Storm,

I like this list a lot. It's very similar to some ideas I was brewing around with but far more refined. Thanks for sharing!

Have you considered Anafenza the Foremost? I think that she is one of the newly printed hatebears that is worth considering. Obviously the mana cost is hard as it costs WBG, but the effect of exiling the creatures as they hit your opponent's graveyard seems great for dredge match up and helps out vs delve on occasion. It also stacks well vs some of the Eldrazi and tinker target shuffle effects - if it isn't a replacement effect and is a trigger and it's happening on their turn (which is likely), then it gets exiled before it gets shuffled back in.

Thanks for sharing, I'm excited to see Grand Abolisher get some play.

I glazed over when I read this card the first time around and didn't see the CMC or the thing about casting spells, so I thought of another card that I like a lot more, and since this is just a discussion thread, I'll share

Crucible the Enchantment BBB
Enchantment

When ~ ETB, exile target player's graveyard. If a land would enter the targeted player's graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.

You may play land cards exiled with ~.

So basically, I think the real card is terrible but graveyard hate+value seems interesting so I would be on board playing something like a RIP for lands with added utility.

I'd like to be marked down as co-signing the comments that xou has made.

I think this card is very real and I really like the mana costs associated with it. It is easy to come down and play a long control game. It doesn't stack up well against token armies by itself, but in a control deck I think it has legs via sweepers of some kind and just being a constantly growing threat while you control the game. I love holding up mana for EOT interaction and using it to get ahead with real cards or just add lore counters if you don't need to stop your opponent.

I'll be picking some up for sure.

I like it a lot, and I think that it could create a UWR archetype about spells matter where you use Delver/Pyro/M Monk and go bigger than the UR versions and probably wider too, since you'll have more token producers. 3 CMC is a lot, but it's not the worst thing it could be since you can still t1 lotus into it and then cast a mox or two and a draw spell and try to hold up misstep or force.

If I were to start fooling around with Narset, I would start with Cavern of Souls for uncounterable and Hall of the Bandit Lord to give it haste and I would have a high density of spells like Seize the Day, wheel effects, draw and mana to keep it going and just try to get to a position where you get off a proper Mind's Desire storm into something like a Tendrils end game. The biggest problem is that it doesn't change the timing on spells, so it might be hard to actually continue attacking. I believe that you'll get the trigger to resolve and can cast some kind of wacky unblockable or shadow granting ability before you get to blocks so that it can go through, but I doubt that enough cards are there to make it worth it.

How many cards does Mind's Desire need to flip in order to generally win the game? That's kind of the crux of the issue here, how to get to whatever that quantity is, considering that there will be a number of bricks beforehand just so that you can set up your deck to attempt it.

A UR Delver list with 4x of this and 4x of Treasure Cruise also won the latest Legacy SCG Open wherever the one not in Indy was this past weekend.

I underestimated it personally in my spoiler reviews with friends, but I think there is potentially a place for it in a Pyromancer/Swiftspear deck where you have two threats that pay you for doing the same thing in two separate ways. Young Pyromancer compares favorably to Jace and Tarmogoyf because it is a horizontal threat. Monastary Swiftspear compares favorably because it is a proactive vertical threat in the same way they are, though it's power varies from turn to turn. The biggest thing to me that strikes me as a big sign saying to investigate is that Delver wants you to have a significant number of instant and sorceries in your deck, as well as Young Pyromancer, as well as this new Monastary Swiftspear. That is just elegant at that point - all the cards are pointing you in the same direction which ought to give the deck significant power and speed to overrun people.

Steve, you're preaching to the choir about more data. The entire appeal of Dredge to me is that it's just a math equation to be solved which as you and Kevin pointed out, is and would benefit greatly from just a bunch more reps.

diophan is also right though. I was just in the 930pm EST DE queue and we got 8 people before time ran out so it didn't fire.

I think that the community has done enough to show that it isn't a turn 1 format, but I think the price is still keeping people away, whether it's in the cost of the P9 or the supporting cards, such as Wasteland.

I wish that WotC would allow players to buy but not draft packs of every set they've released on MTGO and switched the current trade system to something like the Steam Marketplace. But one of those would be a very terrifying overhaul of the secondary market and the other requires a lot of programming work and the tacit admission that cards are worth money which may not be okay because of whatever outdated gambling laws exist.

The prices are still just on the other side of unreasonable in my opinion. The market is what it is, but I ultimately don't like renting these cards from WotC and paying a premium to a 3rd party for it. That said, you can still get the majority of the cards you want for significantly less than you could in paper. I have jumped onto the long term view, and I just think there are some frustrating business practices that make me more reticent than I would like to be.

I agree with the majority of what you're saying though, which is what caused me to jump on the train at this point in time rather than before.

If the early evening DE was an hour later, I would be playing in it every night without a schedule conflict or problem. As is, it is very hard to get to even on the East Coast.

As far as data sets go - Mark Rosewater has talked on his tumblr about the idea that there are "tools" (his words) that would allow players to solve metagames and that WotC wants to slow that down or prevent it by bottlenecking the information. I believe that there's a spreadsheet that one could make to keep track of wins vs particular decks and how you sideboard, but the best way to set that up escapes me currently.

I would. I was waiting for them to come down, the no-draft announcement came and they spiked and I did not buy in. They were announced to be draftable for the original time frame and they dropped and I went ahead and bought in at that point. I wish I had bought more, but it was hard to convince myself to even buy that much - there are just too many things that are necessary to be able to play decks. And I still don't have the Wastelands I need to play my preferred deck.

I really want to stream vintage and with the VSL, I have a new goal of trying to be a big enough name and streamer of vintage to get an invite (unlikely). And to not capitalize on the opportunity to buy in while prices are nearly reasonable was much higher risk than to continue doing what I have been doing for 10 years - waiting for MTGO to get better. It's the ugly baby that we are left with, it seems, though I hope that now more people are complaining, there will be more change. And with the release of KTK on MTGO, I will be able to get fetchlands which will allow me to maybe build a full deck besides dredge.

On the flip side, as The Atog Lord says, I can't recommend others buy in, which is a bitter pill to swallow.

I am 1-0 with Bazaar Dredge, streaming away with no protection beyond Twitch delay. Enjoy if you aren't in it!

http://www.twitch.tv/weatherseedmage

I will be trying to do so once I get a few things squared away:

1. get internet hooked up to my desktop (room isn't wired for it at the moment)
2. figure out how to get the beta to show up in xsplit and actually show a freaking game

I'll update this when those get resolved.

This stinks. I was hoping that that it would continue until at least Khans. I am still banking on some kind of huge mtgo crash to really buy in, but at least I cracked a lotus in one of my drafts. I wish I had more spare scratch to do more drafts/open more packs. I'd like for there to just be more sets out there to keep the price down.

WeatherseedMage

Invited -Z

Heliod is certainly a strong finisher for some kind of Serra's Sanctum deck where every guy you make gets more mana for you. I'm not sure if you can get there reasonably, however. There is a modern mono white prison enchantment deck that you could try to model after, with Ghostly Prisons and such to stop attacks.

my thoughts exactly

I think that I dismissed this card too quickly because I was thinking about it in comparison to Disfigure. The fact that you can have it take out a Golem is what I think makes this a big deal card, though I'm not sure if the flexibility of Dismember won't just outclass it.

Indeed, I meant mechanics. Thanks for providing such a long list of 2.

I think the weakest part is that it's an "upon death" style trigger vs a "leave the battlefield" trigger. I like the idea of the card, but I don't think it will see much play because it can be dealt with the way anyone deals with big creatures. The nice thing about it is that it is better vs edict effects.

At the end of the day though, will anyone play an answerable vanilla creature who doesn't end the game in one hit? Blightsteel is an instant win and is only answerable 2 ways. True Name Nemesis is a pain to deal with. Delver is fast, Young Pyromancer grows horizontally, and Tarmogoyf is easier to always be a large beater (subsequent goyfs are all the same size, each additional one of these requires you to draw a new 4 cards to be reasonable).

Actually, upon reflection, that is the weakest part of the card: that getting the power/toughness to be reasonable after the early turns will require to draw enough cards to where you have probably already won the game.

This is a real card and playable.

It has an easier casting cost than Harmonic Sliver: 1WG vs 2G
     Side note - it also has a better body, being 1/1 vs 2/1

Vs Uktabi Orangutang and Viridian Shaman: hits an additional permanent type, clampable body

Vs Viridian Zealot and Quasali Pridemage: probably not replacing Pridemage but I didn't think Zealot got a lot of play in any case.

At the end of the day, I think this card is now THE other card when you want to talk about creatures who break things and will have a home in sideboards for quite a while - it will be a choice between Pridemage and Reclamation Sage for most decks looking for this option.

If you haven't read it, I think this was a pretty good write up with a better than average comment section. Especially as I don't know diddley about The Law, I thought it did a good job explaining it to someone with a lack of knowledge.

http://www.quietspeculation.com/2014/05/understanding-the-wizards-v-hex-lawsuit-in-plain-english/

Deckbox.org, as someone else mentioned, is probably the fastest way to get a ball park of what the deck is worth. It's no longer linked to TCG Player pricing or anything else though and has it's own economy, so it can be a bit off, but is still a good overview.

The other site to knock out an overview of your cards on is mtgprice.com which has a collection tracker deal, but I haven't always had the easiest time uploading my collection into it. TCGPlayer also has a collection management thing and if you have bought cards from them in the past few months, they will show you your collection so that you can know - that's a nice tool sometimes too.

Honestly, I've stopped looking at the price of the stuff once I have it because I don't intend to sell it and I want to keep good care of it no matter what. I am keeping an inventory in a spreadsheet that has language, edition, etc so that when I get to having it insured, I can have and demand a better rate since most of the value tracking websites do a poor job tracking either foils or foreign cards or both.

Basandra is such a dud, I'm pretty annoyed by it. If it just was templated in a modern fashion (it came out in 2011 Commander) it wouldn't be the worst - it needs to say "Your opponents can't cast spells during combat." As is, the RW combat trick guild/color pair can't play...you guessed it, combat tricks. Womp womp. Good art though.

Personally, if I were up there I think the price point for a seat at the table is too high for me for just a draft. I could literally go get a piece of power for that. Not even mentioning the horrible draft experience. As an alternative, I think you could do something like a 1994/Old School Magic Cube draft with a hefty buy in and legends packs as a prize or something. I think that would do well and hit the nostalgia and fun buttons with a good buy in and good support.

disclaimer: I won't be able to make it to NYSE

I'll take one.

I noticed your Braves post on April Fool's Day.

Lots of fun

I got my Bazaars already and a fair number of other staples for Bazaar decks. I am eagerly waiting VM and hoping for some specific reprints to lower prices down - Ichorid, Bloodghasts, LEDs (for legacy), Undiscovered Paradise and so on. My hope is to grind out some drafts, get some good cards and assemble a dredge list and then sit in the vintage queues as much as possible.

Oh man, if that's true, that's hilarious.

So, I would say that I've been disappointed in this block more than most because I also play a bit of Modern and my deck of choice is an impossible deck in any other format - GW Hexproof, also known as Bogles. I bring this up because it's important to point out that there are no actual playable cards from the aura block for the aura deck.

Aura deck. Aura block. No playable cards. That's significant in that it shows that yes, this block has been deemed as a power down period. That said, I don't think it's a Homelands. I'm just really disappointed that the Aura deck hasn't gotten a playable card yet.

Why is that? It's because none of the cards are competitively costed.

So, while casting cost doesn't matter sometimes (Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Oath of Druids are the main things here), it DOES matter for everything else that you do in my understanding of vintage. You look at a card, you determine it's affect and it's usefulness and then you take into account how much it will cost you. If you don't get a significant return, it won't be played.

Trostani's Judgment, for example, is a 6 mana instant "exile target creature" effect. Obviously unplayable anywhere besides Limited (and questionable there) because it costs too much and comes down too late.

For Steven's point, Yawgmoth's Bargain is the "fixed" Necropotence by doubling it's mana cost. But that card says, "get to 7 mana, win the game" (7 because you need some way to get more mana to continue casting spells, not that I don't know the CMC). Well for 7 mana, I would like to win the game, that sounds like a good cost to pay for that effect.

Narrow effects, such as mass artifact destruction which is an effect that is uniquely loved in vintage, aren't played unless they are hyper efficient or can get around certain locks. For example, Shatterstorm/Creeping Corrosion aren't played, Pulverize (probably easy to float mana and get around a sphere effect or two, but has the downside of requiring mountains) and Seeds of Innocence (at 3CMC! and a largely negligible drawback when you're destroying 0CMC artifacts or killing via Blightsteel) isn't played.

So I would contest that mana cost is certainly the stick to measure efficiency by, though maybe not the full measure, it does give a good way to check the card at the door. If a card isn't efficiently costed, it won't be played unless it's effect is powerful enough to pay for (Bargain) or cheat out (Griselbrand).

Mental Misstep isn't quite 5 years old yet. And I believe that I read Deathrite and Decay were more printed for Eternal than not. Honestly, there have been really good recent printings, but I think it's reasonable to expect a downswing in eternal playable cards as they try to ratchet down the power level again, as they like to do every few sets.

So, I am looking to build this deck for MTGO and get used to the client. I believe that it is a playable deck in the classic format on there right now. I already got the Bazaars, assuming that I wouldn't get them out of Vintage Masters in June, but I am looking to get the other bits now and I wanted to iron out what the lists have evolved to.

Right now, I am imagining that the list will be

4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 City of Brass
2 Petrified Field
1 Dakmor Salvage
3 Undiscovered Paradise

4 Bloodghast
4 Ichorid
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
4 Golgari Thug
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Nacromoeba
4 Putrid Imp
2 Fatestitcher
4 Street Wraith

4 Bridge From Below
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Serum Powder

SB
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
4 Nature's Claim
3 Ingot Chewer

Although I would love to be pointed in the right direction if this is a bit too far from standard ideas. Previously in the thread, there was talk about main Chalice of the Void which still seems reasonable to me but I like the synergy of the Fatestitcher plan a bit more (dredging into an Unearth trigger is easier than mulling to dredger+draw+bazaar+chalice).

I'm also a big fan of the Undiscovered Paradise+Bloodghast Engine so that's why its in there and I like that Street Wraith feeds Ichorid and gets a draw trigger to occur for free would speed it up, I imagine.

I think that the Kiora discussion was very interesting, and it got brought up but I have to think that Explore is the guide here.

+ it costs less mana (2<4)
+ it costs 1 type of specific mana (being 1G)
+ you get to replace the card and drop a land
+ it can only be countered/taxed, not stopped via other means

= it is half the same interaction with Cobra as Kiora, but this is acceptable because it is half mana investment
= it is sorcery speed

- it can't go positive on cards because it isn't a permanent
- it isn't a win condition eventually/accidentally
- it doesn't incidentally protect against a non-Time Walk hasted Blightsteel

So with all that in mind, I'm think that it is possible to use Explore to satisfy the "strictly better/same card that doesn't see play" heuristic.

On the other hand, Cobra Kiora Gush sounds super fun.

re: counterfeits

I think that Kevin was on to something, but I think that what he proposed would be too little, too late and that we could expect WotC to act prior to a flooding of the market with counterfeits. We see them being proactive right now, so I think it's reasonable to assume they will maintain a proactive mindset.

The thing to me is that there will come a time when they come to the same conclusion Kevin did - the reserved list, as a protector of the collector, is no longer able to do it's job. You thank it for it's service, explain the changing world, and move on to print Vintage Masters in paper in 2020 (may be a bit optimistic there, but you get it) with new card faces and art, saying that new art and border won't impact previous collectibles because they are different and no longer "originals" which adds inherent value for collectors. And that idea from Kevin, I think is spot on.

Something about this debate in the community that I have seen is that everyone, nearly universally, agrees that WotC makes no money from the Vintage and Legacy community. I disagree with this idea. The mere existence of these marquee cards from Magic's past that see limited Vintage play or get shown at Legacy tables is huge. It adds legitimacy to the game that no other TCG has. Yu-Gui-Oh's owner, Konami, frequently does price corrections for their game, reprinting cards very quickly and is not seen as serious of a game thought the prizes are often similar and the game is in the same sphere. I think that if the Black Loti and Moxen and Dual Lands were to all become 3$ then there would be a very large prestige hit to Magic which would take away some aspect of what has kept it going.

So I think that what will happen is that WotC will recognize, sooner or later, that the reserved list is not protecting collectors anymore and take action upon that while recognizing the prestige that Vintage and Legacy give Magic to the outside world (all they understand is that there are magic cards and tournaments worth thousands of dollars, which lets it be taken more seriously by the nonMTG community) which, both combined would allow for them to reprint reserved list cards to harden players' hearts against using fakes (which is certainly something that needs to happen, it seems every forum is ~50/50 about the ethical and effective point of using these fakes) and reinvest players into these formats. In return for getting more players invested in playing the format, demand will increase and the originals will go up in price eventually assuming they can be authenticated (because their utility and prestige have both been raised). This doesn't require them to take away Modern as the premier format - it just needs for them to recognize that Vintage and Legacy are prestigious formats. 

The most dangerous thing in my mind is if they do nothing for the older formats and only move forward with the new frame/stamp.

edit: about the price increases of cards if WotC were to embrace eternal formats as prestigious: Something to note about the price increases observed in Legacy is that they correlate to an increase in tournament play. Honestly, I think we all should be grateful on the one hand that Vintage is community lead and Legacy isn't a PT/PTQ format because the GPs and SCG events have driven Legacy prices into the stratosphere where they currently reside. I can only imagine what would happen to the price of duals if Legacy became a PTQ format, or a Lotus after people saw that a few vendors were serious about running Vintage as a PTQ format (if that were possible).