I believe that person was talking about playing on Cockatrice or one of the other programs that lets you simulate a game of Magic over the internet, but does not actually enforce the rules. MTGO is significantly different, it does enforce the rules, as opposed to just giving you a UI that lets you go through the physical steps of a game.

Man, I just sleeved up this deck list for side events at GP DC, I sure hope I remember to mention the full lineage of the design to anyone I happen to play against, just to be sure that nobody gets the wrong idea about who had what idea when.</sarcasm>

Ok, I stand corrected. People are talking about a sanctioned side event, so I'll have a non-proxy deck, I just don't know what it'll be yet

This came up over on mtgthesource today (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?27010-Anyone-down-for-vintage-at-around-GP-DC), but I figured there might be some people here who who were interested.

Is anyone going to be attending GP DC up for some vintage before/in between rounds/after the GP?

Parts of my Vintage deck are currently loaned to friends who need the cards for Legacy, and I'm not brave enough to walk into a Legacy GP with my power (that only leaves the house for Vintage events), so no sanctioned side event for me, but I'd love to play some proxy vintage on Friday or in between rounds on Saturday and Sunday if anyone's interested.

They were better than the vast majority of commentators I've seen, and I watch a lot of magic coverage. Buehler clearly is a smart player, although a bit out of touch with recent developments, and Pikula has clearly played vintage relatively recently, although he's stopped recently to concentrate on Legacy and formats that one can play at PTQs and PTs. Especially for something like Vintage, where it's specialized knowledge and almost everyone who knows more than that is actually playing in the event, this is the gold standard for coverage. Did they make mistakes? Sure, but they got to the right answer eventually in all the cases I picked up on.

Honestly, the only people who really do better than that are when they pull in a high level pro who punted on day 1 of a PT and have them do coverage on day 2, like they've done with LSV a couple of times recently.

Wow, that is one heck of a story. Thanks.

ggslive (the guys running the coverage) typically have videos archived online after the events are over. Probably sometime this week? Sadly, the current broadcast isn't archived on twitch.tv in realtime like scg does with their broadcasts, but they should be available eventually.

I'd love to hear the story of how he got that stolen set of power 9 back at GenCon. I mean what, did the guy who took it just try to flip it to a dealer in the next room or something similarly stupid?

Video coverage would be awesome, and should clearly be done, but for me the single most important thing for an event in the summer is a venue with some form of air conditioning.  My car load bailed out relatively early in the event due to the heat.  We'd have been happy to stay for side events, but it was simply too hot in the room.

More like "random coincidence that the weekend of the newly rescheduled legacy/vintage champs happens to coincide with the previously scheduled release date for an annual product" IMO.  Will it result in some tournament players cracking boxes to get cards?  Maybe, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the number of these things they sell.

Agreed, this was loads of fun.  Did anyone get the final count for number of players?

Here (around Boston) most events allow proxies, although there is one regular sanctioned event that's been growing in popularity over the last few months.

How can you Time Walk three times via Snapcaster and Yawgmoth's Will?  Snapcaster gives flashback, which exiles the spell after it's cast, as does Yawgmoth's Will.

Out of curiosity, how are pre-regs going?  Any numbers?

Regarding the proxy rules, would proxies created by taking a similar card (i.e. spellbook for black lotus), erasing the different portions of the card (in this case name, art, rules text) and replacing them with sharpie be acceptable?  Or do you have to literally blank the entire card?

Can't believe I got that wrong, the heat must have gotten to me!  Next time we should write down deck lists or something for the curious denizens of the internet who didn't make it out to Myriad.

12 people.  The top 4 split.  I made top 4 with Grixis Welder Strix, the others in the top 4 (I believe, this is from memory) were ELD with his typical Grixis control list and a Workshops deck and a Bomberman deck (the player names escape me, I'm terrible with names and have only played here a few times).

Highlight of the day for me was game one of the quarterfinals where I got a turn 2 kill off a Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas ultimate.  Turn 1 Tezzeret off Academy plus some artifact mana, then turn two hard cast Myr Battlesphere and ultimate Tezzeret with 10 artifacts in play.  It was epic.

Thanks!

I'm planning on attending this as well.

Any chance of getting deck lists this time?  It'd be nice to have them to go with videos.

Say you have 10 singletons in the deck, let's call them A through J.  Each is good against one or more of the archetypes you feel you might face.  Say cards A, B, C and D are good against Dredge, C, D, E and F are good against Shops, E, F, G and H are good against Blue control and G, H, I and J are good against Storm.  The clusters he's talking about are the sets of singletons (or 2 ofs or whatever) that are good against particular archetypes.  It's a way of thinking about deck construction that allows you to build a strong deck by providing a versatile set of cards, each of which is good against more than one type of opponent, as opposed to a bunch of playsets each of which is only good against a single archetype.

The video coverage is great, really top notch stuff, although it would have been nice to have at least one match that didn't involve BUG fish.  Are the deck lists and/or any other info on the tournament available?

The main difference that I can see is that you can drop the pyromancer a lot faster than you can drop talrand.  A turn 1 or 2 pyromancer lets you start building up your little army of elementals a lot faster than you could if you needed to get to 4 mana for talrand.   This, combined with the fact that it's not a legend, means you are hopefully going to be building that army of elementals quickly enough to let it help you against shops (things to tap to tangle wire, stuff to sac to smokestack, chump blockers to stop lodestone).

Talrand requires you to get to 4 mana and THEN do other stuff before you really get the benefit from him, and can really only be played as a 1 or 2 of and that means you're casting a bunch of your instants and sorceries in an effort to actually find and play him.  He does have the advantage that his tokens are bigger and fly, so they can end the game faster, but you have to get to the point where you've got him in play and have made the tokens, and pyromancer seems like it'll let you start that process a lot faster.

Empty does get you more tokens faster, but it has to be at least a medium sized storm turn, pyromancer can hit the table with no other spells being cast that turn and still be a useful play.  This is especially important against shops.

Of course, this is all theorycrafting, I haven't proxied it up yet.

Great, the Marriott was basically what we were leaning towards anyway.

Thanks!

Before we just semi-randomly pick one based on internet reviews and proximity to the event location, does anyone have suggestions for a local hotel?  We're looking for a place to crash on Friday night after the absurd post-FNM drive from MA.

And our carpool has expanded!  Please add Mike Lieberman to the prereg list as well.  We're working on one more, but he's not yet fully convinced...

Thanks!  It'll make it infinitely more likely that I'll actually remember that these are happening.

Sure it's strong, but it's also playing $3k worth of power.  I'd hardly call that budget.  Can you play it without the 3 moxen, lotus, walk and ancestral?  Sure, but it's not the same deck at all.

That makes a lot more sense.  I was wondering why he'd play 1 DRS

Looks like Marco Farrugia's main deck is only 55 cards.  Missing some lands perhaps?

Acually, Alex Brown's main deck is also short, it's only 57 cards.