The tournament went pretty well, too bad I had to make a re-pairing in one of the rounds. Next tournament will probably be sanctioned, with even better prize-support. (Probably a Time Walk or Mox as first prize).

I see Maarten Adam's deck is listed as O.G control, lmao, good to see our inside joke made it all the way to TMD 

Maarten intentionally dropped to get out of T8, and he took the Italian Drain in the unpowered T4.

I would also like to give thanks to Bart Marijnissen and Steven Geurts, for organizing this tournament with me.

Personally, I would still run 2 mainboard. The chance of getting paired agians Staxx/Dragon/other decks that still use mostly nonbasics is pretty big. Then, if you get paired agianst Gifts, you can side them out for Gifts hate. If you get paired against one of the 'nonbasic decks' you can side 1 or 2 more in.

You'll have to tweak the perfect number of maindeck Back to Basics, according to your metagame.

I can see it doing something for Doomsday.

End of turn Doomsday, so you no longer have to wait a turn to combo out. And as said before, it's a cantrip. And cantrips for aren't bad at all.

Time will tell whether it's really going to do something for Vintage.

Even with fetch running rampant, B2B can still screw ones manabase pretty bad. For example: Staxx not being able to use all of it's lands, Dragon not able to use it's Bazaars.

You are probably right when you say it's become less powerfull than it was before, but it can still rip up decks. But it won't be winning any major tournaments if that's what you mean 

And what about Quicken in Doomsday? End of turn Quicken, cast Doomsday after that, no more waiting a turn to go off. And it draws a card, I think it's a pretty solid card, as it only costs  .

And why isn't it win-more?


I think this post by lordmayhem perfectly illustrates why the Djinn IS win-more. I mean, when the Djinn hits play, all you do is fiddle around with other spells. If one of the 'regular oath creatures' would be in play you would be taking away life points, thus winning.
It's a fun idea, but it doesn't add to quality of the current Oath lists.

True, but have you taken a look at the bottom and right edges of the back of the card? It will probably only get rated 7 by PSA (off center and clearly not NM). A PSA 7 card hardly increases in value, that's not worth the membership

Why would you want to put a Vial on 3 counters? You other creatures are 1B, Vial on 2 seems like a much better choice.

Negator is something you want on the board first or second turn with ritual. Third or fourth turn it will probably be obsolete.

Also, the Dust to Dust has double W in it's cost AND needs 2 Artifacts to even be played.

You call it Fish, then why don't you run any strip effects?

I think this deck could use some serious tuning, the matchup vs. Staxx and random control seems very hard.

I don't know, using them together with bazaar would mean card-disadvantage.

You make bazaar effectively: T: put the top 2 cards from your library into your graveyard, then discard three cards.

But the draw is what makes bazaar so great. Discarding 3 cards every turn is bad, even if you get your dragon in the yard. Most of the times it would just mean you will have to discard your hand (and yes, that's the animate spell too). Your draw spells aren't effective anymore. You would have to cast the Dredge thing the turn you go for the win, because it will cause you to stall if you don't swing for the win immediately.

Absolutely true, have you never had any problems with this? I mean, when you have Jitte + Vial in play, you really want to hang on to them.

Also, the Ninjas don't seem like a good choice, they are only effective in turn 2 or 3, and it costs you. I would cut them for an extra StP and 2 Misdirection or 2 Disenchant.

I run a build like this, but really, the studies shouldn't be in there. Madness and Gorger are the only decks that use study as cardADVANTAGE, in other decks it is disadvantage.

Run Faerie conclaves and maybe 1 Treetop Village (depends on how many early-drops you have to support this). And the Ninja's, I don't know, the ninjutsu costs mana, and you don't run Cloud of Faeries.

But the most important change would be getting rid of the Studies.

True 

I would consider running an extra StP as 60th card and maybe cut that Plains for a Faerie conclave.

Absolutely true, because of this it will probably have very limited impact on a game. Control can easily work around this, as said before. TPS works around it no problem, given the moxxen etc.

Fish could find it pretty annoying, but it has enough ways to get the Web out of the way.

IMO, Mana Web won't have a big impact.

True, but you have 4 welders for that purpose. Animate dead is more of an extra welder, it's not essential to the deck.

I totally agree with you on this, Jar can turn a game around.

Gamble seems like a great card in stax, a less mana-intensive alternative to TfK (well, not really, but you get the point). Losing Welders shouldn't be an issue, because if you have Welder and Gamble in hand, you play Welder.

Just a little thing:

Isn't 3x Animate Dead a little over the top? I would probably cut 1 for a Mana Crypt or Lotus.

Why would you consider running 1 Daze? It would be a dead card most of the times, you really need it in your hand turn 1 or 2.

I feel Chalices mainboard would be a bit over the top. But if your Meta is heavily powered you could consider running them main.

But does it really add to the deck? Could you have won those matches with just Tog?

I have seen people doing this (combining TPS and Affinity). The deck takes too long to build your affinity-base (let's just call it that). You can only go off turn 3 or 4, and in the mean time someone has almost certainly put an Energy flux or something similar in play.

I have seen these decks go down too many times to believe they could work.

Great point there, self reliance can be quite important. But with Tinker it's not an issue I guess, you almost always cast it with moxxen or a Crypt.

@Methuselahn, but still, the cards in the P9 are some of the most powerful cards out there. They are not restricted for being too powerful in the past, they still are. Although Yawgwin and Tinker, for example, are more powerful than twister in most cases.

In a way it does, yes. But $1 for each proxy after the set of P9 and a playset of Drains, Shops, Bazaars doesn't seem that ridiculous. It's not like they are so poor they have to proxy their whole deck.

I have power too, so it's not an issue for me either. But you can't play T1 if you have no funds at all. If you can't even afford a set of duals, why bother paying $4 (or more) each tournament, it'll cost you in the end. We have to face it, our beloved T1 will always stay kind of 'elite' even if we have proxy tournaments.

Well, tournament organisers could supply the players with proxies printed on a blank card (as found in the World championship decks). It don't know how WOTC would feel about this (copyright, legal issues etc.) but it would certainly solve your problem, Dante.

@Moridar, but if they would reprint Power as DCI foils they would limit the printing to 1 or 2 tournaments. They really don't want to reprint things on the reserved list.
And those DCI foiled powercards would be even more expensive than regular power, so what would be the point?

And imagine how all those people you know, who spent thousands of dollars on power and such, would think about reprinting on a larger scale? I know I would be furious, I didn't spend that money to see my cards decrease in value. And Wizards wants to keep a certain market value, MTG is still a collectible cardgame.

It would be nice for the format to see some DCI-sanctioned proxy-tournaments, with real powercards as prizesupport. This way, good players with a smaller budget can own power too and compete in the high-end tournaments which should be non-proxy. The quality of the big tournaments would go up this way.

@Hi-Val, so very very true.

All very good points. I would have to agree with you guys one Yawgwin being more powerful than Twister. But yes, Y. Will relies on other cards to do it's magic.

I want to start a discussion about whether Timetwister (in the opinion of the majority!) belongs in the Power Nine.

This post because of an article by Mark Rosewater, in which he states:

'Timetwister – Don't get me wrong, Timetwister is a very good card. It's restricted for a reason. But one of the nine best cards of all time? I don't think so. (All the Vintage players can let me know if I'm putting my foot in my mouth. It seems the Vintage crowd really enjoys pointing out when I do this.) The best comparison I can make to Timetwister is Brahms. Yeah, he was a good composer, but he's no Bach or Beethoven. He was just lucky enough to have his name start with the letter B. Just as Timetwister is lucky to be blue.'

This got me thinking, Twister does seem the odd one out: It costs 2(U) and doesn't exclusively give advantage to the caster.

But on the other hand, it does give the caster 7 brand new cards, which might include the already cast Ancestral Recall. Or in combodecks, the stuff it needs. It can pretty much self-handedly make sure the combo gets on the table.

So, discuss: Do you think Twister should be P9, or is it the odd one?

I think it is absolutely P9