I love Land Grant, but one heavily played card makes it unplayable right now: Trinisphere.  To play Land Grant you take out 4 lands (or you're losing spell slots), making you much more vulnerable to Trinisphere locks.  I know we have ESG, but I get uncomfortable playing so few lands with Trinisphere unrestricted.

I added Null Rod, as I initially overlooked it.  I didn't think of REB because I was thinking mostly of maindeck considerations, not 'board and I don't think we're really considering maindeck REB right?

This discussion is too scattered for actually building a deck, but has been very useful for generating ideas.

Everyone has been throwing around various hate cards and speculating how broadly useful they are.  To get some resolution, I think the first step is to determine the metagame.

Off the top of my head here are the metagame decks I can think of:

4cc
Oath
Prison
Workshop Aggro
Dragon
Storm Combo
Food Chain Goblins
Fish
Control Slaver
Tog

So the question should be, how does a deck matchup against these decks?  Do we try to improve or ignore the worst matchups?  How many slots can we afford to devote to disruption, what disruption helps the most matchups or is most devastating in certain matchups and can we find disruption that fits the basic plan of the deck?

When you look ar a R/G deck in a vaccuum (ie creatures, burn, wastelands) what are the worst matchups?  I'd say Oath, Dragon & Storm Combo are clearly the worst matchups; without hate cards you have a very difficult time winning.

Root Maze - very good against Dragon/Storm
Blood Moon - good versus Dragon/Storm if you play enough acceleration
Pyrostatic Pillar - very good versus Storm; generally useful in that it supports the basic plan, terrible vs Oath/Dragon
Naturalize - very good vs Oath and Dragon; significant general utility vs the field
Null Rod - very good against Storm, additional utility versus artifact decks, mana denial

This is where I'd start, what disruption do you need to play, what is the best way to play around or ideally leverage your disruption into working for you.  Of course you want to play as few pure disruption cards as possible to keep from diluting your threatbase so much that your decent matchups start getting worse.

I also think we need to play creatures that are controlling.  The more we discuss, the more Mogg Fanatic (will you have room for 12 ways to kill Welder with Naturalize & hate) and Gorilla Shamen looks like auto includes to me.

Honestly, if you're not playing Lightning Bolt, why bother with Red? Pyro Pillar has never been broken, some utility cards are nice (Art Mutation, Mogg Fanatic, etc), but the reason to add red to this deck is be able to end the game in a flurry of burn.  If you're not playing at least 8 burn spells, you should consider dropping Red for a different color, maybe even White, which gives you solid tools for beating Oath and all manner of combo decks.  Or a mono green deck could be out there that uses some of the tools we've discussed.

Like I said before, you are not going to beat the best draws of other decks with R/G because we don't have enough over-powered cards.  You have to concentrate on winning the games you actually have a chance in.  Sideboard cards should absolutely just win a common/difficult matchup (ie Blood Moon, Choke if mono-U were very common, etc), be insanely cheap disruption (REB) or support the basic plan against a matchup but be narrow (Pyro Pillar is in this category for some builds).

The chance of you drawing the first land is 18/60.  Presume the first card is a normal land, the chance of drawing the second land is 17/59, 28.81%.   Presume the first card you draw is a fetch land, which you use immediately, the chance of drawing a second land with the next draw is 16/58, 27.59%.  It only significantly matters after many fetches have been used.  Presume the first 4 cards you draw are normal land, the chance to draw a 5th land would be 14/56, 25%.  If the first 4 cards were all fetch lands that you immediately used, the chance to draw a 5th land are 10/52, 19.23%.

This is an under-developed topic in my opinion though.  How do you guys go about determining how many mana sources to put in a new deck?  I usually see if it resembles previously successful decks and use that as a starting point, but I'd be interested to hear other's techniques.

For example, I am working on a two-color deck who's curve is

1cc 17
2cc 15
3cc 4

that has a lot of specific color reqirements.  I'd originally planned to have 24 mana sources, now I wonder if that is a few too many.  Sligh and White Weenie decks traditionally played fewer than 24 mana sources for example.  Also, do Wastelands and off-color Moxen skew your decisions?  I'm going to play the full set of Strips, to me that skews up my mana needs by a little because of that many fewer colored mana sources.

Of course, the best way to determine mana requirements is testing, but where do you start from?  I usually just go by feel and looking at established decks, but does anyone else have other tools they use that seem useful?

This seems like really bad math to me.  As a matter of fact, in the scenario you described, the first card you draw 18 of 60 of them are land.  Over time, each fetch land you use slightly changes the percentage in favor of drawing more spells, but it is certainly more correct to say you are playing 18 land in the scenario you describe than 12/54 because the time frame in which most Vintage games are decided isn't enough turns to have the "thinning" matter much.  Fetchlands are great for color consistency, but "thinning" in Vintage is a pretty overrated concept except in archtypes that ted to play very drawn out games.

I certainly didn't mean to imply I think you shouldn't play Root Maze, Pyrostatic Pillar, etc.

I think you have to understand playing R/G is a play for consistency.  You are not going to beat the best draw of several decks.  To have a chance to get the best draw from a deck, you need to play workshop prison or storm combo and be good at the die roll.  You want your R/G deck to beat average draws by other decks pretty consistently.

The tough questions are: how many card slots to devote to disruption, what are the best threats to work in conjuction with your disruption and how reliant are you are on burn.

Traditionally, R/G would play out guys and destroy lands to get to the point where they have a threat or two on the board, a couple of cards in hand, and the opponent at 8-10 life.  At this point, the opponent would usually be in trouble because your burn spells become very good.  Now, the question is, do we have to play so much disruption, that it cuts into the burn?  I'm not sold that this is the case, I personally think people have an irrational hatred of Lightning Bolt right now, but it is certainly a question.

Disruption Slots

The card most synergistic with the basic plan that helps against Storm combo is Pillar.  Unfortunately Pillar is a liability against Dragon, which is why for the first run I think you consider Root Maze also.  I really want to avoid spending more than 8 slots on disruption.  Much more than that and you are so controlling, I start to wonder why we're not playing Mana Drains and Angels or Togs.  Note that if we're not playing Null Rod, it opens up Cursed Scroll or other artifacts.

Creatures

I really think Troll is too slow.  The creatures are certainly open to question, but I'd start with Kird Ape and Skyshroud Elite.  Ideally, you'd like consistency here with casting costs, because further down I'm going to argue for testing Aether Vial in this deck.  River Boa, Grim Lavamancer, Mogg Fanatic, a couple of Call of the Herd, Gorilla Shamen, Lyrist all are worthy of consideration.  The Zealot is too slow unless we play 4 ESG because you're presumably playing him because of Oath or Trinisphere, but getting GG on turn 1 is very difficult without ESGs.  Werebear is worth a look (mutually exclusive with Lavamancer of course), especially if you want Trolls or anything that costs 4, Werebear really helps with those mana war games that are common with many decks playing 5 Strips and can be invaluable versus Trinisphere.  If you play enough stuff that's really cheap, you can consider Eternal Witness.  Lastly, Hidden Guerrillas are really good right now and I'd even give a look to Hearth Kami, because R1 is easy to get, he beats for 2 and usually at least takes a mox with him when he dies.  I would aim for playing about 16 creatures not counting man-lands.

Burn-Removal

Like I said above, I still believe in burn.  We have about 10-12 slots left depending on how many mana sources we need to play.  Having to play 8 disruption spells here hurts, because its taking slots from the burn, but I like having at least 8 burn spells, frankly 10-12 would be nice but there's no room.  The remaining slots are either Naturalize, Artifact Mutation, Skullclamp or Wheel of Fortune I would imagine.  If you manage to play Skullclamp, Aether Vial, at least 2 Moxen and/or some Cursed Scrolls a couple of Shrapnel Blasts can be a very nice surprise.

Mana

It all depends on how the deck shakes out of course, but with Pillar and Root Maze main, Aether Vial looks really strong.  It puts your guys into play through countermagic, is unaffected by Maze and doesn't trigger Pillar.  It you can keep the creature curve low enough and still find efficient beaters it seems worth testing.  Vials of course are cutting into your potential off-color moxen or ESGs probably.

I think we're playing some man-lands also just to increase the threat count.

Those are my thoughts.  I really think you have to start with foundational cards and add the best tools around them.  For me, the cards that are the foundation are Pillar, Root Maze, Vial and Lightning Bolt and I would add from there.

You guys are looking for a draw engine for R/G and aren't using Skullclamp?

Play 4 Kird Apes, 4 Skyshroud Elite, that gives you at least 8 turn 1 plays, which you have to have.  Turn 2 play Clamp and equip and you're beating for 3 which almost no one wants to block.  You have to get faster, and can't possibly routinely skip turn one with no plays.

Try to find Skullclamp friendly creatures.  Gorilla Shamen plays nice with Clamp as he eats moxen and then refuels you.  The only really bad thing about Clamp is River Boa doesn't like it.

Also, you have a tough time against good players playing too many Hidden xxx creatures, they can be played around.  Right now, if I was going to play any of them main deck, it would be Hidden Guerillas, but that's a metagame called.

Mask of Memory is tough because other than Boa R/G doesn't have a ton of evasive creatures.  Skullclamp makes your creatures evasive because no one wants to block and kill a Clamp'd creature.

I definately see the difference.  My only point is the high profile members of the site seem to have wanted to promote extreme competitiveness on the site in my view to validate the quality of the format.

In my view, it would be healthier to promote the format itself and how much fun it is, as well as the high level of competition you can expect.  If the format keeps growing and attracting new people (especially good players of other formats) to start playing, that will lead to innovation.  The step you're looking for is then refinement of decks to be as good as possible, and for that you want teams.  Teams will help, but a forum like this one can help also.

I think our biggest problem is we all "know" so much.  This is strictly better than that, you have to maindeck card X, not card Y, the card pool is only 300 cards, etc.  If we stepped back and pulled our egos out of it for a while, we'd see there really are a lot of ways to get someone from 20 life to 0 in this game and there would be more innovation.

I couldn't help but laugh as I was 5-1 in 6 rounds of swiss in a 60+ person tournament and sat down across from a guy for round 7 that was playing a very good mono-R deck.  I got a chuckle thinking about what the TMDers would say about this match, we were both 5-1 in the tournament!

Teams aren't the only way to get where you want to go.  A bunch of helpful teammates would be invaluable to anyone who really wants to compete.  This site is also invaluable and could be even more so, but we all have to get a little "dumber" to have it be so.

If this is how your "team" works than I seriously question your definition of the term.  Its sad enough when people in this format, with its payouts that mean people can't quit their day jobs, won't help each other on this website because of competitiveness.  It makes you wonder how you define team when you have that same attitude with teammates.  This website could (and does to some extent) promote great new decks and new tech if everyone looked at this as a noble competition and not cutthroat win-at-all-costs.  

No one lives or dies on this competition.  No multimillion dollar shoe deals are signed.  For the vast majority of us, big tournaments are a fun way to spend a weekend with friends and healthy competition.  Why not help that other guy with his/her deck?  So it makes him better, you're the better player with the better deck, right?  Building the decks and finding the tech is at least half the fun, right? So in any given tournament, you lose to his better deck because he's inevitably luckier than you; that happens to everyone.  If you're in the format because you really enjoy it and the competition there will be more tournaments.

I know I'm horribly naive, but it is possible to be very highly competitive and want to win and still have a friendly, helpful format.  This website could very easily be the vehicle for that type of format.

Toad is right on, people don't seem to get how good Ravager + Trike is.  Its like playing a bunch of burn except you don't have to waste many slots.  You look at your scorepad any given turn, see they're at 13 life and think...maybe I've got them this turn.  Plus Ravager attracts nearly everyone's artifact removal.  Who wants to blow away a creature and make another one bigger?  They don't, the opponent will usually try to get Ravager right away, even is something immediately bigger is on the board.

I only have two major questions with the deck:

1) Trinisphere just seems flat better than Sphere of Resistance in this deck.  Sphere is cute and slows things, Trinisphere wins games.  It gives you a set of cards that if you go first and it resolves with decent acceleration many times its game over.

2) What do you do when your first set of threats gets Rack and Ruined?  I get that Sword of Fire/Ice keeps guys from getting Racked, but it seems like you have to keep a lot of guys on the board so your modular tokens don't go away.  If they do Rack you when you only have 2 creatures, you're pretty well screwed because you lose all the tokens and you have little card draw.

My two cents, I personally can't see how you live without Welders and probably Shrapnel Blast, but what you've got so far looks cool.

When I (the 7th round opponent) "did some math" it looked to me that if everyone ID'd there could be 9 people with 16 points.  I didn't want to take the chance on being number 9.  Your buddy didn't offer to ID or explain to me how he thought we could both be assured of getting in so we played the match.

Perhaps if he'd "done some math" on his own and explained to me his logic we could have ID'd and both been in, but he didn't do that.

Bastian:  I'm fairly sure I'm onto something pretty decent.  Whether the way I'm going about it is the best way I have no idea.  I built this because it suits my playstyle and is reasonably good.  A more Affinity oriented build would certainly be more broken and possibly better.  Transmuting Myr Enforcers would be lots of fun, but the vulnerabilities of that strategy to very common hate (Gorilla Shamen, Null Rod) made me shy away into something more resilient.  Other people working on this concept will I'm sure come up with other good ideas.

Bobduh:  In the probably 100 games I've played with this deck, I remember hardcasting Titan once.  Its a one of and requires so much mana, the game is likely decided one way or another before Draining it would be a factor.  I would dispute that my curve starts at 4.  Welder and Ravager both very likely come down on turn 1 and Workshop breaks mana curve rules if you draw them.  Trinisphere is definately in, I played some games this afternoon and it was great.  Tangle Wire I'd like to make room for, but that means something has to go.

Milton:  The loss in round 4 was a great match.  That was one of the 2 major play mistakes I made yesterday:  Game 3 of our match, turn 1 Milton had Forced something, Turn 2 he doesn't have 2 blue yet, so I go for the kill and Tinker a Darksteel Citadel or a Mox, it resolves and I search for Sundering Titan, putting him in play and nuking both of our lands.  I have a Su-Chi in hand and not much else, Milton has no land.  His turn he goes land, go.  My turn 3 I peel a Workshop off the top, swing with the Titan, and make my mistake which was casting the Su-Chi.  There wasn't much reason to play it, I should have made him deal with the 7/10 and held everything else in reserve.  Of course I knew he was playing Rack & Ruin and it was possible he was holding one.  Milton's next turn, he peels Black Lotus, plays it and Racks both my threats.  I proceed to never really recover from it.  If I'd have held the Su-Chi, its possible he would have finished the game while Milton was getting setup.  It was a great match though, lots of fun.  I'll try to figure out SoFI.  And I'd love to run Gorilla Shamen, but maindeck is tough to find room; SB is a serious possibility.

Snachos:  Here's my logic on my choices...the Ravagers draw FoW lots of times, and they let me get to absurd burn kills with Triskelion that people don't see coming.  Twice yesterday I burned someone dead that was at 13+ life with a combination of Ravager, Triskelion & 1 Shrapnel Blast.  I don't like Masticore for 1 basic reason, he doesn't kill players.  My Triskelions handle weenie suppression and they can go at the dome.  I could see having 1 Masticore to Transmute into, but I don't think 2 is the right call.  As for Fire/Ice vs Shrapnel Blast, we're looking for different things from that slot.  Many decks get Welders as fast as mine, but I get Triskelion faster than anyone else, all things being equal, because of Transmute Artifact.  So they may get the first Welder, but often mine last the longest.  I want Shrapnel Blast as a finisher not as removal (except for vs Exalted Angel).  It was very valuable yesterday, for what I wanted, but I can see your argument.

Part of the problem I had making this deck was there are lots and lots of cards that would be good.  If you want to play the Affinity guys, obviously you have to play a lot of artifacts, but Transmute requires UU meaning you have to play a lot of blue.  Blue, Red & Black all have plenty of candidates for inclusion in the deck.  Narrowing the focus was very difficult for me and I'm not at all sure what I narrowed to is the best solution, there's lots of room for exploration within the concept.

Dante:  I don't own a Mana Crypt, but I agree with you it seems tough to argue against is when compared to Darksteel Citadel.  The damage from it could be a factor in this deck, as in real life, it doesn't always win really fast, but you have Shrapnel Blast & Ravager to get rid of it with.  Gorilla Shamen is the only other argument against it, but it doesn't seem to be a compelling case, Mana Crypt should at least be tried.

Thug:  I tried Sword of Fire and Ice, and its great, I love the card, but if I was going to put it in, I found I preferred Lightning Greaves.  If you get the Sword going, its ridiculous, and in fairness, when I tried it I was using only 1 Workshop, not 4 (I own 1, it was a 3 proxy tournament) so maybe with the full set of workshops its better than Greaves, but untargetability and haste is damn good also.  

I addressed the Crypt above, I kind of figure Vault is unneccessary with 4 Workshops and my environment is Gorilla Shamen and especially Wasteland heavy, so I like permanent mana sources.  As for Mana Drain, its a threat, but I try to get stuff that costs 1-2 drained if possible.  Welders, Ravagers, Transmutes, of course you don't want this stuff to get Drained, but you do have a lot of cheap threats.  Many times I've had a Welder Drained and followed with a Juggernaut or Su-Chi.  Of course, in those situations many times I would have rather had the Welder, but you have to be willing to take what your opponent gives you also, especially if you suspect they are sitting on a good Drain outlet.

Re: The Citadels, they were useful, expecially when I needed an artifact to sac in the face of a Gorilla Shamen, but they are definately questionable.  2 Shivan Reefs and a Mana Crypt in place of the 3 Citadels is certainly worth trying.

Re: trading 2 for 1 with Transmute, that has rarely happened to me.  It does occasionally happen to trade 2 for 2 for Force of Will, but generally I have enough cheap threats to use up a lot of countermagic in an effort to force through a transmute if it will be really gamebreaking.  It certainly will happen that you get 2 for 1'd sometimes.  On the other hand, it is a massive effect if you can get it to resolve, and its so inexpensive, its easy to lead with Welder or Ravager for example and that same turn Transmute something.

I haven't used Transmute as an Entomb yet, but it is a cool effect.  My Welders tend to die horrible, horrible deaths as soon as they hit the board it seems, so I don't usually have the luxury of using them that often, but they pave the way for the 4/4s and 5/3s.  

Tangle Wire is great, I did try it and its very possible the best version of this deck has them in.  My theory right now is to pull the Frogmites for Trinispheres in the maindeck and try that.  Tangle Wire would be another option for that slot.  Which do you think would be more useful?  Turn 1 Trinisphere can be game over, but Tangle Wire certainly is great disruption in a beatdown deck like this one.

Some combination of Pillar/Chalice/Null Rod is definately going in the board, and some type of disruption, Trinisphere for now, is going in the maindeck also.

Thanks for the input everyone, its been very useful.

My opinion on Enforcers for this deck is, once you get to the point they're actually a good deal (at least 3 artifacts on the board), you're probably winning.

I think if you were willing to devote space for artifacts into the deck, either artifact lands or other artifacts, I could see them, but I didn't want that much Gorilla Shamen vulnerability (its already plenty good against me).

When I tested Enforcers, they seemed like win more cards for me.  I liked Frogmites much more in that slot because despite only being 2/2 versus 4/4 they are useful guys to have around and can be cast relatively easily even from a fairly bad board position.

One issue I ran into is trying to maintain focus on a specific plan for the deck.  There are so many good cards in these colors you could play, its tough to make decisions.  I think in some version of this Enforcer could be good, but I wasn't willing to play artifact lands other than Citadels which I think you would need to do.

I played this deck yesterday in a 68 person tournament in Minneapolis and went 6-1 in the swiss earning the top seed into the top 8 (where I promptly got rolled, but such is life).  

Beaters

4 Juggernaut
4 Su-Chi
3 Frogmite --> these will be Trinispheres in the future
3 Arcbound Ravager
2 Triskelion
1 Sundering Titan

Utility

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
2 Transmute Artifact
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Memory Jar
4 Goblin Welder
3 Shrapnel Blast

Mana

3 Darksteel Citadel  --> 1 Mana Crypt & 2 Shivan Reefs will be tested here
3 Island
4 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Mishra's Workshop
7 SoLoMoxen

SB

3 REB
3 BEB
2 Hibernation
3 Rack and Ruin
1 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Duplicant
1 Platinum Angel

In retrospect, I made a couple of bad decisions, the primary one being having no answers for combo decks, I don't know what I was thinking building my board that morning, but I obviously wasn't thinking clearly.

The thoughts behind the cards:

The Juggernauts & Su-Chis are selfexplanatory, though Su-Chi is better in my deck than most for reasons that follow...

The Frogmites are there to provide mid-casting cost artifacts to be transmuted, they pulled their weight yesterday, but for now I'm going to test Trinisphere in their place.

Arcbound Ravager isn't completely abusive in this deck like in others, but he is so useful, he's definately worth playing.  People seriously worry when he is played.  He gives you (with Welder) 8 solid turn 1 plays even without a Workshop presuming you have any acceleration in your opening hand, that people at least seriously consider Forcing.  He allows you to sac artifacts to dodge Artifact Mutation and he has the major benefit of making a Triskelion much more dangerous.  Lastly, he allows you to ritual away a Su-Chi for 4 mana on those rare instances you absolutely need the mana burst.

Triskelion is the heart of the beaters.  He wins games you have no business winning and Ravager + Trike is good times.  Twice yesterday after I attacked my opponent was at 13+ life and I sac'd some of my artifacts to Ravager, sac'd the Ravager to the Trike, fired 8+ tokens at my opponents head and then Shrapnel Blast'd for the win.  Of course, this isn't recommended strategy against control, but I won several aggro matches this way.

The utility cards are mostly self explanatory but 2 are worth discussing.

Transmute Artifact is the best card in Type I no one plays.  Its oracle text is:

Transmute Artifact
{U}
Sorcery
As an additional cost to play Transmute Artifact, sacrifice an artifact.
Search your library for an artifact card. If that card's converted mana cost is less than or equal to the sacrificed artifact's converted mana cost, put it into play. If it's greater, you may pay the cost difference. If you do, put it into play. If you don't, put it into its owner's graveyard. Then shuffle your library.

This card's synergy with Affinity guys and Su-Chi is amazing.  If you transmute Su-Chi, you can search for an artifact that costs up to 8 (Sundering Titan) and put it directly into play.  Frogmites come out pretty cheaply in this deck and Transmuting a Frogmite + 1 mana = search for Memory Jar, put it in play.  Another benefit is, if it gets Drained, they only get 2 mana.  At one point I was playing 4 which seemed like too many, and I've settled on 2 for now but 3 may be the right number.  Having 3 Tinkers available also means one of's in the sideboard are useful.  That was my reasoning behind the singleton artifacts in the board.

The mana seems pretty straightforward also.  I was a little starved for red in the face of a heavy Wasteland draw and wouldn't mind figuring out a way to get another red source or two.  Also, I've considered Glimmervoids or other multicolor lands to give me access to Yawg Will.  The Citadels are the obvious candidates for change, but I will say they had their moments of being handy yesterday to sac to Ravagers or be Tinkered away.

For matchup analysis, I haven't tested dozens of matchups versus the various archtypes but my overall impressions are:

I tend to do pretty well against other aggro, even if it has Null Rod.  My guys are just generally bigger.  If they don't get Null Rod in play Triskelion mows down goblins and other weenies.  Against Food Chain, matches seem pretty even, though a well timed Trike or Memory Jar can ruin their day.  Oshawa can be pretty tough is they get a good draw.

Against control decks, you have the tools to beat them, of course it won't always happen.  I had great matches against control players yesterday and I lost to 1 keeper deck and won a couple of other matches.  I have no idea what the percentage is, but you have the tools to compete with control.

Against combo, you have some answers for Dragon (Crypt, BEB), Charbelcher and Draw 7 are brutal though right now.  I hope Trinispheres will make a difference here and some sideboard changes will help.

The only maindeck change I'm going to make based on yesterday's experience is -3 Frogmite, +3 Trinisphere.  The sideboard needs to be reworked also, and I'm open to suggestions or if people have other maindeck ideas or questions as to why I've used certain cards.

Type I's cardpool is so wide, and the cards are so good, it is inevitable that it will have a wider variety of available decks than in the other formats.  Wizards' focus on mechanics for each block also seriously narrows the available strategies in standard at any given time.  For the past few blocks, the best cards have been not general use cards, but cards associated with specific mechanics seriously narrowing the available decktypes.

In addition, the assertion that the vast majority of decktypes have another type strictly better is flawed.  There very well may be a good reason to play Stacker over a Ravager type build.  Stacker may give you less vulnerability to certain hate or availability to tools that Ravager has a tough time using.  The same is true for TnT decks.  Stacker & TnT can be good decks, plenty good to win a given tournament.  A majority of very smart people on this site may think a Ravager deck is better now than TnT.  That even may be true in the majority of circumstances, but that doesn't take away that TnT is a damn good deck.  In the right environment, with the right build, it can and will be tough.

This format will never be "developed" to the extent some on this site want because the cards are too good.  Unless you group decks much more widely (ie grouping everything that plays Yawg Will together into one decktype), there will be multiple decktypes that use certain overpowered cards.  For several decktypes viable in Vintage now, one of their paths to victory is a game-breaking Will.  You can make the same argument for a few other cards, Ancestral for example or in previous years, Balance.

Wizards' is giving us a new archetype each year or so with each new block, U/G Madness, Affinity, etc.  As Wizards' adds new mechanics, to the extent they interact in positive ways with old cards, they will create new archtypes or variations on old ones.  Some of you expect these new decktypes, with enough testing to distill themselves down to only a few "best" decks.  In my view, this is exceedingly unlikely because the call between what is the right choice may be almost impossible to make and fundamentally make be based on a variable criteria: metagame.

I think the forum rules of these forums discourages new deckbuilding.  As stated earlier in this thread, the standard for posting a new or innovative deck is winning a major tournament with that deck.

That is an awfully difficult standard to reach.  A great player, playing the "best" deck can go months or even years without winning a major tournament.

Themanadrain is extremely useful for reading about or discussing established decktypes but really isn't useful anymore for developing a new deck type.  By the time a deck is ready to be posted here, the vast majority of development should be done, making you wonder why you bother posting it here at all; other than for the ego gratification of saying you won something.

Don't forget Pulverize, when you absolutely, positively have to kill every mother ... in the room, accept no substitutes; and its free (sac 2 mountains alternate cc).

Since you're not playing any artifacts/enchantments yourself other than Moxen, if Damping Matrix doesn't do it for you, I'd seriously consider Serenity.

If arifact decks are heavily played, its pretty tough to argue with it.

I think the essential thing lost from BDominia has been the friendliness.  Milton is right that BDominia was about building a network.  With BDominia, you could work on new ideas and a boatload of cool people like Razor & Bebe would be willing to help out and give card ideas.  You could start with a concept and people would be willing to help with building the deck.  Of course there were idiots.  There are idiots in every internet message board, that's just part of the territory.  

With TMD, you guys don't want to see decks without tons of testing and analysis.  That's understandable.  I personally think it leads to less interesting boards, but they're not my boards.  Note however, that it doesn't keep the idiots from posting, so if the goal is to improve the post quality, only so much can be done about that.  

I think it really comes down to the attitudes and rules as set forth by the Mods.

The rules make for a very competitive website.  Along with that competitiveness, you get the kids that want to be full members and you get a hoarding of information.  It seems we've reached the other end of the spectrum, a few years ago if you didn't find BDominia there was no information to find; now TMD is very well known in the community, so we have this forum most people know how to find, but people don't use it because they are afraid to either look stupid or give away an advantage.

My solutions:

I certainly don't think we need 3 seperate categories of members.  If you want to merge the Open and Newbie forums I don't see the harm in it, though I don't really see why it would be worth the trouble either.  Us low-life scum would appreciate you leaving the forum name the Open forum though.  

Add to the forum rules that Mods will take a dim view of people telling others they don't know Type I.  These statements have even happened in this thread and do nothing productive, they only start flame wars.

Decide if you want sporadic posting with little innovation of anything other than established archetypes or if you want more posts with some of them of dubious quality.  Where the site operators fall on this spectrum should determine how aggressive the Mods are in dealing with "dumb" ideas.

The ultimate example here is the stagnation of the Type I forum.  Very little happens there because people generally seem to not want to post anything innovative.  It occasionally happens, but even full members are much more likely to post an idea in the Open Forum.  The Type I forum is useful for finding builds of the established archetypes to test against.  Other than that, teams and fear seem to keep it from being as productive as it could be.

Personally, I don't think TMD is in terrible shape right now.  I don't think any major changes really need to be made.  In a community this large there will be idiots.  I think a more general emphasis on friendliness and less on competitiveness would lead to better boards and a better community.  We all need to remember its just a game we play as a hobby, we all want to win and play to win, but since its unlikely any of us are going to get very wealthy playing and winning in Type I having a decent attitude makes it better for everyone.

In my area, we have weekly tournaments and once per month a power tournament.  These are all 0 proxy and have steadily increased in attendance the last year or two.  Once a month, the store owner holds a unlimited proxy tournament, which is inevitably the most poorly attended event of the month.

Personally, I voted for 0 proxy in the poll, but I can see the argument for 5.  I think any more than 5 proxys is too many.  5 proxys gives plenty of leeway for making competivite decks, while also giving people incentive to collect the cards.  Why have tournaments for power when it can all be proxied all the time?  A limited number of proxys makes players commit to the format more, making winning power that much more interesting for those people and making the community generally better.

I am always amazed at the volume of power I see in our area.  People have had to commit to actually getting cards because we play sanctioned 0 proxy events.

Islandwalk matters for that 4-6 damage your Turn 2 Boa is going to get in before your Sword is out and on a guy to give him pro blue.

Between 8-30 people or so on Friday's, usually around 16.  More of course on the Sunday tournaments, and there is one today for a Mox Sapphire.

I see where you are going now bebe.  Personally, I hate pretty much conceding any matchup, but you are right, that is sometimes the thing to do if your other matchups can be strong enough.

I like very much the 4th Boa and fewer Mongeese.  The Troll Ascetics are solid additions also.

Do you find the 4 Treetop Villages are too many sometimes?  I've always been leery of running 4, as I hate essentially missing a first or second turn land drop because you had to play Village, but they are great late game.

Last thing, have you tried Meteor Storm in place of the Storm Binds?  Just thinking out loud, but its less of a Drain target, though the 4 mana activation versus 3 may be an issue.

I tend to agree that Null Rod is much more useful against the difficult matchups for RG decks than Sword, but fortunately if you play Red, you have access to high quality disruption against good decks without playing Null Rod:

Blood Moon & Pyrostatic Pillar

So bebe, I'd consider building around one or both of those if you want to play Sword.  Using those cards as disruption allows you to not play Null Rod and still have some game against Combo.  For Workshop decks, I think you'll have a tougher time Game 1, though not unwinnable, but Game 2 & 3 should be favorable with the very high quality hate you have (Artifact Mutation).

Thanks for the info on Price/Blood Moon interaction.

Ok, I must be an idiot.  I always though PoP wouldn't do any damage under a Blood Moon, explain to me why it does do damage please.

Madness and Oshawa Stompy both have game, and anything that has a lot of burn give Prison a tough time has been my experience.

I saw the caveat also.  I guess I'd just like to throw in my 2 cents and say in our testing pure Aggro (especially if you put Oshawa Stompy in, which I would not) was Prison's worst matchup, not Control.

The second half about Psychatog and its effects on the metagame was well written and insightful.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled trolling of looking for an answer to the damn beast.