He ran 4 "Juzam's" actually: 1 Djinn + 3 Plague Slivers. 

Still, it's pretty cool to see an updated "Legend Black" finish so highly.
(Yes, I admit the comparison to "Legend Black" is a little fast and loose, but this is closer to the archaic Sui Black than any deck I've seen in a long time.)

Edit - sorry about Necro-ing a dead thread, but it was still on the 1st page, so it didn't occur to me to check the date.  I don't want to start a new thread just for this, but I do want to say it.

I posted a while back about a bad trading experience at Bob's Dual Land Draft, so I thought I would post a different experience I had at Kalidak's Dual Land Draft.  I avoided trading with the guys who weren't playing, just like I said I would, but one guy finally broke me down to look at his binder.  This time the trading went much better, and I ended up trading with several guys who were there just to trade.  My experience couldn't have been more different than last time.  I'm glad to know that there are traders/dealers worth trading with out there.

I'm feelin' this one.  At my very first sanctioned Legacy tournament (a Dual Land draft in Syracuse), I ran into one of these guys in between rounds.  Not having a lot of chase rares, I had brought a trade binder with commons, uncommons, and maybe up to $6 rares that I knew people wanted for the normal Legacy decks (like Duress, for example). 

So this guy pulls out a pile of cards from my binder worth collectively at least $40, even though individually worth .50 to $2.00 apiece for the most part.  He asks me what I want from his binder. I point out a few things, but I pull out Masticore and immediately he gets hostile.  "You don't have anything worth that in here."  I try to convince him that the pile he has extracted from my binder is worth much more than a single Masticore, but he tries to get me to take maybe $5 worth of crap rares I had expressed a mild interest in. That's when I realized he was there not to play, but to rip players off.

So I called it off, took my cards back, and decided then and there that, at tournaments, I will never trade with someone who isn't playing in the tournament.  Maybe I'll miss out on some good trades, but I'll also miss out on jerks who only waste my time and disorganize my trade binder.

I want to make it clear before I start that I am not attempting to accuse anyone of collusion, and to that end I will change the names, but not the words, of parties involved.  I simply want to know why a given situation is not considered collusion.  If you must go and find out who I am talking about, I won't stop you, but please don't drag this discussion down by replying with things like, "Hey, he's talking about Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp!"

Suppose we have players A, B, C, and D, all fairly respected T1 players.

To understand my point of view, lets start with a quote I agree with from A: (emphasis added)


Player B had this to say: (emphasis added, irrelevant text snipped, find the originals if you believe I am misrepresenting what was said)


It is important to note that this is all from B's perspective, so B may be misrepresenting what A, C, and D intended from their actions.  However, it could seem like we have:

Implied collusion between A and C.
Implied collusion between A and D.
Implied, possibly admitted collusion between A and B.

The implied collusion could be nothing more than poor choice of words on the part of B.  A could, in all legality, share some of his winnings, out of sheer gratitude, with C and D after the event, as long as there was no understanding that that would occur when C and D scooped.  On the other hand, if A had an obligation to "pay off" the scoops, that is collusion.

The "admitted collusion" may not be collusion either, possibly if the team's pre-determined prize split was a set prize split, regardless of the outcome of the tournament (is that still concession + prize split=cheating?).  However, B definitely mentions a split under "limited circumstances."  The inference that could be drawn here is that "limited circumstances" is a euphemism for "If I help you advance, then I get a cut; if you help me advance, then you get a cut."

I don't know.  I just got upset reading about how it seemed like people were advancing based on the potential of pay back for concessions.

Unfortunately, full-on intentional collusion happens far more frequently than I like.  Trust me, I get far more upset about blatant collusion than I am about these borderline situations.

Well, you asked for it.  Since I am a new to the forum (sort of, I've been a lurker for at least 6 months), I'm sticking to minor points in deck critique.  So, here is my minor point.

If you are playing this deck to win, play Thermokarst instead of Winter's Grasp.  It is nearly functionally identical, only with a situational bonus.  Mind you, there are only two reasons I can think of for most deckbuilders to use Snow-Covered lands:

1.  If  a deck uses Tainted Pact, then half of it's basic lands should be Snow-Covered.  The Pact can then dig deeper and have less chance of turning up two cards named "Swamp."
2.  Paranoia.  I suppose you never know when you will face a deck that "Echoing Ruin"s all of your "Mycosynth Lattice"d Forests.

I have witnessed reason #1 in real life.

On the other hand, if this deck is not quite that cutthroat, both versions of Winter's Grasp have better art and flavor text than Thermokarst, IMHO.

Like I said before, if you do decide to run with the Thermokarsts, then you should consider Snow-Covered Forests for your own deck.  (Which I guess makes Mono-Green LD with Thermokarsts reason #3!)

Maybe soon I'll get brave enough to make suggestions with a higher impact, but nOObs tend to get slapped down pretty fast in this forum, regardless of the merit or ignorance of their ideas.

Just a minor thought, but if you are going to use Thermokarst, you may want to consider replacing some or all of your Forests with Snow-Covered Forests.  This goes back to the concept of using the most versatile cards possible.  

Snow-Covered Forests give your Thermokarsts a seconday function:  If you ever REALLY need that one extra life, you can destroy one of your own Snow-Covered Forests and gain that one life.  It may come up extremely rarely, but it could happen, and replacing the lands dosn't hurt your deck at all.  (Until Avalanche becomes a force in the meta).