Kind of a silly question, but what's up with the price increase on all of these? I saw the tag on this one and thought it seemed odd as I generally enjoyed these at the 2-3 dollar range as a fun little thing. Not sure if I remembered things correctly I went back and looked at some of the older publishing and noticed they weren't too far off this, yet when I went and looked at my transactions and receipts I noticed there was an increase in price across the board on newer chapters. For example, the 2001 chapter is currently listed at 3.99 but all of my records show 2.99, yet everything prior to that seems to still be listed under the original price.

While I agree that this card isn't good for Delver, I don't think it will make Delver bad in itself. Delver will continue to be a solid deck in my opinion, but we'll see more non-Delver lists that use this and Pyromancer as their win conditions, potentially even cutting Tendrils. The issue with Pyromancer Gushbond decks currently is that they have 4 cards with the effect, and it has to be in play to benefit from all the spells being cast. Giving them the ability to go up to 8 means they can more consistently have their win condition and go off, without having to exhaust so many resources looking for their win condition in addition to ways of stabilizing the game against certain decks.


Well I don't know how true this is, since this guy allows you to run Hurkyl's more reliably as it can just be used to produce a bunch of tokens, trigger Prowess, or some combination of the two once the game goes late enough, while also just being solid against shops. This means that decks that include this guy have the ability to include Hurkyl's in the main and side a lot more readily than they do currently since without him it's pretty awkward against Delver.

The other benefit this guy has over Pyromancer when it comes to fighting Shops is that he promotes the use of artifact mana for you, since each Mox in the mid to late game becomes a land that triggers this guys token and Prowess abilities, while also helping the tokens after he's dead. Yes this means there's a chance for random Chalice blow outs, but it also means things like Lodestone and even basic Spheres are less of an issue since you have a lot more methods of deploying mana despite them.

So while this guy has a higher cost, which makes him harder to resolve, he also has a lot of built in methods that promote play that's generally good against Shops when it comes to deck construction.   

Aside from Dredge still being a thing, I don't think this guy will devolve the meta, but rather add to it. Delver can still a completely legitimate deck, even without this guy, since it plays a completely different game from him. We'll also see other decks that aren't on this guy because they're simply doing other things, as we see now with all the X City Vault lists (Although he's not bad in them).

Manifest does have the benefit that it's basically drawing you a card and can be used to get rid of dead cards by turning them into 2/2s, so when it does work it's better than Stifle + Naught since it doesn't actually require you to use two cards from hand, and it gives you some protection against Ingot Chewer I guess?

The problem is that Manifest requires the card to be on top of your library, and all of the cards that we've seen do it so far have been pretty weak. Additionally you're still using valuable deck slots for Dreadnaughts and Manifest cards...

So maybe if we see something that has Manifest and is a lot stronger it could be more viable, but as it stands now I just think it's too weak.

Well yes, Witness has its place, but what I'm saying is the fact that Snapcaster has flash does not make Witness a stronger but more expensive (and colour shifted) card. Being able to surprise block, fight planeswalkers better, and set up more responsive decision trees (imagine having 3 mana with Snap or 4 mana with Witness and your graveyard being Swords, Misstep, and Drain, there are a lot of situations in which Snapcaster ends up being better as it gives you more options for a period of time.).

In other words, what I'm saying is the comparison between this card and Pyromancer is significantly more comparable than any other two creatures when going from 2 to 3 mana. Mentor is literally better in every way than Pyromancer (better body, easier activation, more abilities, and better tokens produced) other than costing 1 more mana and being White. The same is not true for something like Witness and Snapcaster, where one offers more options in terms of what you can return, and the other can be played at instant speed, had Witness been 2G and had Flash, we'd have a more similar comparison to how Mentor and Pyromancer compare.

While I'll concede that Eternal Witness is in theory a better Snap, although it has the issue that it's double green and harder to splash, along with not having flash, I don't agree that any of the Ophidians are better than Bob. Having to attack and connect is much harder than having to simply survive a turn.

This guy on the other hand is strictly better in every way than Pyromancer, except he's white and costs 1 colourless more. I'd say that's a much closer comparison than any other comparison between a 2 and 3 drop when comparing the different powerful creatures we have currently.

Edit: Also, I think this is a pretty interesting discussion that should be had at some point, to get a better grasp of when a card is truly better or not without considering the mana cost necessarily. Especially since the more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to say Witness is not comparable to Snap, simply because of how powerful flash can be at times, even when you're not gaining anything from the flashback part.

So I hear this at times but I'm honestly hard pressed to think of a lot of creatures at 3 mana that are better than their 2 mana counterparts without it being conditional. I feel like most 3 mana creatures are more conditional than their 2 mana counterparts, which is why they see play, whereas this guy is just better stat wise than Pyromancer.

The best I could come up with at 3 mana to compare to Goyf is Master of Etherium or Leatherback Baloth. Master can be a lot stronger but he also gets hit by more hate and requires more of a bored presence to be stronger, Goyf just fits into decks a lot easier. As for Leatherback Baloth, it's not even larger than Goyf, requires a much heavier mana commitment, and is more mana.

What's the comparison for Dark Confidant, Snap caster, and so forth? I don't really think there is one, I guess there's Dark Tutelage for Confidant but that card is by no means stronger for more mana, it's just different and in a lot of cases weaker.

I think Repeal would be a little too cute, and this card doesn't need so much a "build around me" scenario as it does to be eased into certain decks. Oddly enough I think something like Turbo Tezz can easily find room for this as they tend to play a ton of artifact mana and other artifacts that would trigger this. I've seen a Tezz deck overwhelm players with keys+mana+tops more often than locking them out with Vault quickly.

There's also the benefit that in lists that run a lot of Moxen they can now run Hukryl's Recall to be strong against shops and not lose quite as much to the Delver match up since sometimes Hyrkul's will just make a bunch of tokens or pump your small group of tokens into Goyf's for a turn.

So silly question but could someone post the full name of all the abbreviated stores?

In Delver, probably not very often since they only play a couple, in other decks sure. I personally like playing artifact heavy lists with 5 Moxen, Sol Ring, Lotus, and Mana Crypt, all of which trigger this guy but don't trigger Pyromancer.  Don't forget that Top also triggers the Mentor, in addition to providing some extra synergy with Key as not only do you get to draw more cards but it also makes more tokens and pumps existing ones .

That's what I really like about this card, it's an inherent artificer that rewards you for playing the style I enjoy, whereas Pyromancer does not.

For 6 mana you win the game with a Time Walk, that's something I suppose?

The cool thing is that this does work with all the free spells, like FoW all of a sudden has 2UU as an additional better buy back cost since it doesn't have to resolve to go back to your hand.

It seems a little too weak to see play outside of decks that specifically want a Time Walk effect over other cards, and even then I'm not sure. Though there's an easy chance that I'm just undervaluing this card.

UUU is a lot for Delver to pay?

I don't know who you are, nor do I know what you want, but I promise you this, I will find you and I will play some intense magic with you, especially if it's a top 8 quarter final match.

I had a great time, lost to the Mono U Control player that made top 8 round 1 and to the U/B Tezzerator player Round 5 in the win and in match. I didn't feel like either game was unwinnable, I just needed to play tighter and to be slightly luckier.

I was playing Tezsper with Cruise over Dig and the deck just felt awesome to pilot. Oddly, Yawg's Will was probably one of the weaker cards throughout the day.

I posted this on Salvation:


But for you guys I got further, and as someone who played WoW pretty seriously, I think the WoW episode was a lot better (it's even one of my favourite episodes), it simply touched on aspects of the game that were more relevant to players in it while also inventing enough to be funny. I don't feel like the invented information of this episode really added anything, the humour simply wasn't there.

VMA was going live and as a result Vintage would see play on Mtgo, and basically people said "now pros will play Vintage and we'll see more refined decks and new things and this format will be real." while the other camp said decks were already refined and such. I was in the camp of "more people playing magic means more refined decks and more potential of new things being discovered." but Vintage hasn't been as popular.

I did try to play Mtgo recently but I'll never play it again after the horrible customer service.

I like the token idea, but also even cheap cards that are cool would be nice. I mean I wouldn't be upset to get a playset of Ichorids or Oath of Druids, sure I might not need them, but they're fun cards to own that aren't too hard to trade.

Edit: I just had an idea, if you can get someone to alter some new cards to have old frames that would be amazing, although potentially expensive. I can just imagine it now, old frame Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, that would just be amazing, because I'm still hoping they print the Zen fetches as old frame Judge foils.


Man, now I really wish I bought that sleeve playable Lotus at the GP for 1.5k, the front looked ok but there was a weird imprint mark on the back.

So how did these events go? Unfortunately I couldn't play in either as I was still in contention day 1 when the first one started, and we left Jersey too early for me to be able to stay for the second one, in addition to not really having a deck prepared.

So here's a dumb question as someone who hasn't played MtGO all that much, if I decided to build Dredge is there some special stop or priority retain I need to set to use Dredge or do all the Dredge triggers in your yard just happen at the same time and you have to weed through them to select which you want to use for each draw?

Two things I don't like about the announcement:

1.) It's a magic online thing and I don't really care about magic online, but that's a personal thing.

2.) Bazaar is considered unpowered :/... Guys, come on.

I think it was fine, sure he has one really bad card in hand, being BSC, but Tinker is still live for other cards off one land, same with Gush. He also has the ability to turn 1 DT if needed and Steve is known for playing a very grindy game as Delver against control decks, so there's a good chance he just has time to get Dig online, find another land, and so forth.

Sure, it's a weaker hand, but it's not a horrible keep knowing what he did.

One card I really like in Human decks is Orzhov Pontiff, he has the right creature type for Cavern and can nuke a Pyromancer field without killing your own Snapcasters and he continues to do work against them even if they play a second Pyromancer after you wipe the first. The pump isn't irrelevant either, it means you can get in some extra damage at times that your opponent isn't expecting.

I asked Akash about this and he replied with "It's possible that coverage just never gave mine back since my feature was the last round of Swiss"

Though yes, he was on Dredge, and when I asked why he put a Grave Troll into play over a Bazaar when the opponent ran out Show and Tell, he said "I know, I misclicked." Great guy.

Wow, what event is this? I'm far more likely to be in this one and if there are multiple Vintage events during the weekend I'll most likely come up with something.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Phyrexian Tower, it's a pretty good card that works as a land and a sac outlet. It also has various interesting interactions.

Just out of curiosity, what put you on Burning Long as the last couple of big events you've showed up with new decks that no one was playing and put up strong results each time.

So why not just run something similarly consistent and fair, but with a different kill than say Pyromancer?

I'm asking mostly because when I came back to Vintage and started playing Blue decks I obviously built something similar to my old Painter or Tezz deck and went with it. Over time I added a single Agent of Bolas in place of one of the several Tezz's I was running, and pretty much every tournament I played in I swapped one more out, to the point where I was running 3 Agents and 0 Seekers by NYSE2, and I never felt like I was worse for it. Additionally, Time Walk went from an ok card in my deck to an amazing power play most of the time because it basically said I won that turn after resolving it.

I guess what I'm wondering is how much better is it to take some of these control decks and boil them down to Treasure Cruise decks, in the sense that you increase the consistency and reduce the broken plays until you get something that isn't so dependent on a handful of plays. Like your plan against those decks is to essentially go full control mode with Pyros as your win con, which makes sense on a lot of levels, and Oath is similar in that it just runs a lot of redundant threats, as they have 4x Oath versus just depending on 1x Vault or 1x Tinker.

I feel like in a lot of ways this reminds me of what happened in Legacy, back in the day you had things like Welder Survival, Iggy Pop, and so forth and so on, but as the format became more refined it shifted from the "broken" plays to a more complicated format where you could still do a lot of interesting stuff but ultimately wanted consistency over bombyness, and I feel like in a lot of ways we're seeing the same transition in Vintage now. I don't think this is a bad thing, simply something that changes the field, but retains the concept.

So out of curiosity, let's say you were going into a tournament tomorrow and couldn't play UR Delver, what would you do/play in order to combat a UR or RUG heavy field?

Adrian was on a storm list, you can see him playing it at the end of one the feature matches. I was kind of surprised to see him on it after seeing the amazing innovative decks he's played in the past.

You read right. I actually asked in a thread if we'd have all the lists posted like we did with the NYSE2 lists and he said that it would happen but would take some time due to the amount of data entry required and there would be a lot of analysis and content posted about all the lists on Eternal Central.

It'll probably be another month or so though since it is 300+ lists which is a massive undertaking.

That's pretty awesome, and you should work on getting your favourite Survival creature next so that you can play Art League in the future with your favourite card .

I'd say Survival is on of my favourite cards, I even played Welder Survival awhile back and I'm sure you saw my thread on here asking if Survival would be possible in Vintage shortly before Orcish Survival and Varolz-Mask Survival became a thing. Assuming that's off the table, if I had to go for a piece of artwork I'd be drawn to probably Workshop, Tinker, or Time Vault, in particular order.

Could Engineered Plague be the right call if you're expecting Delver/Oath to be the two big decks?

Name Human against Delver and kill their Delver/Pyro when it comes into play.

Name Spirit against Oath to turn off their Orchard tokens.

It's also just a clunky removal spell against various other decks and can wipe out already existing Pyro tokens, plus it's Black so it dodges things like Pyroblast, but it's three mana so things like Decay in Oath still hit it. It's also pretty janky and cute, but you never know.