My thanks to Killane and Engineer for the advice. Hopefully, I can put it to good use this Saturday.

I am considering taking this deck to the local weekly sanctioned tournament, but I have a couple questions. I have done some playtesting with the deck, but mostly against Tezzeret, MUD, Red Stax, Ichorid (kind of a joke), and Oath; however, most of the decks that will be at the tournament are not going to be powered and will be a bit random. Does anyone have tournament experience against random decks, or have you been playing in proxy tournaments with a more established metagame? I am thinking that the match-ups should be mostly good because of how quickly this deck can assemble a game ending combo with at least one piece of hand disruption, but any input would be good. Also, I know of at least one other person who will be bringing Dark Times to the event. Does anyone have experience in or tips for the mirror? On the bright side, I don't think anyone other than myself owns a playset of shops, so no MUD/Stax.

Your thread got me thinking. I brewed and decided to test the following list. I haven't had a lot of time to brew so it may be a little rough.

Creatures (12)
4 master of etherium
4 lodestone golem
2 karn
1 triskelion
1 sundering titan

Other (21)
4 thorn of amethyst
4 tangle wire
4 chalice of the void
3 crucible of worlds
3 mindlock orb
1 trinisphere
1 tinker
1 ancestral recall

Mana Sources (27)
4 mishra’s workshop
4 seat of the synod
3 island
3 ancient tomb
4 wasteland
1 strip mine
1 tolarian academy
5 moxen
1 black lous
1 sol ring

I wanted to take an approach more in line with Stax rather than Shop Aggro. I removed Force of Will, but they would probably be sideboard cards 1-4. I removed the transmuter package in favor of more lock components. There is a pretty solid mana denial package in recurring wasteland/strip mine and sundering titan as a tinker target. I also added mindlock orb, primarily for testing purposes. It seems good in theory, but how many times has that statement led to trouble. I don't want to go into too much depth on the choices but would love to hear feedback. I'm going to try to do some testing this week and maybe post some of my observations. The big question in my mind is whether this list, or your list, is better than MUD or Red Stax or 5C Stax. And as a corollary, why or why not.

I know that it has beena while since this topic was posted in but with the worldwake spoilers I feel that it is appropriate to post here. I've been testing this deck recently and think that it is a perfect home for the recently spoiled Lodestone Golem. Hwever, I am having a little difficulty in chosing cards to remove for it though. I have currently gone:

-2 Triskelion
-1 Solemn Simulacrum
+3 Lodestone Golem

But I'm pretty sure that this is not ideal. I was also considering dropping Sword of Fire and Ice. Does anyone else have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?

I live in the Pittsburgh area and I'm trying to get into Vintage. Do you Pittsburgh guys meet to test regularly?

I'm new to the format and the forums. I was wondering if anyone had thought about Telling Time? Is it strictly worse than Impulse? Are neither good candidates to replace Thirst? Just some thoughts.