Congrats to the top 8 - especially Jarman, and Jones for cracking top four with the Last Minute Special. Hope revoke did something ever.

For what it's worth, totally nailed the 1-2 record. So I have that, at least.

Can't wait for the next one of these!

Pretty sure I don't have family commitments on tournament day, for once, so I'll be there to keep the 1-2 drop bracket steady. Every team needs a punter, right?

Least... Im pretty sure that's how sports works...

Question -

 What's the time allotment between formats like? If I own four tarmogoyfs, but I'm playing them in two formats, am I going to need four goyfs or eight (proxy or otherwise)? A.k.a. am I going to have time to desleeve/resleeve, or do all the decks have to be ready to go from Round 1?

Statement -

 Dammit. I was retired until I saw this. How in the hell did I sneak fifth? Guess I need to put on my robe and wizard hat one more time...

ITT: Noble heard I was going to GenCon, and is making another move to infiltrate my life as my replacement while I'm absent. I am now 97% sure he is a doppleganger.

Little does he know I lead an awful, awful life.

In all seriousness, though, I'm bummed I didn't know about this before I locked in for the road trip out to Indy on the premise of "because". I will hopefully be at the one after, though, and good luck to everybody that goes!

There really ain't no party like a Nick Coss party. The smell of your BBQ will haunt me from states away.

Pretty sure I'll be there. Been too damn long messing around with awful, awful standard cards.

Last round blew the math section of my brain to pieces, but it was a good day filled with good people. Congratz to the top 8, and I'm sorry I couldn't take our fishy friends to the finals, Joel.

The most important part of today is that the plan is working, guys! All the fish decks pushed most of that azorius stuff out of the metagame. So while I can't bring back Ghost in the Shell quite yet, I'm pretty sure we can all run Tinker again.

We should probably all get on that.




....So I can run the GoST again.


.....I never said it wasn't a convoluted plan.

To shop pilots: we only skimp when you guys go MIA for like, two months.

Please stop running a sensible amount of Shops, and we'll go back to skimping so we can do things like fight dredge.

Thank you,
Your local Everyone Goddamn Else

Congratz on the first place! I dig that robots have made their return. Was wondering where they all went.


Props to Calvin, since he really did try his damnedest to get me into prize support all day.

Props to little Ferrante, since that kid is going to be a vintage monster if he keeps at it.

Props to everyone that did come out and support Vintage.


Slops to god damn Burning Long jesus that **** ** ******** *** ***** *************** ** **  ** your *** * **** kiwi **** * **** **********  **** ** ** mangoes ** **** ************* ** right in the **** ******** platypii ******. ****** ******.  

Basically I hate it.

Showing up to win this as long as Coss tells me what to play.

Otherwise I'm showing up to win this.

Shoutout to Jon Jones for keeping it real with the homebrews and getting back into the top 8 swing. You might be my favorite vintage player alive.

Props to my Burning Oath comrades. As much fun as I made of that f***ing deck, it is a sweet sweet pile to play with: and if you notice, has been cracking top 8s all over the place, usually in pairs (for some reason).

Congratulations to JLim for winning, and continuing the Slaughter Smurfs tradition, because suck it, that article DeMars wrote forever ago.

High five to all of the Top 8, of course. It's a rough X rounds when almost every one of them is a Name now, yeah? Who's up for storming GenCon with NE wizardry?

Finally, brofist bumpsplosion to the fact that Dark Rituals are almost an even contender to Dr. Wiley's Robot Masters anymore. Is Burning Oath secretly Megaman? Only this summer will tell.


And, of course, slops to having to miss this, but a family wedding reception was happening and I certainly wasn't missing that. I'll be back with some crazy noise next time, though, because my new motto is "What Would John Jones Play?" 

So the real question this tournament raises is...at what point are we, as Vintage, going to stop bomberman? Not THE Bomberman, obviously, since that motherfucker is just indestructable, but the archetype maybe. Kohler's starting to spawn additional overlords, and they went three for three this time around. Worse is no one seems surprised.

Also, one of these days when I have money for a hotel I'm coming to a Player's Guild. I just can't make my car do eight hours of driving in one day, the poor thing would die.

Congratulations to the vintage warriors who made it out, and the top 8, though!

The maindeck Tendrils and all four Burning Wish are amazing. Throughout the day, it felt like I saw too few wishes rather than too many, and I'm playing the full set plus what they usually fetch. I missed Desire terribly, should not have boarded that. Did you ever find yourself missing Consult like I did?

Also, because I can't actually seem to come to a solid conclusion - despite the fact that we both cruised to an easy quarters finish with the deck (you probably having much more testing time than I did), is this something you'd play again? Is this something you'd play in a larger tournament? So much of the deck feels like slightly favorable dice rolling, so I'm leaning towards "yes" and "no" respectively, but I was wondering if you had a more holistic appraisal of the deck after having played it. I come back to "it's a zero or a ten" constantly, but making that mean something practical/useful is a little harder.

                                                                                           The Cardslinger Chronicles: Burning on 4/20   

   It was time for something new, I told myself. You drive to enough of these alone, you learn how to be your own company. Your own sounding board.
   “Why something new? Why not tweak a good thing?”
   Tweak. For the record, I despise that word. Tweak. A little nudge, a little fidget, and presto, problem solved. Tweak. Useless word. I give the voice in my head a disapproving glare.
   “You can't...adjust...the fundamentals. Small choices yes, but not basic operation. Manstill is excellent, sure - in a good field. High tier field, anyway. It isn't really powerful enough to take on the outside gimmicks.”
   I was talking about my last few rounds in Lancaster, a terrible 1-2 drop. The first time I'd failed to make Top 8 at a Vintage tournament in 2013. I adjusted some choices the night before, like always. Recounted my list, like always. I'd probably do well and have to start fighting in the quarters, like always.
   Maybe not always.
   I start the tournament with a grip full of countermagic starting from turn zero if the bad guy tried anything fishy. Well, as it turned out, he was neck deep in fishy.
   “Cavern naming Merfolk, Cursecatcher. Go.”
   I'm dead, just like that.  Maybe not every game, but if I played Merfolk "X" times, I might win five or ten percent of the games he doesn't mulligan to oblivion. It was here, on turn 1, game 1, round 1, I realized there was a terrible flaw in my weapon of choice – it wasn't powerful. It has consistency in spades, and a full house worth of control – but there's no power to it, despite Elspeth and Geist pulling more offensive weight than traditional Landstill lists were capable of. Every time it took me to a Top 8 or Top 4, I beat all standard, “inside the box” decks. Thing's you'd expect. Things you could prepare for, and control. Things not diametrically opposed to your entire gameplan, but that fight it head on. Robots, Big Blue, Storm, Tempo – the faces of the format. These I had game against.
   Dredge, though? Cavern Merfolk? Jon Jones' Junk Shamans? No way.
   Of course, I arrived at a bit different choice than some other players might, after that.
   If nobody else wants to play real decks, then the hell with it. Let's play something crazy, Voice in My Head.
   “That's probably the single most sensible thing you've said all day.”

For reference, my last Manstill list and what I was coming from:

“GoST in the Shell”
UW Manstill

4 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Snapcaster Mage

4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
4 Mana Drain
3 Mental Misstep
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Flusterstorm
1 Shattering Blow
1 Spell Pierce
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Time Walk

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Tundra
4 Wasteland
3 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Plains
1 Strip Mine

It was a solid list, and I wouldn't hesitate to take it somewhere I expected the big guns to be brought out. It dismantles big guns very, very well. My decision was my decision, though, and if I had to stand by it no matter what kind of trickery I pulled. You can't make progress staying in the same place, after all. The important thing is just to make your way to new places with intelligence, dedication, and extensi-

   Flash forward to Top Deck Games Vintage 2k on 4/20, and I'm strapped in with a deck I picked almost at random, with maybe an hour or so testing under my belt. I hadn't cast over half of my list in years, at least, and honestly had no idea how it would stack up in practice against a room that was at least supposed to be exactly the field something like Manstill would thrive in. I'd that I honestly didn't believe the archetype I was running was that good, or even as good as the last storm deck I ran for awhile (Ad Nauseum Tendrils). So why was I playing this pile? Two reasons:

1) It was fun. Half of these cards are ridiculous. The game states and board states it could generate were ridiculous. Sometimes it would just fold in on itself, but when it didn't? I'm pretending to be Spiderman crawling along the walls of the Gravitron ride again. That fun.
2) It was powerful. Exactly what I wanted. It was silly, and over the top, and something like sixty percent was copy pasted directly from the Restricted List. It was everything Manstill wasn't. It didn't want to control anything, or edge into long term advantages – it wanted to jump up on the table screaming “King Kong ain't got NOTHIN. ON. ME.” and throw a chair at that guy in the back. Yes, you, guy in the back. You know what you did.

   If you were wondering, this is what I came to and brought to battle:

Burning Oath

2 Griselbrand

4 Burning Wish
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Oath of Druids
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Memory Jar
1 Necropotence
1 Ponder
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Thoughtseize
1 Timetwister
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain

2 Chrome Mox
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Opal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring

4 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
2 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy

SB:
3 Ancient Tomb
3 Nature's Claim
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Mind's Desire
1 Pyroclasm
1 Show and Tell
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth's Will

   I made a few changes to accommodate myself (adding Tendrils to the main, moving Mind's Desire to the board), and a few to accommodate availability (Cabal Therapy really should just be a Thoughtseize, or at least an Overmaster)., but generally a Burning Long/Oath is a Burning Long/Oath. After playing with it, I really want a Demonic Consultation in the main, and am considering moving Desire back in as well. Cuts are to be determined, though I have a feeling one Draw Seven can be boarded safely after wishing I had one there several times throughout the day.
   What follows is what I can garner from my indecipherable gibberish notes, with a Quick and Dirty at the end.
   
The Round by Round

Round 1 – Lance Ballaster on UW Bomberstill
   I approve of Bomberstill in general, and was incredibly excited to finally play against it once I realized what was going on. I steal game one quickly on the back of Burning Wish for Show and Tell, Show and Tell (resolves) in a Bargain, and use Bargain to draw cards. Only things to note in this game is that I actually had to dig very far in to find the kill. My notes see my life total drop from sixteen to one in rapid succession. I am feeling alright about my choice now, as I'd actually forgotten how savage some of these spells can be, but Lance rallies after that and draws “the good half” of his deck in the next two games (i.e. Standstill, Force of Will, Mana Drain, Mental Misstep), and shuts me out with Wastelands both games.
   
   Lesson 1: Wasteland does a lot more damage to Burning Long than you'd think as long as you can buy yourself a turn or two. Force of Will, blue card, Wasteland are my three cards against Long from the other side of the table, if I'm asking. Null Rod, Mental Misstep, and Mana Drain might be my next three.

   As I sit defeated handily between rounds, I wonder if this might have been a mistake. I then realize manly men don't make mistakes, they make carpets out of grizzly bears with their bear hands. No, not their bare hands. Their bear hands. The ones they got from other bears. I resolve to trounce the next son of a...

Round 2 – Will Magrann on Robots
   You're kidding. Alright, well, I'm on Rituals versus Shops, so I guess I have to win the die roll.

X2xWillMagrannx2x rolls an 11 out of 12.
Worldslayer rolls a 5 out of 12.

   “So Will, I think I'm probably just dead.”
   “You could always scoop.”
   “....Nah. You could always just mulligan to oblivion.”
   Unfortunately he does not mulligan to oblivion. I do mulligan, though also not to oblivion. My first note of the game is “[expletive deleted]”.
   His next thought might have been the same, as his “Wasteland, Pass” is met by “Mox off the top, a bunch of other Moxes, Tolarian Academy, all of the fast mana, Lion's Eye Diamond, and the last card in my hand, which was big Griseldaddy himself. I activate Draw Seven Punch twices, and Will finds out how many drills it takes to kill a Vintage player*. I'm not sure how many it takes, but I know how many I use, which is mathmatically “all of them forever”.
   His game two is a strong Land, Sphere of Resistance, go. Against a normal storm deck with a normal hand, this is a good start.
   Against this pile of nonsense, it's a minor speedbump to Orchard, Mox, Lotus, Oath of Druids.
   I mill into the Laboratory Maniac I swapped in for Griselbrand, and without a Triskelion or Duplicant in hand Will dies before he's ever really in it.
   “Well, I guess I'm just dead.”
   “...apparently?”

Round 3 – Shawn Tappen on UW Bomberman
   Azorius is the new Grixis in Vintage, anymore. I begin with a mulligan to five, but managed to Memory Jar into almost enough gas (read: a bunch of absurd things), and leave him with two life remaining.

   Lesson 2: This deck can apparently afford to mulligan more than some others simply on the back of how gamebreaking many of its spells are, and by the sheer amount of ones that say “Draw a new hand already”.

   I cast Vampiric Tutor during my Jar turn for Timetwister, Do The Twist™ turn 2, and while I can't find a Tendrils to end it he packs it up to Oath and Time Walk.
   Game two is less lopsided, as my gameplan of Orchard, Duress, Untap, Oath is fine...except one Griselbrand is already in my hand, and the other is down passed my Tendrils of Agony and all four Burning Wishes. For those of you not keeping tracking at home, that means we're in Man Mode now. I bash with my Demon like the rugged Oath Decks of the Before Time as he finds Aether spellbomb to buy himself a turn. Unfortunately, Big G does not stay locked up for long, is summoned the good old fashioned way, and Shawn's life total gets eaten in chunks of seven.

   Lesson 3: This deck can hardcast its Big Scary Monster Man an awful lot of the time. I think Griselbrand hit play from actually being summoned almost as many times as being Oathed into play.

Round 4 – Ryan Glackin playing BUG Fish
   Normally, this is a matchup I'd say favors the BUG Fish player – depending on their list and which half of their deck they draw. A bunch of cheap disruption and cheap pressure from all sorts of crazy angles generally makes life as a Tendrils player miserable. Fortunately for me, BUG Fish also expects its opponents to be sensible. Voice in My Head tells me "sensible" is exactly what everything about this day isn't. My memory of the exact way game one pans out is hazy, but for anyone curious my notes read:

“Turn 1 - Crazy **** happens
Stuff → Wish → Will
Tinker → Jar
Wheel
Bargain”

If I remember correctly, it involved a ton of fast mana, Willing it back again, Tinkering a Jar, Wheel of Fortune (with Jar in play), Jarring, then casting Bargain and going from there. I might be making that up, though.

   Lesson 4: This deck is silly.

Game two reads simply, “He counters Twister. I cry”.  I'm imagining my first bomb met a spell pierce and I couldn't get in the door after that while I died to something or other.

   Lesson 5: The deck is absolutely a zero or a ten.

Game three involves Duressing a Null Rod, getting Duressed back, resolving a Griselbrand because why not, and bashing him to death. Yes bashing. By the time Grizzlebees came around my life total was nearly depleted (around ten), making Vampiric Tutor for Tendrils, Draw Seven Ultimate Attack a lethal line of play thanks to his Deathrite Shaman and a Mox Jet I nearly missed. One turn and +7 life later, I took several minutes minutes of considering whether or not to just “go for it” and hope one of four Burning Wishes is in the top seven of twenty one remaining cards, but I chose to take the safe route because if I whiffed I died despite having Griselbrand against BUG Fish. My notes say “Gdaddy beatdown, because I can, and thinking is hard”. I looked after the game, and turns out he was just dead the turn I attacked. Burning Wish was in the top seven cards twice, which means I could have just gone for it.
   
   Lesson 6: Just go for it. This deck pretty much always wants to just go for it.

Round 5 – Vincent Pau
   I'm on the pair down, and have to play it out for the last round to make Top 8. Vincent has brought the third Bomberman deck against me today, though his was an Esper variant. Game one, sending my Griselbrand farming only delays the inevitable, as Burning Wish for Will picks up the slack. Game two is much closer. He stops my initial pushes (double Burning Wish we both knew was finding a discard spell) and makes a board of Bob, Clique (taking my best action), and an Orchard token. He swings once and I mark six on my life pad, and feel myself start to check out.
   “Where the hell do you think you're going? Get back in here, dummy. I'm not playing for you.”
   I resolve to have a talk with the voice in my head about saving energy after the game, but manage to pull in enough to see his reaction to “six”.
   I draw, I pass. My only hope is to hardcast Griselbrand next turn.
   “Attack.”
   “For...?”
   Look right at him. Don't look at the Orchard token. Don't even look at the board. Just look at him.
   “Five.”  He turns Bob and Clique sideways, bringing me from seven to two life.
   Untap. Mana source. Hardcast Griselbrand to stabilize and go on to win the game...one black coming from a City of Brass.

   

   
Top 8 – Round 1 – Joshua Potucek on Empty Gush
   Josh and I, the faces of UR Landstill and UW Manstill, in the finals of a Top 8...and neither of us on anything resembling a Landstill variant.
   Awkward.
   We trade the first two games, and awkwardly begin game 3. He eventually storms out to make himself twelve total goblin tokens, and I figure it's now or never. I go deep in the tank, and eventually Hurkyll's Recall his Nihil Spellbomb, forcing him to pop it and clear the way for a Will path to victory, and fire off a Draw Seven. I storm, and spell, and cast things, and eventually Tendrils – for fourteen, dropping him to four. I can't remount an offense in time, and am unfortunately knocked out of the Top 8 by little green men.

Quick and Dirty
Round 1: 1-2 vs. UW Bomberstill   
Round 2: 2-0 vs. Stax
Round 3: 2-0 vs. UW Bomberman
Round 4: 2-1 vs. BUG Fish
Round 5: 2-0 vs. UW Bomberman
Top 8 Quarters: 1-2 Vs. Empty Gush

   Looking back, hindsight and Voice in My Head (as well as Josh and the onlooker to our game) tell me Hurkyll's Recalling myself to bounce my three Moxes in play would have made the tendrils lethal. It's a good argument, and probably correct...but would I say the same if I had drawn a Will-based seven new cards? Would I be kicking myself for not making him pop the Spellbomb before Wheeling away Hurkyll's Recall? It's hard to know for sure, and probably the single most frustrating thing about this pile of ridiculously awesome things – so much of it is just doing whatever you can in a hand, firing off a draw seven, and praying to whatever intergalatic spaghetti monster you happen to pray to that your new seven is good enough to kill them so hard they die to death. There are certain points you just can't see past with this list, and no amount of calculating can ever really convince you. It's an all or nothing proposition, through and through.
   It's also a gigantic blast to play, pain in the ***, the single cruelest thing that's been done to my brain lately, and one of the most incredibly absurd seventy-somethings I've slung in awhile. You can...adjust....things here or there, but you're never really going to make this more stable, or more consistent. Stability and consistency just isn't what this deck does, or what it was built for. It isn't the deck's fundamental nature. Schitzophrenia is.
   All of that said, I can't in good conscience recommend anyone pick this deck up. I can't really recommend they don't, either. Just know that when you sleeve a Burning Long list up, you need to be ready to spin the wheel. You need to be ready to go hard, and go fast. You need to be ready for silly things. You need to be ready for zeros and tens, and be ready to go again next round no matter which one you land on.
   Above all, though, you need to be ready to just go for it.  


Seth Zulinski
Worldslayer on themanadrain.com

I'm sorry I wasn't able to make this one, GWiley - would have been nice to have an old WizO forums showdown.

Props to Rich for not getting LoA'd into oblivion this time, and...is that the same Rachel from Saturday in 7th? If so, Bravo for leaving the damn robots at home.

Also: That first place list looks amazing, and will be played as soon as everyone around me stops running god damn Landstill.

Mother****er. I'm going to batter their goddamn skulls.

...Wait.

............shit.


To everyone else: This isn't really a decision. I spent a few hours today talking people in Richmond damn VA to try and make this. This tournament is awesome. Period. EVUnlimited.

Coming in hot for this one. This will be the time I beat the End Boss, damn it!

This is kind of an unfair Slops. I mean...he's a ghost.

Haunting is kind of his schtick.

Too many robots on the dance floor, there's (there's) too many robots on the dance floor.

Metamorph continues its reign of terror over me in top 8s. I'm pretty sure it's secretly the best mech.

Props:
Izzet Charm - I came up against this card in two different rounds. I won those, but it seemed legit anyway.
Elspeth, for letting me kill someone from 18 on t4 with Landstill. That was my favorite moment.
The 21/22 people that came to battle at a ridiculously prized event.

Slops:
Everyone that could have come and didn't. Did you read the prize support on this thing?
Metamorph, again. F*ck you, robot. F*ck you.
Mishra's Factory, because I always hate that card. It's a necessary evil, but a necessary evil is still evil.
Four robots hitting the top 8 when only like five robots were in the room. God damn. I thought blue was the best color in Vintage?
Josh Butker, for playing that terrible, terrible deck. Seriously man, should've Serum Powdered x5 g3.

Honorable Mention - Berserker Ghost. Jon, get on that shit.

See everyone at the next one of these, hopefully.

Your new series is nuts. Its two of my three favorite formats, plus Legacy, for all of the monies forever. I'll be there. I hope turnout reflects how fucking awesome this series, the payout, and the endgame tournament is.

Should be jamming this. The GoST is still hungry for blood.

Is there a cheapish hotel nearby these things?

Turnout was a bit heartbreaking. Where's all my vintage homies at yesterday?

At first, I was a little salty that some retro shit got there, but-

A) That's actually kind of awesome.

And

B) Look at that deck name. How can I stay mad at that?

Well done, Bernie. At least you weren't on fish :p


Other Props:
Noble finally getting a round on me, because somehow I wound up on Tundra and he wound up on Dark Ritual.
The term "Manstill"
Again, Bernie's deck name.
Dr. Horrible

Slops:
Library of Alexandria for being the worst goddamn card in the Landstill mirror. Seriously LoA, get your shit together.
18 people.

I was indeed in the top 4, succumbing to robots in the semis after I missed two damage game 2. Bill ended Tim's hot streak, but I left before Finals: Bill v Shawn was decided. Pretty sweet tournament, if a little cramped from the double booking. I got a free foil that's apparently worth dollars. Legit. Am going to try to make it to these as much as possible.

Aside from the gaff of talking ANT vs. STAX and writing ANT vs. Storm, I stand by everything in my post. Your post starts off as needlessly aggressive and toxic on top of being entirely ironic. The first statement you open with is that I know nothing about ANT, followed by statements about how you're still running Necro and Twister, are actually running Bargain and Memory Jar, how the 5c lands are correct and how ANT is not a glass cannon.

 The added quips about not running Consult/growing a pair are A) provably false and B) needlessly awful.

Necro isn't bad because I'm not drawing enough cards, it's bad because passing the turn in a deck with little to no reactive, instant speed interaction is a good way to get killed against anyone playing or drawing at any level above "absolutely awful".

Your chances of casting Hurkyll's Recall or similar in a relevant timeframe are lower than Big Blues, and Big Blue is a matchup many competant STAX pilots are familiar with and prepared for. You are a attempting a strategy they already play against with less reliability then the deck(s) they expect the strategy from. This is a doomed proposition.

ANT is inherently a glass cannon deck in Vintage, if only because of the speed at which other decks can retaliate for the win or simply pull so far ahead in their own gameplan that you've actually lost already, your life just isn't zero. ANT in Legacy is a different monster because Legacy is a different monster, but ANT in Vintage is and in all likelihood will be a glass cannon strategy. Saying it isn't because it can beat a counterspell or two is completely false: for reference, Belcher is also capable of beating a similar number of counters with the correct draw. It is a glass cannon deck. In vintage, once you fire your cannonball your cannon's shattered: either you've won the game or you're dead before you can glue your pieces back together.

I'd continue this, and probably add in statements questioning which one of us knows anything about ANT, but realistically this forum has grown to League of Legends level toxicity: the noise to signal ratio is excessively high and I expect better conduct out of Standard players, anymore. At this threshold, residence is no longer worth it. I wish you success in your endeavors, as a Ritual deck is a Ritual deck and I'm fond of those, but realistically I expect none in this deck's specific regard.

-WS

Few thoughts while reading this:

1) As a diehard ANT player, my first thought when Wish was unrestricted was "yes, my cmc gets lower! Consistency!" So I tried it a bunch and found that the mana you have access to in your window of operation is UB, and that adding 1R cards functionally cost me draws while remaining uncastable a large portion of games, or at least forced me to dig deeper where typically they became irrelevant because I found nonWish paths to victory. I was running an additional Ruby and Volcanic Islands in my manabase to support this.

2) Necro was already awful in AdNauseum Tendrils, again, due to your relatively limited window of operation. Further punishing your life total with lands that immediately cost life (City of Brass) or generate increasing lifeloss (Forbidden Orchard) is cramming salt into an already unecessary wound.

3) So far, Burning Wish does next to nothing to improve the faults of AdNauseum: I.e. the shops matchup and fighting a fistful of counterspells against Big Blue. Wishing for Shattering Spree or Pulverize is a good play against shops assuming:

A) You won the die roll and have not immediately killed them.
B) You can in fact even attempt to cast a 2cc spell
C) They will not kill you or effectively kill you (I.e. lock you out) by the time you can cast the spell you wished for.

If you play ANT vs. Storm often, you'll know that against any competent opponent with a reasonable hand, any line of the game stemming from A is most likely a loss. You will usually not be able to cast your 2cc spell except on the first turn, and you will certainly not be able to cast it after that. There's games where they draw the incorrect pieces or games they don't have a relevant first turn play, but those are typically the games you kill them before their second turn so Wish -> answer here is irrelevant.

Against blue decks with fistfuls of counterspells you Wish for "bombs" under the assumptions that:

A) Wish will resolve. ANT could typically beat a single counterspell anyway. Any more than that and your Wish has as much likelihood of resolving (or resolving your wish target has as much likelihood of resolving) as whatever your first bomb was.
B) The "run bombs into counters" strategy works with little to no disruption in comparison to blue decks.
2B) The "run bombs into counters" strategy works when the blue decks are capable of gameplan "run bombs into no counters".
Summation of B) The blue decks don't just parry your first strike and kill you on the return blow. Unmolested or lightly molested, Big Blue decks are only about a turn to a turn and a half behind a pure combo deck. Other control-heavy, aggression-light blue decks exist, such as U/x/x landstill, but at that point see A.

3) Burning Wish helps in games where your lifetotal is under assault to the point that AdNauseum no longer functions, most commonly from "Fish" decks like Noble Fish/Selkie Slam/Slaughter Smurfs or "fishlike" decks such as Rug Delver, Bug Delver, Ug Delver, and generally anything with Delvers in it. It is my fervent belief that the first mentioned group (Fish decks) are already your best possible pairings. Despite being the drastically inferior player in all likelihood, my ANT is currently X-0 lifetime against Mykie Noble piloting his namesake, as well as several other players of equal or superior caliber to my own. Anecdotal evidence, but speaks to the drastic disparity between their respective strategies and the power of them in the matchup. In these cases, Burning Wish is exactly fixing something that isn't broken (or possibly slightly breaking it, as a 3c-5c manabase opens you up more to Wasteland). In regards to "Fishlike" decks, their individual construction can lend the matchup to anything from the same as "Fish" (nearly laughable) to "Nightmare" (Matt Elias' Remora RUG Delver from the end of 2011) which is so lopsided in a competent/knowledgeable opponent's favor that it's laughable in completely the other direction, to which Burning Wish would most likely meet the same fate as "every other relevant spell you cast ever", which is to say countered or otherwise negated. In direct contrast to the Fish line, Burning Wish here is attempting to plug a dam with a winebottle cork - the tools you're employing simply don't measure up to the undertaking. In either case, Burning Wish is largely irrelevant to the matchup while eating up vital slots and condemning your manabase to mediocrity.

I'm sure Burning Wish has a place in Vintage, whether in a long-style combo deck or in a Big Blue deck (Menendian's Doomsday Deck was based upon the concept of a control deck running four "tinkers". Burning Wish similarly allows you to run four "Tinkers". This design has tons of space to explore), but the more I see this thread develop, and additional colors and bombs and Wish targets and alternate strategems appear, the more it confuses me what the point of forcing everything into the ANT shell achieves. Adding wishboards and draw7s into ANT is jamming a Horseshoe onto a Hobo: it's possible, but the nature of the gain achieved is questionable. Wish does one thing: gives you low CC ways to find Tendrils. Instead of flipping fours, you flip twos. Wish's weakness is in it's nature as a tertiary color: ANT now needs three colors to operate in its window of efficacy: turn 1/2.

Summation: Burning Wish costs a nonzero amount of resources while presenting an almost zerogain to the strategy. There are decks for Burning Wish, by it is my absolute belief that the Best Glass Cannon Vintage isn't one of them.

Anytime something strikes me as more awesome than an entire community trolling DeMars (because seriously, that guy), I approve. WUBWUB BOMBSTEP 2012.

Sidenote: I'm sad to see only one pilot mustering the testicular fortitude to run BBBs. I get it, NYSE is the House of Mishra and all, but still. Ritual pilots, I am dissappoint. The matchup is only 50/50 at best/worst, what gives?

We actually agree here, Desolutionist, at least in regards to this card being completely absurd. I think the biggest sticking point everybody's hung up on is the Desire comparison, which is close but not entirely accurate. This is more limited in scope, obviously, but requires only deck construction and a bunch of mana to work instead of a storm count. I don't know about running this is an absolutely pure hyper aggressive ritual combo shell (though that's probably a thing too), but it immediately stuck out to me as something a deck like Drain Tendrils would run, or even a normal big blue deck. All DT ever wanted to do was counter and Duress everything forever, Mana Drain something large, then switch modes, cast a ridiculous spell and kill the bad guy: this kind of fits right in there. It already ran a small number of rituals and most artifact mana accelerants, which suck to flop on your Experiment but are great at casting it for an arbitrarily large number. If you're just grinding the game out to dust, and both you and Evil are nearly depleted, I'd rather topdeck this than Desire a significant number of times.

In Big Blue, especially while everyone's still having fun with the Burning Wish Blue phase of the format, how is this not a runnable card as at least a 1 of? All of Big Blue's spells are ridiculous. Even if you whiff on like, 3/6 of your experiment later in the game, you're still desiring three cards in a deck mostly composed of the most ridiculous spells printed. 4 lands a tutor and a tinker off x=6 still assemble vaultkey (or if its a topdeck tutor assemble it next turn), hitting walk or recall or even Wishes is fine...in a normal big blue deck it almost doesn't matter if half of your flop is a whiff, because the other half is probably dumb enough that the whiffs are irrelevant.

I like this card. A lot. Between this and Burning Wish I really want to try and make UR Tide a vintage thing, (though if were being honest i'll probably just cop out and continue playing ANT because vintage has turned me into a masochist).

URx Pyromancer is also a deck i've been playing that might like this (and/or wish. They really do seem to go hand in hand at first blush), though I was focused on looping Time Walk then storming. Copying an Experiment in a deck full of instants and sorceries then copying every single one you Experiment into seems incredibly strong. Ascension kind of quadruples Experiments effectiveness that way.

Few thoughts on this thread and/or Burning Wish from a long time combo player:

1) Going straight UR offers almost no tangible benefit over URB in Vintage. The mana is too easy for up to 3 colors, and Wasteland is going to get you if it's going to get you. Demonic, Vampiric, Consult, and Yawgmoth's Will are too central to the storm mechanic to exclude - they're not combo training wheels, they're your primary tires. Use them accordingly.

2) Even with four Burning Wish in the maindeck, you main your primary win conditions. I get that Burning Wish is the Mystery Box. "Anything could be in the Mystery Box! It could even be a boat. You know how much we always wanted one of those!" The most correct solution in the majority of cases is to just take the damned boat. Burning Wish IS highly functional when it represents four copies of a powerful restricted spell, like Desire, which you noted in your original post. I believe the CHOICE of Mind's Desire is incorrect a majority of the time when compared to Yawgmoth's Will, but that's my two cents. Point is, construct your deck normally as if you did NOT have access to Burning Wish, then slot Wish and put the sorcery card you most want four copies of in your board. Long.dec did this with a Yawgmoth's Will and a single Tendrils of Agony on the board, and a more recent example of a prominent Wish deck (Know and Tell a.k.a. Omniscience Petals in Legacy) uses the same thought process - the only cards that deck ever finds with Burning Wish are Show and Tell (for the combo) or Petals/Grapeshot (for the kill). The rest of most succesful boards may have one or two other targets, but will fetch one of those cards the vast majority of the time. The most important part is to stay on task, and stay efficient. Forceless or low-interaction hyperaggressive ritual decks have usually two turns at most to execute their game plan or lose the game.  

3) I believe Burning Wish is better suited to a Big Blue deck (or something like Omniscience Petals, where your "combo" really only hinges on one or two cards which Wish can access), though you could make a case for Drain Tendrils utilizing it (though Drain Tendrils is closer to a Big Blue deck than a Ritual Deck anyway). The addition of Burning Wish actually does very little for Ritual based combo's position in the metagame. It was ridiculous on speed the first time because we had access to 4 LED and the opposing strategems weren't super prepared to fight us - they were basically banking on Force of Will and maybe winning the die roll and playing Duress before we murdered them. These days their access to turn 0 disruption has gone up with the addition of Mindbreak Trap and Mental Misstep, and their turn 1 counters of Spell Pierce and Flusterstorm are huge. When they shut us down the first time, we had several turns to rebuild - Tog and Dryad and the like were clocks, and robots happened, but in general they were less adept at putting US on notice. These days you're going to walk into a Mental Misstep or Force of Will or Flusterstorm, and try to rebuild, and in the meantime they're going to have Jace locking you out or just VaultKey GeeGee you. It's not that the storm card pool has gotten much weaker, as I believe even 4 LED Long would have trouble with modern blue decks, but rather than our opposition has gotten so much stronger - both against us specifically (flusterstorm and MM maindeck in Big Blue, looking at you here. And YES, these are commonly maindecked cards in American Vintage) and in general (Lodestone Golem). Burning Wish in a traditional Ritual Combo shell actually does nothing to improve our position - it's primary function is really to improve consistency, which is NOT what is holding down Ritual Combo currently. We're already very consistent. The problem is that so is everyone else, and in the case of the two Big Kids in the Sandbox (big blue and shops) their consistent gameplan trumps ours because they have far more interaction and disruption than us in a relatively similar time frame, and their clock is only about a turn behind us unmolested in Big Blue (which they typically are) and "essentially instagib" in Shops. The metrics change the slower, more interactive, permanent mana-heavy and more nonlinear you get - but by then you're basically playing Big Blue.

4) Draw 7s are almost always terrible - the amount of times their hand is better than yours is roughly equivalent to the amount of times you play against a base blue deck, which is probably "very often", and the amount of times your hand is better is only slightly more than the number of times their hand doesn't matter and you're just destroying them, which is probably "fish", er, "not very often". With the access to large engines like Necro, Bargain, Ad Nauseum and a whole squad of efficient tutors (Demonic, Vampiric, Mystical, Personal sometimes, Grim, Demonic Consultation) it is almost never correct to play a draw 7. Even High Tide in Legacy only played a D7 because it untapped their lands.


Tl,dr: You maindeck like a normal combo deck, pick one or two cards to Wish for (like Yawgmoth's Will + Tendrils, Show and Tell + Petals) and play it as a slightly more consistent version of whatever you're playing. The cardinal sin of every wishboard is getting cute with it. Don't. Just kill them. For what it's worth, I recommend Wish more in a slower, more interactive "combo" deck like Big Blue or Drain Tendrils if you want to see a real difference. Wish is playable in hyper-aggressive ritual combo, but doesn't change too much - our cards aren't really our problem, if you understand me. It'll function fine, function aggressively, and lose to pretty much the same cards, hands, and decks we always did.

This tournament was a thing of beauty, and I wasn't even there.

 I love every single deck title.

And...that Neo Academy list. When I looked at it, my eyes began leaking. I'm not sure if it's tears of joy, or my brain liquifying as it tries to figure out if this is reality. I feel like this entire event managed to troll Vintage as it exists, and that's so glorious I can't describe it.

Robots were half of the top 8 with 100% penetration, and i'm not even mad.

Good show, guys. I REALLY have to make it up to one of these.

...Slaughter Smurfs is officially the name of every vintage deck I play until my next top 8, relevance be damned. That may be the best deck name i've ever heard.