Hey guys, I haven't posted/ read here for (literally) years but for some reason felt compelled to check up on Magic. It seems like there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, and I've put a deck together that I feel could have potential with a lot of development, but more importantly revolves around a card I've wanted to be good since it was printed.

No surprise there:
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
2 Merchant Scroll

Something completely different:
4 Artificer's Intuition
4 Stifle
2 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Darksteel Colossus
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sensei's Divining Top

Needs more cards:
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Misdirection
3 Mana Leak


5 Moxes
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
5 Island
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria

And that's only 58 cards, but I have no idea what decks need. I'm not sure about Gush and Ponder doesn't seem like a great choice.

Obviously I pretty much compiled different "tech" that I thought seemed good and jumbled it into a deck that wants to beat the new big combo. The coolest thing I found was that you can Stifle Dreadnoughts now.

Pitching Colossus to A. Intuition gets it back into your library, but Leyline of the Void is a PITA.

So yeah. Have people already considered AI and dismissed it? I don't play Magic at all anymore and don't even own cards so I won't be attending any tournaments, I just thought of what seemed like a potentially good idea while skimming through tmd/ procrastinating my finals studying.

Rob, IM me if you read this/ are still around TMD.

This deck is absolutely disgusting. Here's the list I've come to, with discussion to follow:

3 Street Wraith
4 Gush
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fastbond
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Regrowth
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Mind's Desire
2 Empty the Warrens
4 Force of Will
2 Pyroblast
3 Misdirection
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Mana Crypt
5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
2 Volcanic Island
2 Island
SB: Tog, Pyroblast, Threads

Adding Red really cleaned up a lot of the weaker matchups. Although it doesn't seem to be needed just yet, I'm assuming in a month or two Artifact Mutation will be absolutely necessary for this deck. Wheel of Fortune obviously just wins games you have no business winning. It is very often sided out Game 2, but there are few matchups that I don't love it game 1.

Running Empty the Warrens rather than Tendrils as the kill really means you don't have to over extend at all, which is what I found myself doing a lot with this deck trying to get a lethal storm count. This alone dramatically improved a few matchups.

The Gifts Pile Regrowth, Fastbond, Will, Gush is amazing as always.

Life loss was getting a little crazy (and I'd assume it's even moreso in your build with Seal and the necessity of Storm 9-10) so I cut the 4th Street Wraith. It is, however, an amazing card.

Any other questions, feel free to ask.

It's just absolutely fucking insane to me that I can get the telephone representative to say "Yeah, it is a very unfair policy, I'm so sorry" yet still they won't do anything about it. I guess I'm going to pay the debt collecting company. They haven't said anything about a court date, and when I said I'd most definitely be seeking a lawyer they sort of freaked out, but I mean I'm 19, in college, and I don't feel like having my credit destroyed because of this. Obviously it's a huge sum of money at my age, but if there's nothing I can do then that's that. I'd rather spend the money on a plane ticket to the buyer's house, though.

Completely an opinion. Actually, not even an opinion, a downright lie to get a free collection. Unfortunately it looks like it worked. It's just way too late for me to get them to appeal the case I guess. Paypal is fucking ludicrous for handling the case like it did.

So I sold my collection a few months ago. The buyer said the cards were all fake (they were all real). He filed a paypal dispute, and won because I never received any emails from paypal and thus didn't/couldn't respond to the dispute. I filed for an appeal, but the representative I spoke to told me I was almost certainly not going to have my case appealed because I didn't respond to the dispute and it was past the appeal deadline.

Now I have a debt collection agency trying to collect $2000 from me, because paypal issued a totally invalid refund. Is there anything I can do, at all?

I posted on SCG that I thought it would be cool if WotC did something similar to the Pro Player cards with Vintage staples (or hell, even new cards that would be playable in Vintage)- because no one seems to like Pro Player cards, why not do Vintage staples that are equally not Magic cards just as Pro Player cards are not Magic cards- something like Balance with a different back and different layout or something, so new players could see the powerful old cards and play with them in casual decks but not in tournaments. It's not like it would be at the cost of anything because obviously no one wants a Pro Player card, and it would definitely pique interest in Vintage. Maybe they could even make them legal for just Vintage.

I do like your idea as well.

Did I in any way dispute this? I'm not saying I knew what the fuck I was talking about then, I'm saying this was my list.

I tried searching and the posts only go back to 2004. I absolutely refuse to believe you don't remember the huge discussions we had about it, though, when I still posted. This is basically my list.

You should check the archive forums.
-Jacob

No man, you have to be kidding. This is almost exactly the list I was playing sooo long ago. Given, Witness wasn't even printed yet when I started advocating Read the Runes, Deep Analysis, and Cunning Wish. Other than that, this is the list pretty much exactly. Don't you remember us arguing for like 20 pages and you absolutely refusing to admit that Compulsion was terrible? I'm sure it's all there somewhere still, I'll go find it and post links.

It sucks because as you said it requires 4 slots if you wish to run it. Also, Planar Void comes down on the first turn and it's not great.

Vintage has become completely stagnant. Discussion, and therefore innovation, typically decline for a few months around this time of year, so this may not have come as much of a surprise to anybody. However, it's been on the decline for the better part of a year. Prices are falling much lower than their usual seasonal swings, and it's been months since we developed a viable new deck. The problem, as I see it, is that we are all waiting for something, but we don't know exactly what- an impetus to test new ideas. Maybe it's a wave of unrestrictions, perhaps even a banning or two. Maybe we're waiting for Waterbury to roll by in hopes that someone's been working on an archetype that's been kept a secret. If there's ever been a time that we needed to stop waiting and do something, this is it.

We've written countless articles, tested myriad new cards and decks, and published tournament results for years. What did this get us? SCG's tournament support. A Vintage "World Championships" event. Waterbury. Seperation of the Type 1/ 1.5 Banned and Restricted List. Portal made legal. We are completely capable of making this format what we want. Have we just stopped wanting this badly enough to work for it? We can't just let the teams do all of the work for us. We need our steady discussion and community flow of ideas back. Maybe too many players have quit the Magic scene. Maybe everyone who was once interested enough to work for support for our format is now too busy. Or maybe we are all just waiting on everyone else.

I haven't played in years, but I still care about the format. I would think it would be tough for anyone who's been around the community since BD not to. I find it impossible to believe that the players who consistently attended SCG and Waterbury events don't care at least as much as I do. I'm not accusing anybody of being too lazy to come up with something new, I understand a new deck doesn't exactly dream itself up. I do, however, think that we have all been guilty at one point or another of saying to ourselves "I'll just wait and see what meandeck takes to the next event." If we stay in this mentality, eventually we won't have the tournament support that we do now, and we won't have anything to wait for. I'm not saying the sky is falling, but I do suspect that with the sharp decline in attendance to SCG events, they might be reconsidering their tournament support. I know I would be were I in their shoes.

Or maybe I'm just too out of the loop. To me, it seems like we are in jeopardy of losing something that's been worked so hard for, and no one wants to see that happen. I'm sure there will be posts that claim the format is doing perfectly fine and the amount of support we have is just great. Before you post that, don't you think that we are on the verge of losing that support? Do we really need numbers from MORE tournaments to deduce that tournament organizers are probably reconsidering supporting Vintage, especially when they could be holding Legacy events and almost definitely raking in more tournament entry fees?

My point is, I just want to know what we're all waiting for. Are we really out of ideas? I don't think so.

Or someone could BIN and not pay, in which case he would still be chared the $150K. I'm actually surprised no one has yet. If he didn't pay the fees, they would eventually be automatically deducted from the credit card account he used when he signed up for eBay. They say they don't do this, but after a few months, they did it to me.

Well then, forgive me for wanting to keep cards within the community. The idea of putting it in Magic community was so that only full members would have access to it, which I feel would basically eliminate any concern about being ripped off and needing someone to be responsible for it. If you've ever been to MOTL, then you understand why it's not such an appealing option.

Since SCG bought the site, would it be cool if we started to allow posts for trading and selling cards? I always thought it was removed because Zherbus didn't want to deal with some clown trying to rip people off and holding him responsible. I don't mean making a trading forum, but maybe just allowing trades and sales in the Community forum.

Does anyone know if this is illegal?

But, have you ever seen someone counterfeit a card that is still in print?

I actually advocated that much earlier in the thread, since it's what I've been doing for a while as well.

If you're playing the deck well enough, you're going to beat control a LOT with Duress anyway. I feel like a lot of inexperienced players (as far as Dragon goes, anyway) need Xantid as a crutch.

Damn, they could have done great things if they made this set legal only where Ice Age is legal (Vintage and Legacy). Oh well, I'm sure it will still be fucking cool as long as there's some old art kicking around too.

I'm quite confident you don't. It does make the matchup much easier, but you do not need it to win. Dragon will still take a large amount of games vs. Stax without Sacred Ground.

5C Dragon is a good deck, but I don't really understand the necessity.
U/B has all the answers, and is plenty fast and  consistent.
I've been playing this list for _ever_ (EE and Witness are obviously relatively "new") but the idea has been the same as long as I've played the deck.

4 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Eternal Witness
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Intuition
2 Compulsion
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Animate Dead
3 Necromancy
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
4 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
3 Island
3 Swamp

Lots of basics, simple game plan. We should refer to Duress and Force of Will as Bacardi and Cola, because they ALWAYS get the job done. I've played thousands of games both with and without Xantid, and I prefer Duress because it's always good enough. Sure I occasionally wish I had Xantid, but much more often I would wish the Xantid were a Duress.  Fast combo (Belcher) can be tough to handle, and you actually need Duress here. To be honest, I'd probably cut Force for Xantids before I cut Duress.

I like that you're trying this, and I'm sure a lot of us had this inclination when we saw this card originally. However, Grim Tutor fetches Lotus. Fetching Lotus sets up Wills that win the game. I can't see the Transmute card being better than Grim, since Tutors aren't the cards that get countered anyhow.

I've been following this thread the whole time, and I just can't understand how you guys are beating combo. Sure you've got hate post-SB, but it just seems like every combo matchup is going to go

game 1 loss, game 2 loss because you don't have hate out fast enough,
or
 game 1 loss, game 2 win because the hate was there, game 3 loss because combo went first.

I'm really interested in the deck though, and have been testing something more along the lines of old Ankh-Sligh.

My list is:

3 Null Rod
3 Blood Moon
4 Ankh of Mishra
3 Price of Progress
4 Gorilla Shaman
3 Hearth Kami
4 Genju of the Spires
2 Viashino Heretic
4 Jackal Pup
3 Fireblast
2 Shrapnel Blast
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Ancient Tomb
12 Mountain

I don't want to be spamming your thread with lists, but my purpose is to ask if you ever tested something like this? It maindecks like 25 hate cards, and is itself pretty resilient to hate. A few selections might seem random, but they're the way they are to dodge Chalice. Here's a breakdown of what Chalice does to my build:

Set at 1 stops you from playing:
Gorilla Shaman
Genju of the Spires
Jackal Pup

12 cards total

So most of the offensive cards/beats.

Set at 2 stops you from playing:
Null Rod
Ankh
PoP
Kami
Shrapnel Blast

15 cards total

Staring down Chalices for 1 and 2 simultaneously is rough, but hopefully you've dropped a Genju or at least got in some damage by then. For this stage of the game you've got Fireblast and Heretic.

But that's enough about my deck- I've got some weird card choices and my deck plays more like a Medium Red deck from T2 than Sligh, and if you have any questions let me know and I'd be glad to share my thoughts.

Back to your build and comparisons

STP and Disenchant are good, and I'm not going to argue them as their inclusion is what makes our decks play so differently. However, I would like to discuss the merit of a list almost completely focused on mana denial. Principally, it seems like a sound idea to me because resolving one of the pieces can slow down or seriously mess with a deck's game plan even if they're about to go off (for example, Ankh vs. Dragon, Blood Moon vs. Most decks) and Null Rod is a good first turn play pretty much all the time. So what do you think about playing the deck like this?

You have the Balances, but you don't abuse them as hard as other decks are going to, is what everyone is telling you. Your deck looks solid and pretty balanced, but unfortunately I think everyone is trying to break this format.

Genevieve is an awesome name, congrats.

I'd be so down to do this if it weren't for the judging part. I think I'm too rusty to try to help judge an event, anything else I can do?

I think the card's real, but I have to bring up the concern that initially made me believe otherwise-

If this were your card, why wouldn't you get it PSA graded and triple (at least) the value?

Because it's fake. That's really the only reason not to have this card PSA graded, and that's all there is to it. Checking out this dude's feedback (paying attention to the items he's sold in the past), I have a hard time believing he doesn't know what PSA grading is.

No, just like I described it isn't Rector Trix. Rector Trix would be bad with no power. Dragon is bad with no Bazaars at least. I took the engine that made Trix playable and combined it with a combo that is easily castable on its own (Buried Alive and an Animate spell), without any power cards needed.

I have a kind of funny list for budget players who don't get to attend proxy tourneys:

4 Academy Rector
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Buried Alive
2 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Ambassador Laquatus
4 Animate Dead
3 Necromancy
2 Dance of the Dead
3 Seal of Cleansing
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Balance
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
1 Plains
4 Scrubland
4 Swamp

It's like Rector Trix minus Force, and with a combo that you can actually pull off really easily without the Rector engine. Adding the Rector/Therapy/Bargain just gives a more consistent plan in that it's another set of cards that win you the game. Being able to maindeck 3 copies of Seal is pretty brutal as well, and some things can be cut for even more MD hate. Just an idea.

Ray, I'm still around to help you set stuff up if my ride doesn't bail on me (coming from Storrs campus).

Also, if anyone else is coming from the area, PM me.