Ben I'm sorry to see you go. You are a real class act.

Good luck with all of your future endeavors,

--Paul

Opportunity is just so good it's hard to pass up. Aladdin's Ring is a powerful card in Type 4. Tooth and Nail can still be ridiculous even without Nezumi Graverobber and/or Glarecaster. One word - Bosh.

I would be surprised if Opportunity wasn't the first pick here. It's so good in any deck. Tooth and Nail is probably the second pick because it's strong in both aggro and combo strategies. The Charm is good but not first-pick material. I would expect Armored Guardian to go third. You'll see Twincast last I think.

--Paul

I have over a dozen. Most are vanity domains, though. moonkhan.{org,net,com}, some for my family, etc. I register all of mine through joker.com for less than $12.00 a year. I think you can even get them cheaper than that, too.

Also - if anyone is looking for a good virtualhost, drop me a PM.

--Paul

The coverage was stellar this time around! This certainly justified SCG Premium for me (as if the great Vintage articles weren't already enough).

The Deck Tech articles were especially fun. It is very helpful to read about new decks when you hear about them, not 24-48 hours later through the various reliable/unreliable rumor mills.

Thanks again,

--Paul

Nezumi Graverobber == Gamerobber
Armistice == Buddymaker

--Paul

I got back into Vintage because of the fun and exciting decks that have developed over the past 2-3 years. Vintage has come a long way since 97' Keeper with Serra Angels.

That aside I think Control Slaver or other slower Mana Drain-based control decks would be a good choice for me to play. Mana Drain is good if it drains a Smokestack or an Impulse.

--Paul

@Lamex: Yeah your installation worked great. I already had an augroup so my install looked slightly different:



I made the above lines work in my .vimrc and dropped your deck.vim syntax file into ~/.vim/syntax/ and it worked right away. Thanks again!

--Paul

@Lamex: Thanks so much for posting this .vim color file. I didn't know about Mindless Automaton until now so I'm totally going to get that working this afternoon!

Is there someone out there that has Magic Workstation working on Linux? I've tried Wine, WineX by Transgaming (Cedega), and CrossOver Office and none of them work ...

--Paul

This one is sure to be a lot of fun in Type 4:

Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

I found it at http://mtgsalvation.com/spoiler/.

This is apparently the prerelease foil for BoK, too.

--Paul

Richard Garfield isn't going in my type 4 pool because some of my players are veterans at Magic and some are strictly type 4 casual players that don't have competitive knowledge of 10+ years worth of cards. I have thought about doing a house rule that you can only name cards in the type 4 stack, though. Honestly there are so many strong cards in type 4 I'm not sure he's needed anyways.

We'll be trying Johnny, Combo Player later this week. I'm skeptical but with one-spell-per-turn he could be tamed.

I wish there wasn't an X cost on Who/What/When/Where/Why!

Here's a link to my current type 4 pool (286 cards):

http://www.moonkhan.org/mtg/current_type4.txt

I should finish the stack sometime soon (missing Forcefield, Illusionary Mask, Timmy, Johnny, and some other rares). All in all the power level feels high. We don't use firebreather's but we're using Myojin of Night's Reach and Cabal Conditioning.

Aside from the usual suspects here are some cards we consider powerful in my play group:

Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang is hot.

Armistice is a great political enchantment. It's one of my personal favorites.

Reweave is powerful. It turns cool enchantments like Dawn of the Dead into cooler enchantments like Holistic Wisdom! It's also a great way to resolve game_winning_critter when you arrange your library with Flash of Insight, Aladdin's Lamp, Soothsaying, etc. It can also remove indestructibles.

With the current wave of indestructibles (myojins, DSC, Konda) Innocent Blood and Second Thoughts have proven very useful. I consider Second Thoughts a very high pick overall.

Re: Headstone - great call! It's going in as soon as I find one ... Graveyard removal is key. I'm looking for other cantrips like that because I don't want to put in Withered Wretch.

Cards that aren't making the grade:
Crater Hellion - morph-killer but that's about it
Disturbed Burial - Sorcery, too slow
Godo, Bandit Warlord - cool with Vigilance creatures but the only Equipment we use is Tatsumasa
Jugan, the Rising Star - being a cool-looking dragon isn't enough to make it into a type 4 pool
Kodama of the North Tree - sadly he hasn't proven to be strong enough to waste a main phase casting
Kuro, Pitlord - why when Smokespew does more for less?
Living Death - really this and Twilight's Call are just a way to punish Phage and it takes a lot of luck to set up. Still a fun card.
Mindblaze - when I read Kaboom! I decided that a main phase is better spent blasting everyone instead of one person for 8.
Night Dealings - I saw someone on TMD with this and thought I'd try it. No one liked it.
Reverse the Sands - ok, ok, so I thought it might be fun!

Thanks for the great card ideas everyone!

--Paul

Extending the hand size makes first turn Promise of Power + Entwine more useful in the long game. Right now Promise of Power and other big draw spells are falling into Incarnation/Reanimator decks with my play group to take advantage of discarding down to seven.

--Paul

What are your thoughts on Seasinger (vs the mirror, U/R Fish, non-Titan Welder.dec, etc.)? Initially I liked the idea of Vedalken Shackles but they're hardly usable in the Fish matchup unless they sb out Null Rod. They can also be welded out if you end up with a Chalice/Keg/Mox in the yard.

In particular I've been having trouble dealing with the mirror. What do you think are good cards to sb in/out? I have been in the practice of putting in an extra Powder Keg and taking out B2B for 1-2 Control Magics and a couple of Propagandas. Unfortunately so does my opponent

--Paul

(Budget question removed - Kowal)