The only thing more white than sitting around playing Guitar Hero on a friday night is attending a Klan meeting.

This doesn't fix it for me when I have the problem.

Does anyone else have this problem? Quite often for me, I can not use any arrow keys or Page Up/Page Down to scroll up/down on this site. I think this problem started occuring around the time of the software upgrade. I have no clue how this would be possible other than some sort of problem with the Javascript in the page. It is really annoying because scrolling with the sidebar is basically the nut low.

I love your dry sense of humor.


You should have been allowd to use the mana as that is the current way the rules work

You really should get some help for that.

1x Power9 (Beta)
1x 40 Dual Lands (Beta)
2x Sol Ring (Beta)
1x Mana Vault (Beta)
1x Mana Vault (Alpha)
1x Demonic Tutor (Beta)
1x Wheel of Fortune (Beta)
1x Fastbond (Beta)
1x Regrowth (Beta)
4x Dark Ritual (Beta)
1x Balance (Beta)

and infinite other beta cards like Gauntlets of Might, Counterspells, Psionic Blasts, Time Vaults, Sink Holes, Animate Deads, Ice Storms, Winter Orbs, FORCEFIELD!, Nevinyral's Disk, etc

My main problem with Street Wraith is that I feel it decreases the power of Brainstorm. While at first this may seem to be the opposite because with virtually less cards in your deck, (the effect street wraith provides), in theory, Brainstorm would become even more powerful. However, what ends up happening is that brainstorms hit street wraiths. And if we are without a reshuffle effect we don't have a chance to cycle Street Wraith into a new card. Thus, I have sort of grown to dislike Street Wraith in Brainstorm based decks.

Ironically, I feel that the format is slow right when on the surface it appears to be very fast. Why is this? Well I believe the root cause is Ichorid's distortion of the metagame. Why is bomberman suddenly not just viable but tier1? Well what other deck in the format can so easily get out Tormod's Crypt in game1, without devoting more than one slot to the card? In addition, bomberman is able to "combo out" and win in the span of a single turn, meaning that ichorid can be finished off quickly if the game goes past the initial few turns.

However, this does not change the fact that bomberman is a quite clunky combo/fish deck that happens to run Mana Drain. GAT is a deck that seems to have some issues but at the very least should be problematic for ritual based combo decks with its extensive and powerful disruption package backed up by a consistent clock. It seems like CS might very well be a good deck to play if you can avoid the ichorid/long decks in the first few rounds of a tournament. I have not liked CS in about a year but now it might be time to run it again.

True, but wasn't burning slavery deleted?

I swear that your reports are getting better and better as you write more of them! Great report.

Why would you bring in Leyline of the Void against Gifts? Seems terrible.

Currently in the cd player:

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
Radiohead - Kid A
Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Chris Potter - Underground
Steely Dan - Preztel Logic

FFY: your list doesn't have Library? Blasphemous!

Mike Matusow is broke and a lifetime loser at poker. He is a reasonably good tournament player which is why he can get staked. He has a share of Full Tilt Poker which is where he gets his money from. Also, there are a variety of people who will stake him. I don't think he's a good example of a winning "put people on tilt" player.

Burning Wish
Imperial Seal
Personal Tutor
Frantic Search
Time Spiral

Those could all be safely taken off. Probably Chrome Mox as well.

As someone who has been on the other side of the table from Brian in this kind of situation I believe nothing is wrong with a little table talk unless it turns abusive. I think I learned a lot from reading this post about how to approach the mental side of the game. A very well written post and great topic!

How could that gifts player lose the game with recoup/timewalk in hand?

The more welders that are present in your meta, the better ETW becomes in relation to Collosus. Also, the more swords you see, the better ETW becomes. If people start packing Echoing Truth... well that's slightly worse than swords against Collosus, because it is harder to cast and Collosus can often come out earlier than ETW.

In the drain mirror ETW is far superior to Tinker+Collosus for the following reasons:

1. ETW uses only one card slot where tinker/collosus uses two (although it shuts off the tinker for mana vault/lotus play)
2. ETW is only countered by the bounce spell Echoing Truth where Collosus is countered by all other bounce spells (in addition to the Rebuild you might see game1). Therefore it is easier to protect against traditional control decks.
3. ETW can be a one turn (or 0 turn with time walk) clock
4. ETW can be played after a lengthy counter war for an "oops I win"
5. An early countered tinker is usually game over. An early ETW... well it can't be countered
6. ETW can not be countered by a goblin welder

The downside to to ETW is:

1. Mass removal like Engineered Explosives, etc, can easily deal with all the tokens.
2. The same mana denial that hurts you with Tendrils hurts you with ETW -- but at the same time this can be a boon because an ETW for 3-4 is usually game against a deck that is playing lock pieces.


That being said, if you are in a fish heavy meta it might be a good idea to run Tinker/Titan in the board, along with 1-2 more copies of ETW. I don't anticipate a fish deck beating a gifts deck packing ETW AND Tinker.

As far as combo goes, I don't think you need to run more win conditions than Tendrils.

If timewalk gets me drain mana on turn1 vs stax or something, I'll play it. But if I'm playing the drain mirror, or I'm on the draw and I'm not in danger of getting blown out I'll just hold it.

With burning wish in the deck the deck really becomes about abusing time walk. The card is incredibly broken, especially if you don't cantrip it (like how most players do). Generally, unless you are up against wasteland.dec or something and you want to get more land drops out there, you should save time walk until you can do something broken with it later in the game. Time Walk is only insanely broken when you tap out, then cast time walk, then untap. That's just so much free mana.

Wasn't merchant scroll restricted at this time?

Here is the decklist, it is actually quite incredible considering how bad so many of the other "best" vintage decklists were at the time (hello, weisman.dec with fireball/abeyance as the win condition???). Also, remember he had to use 5 cards from each expansion or something along those lines.

Turbo-Mulligan
Mana
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Mana Vault
4 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
4 City of Brass
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Instants
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Force of Will
4 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Mystical Tutor

Sorceries
1 Balance
1 Braingeyser
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Prosperity
1 Recall
1 Regrowth
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune

Artifact
4 Barbed Sextant
4 Black Vise
1 Mirror Universe
1 Snake Basket (FTW!)

SB
1 The Abyss
1 Amnesia
1 Death Speakers
1 Dust to Dust
1 Freewind Falcon
2 Hymn to Tourach
1 Icatian Infantry
1 Moat
1 Preacher
1 Sea Sprite
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Vodalian Soldiers

I remember Olle Rades winning Vintage deck (well -- they had to use 5 cards from every expansion in their deck so they were a little constrained). He ended up beating Mike Long in the finals with a super broken Propserity deck running 4 Mana Crypts, 4 Mana Vaults, and 4 Hurkyl's Recall.

Well, I hadn't noticed he cut another land. So basically he is running 24 "normal" mana sources and a Dark Ritual. In this case I would say running mana vault would probably be incorrect as it would place too much strain on the manabase.

I am a proponent of running his current manabase plus a mana vault -- metagame dependant. Probably is not necessary in a drain heavy meta.

I cut a land for Mana Vault because I was always comfortable running 15 land + 10 artifact mana with traditional meandeck gifts. Really, the cut for mana vault in terms of going from MDGifts to this list is Library of Alexandria. I can't cut library though, as it is too powerful with many different ways to refill my hand.

I had success in one tournament only running the 15 land and I know some others have as well, for instance, BrassMan ran 14 lands at Gencon 2005 -- a field INFESTED with stax. He did ok I hear.

Sometimes, on the draw in the control mirror it is not a bad idea to sideboard out mana accellerants. For instance, Dark Ritual is not very strong there.

Also, against decks packing chalice traditionally it was ok to cut a mox on the draw. However, with ETW being your main answer for chalice style decks I woudln't cut it.

How strong is the Echoing Truth plan in actual testing? Gifts seems to have 11-12 maindeck "counters" for Echoing Truth on goblin tokens (Force, Mana Drain, Repeal). That's if they don't bring in pyroblast. I find when I play against fish now I don't really need to burn my counters on any of their spells when playing gifts so it is easy to have ample countermagic to protect my win.

Repeal enables the obvious "free" storm plays. Also, it is useful vs stax and fish for bouncing Chalices, Null Rods, Spheres, etc. Finally, it enables many techy plays like the following:

1. Your opponent ends their turn with 7 cards in hand, you repeal their mox. The opponent discards and you draw a card.
2. You are at 6 cards in hand with Library on the table, you repeal your own mox, you activate Library.
3. You cast mystical tutor during Yawgmoth's Will. Repeal your mox to draw the card off mystical tutor for "free".
4. You have mana crypt in play, cast repeal targetting mana crypt --> effectively you have spent one blue to gain two colorless and one storm.
5. Your drain opponent has 5 mana available, repeal one of their moxes. Now they are unable to hardcast Force of Will.
6. You Empty the Warrens for 12 and pass the turn with 24 tokens in play. Your opponent casts Echoing Truth targetting one of your tokens. You cast repeal targetting the same token. For one blue you counter Echoing Truth and draw a card.

you need lotus petal in the deck. There are far too many situations where you need black mana (and sometimes red) and you have to put petal, jet, lotus, in a pile. It is uncuttable.

That is what I was questioning.

Mana Vault is one of your ways of obtaining 2 mana off a gifts, the others being: Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Dark Ritual. Mana Vault is synergous with Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild, Repeal. I don't want to turn this into Dark Ritual vs Mana Vault, but more of, should Mana Vault be run at all? Is it better than a 2nd Dark Ritual (which I think is definately true).

For me I have a hard time "de-powering" the deck even to a small degree. I think it might come down to metagame. In a meta full of drains you might not want mana vault but in a fish/stax heavy meta it is a good card to have.