I voted no. I own very few real magic cards anymore unfortunately. A family member with some serious medical issues nearly lost their house two years ago, and it felt too cold-hearted to sit on five-figures of cardboard while they got kicked to the curb, so my cards saved their house. 100% worth it.

Loved the last match. Anyone who claims shops aren't skill intensive ought to be shown that video, and then they will shut up forever. Brilliant.

The current bid for the Top 8 Goyf is almost $3300 - crazy!

There's a lengthly Facebook discussion in which Turtenwald and Duke apologize for thier harsh langueage, and Maynard accepted. People at the top of any field can get a bit salty with each other from time to time - looks lik Maynard took it in stride.

It would be really hilarious if the Goyf sold for more than 220% of the GP prize for 1st (since there are sellers fees and he's donating 50% to Gamers Helping Gamers). If I was really rich I'd put in a bid just to make that happen.

We're on a forum where many members own at least $50,000 worth of cardboard (a set of Beta Power + a Playset of Beta Duals is over thr $50k mark - how insane is THAT?) - surely someone on here is really rich, right? Make it happen!

Wasteland was seeing quite a bit less play in legacy for a while because the best tempo deck (Delver) didn't want it when it got to run 4 treasure cruises and cheat on the manabase.

I second the idea of a podcast is this same vein regarding countermagic in modern vintage, espeically given Steve's proclivity towards the use of spells like Misdirection in the VSL i feel like you guys would have some really interesting insights.

Ridiculously excited for this to return! My phone data is going to be going WAY over in Feb!

What on Earth in happening to this forum?

This is the second discussion I've read today that has done off on a bizzare tangeant. This forum used to be almost Academic in terms of post quality.

Medding mike is using a literary device called Hyperbole folks. He's saying - "huh, let's create the most absurdly broken artifact possible, and use that as a device to say - hey, this card sucks. Even if I could find THIS with it, it woudl still suck".

How is that trolling?

In other news, this card sucks.

I'll be honest, you're not going to have a lot of luck here.

I'm in Hamilton, but I sold out of Vintage quite a while ago. As far as I know, I won the last Vintage tournament in Hamilton which took place in fall 2012. We got 9 people and the prize support was therefore lower than FNM draft. I personally purchased the collection of another person at that tournament, and I know of at least two others who have sold and one who had his collection stolen.

Apart from that, I know of 2 other people in Hamilton who used to play Vintage.

Your best bet it going to be to attend FNM at Black Knight Games up on the escarpment at upper Ottawa and Mohawk road. I've seen some guys there a few times that I recognize form the old days of Vintage. Ask around at the store for some of the top players (there's a guy named Marty who is a very good player who I know used to play vintage) adn they might be interested, but at 5 proxies all you're going to get is Dredge- I doubt there's much real P9 left in Hamilton, I haven't seen a real piece of power in the city in at least 5 years.

I hope this works out. I still think Vintage is the best format (or at least tied with Cube), and I miss it terribly, but Hamilton has been hurting financially for a lot of years and there just aren't that many people in our city who can afford to keep thousands of dollars of cardboard around that hardly get used.

That said, there's a beautiful CE set for sale at a store in the city (I know because I sold it to them). all the power and duals are there and in Mint Mint Mint condition. If this gets up and running and you don't count CE as proxies, I might buy it back and join you. PM ME if this gets up and running. Cheers!

I did NOT care for this trailer at all.

- the Falcon engine looks different, and the Falcon is clearly CGI. I admit we're almsot there, but models still look better than CGI and it's freakin's Star Wars! Can we not, PLEASE, film in the style of the original triology!?

- ok look, it;'s a little pointless ball droid. Yes it's great to have funny stuff like this thrown in (one can certainly not make any arguent with a straight face that the originals didn;t ahve this is spades), but why the Hey are they a focus in marketing? Funny is good, plain goofy is not

Both of these points woul be forgivable, but then we get this:

- a gimmicky, STUPIDLY BAD lightsabre design. WHY!?!?!? I get that they need to sell more toys, but can somebody PLEASE stop and think about intelligent weapon design for TWO SECONDS? When using a Broadsword, there is typically quite a bit of cotact between the user and the crossguard. This sabre would burn the weilder's hands off in about ten seconds. It is one of the WORST fictional weapin designs I have EVER seen.

I hate when they go gimmicky to make more marketing opportunities. Make a good movie - there will be plenty of stuff to sell to kids regardless.

Still hopeing the film ends up beng  good at the end fo the day, but the trailer did not leave me optimitistic.

Damn! Didn't bring my headphones to work today. Would have enjoyed watching this.

Disagree, it was awesome

I do not think that you can run zero board vs Dredge. It's abeen a few years, but the deck seems even better now than it was then- faster and more consistent, andf I was never comfortable with less than 4. Drdge is FAST - it can turn 2 pretty often.

The issue is that Shops has stategic superiority in the matchup- yes there are trump tactics, but it's not as simple as hurkyls nd win- it hasn;t been since Lodestoen got printed.

Make them the property of WoTC. Require your DCI card at entry, whcih gets scanned into a database along with barcodes on the cards themselves. Requre surrender of the card at exit in order to leave.

Great post nothing really to add. I have little experience with Long as I've never played paper Vintage with unrestricted Gush.

I played Vintage regularly for only about two years, and TPS is all I played. My lifetime Vintage tournament record is approx 48-10-1, but keep in mind it's all small tournments - never made it down to the states and the one bigger (50 players) I went to here in Ontario I tried an Oath/TPS brew and went 1-5.

Everything changed for TPS with the printing of Lodestone Golem. TPS used to have a fine shops matchup becuase all you had to do was wait for your moment, Hurkyl's/Rebuild, and win. When shops got a 4 turn clock (and then Metamoph to make it a 2 turn clock), that strategy went out the window. You are a DOG to shops- the matchup is litterally something like 20/80 or worse.

Then, Mental Misstep, Mindbreak Trap, and Flusterstrom turned your U-control matchup from excellent (I was something like 24-1 lifetime vs U control) to decent (somthing like 55/45 I'd guess). Duress--->bomb or mana--->Mind's Desire isn't nearly as backbreaking as it used to be, since Duress became Infinitely harder to resolve in a world of Missteps.

TPS is a turn 2.5 deck. Dredge is now faster and more consistent, so that turned a virtual bye into a good, but not blowout matchup. There are a million good hatebears out there now as well.
That said, your build is missing a few key components. I'd take out the Abyss from the board for Toxic Deluge - it's a much better card against the hatebears of today, and is passable and more easilly cast vs shops if you bring one in. I think Mental Misstep is a much better card than Flusterstorm, so I'd make that switch in full, and I'd drop one of the hurkyl's from the board for another piece of Dredge hate. Finally, Night's Whisper is NOT good. I'd drop one for Imperial Seal, one for Memory Jar, which is the Tits in TPS and is very helpful in the shops matchup (you can hurkyl's them in a Jar turn and have them discard it all), and the last one for a Preordain.

I've found the same just down the road here in Hamilton. The last vintage tournament I played in was about 5 years ago at Comic Connection, and while proxies were permitted, you got serious flak if you used anything except CE cards. As a result, no one had any fun playing against my TPS deck because they (for the most part) were not running "real" decks. The scene totally disappeared after that.

I miss Vintage. EDH is a decent substitute if you have a cutthroat group, but I miss my moxen and Lotus and tendrils for 20. I want to get into MTGO for Vintage, but I don't have that kind of money any more.

The EE was a significant misplay - moving to upkeep and allowing one flip of the Crypt could have been huge, and there are no commonly played cards (Wipe Away I guess, but not a likely card out of LSV's list) that would have severely punished Pikula for waiting till upkeep.

The rest of the gameplay was pretty solid, but the games felt less interesting an interactive than in the previous sessions. Did anyone else feel that way?

1 Ad Nauseum
4 Pact of Negation
3 Slaughter Pact
4 Ancestral Vision
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Evermind
4 Mystical Tutor
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cunning Wish
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
5 Moxen
4 Mox Opal
4 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Diamond
4 Zuran Orb
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Swamp
1 Island
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal

SB

1 Ad Nauseum
1 Force of Will
1 Slaughter Pact
12 whatever

This deck is almost vintage legal (4 mystical tutor) and has a CMC 19 in total, so you auto-win on Ad Nauseum. you have Pact of Negation for protection and Slaughter Pact to kill any hatebears. Zuran Orb lets you fetch and vamp and still win at 1 life by saccing your fetched land in repsonse to Ad Nauseum.

exactly. It doesn;t really help them (unless they have hundreds of the sets unshipped somewhere that they can sell 6 months later to SCG for $$$$$), but it can;t really hurt them (too low impact). It's a gesture, nothing more, but it would help the format a bit and bring some positive publicity.

Interesting design, but too narrow. Becomes unplayable in aggro pretty quickly. Great BCS, but it's not good enough.

 I still think non-basics controlled by opponent is the cleanest, most on-flavor, and as a bonus, it isn't broken.

There is no difference in thickness, nor can you tell the corners in good sleaves (KMC Matte, for example). I ran my CE power and duals in my cube for about 18 months and there was never an issue at all, and I specifically asked my players to keep an eye out for this reason.

AMEN!

Even though I'd be very po'd since I sold my CE set a few months ago, this is still the absolute right thing to do for the format.

You're still 5-1 in what has to be one of the most difficult tournaments in the world. The skill level is insanely high. Think about how much the commentators hype the high skill level at Wordl's for example- this tournament is not dissimilar, expecially given that each and every one fo the Vintage players would be in a Vintage HoF, if there was such a thing, and heck Pikula barely missed the HoF on his last ballot. No shame in one loss in that tournament.

This tournament has been one of the best streams of MTG to watch in ages. It's strategically diverse, the matches are deep, complex, and have incredible amounts of interaction. It might not represent a typical Vintage metagame, but it does a great job of showing off magic's best constructed format. I wish it was getting more attention - whil production values aren't as high as say, an SCG open, the actual Magic being played is far more intersting and deep.

Well, it's better than IRL lol

The problem is that i just bought a new car... for the first time (at the age of 30 lol). Insurance premiums as a new male driver, plus the cost of gas and the actual car payment itself have almost entirely consumed my budget for magic.

Car insurance is disgustingly expensive here in Canada. I pay more per month for my car (a 2010 Elantra) than I do in rent.

I thought Moxen were more like $100 online- at $50 each.. hmmmm.

Burning Oath is my favourite deck - if my wife wanted to buy it for me for x-mas online what would she be looing at (ballpark?)

Ok I was being a bit hyperbolic about the budget, but the point stands.

Ok I appreciate your help and honesty everyone. Looks like I might have to engage in boring current formats for a while and look at Vintage as more of a long-term goal.

How is that on flavor? Apart from Flashback, Red really doesn;t use the yard as a resource at all. It does hate on nonbasics, which mine essentially does by turning them into symetrical resources.

Since red hates on nonbasics, what about

 : add   to your mana pool for each nonbasic land controlled by an opponent.

It's very powerful, but also very random, since it does Nothing if your opponent has only basics.

Would likely have to be banned in EDH, or any other multiplayer format (maybe not Type 4, but I've no real idea)

Thanks for the advice folks, I should clarify:

I cannot afford to buy power online. It would take two months of my budget to buy a single piece of power.

Is VMA expected to come up again?

I'm a very good drafter - I rarely loose at the local shop, which even has a few PT players at it. I get that I'd be at a staggering disadvantage for VMA drafts, but I have watches at least 30 online and feel i could do well.

I just don't get how MTGO works in terms of economics. I need good advice on how to get in with a budget that's VERY low.

My Google-Fu is being stymied by the ancient web broswer I'm forced to run at work. Are VMA drafts over, and will they be run again? Can anyone help me with that?

I have no MTGO account, but am thinking of joining- between Vintage and Cube I'm pretty interested, but I do not have the money to buy power at current prices- I'd need to VMA draft and hopefully open a piece or two plsu some other expensive staples.

Alternatively, does somehone with expertise in doing it have any advice for buying into and getting started on MTGO, especially from an Eternal Format perspective? (my interest in Standard is approximately equal to my interest in getting a root canal).

Thanks!