I'm gonna agree with dicemanx on the Balance hand; I like the plan to end your turn with a Putrid Imp in play.  The main reason, beyond a regular discard outlet, is that you can start attacking with it.  The two points a turn is not going to win on its own but that damage adds up.  It may also be useful later on to sacrifice the Imp to Cabal Therapy and then remove it for an Ichorid or a Ghoul.

The Slaver player is going to be looking at a three card hand and a Chalice for zero.  It's going to take a few turns to recover and you might find that lowly Imp doing ten or twelve points of damage.  When I first read through the game, I forgot that the Imp had to be sacrificed to Balance, and I couldn't figure out why you hadn't won yet.

This is also an interesting scenario from the Slaver hand's perspective: which three cards do you keep?  Their opening hand was

The obvious plan is to keep land, Sol Ring and TFK and hope you draw something useful with Thirst.  On the bright side, you'll have three mana available, and you'll get to keep at least two new cards.  The bad news is that you are in total topdeck mode afterwards.

Another idea is to keep Delta, Sol Ring and Welder.  On your first turn, you break the Delta for a Volcanic Island and play the Welder, and later on you can weld out your Sol Ring for the Tormod's Crypt that you discarded to Balance.  If you're lucky you'll get a few turns before you need to weld, so you can hope to get some use out of the Sol Ring in the meantime.  This slows you down by the three cards you'd see from TFK, but it has the potential to disrupt the Dredge player by even more.  It also leaves you dangerously low on mana.  You know that Darkblast is going to show up sooner or later, too, but not necessarily with the mana to cast it.  Risky, sure, but what's the right move?  I have no idea.


I really like this sort of concrete analysis.  It's too bad that this sort of article isn't more popular, but, you know, it is not exactly light reading.  For what it's worth, I think that seven games may be a few too many for one article-- a lot of people will have trouble getting through the last few games.  I'd say that five would be an easier number to digest all in one sitting.  I'm not saying you should throw out the last two games, though.  Just save 'em for Part Two.

Thank you for all the work you clearly put into this.

For what it's worth, I think I'd worry more about Blood Moon.  That card sort of defeats the whole purpose of avoiding mana screw.  Price of Progress would have a pretty big effect on game state, too, but it's probably still fair enough.  Dwarven Miner should probably be left out of your casual limited stacks, but I'd expect him to be too slow in constructed.

It's a little over an hour to each, but that's still not bad.  Waterbury is about two hours away.

I remember reading something about YMG starting (restarting?) a Vintage series, but I can't find anything about it now and I may have been mistaken.  They are about two blocks from a subway stop, which is nice if you don't drive.  (And I wouldn't blame you-- the area around Berklee is not the easiest place to park, or to navigate by car.  Depends what your instrument is, though; I wouldn't want to carry a tuba on the T every day.)

I'm not really a Vintage player, but it does seem like the Boston area is one of the easier places to find a game.  I'm actually working on an article right now; one of the sub-themes is the Vintage community in this area.  And it's magus888's fault!  Small world.