What is your logic behind running Chalice and not Null Rod? 


Thanks
Sean

There has been a lot of talk about the maindeck, and a LOT of talk about the possible 4th color.  But what I haven't heard a lot of talk about is the sideboard.  For reference, here are the top placing sideboards (with differences in bold):

JD @ STG:Chicago            Kyle leith@beanie exchange
1 Dark Confidant              2 Dark Confidant
1 Elvish Scrapper          1 Goblin Welder
1 Eternal Witness             1 Eternal Witness
1 Uktabi Orangutan          1 Uktabi Orangutan
4 Xantid Swarm                2 Xantid Swarm
                                      2 Overload
1 Artifact Mutation       1 Echoing Truth
2 Naturalize                     1 Naturalize
1 Oxidize                         1 Oxidize (one main)
1 City Of Brass                  1 City of Brass
1 City Of Traitors           1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Tolarian Academy           1 Tolarian Academy

It is obvious that the functional differences between the two are relatively minor, but does anyone have any suggestions?  Personally I've never wished for the Eternal Witness or Elvish Scrapper.  I almost always wish for the City of Brass (or equivalent), the Dark Confident, or for the Phyrexian Negator (which I choose to include) for more pressure.  Have any of you found the Witness/Scrapper to be underpowered?  Does anyone miss the Negator?  The crypt seems rather random to me, but I can see where it might be nice (especially if you are bastardizing your artifacts with Tinker).

As to Duress, it's a fickle bitch.  I don't like wasting my resources on something that doesn't accelerate my game plan, but it has saved me many games.  A thought that I've been tossing around is running 3 Dark Confidants instead of the Duress.  This serves a similar purpose to duress in that it helps negate your opponent's answers, the card advantage is amazing, and it also acts as an alternate win condition along with hardcasting ESG and wishing for Negator.  Has anybody dallied with running the confidant main?

I've really enjoyed the blue in my belcher deck. I've never really had it be a huge problem. Sometimes, I'd need to land grant for tropical instead of bayou, but I generally either brainstormed or ancestralled into a black source. Here are the cards I've been using and why:

2 Brainstorm - I disliked any more, but sometime digging for extra accelerants on turn one is pretty awesome. I feel I mulligan less with these included.

Tinker - Man, I love this card. It acts as both a draw 7 and another tutor for belcher. Post board, it gets Collossus. I know a lot of you think he's easy to deal with, but most decks I've played against end up boarding out a lot of their removal and bounce.

Ancestral - Most combo decks like it, right?

I think bringing in Xantid Swarm against Fish is a mistake, in my testing.  The key threats are Rod/Chalice, Wasteland, and Force of Will.  To a lesser extent you can run into Daze and Stifle, but these are not as threatening unless you go for an early Desire that gets Stifled.   In either case, in my experience, if you Duress on turn one you almost never see a hand like this:

Fetchland
Wasteland
FOW
blue card
Null Rod
Daze
Stifle


More likely, they will have one or at most two cards you need to take and the others will just be annoying. 

For example, a more realistic hand might be:

Wasteland
Manland
Fetchland
Force of Will
Cloud of Faeries
Meddling Mage
Standstill

You only really want to take the FOW.  You then konw they have Wasteland - so anticipate it, and then go nuts with your first bomb.  The only thing I really fear from Fish is their topdeck getting lucky. 

I still think that Control is the hardest matchup, period, for Grim Long becuase of its potential to just combo out before you do at the same time it counters your spells.  If you think that you have no trouble at all beating control, then I see no reason for you not to just master the Stax matchup, put in a bit more stax hate and go to town. 

How could this deck even be viable?  It has no counterspells, no duress, no Chalice, and no lock components?  It dies automatically and unequivocally to Chalice, Null Rod, Nether Void, Trinsphere, Sphere of Resistence, Smokestack, Oxidize, Root maze, Metldown, Shatterstorm, Damping Matrix, Balance, Tormod's Crypt, Wastelands + Crucible, Disk, Keg, Back to basics, Force of Will, Mindslaver, naturalize, disenchant, Rack and Ruin, Energy Flux, Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild, Oath, Tog, Goblin Welder, Gorilla Shaman, and Pithing Needle - all of which you will face turn one every game in every tournament.  This deck is slower than combo decks and not as aggressive as aggro - how can this pile even expect to win a match?  This deck loses to Fish, Stax, Slaver, Gifts, UR Fish, Chalice Fish, TPS, Deathlong, Uba Stax, Chang Stax, Cron Stax, Belcher, Oath, Tog, and Suicide black.  It might be parfait.  Maybe.  Why would you play this deck over stompy I don't know.  I don't understand how you can reasonably expect to beat  Chalice, Null Rod, Nether Void, Trinsphere, Sphere of Resistence, Smokestack, Oxidize, Root maze, Metldown, Shatterstorm, Damping Matrix, Balance, Wastelands + Crucible, Disk, Keg, Back to basics, Force of Will, Mindslaver, naturalize, disenchant, Rack and Ruin, Energy Flux, Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild, Oath, Tog, Goblin Welder, Gorilla Shaman, and Pithing Needle. 

...

If I believed all of that, I never would have even written an article on the deck. 

Does ANYONE read what was said before their own reply? Jesus. As its allready been said, it was mana crypt, and Steve allready corrected it.
Also, as he allready said, if you READ THE ARTICLE he discuss's other concerns/problems with the deck.


This is a forum for intelligent people. Try reading what others have to say before you post. Yeesh.

My head asplode!

Seriously, these are NOT going to be more than $20. It just isn't going to work that way. If there are 4 lands that run for $20+ as well as some other chase cards, then boxes will be torn open and sold so fast that the price will plummet again. Look at all the hot rares you know of in the last few years even. Cranial and Needle hit $25 and only briefly. They were also that expensive because it wasn't worth it to crack packs for money cards.

Ravnica looks like a set very much geared towards cracking packs for cash, so I forsee the value of these cards to be $8-12 tops. Again, fetchlands were playable in every format and Delta never got above $12.

Prohibitive to some people? 

I would not be able to enter Vintage if I were just starting up.  Frankly, I don't see how anyone can.  If you have no Vintage cards right now but you are thinking about playing Vintage, I can't even imagine how you would get into it.  You would have to unload several hundred dollars just to get get Force of Wills and some basic Dual Lands, Fetchlands, and Wastelands, City of Brasses and the like.  With Legacy grand prix's coming up, this problem is going to get much worse. 

It isn't even just that the price of power nine is expensive, you can't play Drains, Workshops, or Bazaars without unloading at least $400 and more like $600+. 

I don't think Vintage is really worth playing unless you have at least *some* metagame flexibility.  I like to be able to play whatever the hell I want.  Decks like Vroman's Uba Stax with Workshops and Bazaars and decks like Kevin Cron Stax with Chains of Mephistopheles and Workshops seem far beyond the range of any 10 proxy player.

I think that is a really really stupid ruling. A card has a NAME. when you have to NAME a card it means provide the other player with a CARD NAME. Therapy doesn't say "guess a nonland card" or "describe a nonland card," it says "name a nonland card." I also think judges shouldn't provide card names to the opponent, except in the case of foreign cards. If you can point to a Geisterschiff and ask what it's name is, that's fine, but just describing things - no.

On a related note, is it legal for players to carry a copy of the Oracle (say on a PDA) with them to matches?