Awesome.  It's good to see you did well with your audible.  To me, there's always been something amiss about Night's Whisper Tezz, though I can't quite put my finger on it.

Ichorid is 2 slots which drastically improve the Workshop match.  What would you prefer?  Running 2 cards that marginally improve the deck as a whole?  You get a lot more percentage points from playing 2 Ichorid than you do from playing other cards that provide little/no utility.  It's not like Ichorid is bad against anything.

Mystic Remora is like a tax every turn, and it's always good to repeal taxes. 

Oh I'm very aware of that, but that wasn't the point.  The 4th Therapy and a lone Ancestral are much, much better in post-board games than a lone DR that can only supply a Troll.  I mean really, if you're in a position to use DR on Troll, aren't you already doing very well on the board?  Why would you want to "win more" on the board?  Therapy is still great in that position, or perhaps even better because it pins down their options to get back into the game, and Therapy is miles ahead when you're not in that position in the first place (which will be the majority of the time). 

Your post-board plan consists of using a DR whilst removing all your DR targets.  I think you can find room for Ancestral/Therapy.

The baby is for lunch.  Oh, erm...hi Matt!

As posted on TheSource:

Play the game as dictated by the official rules, or don't play at all. Players should not and cannot adjust the rules of the game or the system in which the game is played to suit their own expectations without degrading the game itself.

I prefer not to think of it as a leave from the game, but rather as the time necessary to incubate and train a young padawan in the arts of slinging the magical cards.  In no time at all we'll have two Elias characters to deal with at the top tables!

I would appreciate if someone were able to provide a ride for me to this one.  I live about 15-20 minutes from the store itself, right next to North Penn High School, and if anyone is able to help me in getting to the tournament I would be ecstatic.  Let me know in a PM or here. 

Matt, I enjoy all of your articles, but this one was extra special.  I love the light-hearted and playful tone.  It really fits you well.

Well it definitely does something new, in fact I can think of two new things that are worth noting. 

The first is that it's an instant speed Vindicate, which offers a tremendous array of advantages over a sorcery speed Vindicate.  Instant vs. Sorcery speed should not be underestimated in a world with Mana Drain, whether playing with it or against it, and it should also be pointed out that cards like Fastbond and Time Vault can result in winning the game without passing the turn and thus never having a chance to even play a sorcery speed answer.

The second thing is that this produces a creature for Oath.  Oh sure we've seen a number of things that can produce creatures for the opponent, but outside of Forbidden Orchard there isn't anything worthwhile to play.  And having 5 effects that produce a creature for the opponent is better than 4 in an Oath deck, especially when we can use cards like Mystical Tutor to find one now. 

I don't really think this card is going to be outrageous, though that might just be a difference of word choice, but the effect this card produces is something that Oath has always wanted but the choices have always been mediocre.  I've wanted to try and squeeze in a Pernicious Deed, Balance, Grudge/Hurkyls, or some other removal type of card into an Oath deck but nothing has ever satisfied before.  This card is better than Deed and Grudge and Balance by a mile if only because of its mana cost, and unlike Grudge/Hurkyls this Beast Within deals with Chalice at 2.  I've used Nature's Claim maindeck in Oath, and while Beast Within is not as efficient as Nature's Claim it's also much more versatile by being able to stop creatures (Trygon) or planeswalkers (Jace) that are very problematic for Oath.  There are possibilities for mana screwing people alongside a Strip Mine, and I'm also pretty sure this will have a strong impact in the Oath mirror by being able to blow up an opponent's Orchard.

It isn't going to revolutionize the format, but I'm pretty sure this will make the Oath deck significantly better than it was before.

For the purpose of answering Blightsteel there are definitely better ways to approach it. 

I can see uses for Deglamer if you're playing an attrition style against Workshops.  Some people are in for the long haul against Workshops and being able to permanently answer a threat is better than just bouncing it for a turn, and in the case of Steel Sabotage you need to have it before your opponent plays the threat to begin with or it's just another bounce spell. 

Additionally, there are some cards like Wurmcoil Engine that Ancient Grudge can't adequately answer, and being able to tutor up Deglamer will matter.  Also, there's the fact that Deglamer is better than a standard removal/counter when facing down an active Welder.

That being said I wouldn't touch the card. 

Well Dark Ritual is the sort of card that isn't really good against Workshops in the first place.  Even BrassMan talked about SB'ing them out against Workshops.  Sure you get to play Necro which is a huge bomb, and maybe something like Bargain too, but if you can't leverage the speed of Ritual into something effective you're at a disadvantage against other control/combo decks too because you have mana where they have disruption/business.

Ritual is admittedly better against decks like Dredge, Fish, and a few others though. 

Some of it might also depend how comfortable you feel playing cards like Tendrils, Mind's Desire, or other combo oriented cards without Ritual. 

What exactly made you miss Dark Ritual?  It's mostly there for speed purposes, but these decks are pretty fast even without Ritual.

The thing about Gush against Workshops is that if you're playing an effect like Hurkyl's Recall, you only have about a turn to really do anything substantial.  Even without Spheres on the table, you're still limited by your mana available during that free turn.  Sometimes you need to squeeze in as much as possible before letting your opponent have another turn, even if you're not necessarily winning, and Gush being absolutely free to play is a tremendous advantage when you're trying to do something without much in the way of resources.  The last thing a player wants to do is play himself into a corner with no options, but Gush provides an array of options that were not available before - the possibility of an extra land drop, a no-mana-cost ability to see and keep 2 extra cards, free storm, and the potential to "go off" with Fastbond and chain Gushes.  You don't have to make a choice between this spell or that spell, you get to Gush for free and then get 2 or 3 spells instead of just 1 during that free turn.

BrassMan has said before that Gush is better than alternative blue-deck engines after a Hurkyl's Recall effect at making sure you can take advantage of the window of opportunity the bounce spell gives.  This is similar to what I'm saying here, though I'm saying even if you don't win you still want to cast as many spells as possible before the Sphere/Chalice effects reenter the battlefield.  Sometimes all you need to do is bounce their board, build as much momentum as possible during the free turn, then have that momentum lead into a later bounce spell that does indeed seal the game.

And really, what would you rather be doing?  Spending mana to draw cards?  Kill yourself with Bob?  Look at the pretty Jace you can't ever cast until you've already won?

Whenever I hear this problem brought up, the first thing that comes to mind is an individual's use of Gush is far more meaningful than the other cards that surround the Gush itself. 

Brassman detailed a bit of it, but frequently I'll see people using Gush's alternative cost when they could be manually casting it.  I know, paying 5 for a draw 2 isn't exciting, but sacrificing board position is less exciting - especially if you draw into another Gush.  Additionally, some people feel the need to cast a spell the moment they get a chance, but sometimes being patient and waiting for an extra land drop before Gushing is correct.  I guess it's not the size of the ship, but the motion of the ocean.

Interestingly enough, despite my feelings for Fastbond being necessary and vital, I haven't actually gone off with Fastbond/Gush once in tournament play since Gush was unbanned.  I can't tell if this is a result of specific circumstances I've been thrust into, whether the printing of Blightsteel has made Fastbond less important (and Tinker more important), or whether it's just the luck of the draw.  Despite the fact I haven't gone off with Fastbond, I *have* used Gush to a great extent.  I'm using Gush all the time to "generate" mana, artificially build storm, draw into combo pieces like Vault/Key, or just make Yawgmoth's Will lethal this turn as opposed to next. 

Rarely do I encounter problems with having too many lands in hand though.  I do find, however, that alternative mana acceleration helps this problem quite a bit.  I would actually think that Dark Ritual, Mox Opal, or Lotus Cobra are more relevant to this discussion than any other card mentioned so far.

Hey Will, grats on doing so well. 

In our first game of Round 3 I remember specifically you opened with Trinisphere because it cut off a lot of my options throughout the game.  I thought I was in an alright position with the 1st turn Workshop-Metalworker play, but the follow up Duplicant on turn 2 hurt.  A few turns later when we were battling Smokestacks and a Wire against Kuldotha and Vault/Key, it seemed like two titans clashing due to the relatively high power level of each of our hands and it made for a very interesting game, also reminding me of why I love Vintage. 

After playing a nearly identical mirror with Jerry about a month ago, I'm glad to see the deck doing well here.

I thought Sphinx was being singled out for discrimination. =(

You did a good job of explaining how a deck might need this, that, or the other.  And the story about Tinker-Colossus highlights just how good it is to be really fast if there is no specific need.

Blightsteel changes the dynamics of this by a wide margin.  Nothing compares favorably to that guy.  My experiences with it so far have been completely ridiculous.  You talked about how there was a separation between the "immediate impact" cards like Jar and Mindslaver, with the other option being a "big dumb guy" to Tinker out.  But Blightsteel is blurring the line. 

This is a tremendous amount of information, resources, and entertainment.  Thank you for putting in the work for this.

I know you are completely biased against Sphinx, but this part doesn't do it justice:


It's not the very next turn, it's all of the remaining turns of the game. 

You may be able to block and survive, but that doesn't mean you can safely attack. 

When your opponent's answer to your Tinker is to cast their own Tinker, Sphinx trumps Inkwell and Battlesphere.

Ultimately, Sphinx matters when the life total matters.  This matters if you're dying to your own Bob, your opponent has a Tendrils but not enough storm anymore, or if you're playing a deck like Oath that gives the opponent an army of tokens. 

Either way, Blightsteel is nuts.  It's on the verge of stupid.

I have been a big supporter of playing the full 5 Moxen and a Sol Ring in this deck, though it is worth noting that these mana sources are going to fight directly with business slots.  Still I think it's important to include a card like Tinker and support it well enough with sacrifice fodder.  Plus there's the whole Oath thing.  Oh yeah, and there's that deck called MUD which punishes decks without acceleration. 

Yawgmoth's Will is an interesting card.  In some situations you can Entomb a target like Black Lotus or Time Walk or even Recall, then Yawg Will and have fun.  In other circumstances the Will is going to be hit really hard by the opponent who boards in graveyard hate.  It can be frustrating enough sitting on an Entomb/Reanimate combo while staring down Leyline of the Void.  Topdecking a Will on top of that is disheartening when you know it could have been something else.

The other problem with Will is that there is no win out of it.  There's no lethal Tendrils on the same turn, there's no tutoring to assemble Vault/Key, and there's not even the ability to play Will and resolve a profitable Entomb to set up Reanimate.  While playing Will just to recur a Time Walk, Land, and maybe a cantrip is still worthwhile...that's also about the best kind of Will you can produce with this deck too.  I guess it just seems really weak to play this card when you consider that Will is actually a relatively poor card against MUD much of the time too.

Naming Gush is alright, but it doesn't stop Will and restricted cards which is the real heart of the Tendrils kill. 

There's also far too much talk about Meddling Mage here, and not nearly enough talk about the far more powerful 2 drop known as Mana Drain.  That card just wrecks Fish. 

Interesting.

I saw game 3 of your top 8 match.  John's hand was...very good.  I think his opening 7 involved something like Land, Ruby, Ancestral, Pyro, and double Force in hand. 

How was Vault/Key for you?

Also, on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate Blightsteel as a Tinker target on the day?

I'm sure there area  number of subtle reasons.

In order for a Hermit Druid deck to win on a Druid activation, it requires green mana and no basics in the entire deck which is already asking a lot.  On top of this we end up with a 1/1 creature that can also be hit by things like Needle.  And assuming this all works properly, the deck still needs to contain something like this:

-3 Narcomoeba
-Bridge from Below
-3 Cabal Therapy
-Dragon Breath
-Sutured Ghoul
-Lord of Extinction

As such, there are so many blanks in the deck that if the early combo attempt fails it's probably not going to have a whole lot to fall back on.  This isn't to say that cards like Cabal Therapy can't be used effectively, but it's also not hard to draw a Dragon Breath or a Bridge and fall apart faster than other similar combo decks.

With grave hate thrown in, it becomes a lot more challenging.

If there were a card that could help revitalize Hermit Druid, I would think that GSZ would be that kind of card.  It helps facilitate the primary combo, but it also opens up a lot of doors for alternate routes should that primary combo not be an option for whatever reason.

Whether this makes it a deck worth playing I'll leave up to the reader.

Hi Rich, this is Brad.  I played with you in Round 3.

That Phyrexian Revoker naming Top really hurt. =(

It's good to see fresh blood in the Vintage scene, and it must be very reassuring to do so well so quickly.  Congrats.

We had 40 some-odd players and the top 8 looked like this:

John Jones (Turbo Tezz) beats Paul Mastriano (Cobra Gush)
Keith Seals (Dredge) beats Joe Brown (Noble Fish)
Seth ??? (Blue Vault/Key) beats Brad Granberry (Gush)
Rich ??? (MUD) beats Joe Pace (Golden Gun Oath)

Top 4:

John Jones (Turbo Tezz) beats Keith Seals (Dredge)
Rich ??? (MUD) beats Seth ??? (Blue Vault/Key)

Finals:

John Jones (Turbo Tezz) beats Rich ??? (MUD)

---

Sorry for not remembering your last names, I didn't want to butcher their spelling.

John Jones was playing a deck featuring at least 3 copies of Tezzeret, the Seeker, along with a variety of artifact acceleration such as Grim Monolith and Mox Opal which would invariably be used to power out an early Tezz.  So I guess I'd just call it Turbo Tezz though he might call it something else.

I'm not sure what Seth was playing exactly, but it was a blue control deck with Duress and Drains and Vault/Key action.  I don't remember seeing much else except for standard restricted cards and a few standouts like Mis-D and FoF and Nihil Spellbomb main.

Joe Pace was playing the version of Oath that tried to one-shot people with Dragon Breath on an Emrakul or Blightsteel.

EDIT - I was playing Gush, featuring Mox Opal, Top, Vault/Key, and Tinker + Blightsteel.

2-0 vs. Sean with Dark Times
2-0 vs. Mark Hornung with Dredge
1-2 vs. Rich with MUD
2-0 vs. Rob with MUD
2-1 vs. Shawn with Tyrant Oath
ID

Then I lost to Seth 0-2 in the quarters.  

GGs to all, and overall an awesome tournament as always.  

The coolest deck award goes to Matt Elias who played an awesome, awesome deck that started the day with a turn 1 Stormtide Leviathan on the play against MUD.  I'll let him talk about that one though.

When updating MWS, I've always gone to mtgsalvation.

For instance, when I type "MWS mirrodin besieged patch" into google, I get this as my first result:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=294046

That guy regularly updates each set for MWS, and that has always worked for me.

There is a ruling on Burning Wish (and other Wishes in that cycle).


In a sanctioned event, if you were to cast Shahrazad and go into a sub-game, you would not be able to B.Wish for anything except for cards in your SB. 

But I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're playing unsanctioned.  In this instance you can B.Wish for any card from your collection so long as it is not in one of that game's zones. 

These are from the comprehensive rules for sub-games:


You can be playing the sub-game, Wish for a card that exists in the main-game, and it will be brought into the sub-game.  It doesn't matter if that card was in the graveyard of the main-game, the exiled zone, or your coat pocket.  It is not in one of the sub-game's zones, and therefore it is a perfectly valid card to take with Burning Wish.

Furthermore, once you have finished the sub-game, the Burning Wish and the sorcery you find with it will not return to their original places in the main-game, but will be shuffled into your main-game's library along with the rest of the cards in the sub-game. 

So if you B.Wish for a card in your binder during the sub-game, then finish the sub-game, whatever card you Wished for will also be included in your main-game library.

The blue count does dip significantly against Workshops post-board, but with the influx of spot removal there are very few things we *need* to stop from resolving - namely Karn and Duplicant.  And Duplicant is only a concern if we're Tinkering, which is a play we set up on our own terms.

As for SB'ing, Tempus hit it pretty accurately.  My "standard" plan is making all the changes he wrote out, and also taking out Regrowth for a 2nd Needle.  Of course this depends on the circumstances, and SB'ing should be both fluid and dynamic.

Against Oath, keeping it off the board is a viable plan.  Sometimes, racing it is the right thing to do.  In a lot of instances the Oath trigger won't be lethal anyway, like if they reveal a Tinker robot or w/e.  

It's tough for Fish to fight Tendrils in my experience.  This might not be true for everyone, but when I have tested Fish variants (mostly Noble Fish) the Tendrils kill is used far more often than not.  The Fish deck is often loaded with board control elements like Pridemage and Predator, which are all useful against Vault/Key but not so effective against Tendrils.  Cards like M.Mage usually need to name Tinker (or a piece of Vault/Key) before naming Tendrils.  And if you're going off with Will, well, Fish as a deck just isn't well equipped to stop that most of the time.  But that's just my experience.

As for Empty the Warrens, I just don't feel it is a top tier win condition in Vintage.  I'm not a big fan of casting a bunch of spells and passing the turn because it gives too much of an opportunity for the opponent to cast a bunch of spells but end with something that wins immediately.  Of course Empty is a lot better against Fish decks...but they are not a big concern anyway.

But there's a big difference between:

"Fetchland, Go, Spell Pierce your first card, untap with 2 lands available"

vs.

"Sea, Duress, take your first card, untap with 1 land available"

If you're playing a deck like Oath or one centered around Bob or practically anytime you want to resolve a 2 mana spell...you're going to notice a difference between leading with a non-basic vs. leading with a Waste-proof land.  It's not about being immune to Wasteland, it's about being immune for one turn so you can ramp to X (whatever X may be) and hopefully X will drastically improve your chances of winning.