible and use my own mana to turn 3 intuition for strip. That shuts down his mana. Eventually I get a fire walker and it kills the dudes that had made it onto the board before he was landlocked.

Round 3
Dragon
Game 1
I have a nuts draw. Turn 1 island sol ring. Turn 2 use island to mystical for tinker. Then draw it, play volcanic, and tinker away the sol ring for platinum angel.
Game 2
I am able to use force and drain to delay things and manage to get 2 welders on the board with mana crypt, crucible, and darksteel land as my artifacts and nothing worthwhile in the grave. He then combos me out with laquatus. On my turn I weld the angel into play for the crypt but he coffin purges in response. However, I have 2 welders so I weld the angel in for the crucible in response and live. Next turn I weld in slaver and have him combo himself out.

Round 4
FCG
Game 1
I keep a 1 land 1 mox hand that will be great if I find a third source of any color or a 2nd blue source. I don’t I lose. In retrospect I probably should have mulliganed this.
Game 2.
I force his turn 1 dude. FTK his next guy. Then tinker up pentevus and beat down with it and FTK.
Game 3
I keep a 1 land 1 mox hand that will be great if I find a third source of any color or a 2nd blue source. I don’t I lose. In retrospect I probably should have mulliganed this.
Yes, that’s the same description as game one. Yes, I should have learned my lesson after game one.

Round 5
Zherbus with AK slaver //he has black so its not a total mirror.
Game 1
He mulligans and looks less then thrilled with his hand so I try for a quick mana lock. I intuition for strip crucible, welder hoping to get strip to buy time and then thirst or intuition into welder number 2 to finish the lock.  He gives me strip and I strip his volcanic island. I don’t get the 2nd welder but I don’t need to. He winds up being mana screwed long enough for me to hard cast a slaver. When he does play a blue source I slave him and use his hand to wreck him. Since I’m controlling both players I can use intuition as a true tutor to get what I need to do maximum damage.
Game 2
I boarded out the AKs for rack and ruins and rebs, and some other stuff for darts. He boards in darts, but keeps the AK engine and doesn’t have rebs or R&Rs. Early on I drain one of his thirsts into an Angel and start to beat with it. When he is down to 4 life he manages to get an angel of his own. I rack and ruin it and win the counter war with red blast. Welders were a non issue since both of us had gotten darts with intuition early on. At one point he even pitched a welder to thirst since it would have been to resource intensive to protect it from the darts.

Round 6
I don’t really recall to well. I played TnT it was 2-1. Game one was decided by 3 sphere. Game 2 I get a turn 1 tinker for pentevus and he gets turn 1 uktabi and turn 1 survival plus an activation. He wins.

Props
Jacob Orlove for lending me a deck so I could play
Kowal for running a great event
All my opponents for being cool people
Toad for developing crucible slaver and helping me with side boarding
Team 187 for not kicking me off even though I’ve been incommunicado for almost 6 months.

Slops
Me for poor mulliganing decisions, the terrible error first game, and generally sloppy play in round 6.
No other real slops, things were good.

Having been to an event for the first time in a while I’ve found myself swung fairly heavily towards the side of people who think 3 sphere may be too powerful. In the games it was played against me weather or not it resolved was of huge import. Walking around watching others games it seem that the sphere was making a huge impact anywhere it showed up. Of course anecdotal evidence is no substitute for real numbers.

am changing the card to avoid the stacking problem

Solipsism
U
Enchantment
At the start of each player’s upkeep that player puts a land they control on the bottom of their library and reveals cards from the top of their library until they reach a land. Put that land into play and put all other cards revealed this way on the bottom of that player’s library.
I think I see the world, but maybe the real world is completely different.

Current Wording

Brain in a vat
U
Creature -- Brain
1/1
1U: Target land's owner puts target land they control on the bottom of their library and reveals cards from the top of their library until they reach a land. Put that land into play under its owner’s control and shuffle all other cards revealed this way into that player’s library.

I think I see the world, but maybe the real world is completely different.



I’m thinking of this as a rare blue spell that polymorphs a land at the start of each players turn. Not really sure what it would be good for, but its got the sort of trickiness, mutability, and change that make it very blue.

Possible other options that I considered and was unsure about {and so want to ask you guys for input on } were
A: Raising the cost and making it polymorph all lands you control
Or
B:  Giving it some ability like “Remove a blue card in your hand from the game: put this directly into play under your controlâ€? which would let you play it as an instant so you got the first use out of it. It would also let you play it in response to a turn 1 shop sphere which would bust up the shop on their next upkeep and even things up.
EDIT
or
C: put this on a dude and up power level but make it more removable

I'll be there.  And If someone gives Jacob a ride I'll be there with a deck which is even better : )

My comment about aggro randomly winning in a skill free sense doesn’t apply today, most aggro sucks and the decks that do work, like Fish and company are tricky decks. But 5-6 years ago, a whole lot of games were decided in the first 3 turns by random blitz starts. Today a whole lot of games are decided in the first 1-2 turns by random blitz kills. The main difference is that most of the new decks that end games in 2 turns are hard to play, like draw seven. It’s a lot more acceptable to die without a turn if you are killed by a good player who worked for it.
I think that’s a lot of the issue here, people feel that shop sphere is insufficiently skill intensive. In terms of power over the first few turns shop-sphere is a lot less broken than the 1st turns belcher and 2nd turns draw seven can manage. There if you don’t have force you are actually dead. With sphere not having force just means you need wasteland or a good mana draw coupled with them not having strong follow up.
The 3 sphere lock may be too easy, but it doesn’t actually happen that often, maybe 1 game out of 3 and so 1st turn 1 out of 6. In a macro sense, that’s small enough to really not be too unbalancing to the format. But on the micro there are still going to be lots of players who just randomly lose games to it.

I think we have fairly clear evidence at least 50% of the people in the US are idiots.  with 50% as a baseline we have to estimate how many people act sensibly for reasons that are fairly random. In a 2 choice situation about 50% should get it right by random chance. So all told I place the % of idiots in the U.S. as at least 75%.

Awesome. Thanks guys, see you Saturday.

Hey,

I’m in the Hadley area (Amherst). I normally can’t go to tournaments because school and extra-curriculars keep me busy almost every weekend during the school year.

Due to an amazing set of coincidences I’m free this weekend, but since I’m almost never free I didn’t bother to bring my cards to school with me and my decks are 8+ hours of driving away : (

So… Anyone happen to have an extra deck lying around they could lend me for the tournament?  Kowal would be better off because he’d get an extra $10 reg fee, I’d be better off because I’d get to play, and you’d be better off because you’d have the warm fuzzy feeling of having helped out a fellow TMDer. If that’s not enough I’d also be willing to tithe a large % of any prize I happen to earn* .

*Don’t rely on this too much though, I’m out of practice in physical games so odds are I’ll make several terrible mistakes costing me games.

thanks,
Will

I think watching the opponent for tells is fairly important. I’m not even good at it and it stills wins me a fair number of games just because often my opponents are even worse at hiding tells then I am at reading them.

Sometimes when the opponent plays a spell you can just flat out ask them, “is that a real threat or just counter bait?� and see from their face what the answer is which makes deciding what to counter a lot easier. Of course, against a good opponent this can backfire and get you killed, so I generally don’t try to read people I think are better then me.

Mean deck Slaver, aka shop slaver

Doomsday is newly released so people will want to try that. Also, combo is a good metagame choice in general and eventually Americans have to realize combo is underplayed. A ton of money is a good way to force people to realize things.

Mean deck Slaver has got main deck chalices and the option of SB 3sphere which will give combo fits. It also has force of will so it’s got game even when playing first against combo.

The welders will keep 5/3 in check as well as oath decks that use the big man.
It’s at a disadvantage to control slaver I think, but maybe more main deck trisks can fix that.

The slaver itself is just generally a powerful card against all sorts of things (and can be very nasty v stax).

I figure you guys found something better than gilded lotus and maybe improved the draw engine some.

I’ve been testing a few doomsday builds since the articles and posts went up and have a few thoughts about the artifact removal slot.

Note, my test build is closer to the one JP posted with off color moxen, mana crypt, 4 spheres and no force.

I was initially trying hurkls in the removal slot but after some thinking I suspect rebuild might be better.
4 cases

1. You need to remove some artifacts your opponent has
2. You want to bounce your artifacts to up storm or generate mana
3. You need to do both
4. You don’t need to do either

In case 4 rebuild is better because it can at least cycle.
In case 3 rebuild is better because it can hit both players and hurklys hits only one.

In case 2 hurklys is better since it costs one fewer mana.

Case 1 is the most important case since it’s why the card is in your deck. Realistically, the lock card you are going to go after most often will be 3sphere in which case they cost the same amount.
If they have sphere of resistance hurklys is cheaper, but if they have sphere then they are probably playing old school stax with sphere and chalice main deck, and 3spheres in the board and the match is probably close enough to an auto loss that what card you use won’t matter.

Furthermore if you have even 1 artifact mana on the table that you can reply then rebuild is cheaper under 3 sphere pay 3 get 1 back vs. pay 3 get 0. Likewise it is the same cost as hurklys against non 3sphere artifacts. If you have more than 1 source of artifact mana it’s even cheaper.

So if you play the build with artifact mana, rebuild seems as good as or better than hurkls in most cases.

The acceleration vial gives you is less powerful in type one because you have the acceleration of moxen available to you.

I did however make a vial build for type one after Zvi suggested it on brainburst but before other people realized Zvi was right that vial needed to be in the deck. At the time I abandoned it because I was having too much trouble with null rod, so its fairly untuned but it might be a decent type 1 starting point.
        4 Skullclamp
        4 Chromatic Sphere
        4 Myr Enforcer
        4 Myr Retriever
        4 Frogmite
        4 Arcbound Worker
        4 Arcbound Ravager
        1 Time Walk
        1 Ancestral Recall
        4 Disciple of the Vault
        4 AEther Vial
        4 Thoughtcast
        3 Darksteel Citadel
        4 Vault of Whispers
        4 Seat of the Synod
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald
        2 Underground Sea

This was made at a time when there was a lot of artifact hate like rack and ruin, oxidize, etc and so the deck has tons of card advantage and draw to overcome that. Looking at his now on first glance I might cut spheres for genesis chambers and thoughtcasts for draw 7s but I’d need to test that to be sure.

Sweet! the kill stack I suggested in this thread was the same one meandeck found that pushed the deck to the next level. Of course, its not like they got it from my posts in this thread since they’d had it for weeks before this thread even went up. Still, its always good to know you are thinking along the right lines.

I think that one of the best things you can do is give you child a name with a really large range of legitimate nickname possibilities that still sounds classy if they need to use their full name on respectable forms. By these standards Elizabeth and Katharine really are just far and away the best. Jennifer while not quite as good is still money. Giving your kid a wide range of nicknames lets them have a good choice of self expression.

When children switch from middle school to high school or high school to college they often want to change themselves or change their image and switching nicknames is psychologically a big part of this since their old name carries baggage. If a kid named Mathew is made fun of in middle school while going by Matt they are either forced to use their full name in high school or stick with an old name with baggage that will hold them down and just result in them getting made fun of more.  While no one ever wants to think that their kid will get made fun of its always better to have a plan for the worst even if it’s never needed.