Translation:

Girl: "I'm looking for it now..."
Girl: "Wa! It has such scary eyes!"
Girl: "Scary! If I just peek out my face, I'll trick it..."

Cameraman (text in white):  [I have no idea what ひょこっと is], something about coming out

Are you finding that your skill came into play extremely often, and that when you played correctly, you were rewarded with wins (don't consider the excitement of the wins ), and punished with losses for even small mistakes?

Team Meandeck: Attempting to set the Vintage Record for most members charged with statutory rape

So if I play 8 games and win none of them with Yawgmoth's Will, I can conclude that I don't need Will in my deck and can take it out?

In order to use real games, you need to play a lot of them, given the high amount of variation present in Magic.  It's like playing 8 matches with a deck, losing 7 of them, and then deciding that the deck is garbage.  Do you consider that to be reasonable a reasonable assessment too?

A good recap of a peculiar year of Vintage.  Not enough me in it, though.

I think he's looking to know what would happen if a card, for instance, said

instead of

Then could you you "fail to find"?

Cranial Extraction explicitly uses the word "search," and we've been over that.

I'm actually not sure.  However, there's an easy answer: all cards that say "look at target player's hand" and let you choose a card to discard don't call for specific criteria.  All the ones that make you choose a certain type of card are worded with "reveal."  So the answer is that it doesn't matter because cards like that don't exist.   Perhaps they don't use the word "look" any more so that no one has to make the decision whether or not "looking" constitutes a hidden zone becoming unhidden like is the case with "reveal."

You can choose not to take cards from your opponent's hand with Cranial Extraction because it is a search, and the hand is not revealed.

Neat that the guy is keeping the bidders private so that other people can't warn the bidders that they are buying fakes.

It was.  It was instated in the 50s or so. College basketball didn't have one for an even longer time (1986).  I heard that one team won a game 2-0 or so after stalling out the game for 40+ minutes running around just dribbling, but I can't find any such tale.  The NBA did it because the games were getting boring, and they wanted to speed them up.  It increased scoring by a good 20 points or so, so it worked.

If a spell or ability dictates that you search a hidden zone (library, sideboard, non-revealed hand) for a card with certain criteria, then you may fail to find a card with that criteria.  If an ordinarily hidden zone becomes unhidden--revealed to both players, then you cannot fail to find.  For instance, a player's hand is ordinarily a hidden zone, but if you play Duress, which requires the player to reveal his hand, you must choose a non-land non-creature card if there is one there.  (This is why cards that force such discards ordinarily receive the "choose" templating.)  In addition, just because a card grants one player the right to look at a zone he ordinarily cannot does not make the zone unhidden.  That is, your opponent is not usually allowed to look in your library, but if he plays Cranial Extraction, he is, and he can choose not to find all copies of the card he named.  Ordinarily, you can't look at your library either, and cards that grant a player the right to look in a library are treated the same under the rules.

An interesting point.  The DCI suspension list applies across all formats of sanctioned Magic, and Vintage has no way of enforcing that list.  We don't require DCI numbers, and we don't even require a player use his real name in a tournament ().  Even if we did, we'd have no real way of enforcing that requirement--a player wouldn't have to use his real DCI number. If he were suspended, he could simply get a new number, and use that to play in unsanctioned Vintage.  While attempting to evade a suspension via this method is highly against DCI policies, and results in a lengthened suspension (often to 5+ years) if discovered, there would be no repercussions we could take.  We could not, for instance, inform the DCI that the player was using a false number, and then they would lengthen his DCI suspension.  This is because a player is not guilty of DCI fraud until he actually attempts to play in a DCI tournament using a new DCI number in attempt to evade the suspension.

In fact, it wouldn't be difficult to conceal the new number from the DCI entirely.  The player could simply obtain a new membership card, and arrange with whoever gave him the card not to send in the registration portion of the card.  The number would never show up in Reporter*, but that wouldn't be too big of a red flag.  This would be impossible to pull with the DCI, as they would figure out pretty soon that there was a player who had been playing for months without having registration information on file, and would investigate.

*For those who aren't familiar with DCI reporter: basically, there's a database of DCI numbers that can be downloaded by TOs.  Then, to enter a player into a tournament, all they have to enter is the player's DCI number, and Reporter will load up the player's name, so the TOs don't have to type those in.  Furthermore, once a player has been entered for a tournament once, the name is stored (or can be stored, don't remember which) to the local program, so the TO doesn't even have to enter the number in the future.  He can simply pick the player out by name from a list of the regulars to save even more time and hassle.  The database is only updated finitely often, so players with new DCI numbers don't get added to the database for a little while.  If a TO entered the player's DCI number and Reporter didn't have a name matching it, either side could explain it as "I'm new to DCI play." (and if the player weren't known, or had played pretty much only Vintage, that would be an easy sell.)  If the player only plays at a couple of stores and becomes a regular, the TO will never find out that his DCI number is not registered.


Disagree. If a player is cited, for say, drawing extra cards in team limited, what would make him not do that in Vintage?  The DCI doesn't make a distinction if an offense leads to a suspension--if you cheat or are disruptive in constructed, you don't get to play limited instead--so why should we?  Magic is Magic.  Proxy Vintage Magic is not a haven or an alternative for those deemed to have committed actions that warranted suspension from DCI play.

I was going to vote for myself anyway.

I concur.  The DCI would conduct an investigation about incidents such as this, and if they deemed it necessary, would not hesistate to spend a player they suspected of cheating, and TOs would be informed of that suspension by DCI reporter if that player tried to play again (using the same number).  We have no such system at our disposal, so this is the alternative.

If you don't use Misdirection, then there's a good reason not to play Force of Will--you can't support it as well as you'd like.


It doesn't have any maindeck green.

Gone.

I'm assuming that the tournament in question was unsanctioned.  I would suspect that makes everything that happened at it unreportable to the DCI, including the judging.  I mean, you wouldn't be able to report something like this if it happened with your casual group in your living room, and I doubt the DCI can really make a distinction between unsanctioned play at a store in the form of an organized tournament and any other unsanctioned play--without the sanctioning, I'd imagine that the DCI just doesn't have jurisdiction.  I do wonder if judges can be held accountable for things done in unsanctioned tournaments.


I don't quite understand.  Would someone really file a lawsuit over a matter like this?  Even if we were talking about a sanctioned tournament, I can't really see WotC's legal team jumping in to do something about the discussion.  I could see the DCI perhaps taking action (reprimanding or taking action against posters for interfering with an investigation), but not lawyers.

I have had no experiences, obviously, with this matter, but I have heard stories of this.

Two thoughts:
1) I am disppointed that someone would cheat in Vintage.  This is a format where we compete for fun and honor/respect.  There's no real money to be had here, and even the glory is limited to a couple of message boards with a few thousand people.  It's shameful that someone would blatantly take advantage of the trust the Vintage community has for each other--it is very rare that judges are called over to investigate such things.

2) I am very glad that action was taken.  Since we don't have the DCI to take care of this for us, it's good to see that TOs have taken this matter into their own hands, and are willing to ban players who knowingly cheat.

Star City Games should also be made aware of these events.  I have faith that SCG would also support a ban endorsed by Ray Robillard.


Actually, the DCI policy does not require such high scrutiny.  In fact, "reasonable doubt" takes the opposite effect when it comes to these matters.  If a judge thinks that a player is attempting to cheat, then an automatic DQ is warranted.  51% sure is the number you'll hear DCI judges mention from time to time.  If there's a reasonable suspicion that the player is cheating, the doubt that he is is irrelevant.  The reason for this is that it's so easy to cheat, and the DCI wants to send a clear message that they do not remotely tolerate cheating or shady behavior.

I believe I remember reading that the idea for Goblin Cannon was to create an updated Rocket Launcher.  However, the templating on Rocket Launcher was clunky, and they wanted to avoid the EOT trigger, so they made a sacrifice part of the effect.  In addition, 4 mana and a sacrifice plue 2 mana to do one whole damage was clearly not going to get it done in a block with Pyrite Spellbomb.   Do note that the abilities that have such a wording are quite rare.

Good grief.

Well, back then, you couldn't tap things that were untapped to satisfy a "tap ~ to do something" requirement.  Remember, back then, they put mana and tap costs only to the left of the colon.  All other additional costs were put after the mana/tapping, in the form of "[Additional cost] to have/do/whatever..."  I don't think sacrifices and the like were officially part of the "cost" back then (since the rules didn't have templating for non-mana or non-tap costs).  Imagine if you had something worded like this now:

[Mana Cost], Tap: Sacrifice ~this~.  Do something cool.

If you could untap the card before the ability fired off, you would be able to use the effect multiple times, since the sacrifice is part of the resolution of the ability.  If it were not in play when the ability resolves, you just wouldn't be able sacrifice it, and you would still do the rest of the ability.  Obviously, they don't have wordings like this for that reason.  Either the sacrifice is part of the cost, or when that's not possible (a trigger like Plague Boiler or Standstill), they use the "if you do" templating to prevent tricks like bouncing the permanent or playing the ability multiple times from happening.

You might think this was possible back then, but since you could only respond to effects with interrupts, and there were no interrupts that uptapped stuff, it wasn't.  It's just as well, since even if you could untap something with its ability on the stack, it wouldn't do any good because you everything resolved at once.  First you played the ability, then you could interrupt the spell/ability, then you would be able to play instants and other fast effects with those interrupts still on the "stack" (they called them batches and series then), then the order of resolution would go Interrupts in LIFO order, then everything else in LIFO order.

I was pointing out Hecatomb at RIW the other day, since there's no negative effect not listed for not sacrificing the creatures.  THAT'S INSANE!!  Now, the card works a lot better than it used to, since you couldn't use a card before you dealt with all its comes into play or upkeep effects back in the day.  These days, you can tap all your Swamps to machine gun your opponent with the CIPT on the stack, but back in pre-6th edition days, you had to sacrifice the creatures before you could do that.  Reference all the updated wordings for lands like Lotus Vale.  Back then, you couldn't tap the thing before you dealt with all its CIPT, but now, you could, so all cards like that have received wordings to be replacement effects.

This list isn't even remotely Pitch Long, as it contains precisely 0 pitch spells.  The whole idea for Pitch Long is to play Misdirection and Force of Will (that's where the name "Pitch" came from, you know).

It's nice that RIW and Michigan were once again able to claim a piece of power from Ohio.  I think I should be able to make the next one, so Paul and I will be there to take the next piece.  The Kabuto Moth will likely have to work.  Apparently he hasn't fully mastered "the living off one's parents" as well as I have, thus his need of a job.

Yeah, actually, we had no idea what you would do with the mana.  The idea was to just tell people that we were doing that, and then let them figure it out for us.

I'll still remind you that Meandeck Tooth and Nail was MY idea, and I successfully convinced several people that it actually existed.  However, Ashok gets the credit for coming up with the duo of Worldgorger Dragon and Kiki-Jiki.

Nothing like paying 9 mana to put two creatures into play.  Man, I love non-Vintage formats.

The sword on the Ice Age Disenchant says "Magic" in the Ruinic Language, while the shield of Chaos Lord says "I am really mean."

Actually, it does.  Your opponent has mana (not as affected by Null Rod), and you don't.  A proper amount of mana leads to a properly functioning deck, while enough does not.  Thus, your opponent is able to steal all sorts of tempo from you because his deck is working like it was made to do, while yours is not.  Each artifact source you draw while Null Rod is on the table puts your opponent up one card--its as if you didn't draw that card at all.  Two Moxes negated by Null Rod is equivalent in raw cards to Misdirecting an Ancestral Recall.  The third artifact source you draw nets your opponent more card advantage than that Ancestral.  Given that decks against which Null Rod is effective play 9-10 artifact sources of mana, drawing 3 of them is not an unlikely situation.

And this means precisely what?  We are all aware that Gifts and Pitch Long are popular decks, and that both decks play Misdirection.

That's absurd.  There is no reasonable Magic theory that allows you to keep a 7 card hand with 0 usable mana, regardless of what else is in there.  Winning a game where you keep such a 7 card hand can be described as nothing but extremely lucky.

2 Life must also be lost from Vampiric Tutor.  Just because you don't search doesn't mean you don't lose the life.