That TPS photo is amazing, props for repping Dark Ritual!

Pitching Anger to Dack or something lets him transform the same turn you drop him, at which point he pays for himself if you -3 targeting a Gush. Since the decks that want a Blue Regrowth are already probably U/R, it makes sense that you'd have Mountains for him.

I think it simply comes down to White vs Red, and for many archetypes the Red splash is essential. Mentor is objectively better than Pyromancer in nearly every way, but it means you're playing White. I'm not touching a Gush deck without Ingot Chewers, so there's one example where Pyro feels like the correct inclusion.

Similar to your experience, I was looking at the price of judge foil Lightning Bolts today thinking I might finish my set. I remember wincing at paying 30 bucks for one just a handful of years ago, and now they are 100+, thanks a lot EDH!

"Ctrl F - Dark Confidant: 0 results found"

Yeesh, Vintage changes so fast...

David Willams' deck is AWESOME, and has a great name to boot.

If Magic Online was playable on an iPad with an interface comparable to Hearthstone, I'd be willing to pay paper Magic prices for Vintage cards. Hearthstone is a pretty bad game, but the interface is superbly polished.

I think someone on here put it best by describing MTGO as something that looks like it was installed off AOL floppy disks.

Some interesting replies, great thread idea. For me,

1. Gush

Turn three, no lands in hand, float UU, Gush. This feels so powerful, while at the same time being incredibly fun and full of options. The efficiency of a Gush deck will always epitomize the ruthless pressure of Vintage interactions, which is why I cherish the intensity of the format so much.

2. Night's Whisper

The art is bizarrely intriguing, the effect is crisp, and it creates an interesting contrast to Dark Confidant. The "inbetween" cards like this speak to the vast amount of options available in Vintage, and I appreciate when the fringe playables are incorporated in a deck to become more than the sum of their parts.

3. Lightning Bolt

It's so basic, but in a beautiful way. The art is simple but evocative, the effect is straightoforward, and the casting cost is clean. For one mana, it answers a more diverse array of threats than almost any other card. Bob, Jace, and Lodestone Golem are all sent packing by a bolt of lightning, and pointing it at your opponent's face is just gravy.

I went by things that are actually playable. Juzam and Braids will always mean the most to me from an art/flavor/mystique point of view, but I don't have as much fun with them since they sit in a binder.

Yikes, the synergy in this build is off the charts. It's so cool to see FoF as a 4 of a in 2014 Vintage deck, well done!

As I mentioned to you on cockatrice, I think DRS is the future of combo decks. Giving a midrange feel to combo feels prudent right now, and DRS gives you a mini-inevitability engine that also incidentally screws up some of their stuff while still being mana accel for your primary gameplan.

For anyone interested in a non-Doomsday build of DRS combo, I would love some more criticism of my deck in the General Discussion thread I made about the archetype.

I tried Ancient Tomb in the board but predictably the life loss is too much, at least with Snuff Out also being the main Lodestone answer.

I've been messing more with Energy Flux. On paper it seems completely unreasonable to cast it, though it is comparable to Trygon Predator with the loss of immunity to Thorn. Since it dodges Chalice at 1 and 2, I wonder if loading up on ESG to try to slam a Flux is a worthwhile avenue...

If your entire plan revolves around Transmute Artifact to assemble Vault/Key, wouldn't you want more copies of Key to increase the likelihood of combing out as soon as the opportunity arises? I guess it's awkward to run extra copies of Key without stuff like Grim Monolith, which isn't needed since you don't run Tezz. Key does turn SDT into a pseudo draw engine, so more copies of Top and changing NW to Bob may be something to look into. Echoing the suggestions of 2 Welders as well, it makes you a bit more solid vs. Shops and lets you be more grindy against other Blue.

Cool deck!

Yeah definitely, in a perfect world I would be three colors with UBR. Chewers + bounce is in tune with what you are trying to do in the Workshops matchup, I've just never found a 3 color manabase I like with the very limited amount of room for colored lands after the Bazaar/Waste/Strip slots.


Thanks! It looks like such a pile of shit at first glance, but the small investment into DRS/Wastes just makes everything so much more flexible while still keeping most of the explosiveness of Ritual combo. I tried ETW in the sideboard of the straight BR version and found it to be worse than Tendrils in every matchup except Shops, in which case it makes more sense to just use that slot on additional bounce/artifact destruction and then kill them with the regular package. Intuitively it seemed like ETW would add some game against aggro, but again it always ended up being better to just Tendrils (even if non-lethal) than make some blockers.

Pfft, we live in a post Pack Rat world now. Things have changed 

I'm glad a lively discussion of varying viewpoints is taking place, but just as a reminder amongst all the discourse:

This deck is cool as shit

I'm happy to see that 4c Snap list proving that Keeper is still viable without going the DRS/Wasteland route!

For what it's worth, Pulverize is something I've messed with to go with 4 Bolts and 2 Steel Sabotage MD (-1 Fire/Ice -1 Scroll +1 Mystical) and Shops feels perfectly winnable to me.

Mystical in general feels more powerful than Scroll, simply because Time Walk is such an easy way to win in this deck.

SB: 3 Ravenous Trap, 4 Cage, 4 Chewer, 2 Mountain, 2 Pulverize

Most people will tell you that the best color in magic is Blue. Most people are wrong. Drawing cards without paying life? Sounds like communism. Countering spells? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Jace? Nice 2UU Brainstorm...for an idiot! And what about this so-called “victory condition” Tinker? Sounds like a ballet move.

The most powerful spells in the game are black. Necropotence. Yawgmoth’s Will. Dark Ritual. Tendrils of Agony. A dazzling array of tutors with Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Demonic Consultation, and even Grim Tutor. My president is black, and so is my deck.

On the shoulders of giants...

After the printing of Lodestone Golem, Dark Ritual nearly disappeared from the metagame. The release of Laboratory Maniac managed to return Rituals to semi-relevance with Doomsday. Then, the unrestriction of Burning Wish (in concert with Oath/Griselbrand) put Rituals back into the spotlight as a top tier contender. Even now, TPS pops up from time to time. What I’d like to focus on is the disappearance of Bob Tendrils, which was an extremely powerful deck from 2007-2009. Between Forino Suicide Black and GWSx, the case was made for Dark Confidant in storm decks. I've always been enamored with both of those builds. Following their footsteps, I’ve played countless permutations of Bob Tendrils for the last four years. When I last left off with this deck, it looked something like this: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=43750.0

Two years later, and it’s still rough out there for Ritual decks that don’t want to run Oath. Creature based decks are on the rise, and they are either extremely fast (Delver/Bolt) or extremely disruptive (Caverns, Thalia, hate bears). Decks like BUG Fish have a suite of counters that can incapacitate nearly everything you want to do. However, even with the omnipresence of Misstep and Flusterstorm, Ritual decks do become better positioned in a format with this many "fair" decks. While you can no longer ignore a board of beaters while sculpting a winning hand, the increased presence of beatdown has slowed down everyone else. This is a good thing for people wanting to cast Tendrils of Agony. Every slot your opponent spends on Tabernacle, Stoneforge, Toxic Deluge, etc. is one less card for you to worry about before storming out.

Card choices

All decks are an ecosystem. Changing 5-10% of a list makes the way it plays completely different, but this is especially true for midrange combo decks. On one extreme end of the spectrum, you have extremely aggressive combo. Something like Ad Nauseum Tendrils. On the other end, you have Force of Will decks that fall under combo control. Falling somewhere in the middle is hard. The defining card of this archetype is Dark Confidant, and building around him is what shapes the deck.

4 Gitaxian Probe/ 4 Duress/ 4 Cabal Therapy/ 3-4 Mental Misstep

A heavy discard package is essential. It’s nice to discard counters and then go off with a juiced hand of mana/tutors, but that isn’t plan A. First and foremost, you want to strip their hand and start riding Bob.

Gitaxian Probe does a lot. Again, a hand that has a fast path to victory benefits a lot from Probe. Not only does it let you check if the coast is clear to go off, but it also provides free storm. You can squeak through some very early Will wins with Probe due to this. It also enhances Imperial Seal/Vampiric Tutor. All of that is nice, but its real role is to make Cabal Therapy into a consistent play. With eight ways to see their hand between Duress/Probe, Therapy is rarely a blind call. This is especially relevant against creature heavy decks that will often play 3-4 copies of most cards.

Much like Probe, Therapy is able to add to your storm count for 0 mana. In a field loaded with graveyard hate for Dredge, it’s important that you are able to cast a lethal Tendrils without relying on Yawgmoth’s Will. Formerly, midrange combo accomplished this by swinging with Bob and/or casting multiple mini-Tendris, but Bob is no longer facing down an empty board. Being able to ramp up your Storm count with Probe/flashbacked Therapy is invaluable.

Mental Misstep is a necessary evil. You do not want your own spells to be hit by Misstep, so you have to run them yourself. Hitting their other non-Misstep one drops is just a bonus. Being able to pop your Rituals early for value is a primary advantage of midrange combo over purer combo decks. Instead of solely enabling your finish, they power out your early game like the Suicide decks of old. Your ideal opening play is Dark Ritual, Duress, Dark Confidant. More commonly, T1 Duress (or Therapy/Probe), T2 Dark Confidant will happen. Either way, an opposing Misstep is going to greatly impede on your plans of clearing the way for Bob. It’s best to fight fire with fire here.

That package of one drops anchors the gameplan around Dark Confidant and sets the general tone for the deck. You maintain explosiveness, but have the flexibility to grind out a midgame kill. None of this is particularly new.  From there, my most successful innovation has been the inclusion of a somewhat counterintuitive card.

Deathrite Shaman

This style of combo has never wanted artifact acceleration. Playing an off color Mox on turn one doesn’t enable extra plays of Duress or Therapy. Dropping a turn one Bob without protection is a bad play. Furthermore, ramping up with stuff like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, and Sol Ring is unnecessary. When your primary role is to ride Bob, you don’t have have the space to cast a bomb like Yawgmoth’s Bargain or Mind’s Desire. So at first, Deathrite Shaman seems misplaced. A glorified Birds of Paradise doesn’t seem to do much for a deck that doesn’t run all the jewelry. However, all of the interactions in this deck lead to something far more than the sum of their parts.

Deathrite Shaman adds a sliver of resilience against Shops. Having mana acceleration of any color that ignores Null Rod and Chalice at zero is nice. Deathrite Shaman also speeds up your clock. In a game where you’ve mucked up their hand/board, each DRS activation is one less storm count you’ll need for the final Tendrils. These incremental pings of two life are fantastic for the more grindy matchups. Besides speeding up the kill of your Tendrils, DRS allows you to cast a smaller Tendrils with the knowledge that he can close the game out. On top of all this, he provides another body to flash Therapy on your kill turn. Similar to Misstep, he has some interactions that are pure gravy, such as annoying Snapcaster or impeding their Will.

All of these expected interactions were found to be legitimate in testing. What I didn’t foresee was how much the inclusion of DRS would actually go on to inform the rest of the deck’s identity. Even with a high fetch count, I wanted some more ways to feed him. I started out with a Strip Mine, which has various tempo implications aside from guaranteeing two lands for DRS to eat. The tempo plays from Strip Mine turned out to be so useful that I added additional Wastelands. Again, this can seem counterintuitive at first. I often questioned the inclusion of Waste/Strip in older Bob Tendrils lists, but the ability to set them back a turn (with total knowledge of their hand) proved to be strong. When taking into account the synergy with Deathrite, their inclusion was a no brainer. From there, scenarios started to arise where Duress/Strip effects would slow the game to such a crawl that assembling a winning hand was completely inevitable. Rather than using disruption to protect my victory conditions, I was using it to stop the opponent from winning while I casually found a way to kill them. This led to the complimentary mana denial plan of Null Rod. The deck already shifted between a Suicide Black deck and a combo deck quite easily, and Null Rod in the board just opened up an entire new layer of flexibility. DRS went from a multifaceted Mox/body for Therapy to something that shaped the entire feel of the deck.

Remaining card selections

Mana: 4 Dark Ritual, Mox Jet, and Black Lotus all go without saying. Lotus Petal is often included, and you can make a case in some builds for LED and Sapphire. 3-4 copies of Deathrite Shaman rounds out your mana acceleration. As a deck that is at its heart Mono Black, a light but solid base of 3 Swamps is a standard starting point for your land configuration.

Disruption: Aside from Probe/Therapy, Duress, and Misstep, you some kind of maindeck bounce or removal. Hurkyl’s Recall, Echoing Truth, and Chain of Vapor all have different pros and cons to consider.

Tutors: To maintain the ability to win on the spot in certain matchups, a robust tutor package is mandatory. Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Imperial Seal are complimented by some amount of Grim Tutor and possibly Demonic Consultation. Consultation requires you to run a higher Tendrils count, but drawing and playing a smaller Tendrils is tune with what you are doing anyway. When running multiple copies of Tendrils, Cabal Ritual becomes an attractive option.

Draw: Aside from Dark Confidant, some more draw power is needed to recoup the card disadvantage of an early Dark Ritual. Ancestral Recall is an obvious inclusion if you invest in blue, and possibly Brainstorm. Night’s Whisper is a faster Dark Confidant, which is often useful when you see an opening with Probe or Duress. In general, Night’s Whisper feels like the glue that bridges you between disruption and comboing out. Bazaar of Baghdad is another interesting option. It builds Threshold for Cabal Ritual, can pitch Therapy for value, and easily digs through your deck to assemble a kill. If Bob is active it is a pseudo draw engine, but most of the time it will just chuck dead cards from your hand after you’ve put the game into topdeck mode. Even with the massive amount of life loss from other spells, Necropotence is still the cheapest game winning bomb that you can reliably cast.

Fool’s Gold: As mentioned earlier, off color Moxes do not contribute much to your gameplan. I’d run Sol Ring before any non-Jet Mox, since the only thing artifact acceleration does for you is pay for Sphere effects. Again, bombs like Mind’s Desire and Bargain have no place in the deck either. Timetwister is at odds with your disruption plan. Rather than refilling their hand and hoping you can go off, you’d be better served casting Grim Tutor and winning the game outright. Thoughtseize is outclassed by Therapy when you have Probe, and Probe is so good with Rituals that it would be in the deck even if Therapy wasn’t. Taking that into account, there’s no need for the extra life loss of Thoughtseize. Time Walk is entirely unimpressive in a deck that often misses land drops and doesn’t have much of an attack step. It’s a total blowout if you have Bob active, but not worth the slot overall.

Before taking supplementary colors into account, there are a fair amount of sideboard options. The only automatic inclusions are Null Rod and Snuff Out. Dismember and Darkblast are worth considering, but I have found Snuff Out to be the best choice. Adding even more life loss to the deck is nearly unbearable, but a 0 cost answer to Lodestone that ignores Chalice is great. Yixlid Jailer and Leyline of the Void are answers to Dredge, though I’d rather attempt to outrace them than play more graveyard hate. Extirpate and Surgical Extraction are more flexible options. Defense Grid adds to your multitude of T1 plays off a Ritual. ESG and SSG both function under a Null Rod and help push something through against Shops. More copies of Wasteland is also a viable option.

Through all of that, I found most of my builds looking something like this:

9-12 draw/ filter effects chosen from:
4 Dark Confidant
3-4 Night’s Whisper
0-1 Necropotence
0-1 Ancestral Recall
0-2 Bazaar of Baghdad

18-19 disruption effects chosen from:
4 Duress
8 Gitaxian Probe/Cabal Therapy
3-4 Mental Misstep
1 Strip Mine
1-2 Wasteland
1 removal/bounce

9-12 tutors/bombs chosen from:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
0-1 Demonic Consultation
2-3 Grim Tutor
1-3 Tendrils of Agony
1 Yawgmoth’s Will

22-24 black mana producers chosen from:
6-7 Fetches
3 Swamps
2 Duals
3-4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Black Lotus/Lotus Petal/Mox Jet
4 Dark Ritual
1-2 Cabal Ritual

Within these ratios was where I found the best balance and success. Some alternate configurations were promising, but I didn’t fully explore them. For example, a build with 4 Bazaar/4 Cabal Ritual could have merits. At one point I even thought of maindecking the Null Rods with Death’s Shadow in a more aggro orientation.

Splash colors

Finally, back to the point of the thread. As a nearly mono black deck, it’s easy to find room for a splash color. The natural pairing is with blue, and I’ve played with x2 Underground Sea, Ancestral, and Hurk’s in the maindeck with the sideboard containing an Island, Chain of Vapor, x2 more Hurk’s, and Rebuild. Yet I’m questioning whether or not mass bounce is the best way for this deck to win against Workshops. Public enemy number one in your Workshop matchup is Chalice of the Void. Lodestone must be answered immediately, but it’s doable. On the other hand, Chalice can single handedly lock you out of the game, even with a varied CC bounce package.

Since Chalice became my main concern, I started questioning if blue was even needed in the deck at all.  Between your own Null Rods and Wastes/Strip, you can jam up Workshops a little. It sorta made more sense to try destroying artifacts instead of bouncing them. Meanwhile, I tried out both red and green splashes. Red has Ingot Chewer, which is the best possible answer to Chalice. It also opens up some sideboard Bolts and REBs, but those are secondary considerations. Green brings Abrupt Decay, which is another nice answer to Chalice that does double duty against Aggro. Green also adds a marginal amount of utility for DRS activations vs. Dredge.

Cutting blue completely didn’t sting as much as I thought. Leaving the maindeck mono black with 2 Badlands and a SB Mountain was enough to support the 4 Ingot Chewer and various other artifact kill spells I tried. Combined with the Wastes/Null Rods, this was enough to kinda slow down Shops and stabilize. Similar experience for BG with 2 Bayou and a SB Forest. Either way, making one for one trades doesn’t really get you anywhere. Being able to kill Chalice is nice, but at some point you need to bounce all the Spheres and win with Tendrils. A UBR or UBG version is possible, but it does stretch the mana base more than I’d like. That being said, I’m leaning towards sticking with an UB configuration, possibly with the addition of 1-2 Energy Flux as a side compliment to the pseudo-denial aspect vs. Shops.

Anyway, that’s the main thing I’m tweaking at the moment. A mix of denial + bounce is strange, but passable. I’ve tested with this deck online a lot, and I’m really happy with where it has come in the last few months.

I'm always the dumbass who skimps on Dredge hate, so I have -4 Leyline +2 Ravenous Trap +2 Pulverize (and a second mountain). Pulverize completely shuts down those Genesis Chamber aggro Shop decks, which I've seen a lot lately.

I need to gush (lol) about this deck for a minute. I've been playing a 99% similar list for the last couple of months, and this is one of the cleanest Vintage decks ever made. It is the Platonic ideal of Aggro/Control. Play your efficient threats, protect them with efficient counters, and draw a bunch of cards (that probably are going to be business due to the low mana count).

I have never felt completely out of a matchup with this deck, which is especially crazy given that you only have two colors to cover all bases. Every card is not only maximally efficient, but also flexible to allow multiple tactical avenues.  Fire/Ice and Steel Sabotage are perfect examples of this. I can't count how many games I've won from Fire/Icing a fatty to buy time for those final points of damage. Which brings up my next point, this deck is so good at closing out games. Between the evasion of Delver/Clique and the burn (from hand or Snapped), you can finish them off before that critical turn where they untap and win. For a Gush deck, it is ridiculously good against Shops. It can play longer “midrange” control with Clique, it smashes Ritual based decks, and it can outrace other aggro strategies. It’s a very rewarding deck to play. My favorite feeling in Vintage is “turn 3, no lands in hand, float UU, Gush” – and this deck maximizes the usefulness of that scenario more than any other I’ve ever used. So I think it's the most fun I've ever had playing Vintage.

Instead of Spell Pierce, I’ve been using Spell Snare with mixed results. Ultimately I think I’d rather add a second Misdirection before the first Pierce/Snare. If the main purpose of these slots is to better deal with Oath, then Misdirecting Abrupt Decay on your Cage is probably better than keeping mana open for Pierce/Snare on Oath. Misdirection is dead vs. Shops, but only slightly less so than Snare or Pierce – and at the same time it gives you more free wins vs. blue and massively slows down the BUG decks with 3-4 Decay.  

The next time someone tells you that Ponder (let alone Brainstorm) is safe to unrestrict, play them with this deck to change their mind.

RIP City of Brass...hate to see an old iconic card be replaced like this.

Lackey CCG is pretty bad compared to Cockatrice, but comparable to MWS. It is supposedly days away from hitting the iOS App Store, which is really surprising. It might not last long once it's up, so anyone interested should grab it before it gets pulled (theoretically you would be able to continue playing it on your iPad against PC users since it uses external plugins to update your card database). I have no interest in using Lackey for MTG since it really isn't that great, but it does have support for a ton of dead games.

Anyone up for some Overpower matches on Lackey? Haha.

I feel like the deck with the fewest bad matchups right now is Remora/SFM/TNN.dec

It seems like it has game against every archetype and is around even with everything but perhaps Burning Oath? Remora is always strong against other Blue decks, SFM is generally great against aggro and TNN carrying a Jitte is devastating, UW has proven to be consistent against Shops (and SFM is great there too), and RIP with other misc Dredge hate is the best package you could ask for.

Here's a good starting point, 2nd in a 53 man event - http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12748&iddeck=93497

Perhaps he was bullied into playing a deck like Charbelcher in the first place...a vicious cycle.

Summary of this thread so far:

http://youtu.be/PvwYP_oOtCw

The psychology of bullying is fascinating, and at the time I was in my PsyD program there was only a trickle of research done on cyber bullying. Talking out of my ass with no stats, but if I had to guess I would say the majority of MTG players today face cyber bullying far more frequently than any other form - and unfortunately it is probably more consistent and prevalent than any kind of teasing that used to happen in the past. Not that it would make having a picture of your ass crack posted online any less mortifying (though they are relatively anonymous), but let's be real and acknowledge that it isn't really the end of the world. You are allowed to have an exposed ass at the beach or something, so comparing plumber butt pics to taking sexualized up-skirt photos is quite the logical leap. Similarly, I take issue with the berating of an opponent after a loss being classified as bullying. I think it can diminish the efforts of addressing the real issue when people go overboard with things like that, so  t's worth thinking about what actually constitutes bullying. Also had to chuckle a bit at the irony of your disdain for the practice of calling an opponent lucky and such since it's exactly what you did after our online match in the TMD Invitational

Even though discussions go a bit off track sometimes, that's just how conversations work. I don't think people meandering through discourse diminishes the noble intent of the thread, so I'd hate to see it locked as threatened earlier.

I'm 6'5 240

Oddly enough, this is why I hated Misstep when it was first printed!

Since my Ritual combo decks are always of the Bob variety instead of Oath, I find Misstep to be mandatory x4 in all builds. To answer the original question, I run Misstep there solely to counter other Missteps targeting my first turn Ritual. Other combo decks are less likely to pop Ritual on the first turn (since their ideal opening isn't Ritual, Duress, Bob), but you still see those builds running Misstep in some amount as well - which just speaks to its overall power and versatility. 

This is a work of art, it's really beautifully complex in how "simple" it is. This is basically the platonic ideal of aggro control, and it feels even more MTGish somehow since it's a clean two color list.

Of course you can't get all of your macros in at a single meal, but you also don't need to be eating around the clock to get your daily intake in. Some people on IF take it to the extreme and only have a two hour feeding window, but even a simple 18 hour daily fast gives you plenty of time to consume a lot of food. For example I get 300g protein in with a post workout shake, a large meal after, and a large meal before sleeping. In regards to a spike, that's actually a very good thing to create an anabolic state after hypertrophy training...BBers aren't injecting insulin in concert with Hgh/IGF-1 just for fun. It sounds like you are more geared towards performance than appearance (powerlifting competitions?), and no offense but it seems that the goal there is just to eat as much as possible whenever you can so intermittent fasting is not ideal for that niche. Those guys are strong as fuck and elite level athletes in their own right, but it's not something to recommend for a very broad fitness thread for a bunch of guys who probably just want to shed some middle age flab.

Proper eating time refers to the basics that you already know (get a lot of protein post workout), with the caveat that it comes in a restricted window to get as close to possible to the sweet spot of preventing catabolism. In very nebulous terms, the overwhelming majority of people would benefit from restricting themselves to a six hour feeding window. For someone with more advanced training methods/needs such as yourself, there is a wealth of information you can find by searching for leangains or intermittent fasting. Some things to get you started:

http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debunked.html?m=1
http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fasting/
http://rippedbody.jp/2012/03/02/why-is-leangains-so-effective/

Even in Arnold's day they were doing stuff like this intuitively without knowing the science behind it, a lot of it comes off as too good to be true snake oil salesmen but your skepticism has to wane if you go through the mounds of scientific evidence supporting it.

The more I think about it, the better that Remora Stoneblade list looks....

RIP is the best thing against Dredge, SFM is nice vs Shops, TNN/Batterskull/Jitte for aggro matchups, and then a full Remora/Drain/MBT/Fluster suite against Blue. Hmmm....

This was a long held belief due to some dubious studies, and just sort of became accepted as common knowledge. Almost all research indicates that this is not the case, and digestion is far too complicated to accurately set a cap of how much protein you can utilize "in one sitting."  Even the fastest digesting protein takes several hours for just a few grams, so there really isn't any limit. If you eat enough protein, your body will use it (and actually use it far more effectively if you do it in big chunks with proper timing).