Damn, this is on Father's Day. At least it's a week after my wedding though.

If I can make it, it's because I skipped out on plans with my family. And if that happens, I'll hopefully be bringing two friends with proxy-free Vintage decks. =)

1) Jace, The Mind Sculptor. At the time, I was into buying boxes to feed my standard habit (should have been buying singles/playsets, tsk tsk), and I bought a case of WWK. I opened 3 Jaces in those boxes, and then played a limited tourney a week or so after release, IIRC. I went 3-1, made the cut to top 8, and my final round opponent (after making it to the finals) offered to split. I don't remember if I declined and beat him, or if we split unevenly. Either way, I won about 10 or so WWK packs, and one of them contained my 4th Jace. It was magical.

2) Time Vault. I picked up an unlimited version on ebay a few years back that was sealed in a BGS case (BGS 9.5, actually). I had opened a couple of PSA cases for my Mana Drains, so I figured no big deal. Big mistake. Got the TV and that plastic was THICK as hell. So I did what any sensible player would do. I drilled about a dozen holes in the top of the case, above the card - enough to weaken it structurally. I used some pliers to crack the top off, then ever so carefully slid the vault out. And then I sleeved it and took lots of extra turns.

3) Lightning Bolt. Specifically, the foil MPR lightning bolt. Art by Veronique Meignaud, my favorite artist for the full-art Zendikar lands. I bought about 100 of them when they first came out. I traded half of them in recently, at buylist, and didn't lose value, so that's cool I guess, though I should learn to sell on ebay or something. Anyway, I just love her art, and I'd love to find a lithograph or something of that card so I can put it somewhere in my house.

I once tried to Smother a Marit Lage token. I'd never seen the deck before (Vintage Dark Depths), the token was in a foreign language, it was my first or second Vintage tournament, and I asked the judge if it was a legal target (technically it was). Yeah, whoops. I think I could have tutored for a different answer, too, but thought Smother would do the trick. Will never forget.

Hey Prospero, I've been playing mostly with my cube recently and I have a process that's a decent balance between quick and random, but still collating cards in a way that makes acceptable packs.

First off, my cube. I have 8 separate 'colors:' WUBRG, plus three separate piles for non-basic lands, gold/hybrid/multicolor, and artifacts. Each 'color' has approximately 60 cards in it. They all remain separated in the cube, and I shuffle each pile before making packs.

Anyway, here's the collation process. I have been playing mostly 4-man drafts, so I'm not sure how well this will work for more than 5 or 6 people (since I think you start to run out of cards as you approach 8 players).

Step 1: create 3 packs per player. Each pack will initially contain 16 cards - 2 from each pile.
Step 2: shuffle each pack individually (having multiple people setup makes this easier), then remove 3 cards randomly.
Step 3: add 2 cards to each pack randomly from the remaining stock, using the following formula: roll 2d6. On a 1-5, add W, U, B, R, or G (I try to keep which pile is which hidden so I don't know what colors are going into packs). On a 6, re-roll. On the re-roll, a 1 or 2 means add an artifact. 3-4 for non-basic, 5-6 for multicolor (again, these piles are random, so I won't know from which of the 3 piles I'm pulling cards). Shuffle packs afterwards for extra randomness/better signaling.

I've probably run 30+ drafts with this format and I've been really pleased with how the packs turn out. Random, but each color still shows up decently. Weighted so that the colored cards show up more often than others (though you can change the weighting if you want, depending on the effect you are going for. I used to use 2d8 instead of 2d6, for example).

What I've noticed is that no pack is really heavy in a single color, but also artifacts/non-basics/multicolor don't show up excessively. We still have primarily two or three color decks, but I've run a monocolor deck that beat face, and I've seen plenty of 4 or 5 color decks that had greedy manabases and still pulled out plenty of wins.

I've got a decent balance of aggro, control, and midrange, but because there are usually only 4 people drafting, combo is a little bit too tricky to draft, so I don't run a lot of combos in the cube (though there's plenty of synergy to be found).

That's about it. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can clarify anything for you. I know it sounds like a lot, but after getting the rhythm, I now go through the process really quickly. It also helps having a large box of six-sided dice, so we can all add cards simultaneously. =)

Hmm, I was planning on heading to the Vintage tourney on Sun but it seems like there won't be enough people... it's been a long time and I was hoping to get my Vintage on! And by that I mean donating my entry fee to the top 4, but still. Well, there's next month I suppose.

Horrible horrible horrible Oaths. Twice I was forced to Oath when I held a creature or two, and both times it was to the 2nd to last card in my deck. I'm almost 100% certain I made the wrong call on destroying permanents with Terastodon, but hey, I learned the hard way, and at least I won't do it again. First match against Jeff (LotusHead) was pretty epic (again; our last epic match saw me playing Fish) though I'm pretty sure I tutored for the wrong card, and Oathed incorrectly as a result.

I WILL get better at playing Vintage. Playing with the guys at stars really helps, everyone's pretty friendly and the quality of players here is definitely top-notch. I may be getting my ass handed to me over and over, but at least I'm getting a first-rate education.

You don't want 3 Perish, you want 1 Perish, 1 Nature's Ruin, 1 Massacre. This is what one of the Oath builds I was looking at runs for fish hate, and that way Meddling Mage for Perish doesn't wreck you. Massacre doesn't usually kill goyf though, so maybe you can run something else there - either another Perish or Nature's Ruin or something else entirely.

Surrakar Spellblade is interesting. I think the lack of evasion hurts it a little, so if you're looking to draw an out to a freshly-tinkered robot, he won't help you there. Same goes in the mirror for fish; I'd rather have a Selkie that gets through most of the time versus a Surrakar that will just trade with whichever blocker gets left up. Still, if you can get it out early and a counter war happens afterwards, or you have some broken blue cards to cast, then he's your man.

I don't like Tajuru in Fish. I think it's a sideboard card that is only good against 1 card in 1 deck, versus something like Nature's Claim which is much more versatile against not only Stax, but the rest of the field as well. I'd much rather drop a land and destroy a Crucible while my Stax opponent has a Strip Mine/Wasteland in the yard, compared to holding onto the Tajuru Preserver. That Nature's Claim will also destroy Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Lodetone, Sphere, Chalice... plus Oath, Time Vault, Painter, Grindstone, and others I'm sure I missed.

Then again, my Fish build doesn't have Nature's claim in the side anyway...

'Complex' math aside, just thought I'd throw in my .02 - I was the guy playing tez that lost to hexmage depths TWICE (please don't ask me about my failed Smother, kthx) because I was COMPLETELY unprepared for it. And, well, it didn't help that I made a metric ton of misplays.

I had a lot of fun at the tourney, it was my first time playing Vintage competitively and my sideboard was atrocious, but I definitely learned a bunch of things and will be back for more. Thanks to all the people who answered my silly questions and pointed out what I could have done to play better in the future. Overall I think everybody was pretty cool, which definitely helps when you're new to these things.