Going to try to make this. Some logistics questions:

Getting to Long Island - It appears that my options are fly into New York and take a series of trains or pay a a bit more and fly direct to ISP. How bad is that series of trains?

Getting around Long Island - The closest hotel is around 4 miles away. The airport is around 10 miles away. I assume calling $local_cab_co is the way to go. If so, what's the pricing like up there?

Doing stuff: I'm probably going to make this a vintage-only weekend. IE, I'm coming in Friday night and leaving Sunday morning. No going into the city for me. Is there anything going on Friday or Saturday night that an out-of-towner like myself might participate in?

The fact that these boost Tolarian Academy has been pointed out. The fact that it's good against Tangle Wire and Smokestack has also been pointed out. Just wanted to point out that the Tolarian thing is relevant against Shops as well.

This is probably bad but I want to play some kind of Blue Affinity deck with Master of Etherium, Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager.

Unfortunately, it looks like all the non-Planeswalker ways to animate artifacts do so by making power and toughness = CMC. Maybe do some kind of combo with lots of clues, animate them all, kill your opponent with Disciple of the Vault!

Probably overkill but Tezzeret, The Seeker's Ultimate has no problems with Pyromancer/Monk tokens once you've made a bunch of clues.

Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas' ultimate, which only takes 1 activation to get to, becomes potentially lethal with all these clues, too.

As with Dark Depths / Thespian Stage, this gets shut down on the battlefield by Pithing Needle and on the stack with Wasteland. However, unlike Depths/Stage...


You're going to be real blown out when your opponent uses Wasteland after you've paid that cost.

Another point for Landfall: Drownyard Temple allows you to trigger landfall on your opponent's turn without using a fetch land or casting a spell. Pretty minor.


In the fight of Crucible vs Drownyard Temple, I think I want Crucible almost every time. Rather than list all the times I'd want Crucible more, I'll stick to when I think Drownyard is better.

* My opponent counters Crucible
* My opponent destroys or exiles Crucible
* I want to get the land out of the graveyard at Instant speed (say, in response to having it exiled by Deathrite)
* Wasteland is no longer in my deck (Surgical extraction?)

The fact that it doesn't exile those spells is really interesting. This + Yawg's allows you to cast a 4 of 11 times*, plus any times you regrow or copy the spell.

* Once for the first time playing it (1). Three more for the other physical copies of the card(4). Three more for the copies those copies allow you to cast (7). Four more for casting them all with Will(11).

Could this card make Treasure Cruise / Dig Through Time better in storm since it makes their non-bo with Yawg's Will less painful?

Cost: 3UU: That's real rough in Vintage. Tezz just about wins the game for the
+1: Same as TMS' plus 2... except you can only target yourself.
-2: Same as TMS
Ult: Faster than TMS. Doesn't win the game.

It's often been said that the best planes walkers protect themselves (often simply by ticking up quickly) and win the game when they ult. While this Jace does protect itself well, it's ultimate is far from game ending.

This guy finally gets his revenge:

Just curious: Does the fact that "Insectile Aberation" != "Delver of Secrets" ever hurt significantly?

I agree. This isn't "not real vintage" in the no-true-scotsman sense (eg, the "REAL MEN PLAY WORKSHOPS AND DRINK BEER AND LOVE AMERICA"). This is "not real vintage" in the sense that the players are agreeing to play a fundamentally different format. Our own Deck Discussion forum lists five archetypes plus "Miscellaneous." The agreement eliminates 2/5 of those archetypes. By agreeing to eliminate these archetypes, the players now no longer need to prepare to play against them.

It's often pointed out that the VSL metagame is already warped and that the decks aren't representative of the Vintage metagame as a whole. This agreement further exacerbates the problem. Try taking one of these decks, with no workshop or dredge hate*, to Vintage Champs or Bazaar of Moxen and see how well you do.

*Some of the decks had Grafdigger's Cage or Containment Priest for Oath of Druids.

Vintage Super League has drawn a great deal of excitement and interest to vintage. I'm beginning to fear that the homogenization of the VSL metagame, which is not representative of the vintage metagame as a whole, will quell that interest. I'm afraid we'll return to non-vintage players repeating the same old stereotypes; that Vintage is a coin flip format and that there's only 3 (number varies depending on who you ask) real decks.

For what it's worth, I think that the three-trimester tournament format is to blame. First, the players specifically for the expected matchups of that specific trimester. Second, and IMO more problematic, is that the players will often pick a fun deck in the first trimester and then pick decks that they "know" can win in trimesters two and three in their attempt to make it to the top. This can be seen pretty clearly in the differences in deck lists between the first and third trimesters of this season:

Trimester 1:
UW Control (With Counterbalance! And Enlightened Tutor!)
Dredge
Storm
Tezzerator
UWR Grow
Doomsday
2x Aggro Shops
Uba Staxx
Sylvan Mentor

Trimester 3:
Odd Oath
Dredge
2x Landstill
2x Storm
2x Stax
Oath Storm
Ravager Shops

I'm not really sure how VSL could resolve this (if they even want to). Allowing a new deck each week would at least allow for greater diversity. Forced diversity, whether through forced deck selections or limited deck selections, would also work.

I'm not so sure about this.

1. Cutting red means cutting some pretty great cards.
2. This card has a much longer time-till-threatening than Young Pyromancer. Even in Vintage, you're not likely to flip this thing for at least a full turn, more likely two.
3. This card does nothing good for you for those first 3 spells. At least Pyromancer is making threats/blockers.
4. Young Pyromancer effectively blocks multiple things. Until you flip Thing In The Ice, you're having a real rough time against other grow decks, especially big monks coming at you from Mentor.
5. You're going to be super sad if they bounce or kill this guy before you manage to flip him, especially if they do it with Swords to Plowshares.

I'd be interested in trying this as a sideboard card against Oath and Dredge. Rather than stopping them from doing their thing, let them do it, then bounce all their dudes. That may be too slow, though.

The gaming with this will be really fun. For example, if you have this guy at 3 counters against Oath, do they just choose not to oath? Similarly, do you play any more instants/sorceries or do you hold them so that you can flip this guy and bounce their oath target. That question gets even more fun against grow. How many elementals do you make before you stop casting cantrips to save them for post-flip?

The only thing I can really think of is that they want to do something with CMCs in this set or a set coming soon.

[LINK]

The thing that is probably most important for vintage players:


Engineered Explosives and Pernicious Deed at X=0 no longer wipe out flipped cards. Seems like they both just got way worse against Delver strategies.

As best I can tell, it doesn't work with them at all, and that's probably intentional.


There's never a time when you're doing the casting and there isn't at least one counter on it.

Which is really too bad because Workshop with 4 Restore Balance and a regular Balance would be hilarious.

I'd be curious to see colored shops make a comeback with this card. Without the need to significantly weaken the land-base, the deck could be much strong than years past. Plus, the ability to scry will help smooth out some of the problems that shops have with not drawing the things they need.

Pics are too big for the forum so here's a link: http://imgur.com/a/L7AJ7

Friday fired but I couldn't make it so I have no info.

Saturday fired with 18. Archetypes I can remember:
RUG Delver
UR Delver
2 Eldrazi
1 Merfolk
1 Infect
2 DPS
1 UWR Mentor

I played UR delver and didn't drop a game in the first three rounds. Billy on Merfolk and were the only 3-0s and split the prize tix. We played a match for fun and he crushed me.

One of the Eldrazi decks went 3-1

Sunday we only managed to field 6. CFB still ran the tournament, they just gave us all round 1 wins in a "4 round" event. That meant that, if you split the last round, no one got fewer than 100 prize tix (5 packs). That event had:

UR Delver - Me
Forgemaster Shops (with Vault+key!) - Nick P
A weird blend of Espresso and Frobots - Ben
Oath - Erik
Eldrazi - James
Painter - didn't catch the name

With a large-scale (756 players) legacy event being held in the North East and a North American Grand Prix this weekend, there are certainly a lot of players missing this event and potentially skewing the data with their absence.

That's a super neat idea. I'm going to bring that up at our LGS, where vintage has successfully fired 0 times since we started hosting it :/

On the subject of card availability, as of noon today (Friday), there were a grand total of only six Mishra's Workshops on the floor at GP Houston (which is now five. Yay me!). There was also much less power in cases than I usually see at GPs.

How to get that play on it has been a thing I've been wondering about. I'm thinking put the cards in a sack full of sand and toss it in the dryer.

I find these turn problematic pretty quickly

• People point to their rating as evidence that they're right rather than actually arguing their point
• All vote carry equal weight so the 5 votes I got on one great post are effectively the same as the single votes you got on 5 crappy posts
• Newer members are at a disadvantage as their rating will not have had as much time to grow. This problem grows as the site ages. Even when a newer member's account ages and gains more reputation, the older members will have gained more reputation, effectively giving them higher reputation for being around longer
• When added late into a forum's life (as would be the case here), older posters who consistently post good content start from the bottom, at the same rank as the worst troll

Some of these problems can be solved by weighing votes or other algorithms. That adds significant complexity and opens up potential for complaints about the algorithm.

I think all of these problems can by mod action. At that point, I'd prefer the current system - mod-defined user classes. Perhaps this process could be more codified or replaced with a nomination and/or voting system.

I'd like to go a bit further. Put the tournament information on an actual calendar. Currently, tournaments are organized region > event most recently posted about. This way, we could see all tournaments at a glance.

In fact, given that someone who cares now has control over the site, it shouldn't be hard to have a tournament form for people to fill out which automatically adds the event to the calendar and posts to the forum. Heck, I'm pretty sure I could bang it out in an hour or two.

And to go even further, it's not a significant technical jump to determine nearest tournaments by ZIP code.


Lazy/easy way - Scrape the twitch MTG page for streams with "Vintage" in the title. Only requires that streamers put Vintage in the title but potentially open to abuse from random streamers throwing it in.

More curated way - A list of approved streamers who can toggle whether or not they're currently streaming. This makes sure only the quality streams are displayed but does have the problem that the streamers would need to remember to toggle. That could be slightly offset by hitting the Twitch API to check whether a stream is live before displaying a user.

I'm so glad the community is now in the hands of one of its members. I had been mulling over how to word a post in the vintage issues forum about this for quite some time!

Jeskai Ascendancy Combo has existed as a deck in every format where it has been legal. The combo is quite simple; Use cheap spells to trigger Jeskai Ascendancy, untap a mana-producing creature, and repeat. After several repitions, your creatures will have grown quite large and you can attack for large amounts with only a few creatures, or even just your one mana-producing creature.

In Standard and Modern, Sylvian Cariatid was used. In Eternal formats, where good mana is easier to come by, Fatesticher is used to untap dual lands or moxen. Fatestitcher has the added benefit that you don't have to have him in play when you start attempting to combo. It is often best to instead discard Fatestitcher to Ascendancy and then Unearth him for only U.

The remainder of the deck resembles a fairly standard Young Pyromancer "grow" shell. Producing a large number of tokens on turns before you attempt to kill reduces the number of Ascendancy iterations required to produce a letal army. This shell allows the deck to win without much additional difficulty even in games where Jeskai Ascendancy never enters play. In fact, failing to find and cast (or otherwise reveal) Jeskai Ascedancy in game one can be beneificial as your opponent will sideboard for a substantially different deck.


Decklist
There hasn't been much development recently. That can be isolated to one key thing: In January 2015, Treasure Cruise was restricted. In fact, the previous strategy discussion on Jeskai Ascendancy has had no posts since that restriction. Any would-be developers, including myself, were further hampered when Dig Through Time was restructed in September 2015.

The build below consist mostly of patching those holes rather than re-building the deck. I've included a lot of other considerations beyond the decklist. I'll also admit that the sideboard is like 90% garbage.

Creature (7)
4x Fatestitcher
3x Young Pyromancer

Instant (22)
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
1x Dig Through Time
4x Force of Will
4x Gush
3x Lightning Bolt
2x Mental Misstep
1x Mystical Tutor
2x Pyroblast
2x Spell Pierce
1x Swords to Plowshares

Sorcery (9)
2x Gitaxian Probe
1x Ponder
4x Preordain
1x Time Walk
1x Treasure Cruise

Enchantment (4)
4x Jeskai Ascendancy

Artifact (4)
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Sapphire

Land (14)
1x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
1x Island
2x Misty Rainforest
2x Scalding Tarn
3x Tundra
3x Volcanic Island

Sideboard (14)
2x Flusterstorm
4x Ingot Chewer
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1x Lightning Bolt
1x Meddling Mage
2x Swords to Plowshares
3x Wear / Tear

Some notes on card selections in this list:
Young Pyromancer was cut from 4 to 3. With the amount of draw, you'll no doubt find Young Peazy but you don't want to be drawing into him while attempting to combo. There's certainly an argument to be had in favor of replacing some of all of these with Monastery Mentors but I think having 2 key spells at 3 mana is probably a bad idea.
Mystical Tutor functions primarily as a second copies of the best card selection spells in the deck to help fuel a combo turn.
. Mystical can also find Time Walk, making a potential Young Pyromancer kill significantly easier.
Pyroblast is good combo fodder as it can be cast to trigger Ascendancy even when it's not actually doing anything
Gitaxian Probe is mostly a 2-of due to the life loss. While not paying mana to trigger Ascendancy is great, the inherent slowness of a deck trying to reach ABC mana means that you don't have a lot of life to spare.
Swords to Plowshares, in addition to being one of the best removal spells ever printed, can get you out of a bind. If you're low on life and you're going to have to pass the turn into lethal damage, you can Swords a pumped creature to gain quite a bit back.
Wear / Tear functions as a disenchant / shatter that has potential to do both (i.e., kill an artifact and enchantment) off only one card.

Sideboard
The sideboard above is poorly developed. This deck is hard to build a sideboard for so let's break it down by the most problematic matchups:

Oath - The two best Oath-fighters in UWR are certainly Containment Priest and Gravedigger's Cage. Both of these are non-bos with Fatestitcher. Possible options:

Prevent Oath from resolving - Meddling Mage, additional Spell Pierces, Spell Snare
Destroy Oath before it triggers - Disenchant, which I've semi-upgraded to Wear Tear
Neuter Oath's ability - Take out Fatestitcher and put in Containment Priest / Cage, Turning your deck into a Pyromancer deck that just happens to play Jeskai Ascendancy

Dredge - See the same problems as Oath but add Rest in Peace to the list of cards that we don't want to use. Possible options:

Neuter Bazaar of Baghdad with Pithing Needle - They can still go off, but more slowly, by drawing to 8 cards and discarding a dredger. Legacy dredge shows that this is a perfectly workable plan. They may also be playing Misstep, which shuts down your plan.
One Sided Graveyard Hate - Leyline of the Void is un-castable but strong. Tormod's Crypt is one time use but, well timed, can be devastating. Being a 0 mana artifact, it goes well with Jeskai Ascendancy.
Ditch Fatestitcher - Take out Fatestitcher and put in Containment Priest / Cage, Turning your deck into a Pyromancer deck that just happens to play Jeskai Ascendancy. (Hey, haven't I typed that before?)
Blue stuff - Counterspells to keep Dread Return at bay and Echoing Truth to keep from dying to Zombies.

Workshops

Destroying Artifacts - While delve spells were still unrestricted, this was considered a possible main deck option. Disenchant and Wear/Tear are other options. If going green, Ancient Grudge and Nature's Claim are solid options as well.
Getting in under the spheres - Traditional Delver decks can often ride a turn 1 Delver to victory against Shops. Perhaps play Delvers in the board.

Problems and possible solutions


Card Draw - Most anything that goes into this category needs to cost <= 1 or be busted. The cost restriction is due to Fatestitcher only untapping one permanent.
Sensei's Divining Top - Good card selection. When going off, if you can get two of these into play, you can go infinite.
Timetwister - This deck frequently draws down to very few cards in the graveyard. Shuffling those back in makes for great refueling. If it's preceeded by a good delve (say, all lands), it's even better!
Repeal - U to bounce a Mox effectively triggers ascendancy twice and nets +2 mana (One from the Mox, one from the untap that the Mox's trigger gets you)
Ideas Unbound - The drawback on this is relatively minimal. When going off, the only non-business cards that you can draw are lands. If you're at the point where you're attempting to go off, losing lands isn't a big deal. Additionally, an early Ideas Unbound can be used to fuel your Delve Spells and get Fatestitcher into the graveyard.
Thought Scour - Fuels delve spells but that's less relevant now that the ones we want are restricted. Being an Instant, it can be used defensively against top deck tutors or other card selection.
Sleight of Hand - Without Ascendancy, it better card selection than Serum Visions
Other U cantrips - Serum Visions, Opt. I'm sure there are other even worse options I'm forgetting.


Mana
Colorless Producers - Sol Ring, Mana Crypt - There's not much requirement for colorless mana. The most useful aspect of these cards will likely be triggering Jeskai Ascendancy and reducing the amount of delve required by TCruise and Dig.
Off-Colored Moxen - See Colorless Producers
Chrome Mox - Quite strong when Jeskai Ascendancy is imprinted (though the tactical value of hiding Ascendancy should be considered as well). Unlike Lotus Petal, can be re-used with Fatestitcher's ability.
Lotus Petal - The versatility of Chrome Mox without the imprint requirement. The one-time use however makes it something you want to use either to cast Ascendancy or during your combo turn.

Adding Green
Pros:
Fastbond
Mana-producint creatures such as Birds of Paradise / Noble Hierarch. These ease up on the difficulty of adding Green.  They untap off Jeskai Ascendancy, allowing you to combo without Fatestitcher or to generate extra mana. A Birds can attack in the air, which is often unprotected. These mana creatures will probably eat a bunch of Missteps and Bolts that would be spent on draw spells and kill conditions.
Ancient Grudge - Due to its flashback, it can be cast twice (triggering Ascendancy twice) or discarded until needed later.
Mox Emerald - No longer being "off-colored," Mox Emerald becomes worth running.
Cons:
Colored Mana Intensity - Adding a fourth color to a deck that's attempting to cast a spell that costs ABC makes mana really difficult. In my experience, adding Green makes the deck more prone to extremes. A good start can be really good but drawing the wrong mana can turn the deck into a bad Pyromancer imitation.

Other Considerations
Anything Madness - Best options are (with their madness cost and effect in parens) Circular Logic , Firey Temper, and Obsessive Search
Anger - When you can't combo off but you've got a Young Pyromancer and a bunch of spells to chain together, this can turn into a kill.
Wind Zendikon - Saw some play in the legacy build of this deck. It's a good early play that allows you to save the mana that you might spend on Fatestitcher on your combo turn. Acts as an early threat. Triggers Ascendancy.
Pingers - Cunning Sparkmage, Prodigal Sorcerer, etc - Largely agreed to be a poor way to go about the deck. However, these do allow you to kill without having to use the combat step.
Grapeshot - You're unlikely to get to enough storm for this to actually kill. However, it could be used to supplement a smaller attack. Could also be used to clean up a wall of Elemental tokens preventing you from getting your damage through.
Frantic Search - I admit that I'm really reaching here. This could be something to sink colorless mana into while also er-upping on colored mana via the uncap.

Bonus: How to stack things (TRIGGER WARNING)

Most of the time you'll want to stack your triggers as follows:
1. Draw and discard a card
2. Pump and untap creatures
3. Make a Young Pyromancer token

This way, your token gets pumped and your Fatestitcher untaps, capable of producing mana again and casting another spell, before you have to discard a card.

IDK if it's still this way but on MTGO, this order used to be from left to right, greatly simplifying things.

With each spell causing at least two, usually three triggers, it can be hard to keep track, especially if you get into a counter fight. I recommend that you lay things out in order when executing to ensure you don't mis any.

One thing that's easy to miss is producing as much mana as possible. If I've got a card in my hand that I'm likely to want to cast next, I'll frequently handle my pump+untap trigger then, with the draw/discard still on the stack, immediately untap a land so I don't have to worry about forgetting it later in the turn.

Nope

I think it's interesting in Merfolk based mostly on the idea that once Merfolk reaches four mana, it's frequently emptying its hand every turn. That will trigger the Ruin Diver and help feed future turns. This may be better in the legacy builds of Merfolk that are frequently focused on pooping as many lords onto the table as possible.

I threw this deck together online to explore the following ideas:

Free spells are obviously great with Jori
Lots of cheap spells are almost as great
Snapcaster Mage + GY spell = trigger Jori
With all these spells, I definitely want Pyromancer!

After a gold fishing a handful of games, my thoughts are:

The Delve spells are auto-include but non-bo with Snapcaster Mage. However, Snapcaster Mage is great with Jori. 4 is not the correct number of SCMs. I'm going to try 3 but given the large amount of card selection, 2 might be enough.

Proper fetching and Preordaining, as well as the sequence in which you play your cantrips, is much more important. If you trigger Jori with a draw spell, you're drawing one deeper, which can be easy to forget. It's also worth pointing out that you can draw with Jori, then fetch in response to your spell, allowing you to get the top card, then shuffle away the second from the top.

I sometimes found myself actually drawing too many cards. As an example, in a Gush a deck that has so few extra mana producers, you frequently don't want to Ancestral from >5 cards with no extra mana because you'll likely be left with a card in hand that you have to discard. Jori exacerbates this. I once went from 4 cards at the end of my draw step to 9 at the end of my turn.

Jori can trick you into not playing your spells. On my first run through, I found myself wondering if I'd rather hold something to trigger Jori next turn or cast it now. In a deck where you're ~80% to draw more draw spells or answers to their stuff, it's probably correct to continue playing your spells rather than waiting to be able to trigger Jori. However, it's definitely something you'll have to be thinking about on a turn-by-turn basis.

This deck has next to no game against Workshop. However, going heavy on Hurkyl's in the main might be fine. If you're playing against another Gush deck, Hurkyl's Me, replay my Mox might just be a fine play.

Given the desire for free spells and the increased mana usage, an extra off color Mox (emerald or whatever color you splash) is probably worth playing.

~~~~~

Slightly further afield, and certainly greedy, Jori seems nutty good with Jeskai Ascendancy. The deck probably goes from trying to have one turn where you make a 20/20 Fatestitcher to a few turns where you're almost 100% to attack for 5-10.

I swear to Jobs, Macbook, I will throw you out the window if you keep correcting that to Tori.

If your goal is to see how busted something is, especially in a smaller tournament, I think you should leave it unrestricted. Otherwise, it's quite possible it won't have any impact and, in a small enough event, it may never even see the battlefield!

It's a really interesting idea. I'd be curious to see all the decklists. I'd imagine you'd have some number of people skipping out on Vale and opting for hate decks. I'd bet that a non-Vale deck ends up doing quite well or even winning, since a non-Vale deck will have the advantage of years of tuning.

Passed this on to a friend in your area. Hope it works out!

I hope that WotC sees the popularity of this KS and tones down the OMG VIDEO GAME BOX art

All the art swap program does is find the new version of the art and replace it with the old version. If there isn't an old version and you've got time on your hands, you can still go find the new version, then download and crop the old version and overwrite the new version.

[link]

Interesting that he simultaneously acknowledges that this is a big deal for the P9 event while not even implying the possibility that the fix will be released in time.

If it's not fixed and you play one of those cards and you run into the bug a single time, you can file for comp and will most likely get it... so if it's not fixed and you don't want to play Oath/Dredge, you can free roll the event as long as you play against Dredge or Oath

I got at them about that on Twitter and it should be fixed now.

I'm a little annoyed at the timing. Each day's Vintage starts right about 2 rounds into each day's Legacy and Legacy pays down to x-2 so even winless legacy players will have to make a decision between potentially prizing and dropping to play vintage.

I would say it can't be helped but I don't see any reason that the daily legacy events can't start another hour early. Oh well. I'm planning around $150 just for side event entry fees at GPHOU now lol

Besides cost, it's a Planar Chaos card - It is purposefully outside of Black's slice of the color pie. They're not likely to print such pie-violations in a standard set.