Whats the exchange rate from canadian to euro? Is it the same as a Canadian to U.S. exchange rate?

Well, a rather long time ago, I actually saw them going for $90, US i think. It was quite strange, I was contemplating making a wMUD deck, and with the intention of proxying the 5 power. Then I was discouraged by the high price of the Workshop. Talk about irony.. I should've stocked up on them earlier..

At least I got investments in a pearl,ruby, and emerald (super nm)

I think 3 reaping is too much. Besides, given the amount of drawin you can do once the deck goes off (which is really fast) You are bound to draw into it, and since you have around 20 sackable creatures, you can already go through about 40 cards in your deck. And if tendrils isnt there already, consider seriuosly reevaluating your shuffling skills

Have you considered City of Solitude, given that you are running Green / ESG's? Granted, resolving a 2G enchantment might be hard, but you run green, it DOES help because you can combo on your turn without getting disrupted. It also shouldnt be too hard to find 2G, because the whole purpose of this deck (it rocks!) is to pull lots of mana and cards

BTW: Love that little ! above my avatar =D

Iam seriuosly wondering why anyone would sell a lotus for, if a mox costs around 250, 325 dollars, even if its US... grab the lotus before anybody does

It sounds horribly symmetrical, because the only thing you have to win with once you plonk down the lock are little 1/1 creatures that give you opponent plenty of time to find a wish or a R&R

Thats something to add to my list of "things learned today"

You need more disruption in this deck, i.e. Duress, because as Charlie said, it goes off turn 3-4 and in the prvious turns you NEED someway to drop a threat, because 4 xantid simply isnt enough.

SOMEONE'S been reading play or draw  

BTW, if you want to make an argument Rancor, stop making stupid ass quotes. Try making up your own argument, instead of using other's peoples quotes to do the work for you. Format your own argument from what you read, not just grabbing and reposting material that might not even be right.

The suggestion that wizards should errata moxen and lotus to read legendary artifact is beyond retarded. Theres no reason to suggest that moxen is technically dominating the format in combo decks, where they need speed the most. As Dr. Sylvan suggested, combo is NOWHERE near close to dominating the metagame right now. The closest thing to combo is budget food chain goblins.

holy shit, you put an ALPHA NM mox to a BEND TEST?!  :shock: you got balls my friend, props to you  

But there are plenty other viable combo decks rising now. The one problem with Dragon that I see is that the decklist is so tight that its hard to fit in disruption (maybe Swarm).

In the game where turn 1 is still everything, it doesnt mean you have to win turn 1. Rather, its a contest (on turn 1) to see how much you can disrupt or shut down your opponet. Many decks carry at least 1 out of many tools that are maindecked that can be used against Dragon.

You do weaken it (kind of) in the sense that you open yourself up to Wasteland, not to mention that after you opponent wastes your available Taigas (the only thing they can target), Anger is dead. Also, game 2 most decks side in GY hate because you pate a Squee / StoF engine.

I first learned about the Dragon combo reading some old mtg.com article. Blah blah blah, enchant a Dragon, loop is infinite, if only they could devote the mana to something, blah blah.. seemed like a feasible idea, but I had enough of tech from mtg.com or scrye or whatever (it all sucks anyways), so I disregarded it.

A few weeks later, I got raped (Playing a Nether Lands, pet deck) by a player piloting none other than... A Dragon deck! Turn 1 Kill with a god hand (buried alive, then animate), and consistently hosed me turn 2-3, unless I plunked down a Void or a bit of discard (latter doesnt work against them if they want to get a Gorger in the yard).

With Long.dec coming into play, they were in competition as combo decks. Now, with Jan 1 restrictions, Long.dec is falling into ruin, and Dragon is now the Benchmark of combo decks.

BUT WHY?

Why is Dragon, being so easily hated, seen as a Benchmark for any new combo deck? (except for Belcher). It is easily hated out by cards like:

a) Blood Moon (partial)
b) Control (although it rolls in face of Swarms)
c) Stifle
d) Tormod's Crypt
e) Targeted GY removal
f) Most types of prison.dec disruption

It also has problems with:
a) Bounce cards
b) Strip effects

The fundamental turn in T1 is still turn 1, my boys. It doesnt matter if you win your first turn, its how you spend your turn. Playing prison.dec and setting down any of the lock parts severly hampens Dragon. Swarm has no use on it, and casting deed makes it vulenerable to another turn to prison. Keeper will wish for solutions/StoP/Stifle, Hulk wishes StoP/Stifle, and other combo decks lay down their own disruption.

In fact, as many tourney reports have suggested, it can be generally concluded that Dragon just its right up there anymore. Sure, its a reliable, consistent, combo deck, but it shouldnt be used as a "comparism" point for any new combo deck. Iam getting tired of "why play this over dragon?" "why is this better than dragon?" "why is this faster than dragon?"

So, concluding:

Why is Dragon still being used as a benchmark for Combo decks when there are innovative, fast, and viable solutions being introduced? You cant compare all combo decks to dragon. Its impossible to compare Dragon to Twister.dec. They function differantly, draw differantly, but still go off around the same turn. Its like comparing apples with oranges

Another reason that I think so many combo decks are turned down is because of an established "core" of T1 players. There are clearly powerful combo decks out here, like Trix, Koboldpotence (not as fast i know, but its there), Bargain, Belcher. Most of the threads I see have "why play this over dragon?" Yet Smemmens (no personal attack here) decklist with Twister.dec has no such comment, and I dont an explanation of "why play this over dragon"

You certainly would be hosing a huge portion of your deck. Moxen, all of your land, hell, you would hose everything except for your little 1/1 beatsticks, unless iam MAJORLY missing something, and I probably think Iam. Can someone give me a pointer as to how/why you play such a widespread symmetrical effect, or is there some sort of synergy/card that breaks it?  

Problem with Bauble is that its draw effect comes next turn, and all the digging you spent this turn will be wasted by the end of turn discard to seven. Serum powder is actually quite useful. Considering that Long.dec had to sort of aggressively mulligan to grab a good hand, this is a perfect choice, allowing you to ditch grab hands (things out your deck) and grab new, potentially powerful ones. And of course, if you have a semi-good hand, you can take an old-fashioned paris too

You probably wont need much of draw7s. The whole deck itself is a concentrated draw engines anyways.

The only limitation to this deck is the 1 life you lose, giving you a "potence" of only 19 cards, unless you have some way to boost your life like the old necro decks did with Ivory Tower, Drain Life, etc..

but it should really matter, just dig 10 cards deep and get tendrils.. somehow

I think the best way to go now is a U/G stasis that uses Root Maze / Statis for win, and Null Rod, Tangle Wire, and other juicy cards to keep them locked down. Root Maze does all Kismet does and more, because it costs 3 less, and all mana sources come into play tapped (except for creatures)

Since the Titan destroys one of each basic land type, could you use one taiga to fullfill the requirements of both a Forest and a Mountain?

Id just like to raise a point about you saying LD isn't viable in T1. Mono-G LD recently won Turnhout and is making a strong upstart in germany.

Although it is useful for throwing out academy and generating lots of blue mana to power your spells, you have several factors working against it.

a) (The most important): With the death of LED (almost), mana acceleration has shifted more into the direction of Rituals / ESG's (lets not consider SoLoMoxen in this case). Therefore, fetching Tolarian would not be the wisest as although it gives you some nifty blue mana, this deck is build with ESG / Ritual as mana boosters instead
b) Depending on the turn you rotate in a Tolarian, it will probably get wasted ASAP

A card I would consider is Fastbond, mainly because it keeps your mana steam going by allowing you to drop lands (although you may not have many!) that you get off draw 7's, and further add to the amoutn of spells you can play in any given turn



This is some funny stuff Sylvan  :lol: . Ill be sure to check around flame-drawing posts for your oracles. All that sarcasm is great

Removing the first 10 cards seems a little risky, as you stand the chance of either removing your Tendrils and the Burning Wish (although removing both with one is unlikely). The returns just seems a little risky, if you ask me. Also, wasnt the chief cause of Long.dec to make lots of use of the synergy btw diamond / will? It looks like Diamond is a sort of random inclusion, but thats from a glance

As you may or may not agree with, most of the time brainburst.com has been advocated to the equivalent of T1 backwash. I have been an advent follower of this board for a long time, because their core of members are friendly, knowledgable, and have no descrimination.

Now brainburst.com has completely revamped the T1 forums. In a surpirse move, they have locked the T1 forum (the garbage) and have created two seperate forums:

Brainburst Classic Darksteel Type 1

Brainburst Classic Learning Center

What this effectively means is that there is now a forum for new users that want to get into T1, and a serious discussion / decklist forum for established players.

As a added bonus, brainburst.com has appointed a very competent player and magic player, known as Jhaggs, to moderate the newly created forums. With such a knowledgable moderator watching over these forums, quality is garaunteed to increase 10 fold.

This represents an exciting new opportunity for AGN online mags to contribute to the T1 scene.

You dont necessarily have to add a colour just because you run creatures that fall into the colour wheel. I dont think you will be actually casting any of those red creatures anyways, unless you count Bladewing the Risen, but that probably wont happen either.

Actually, Ive been testing a version with Trinisphere, and the results it has shown are very promising. Although its just a few prelim. results, the breakdown (From games won-games lost) goes something like this:

Games won with Trinisphere: - - - - -
Games lost with Trinisphere (a sneak bullet): - - -

in a total of 8 games, I managed to sneak 5 wins through just by plonking down a Trinisphere and then starting the standard lock procedure. As it stands out, the testing results are inconclusive, but I hope I can pull off some more testing within the next two weeks

Testing was done with 2003 "Zherbus control" and against some old Hulk Smash (since it packed lots of >3 spells, I wanted to see the extent of the damage of throwing down a Trinisphere)

Actually, I dont see any reason why Trinisphere shouldnt replace Chalice itself. Chalice, being commonly set at 0, 1, or 2, is covered by the Trinisphere.

The exact ruling is for a Sphere / Trinisphere is

a) apply the sphere of resistance
b) apply trinispheres effect

So basically, its as if Sphere wasnt there

The problem with running a mix means that you either have to cut slots to add both, or take a 50/50 mix with 2 trinispheres and 2 spheres. It sounds workable, but  then I have a lot of issues with redundancy and reliability in drawing the card I need. (For example, either sphere early game is good, but I wont want to draw Trinispheres late game, how do I weed them out?)

Ill make a little list (yes, its my hobby, making lists on posts) of things blue / black offer (basic)

Blue:
-Immense card drawing power
-Thirst for Knowledge (!!!)
-FoW, Mana Drain (it wont fit, but think of it as a big mana boost)
-Artifact removal for Damping Matrix or Nullrod (hurkylls, etc)

Black:
-Immense hand disruption (duress!) / critter killing (diabolic edict)
-Small mana boost (Ritual)
-Tons of tutorate (spoils, DT, vampiric, consultation, etc etc)

take your pick, but early on, I would rather draw alot (hence blue)

Iam actually leaning a little towards Trinisphere because the majority of decks are built with lots of spells in the 0-2 cc region. The problem is that it wont affect lots of game breaking 3cc spells like Yawgmoth's Will, Cunning Wish (rack & ruin, etc),  and Donate (yes yes, its still Trix)

*Ding ding!* Points to Mr. Orlove!

Question number 2: How do Trinisphere and Sphere of Resistance work togethor? Does it make, say, a [card]Balance[/card] cost 3 or 4?

Root maze is now a popular way to put a stop to tempo and prison.dec for only G. This is also seeing lots of recursion from its old set now. Have any of you seen play of Root Maze recently (before 2003). That being said, how about Drop of Honey?