I think the dynamic the poster is missing is that these are two different cards with different aims. Jace is a jack-of-all-trades that specializes as an engine. Tezzeret is a win condition. Just because you have a win condition doesn't mean you play six copies of it. Sure, you can draw it more frequently, but oftentimes having the engine gets you the win condition, and can work in places where the win condition doesn't.

Obviously, it doesn't fit in all decks. It's a control card; it's specifically useful in places where it can work double-duty, like Oath mirrors (reseeding your guys, bouncing theirs). But a topic of "why do people play this card, it's worse than Tezzeret" is too narrow; sure, Jace doesn't win the game next turn barring disruption, but that's a) a comparison of apples and oranges, and b) missing some of the dynamics at work.

I enjoy rereading the set reviews after a few months to compare the initial insights to the final result.

Stephen - what's your opinion right now about Sadistic Sacrament? Discussing my favorite decks ever on another website, I compared Sad-Sac to a less inherently risky Doomsday. Do you think it has become that kind of "I win these matchups right now" card in the format?

One alternative I don't think people have addressed is adapting existing "bonus prizes for non-powered decks" prize structures into a system that accomodates both proxy enthusiasts and the long-run members of the format: offer a set of bonus prizes for non-proxy decks in addition to the usual prize distribution.

What this type of price discrimination allows for is an incentive to acquire Power 9. Considering the sustainability of the format (especially the sustainability of the format in terms of overall tournament participation capacity) is directly linked to ownership of power, as many have argued, providing incentives to acquire power is good for the lifeblood of the format, as it increases their benefit from owning power.

Obviously, charging for proxies is a poor strategy; on a $20-$30 admission fee for the tournament, an extra $5-$15 to play whatever deck you want is a small price indeed. Likewise, saving that five to fifteen each tournament is nowhere near an incentive to acquire power, which leaves the format on the everyone-is-unpowered precipice. If, on the other hand, admission were increased $5 dollars and that money went directly into one or two cash prizes for the highest ranking no-proxy deck outside the regular prizes, you could give out, say, an extra $200 in prizes on a medium-size tournament. Not only does this make the players happier, as one might expect from higher payouts, it provides incentive to acquire power. This is doubly true in smaller groups, where one person acquiring power may have it subsidized by such a payout system, which in turn will get more players interested in buying power.

Furthermore, it increases the incentive to stay in for those who own power but are unsure whether to continue - the kinds of people who react negatively to proxy systems. Where these people might not value their extra five bucks per tournament enough to offset the negative impression made by a proxy system, they might be more interested if they have a chance to multiply that five dollar investment, as such a prize system would permit.

What this does that a no-proxy, extra-prize-to-unpowered-deck system can't is allow for format flow while at the same time increasing stability. Say you're the best vintage player in your store of 50 people without power, but there are at least 8 people with power who can routinely beat you in no-proxy vintage. With the extra-prize-to-highest-unpowered system, that player has little incentive to acquire power, since he's still making bank despite not having power; even if he doesn't make the top 8, he's basically guaranteed prizes due to his skill. At the same time, however, his lack of investment in the format makes it tricky to keep him in. What proxies do is they give a player a taste of the good life, which while not directly increasing format-ownership does make a player more likely to care about the format and his or her success in it; by increasing incentives to buy into the format, meanwhile, he can have greater incentive to re-invest his winnings into the format by acquiring more power, since that increases his long-run earnings, and in turn increases his incentive to stay in.

While this obviously isn't a perfect solution (some people won't be swayed by more money to play with proxies, e.g.), I'm surprised nobody's tried it. Or, at least I haven't seen anyone try it.

I really like the Snare. Gets Mindbreak Trap in combo matchups, gets Ravenous Trap with Ichorid, so you can play those as singletons and play 4-of Snare in pretty much every blue deck. And this is not even counting any other traps added to the format in the other 110+ cards in the set.

Yeah, but those are the only turns you're worried about. By the time you've emptied your hand, you should be casting Cabal Therapies and/or winning. Ichorid's design forces your opponent to win before you can get the Therapy engine online, and this card fills in that gap against combo.

Granted, the card isn't as good against cards like Yixlid Jailer and Tormod's Crypt, but considering you're usually on the draw against those cards, Chalice isn't necessarily great either.

I like this card in Ichorid, since nothing tightens up combo matchups like free counterspells. I could see running this over Chalice of the Void in manaless versions, since both seem to fill the same position (slowing down Moxen-fueled decks), and even if people play around it, they're stuck with 2 spells max per turn, which seems good against pretty much everyone.

To an extent, but you even then don't want more than 7 mana. There's very little in the format that makes sense with 9 mana. The only example where I'd want to generate massive amounts of mana off such a spell would be Channeling myself to death with the Mirror in play.

Well, to be fair, it isn't as if you need to play your Frantic Search immediately; threatening fifteen mana and three cards next turn is a pretty scary thing for anyone.

I think this card ultimately suffers from Channel syndrome: yes, you've got a ton of mana, but what good does that do you? This format isn't about big mana as much as chaining the appropriate mana and spells. Channel is exceptional because it works so well with Lich's Mirror.

Since there aren't any other threads for the tournament, and because it's based on this report: Duncan, you're a moron.

This card isn't good, and the comparison to Mindslaver is bad, for one very important reason: this card lacks immediacy. It requires you to sit on it until your next upkeep, whereas usually with Mindslaver, you'll activate it as soon as it hits play and get a turn immediately. It's atrocious in Oath for the same reason - by the time you get any effect out of it, it's two turns after you originally played Oath, and you could just use Hellkite and Akroma and win immediately.

What did you think about the Dryad? Considering your results, do you think the deck wants more/less?

Other unmentioned upsides of Inky:

1) It's (marginally) easier to cast, especially off a Drain.

2) Islandwalk means it can break robot standoffs, and unless your opponent goes for the Tinker immediately after you get Inky, they can't win the race with DSC, where they could get a stalemate off DSCs bouncing.

How does the manabase work? How many lands do you usually try to get into play? If you're only trying to get 2 lands at a time, I might suggest more rainbow-lands, like Undiscovered Paradise.

That got a major chuckle out of me.

Regardless, congratulations to Brett.

The problem with Banefire is that it is prone to Misdirection and (now, thanks to Meditate-Remora) Commandeer. I think the Memory Jar solution, while a bit more fragile, is unquestionably brilliant. I haven't had a chance to test this deck, but it looks worthwhile.

Fastbond is doing it wrong, sadly. While it is great with Quirion Dryad, usually your concern isn't mana production as much as it's drawing cards, and with only 14 lands, usually you are only getting G back for your G investment, which doesn't merit cutting an elf which does the same thing and works with Glimpse and Clamp.

I like the idea of Horizon Canopy, although if the deck only plays ~14 lands, you want to have a high number of fetches, and Horizon Canopy is trouble when Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon are thrown into the mix. While turn 1 Moon isn't a common play, you don't want to end up in a situation where you're facing down a hand without a green source.

I have played Yawgmoth's Win with GAT and failed to win that turn (because I forgot to Duress him and had to spend too much mana to undo the mistake)... in the finals.

True. But you took it a step further and made those enlightening and entertaining, which is very laudable. The story about trying to deck the Workshop deck put a smile on my face. Nicely done.

You don't need Order of Leitbur. Infinite life, infinite mana, infinite Wastelands, etc. is usually sufficient to win without a mediocre 2-drop that is useless if you're not comboing out.

Yes, you get to draw your dream hand. It also costs 5, meaning you'll need that dream hand just to cast Parallel Thoughts. Plus the fact that, if you're drawing 7 cards at once, they're trying to go off, meaning your "dream hand" will be wonderful to look at while you die.

Best case scenario, it could serve as a mono-blue solution to combo (go find 7 counterspells), but even then, it's worse than, say, Stifle.

Angel's Grace says "damage". Meaning you won't lose this turn, but come the next turn, the game will notice you don't have any life left and kill you. Otherwise it would be playable. And Angel's Grace + Ad Nauseam as a two-card deck-drawing combo is cute, but not terribly powerful, considering it takes up slots you can't lose and isn't much better than a well-designed normal Ad Nauseam deck.

Right. The nice thing about Sup. Field is that it turns off fetchlands, meaning you could very well lock your opponent out of the game on the first turn.

One alternative if you want a Suppression Field-like card that doesn't hit lands is Damping Matrix. It turns off both Goblin Welder and Time Vault, among others, and costs a single Workshop.

You probably don't want 4 Ad Nauseum unless you're playing a significant (3+) number of Chrome Moxen to compensate. Ad Nauseum is really bad in multiples, and you can tutor for it just fine.

Ix-Ir - I think 11 disruption spells is too much. I'd cut 1 Ad Nauseum and 2 Thoughtseizes for 3 Cabal Ritual on first blush.

You can use Tez's second ability (search) to go grab Time Vault. The next turn, you can untap it using his first ability, then tap the Vault to take another turn. Repeat for infinite turns, including drawing your entire deck, playing all your cards, combo-killing your opponent, and attacking with an army of 5/5 dudes.

I'm kind of disappointed that the formatting doesn't resemble that of Mana Vault (which would have made it something like "Doesn't untap during untap step; at the beginning of your upkeep, you may skip your next turn, if you do, untap Time Vault"), which would have been slightly better than this.

At least the Tezzeret combo works as expected.

The deck that probably will make the most out of Ad Nauseum would be an update of Forino Black (the B/u control deck Vincent Forino took to 8th place at the 07 Vintage Championships).

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire

Creatures
4 Dark Confidant

Enchantments
1 Necropotence

Instants
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Echoing Truth
2 Extirpate
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sorceries
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
3 Grim Tutor
3 Night's Whisper
3 Tendrils Of Agony
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Basic Lands
4 Swamp

Lands
2 Bazaar Of Baghdad
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cabal Pit
1 Library Of Alexandria
3 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
2 Underground Sea
1 Wasteland

Obviously it needs tweaking for a different format, it has some interesting choices, and Dark Confidant and Ad Nauseum feel like too much of a good thing, but if you want a black ritual deck, this is probably the place to start. I like the idea of minoring blue for Recall and bounce spells, though.

Eh. Maybe. The problem here is the same with all the blue artifacts, namely that it requires some external investment of effort (although this guy at would just be stupid). At least you can split up the mana off Workshop. I don't know how useful trying to English Breakfast the opponent is, however. A deck like U, U/R, or UW Stax or Aggro-Stax will probably be decent with Alara, but trying to set up a Phage win is a bit too tricky. The first time I read this, I thought it copied exactly, which would mean it would work well with Phyrexian Dreadnought, but no luck.

Just be glad they banned Sensei's Divining Top in Extended, or you could have a really efficient Breakfast deck in that format!

Yes, but Stax doesn't play blue usually, and that severely restricts the ability of decks like MUD to play it. But I suspect this is an artifact in the vein of Eon Hub et al and isn't colored.

Wow. Stopping tutors, Tinker, Gifts, Intuition, fetches, and turns Ghost Quarter into unrestricted Strip Mine (which is especially good b/c the primary solution to Workshop decks players like Menendian use is to sideboard basics).

I definitely think it's better than Tangle Wire.

What is good about this card is that you can moderate it to keep yourself within safe life. That way, you'll be able to turn around and use Grim Tutor etc. to win out. Not an immediately good card, b/c it requires some adaptive design, but quite good.