Did Steve leave a fairwell peice anywhere?
If he were to leave a mailing address I think I'd like to send along an old-school, snail-mail, best wishes card and maybe a little gift for the family as a token of my gratitude for making Magic mean what it did to me.

I've drifted away from the Magic scene myself as of late, with family and career and other factors taking an effect. 
Something told me to check back in with TMD though, and now I am a bit saddened seeing one of the old champions of Vintage hanging up his Magic hat.
Even though I no longer read TMD daily and only really play Vintage once in a while with a few of my buds and go to the Pre-releases, I think one finds comfort in looking back on something from one's beloved past, still being championed by the stalwarts of the time that they remember.

In summary, I wish Steve and family all the best and would like to voice my eternal gratitude for providing the labor of love that is TMD for the years that it helped stoke the Magic passion in me.
Good luck Steve.

Here's where me and PayPal parted ways:
 - I sold a Time Walk on eBay for $310 to a Canadian customer.
 - He emails me that his friend will be paying me via his PayPal account.
 - Payment in full hits my account; I ship the card.
 - I transfer money to my bank account (thank God)
 - PayPal emails me stating that the payment was made without the account owner's knowledge and was unauthorized.
 - PayPal instructs me to add funds to cover the amount in question, my account is locked and they threaten legal action

After contacting PayPal over the phone and explaining that the merchandise was sent in good faith and that it's not my fault that the supposed fraudulently-used account owner is loose with who's looking over his shoulder when he's typing in his password, they tell me tough shit: re-reimburse the account and take the loss.

After questioning whether PayPal can withdraw the cash from my bank account directly and getting confirmation that they indeed CANNOT, I tell them (in so many words) to go scratch.  F them.
It'd cost them more to pursue a case in court then it would be worth to attempt to recoup the $310.

The scammer customer whose eBay name is Will Ferrill is most likely pulling this scam with the other guy who owns the 'victim account' as his accomplice.

The moral of the story here is that as a seller Paypal does indeed suck, as they will unquestioningly always side with the buyer whether truthful or otherwise, and you will be out of cash and merchandise.
Use PayPal with caution and transfer all money from your account to your bank account ASAP.

Specific example:
If you are sitting across from me playing Affinity, counter the tutor.  If I get my Tolarian Academy on the board, it's all over generally.

What combo decks allow one to get up to any kind of potential mana to effectively cast DoJ for more than 1 or 2 soldier tokens before going off and sealing your fate?


With 6 fetchies, 4 Scryings and FoWs chewing away at one's life totals, it does seem a bit risky without the life supplementation.

Was the Furnace chosen over Damping Matrix strictly because of casting cost?

It just seems to me that Damping Matrix has more to offer if you can get it onto the board:
shuts down
 - Welder
 - Triskelion
 - Pentavus
 - Mindslaver

Once the Slaver opponent drops 2 Weldable threats into the grave (and has one possible hard-castable in hand), you've got to activate the Furnace and then sacrifice it to take care of both grave-born threats, leaving you open if they try it again.
It just seems to me that you get more for your investment (albeit a higher one) with the Damping Matrix.

Amen to that.  Good to see that one can still access good, solid, well written and thought-out content without getting bled for more $$ than Mark-upCityGames.com already slams it's customers for in card prices.  

Ditto for me as far as the follow-up article is concerned.

I seem to recall a back and forth debate on Duress in Keeper a while back, ending in the idea eventually falling out of favor.
I'm looking forward to reading about what has made it a relevant choice again.

Old Man of the Sea is a new if not unorthodox maindeck choice.

And finally, a return to Decree of Justice as a choice of kill?  I've favored the more traditional Exalted Angel route more recently as no doubt most still do.  I also added the contested and summarily dismissed Tinker/Colossus kill, which has worked well for me when not going up against Welder-based decks.

Thanks goes to Zherbus for once again Keeping the failth

O.K. I'm kinda tired and it's been a long day, so maybe I'm missing something... but what's so hot about Imperial Seal?

Looks like a sorcery speed Vampiric Tutor to me, and that card has been selling for under $15 for as long as I can remember.

Redundancy is not the operative descriptor here; counteractive is what I think you meant.  Forbidden Orchard revolutionized the current batch of Oath decks.  To negate their effect is to throw your deck back in time and remove the edge that the Orchards have granted.

No offense but if you are looking to kill off your opponent with a 3/3, targetable creature like Evincar over the course of 7 turns (not counting the turns it took before the Evincar hit the table) then Oath is not the deck for you.
And if that opponent can't come up with an answer during the time that you were swinging all those times, then he/she was never really a threat to be concerned about & dedicate a sideboard slot to anyway.
Engineered Plague should buy you the time you need if weenies are bugging you.

Evincar kills the Orchard Spirit tokens and prevents you from further Oathing.

Dunno if talk of sideboarding options has been strictly frowned upon in this thread, but...

... at the risk of either missing something with my suggested card's interactions or being champion of the obvious: what about Damping Matrix?

It should be castable fairly early for the Oath player via artifact mana support or Drain support, and if defended successfully, should buy the necessary time.

Yes it will; Forsaken City.

@Koen
one more point:
- Oath automatically and reliably puts your win condition into play.  There's no "now I have a Mask in play, I've just gotta go tutor up (and then pay 1 mana for) a Dreadnought now.  Whu-what...Overload my Mask in response to Tutor....F**K!!"  

In this particular build I don't think cutting one Impulse and adding one Cunning Wish would throw off it's equilibrium.
Squeek one Fire/Ice in the board for Welders & mirror match Spirit tokens, and you're good to go.

Overall, I believe the previous sentiments regarding not watering down this combo deck's focus on it's primary objective are correct.  but it really does suck to lose to one particular situation duel-1 simply because you were too inflexible to at least give yourself one escape route (Cunning Wish).

O.K., point taken.  But since we've mentioned the sideboard, I am quite curious as to what that consisted of.  

Actually it would: that's what Brainstorms and fetchies are for.  
I only run one more artifact in my build (Sol Ring) and a fifth fetchie, so there's not a whole lot of difference there, and I have never had a problem Brainstorming away a Tinker in the instance that I cannot immediately use it.  Worse-case scenario; it's pitchable.



That's what I run Krosan Reclamation in the board for (and one Cunning Wish main), not to mention Damping Matrix.

The build that I'm running currently sports Misdirection x3, which I think is worth tugging an Impulse out of the posted list for.

 - Misdirection will almost always be able to redirect an opponent's Diabolic Edict/ StP to their Spirit Token.  Protecting your Akroma or DSC when you are tapped out seems much more important to me than hitting one of the random Impulses.

 - Misdirection will protect an early-game Oath casting, while you are tapped out, thereby allowing you to lay the Oath down earlier than you would if you otherwise had to keep UU open. You would be less likely to have drawn a pitch-counter with one less Mis-d.  
Otherwise, you would not be able to tap out & lay down Oath 1st or second turn, and still have a great chance of protecting against Disenchant-type spells during your opponent's turn.  

Besides Oath to get your beat stick into play (for those playing DSC instead of Spirit/Akroma), why not include Tinker as an alternate way to get DSC online?

Trying to not go off-topic, I'd like to share a bit of my RAffinity deck's mechanics which seem like they would integrate into this deck's engine quite effectively:

Disciples: amazing and even better in multiples.  Once Ravager hits and can eat your artifact lands, etc.. damage piles up like crazy.  These little guys are usually my win condition more often than not.

got creatures?: I use Genesis Chamber for clamp fodder to great affect.  Keep the Thopters in this instance to provide for quick and free Myr Token Clamp targets.  It's a good way to up the creature count without taking up too many slots.

Artificer's Intuition: rather run some draw-7s as they are almost always the death stroke for the guy across the table when they resolve.  My RAf deck utilizes Wheel (the only Red card), Twister, and Tinker/Jar.  After resolving one of these you'll lay down crazy artifacts, draw retarded amounts of cards (utilizing Clamp w/ Myr Tokens) , and then sack em all to Ravager (even if summoning-sick) for Disciple(s) to lay down lethal hurts.
Attacking is generally secondary and not always necessary.

Frogmite: Not immediately Clampable unless Ravager is there to assist, but generally a free spell counting towards Storm count and generating Myr Tokens under Gen Chamber.  When thinking about Frogs, it's best to regard them as part of the draw/storm engine than little beaters.  

I hope I am not Champion of the Obvious in attempting to lend this deck some of RAffinity's tech, but I think that the synergies are impossible to ignore.  
The biggest question that comes to mind in merging the two deck's approaches is if this deck can effectively exploit all that RAffinity does without sacrificing too many slots to creature spells (which I get the sense , you are trying to avoid).

Sometimes it's hard to fit an Impala's big block into a Nova, but in the hands of the right mechanic you'll end up with pure monster material.  It'll just take some inspired tweaking and maybe a good hammer

What about 1 Avalanche Riders in the board for these matchups?  If you've got Oath out already and given that you don't hit Colossus first (or can throw then another Spirit Token) Avalanche Riders does the job then goes away right on queue during your next upkeep to allow you to pop Colossus on board.

Yes, yes; and if you're looking for an economical, fuel-efficient car, please allow JP to suggest a Hummer...

Check BlackBorder.com: a search engine which compares the prices of many online merchants.

With Orchard being quite important, what about a slot for Crop Rotation?

I can't imagine actually jotting down stuff like that on paper anymore.  As far as those of you keeping notes for writing tourny reports later on:

For you Verizon Wireless customers like me, the Motorola v710 has voice memo capabilities and comes with 10 Megs of built-in memory, with an expansion slot that will accomodate an extra 128 Megs.
...and no, I don't sell this hardware and don't own any Verizon stock.

Most modern PDAs also feature voice memo recording as well.

Just my geeky .02

Waiting is not an option in Type 1, especially since an opponent with Crucible in play will never run out of Watelands/Strips.  The only way to make the card not completely dead in one's hand early on, when tempo is all-important in one's mana building progress and therefore precludes this card from early use, is to play it in a deck that has Brainstorms/Fetchies to enable one to shuffle it back into one's library as is done when a 4cC player can't use an early Yawgmoth's Will or Balance to his advantage.  Hopefully later on you've found a way to get rid of your opponent's Crucible (and if you're playing 4cC, and you haven't, then your dead anyway) and you can lay down this land with no tempo loss (having already built up a healthy mana base) and drop your bomb next turn, once it's untapped.  Admittedly this is a stretch though, so this card may turn out to be a 'win more' type card.

I think the best you can hope for is to have a Crucible in play of your own for backup, but even this is rather weak since the tempo loss resulting from recurring a CiPT land is often unacceptable.

The big exception that I can make for my above point about the CiPT disability however would be if the card was played in a deck like the one JP listed here, where Root Maze would level the playing field in that respect.  I realize though that this is a rather narrow application for the card and will certainly not 'sell' it to the masses.

@JDawg13
Sorry, didn't mean to leave you out.  It's just that Hale was the one that I was messaging back and forth with a bit.

The Affinity deck that I eventually chose to play over this deck is much less susceptible to hate, with REB, Annul, Overload, Rack & Ruin and BEB all available choices for the board to combat Energy Flux, Null Rod, etc...

I really wanted to see this deck be the bomb-diggity but just came up dissapointed time after time after getting it up the pooper sideways against Fish players slapping Energy Flux down.  Workshops sure do blow when it comes to trying to pay your Flux-imposed upkeep costs on your 3rd or 4th turn.

Not to jack this thread or anything, but just to illustrate my point, here's the deck that I'm referring to:

RAffinity 7

Lands: (15)                                
4 Seat Of The Synod                                
4 City of Brass                                        
2 Glimmervoid                                        
4 Vault of Whispers                                  
1 Tolarian Academy                                  

Artifact Mana: (9)
7 Solomox  
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
 
Beats: (16)
3 Ornithopter
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
1 Darksteel Colossus

Utilty: (6)
3 Genesis Chamber
3 Cranial Plating  

Draw: (14)
4 Thoughtcast  
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Skullclamp
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will

Sideboard
4x Annul
4x REB
4x BEB
1x Triskelion
2x Tormod’s Crypt

One could even squeeze in Oxidize or Naturalize if need be.
There's simply no way mono-brown decks could cover the multicolored sideboarding options that the above build does.

Of course, with BEBs and REBs, etc.. in hand one's tempo needs to slow a bit after boarding, but it beats getting auto-douched to Flux or Null Rod.
Pre-board this build is faster with it's Ravager/ Disciple synergy.  With Ravager on the board and a freshly resolved Disciple the damage just gets to insane levels instantly.

But I re-iterate: please forget about the above decklist and continue discussing Crushing Chamber.  It is not my intention to lead Hale's thread awry after the intense work he has obviously put into his baby.

This card differs from Intuition in it's objective; Intuition is single-mindedly focused on one goal, whereas this card can accomplish multiple goals simultaneously in the right deck.
For example, let's take this deck posted by JP.  With Crucible and Survival in play I'd grab on opponent's EOT: Squee, Wasteland, Strip Mine, and Genesis (or DA, or something along those lines).
I would be looking to multi-task my land destructive capabilities (facilitated by Crucible) and draw ability (facilitated by Survival).

In 4cC I'd likely fetch Strip, Wasteland, and perhaps 2 fetchies, provided I already managed to get Crucible into play.  I'm not saying that I'm running right out and buying my foil copy of this card to immediately throw into my already way-too-tight 4cC, but I think that it might be wrong to dismiss this card so quickly.

I don't think this deck wants you to hold a bunch of cards in hand.  Any artifact kept in hand stunts Crusher's growth.
This deck needs to be explosive and play everything possible, not play a watch and wait game.

I'm not saying "yea" or "nay" just yet, but in my 4cC I definitely like the prospect of resolving:
- Yawg. Will
- Rack and Ruin
- Disenchant
- Time Walk
- Demonic Tutor
- Balance
- Mind Twist (although still Misdirectable)
- Skeletal Scrying
- Fact or Fiction
- Fire/Ice
- FoW (hardcast when resources permit and you need it to absolutely        resolve)
- TimeTwister (for the few old-schoolers who may still play it)
- Cunning Wish
- DoJ (when using it's sorcery aspect in a pinch)
- probably a few more I've forgotten

I also plan on auditioning this in an Affinity deck that I play containing most of the draw-7's and Y. Will.

I have a nagging feeling though that the CIPT part is going to be the biggest issue.  Waste/Strippable yes, but even if you could use it just the turn you drop it (had it not been designed with the CIPT dissability) on a must-resolve spell, it would have been worth it.
Even if you've got your own Crucible in play, you'd still have to wait a whole extra turn to use it after playing it via the grave.  That may be tempo loss that's just to steep.

Time will tell...