Hi all,

I have been seeing 4 Goblin Welders in some of the lists I have looked at.  Is it really that good?  The only thing I can think of it being amazing against is stax and the ever present colossus, but isn't Hide/Seek just better, especially in the list that are splashing black which enables Seek to be played?

Thanks a lot,
NWI

Hi Cross,
I have one question.  When you building/testing your version of long, did you think that Necropotence was sub optimal and put Contract in stricty as a replacement for the necropotence ---or over the course of testing did you have both and felt that Necropotence was the wrong card for *your version* of the deck and Contract was left in simply because it worked well for you and not to take on the role of the previously cut Necropotence?

As Gaagooch said that Necropotence was very underwelming in what you considered to be a metagame that consisted of many decks packing 3-4 Duress, and even may have been unimpressed by Necropotence hitting the table later than turn 1 as Smmenen suggested.  So if you added in the Contract as a replacement for the Necro in a meta characterized by 3-4 Duress, then you and Outlaw made a good meta call and it payed off for you.  This raises some questions about you reasoning behind that call, but gennerally it is inferred that you and Outlaw feel that Necro is generally good except in that specific meta game ending any and all debate over the subject.  If you feel that currently, necropotence is just underwelming in any enviroment and you simply took the deck in a direction that further optimizes it in this new enviroment than an explanation of which card is better or why the Necro is excluded is frivalous because you have apparently done well with your build of the deck in situations where the Necro-toteing long varients just haven't.  Your top8 performanaces with the deck or evidence and justifacation enough.

Props to both yourself and Outlaw on your finishes and the slight long innovations you made.

Thank you,
NWI

edit: Mixed up what Cross and Gaagooch said, fixed now.

Everyone gets cards stolen at least once in their magic lifetimes, either when their six learning how to play or when thier older and should be more careful.  The point is Chang got shafted and he has to deal with it like the rest of us.  Its just a game, posting this crap on tmd is biased and greedy, I can understand his friends, some of which are tmd admins feeling for him and chipping in but anything else is just greedy and self centered for lack of better words.  I know people who had both of their legs blown off in Iraq and are in their 20's dying of cancer (both of which play magic btw) who have basically lost thier lives and I don't see any threads set up for them. 

Well that just my 2 cents. Your welcome to flame me now for being an opponent to this nonsense and having my heart and mind in the right places. Or the admin can delete my post for breaking some tmd rule, like not conforming to all the other communists.  Whichever works for you guys a guess.

If Goblins made it into the top 4, I shall laugh at you and wonder why the vintage community will find your list relavent.

I played Sui Black about 2-3 years ago when Keeper was the dominate deck.  There is no doubt that a properly built Sui black deck will own Keeper, however, Keeper is no longer dominate, nor is it anywhere within the metagame.  For this reason we have to figure out what Sui black is good at doing, bad at doing, and what can be done to improve it.

Here is the list I played way back then(i think, its a little fuzzy), just for reference:

4 Sarcomancy
4 Carnophage
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Spectre
3 Phyrexian Negator

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Torach
1 Necropotence
3 Null Rod
3 Diabolic Edict

4 Dark Ritual
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Lotus Petal
10 (Assortment od snow-covered and normal) Swamp

Once again, the list is still really fuzzy, and it is only up there to show that sui black put down as many creatures as they could as quickly as possible either before or after destroying and opponent's hand.  This deck had two strategies to contoling the board, hand disruption and mana disruption, both or which worked with great effectiveness.  And the 2 things that quite possibly made this deck work more than anything else is consistantsy and almost no mana issues.

Since I stopped playing Sui Black, many things have been printed that just belong in this unfortunatly dead deck.  Some of you have allready named some of these cards, but I'll list as many as I know with out adding another color:

Chalice of the Void, Leyline of the Void, Dark Confidant, Withered Wretch, Darkblast, Fetch lands, Shadow of a Doubt, Pithing Needle, and I'm probably missing some others.

Dark Confidant is probably the highlight of recent sets giving both a 2/1 critter for 2 and an extra card per turn.

I assembled a list to be more reactive to nut draws rather than being proactive and just ignoring most of it.

Dark Potency:

4 Dark Confidant
4 Withered Wretch
3 Phyrexian Negator
3 Kataki, War's Edge

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Torach
2 Null Rod
4 Chalice of the Void
1 Necropotence
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vamperic Tutor
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Disempower

4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
3 Scrubland
4 Dark Ritual
4 Swamp
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Lotus Petal


The bolded are cards I added so I didn't get run over by Tinker/DSC and Oath.  So technicly it isnt sui black anymore.   This is just a sample list that I put together to maximize new cards releases as well as keep the most presure on my opponent as possible.  Stax and Combo are the two matches which scare me the most so which is probably best in the splash color as well.  

P.S. I agree with Fred, let it die.

@ Kobefan,
As far as the library issue goes, I'll be honest I have won more games off Dark Confidant/Loa then you could imagine, but I may have either allready been winning those games or I am just lucky and draw a LoA early after I drop a couple threats.  I don't know what it is, but I'll test some more without the Loa, as soon as I get home (I'm on vacation right now).

My biggest Problem with bouncer is the choice to attack or stay untapped just in case of Gifts going DSC/Recoup/Time walk. 

before i go on, I am going to post the list that first got me looking a U/B fish:
Maindeck:

Artifacts
4 Aether Vial
1 Black Lotus
4 Chalice Of The Void
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire

Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Gilded Drake
4 Waterfront Bouncer
4 Withered Wretch

Enchantments
4 Standstill

Instants
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Demonic Consultation
4 Force Of Will

Legendary Artifacts
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Sorceries
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Time Walk

Basic Lands
3 Island
2 Swamp

Lands
1 Flooded Strand
1 Library Of Alexandria
4 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
2 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland

Sideboard:
2 Old Man Of The Sea
3 Rootwater Thief
3 Back To Basics
4 Energy Flux
3 Kira, Great Glass-spinner

I tested this list for a while, changeing the Consult to MisD almost immediatly.  I will say right off the bat though, this is a metagame deck, completely and utterly, it usually beats CS, Gifts, Oath, Tog, and just about anything else that is remotely control.  It is gennerally bad against Stax and aggro decks, but it has a surprisingly fair matchup against Workshop Agrro (even though, I haven't really seen enough workshop aggro decks in recent months to warrent this statistic actually meaning anything).

Now here is my newest version of U/B/x(red in this case) that i am testing:
RUB[age]
4 Gorrila Shamen
4 Dark Confidant
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Gilded Drake

4 Fow
4 Daze

2 Rack and Ruin
1 Echoeing Truth
4 Chalice of the Void

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vamperic Tutor

1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
3 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
2 Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Saphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Lotus Petal

SB:
3 Duress
3 Red Elemantal Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Gilded Drake
2 Rack and Ruin
2 Darkblast
3 Planer Void

    You asked for a list, so here you go, ill update my cards choices as soon as I can, but I have to go catch a plane.

    I like your deck, I have been trying B/U fish for quite some time, to no avail, and the addition of red for both better mana disruption and sb options seems very logical.  I am scared to know what strains this 3 color combination puts on your mana base, especially with your 5 strip affects and 2 off color moxen.  I am wondering why it is that you are not playing Loa, i have allways found having Confidant and Standstill/Ninja to give you 7 cards fairly frequently, but then again you are playing 3 colors and mana is tight.

    I am very uneasy about Waterfront bouncer, i suppose it all comes down to you meta game, but in my recent playtesting it hasn't helped me at all against stax(my bad matchup), and is very limited against CS, gifts, ect., but those are generally good matchups anyway.  Although for all its short comings against prison and combo/control, it is a MVP against Oath...and dragon-if you can find someone playing it.

    I am currently trying Arcane Denial in the Remand slot.  Partly because it has been my pet recently and I've been trying to get it to work in something-but to no avail, and also because it usually gains the same amount of tempo as Remand.  I say this because it usually gets rid of a card permanently, where as Remand will simply make use of the tempo and delay your opponent's play for as long as possible, usually no more than one turn.  I also like it because your opponent doesn't get the cards untill the next upkeep so you can really screw with them attempting to go off, if they are playing combo of any kind.  I am curious to know what all of you think about this card, or rather why remand would be better than it. 

    Anyone saying that Duress is good here is a dork in my opinion.  If your going to play FoW, which is the best choice, playing Duress seriously screws with your number of blue cards.  I generly keep 2 to 3 Duress in the SB for grim long and other combo matches where FoW  and Chalice arn't enough.  But then again you guys may be running alot more blue cards then i, or you have cut Fow, or you are plain lucky.

    Daze in this deck is usually a good counter both early and mid game because of your Gorrilas and CotV's, so those should stay a 4 of. 

    Well thats it for me, hopefully I didn't make a complete fool of myself through spelling errors or my Arcane Denial musings, so i would appreciate it if you guys don't flame me too bad.

Or, like the geekz we are we can stalk them, hack their computers, and take pictures of them naked to blackmail them into our bidding.  But Wizards is a small fry in the corporate machine, we have to invade Canada and inslave the communists before we can blackmail wizards. 

Join the cause at http://invadecanada.us/.

p.s. No penguines, llamas, gimps, or brassmen were hurt during the writing of this statement.   

Verbal warning for spam.
-Jacob

Speakng of reading your cards, storm can just play around this by casting jewelry and rituals in bewteen blue spells. Meaning, yes they can play more than one blue spell per turn.  And, I think it has been discussed before, like 3 years ago as an addition to Fish(at the time was mostly Mono Blue), as a way to combat counterspells.  I'm not sure if the thread is covered by the current vintage archived forum or not, but it was bad then, and it is bad now.

Edit:I didn't see Roxas post, but yea you can close the thread now.

Lets look at the upsides:
1)Its a wizard so it has synergies with Voidmage Prodigy
2)Can be pitched to FoW
3)It taps fatties
4)It can stop about half of the broken stuff in vintage from happening. *As long as you have 2U up*
5) It swings.

Granted, niether ability is the most economically costed, but wizards would break more than just Vintage if they made it cheaper.  It has potential, but you can't make fun of it cause it doesn't say U: stifle everything.

@Kombat, I stifle triggered abilities (cip's, storm, upkeep effects, ect.) all the time in vintage, maybe you just don't know how to play with stifle. 

Firstly, Vault is just better in the singular.  There is no reason to free up maindeck slots for Dark Ritual, either as a bad 1-of, or as a 4-of, both situations and anything in between just give you bad draws way too often.  Though this is a combo deck, all the mana it needs comes from moxen and drains.  Dark ritual is a win more card, or a lose more often card.  In that, Either you were allready winning, or you drew it when u needed an answer and lost.  Why Dark ritual is being considered for slots is just disgusting. 

To CSSAMERICAN,
I agree with you in that puting a bunch cards that hurt bob synergies is wrong.  I also like your list(perhaps becuase it resembles tog), but I was curious, since you removed tog, why did you keep the same draw engine in the AK's and Intuition?  Have you tested tfk's instead?  If so, why did you turn down tfk.  Oh and props on the Duress', i put them in my build too because it plays so much like a combo deck now.

To thug,  I'm not sure if Merchant scroll is the best idea for this deck.  Yea your right that there are lots of targets, but you already have a great draw enigine and plenty of tutors, I don't think you need any merchant scrolls, unless maybe you cut one rebuild (from the 2 rebuild, 1 H's recall build) in favor of it, to limit your draws of cards you don't need right then, but will need later(my problem with cycling rebuild).  I however disagree that only one tendills is enough, often I play an early tendrills to recover some life against faster decks so I can continue to use Bob, and play the second tendills later as a finisher.

Well i think that cover all i want to say, happy Burmease New Year!! (well not really, but i missed the Chinease one)

I just have a couple comments to make:
1) Tinker only belongs in this deck if you are running DSc or some other win condition that it can fetch.   That siad, I think that Memory Jar is a must hear and for that reason Tinker should also be a must.  Basically, my build has Tinker/DSC as well as jar.  Granted, 90% of the time I tendrills for the win.  It's nice to have a quick way to end the game without haveing to go all out for the kill.  Its a nice sit back and bash for two turns I win.  What I'm trying to ay here is if you run Tinker, run a kill card too.
2) 4 Brainstorm, 2 Top's is the right number.  Anyone running 3 and 3 or 4 and 3 is just wasteing space and getting dead draws pretty consistantly.  The top does not make the confidant good, the Confidant wins games without the Top, the top is strictly there are a way to prevent some damage from bob as well as be synergistic with the 9 shuffle effects.  Also, Null Rod is a consideration, but not a problem, they are merely shuting down a couple moxen and one top at most usually.  Your answer, cast rebuild and proceed to win the game.

Your forgot that you happily pay 6 life, counter a spell, and cantrip for drawing an additional card that turn.

//LAND
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
2 City of Brass
4 Forbidden Orchard
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Island
1 Tundra

//DORK..s
1 Auriok Salvagers
1 Darksteel Colossus

//SPELLS
6 lo Moxen (yea your right 6)
1 LED
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Balance
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Oath of Druids
4 Duress
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Tinker
3 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Æther Spellbomb
2 Pyrite Spellbomb

//SIDEBOARD
1 Phyrexian Furnace
3 Ground Seal
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Rushing River
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Oxidize
3 Choke
1 Verdant Force ( just smile and read my second signiture...
1 Akroma, Angel of Wrath
1 Pristine Angel

So yea, I changed it alot, but I hope it was for the best, here are my explanations:
-Tinker/CColossus  I too believe that a back up plan MD is a good idea and the fact that you can grab a random 1st turn win from it is somewhat reassuring.

-Engineered Explosives:  Yea they are ddefinitelybetter than Seal of Cleansing any day of the week for all the reasons others have posted.

-Æther Spellbomb:  To me it's just another silver bullet that you may need to get rid of Platinum Angel or Meddling Magi before you win.

Sideboard:
-Ground Seal:  Better than Phyrexian Furnace if you swswitcho traditional Oath post-board.

-Phyrexian Furnace:  I left the one in if I want to keep Salvagers in post-board; though depending on your likely-hood to transition post-board I would probably switch them out with Ground Seals/take them out entirely.

-Gaea's Blessing:  Yea, if your going to transition post board I would put that in as well.  Ohh and if you even run into an old-school Dragon deck that relies on Ambassador Laquatus for the win I suppose you can use it there too.

-3 Choke:  You sisaidn you opening that you wanted to make Oath more like a combo deck, we as far as sideboarding is concerned, this is one of the best hosers available for a combo-oath build.

-Verdant Force:  It is a personal prpreference guess, but I allways love to have this against stax and occasionally against heavy aggro decks.

-Pristine:  Once again my preference, but Pristine is a more easily protected creature than SpSpiritf the Night, and if I wanted haste I would just put in Akroma.

I think that just about sums up my changes/choices.  I really want to add the 4th TfK in now that DSC is in the main, but that's doable if you cut Æther Spellbomb or something.  I hope I was helpful, good luck with the deck.

To my knowledge there plenty of R/G threads floating around along with lots of fish variants that are competitive.  At first glance this seems like (if your stats are right) it should to well in the current Chicago metagame, but anywhere else your only going to see but one, maybe two stax decks in the swiss (before cut top8).  So, what type of metagame are you intending this for.(stax I guess) And what makes your deck better than most other budget* fish decks?

Yeah, but God doesn't hate most stax players, he only hates me---and Allah(or maybe it was Buddha).

P.S. No offense to Christians, Muslims, and Buddhas.

Have you tested Phyrexian Furnace instead of Tormod's Crypt?  It seems (unless I'm mistaken) that you are really only aiming to remove 1 or 2 cards from the game with Tormod's Crypt, when the Furnace can get rid of 1 for sure and over the coarse of several turns get rid of all of them, not to mention the cantrip affect attached to the sac. ability.  However, this is a aggro type deck, so I don't know how well it would do here.

Also how has the combination of Factory/Genju been working out for you??  Do they coexist well in this deck?

Just some questions.

No matter how good Triskellion would be in this deck, Null Rod shuts it down automatically so forget about it.  

The deck reminds me of the older stax builds though and I suppose that's what I like about this one.  I wish the Draw/Tutor was a little better, but the only thing that crossed my mind was using Grafted Skullcap like the old stax decks, or the new Bottled Cloister(basically same idea) from the Ravnica spoiler.

I would so love to add Karn to this deck if WotC would errata him to say:"Not effected by Null Rod," but it is safe to say WotC hates me (Don't worry, so does God).  

Just a couple suggestions.

I understand that both players are responsible for knowing the gamestate, but why is it the opponent's fault?  He isn't the one who forgot about his Mana Drain mana, he's the one that knows what a card does and wants to get ahead by knowing the gamestate and reporting it.  But that is just my opinion, I also have seen it ruled many different ways, which leads many, I believe, to not say anything, and thus their opponent doesn't get Mana Drain mana and they are not penalized for reporting something.  Which gets that player almost advantage as if they had forced their opponent to burn for 3. 
Anyway you would think that WotC would have released an errata for it by now considering judges are seemingly inconsistent about their rulings.

Ignore this if you have explained it in your article (I do not have starcity premium).

Did you test Triskellion in your list, because in some of the Ravager lists that I have seen in the past they have used Ravager/Trike together as creature removal/faster win?  Obviously the drawback with this approach is that Trike costs 6, but if you Academy/lots O' Moxen you probably wouldn't have a problem putting it down.

Just as helpful as allways Brassm...Urzatron.  I think that we need some of your unique abilities over on the budget gifts thread.

Did you guys notice that they didn't Restrict/Ban Zodiac Dragon?  Unless they have changed the wording, it will be BROKEN!  Does someone know if they changed the wording??

One question, when you tinker what are you sacrificing to your tinker?  You know that the deck wins using a Tinker for Colossus/Charbelcher/Rebuild Storm right?  So lets say you get down an early Tinker, what artifact are you sacrificing to it? 

And if your format is all budget, then the armies of suicide black/FCG/WTF are going to own such a slow build of gifts.  Anyone can tell you that except maybe silvernail that posts about his Secret Force deck being fully powered (but I'm the elitist right?). 

Urzatron's(Brassman's) Twiddledrix Deck had more of an ability to win than this, maybe Urzatron can give you some pointers.

You have to have Mana Drains + Moxen to even build a gifts deck, otherwise it just won't work,  You need the Drains to actually be able to cast the Gifts, and you need the moxen to sacrifice to Tinker. If you were to make this 10-proxy, the bes thing I would suggest is proxy 4x Moxen Lotus, 4x Mana Drain, 1x Time Walk, 1x Ancestral Recall, and if you can't, at the very least,  do a 10-proxy build, then you really have no business playing this deck.  So, is this for a 10- proxy tourney?  Or is it 5 proxy?  Let us know what you have available to you and we may be able to get a budget version to work, but like I said you Need at least those 10 cards to even consider this deck.

I have played the list in the past and, yea it can get really insane stuff going, but it is really hard to play.  It's just like playing a Tog deck with lots of answers and wins quicker/more easily, its just that it is less consistant.. 
The build I played had 4 Brainstorms  and 3 Duress though, and that seemed to make it more consistant..

Congrats on the finish.
I have a couple questions:
1) Why didn't you use the Eternal Witness kill?

2) Do you think that Engineered Explosives would be better than Pernicious Deed in the SB?

Goblin Welder is mostly a backup strategy for the deck, it gets thrown down when your Illusionary Masks are in the graveyard and you want to hurry up and win.  Or if you SotF for the Platinum Angel, then toss it to go get Goblin Welder, you can have a Platinum Angel down a turn later, unless you allready have Anger in the Yard.  Not to mention the ability to screw with your opponents stuff pretty badly if they were running DSC or Stax.  That's the beauty of running Goblin Welder in here, you really don't need it to win, it's just there "Just in case.." 
Goodluck with the deck fellas, and does anyone have any recent Tourney Reports on it?

.....Classic, props to eppeguy

Yea, but I think the real questions is not "how good would it be in this deck?" as much as it is "would we really want to devote slots to such a plan and how much better would that plan be?"
I don't think that survival would make this deck any better, unless, you switch to a survival deck, like TnT, or something along those lines, a mono green deck just can't use and abuse  Survival nearly as effectively as Tnt or other workshop aggro builds would.  So what I'm trying to say is, if you want to play SotF, play the deck that best abuses it, but mono green cannot abuse it to great enough extent to put it in.

True Believer is a metagame choice, if you know that your going to be seeing CS and Meandeck Tendrills all day, put him maindeck, otherwise, I agree that he is probably best useful in the SB.How would Empiral Armor ever be better than Umezawa's Jitte?  Your not running Land Tax to build up your hand and your trying to beat the aggro matchup, Jitte is made for aggro decks to beat up on other aggro decks.  Just some suggestions.

The point of the deck is to get to 1 of the 4 Natural Order's, you have no interest in the creatures by themselves, and thus no interest in Survival of the Fittest.

hmm.....
I think I should tell you a saying:
"It doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning is winning"

You have what many call "tunnel vision Euphoria," your so interested in winning fancy, that you sacrifice stability for a "fancy" win.  If you want to post something innovative, thats fine, but this is way too extreme.  Your adding green to a deck that many consider to be almost MUC-with a splash of red and black.  You need to lay out some good explanation behind the changes, because no one here wants to here about slaving someone 6 times, when every CS player can slave infinite times.  Best of luck.

P.S.  Are you in the running for a Darwin Award?