I forgot to address Gifts.  I generally try to just get broken junk to set up for a crushing Yawg Will.  Something like Tinker, Ancestral, Demonic Tutor, and whatever feels spicy at that moment is generally how I go.  When the best option for your opponent is to ship you Ancestral and whatever mystery slot #4 is (usually Time Walk for me), their options are horrible.  One important thing is never actually get Will with the Gifts; Gifts makes your deck really bad if it doesn't still have Yawg Will in it.  My feeling on the card is that if you're resolving it, we're already advanced in to the mid to late game and you already won the counterwar, so the coast is clear to just get broken stuff and win right now.  I don't think I've ever bothered with a mana or value gifts as GI identified them.

I've definitely gotten two robots before, which is obviously game winning with Welder and godawful without him.  Easy decision to make there. 

Likewise, I mentioned casting Gifts on a slaver turn above:  That's the simplest.  Just go get broken stuff, Lotus, and Yawg Will, and make your opponent give you Lotus and Yawg Will.  If you can't figure out how to make that win, you've got bigger problems than resolving good Gifts piles

The vast majority of archetypes can still kill themselves fairly easily.  Some things like BUG Control maybe not so much, but you can still force them to do things like Abrupt Decay their men and waste their own lands and force their own spells.  That said, you win a lot of games by forcing the combo player to tutor for and cast his Necro, or make the control player Yawg Will and dig in to their deck to find ways to bone them.  I've killed Gush players by running them in to their own Fastbond for lethal and won the mirror by using my opponent's welder to weld back my Slaver for me.  I've beaten resolved Oath by making my opponent Oath up Griselbrand and pay their life, and blown out Dredge by means of dredging away the entire library and passing the turn back to myself.  The most enjoyable ones are when you slaver workshops and force them to use Forgemaster to wipe their board and find either Lotus which you use immediately, or let Smokestack eat their best stuff, or run their moxes in to chalice so you have something harmless to weld in for their threats.  It's almost always a game-winning play, and it breaks out of bad board states that typical Tinker targets can't resolve on their own.  It's also highly amusing to cast Gifts or FoF on your opponent's Mindslaver'd turn.

If all I've done is create a deck that Rich Shay and Zherbus netdeck, and brought Kerz and Razor back from the dead, I'll consider my mission here to be accomplished.  GG gentlemen.

As to the build of the deck, I like basic mountain as an option out of the board but I hate it in the maindeck.  The list is very color-hungry, particularly in early turns, and unless red is dropping bombs (and again, Welder is no bomb) that mountain in your opening hand is probably a game loser.  If nothing else, it certainly stinks up the vast majority of hands you draw forcing you to have a lot of other juicy stuff to make it playable.

Night's Whisper is pretty much the entire reason the deck runs, so I'd be loathe to cut it for another draw engine.  While there's some value in exploring the blue-based draw engines, none of them are particularly synergistic with the deck (and the ones that are, are underpowered to the point of that synergy being more cute than effective...)  It can't be overstated how important it is to get two cards right now with Whisper, and it's the reason I favor it over other comparable draw spells including the ubiquitous Dark Confidant.  For what it's worth, pitching to Force has only been an issue for me very rarely given the spells that are high cc and dead in the early game like FoF and Gifts are blue, and I've got no problem getting rid of Dack.  These cards tend to sit in my hand until they're winners, or until I need Force fodder anyway.  The high concentration of artifact mana also lends itself well to just hardcasting the stupid thing, which is pleasant.

Failure to run Library is an inexcusable mistake.  It's shocking to me the argument to cut it even came up.

Welder is awful in the early game unless you're playing against Workshop.  He makes opening hands worse by existing.  Until you've had a chance to set up and accomplish some things in the early and mid game, he's a dead draw.  He still makes the cut because he's backbreaking in the late game and is fantastic against workshops, but he's among the four cards I loathe seeing the most when I need a juicy draw.

I've been running on V4 since I bought in to the online stuff.  I tried the V3 and I found it jarring aesthetically, so I just decided to put up with the memory leak issues of the V4 client.

The problems I've experienced are occasional crashes (usually related to memory leak, but not always) and I did experience the sideboard bug once.  For what it's worth, customer service was extremely gracious and polite and refunded the entry fee of that event with minimal fuss.  I haven't had any issues with the stack or playing cards from my hand, so I can't speak to that.  I also don't rearrange my cards in hand, so whether or not that feature is messed up hasn't bothered me.

It was mentioned above that people dislike the white background in deck building mode.  I appreciated it - the contrast makes it much easier on my lousy vision.  Dark cards on dark backgrounds make for strained eyes.  It would be neat to have the option to replace that background with a color, or use those realm cards as an image background if they're in your collection.  I would prioritize this very low on the totem pole, given the extreme need to fix the horrific memory leak issues and other bugs.

I haven't taken a look to see if they fixed this yet, but one thing to note is that at least when I was running TPS in the dailies, Necropotence didn't exile the cards face down in V4.  They were exiled face up.  I had to cover up that part of the screen with my hand so I wouldn't feel like a cheater.

Simply put, a deck with Welder and two robots already has enough dead draws.  I didn't find that Vault/Key won me any games I couldn't win for any number of other reasons, whereas things like Mindslaver did.  Having Key or Vault turn up in an otherwise playable hand made that hand turn in to garbage very quickly.

Rich got a pretty good chunk of what I was going to say.  As to Jace, it's hard to find room for more 4cc spells in the list.  I experimented with Jace, Notion Thief, and another FoF as another 4cc slot and I disliked all of them because I kept getting hands flooded with no early game.  Of the three, Notion Thief was the most interesting but generally win-more and not worth keeping.  I don't think running a one-of Jace would be bad, but I haven't enjoyed him in the list.  I will freely admit that in the premiere and the last half dozen dailies or so I've run with the list, my only losses were a match to Dredge in which I misplayed game three, a match to shops in which they won the die roll and had amazing hands, and all the rest were to resolved Jace on the other side of the table.  He's the primary reason for the maindeck Spell Pierce (which used to be Flusterstorm) and the sideboard REBs.  I've had people argue in favor of including Bolt in the maindeck and I don't necessarily think that's bad, but my experience with it was that I frequently wished it was a different card.

There's no reason to hate on the archetype, as it's perfectly viable.  There's definitely a question of which builds are actually acceptable, and I think there are some flaws with the list presented in the OP.  Before I dive in too far, here's the list I ran in the vintage premiere this past weekend, which I was able to grab second place with.

Kowal NWCS

2 Goblin Welder
2 Dack Fayden
2 Baleful Strix
1 Mindslaver
1 Myr Battlesphere

4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
2 Duress
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Pierce

4 Night's Whisper
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Fire/Ice

1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl

1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island

SB:
1 Flusterstorm
1 Darkblast
1 Mountain
2 Yixlid Jailer
2 Massacre
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Ingot Chewer
3 Grafdigger's Cage


There are a couple points I wanted to make having had the chance to read through this thread.

1) Mindslaver is still a critical component of the deck.  Mindslaver gives you an out (which is really more like a win) against a myriad of board states and conditions that the rest of the average welder control deck has no solution for.  It's also generally a lethal activation against traditional storm, oath, gush tendrils, and hilarious against an active Forgemaster.  At only 6 mana, it's not hard to just play it, particularly if you've found Lotus, Vault, Academy, or Drain.  Cutting it is a huge mistake.

2) Dack is not an engine of the deck, or a focal point of the deck, or even a good card.  He's there because he's generally synergistic and wins a game hands down against workshop players, but living the dream of having Dack dump robots in the graveyard to be welded in by your active welder never happens.  If it ever does happen, you already won the game and you're just being cute.  What he does do that's helpful is much more subtle - He acquires another artifact for you to get another slaver activation or pump up your mana acceleration to hardcast a big dumb robot.  He eliminates the Tinker plan (unless they have Time Walk, of course) that many decks use to race your card advantage.  He occasionally gets to disrupt the Key/Vault kill which leaves a bunch of players mystified as to why their deck and all of its tutors suddenly suck.  He gets to do all this without being dead otherwise.  Don't expect him to win a game for you outright unless your opponent is playing with Lodestone Golem.

3) The deck requires a legitimate draw engine.  Trying to skirt by with Tops and restricted cards is a good way to get blown out by everybody running Confidant, Gush, and Snapcaster.  There aren't a lot of engines with any synergy to the deck, but Night's Whisper has long been a favorite of mine and is very effective.  As I mentioned in the premiere thread, it outpaces AK during the part of the game that matters the most and it's a fantastic topdeck when both control decks are spent.  It also enables some pretty rapid digging when your mana cooperates.  It has long been my (often mocked) opinion that Night's Whisper is better than Confidant unless your strategy is to punch people in the face with creatures.  That argument is based in the concept that Confidant's best-case scenario is that he survives at least two turns (finally generating a card profit) and lights you up for less than a point or two of damage.  If he continues to draw cards after that, he's either actively killing you (just ask anyone who's flipped a Force of Will) or you already took control of the game and his ability's not hugely relevant anymore.  Night's Whisper gets you those two cards right now, capped at 2 life lost, and your opponent doesn't get to know what those cards are.  It's a slam dunk, and while you can feel free to disagree with my reasoning (most do) in this deck it's critical to take NW over Bob due to the high mana curve and to take NW over Gush because you need your land drops.

4) Strix is actually really good.  I hate saying it.  I thought the card was garbage before I put it in here.  It's pure juice.  It gives you an artifact solution to getting punched in the face by Lodestone, and it kills any random attacking mook except BSC and Thalia.  Not running at least the one Strix is a mistake.  I prefer two.  It's less for welder tricks and more for giving you a cheap, blue, cantripping solution for any hate bear or angel or whatever happens to be punching your face in.


This post is getting pretty long so I'm going to clip it here, but I hope my list can help put the archetype in a different light.

I've seen some of the lists go missing too.  I suspect that when people rename their deck files or delete them to rebuild from scratch, the client isn't able to continue pulling the list for its archives. 

And Phele, to answer your question:  I'm not a fan of Inuition/AK for a number of reasons, but the most basic one is this:  From the first casting, Night's Whisper is ahead.  From the second casting, Night's Whisper is ahead.  From the third casting, Night's Whisper and AK are tied.  If you're casting all four, you're not doing it because you need to, you're doing it because you already won and you're rubbing it in.  Certainly adding a vulnerability to grave hate is part of the equation, and the fact that Intuition is pretty bad without a Welder in play (in which case you're not getting AK anyway) but truthfully it's mostly just that Night's Whisper outpaces AK until the game's already in hand.

I like to think of a turn one Night's Whisper as taking a mulligan that increases your hand size instead of decreasing it.  It's also a saucy raw topdeck.

Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to justify being up that late on a Sunday evening/Monday morning normally but for the first premiere I had to.

Also, in regards to maindeck hate:  I don't consider the more ubiquitous Lodestone removal, like Bolt, to be hate.  There are a couple reasons I'd argue the semantics of this but largely in part to Bolt being completely irrelevant against the rest of their deck.  If Bolt is a hate card, it's a very inefficient hate card.  Welder and Dack on the other hand are frequently removal though they work a little differently, hate the workshop player's entire deck effectively, and are powerful enough to take control of the entire game.  They're justifiable hate because they do other things that have synergy with the rest of the deck, but they're hate cards.  The core of this deck exists because I was tired of losing to workshops and wanted a deck full of trumps.  In the case of this event, I was able to take over matches against Montolio and Thorme because of the strength of these cards.  No matter how you slice it, 4 maindeck slots that work in this fashion against the matchup is a lot.  To put it another way, I always thought the white-based man decks with Kataki War's Wage were appealing because of the ability to maindeck such a good hate card against Workshop.  At most, people were only running 3 of him which I think is correct.  I get to run 4 effects that are even more powerful against the archetype, and have a greater effect in other matchups.

Wizards will publish them tomorrow afternoon.  It's typically around the close of business two days after any given event.

Low turnout for MUD, and nothing more.  Montolio was my make-it-or-break-it opponent in the final round and the only reason I won is because my deck is loaded with maindeck hate and his deck gave him a mediocre hand game three.

Happy to share it, Marc.  I've been playing it with slight tweaks for the past week and change, and I've had a lot of success in the dailies with it.  Forgive me as I'm typing it up from memory and the version I played last night may be slightly different:


Kowal NWCS

2 Goblin Welder
2 Dack Fayden
2 Baleful Strix
1 Mindslaver
1 Myr Battlesphere

4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
2 Duress
1 Mental Misstep
1 Spell Pierce

4 Night's Whisper
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Fire/Ice

1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl

1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island

SB:
1 Flusterstorm
1 Darkblast
1 Mountain
2 Yixlid Jailer
2 Massacre
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Ingot Chewer
3 Grafdigger's Cage


Also apologies to jsiri for getting the deck type wrong.  I saw Bayou and Plains and two dudes of creature type Human before I got smoked, so I just kind of assumed.  Shame on me for assuming!  I was thinking about it on the way in to work this morning - Humans doesn't generally run Jace, but it was Jace who took the boots to me in both games.

Dragzz:  Thanks for an awesome top 4 match.  Game three left me rubbing my head so much I feared I'd go bald.  Such a struggle to pull that game out.

The finals was me vs jsiri84, who was running 5c humans.  His deck had a strong start game one I couldn't keep up with, and my manabase imploded game two so he blew me out in short order.  I was joking on IRC just before finals "wow, it's been a whole day and my manabase is still functioning!"  Serves me right for calling out the gods of fate.  Still, he played well and was gracious after the game.  My record against the deck was something like 4-0 until today, so clearly he's doing something right.

I ran Control Slaver, with 4 maindeck Night's Whisper.  It was manly.

It's an interesting world, but I agree with statements it'll take some time before we see any major innovations.  One thing of note is that because the events are shorter and require less physical investment to play (no travel, etc) people are fine taking risks with their lists instead of playing it safe with a known archetype.  Because of this, we'll see a lot of out-there attempts where some of them are legitimate and the vast majority are actually just bad.  Such is the price of experimentation!

To answer the question posed to be above, I like Misdirection a lot in the list and would probably run it if not for the fact it's a $75 card on the internet.  That said, Bolt and Abrupt Decay aren't the cards I really care about (unless I'm defending a Cage against Oath I guess) but Fire/Ice and to a lesser extent Toxic Deluge are quite dangerous.  MisD doesn't really help me there, so it may not make the cut anyway.

Getting 32 is tricky, but they queue up every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening around 8:30.  The 16-man ones fire in theory every 8:30am, 6:30pm, and 9:30pm.  The 9:30 one is pretty sure fire, but the 6:30 one is more competitive when it does.  Budget seems to be only somewhat a concern - there are fully powered shop decks all over the place, but there are also loads of dredge decks because of their low price.  It's rare to see genuine blue based control, but Delver is quite common.  Delver mirrors are pretty frequent, which is why when they update the winning lists with the 75 cards I won with yesterday you'll see I'm running a LOT of maindeck Fire/Ice, 2 Dazes, and a full suite of Mental Missteps.  And Steam Vents over moxen, but don't look at that.

 

Folks are scared.  Too scared to trashtalk.  Too concerned about the inevitable tea-bagging I will deliver the moment they open their mouths.  All you kids that get paired against me, write yourself a note.  Don't forget to collect your belt when you sign your match slip. 

Oh.  Guess I should turn up, then.

Oh hi.

In tournament play, it's basically only saved Teeg from Pyroclasm.  It was relevant, but not game-breaking.  In testing however, I found it to be absolutely golden against Oath.  Oathing up Iona kinda sucks when Karakas is on the table.

Were I to fit the 4th horizon canopy in, it would occupy the space of one of the savannahs or the second forest rather than Karakas.

I wouldn't bother trying to bluff a different deck.  However, if not for the sake of convenience I'd be running two U/G fetches and a G/B fetch over three wooded foothills to dodge things like Pithing Needle.

If my opponent counters my first one with Force, I'll be surprised if their hand contains anything else that costs more than 3.  Seeing duplicates of him is so bad I actually frequently consider reducing him to 2.  4 strikes me as very, very wrong.

Well let's not worry about the ability to afford things.  The deck is being proposed because it's good, not because it's cheap.

As far as color splashing, it has little to do with the ability to find the lands, and more to do with getting the mileage out of the lands you've already found.  The deck constantly needs GW, GG, and frequently WW.  It needs to be able to support these color combinations while supporting a pile of strip effects, and needs to be able to reliably put those combinations together without having effects like Brainstorm or Sensei's Top to help out.  I have lost games without even running the third color because of inconsistencies in the mana, and no matter how good the new fetches are it isn't going to change that by adding more inconsistencies.

I don't think the black splash is godawful mind you, I think it's perfectly respectable.  I just don't think it's optimal for that reason and the reason that I feel my G/W slots are better than the options black gives me, as I've mentioned.

Actually yes.  It's something I haven't ruled out, and could easily find its way in to the deck.  However, the demand on multiple colored mana sources is high enough that I haven't felt the desire to actually do it yet.


I feel it is fine to run the two.  I like to see one, but it's not the end of the world if I don't.  I hate seeing more than one unless my opponent is Stax.


It's a mixture of the fact that adding the third color hurts the mana more significantly than it seems on paper, and that lots of theoretically great options in black necessitate cutting cards in green and white that are as good or better.  Dark Confidant as an example is a stellar creature who clearly goes in to any build with black, however that doesn't mean I'll be happy to pick him up off a topdeck in most circumstances.  Another thing to consider is that the Stax matchup, as configured in my opening post in this thread, is the weakest matchup (well, non ichorid matchup) the deck has.  Adding black doesn't help you compete with Stax and it actually hinders you by necessitating fewer basics and must-run black slots like Duress effects that are frequently terrible against Stax.

I use the card draw part of Canopy more than I tap it for mana, actually.  I'm considering going to 4.

As for the blue stuff, most of the blue cards you HAVE to run to support force are significantly worse than cards you'd be cutting to replace.  Meddling Mage as an example is actually pretty terrible right now.  Not to mention you have to remove things like Choke, which is almost always an enormous bomb. 

The ways you lose the game, however, rarely have to do with your opponent casting things in the early game.  You lose to things like tutor->tinker, or a combo player going off in one turn, or a stax player who never gives you any better than land and artifact to grow from, or Ichorid being Ichorid (which you can't race even if you draw four goyfs and lotus.)  Admittedly, if I got paired up with someone running an older G/W build with four goyfs, it would be more difficult than a true mirror match.  However, that's one of the most extraordinarily unlikely pairings in the current environment, and after sideboard I'd rather be drawing Exalted than Goyf anyway.


To be fair, the alternative fish/null rod decks people could be playing are mostly terrible, so I can't fault the solid players for not representing them.  This G/W list is the first list I've found that I'm confident is a good null rod style deck since the days of Gay/Red vs Tog.

And lastly, in regards to Fire/Ice - I just looked up both of the most recent tournament results for New England and, including sideboards, both events combine for a total of two Fire/Ices.  I'm actually more in danger of losing one to Duplicant than Fire/Ice...

Oh no doubt Goyf is a fine man against Fish and Workshop.  I just feel that the fish matchup is strong enough already I don't need to run Goyf to win consistently, and that against workshops really any man is almost as effective.  His size only occasionally reduces the clock speed of the deck by one, maybe two if they stack their yard heavily.  I prefer to have Grunt here to make Crucible less effective and to help prevent the primary way I have found to lose to workshop decks, which is recurring tangle wires.


I feel you’re completely wrong.  Cards that are 2-ofs in this deck are cards you don’t want to see multiples of.  This deck wins by drawing a diversity of threats, making it difficult to answer any one thing and still fight back.  I can understand your reasoning, but the obvious decision is made in this fashion – If I see an opening hand with four men that have nothing in common, I am in fantastic shape to win.  If I pull up seven cards with three Vexing Shushers, my hand is awful against everything but monoblue control. 


My list also runs Choke, so you don’t have to point at Steve’s list.  Canonist being a creature doesn’t make drawing multiples of him any better than drawing drawing some other disruptive beater though.  The point about removal is pretty much irrelevant, and is actually another reason running 4 is a mistake.  The removal spells he’ll get hit with, more than anything else in magic, are Rack and Ruin (meaning if you double up on them they get to two for one you) and Hurkyl’s effects (which make multiples irrelevant.)


In almost every single one of the games testing this deck before running it in tournaments, Goyf was ¾ or smaller.  The only times he was any bigger than Grunt, it was completely irrelevant and I could have gone the distance with Squire.  So sure, seeing multiple grunts is unpleasant (usually) and multiple goyfs don’t make each other worse – However, drawing multiple goyfs would mean that I had to run multiple goyfs, who is crummy against most of the field.


Actually, the meta is pretty diverse in the states.  Three to six months ago, I’d agree with you. 


It was a superstar in testing, but it hasn’t come up in tournament play yet other than to save Gaddock Teeg from certain death.  I’ve been happy with it, though.


Why do you feel the third color is necessary?  I’m not arguing that Walk, Ancestral, etc are bad, just that I don’t think the splash benefits the deck that much.  The manabase, as consistent as it seems like it should be, is not.  Further, running Force necessitates running a large number of blue cards to feed to it.  The blue men you’d add to the deck to fuel it are really awful men, which is why I strongly dislike Noble Fish’s approach – most of the men don’t actually impact the game in any meaningful way.