It's actually not as rare as you'd think. So far in tournaments, Leyline x 2, True Believer x 2 and Meddling Mage x2 have come up for me. Sometimes it ends up being irrelevant how you go about winning and getting rid of problematic cards, but there are a few times where it'll basically save your butt where CoV wouldn't do the job. In my semi-finals match against Ichorid a long time ago, my opponent threw down Leyline x 2 and began cabal therapying my hand to basically nothing. I did manage to Mystical tutor for Echoing Truth and it got rid of the now uncastable Leyline. Had it been CoV I would've just lost.

Actually, as far as I know, it's a glitch in his software that makes it look like everything's a-ok but he really has to manually go through and fix it.

Pac, give me your username and your email, I'll PM Trent.

I'm not sure why you would ever want to make an Intuition pile 2 instants and a Scriviner if you have the 5 mana to cast him, I'm sure there's a much better and easier way to win. The minor benefits that Scriviner provides probably don't outweigh the benefits that Witness provides (holding your deck in your hand and being able to play artifact mana, getting another animate to have the Witness in the loop).

In regards to RtR being better than Entomb, this version of Dragon can be surprisingly balls to the wall. Sometimes your draws lend itself to a period of setup time and slow-rolling your pieces, but there are others that just tell you to go for it as fast as you can and don't look back, and those times often involve Entomb in your opening grip. Really simple opening hands with Entomb and Animate Dead  (accompanied by a RtR/Intuition/Cunning Wish) can mean very fast kills that can win through cards like Wasteland, which your opponent might play on the first turn in hopes of blowing up a Bazaar. I've never been disappointed with Entomb sitting in my opening 7, as it completely speeds up goldfish kills.

Having cards to pitch to Force of Will isn't as big a deal as you might expect, as I've often pitched them to Bazaar on more than several occasions. Sometimes the hate card is sitting on the table and you're much better off finding a Wish or bounce to deal with it.

1st: UGRW Threshold
2nd: UGR Threshold (Lam Phan)
3rd/4th:

Vial Goblins/w  (Steve Wolfman)
Iggy Pop (Ashok Chitturi)

5th-8th:
Loam Confinement
Vial Affinity
Vial Goblins
A sort of ATS type deck. It was more like Aluren Survival type thing I think.

It's probably a better idea to play this Dragon deck over GrimLong and IT in a longer tournament where fatigue definitely starts playing a big factor. GL and IT require a fair amount of planning and experience (especially GL) to pilot correctly. With this deck, it kind of feels like I'm able to just let the deck do it's thing and if I won or lost, chances are it only took me 20 minutes to finish the match.

Also, somehow this deck doesn't lose very much to hate. I had a hard time figuring it out at first, as a lot of the conversations about the deck with Peter were something like

J:"But what if--"
P: "Don't worry about it, just board in 3 bounce spells and you'll be fine"
J: "But I probably need some x in the board"
P: "Don't bother with that. You're better off just winning"

etc etc.

and that went on for a few tournaments until I just gave up and accepted it's resiliance against hate and so far it's worked out rather well. I've fought through double Crypt/Echoing Truth in one match and double Leyline/Crypt in another. It just sort of works out if you just wait until you're about to go off and get rid of whatever is troubling you or just work around it.

Jason Chau here. I tested out Darkblast in a 41 man tournament here in Toronto. I only ended up Wishing for it once against Confidant Control. Killing doods usually isn't your priority most of the time and every time I would reach for my sideboard with the intention of getting a Darkblast, a much better card would be staring back at me.

Awesome. All that work paid off.

Now I regret staying at home and doing work and not being a part of Canadian Dragon Ambush Squad.

My favourite right now is a just recently signed singer named Lily Allen.

http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic

I think her album comes out in July, but I managed to make mp3s from her myspace broadcasts and they are amazing.

It usually depends on the reaction of the player. I've thrown down a first turn Meddling Mage quite often, and I've tried to gauge reactions and make wild guesses based on that. Weak players whose deck is very vulnerable to Meddling Mage often get shook up, and that's usually the opportunity to name things like Oath of Druids or Dark Ritual.

Most of the time, however, it's best to name brainstorm or mana drain and generally hope for the best.

In my metagame, however, it's really easy to tell who is playing what, as people rarely change their decks, so meddling mages get better and better.

I still stand by my suggestion that you won't run a snow-covered island because it would make your deck less aesthetically pleasing, but I imagine having a mix of Orchards in the main and side would tip off the transformational sideboard plan. I think the key in the sideboard plan is the surprise.

Anyways, Congrats on the Top 4.

The TO took the pictures. I took mine independently and put them up in this thread:

http://www.mtgontario.com/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4420

Congratulations on your Top 2. I was the one taking pictures, and I realized I got one of your match with Marc Sims