Yep Monday 25th. 11 players only this year. 5 rounds + Top4.

Just bought some Moats so I'm pretty sure I now have everything but Imperial Seal & Drain#4... (which I don't think I'll ever play)

Only proxying newer stuff or Modern staples such as Jace Vryn, Consecrated Sphinx, Gift#2 & 3, Ensnaring Bridge(s)... It pains me to spend money for that stuff so I'm ok to wait until I can find a trade instead.

On MTGO, I cant afford Misdirection so I proxy with Mindbreak Trap.

A little too many unnecessary swear words to my liking but this made me smile. It's not from me. http://imgur.com/gallery/7EhqwbF


People keep complaining about the fact that Finn and Rey beat Kylo at the end of TFA.

"He's so weak!"
"Beat by two nobodies!"
"Bitch got rofl-stomped by newbs!"

Did you watch the movie?

Did you pay attention at all?

Let's rewind a bit, and talk about something that comes up over a dozen times; Chewie's bowcaster.

The movie is like a freaking infomercial for the epic tons of fuck you and everything around you for the next twenty feet that this badass piece of weaponry dishes out like second helpings of your grandma's world famous mashed potatoes.

We see time again Chewie dealing heaping truckloads of fuck that guy and his entire lineage with this death-dealing weapon of pure carnage. He hits a Stormtrooper in the breadbasket and sends that poor sod flying twenty feet back into a wall as his armor shatters on the ground.

Han makes a point of asking Chewie if he can try it out, and then proceeds to obliterate five (two*) troopers with one easy shot.

Let's not mince words here. Chewie's Bowcaster is like the unholy love child of the original fucking crossbow and a howitzer. The Empire should have just strapped this piece of weaponized fuck you to the front of an asteroid, aimed it Alderaan, and saved themselves the trouble of housing a giant space station.

So...after being shown the pure unadulterated hell that spews forth from this hand-held death cannon in a deluge of destruction and demise, we can all agree that being shot with this thing tops a long list of things you don't want to happen to you.

Well, it happens to Kylo Ren.

And, what does he do? Well, he doesn't get thrown through the air like every other fucking thing that gets hit by this murder machine. In fact, he just kind of takes a knee for a minute. He doesn't get instantly wrecked while careening through the air hoping for the sweet release of death. He gets up, and proceeds to walk it the fuck off.

But, he doesn't just quit there. He doesn't just walk off what everything else in the universe instantly dies from. He goes out to find a couple bitches, and tear them apart.

The amount of control, the amount of pure Force power to stay standing after taking a shot like that is mind-bending. But, he doesn't just stay standing. He goes out and fights. He should have been dead right there, or at least screaming in pain as his insides fought to be outside his body. But, he fights. He's using untold amounts of pure Force energy to keep his insides inside, to keep himself conscious, to keep his legs, arms, and body moving, all while fighting two people who, until this point, haven't really been spending a ton of energy. They're practically fresh. And, no training? Finn's a STORMTROOPER. He's been combat trained since childhood. You bet your ass he can handle himself in a fight. And, Rey? Rey's been kicking ass hand-to-hand since before she can remember. Sure, it's an unfamiliar weapon, but you give someone, with an inkling of how to fight, a stick and they'll hold their own.

Of course two people beat Kylo at the end. Dude's nursing a gut wound that would put down a Rhino on steroids. The question shouldn't be how did Finn and Rey beat him.

It should be this:

If Kylo Ren could do all of that after taking that kind of hit...how in the fuck are they going to stop him when he's at one hundred percent?

</end rant>

FP edit: Holy...I go to sleep for a little while, and I wake up with delusions of grandeur. You guys rock!

Deserter!

More excuses for me to sleeve up my Miracles!

This was a bad movie. The character's development was non-existent. Rey is a nobody and in litterally 5min become a superhero. The angry teenage baddy is pathetic, you don't even understand what's going through his head. Solo is meant to be like an Ulysse, full of tricks, talk, etc... there is no way he would expose himself like he did without a plan. I guess given his age maybe they decided on terminating him. Maybe he cost too much too.

The dialogues were pathetic. Once I shut my eyes and it was all mono-syllabic.

The politics is non-existent. The scene were the rebellion come up with a plan in less than 3 min was laughable.

All in all, the scenario was poor, the character poor and it really felt like I've seen it all before.

I believe its a trilogy, they could have built a much darker setup. The village scene was ok, there was a glimpse of competition between the army general & Kylo Ren, they could have work on that as a wickness of the First order, more spy stuff, more betrayals, more tricks, more twists, more back & forth.... the solution being simply half a dozen fighters shooting at the cooling system is little lame.

Visually, a couple of great things but the movie bore me out. Maybe I grew up, but for the amount invested even the sound track wasn't great.

They played safe, didn't invent or reinvent anything. I'm sure there are dozen novels & sequels already written, I cant believe this was the best one they could dig out.

The main problem is that it competes directly with Dack.

Fish decks will always prefer Edric or Selkie.

3 Monastery Mentor cards in the whole T16 and it is 16th place!

and 3 JTMS.

I often run Mystical & VT along with Miracles but I cut it today as I don't run any Misstep and I also feel that the top deck tutors & Miracles work better when paired along with instant speed draws (Gush, Remora...).

Terminus only triggered once today against Dredge. I suppose I favoured it over Verdict because I found that aggro are just getting way too fast.

So I woke up at 5:45am and joined in for my very 1st online tourney ever (because they are always crap time for Australia)!

I finished 22nd @ 4-3 with a funky PW control featuring instead of the package (typically loaded with haymakers such as: Thief, Deluge, Dismember, DT, VT, YWill, Vault/Key....)

R1: Sneaky Homunkulus (29) Dark Petition Storm: Leyline of Sanctity did the job. These were very tight games
R2: Ecobaronen (13) Tezz: He infinite-turned me G1 but he scooped as he couldn't Jace Ultimate me thanks to Leyline of Sanctity nor Tezz Ultimate me nor Tinker/Bot me thanks to Moat
R3: Montolio (19) Martello Shop: I strongly suspected my opp to be on Shop. G1 on the play I think, I regret mulling a decent 7-cards hand with Ruby, Sapphire and Dack (but no land). My 6-cards hand was poor & the scry rubbish. It took Montolio less than 5min to trash me so I went for breaky + shower
R4: Zevad (12) Show & Oath: I played so bad it's not funny
R5: Matori (42) Dredge FKZ: Fantastic set of 3 games where we made full use of the 50min. Serenity VS Moat: so much back & forth! I really enjoyed that round very much
R6: CHaPuZaS (41) Tezz: G1 Drain into Consecrated Sphinx on T3 I think. G2 I think I waited too long and he eventually killed me with Tezz's army. G3 Mana-Draining FTW like in the good old days
R7: The Atog Lord (9) Aggro Shop: G1, I got trumped. G2, I didn't play Mox Ruby when I should have. It could have made a difference as my hand was full of answers

I'll be keen to play. Being in Australia, it would be much easier if you give me X pairings + a time window & then I'll work it out from there. It would be to difficult to lock in one given day or time with X different opp probably living in different time zones.

Maybe 4 every 2 weeks may give more flexibility? That's the sort of thing you have to think of but yeah Im keen

What is really the difference for Shop between Coercive Portal & Bottled Cloister?

I suppose it may suck sometimes when Cloister get destroyed but on the other hand, it does combo better with this new land!

The list in the OP is your list. Why do you need to ask others how it is performing is beyond me?!

We don't have 4 brainstorm in Vintage but we have top deck tutors. Miracle in Vintage (I'm mostly thinking here Terminus & Devastation Tide) may have some place. I mean Sensei & JTMS are still ok in the format.

Me, I simply don't think that this new mana symbol is very elegant. All I see is <>. I find it hard to spot & read.
The eldrazi logo or something along these lines would have been nicer.
You know something with a bit more design into it. With a solid background, neat contours...

And because of this exact ruling, I witnessed first hand a UR Delver player doing the eact same against a MUD player last month at sanctioned Sydney GP Vintage.

It was in the additional turns and this was the only way the UR Delver guy could pull out a win with his flying Delver. I was watching at the exact moment and althought, I can't recall exactly how he did it, I think it was a smooth & swift: "Untap - Upkeep - Draw" annoucement sort of thing. The opp said "yes" probably merely aknowledging that it was indeed the right order of chaining MTG phases. And, the UR Delver guy drew is card promptly.

This time, the judge was called and he asked to rewind & to tap the permanents under Wire. I thought it was very cheeky, it was very clear that the UR Delver guy was aware of Rolland Chang very recent precedent case.

Some dude here even played Terminus to a 2nd place finish. I think the card is legit:
- Doesn't get hit by Misstep, REB
- Work ok around Flusterstorm & Sphere effects
- Give you time to establish control versus aggro strategies: dredge, mentor/pyro's tokens, MUD
- Wipe out Revokers nulling your Planeswalkers

4 Sensei seems way too heavy. To compensate for lack of 4 Brainstorms, I think you'd better rely a more on full range of top deck tutors: Enlightened, VT, Mystical... All this probably means that 4 Misstep is a must in your deck. Trinket mage is the other option but maybe too slow for what you trying to do.

Seriously, I've done 1 daily in my whole life, that's how bad it is. My point is more than valid.

It's very true to state that, by default, these tournaments are always set for USA customers. Of course, I don't know the exact market shares, etc... for each part of the world so I assume they have good reasons to do this. But, it's an online game so I found it illogical to give up so easily on the rest of the world.

It changes a little throughout the year with daylight saving, etc... but right now, I'm pretty sure the current time difference is as follows:
- California: 0h (pst time)
- New York: +3h
- Paris: +9h
- Hong-Kong/Singapore/Malaysia: +15h
- Sydney: +18h

So assuming that 6am on Saturday or Sunday is "manageable" (screw 5am), how about they try a quaterly schedule as follows:

Highlighted in red are I believe the unreasonable times. In this example, I favoured US East Coast (they're not missing any tourney) but my point is that it is not hard to schedule events in such a way that you can overlap reasonably 3 continents at any given time. So far, it's just been laziness when scheduling and it could be as simple as the MTGO event team simply having no idea how our round world functions (seriously some people don't travel a lot and just have no idea).

The trap is that US events should generally be scheduled on a Saturday to allow the rest of the world to be able to play on their Sunday. If you start scheduling US events on a Sunday than there is a risk that it is nearly Monday everywhere else in the world. Saying that, in my above example, quarter 1 & 4 can work both for Saturday & Sunday in the US as it offers a 9pm event on Sunday evening (in Hong-Kong or Sydney) which may be reasonable.

So yeah, rotate it a little so that you don't always favour the same customers. You could even put into place an entry fee discount system for the hardcore or drunken players who decide to sign up for any events scheduled between midnight and 6am (their time).

Yeah that's 5am Sunday morning for me!

1pm Pacific time would be like 8pm Europe, 7am Australia. What's wrong with that? Sure MTGO staff understand such constraints but it always go USA first.

The online game cost me the same clearly I'm not getting the same value.

Awesome report Josh!

In the final game 2, turn 1: I Forced your Golem first and then Mindbreak Trapped away the Welder which you cast using RR floating from Lotus.

When you passed the turn back to me, I honestly felt pretty good with my 1 land on the board + 3 lands in hand VS your Workshop in play + 3 cards in hand (I think you mulled that game). I was confident that I'ld outdraw you but it appeared that the top 10 cards of your deck (after I cut it) were in fact made of: 3 Workshop + 2 Golem + 3 Wurmcoil + 1 Lotus + 1 Welder. Bahhhhh!

I love the brew & once again congrats on the win. I now need to get some Ensnaring Bridge which are apparently $25+, WTF have you done!?

I called it: D. Tide made it to the top!

Thanks to Rich Shay for making me change my mind in the last minute. Thanks to Kevin Cron for the inspiration (his thread & cool video here)

A couple of good looking lads:

At the end of the day, I doubt very much that Chalice restriction will bring more "fun" or "diversity" to the format (which is what I think you were alluding to in some other recent threads).

For example, I'm not sure that playing versus Defence Grid all day will be more fun than playing versus Chalice. Yes, you get to cast some preordain or bears on your T1 or T2, but the only faint difference will be: "Believing that you're alive" vs "Knowing that you're dead". Same/same but different. More fun? I think not.

I think it's naive to believe that by weakening prison deck we'll go back to a more natural circle: Combo<Aggro<Control<Combo. They said it themselves: "They want people to cast moxen" and I think that in no time Ucontrol will be all over this. It's not even funny. With Rods & Hurkyl's everywhere, aggro will basically just be Dredge. Matchups will probably be boring as hell and be prepared for: "Crap, you got Leyline of Sanctity again!", "Ahah!! Mindbreak Trap you!"

In the end, we are probably trading "coin-flippy" for "lopsided". I liked it when I was working within given parameters that Shop was imposing on the format. It felt somewhat comfortable, even when losing against it. Once again, a single restriction would have probably helped the whole format: Misstep. Less Misstep => more MD flex slots (aka Spell Pierce, Snare, Thoughtseize, Nature's Claim...) => more MD hate for Shop => more % for the rest of the format (Rituals, etc...)

Karn is 5cc + 1 to activate.

I think Dice_Box is suggesting that Karn may come back to fight hungry mana moxen decks (like good old Shaman).

I still think Rod is where you want to be for the moment.

Good video, sweet deck.
What did you loose against at Champ?
What would you change to the main or side?
No love for RIP or Priest? You were expecting Barbarian Ring/Sudden Shock of Dredge?

We have the very same problem in Australia:
- Sydney 5M people: 10 players Vintage league once a year... sometimes a GP side event with 25 players max
- Melbourne 4M people: 30 players leagues chaining one after the other, monthly events, Eternal Masters once a year (50+ players)
- Brisbane 2M people: 25+ players leagues twice a year & monthly events.

In Sydney area only, there are something like 6 MTG stores but Vintage is inexistent. People blame transports, family stuff, they don't like one another, etc...

I think it all start with a couple of passionate people willing to push their format and, more important, who are able to spend a lot of quality time at their local store (showing the game to others, lending cards, proxying decks, discussing/helping/getting the support from the store manager, finding good prizes, TOing, etc...).

Once you get a bit of momentum happening, it gets easier and the community grows itself.

I think the dude had in mind that Control Slaver already runs Dack Fayden + Notion Thief combo. So he was probably thinkink maxing out the Thief for extra Draw7 synergies.

The missing cards in Josh Archer's MUD list are 3 Wasteland.

3 revokers?

Yeah Portcullis looks good against Oath especially with the Orchard tokens they give you. It works against Dredge too (a tad slow maybe).

Ill say the card probably competes with Witchbane Orb slots in the side and in the current meta Portcullis just looks much better.

Slops to MTGTop8 for returning 0 search result.

TCDecks website did return only one other entry dating 2005! here