Thanks for the lists!

Thanks a lot, Lori.  I had a great time slinging Vintage.  I hope you can run some more Type 1 soon.

This is great, Lori.

I can't wait.

Playing a friendly control mirror, I'd been run out of resources by my opponent who then resolved a small-ish Yawg's Will.  He was basically going to get a land and a Tinker for Blightsteel, but that was going to be enough.

So I had to play to my only out, convincing him to play the unnecessary Ponder out of his yard.  I mean, free card, right? Actually, the way I phrased it was, "you should totally play that Ponder, shuffle, and draw your robot. Because that would be hilarious."

So he played the Ponder, saw nothing he wanted, and shuffled.  I did something uncharacteristic for a friendly game, and cut him... straight to his robot. It was as funny as I'd hoped it would be.  My opponent didn't seem to think so, though.

--------------------------

Once, when playing for the honor of a 4-4 record in a PTQ with Faeries, I convinced my Merfolk opponent we should both mulligan to 0 if we got to game 3.  My draws in order were land, land, bitterblossom.  So that was fun.

At least "Mox Jet" scribbled on a swamp makes some kind of sense.  When the Mono-Red MUD player laid a Plains on the table and said, "Magus of the Moon" I just straight up quit watching.

Now... maybe I would've quit watching anyway, as that's pretty much the scoop moment, but using one of your proxies on an eight dollar card just reeks of not even trying.

Short Tournament Report -

I'm only writing this because I said I would, and not because anything terribly interesting happened.  23 people showed up to play Vintage at Knight Ware in Studio City, CA.

My friend, Phil, was the judge and was also playing.  In order to finish his rounds quickly so he could get back to judging, Phil was willing to switch decks with me. (He was running The Deck.)  I declined since I knew there'd be a lot of random decks in the room, and I'd rather be pro-active than reactive.  This was my first of many misplays on the day.  See my previous post for my complete decklist.

Round 1 - Kevin with Fish
This was Kevin's first Vintage tournament, and it showed.  He was a nice guy, but he just didn't really know what was going on.  To start with, his deck ran Stifle, which is terrible, but would've actually been good game 1 since I wasn't playing around it AT ALL.

Game 1 - all he'd seen was Swamp, Ritual, Bob (eating a FoW), and Wasteland.  Not being able to extrapolate Dark Times from that, he tapped his only source of blue (I think to play a Qasali Pridemage).  This allowed me to rip Lotus off the top and go from a board position of just a Swamp to a Swamp and a 20/20.  Of course I made the 20/20 on my turn to play around him ripping a Wasteland... I didn't realize I accidently played around him having blue-mana up for Stifle.  I'm still pretty sure I win this game anyway.  His hand was all answers and no threats.  Even if he'd managed to Stifle the Hexmage, that would've been a 1-for-1 trade and in no way a blow-out.

Game 2 - He goes turn 1 Trop. I go turn 1 Swamp, Thoughtseize, seeing a hand of almost all hate (FoW, Stifle, Echoing Truth, Wasteland, Strip Mine, Meddling Mage).  I think I took the Echoing Truth, knowing there's no way I can lose.  When he's staring down a nearly lethal Bob and 'Goyf, I make a 20/20 because I'm kind of a dick. (I'd already traded a Wasteland for his Stifle, and he had no idea how to use his Wastes to keep me off the combo.)  

Afterward, Kevin asks me for advice about his build, then proceeds to argue against everything I tried to tell him.  Whatever.  He's perfectly welcome to keep wasting slots on Stifles and running a card like Meddling Mage that's marginal at best and ONLY if you really understand the format. (See round 4 for some great examples of bad Mage-ing.)

1-0 (2-0 in games)

Round 2 - ANT
I hated everything about this match.

Game 1 - He has pretty much the nuts, plus a brainstorm to hide the nuts from my Duress.  C'est la vie.  He does almost die to his Ad Nauseam, but then he storms out and puts me at 3 with a Bob in play while he goes to 18.  What was frustrating about this game was how he tried to storm again after a Bob flip and a fetch-land put me at 1.  You're at 16 against a 2/1!  Just pass the turn and let me die to Bob!  He finally did, and I did.

Game 2 - He's been Duressed 3 or 4 times, he's at 8 life against my 4/5 Goyf + Bob.  He rips an Ad Nauseam and proceeds to flip perfectly, go to two life, and win (his flips were something like Lotus, Ritual, Recall, Tendrils, and his Recall hit all gas).  This game sucked because he had nothing in his hand, and the Ad Nauseam allowed him to just win.  Had the topdeck come one turn later, he wouldn't have had enough life to use the Ad Nauseam.  Magic sucks sometimes.

1-1 (2-2 in games)

Round 3 - Stax

Game 1 - He won the die roll.

Game 2 - Bitterblossom was a champ, allowing me to stay ahead of Smokestack.  Then, when the time was right, I sac'ed the Tribal Enchantment to make my two 'Goyfs friggin' ridiculous.

Game 3 - I kept a bad seven.  I knew I was on the draw and he'd probably have resistance.  I had a hand that allowed me to go Land, Jet, Lotus even through his turn 1 Sphere.  What it didn't have was a second land.  Turn 1 Goyf isn't enough to get there.  It was a bad keep and I deserved to lose because of it.

1-2 (3-4 in games)

Round 4 - Another Fish player with main deck Meddling Mage and Stifle (EDIT: In my original post, I got this out of order with round 5.  Serves me right for trying to do a tourney report entirely from memory)
As in round 1... nice guy, bad deck.

Game 1 - Turn 1 I Duress FoW.  Turn 2 I try to make a Crucible of Worlds off a Ritual, and he casts his freshly drawn Force of Will.  He then proceeds to play a Meddling Mage, naming Crucible of Worlds.  Yeah... that happened.  Please, people, stop running this card if you don't really understand what's going on in every matchup.  I make a 20/20, but am caught totally off-guard by Curfew of all cards.  Now, I've run a deck with Curfew before, but I also ran a bunch of guys who were good to reset, like Spellstutter Sprite.  When you have to pick up your two drop for no value, Curfew gets worse.  When Tinker decks are also running Bobs, Curfew gets even worse still.  So he takes out my 20/20 with a Curfew, but I win anyway because he's got a deck full of the wrong answers and - like round 1 - no threats.

Game 2 - I hit him with an early Thoughseize and let him keep the Curfew, since it's ridiculously easy to play around as long as I know about it.  I play a Hexmage and just start beating with it.  Then I tutor up a Bitterblossom and play it, then I think I played a 'Goyf and made a 20/20 the next turn.  The only creature he played all game was a Meddling Mage naming (you guessed it) Crucible of Worlds.

2-2 (5-4 in games)

Round 5 - Jonah with BG Kinda Rockish Stuff (EDIT: I got this out of order with round 4)
Jonah's a friend, but this was his first Vintage tournament, so his deck was a little untuned. (EDIT: Turns out I forgot about Jonah's one other Vintage Tournament in which he won a FRIGGIN' MOX JET... so yeah, good player, just doesn't play much Vintage.  And I think he was handed a deck for that event, whereas he tried to brew this one himself.)

Game 1 - He's on the play and Duresses me, but doesn't take my Duress.  I'm able to Duress the Dark Ritual out of his hand, making a turn 3 Hypnotic Specter his next play.  I know the coast is clear, so I make a 20/20.

Game 2 - I don't remember much of this game.  I know I had a dominant enough start that Jonah scooped to go playtest Standard.

3-2 (7-4 in games)

So I made some bad plays and beat the people who don't play Vintage.  With the number of people in the room, 3-2 was actually good enough for one person to make top 8, but I was 9th on breakers.  9th out of 23... ugh.

I feel weird giving thoughts on the deck, since it was only five rounds and I just barely broke even on the day.  I maintain, though, that the green splash is really good, and 'Goyf beatdown is a much better Plan B than Leyline/Helm.



My reasoning for not going with Painter's/Grindstone is that, like Leyline/Helm, neither half of the combo does anything on its own.  Neither one hurts as much when you flip them to Bob, but a Goyf off the top is relevant way more often than a Grindstone off the top if you don't have a Painter, or vice versa.  

I can't speak for Sporkcore (since the game 1 plan against Dredge is NOT the reason I play this deck), but I can say that Painter's/Grindstone brings with it one of the worst parts or Helm/Leyline (dead draws) without bringing a little splash value (being stupid good against 1 deck in the meta).

I think, though I haven't tested it, that three colors is too much.  My testing partner and I have discussed it, but I just can't see it working.

If you want to try it out, then more power to you.  I would skip the Brainstorm, though, and just run Time Walk and Recall.  I would also try to find a way to fit in all 8 Duress effects.  Maybe you can cut the Brainstorm, the Emerald, and the Sapphire for Duress, Thoughtseize, and a Mox Diamond.  Diamond gets better in a 3-color deck, obviously.

Late last night, I got fed up with trying the blue splash and went back to green.  I realized I'd just been trying to make these cards work because I liked them, and I'd been seriously underestimating the value of 'Goyf beatdown.

I'm playing in a tournament this afternoon, and I'll be running this:
4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Thoughtseize
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Necropotence
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Darkblast
1 Pithing Needle
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Lotus Petal
1 Null Rod
2 Dark Depths
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
1 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Bayou
4 Swamp
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

Sideboard (very rough)
2 Null Rod
2 Bitterblossom
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Trinisphere
1 Pithing Needle
1 Sadistic Sacrament
3 Nature's Claim

I'll try to take notes and post a quick report later today.

Living wish was actually the original reason I tried green, with Goyf's and Claims coming later.

It didin't take much testing to realize Wish wasn't that great.  There really aren't that many silver bullets you really want to wish for that are creatures and lands.  So if you're running, say, 2 Wishes in place of a Depths and a Hexmage, all you're really doing is costing yourself two sideboard slots.

Some of the ideas kicked around and why they were discounted:
Tabernacle - gets Wasted or simply paid for by fish decks, doesn't really stop Dredge if they can make one big Flame-Kin Zealot (too slow anyway if you're wishing on turn 2 and playing the Tabernacle on  turn 3).  Slows us down even more in a mana-light deck
Maze of Ith - There aren't many creatures we'd rather be Mazing than just assembling the combo, so we would never wish for this.  Also, see Tabernacle about us being mana-light
Glacial Chasm - I never tried this, but since you brought it up, I'll say we don't really have a way of abusing it.
Caustic Wasps - seemed like a Trygon in our colors, but the Goyfs made Workshops much easier, so it just didn't seem worth it, considering all the drawbacks of running the wishes in the first place.

-7 Swamps
-1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

+5 Black Fetches
+3 Bayou

Funnily enough, due to card availability issues, I actually ran 1 Bayou and 2 Overgrown Tombs at the Champs Prelim.

I thought about that.  Then I thought if I'm running a 3rd Depths just to make a marginal card better, should I even be running said card.

The fact that you're also going up to 3 Depths makes me reconsider that idea, though.

I've run this deck in three tournaments so far to some moderate success.  I placed top 8 in a Superstars Mox Tourney, Top 4 of the Vintage Champs Prelim at Gen Con, but only ran a 4-3 record in the actual Vintage Champs event.

I absolutely love the deck, but there's something that bothers me about the stock build, and it's this:

The thought of playing Helm/Leyline maindeck in a Vintage tournament makes me feel nauseous.

I realize maindeck Leylines turn the Dredge matchup into some kind of sick joke.  But against many decks, they're marginal at best, and against some decks they're straight-up dead draws.  So is it worth it to completely own one fringe matchup (Dredge) while a very popular archetype (MUD) takes us to the woodshed?

To be fair, I only ran the deck as Mono-Black in my first tournament, so maybe some players with more time behind the deck can share some insights about these cards, because I'm just not seeing it.  For the combo to even be doable, you kind of need to turn-0 the leyline, otherwise we're talking 9 mana to get this bad-boy going.  So let's say you have the T0 leyline in your opener, maybe you even have the Helm, but no fast mana.  Are you okay with your win condition activating on turn 5?  Even turn 5 here assumes you never get a land Wasted or choose to Waste a land yourself.  What if you have the T0 Leyline and no Helm?  Are you now prepared to start burning tutors to put this combo together instead of HexDepths?  And if you don't go for the Helm, that T0 Leyline is basically a mulligan, while a Helm by itself in your opener is almost assuredly a mulligan.  Anytime I drew a Leyline or a Helm after turn 1,  I wanted to punch something very hard.  Flipping one of these spells to Bob is adding injury to the insult.  In the one tournament in which I ran Helm, I only went for it once.  That happened to be against Dredge, a matchup where I'm obviously going to mulligan into Leyline.  Against everyone else, however, either side of the Helm/Leyline combo turned into a mulligan (by that I mean my "7" card hand only really had 6 useable cards in it).

I feel like this deck runs a lot of fair-ish cards in an unfair format (sorcery speed hand disruption, Wasteland effects that often slow down our development just as much as our opponents').  Add to this a number of tutorable silver bullets and fast-mana accelerants that are great early game but not so great late game, and you end up with a deck that can find itself drawing dead a lot, in a format where every card you or your opponent draws is of critical importance.  I can't bring myself to run five more dead draws in the form of Helm/Leyline. 

The problem, I realize, with removing Helm and Leyline is that you are taking out Plan B, and making the deck all about Plan A.  We know that Bob beatdown is not really a viable strategy, so I feel like any move away from Helm/Leyline needs to do one of two things: provide an alternate Plan B win condition, or make Plan A as brokenly streamlined as possible.  Here are the things I've tried so far:

GREEN SPLASH - When you just want a good plan B

I played a friendly Vintage game against Conley Woods once.  He was playing MUD, and I asked him "Everyone seems to be afraid of playing against Workshops.  What are Workshops afraid of playing against?"

He said, simply, "Tarmogoyfs."

After my first tourney at Superstars, I axed the Helm and moved the Leylines to the sideboard.  In their place, I added 4 Tarmogoyfs and a Mox Emerald.  I suddenly felt like the MUD matchup was as unloseable as Dredge had once been. The first 'Goyf you play will usually trade with a 5/3, buying you lots of time against a deck that really only runs 8 threats.  The second goyf tends to be a 5/6, and at that point you really can't lose.

Nature's Claim out of the board gives you even more game against 'Shops, and helps with the Chalice-at-2 problem the rest of the deck has.  Claim is also good against Oath, a match-up admittedly made a little bit worse by the 'Goyfs.

My local shop is running its first Vintage event this Sunday, so I'm dusting off the Dark Depths again and getting ready to crush with some 20/20s.  There will be a lot of first-time Vintage players in the room, many of whom will probably try porting their Legacy decks over to this format.  In such an unpredictable meta-game, I want to be comboing.  I want to be ignoring my opponent and just winning faster.  So the question becomes, what is the best way to do that?

My friend, Phil (saspook on TMD), thought I should go back to the mono-black version.  This isn't a terrible idea since I can name at least two Legacy Dredge players I know who are going to proxy some Bazaars and call it a day.  But again... nauseous.  So I've been tinkering with this:

BLUE SPLASH - When you just want Plan A, and you want it now

I'm a greedy bastard and I wanted to run Jace in a Dark Times deck.  Sue me.  So I started testing with blue for 2 Jace, Ancestral, and Time Walk - adding a Sapphire and Mox Diamond to make the mana work better - and I've found Plan A to be waaaay more consistent.  In fact, Plan B has become "do Plan A again."

Phil, again the voice of reason, thinks UU for Jace is just a bit too greedy.  He may be right, and without Hurkyl's Recall, I'm leaving myself open to the trump cards that can actually shut down Plan A (Needle, Ensnaring Bridge [do people even run that card?]).

So after some more tweaking, I've ended up with this list:

4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Dark Confidant
4 Thoughtseize
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Intuition (This is a new addition and the slot I'm the least sure about.  I'm considering trying out Preordain, or maybe running the Sapphire in it's place. Maybe it should be one of the cards that used to be in the deck, like the SB Darkblast or the 3rd Edict.)
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Necropotence
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Pithing Needle
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Diamond (seems weak, but is surprisingly good)
1 Lotus Petal
2 Dark Depths
4 Black Fetchland (1 of each)
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Underground Sea
4 Swamp
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine

Sideboard (very rough)
1 Emissary of Despair
2 Bitterblossom
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Trinisphere
1 Pithing Needle
1 Darkblast
3 Null Rod
1 Engineered Plague

Other cards I've considered for the sideboard: Annul, Spell Pierce, Energy Flux, Perish.

So that's where I am right now,  The extra card draw and tutor(s) make the HexDepths combo more consistent.  I have a bullet against MUD, but I still lose to a Chalice for 2.  I'm no longer favored game 1 against Dredge, but neither is anyone else in the format, and I feel comfortable enough post-board.

This is the deck I hope to run two weeks from now at Superstars, a more established metagame, but (and I can't believe I'm typing this after all I've already said) I MIGHT still run mono-black at my local tourney this Sunday.  It's only because I know there will be a disproportionately high number of Dredgers in the room and I don't expect much MUD.  Maybe somebody here can convince me that the Helm/Leyline combo isn't completely jank.  But right now, I'm (obviously) not seeing it.

How are peeled foils for proxies?

It's definitely not a fortunate thing if Shuffle and Cut needs 20 players.  I have to imagine there's a better weekend for this.

Phil's the best player we've got, and he's judging?  I guess that's good for the rest of us.

Why no decklists?  Seems like there's no reason NOT to have them.