I have been adding one auriok to my deck in vintage no matter what I play.

I also add the sstech of conjurer's bauble.

It works well.

the bauble at worst is a one mana cycler, but it also puts things back to be tutored for ltr. etc.

it can protect vs a welder on your dsc for a turn. many little uses.

plus it draws the deck for salveger.

it also is a great cheap early way to boost a tolarian.

I love playing tolarian mox into conjurer bauble so that I have drain mana.

It also lets you try and gifts the same bomb twice or at least forces your opponent to not let you have it twice.

I love how gifts actually lets you combo off a auriok in play as well.

Thank you for the correction. I should have figured out that someone before me would have said isochron if it was an instant.

I win the prize.

HI, I have been absent for a long while from these forums, but isn't this card at least decent. ON an Isocron, it is a Ancestral, yes?

I have fit it into my deck. I took out a fifth fetchland. The times i have seen it used it has been great. the problem is you have to use it w/o knowing whether they have a counter in hand. The cipt disad is not so pronounced for this card. To get around the wasteland arguement, you just do not play this until they have no wastes left.

I have combined this w/ gifts ungiven for comlete awesomeness.

I think the best use is for uncounterable:

tinker
yawg will
gifts ungiven
skeletal scrying(although the extra life loss does hurt)


On a side note, I definitely think this is the best of the new leg lands.

I think you better see the cards before you give the money, because i find it highly unlikely that they wold sell that cheap. He just happens to have more than one lotus but no other power for sale. sounds fishy.

Every con starts by offering a deal to good to be true, and you thinking you will rip him off.

Maybe they are good proxy fakes.

be careful.

I think this will work where you need a certain card and you have at least two ways to pull stuff from the grave. for example you might need balance, so you cast this and get yawg will, regrowth, balance, and ancestral recall. you will cast balance next turn w/ an ancestral to boot.

This card will be better thatn most people think imo. i think using it for a intuition is the wrong way to think of it.

imagine the shear brokenness of just getting a gorilla shaman, balance, mana drain, FoW. You are either getting a counter or two, or destroying their board. I think 4cc will best exploit this.

The fisrt allows you to untap any legendary permanent, which granted in type one means tolarian academy, but who knows what is in store for the future.

The problem with even using it for a tolarian is you are down the land that you use to add1 and down the land itself, so your tolarian needs to tap for 3 or more for a gain.  Kind of hard work it seems.

side note, if i had to place my money on best type one CoK card it would be on Busieju, One who shelters all. I think this card will be awesome. If it fits in fish, then fish would have a ton of uncounterable counterspells.

thanks. I had not noticed the timetwister.

This was one of the most well written articles on scg I have ever seen.

good job.

What kind of record does this deck put up?

And maybe I missed it, but do you have a way of shuffling graveyard back in if needed? thx.

I have been using the CoW/Fastbond/Zuran Orb for a few months now, and have no mana base problems. I added one fetch land, and removed a tundra, I added one tropical island for underground sea, and took out one wasteland for the second tropical island. My mana base is this:

5 fetch lands (4 flooded, strand 1 polluted delta)
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
2 tropical island
2 Volcanic Island
1 Library of alexandria
1 tolarian academy
5 mox
1 sol ring
1 Black lotus
3 Wastelands
1 Strip mine

I have almost never (other than being completely mana screwed) been color hosed. every color has at least nine mana sources that can produce that color first turn (mox,lotus,2lands{at least}, and 5 fetchlands)

The great part about the "hard to achieve combo" is that it is not required.  i agree that it should at least go in the SB of all keeper type decks, and should be considered for inclusion.

I have not tried this, but I would be interested to see, someone take a keeper deck and put in CoW and take out time walk and play a gauntlet before and after. I predict that the CoW version is better, assuming 4 fetchlands,4wastelands and a strip mine. I could be wrong.

Also w/ CoW in mind soldevi excavations becomes much better. I tried it out and eventually cut it for the 3rd tundra but either way seemed about the same.

I think rakso is wrong about CoW. I think its interactions w/ wastlands/strip mine alone call for consideration. (and almost every deck uses wastes/strip). The only deck this combination is uneffective against is belcher, and then you still have the interactions w/ fetchlands. Then let us talk about the combo of fastbond/zuran/ CoW. W/ CoW and FB and a fetchland/wast/strip/ you will devestate your opponent in one turn w/o the zuran. if you have the fetchland you can pull enough land from your deck to hard cast a turn 1 FoW and mana drain. this is huge. Yes, FB is resticted, so are the 3 tutors in my deck that draw it, so is most of the card draw that gets me to it. Let us talk about cow and future sight w/ no fb in play. this means when you get stuck w/ a useless card, you can shuffle it away and keep the FS going. w/ the FB/FS/CoW, you can almost guarantee you will get the ZO or whatever and then go infinite. I would like to point out that if you have all 4 in play, it is an auto win since you can gain inf life (arbitrarily large, blah,blah) and then shuffle library until you cast time walk for extra turn and DoJ for kill (or whatever your kill condition is). There are other interactions, such as strenghening brainstorm, helping to minimize an opponents mind twist on you, recovering after balance, and so on.

But other than that, I think the article was mostly on, although, personnaly I would have been more guarded in my dismissal of a couple of cards.

http://www.drdino.com/QandA/index.jsp?varFolder=DinosaursAndFossils&varPage=PolystrateFossils.jsp


http://www.otherside.net/sthelen.html


These are two quick links that I found concerning that specific issue.

The environmentalists in the sevemties warned of global cooling (look it up) because the earth had cooled down by a couple of degrees and they use the same arguements made by the people that use them today, but w/ global warming.

OPCOLBY:

I agree w/ what you said about mt st helens. i just was looking into that the other day. also some of the trees that exploded off the mountain landed in a nearbylake (spirit lake) as they absorbed water at different rates based on type of tree the all sunk into the sediment layer in the waters at different depths and it looks just like the fossil layers found in other parts of the world.

They recently discovered a petrified cowboy boot, so I guess cowboys are MILLIONS of years old.

Another thing to point out about the "MISSING LINK" it should be called "All of the links are missing". There is not one link of fish to beaver or whatever in any museum. I went to the smithsonian in DC and they had an evolution proof. It was basically this horse getting bigger over the course of millions of years. It did not grow wings stand on two feet or anything different like teleport. It grew taller.


Yes, I realize that sexual from asexual does not woprk exactly as I referenced, it was an analogy.

for example, which came first the immune system or the need for one?

which came first dna or rna which transports the dna to where the dna needs to go?

how long did it take arms to grow from fins and what were there use in the millions of years in between?

were there all of these half armed half finned things wasting time and energy supporting useless appendages?

There are many other great questions.I encourage everyone to read Darwin's Black Box. He "disproves" evolution on the tenets that every living thing has a certain amount of things that are all vital and it could not live w/o any one of them. the best example for simplicity is a mousetrap. all of the parts are needed. w/o the spring it is useless. w/o the pin it is useless, etc.

How could it evlove. it could not. it was made. If it is easy for us to understand that a mouse trap was made, why do we think that humans were not made but evolved over millions of years.

There is another story of a watchmaker that basically shows the detail that is put into making a watch that was found on the ground. the reciepient knew the watch must have had a master watchmaker. then there is the same story told from the evolutionists point of view that the watch must have at one point just been gold which landed in a circular crevice shaped like a watchback and colloed and then metal fell into the middle of it, and many years later gears were made, and then sand was heated and cooled to form a glass face plate and so on. this is absurd. I will stop there. It takes faith to believe in evolution.

Very valid points. I am not saying that one can not criticize someone unless they do it themselves. I am saying it just does not change much, unless they do it for themselves. For example, if I were to talk all the time about the horrible state the environment is in because of litter, and then never pick any up when I saw it, that would not get much done. If Tan's articles are not in depth enough then pick a card or several that you would like to see analyzed and put it in a forum. The analysis of serum visions was as complete as iit could be, and it helped. Saying CoW can be good but maybe not (or words to those effect which are going around the net) is obviously less good.

You are all correct in my anecdote not being perfect as none are. The point however, imo, is valid that typically christians work for the greater good, regardless of the scale of the matter. Think YMCA (notice there is no YMAA). There are many horrible people in the world regardless of belief or dis-belief in God.

Couple of questions for people that see no evidence for faith in God.

How much faith does it take to believe that life came from non-life via a rock soup thing?

How much faith does it take to believe that the first non-sexual organism to evolve into a sexual organism coincidently had another one evolve near it?

How much faith does it take to believe that the Law of thermodynamics is correct except apparently on Earth?

How much faith does it take to believe in fish turning into humans eventually because a man discovered two different beak sizes on some finch?

Evolution is as much of a religion as christianity.

HI all,

I currently read each article on SCG, Wizards, non premium brainburst, and I look through forums at themanadrain. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. I do enjoy tmd for its content, but  the elitist attitude here is imo silly. Is oscar tan perfect or the best player in the world? of course not. But he does evaluate cards objectively, and fairly accurtately. Is this only a benifit to newbies? I do not know. It benifits me. I am a newbie of sorts, so maybe it does. The bottom line imo is if you or anyone thinks his stuff  sucks then write approximately one article a week for 3 years on your favorite deck and see how it does.

I am rakso's spanish ally. lol.

Seriously, I tell people what I believe, and couldn't care less about the result. If it is good, I will tell them, and I will also tell them if it is bad.

Separate note: green belongs in keeper.

This is (as always) a well thought out article. I was introduced to SCG for your articles, and have read them all at least twice. I agree w/ almost all of that article, but I am patial to CoW since I have been proxying it for about two months w/ much success. granted I have not played in any tounements, but I have found it makes my deck better verses GAT and Slaver(these are the only decks I have played it against{other than the uber secret suiblack deck that is about to take the world by storm}).

I thought about velkaden orrey for a while, and came to the same conclusions that it by itself does not make your deck that much better. I can not think of a single card I would take out of my deck for this.

That is because even non-believers sometimes suffer through bouts of civilty. This is definitely sarcasm(they never do{sarcarsism inside of sarcasm}).

I would like to chime in here.

If religion and all of it's forms were destroyed (even ignoring the fact that one of them might be right) how many people would lead worse lives?How many orginizations would not exist today? (boy scouts, salvation army, most homeless shelters) How many people would lead lives as drunks (not drinkers, drunks)? How many people would not be like the "good samaritan"?

I could go on and on, but the real point was stated earlier. most people love mocking christians the moment one of them kills their child in the name of God or goes on a holy war in the name of God or makes a stupid website in the name of God, but then they forget that christians (or most religions for that matter) teach so much good that the people that mess it up are few and far between.

Here is a small example that I hope might show people the difference between "christians" and non-believers. We were going to hold a picnic/ bar-b-q at my work, and were told in order for it to run smoothly each person would sign up for a certain amount of items on a list. The day before the bar-b-q happened the bosses saw that the list ad 2 blank spots out of about 20 and canceled the bar-b-q. At my church this last weekend(or week start really) the pastor announced an impromptu picnic/bar-b-q for memorial day, and told the congregation to bring enough for your family and then a little more. I think you see where this is going. The church picnic was great and we all had a great fellowship. All the non-believers at my work got to do instead of the picnic was say the "f" word every sentence like they always do.

I used to live in palm bay.
(six years ago)

There was an ok shop for type one then. Back in the day when keeper was king. Also in orlando, (about 1.5 hours away), they played magic all night long at a crystal burger every tuesday and saturday, but once again that has been 6 years. i am mostly just reminiscing.

Join the military. I am stationed in Spain, and I still have insurance.

This is meant completely tongue in cheek.

Let me be clear. no one post is going to contain everything a player needs to know. Mark Pharoah made the claim in his initial post that he is better than his chess coach. this means to me that he knows how to checkmate w/ all types of pieces, can force a pawn to queen, if possible and so on.However, it does not mean that he can out open his opponent (although he did inform in a response that he can), so middle game it is. The only thing I can suggest is go to barnes and nobles (or an actual chess store) and find a detailed book on mid-game. I found pandolfini to be helpful when I was getting started. The problem is most middlegames are subjective as to the best response. it depends on where you want the flow of the game to go. I do not play the reti because it is not my style. no other reason. it is also the same reason I do play e4. I like open games.

Maybe I was misunderstood about my only memorizing one line. If your opponent is white you only must memorize one line against each possible/probable first move, so for example if your opponent plays 1.d4 you only must memorize one response "perfectly". ie d5, knf6, g6, or whatever. You do not need to know them all. Eric Schiller writes great books on a variety of openings including reti, which is a good way to take your opponent to your home court.

The scandanavian has been given bad press, since few grandmasters play it, but its win rate is comparable to most black openings. The smith-morra gambit is listed in a good book called winning with the smith morra gambit and its "refutation" is in this book:(http://www.chessexpressstore.com/smitgamfinde.html)

The smith morra is very agressive for white, unless black navigates carefully into an equal position, then it gets rather dull, which is one of the main reasons it is not played much, as it suits no one imo.

I do not know how for you to find a chess coach, other than to suggest you continue using your resources, like take an add in the paper. go to local tournements and talk to the winners or highly ranked players. find blitz tounements and do the same, because most blitz players are virtually flawless in the openings.

that is all i can think of. I hope this clears a few things up.

Staff of domination and Crucible of worlds are worth looking at.

This may or may not help you, but here goes.

Do you study chess more than you study in school. ie, read every chass book you can get your hands on that talks about your opening you will see. For example I only play 1.e4 as white, so I only need to memorize one line when my opponent is white and playes 1.d4. Do not waste your head w/ more, unless you plan on changing openings.

Go to half price/used bookstores. I find chess books there all of the time for a dollar or two.Definitly get a "Modern Chess Openings" or equivilant.

Master the endgame. this is just through practice and repitition. the more you see it, the more familiar it becomes.

Do not play to much speed chess, if you want to be a great slow player, Especially the week before a tourney.I can not stress this point enough. I love blitz chess, and constantly play, but they are two different games.

I can not help you as a coach per se, but there should be some chess coach in your local area that can help.

Memorize every favorable line for your opening and hy it is favorable. I do not know how many times I have been playing a game, and my opponent "blunders" by making a move that is favorable for me, but I do not remember why, so i must waste my time during the game to figure out why. Waste your time before you get to the board.

Similar note. Always make your opponent think first. In other words, know your opening better than he/she does, and know all responses as black better than he does. For example, if I am black, and  the game starts as follows:
1.e4       d5
2.exd     Qxd
3.Nc3    

Most white players are expecting Qa5 or Qa8, and thus they have prepared for it. Most, however, will not have prepared for Qd6!, which is currently being studied as a fairly new move, and appears to be at least as good as Qa5. This gives you a major edge. There is only one english book written extensively about this opening to my knowlege.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1888690119/wwwlink-software-21/026-2886361-3386838

If you will never see this position that is fine. this was just an example. there are many other similar examples.

If you need to just get a draw, but would like to have a good chance to win, against a normal sicilian player, w/o getting into their lines, then play Smith-Morra's Gambit, which is very stoppable , and if they do you achieve equality early, but slightest mistake and they lose quickly.

1.e4       c5
2.Nf3      Nc6
3.d4       cxd
4.c3!?

I will be glad to talk more about any topic you wish any time. If you do not wish to use the boards my email is

AIcOPed@hotmail.com

I am currently running 5 color build w/ CoW proxied. I run 1 gorilla shaman (my only red maindeck card), and i did take out one wasteland and put in an extra fetchland (I run five). I run the CoW in place of one of my maindeck DoJ that I used to run. The reason I play green is to regrowth my DoJ if I had to cycle it early(or regrowth my ancestrall if not), and for fastbond.

with the blue enchantment and FtK and memory jar and wheel of fortune and widfall, there are plenty of good ways to put this in your graveyard and then weld it out. It is interesting to say the least.

The winners card was one green mana sorcery with the text reading target player gains nine poison counters. He said he made it as a joke. What would be fair (read that as strong enough to see type one play, w/o being instantly restricted)? I would say four counters would be "fair" or wording to the effect of " if target player has less than 5 poison counters, that player gains 5 poison counters". The second version would prevent using it as a direct kill.

thanks for inputs.

quote

Game 2 - I drop a factory and standstill. He breaks Standstill to Twist me for 3. I draw from Standstill and my hand is 2x Maze of Ith, Tormods Crypt, MisD, Blue Card and Land. I MisD, but he REBs and Twists away everything but one Maze. I probably shouldnt have MisD'd to increase my chances of keeping more then 1 SB card, but oh well. He drops Tog and we sit in a stalemate for something like 10 turns. Unfortunately I see no Conclaves to fly over the toothed moat, and he eventually finds Fire/Ice and wins.

end quote

I thought mind twist could not be misdirected am I wrong?