As a teammember and friend sucking does not begin to describe the feeling.

The memories live on, and its good to see so many of you respond. Not only for us but mainly for his family. We will make sure your condolances will  be forwarded to his family.

Marco Kiewit
Proud member of ISP

It is true, all true. Having your painter blasted by a ReB is a bit cruel and it happens. having a FoW played with a land pitched is a bit cruel. Then again assuming that keeping painter of the board being your primary target is a good strategy. I see just a few problems with that. I can look for them, i can recur them with both welder and scarecrow, and i play four so chances are i will draw one or the other very soon, either with the cantrip as you describe it, or with the bazaar engine i will be trying shortly.

Facts are indeed in your favor. A lot of people do play artifact hate, do play chalices, do play graveyard hate. But the beauty of it is, all of it can be destroyed with a simple pyro or ReB with painter in play. Without painter a lot of decks rely solely on blue spells for their drawengine. You can counter that anyways.
And then there was creature removal. Then again, this is vintage, not that many creatures, not that important, so not to many people playing those, so not to big a concern.

You say pounding of 1 a turn is not to much and will give you enough time. Then again getting pounded by 4 1/x critters is getting annoying. Especially when you do not have to many things to get rid of them. Sure, you could try and set up your win. But unless you use all black spells and black tutors it is going to be hard with a blue drawengine almost dead due to ReBs.

This all seems a bit bitter. But i have won more games due to little critters going all the way than from my combo. Never forget that little critters can go all the way. But i also know that fast combo is probably getting the best of me if i do not have a killer opening. But that is true of virtually every deck out there. Sure this seems a fairly straightforward gameplan. And sure it is easily disrupted when you know how. But knowing how it is disrupted gives you the edge to play so you can protect your key cards. This is where skill becomes important. Now i am not saying that i am a good player. But i have won on luck as well as on skill. I also lost due to luck and skill. But it is a fun deck to play and it is hilarious to stomp somebody to mush with little critters knowing they cannot play their DSC due to an instant kill if they do.

About the wastes. I do not seem to find the place for those, but otherwise they would be included. But having the magus is almost as good as most decks really rely on the many colours they play and will have instand dead cards and dead draws after magus is played.
About scarecrow, sure it may seem week, but will win you games if only because people do not understand that that card can bring back your painter. And that card can protect painter from StP as well. just a thought.

Then again you didn't miss much, and you missed loads.

I know, but having them only draw DSC every turn pretty much is game as well, even if they manage to discard it every turn.

As i said, i need to try out the bazaar in the deck. It absolutely seems good. I only vented my own worries about the non compatibility with magus. But it probably is a better draw engine than goblin lore as you get to choose which cards to discard. With magus you have the extra mana for whatever needs you desire. So i am not discarding the idea at all.

I also like the idea of main deck chalices. But to cut the crypts for it, i don't know about that one. I would need to find the space somewhere though. But together with the knowing what to discard pile from bazaar i could cut some things i think. Definitely worth a go.

I am not overly fond of the monkeys though. Most of the time i can wait one turn to play painter or just play him with off colour manasources and protect him with a mountain. As i wrote earlier, most of the time i am the control deck so take your time.

That indeed is something i need to look at but my first impression is that it will not work that good together with magus of the moon. And most matches you need the early magus or the early mana so turn 1 bazaar is not that good. It is good for digging, but i see synergy problems.

Gamble was in my original build. When i tested with it and played with it it was more often than once just a dead card in your hand. You never want to draw into one when your hand is almost empty and you really need something. So late game more often than not it is just a dead draw and you dont need that with this deck. Goblin lore lets you dig fast. Lets say you hand is empty and you draw land, recruiter, welder, ReB which is pretty possible. You have a 75 percent chance of getting a better card. If you draw gamble it is just dead.
Another reason not to play gamble is to get more in your graveyard to get better use out of welder and scarcrone. With goblin lore and control the court you fill you graveyard with more cards so you get better use of your graveyard critters.

Gamble as to find what you need together with welder makes it good. And early game you would prefer it over goblin lore. But to assure yourself to have one early game you need to pack 4 and that means really bad draws mid and late game. But i think this is a personal preference if you want to play this or not.

Most of hte time you are the control player. If you realise that you will understand to get welder and/or painter up as quickly as possible. Scarcrone is very well to get early on as well. Getting painter up and running is critical cause of your control plan with the 7 ReB/pyro. More than once i went all the way beating with a couple of little critters due to early painter with protection.

Another card i tried early on was Wheel of fortune but that was always the first card to get sided out. You dont want to give your opponent a full hand again.

Two reasons this deck works is that the amount of critterdecks is minimal in vintage and you have maindeck counters against all blue spells.


About faery macabre. I have never even considered it as an option as you barely need it. The 3 tormod crypts work great. And as you dig deep fast you will find one easilly enough. Getting an active welder again is key to this control plan. And as Colossus never even hits the graveyard you cannot get rid of it with this card, only blessing. And lets face it, more people are playing colossus.

The sideboard is still pretty shaky. The Extra Blood moons and magus of the moon are good but you almost never play with all 6 of them.
The extra blast i would like to have main deck but dont know what to cut for it.
The active volcanos i never boarded in so can become something else.
the 3 shattering spree's are very good and will probably get a number 4.
the extra crypt is very good when you need it.
the 3 lava darts are when you play another goblin welder deck. You really need to kill that one. This card works well with forgotten lore as you can play it with little cost from your graveyard when you need it.

So you pretty much have 4 slots open in your sideboard.

gamebreakdown:
combo:
get out your crypt and magus as soon as possible. This will slow them down for sure. With painter on the board you have more counters than they have so you should be able to pull it out of the fire.
Post boarding some extra bloodmoons and crypt.
You will do nothing against a turn 1 kill if opponent starts, that is something you will need to be comfortable with. But nowadays it is not as common as it used to be so i am cool with that and will take it. When you start game one you have a good chance. But without turn 1 kills you are in pretty good shape. If you know they play the tinker colossus combo as well or alone, get your combo and beat him to death. If he plays tinker colossus grind him or do it with a draw spell on the stack. Timing is everything here.
50/50 at best.

cerebral assassin
With your tormod crypt main deck you have a pretty solid gameplan against this deck. I would say very favourable, especially after boardign in your shattering sprees. Important other cards are your magus and painter with ReB effects.
Very favourable machup.

Stax
With your welders and your discardplan i think this is a good machup. Again the magus will do you proud when you play him. After boarding the sprees make it an even better matchup. Especially as this is somewhat slowish. And you have less to fear from wastelands.
Favourable matchup

Oath
This one is tricky but doable.Having an early painter and/or an early magus is critical here. If there is an oath on the board get rid of it with a ReB or Pyroblast after playing painter or reb the critters and crypt the graveyard with the critters in it. As long as you manage to keep oath from the table you habe a fighting chance. The new dragon can be ReBed with painter in play but Akroma still is to much. A possibility would be to play some StP sideboard and some Red/white lands. But then you ned to play fetches. So that is something to think about for this matchup. Most important card to get up fast is magus or bloodmoon.
i would say 40-60.

Control slaver
As long as you manage to keep triskelion of the table you will win. Lava dart is important in this game. If you get your combo on the table you will win. magus is not as important as a good player will get basics anyways. getting a welder first is also a good thing. As you have a load of ReBs mainboard you have a very good plan against his counters. So make sure to take your time before making decission. He plays a slow deck so take your time as well. You play more critters but his are bigger. After boarding spree is very good as well.

Ichorid or dredge decks
Your mainboard crypts will help you a lot. Getting a fast welder and a crypt will win you the game. Magus will help as well getting his bazaar out of the way. So you have all 3 games a good plan against the deck. As you play a lot of critters he will need his bridges and you have some ways to get rid of them with welder.
A little favourable due to the maindeck crypts.

fish and other critterdecks
As you play a lot of critters yourself you can buy yourself the time you need to combo out. Especially usefull is the scarecrone/painter recurring drawengine/blockmode you can get into. Will get you cards and will keep him at bay long enough to become deadly with grindstone.
Very favourable.

This concludes this session. If you have more comments or questions do not hesitate to ask.

After i heard about the painter/grindstone combo i was set on playing it. I saw the blue/red control version but did not really like it. So i started on my own mono red version. First of all my decklist:

8 mountains
4 Great Furnace
2 Ancient Tomb

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

4 Grindstone
3 Tormods Crypt

4 Painters Servant
3 Scarcrone
4 Goblin Welder
4 Imperial Recruiter
3 Magus of the Moon

3 Goblin Lore
3 Control of the court

4 Pyroblast
3 Red Elemental Blast

Sideboard
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Magus of the Moon
2 Blood Moon
1 Tormods Crypt
4 Active Volcano
3 Shattering Spree
3 lava Dart

About the cardchoices:
painter/grindstone main kill, theme of the deck so no discussion. Both you play 4 as you need to get them asap.
magus of the moon is really good as you are mono color and your artifactland remain just that, artifact land.
goblin welder is just so good if you lose a counterwar or if you have a streak of bad luck with your draw engine.
Imperial recruiter finds any critter you need, seems like a nobrainer to play.
Scarecrone, this is one a lot of discussion will be on but i like it very much. It can keep your painter from stp by saccing it and drawing a card and then return it to play again if you have 4 manas. If you have loads of mana you have a draw engine backup plan.

Tormods crypt seems a nobrainer as well as so many decks play with either darksteel colossus or gaeas blessing. Main deck you have a gameplane against ichorid as well as combo with this one and magus.

Goblin lore and control of the court are your draw enginge. Most people will argue that they do not like those cards because of the randomness. But i will say 2 things. Timing and digging. You need to dig fast with this deck to either find grindstone or welder or recruiter if you do not have them and this will find them. Chances are you will get one or more of the desired cards very soon. And the central cards you mostly can weld back in if you have to discard them. And all of that for 2 mana.

The reb and pyroblast are fro protection against counters and against everything when a painter hits the table.

Sideboard i am still working on. But so far it has some promising results.

Comments?

I have to say I like the new restrictions. It will probably pull me back into vintage. As other people have said, to many decks started with 4 times 4 of the restricted cards. And if they hade not restricted ponder it would just be the brainstorm replacement. This way they cut deep into the few archetype decks that would actually run these cards as well as some combo decks. And WotC has always tried to make magic a two people interaction game, a critter batle game. Not a oh i will win in one turn and you can do nothing about it game. (does not have to be first turn, but mostly in one of the first three turns while playing almost 15 minutes a turn)

Now i am sure that vintage is way past the massive critter battles. However the changes that have been made now will open the road for a whole lot of old and new archetypes. Last tiem i played all deck that were different from the blue brain, scroll, gush decks were wiped. Not because of bad players behind the other decks, but just because the decks were so overpowering. Now all those decks that didnt have a chance will have a chance to come back.
Next to that, people can go back to the drawingboard for all new decks. In the last two years a whole lot of new cards have surfaced and i think new things can be made. Time is the best word for it, people will need to invest time. And as we all know, net decking is so very easy that most people dont work on deck innovations. (i am hoping that the few will outweigh the many here and that innovative decks will surface again)

As long as archetypes like workshop and bazaar decks will not dominate the field those cards will stay as they are the basis of good but not overpowering decks.
Well, just my 2c.

start talking about any ex girlfriend during sex.

Admit you are gay.

Now there is something scary. Bram as judge and jury all in one...

If the woman gets the info i hope it was worth the loss of her limbs. If now i hope they sew for every dime the hospital has and hope that the hospital is closed down for malpractice. This truelly is mindblowing.

The higher they fly, the deeper they fall...

Gratz man, keep it up and good luck with her dipers...

I am not talking about unlimited number of reprints. But i think if they reprint power (which i think they won't) the prices would sooner rise than fall if only because the demand will only get bigger. In the end people like to have something real instead of a proxy. At the same time they could make vintage a viable protour option as the cards would be available. Again more demand...

But then again, i have yet to see my first miracle...

As i just lost half my job (could keep the other half, my glas is half full hehe) i will have a lot more time on my hands soon enough, perhaps even when ye are here. So my offer stands.

I am not sure, but this could have originally been a collectors edition card. The corner indeed looks a tadd weird and could have been home made. The collectors edition was with straight corners. If you cut them correctly they are almost the same as beta or alpha. But in this case it seems a miscut.

Again i am not sure about it. Could be real.

Then again, could be fake...

Just to be on the safe side.

Commandeer  (UU5) instant
You may remove two blue cards in your hand from the game rather than pay Commandeer's mana cost.
Gain control of target noncreature spell. You may choose new targets for it. (If that spell is an artifact or enchantment, the permanent comes into play under your control.)

Is it right when i assume when you commandeer a tendrils of agony, you only get the first spell and not the storm copies. My confusion is about the wordts:
"You may choose new TARGETS for it".

I may just go see this after all...

Dark elf trilogy by RA Salvatore. Would spawn a whole dark elf tribe in black. Red would gain more dwarfs while white and blue would be getting more wizzards and clerics. Green would be getting a whole different range of critters and normal elves opposed to the black ones. Blue would also be getting some aquatic elves. The possibilities would be enourmous because it allready is not a trilogy but alike 15 books or something.

Any book by Salvatore could be used for this by the way. They all have these same sorts of opposed races and good and evil.

You planning on using this in your thesis Bram???

Perhaps global warming isn't so bad hehe

If it was me i would be taking the first one as it is closest to the centre of the city. It all depends on how you plan to come to Amsterdam. IF you come by train i really recommend you take the first as it is the least trouble moneywise (closest to the trainstation so taxi costs less) and walkwise.

The other two seem fine as well and also depends on what you want to do in Amsterdam. Still to me the first one seems to have the best location for whatever you want to do.

If you could elt us know what time you want to go to Amsterdam i and perhaps other dutchies can look if we have the time to come and show you some stuff. I am sure there are several people that would be honoured to show some things of our capital.

Another plan is to make a list of what you want to be doing and things you really want to visit. Perhaps people can do some research how to get where easiest. If i have evening shifts i could come and show you around some if you want. Would be nice to meet up. 

This is a question about minds desire but a slightly different one.



Lotus Bloom
Suspend 3- 0(Rather than play this card from your hand, pay 0 and remove it from the game with three time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, play it without paying its mana cost.)

Now is suspend an additional cost or can Lotus bloom be played from a desire in a way you can use it right away and be towards your spellcount on during the turn.

We were there as a group of 6 dutchies. We allready had plans for the time the vintage tounrament was being played (saterday starting at 1600 hours is a bit late for my taste, but that could be me). If we had played there would have been 6 more powered decks.

We said hello to Dozer and to lots of other people and had a blast with all kinds of side events and collecting. For me it was the first time i could get time of from work to go to such an event so i was amazed at how many people actually scurried around.

I played in the legacy tournament with my own version of affinity with dark confidant. After being 4-0 i dropped after 4-2 because then i could make a train home (at toads). This event also started at 1600 hours and was ready at 3 in the night. For people staying close not a problem but i have heard of a person not getting home till 7 in the morning because he had to walk accross half of Paris. I do not say these events should start the same time as a PTQ but starting at noon should be within possibilities.

I had a blast with rare drafting and still getting decent to good decks. Anyways, i had a blast the whole week, not in the least because Brittany chose to guide us all over Paris. Never had such a nice guide.

In a strange way Wheel or Deal. I have been playing magic since 1993 and have been playing my own junk decks for a long time. I also have been taking breaks from the game from time to time. At the time my latest creation was a wheel or deal deck with megrims. When a friend of mine told me a cool new card was printed and that my deck could become really good with it.  It turned out to be tendrils of agony. That deck turned out to become my first TPS creation and i have been hooked on the game competitavely. I even am considering to try and go back to some standard next to vintage now. Basically when i hadn't have played the wheel or deal deck i perhaps never would have started playing TPS.

First of all these are almost all fish options. Fish is not a deck heavilly played here so that is a plus. Then again, speed does solve most of these problems. A couple of clamped dudes can do many damage fast which could be key.

Workshop aggro is slower and has a draw engine that is a lot worse. Hence, i keep this over WS aggro any time of the day.

You can clamp them dudes in your turn to get a draw engine and leave your opponent with just 1 big dude to hit you. Sure that hurts but a dude with a plating hurts just as much and you can make sure you  draw a whole lot of artifacts with all them dudes you can clamp.

About it not being the best draw engine, this is as good as any draw engine when meeting counters or recurring wastelands. The openings you were talking about would wreck just about any deck. So i do not think it a good example.

I never said Eon hub was good, it was a possibility. And for a fish player to have all the answers against this deck would mean for him to have a god hand. Again, never said this to be a godly deck, but it is a good and very stable deck to play something different and still pretty quick.

We should have to test that. But on the surface i would say no.You need to play as  little coloured cards as possible. Firstly to make your plating more usefull and secondly to make your ravager more usefull. Next to that this is a card i would not want first hand. The rest of the deck i would really want in my first hand. If only to get speed. As i see it this is a win more card (as in clamp more card) Then again, as said, i should test with it, perhaps as a 1 of or 2 of it could work.

You would think affinity speeds you up but it actually slows you down. You underestimate the speed you get with clamping dudes. You would think you will deal less damage while you actually deal more damage as you get to see more cards and thus can play more cards so your ravager gets bigger faster and plating gets nastier faster. Prhaps you are saving mana but you do not need mana when not drawing cards. Never underestimate the drawengine in this deck. It is brutal when done right. (i am far from perfect with it)


You are right that a good player will bounce at the right time when he has his bounce and then has enough gas to combo out. The nice thing of this deck is that you force your opponent to bounce due to the sheer speed of the deck. So it is either to early for him to bounce or he has to use resources to find the bounce. And believe me, mostly a combo player will need all the resources he has for his combo. So the main disruption you have is speed. After boarding in the eye of choas can help as well.


Null brooch seems an obvious choice as you would imagina that your hand is empty much of the time. When played right your hand should be filled most of the time, making null brooch actually quite expensive. As almost any card you play is worth drawing two cards your hand should keep filled.

On a side note. When playing oath consider that you can clamp the dudes they give you to fill your hand and dig for the staff of domination/metalworker combo. You also can win by saccing all to ravager and then saccing ravager to triskelion to either shoot an angel down or shoot your opponent down. Another nice option is to get a dude plated and actually try to race the oath player. For that reason you could play rainbowlands to change the plating at instant speed from dude to dude. Plenty of opportunities.

Against fish it is pretty much to get metalworker out and keep you hand packed with artifacts to pay for kataki or flux. Eon hub is only a last resort i am not willing to put in the board just yet.

http://www.qmusic.nl/page/q-djs/Menno/

just scroll down and see the tattoo dude....

To be able to withstand sundering titan, a critter of choice here in many decks. But they will be replaced by rainbowlands soon. More flexibility that way.


As you can see i do not play any affinity critters. Reason is that most are not clampable. As skullclamp is your main drawengine you should not be affraid to clamp dudes for cards. The more cards you draw the more threats you have and the more mana you can make. This deck is not about hitting people with many critters, but to hit with a few but then very hard. As said, turn three kills are very common when not opposed. Another thing a lot of people seem to forget is that an early FoW will cost your opponent 2 cards, making it a lot harder for him to combo early on. Chalice 1 is annoying but still has to come down turn 1 to be really effective. Null rod is aanoying but you can still hit with dudes and most decks that run null rod are not that quick themselves. To get back to metalworker, it is not so much to cast critters as it is to use skullclamp to its full potential. When using metalworker with two moxen in hand those moxes axtually render you 6 mana, which means, casting a 1/1 dude, clamping it (getting 2 cards) and do that 2 more times, actually rendering you 6 cards. So metalworker as well as cradle are part of your draw engine. It also helps you get out your finisher, trike more easilly.


The opposite is true as well. If they do not destroy or counter it they will lose. I prefer to see the positive things of it. Most decks play less artifact destruction than i play metalworkers.



Null rod is annoying, but as said, null rod slows everybody down and mostly i have more critters than the opponent. And modular still works. Besides, they (frogmite and crusher)hamper your drawengine, so basically are dead draws.



Null rod as said before is annoying but can be dealt with with the naturalize. As said before, people playing null rod will be slow and will have less critters. So yeah, beating them with 1/1 will help a lot and modular as well as retriever still work as far as i know.
Chalices actually hurt, but still can be dealt with. As most decks are hurt by chalice 1 or 0 due to power this deck is as well. Still this deck has some winconditions left after those 2. Naturalize again helps as well as having more chances of hitting the board with something costing 1 or 2 sooner than a chalice. Again the positive thinking actually works. The only decks actually not hampered by chalice 1 are dragon and staxx. Dragon was bad enough but not much played, staxx is an autowin anyways and keeps that way.
Mass bounce only becomes a problem when played EoT. Obvious but you will force your opponent to either cast it early to buy him time or do it during attack when you beat him to death after which you still can cast all again.


Eon hub could help here, against oath as well, but it seems a bit slow. The best thing against energy flux actually is tolarian academy or gaea's cradle when having multiples. Another solution is naturalize or having a metalworker with 3 or 4 artifacts making sure you keep the pressure. Flux actually hampers opponents as well which gives them but also me the chance to build a board. Mostly i am faster.

I am not saying this is the new deck on the block, i am saying it has a chance against anything. It has possibilities against anything. The disruption maindeck is few to zero. The choice to do this is pure speed. All disruption goes against the synergy of the deck. This is to look forward, not backwards. Just imagine to have a 1/1 with 2 moxes, a plating and a random other artifact. Together with 2 lands you can do 5 damage turn. Also realize that necro and bargain lose their value quickly this way. With a clamp this artifact heap could become very big very soon. And it is a lot of fun beating somebody's face in with a former type 2 card while he has a heap of power in his hands. It is not the new comming, it is a nice deck that can easilly beat face and is very consistant.

One last thing. Mass bounce when played by an opponent mostly means they are at the defence. This means they will either have used resources to get to the bounce, rendering their gameplan less effective, or be a lucky topdeck. And that last one is part of the game. annoying but you win a lot and lose some hehe.

This deck has its basis in a deck Jesse River played some time ago.

Jesse River - Affinity
Maindeck:

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Memory Jar
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
4 Sphere Of Resistance
3 Sword Of Fire And Ice
4 Tangle Wire

Artifact Creatures
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Metalworker
4 Myr Retriever
4 Myr Servitor
3 Triskelion

Lands
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City Of Traitors
4 Mishra's Workshop
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

Legendary Lands
1 Tolarian Academy

Sideboard:
4 Chalice Of The Void
1 Crucible Of Worlds
3 Eon Hub
4 Phyrexian Furnace
3 Razormane Masticore

After seeing this deck Hero started tinkering with it so I have to give credits to Hero for perfecting the ravager gameplan. Cranial plating really is the hots for this deck that has yet to get a real name. If it was up to me i would name it cranial clamp. First i will put the decklist up and then i will be explaning a bit, perhaps a lot. This is the list i was playing in last tournament making top 8 as number 1 losing in the quarters due to some really bad luck (crypt wise). But on the whole is pretty solid. Next to me Hero has played a couple of tournaments winning a twister and a library of alexandria in the process. It is a very strong contender people tend to underestimate. First the decklist:

1 black lotus
5 moxes
1 sol ring
1 mana vault
1 mana crypt

4 mishra's workshop
2 ancient tombs
2 city of traitors
1 tolarian academy
1 gaea's cradle
4 yavimaya coast

4 arcbound ravager
4 arcbound worker
4 myr servitor
4 metalworker
2 triskelion
3 myr retriever
2 ornithopter
1 arcbound crusher

3 cranial plating
1 memory jar
1 staff of domination
4 skullclamp

1 tinker
1 time walk
1 ancestral recall
1 crop rotation

Sideboard
3 choke
2 in the eye of chaos
3 naturalize
1 trinisphere
4 sphere of resistance
2 jesters cap

The game plan seems obvious and it is in a way. Beat your opponent to mush before he establishes control or he can combo out.

Draw engine:
You have one main draw engine being the skullclamp. You are playing a a whole lot of small low costing critters that can beat or be sacced to skullclamp drawing you a whole lot of cards. The ancestral and memory jar (through tinker early on, retriever could make this recurring)) are the random handfillers that can win you games.

Beatsticks:
Off course ravager is your main beatstick. So drawing into a whole lot of artifacts and having them on board will give you huge ravagers. The nice combo here is with either cranial plating, your small critters become big fast due to the many artifacts, or with trikes as finishers.

Random wins:
The staff of domination with the metalworkers can mean a random turn two win. Next to that the metalworkers will give you a  lot of leverage against control decks. The many manas it gives when your hand is packed with artifacts will give you the opportunity to get at least a few spells that matter through the wall of counters.

Manabase:
The metalworkers give you so many extra manas that the 23 landtype manas are more than enough. Next to that you do not need a lot of mana to actually be able to do something. There is room for improovement here though. As i kept it green blue the coasts were sufficient. But both maindeck and sideboard could benefit from rainbow lands. Another change that could be made are the number ancient tomb and city of traitors in the deck. If you lose 1 or 2 of those it would open up 2 spots for other rainbowlands. This would slow your deck somewhat though. So that is a matter of oppinion.

Weaknesses:
The biggest weakness is null rod. Chalice on 0 and 1 will also severely hamper this deck. Somewhat less obvious is the  use of pithing needle by your opponent. Choices can be ravager and skullclamp. But either choice will only slow you a bit.

Matchups:
Combo: Game one you can race him if he has a slow start. If he is fast you will lose. Games two and three will be much more favourable as you have a couple of slowing possibilities. So this matchup gets favourable. This also means against the more control combo you see nowadays. That is a tadd slow in itself and you actually have a pretty good chance game one as well. I have yet to lose a match to combo although i have lost several first games to combo. It so far has bounced back games two and three.

Fish: you draw faster, you critters are better and get bigger due to plating so you will gain advantages fast. Downside is the board options fish has. The naturalises and the slowing spells as the spheres and trini will help with that. Trike is very important in this matchup, as is plating.

Stax: a virtual walk over. As he cannot counter anything he will need a dreamstart to actually gain some sort of advantage. But due to the fact you play wshops as well you can drop things fast enough to keep pressure and force staxx to show his hand. Trike as well as clamp are very important here. But normally this should be a walk in the park.

Control: You have many critters and they can get big fast. Next to that, if you get a clamp down you will outdraw control fast and keep pressure. Sideboard options make it somewhat harder as null rod will see play. Basis is racing. Your critters still do damage and you have way more than control. Next to that, modular still works fine under null rod. Chalice could pose a problem but a well timed naturalize or just plain racing will help you there. Should not be to hard. In the eye of chaos could help here to get your skullclamp through. Choke is an obvious sideboard choice as well here.

Dragon: This is the weakest matchup of all. Basically you need to race him but in the end you only have 5 outs here. And if it is a good dragon player the outs in naturalize become pretty weak. The other help could be jesters cap but that card may be to slow. So perhaps the sideboard can help here more, but as dragon is hard to play well and not to many people play dragon anyhow this deck could be a good bet. Best is to actually race him and hope he does not draw the nuts.

Oath: You would tend to think that this is a bad matchup as i play many critters. The beauty is that you critters actually are many and do lots of damage because you have a lot of artifacts actually hitting play. Skullclamp can also make use of the 1/1 orchard critters giving you huge card advantage. The ravager trike combo gets very strong here as you can shoot angels down. Or simply shoot your opponent. In the eye of chaos as well as naturalize with the assistance of jesters cap can make your day after boarding.

Drain slaver: could be a problem if he gets a slaver turn soon with a ravager on your side. This will actually wreck your side of the board. On the other hand. He has to do it quick as he has neither the critters to stop you (besides tinker) nor the counters. Trike is an important critter here but cranial plating can pretty much wreck him early on as well.

Slops: its apparant weakness against combo. Hero wants (or puts) tanglewire to help you there. As you have a couple of cards you can actually miss, this could be a very good option. It will not help against dragon though. This could very well be the matchup you need the coinflip to be in favout of you.

Props: This deck is so much fun to play. It is scary quick and it consists of a whole bucket load of cards most vintage people do not even deem worthy to play. And to actually beat somebody in turn 3 or 4 with an arcbound worker that has a cranial plating on it is totally the nuts. And i will trade an arcbound worker for a sundering titan any day of the weak when you bash its head in with the plating. Or imagine you actually block the darksteel colossus with your very big ravager. The synergy within this deck is very great on all kinds of levels. Next to the random wins you actually have a very stable deck that will mostly kill people turn 5 at the last when goldfishing. When actually playing this stays very stable, even when people try to counter some critical cards. This deck seems easy enough but to play it well (as i cannot yet) is tricky. You need to mull very agressively as many hands you get will do, well not enought o be a threat. But even more hands are so creepy good that again this is a very stable choice.
You will also crush most random decks with ease.

When people see this deck they almost automatically say: ah, affinity. Although this deck has a lot of affinity parts it is nothing like affinity. It is way faster and has some very abnormal aspects in it that make it very much stronger than normal affinity. That is why i would want to name it cranial clamp.