I didn't even realize this forum was still accesible until I saw it this Monday. Makes me quite happy to read and talk about Vintage again.

Of course I do welcome some changes to this forum, as I think it is far from optimal. Looks too old-fashioned and feels a bit too elite (at least that was my first impression when I had to realize that I can't just create an account like in other forums, instead I had to e-mail an admin and it still took weeks for my account to be activated).

It is an interesting card and I like it as a countermeasure against Spheres and stuff but I just don't see it. You are not winning games by resolving spells that essentially do nothing. You have to spend mana (even though the upkeep is quite low, one mana is a lot, especially in Vintage) and turns until it does what you expect from it and that is only the case if you already have the wanted spell in hand. Also, to use this card to its max efficiency you need to remove counters at some point. Removing these counters costs a lot of mana and all you get out of the deal is Scry x (which will rarely be greater than 3). Scry is fine, but way below Vintage's power level unless it appears on cards like Preordain.

Right now I think that people will tinker with it (yay, a pun!) but scrap it soon afterwards. You need specific situations to make this worth a card putting into your deck and these situations will rarely occur. It is neither an early impact card which forces your opponent to handle it, nor does it generate card advantage once games drag on. It just has a lot of baggage attached to it. Hardly any impact, not flexible enough and the scry is just way too expensive - the longer I think about it the more I know this will be the type of bulk card that I will open at the prerelease and never play it anywhere.

That said, I'm also not a fan of Aether Vial in Vintage. Cards are strong in a vacuum, so cards need to have a certain impact. Cards that are not flexible enough, which are not actual threats or CA-engines usually lead to situations which feel like "I just paid mana to duress myself". Creating mana is a strong ability though, but is it really worth to do nothing for several turns just to generate 3-4 mana? I doubt it. 

Appreciate that idea and some of the art is very fitting and flavorful. Only thing I would change would be Mr Lage to Marit Lage - also I think Marit is female

Proxy free, but I think that is just the standard in Europe. I'm sure there are proxy events here, but they must be few and in between.

Hey Christian, your finals opponent from Prague here. Good job on taking this down and enjoy your vacation in Japan! Make all Delver players in the world proud and kick some Hall of Famers and VIntage Champs in their asses!

Exactly my point of view, you couldn't have described it any more precisely. Creatures in Vintage need to be disruptive and hard to answer, or should build a board presence by themselves. Even Delver is hardly impressive, but it comes down as early as turn one even without any Mox and it is more easy to play one and keep disruption up. Also, you don't need to play 2 spells each turn to deal 3, you just need to be lucky enough to reveal an instant or sorcery by turn 2 / 3

Sadly it's exactly the day my father is turning 60... but GL to all who go there.

Thanks for the insight on Sylvan Library. As the metagame is right now I can see all points you have made. Can't wait to get some practice in with the deck, as it looks so intriguing (+ <3 Dromoka - probably the card that impressed me the most in the last months, so good and so hard to deal with).

Your link leads to nowhere I guess you added the "f" by accident? Anyway, this is the right link for everyone not familiar with mtggoldfish: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/vintage-101-power-nine-challenge-2-0

Also, question to Rich Shay or whoever created his decklist: how did the 2 Sylvan Library end up working out? I tried Library in Vintage but never was too happy with it, re-arranging cards is fine but rarely impressive and 4 life to draw extra cards is more than it seems at first, especially without Dromoka in play. I haven't tested the deck yet, but I'm generally sceptical and umimpressed if it comes to Sylvan Library. Also, just 3 Preordain? I can't help myself, but it looks suboptimal.

@IslandSwamp:
You should consider to check out the original sources for decks. Goldfish is a good place to find decks, but their coverage lacks. For some reason they cut off a round off the P9 Challenge, as it probably was 7 rounds and the decks you list as "didn't make it on breaks" are x-1, and we all know that x-1 never misses (unless you talk about the early MOCS tournaments, where a lot of people had up to 3 byes and the number of rounds didn't reflect that).

@Metagame:
Sadly I'm unable to attend myself these days, but I really enjoy the latest online metagame since the restriction of Chalice. There are a couple of totally new, never seen before decks as well as interesting twists on old mainstays. I wonder if Storm will have a great comeback, or if people find efficient answers for it

I don't think this will have much impact on prices, and even less on Vintage. Legacy playable cards are often on the reserved list or playable in other formats, up to casual staples, so even if there will be a slight decline it would just be temporarily. There is also a lot of support from independet tournament organizers, not to forget that Europe is also a thing and it looks like Europe might have 2 series coming next year with Legacy support.

It’s been some time since I Iast wrote a tournament report. Actually I hardly wrote one before, if ever, but I guess there is always a first time (and don’t expect this to be detailed or anything, it took me more than a week to write this ).

Let me start with an introduction… the long and grindy way to finally play some cards!

Like not so many stories in this forum, my story starts on Magic Online. Before Vintage came out on Magic Online I had no interest in the format. The cards were too expensive and there wasn’t a scene to play with. Aside from watching the yearly Championships I didn’t have any contact to the format, and just until a couple of years ago it felt „retarded“ to me to put that much cash into pieces of cardboard.
Then I joined Modo. Early on I met some guys from the now defunct „Clan Magic Eternal“ and we were pushing ourselves for Vintage. Finally, Vintage came, but with it a new version of Modo as well. Our clan went pretty much extinct and then a tension between some remaining clan members and Montolio happened, making him leave the clan.
I was all in between and proved to be quite opportunistic. With a blatant act I put a lot of tension between me and Montolio, leading him to reveal my dubious past to Wotc which in turn threw me off Modo. The loss of my cards and a few thousand Dollars didn’t struck me much, more so did losing a friend and the ability to play Vintage whenever I wanted. At least I was „smart“ enough to sell some of my Modo inventory months before that so I could at least afford the pieces of power needed to play Delver.   

So I was without Modo, but who cares? Daily Events didn’t have the thrill they used to have anyway and there was a Prague Eternal tournament to be scheduled soon anyway. Just a couple of days after pre-registering for that event though I received a letter that some important final exams would take place the Monday after the event, so instead of slinging cards I had to learn.

But as you know, after the tournament is before the tournament! So I made plans to attend the Vintage at MKM Prague, I even took off a couple of days to make it fit my schedule. Guess what? Sometimes even departing early doesn’t help. A couple of problems during that ride accumulated and at the end I arrived 20 minutes too late fort he Vintage main event.  I wasn’t even salty, rather felt like I’m destined to not play Vintage, EVER.

Luckily there was another tournament scheduled on site, a small trial for the following MKM in Madrid. Finally time for Vintage, and finally time to end this lengthy introduction


Time to start with what everyone came here for, a decklist!

4 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tundra
1 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Young Pyromancer

4 Preordain
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will
2 Flusterstorm
2 Spell Pierce
3 Pyroblast
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Swords to Plowshares
3 Gush
1 Dig Through Time
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Mystical Tutor
2 Dack Fayden

Sideboard

4 Grafdiggers Cage
2 Containment Priest
1 Stony Silence
4 Ingot Chewer
2 Pulverize
1 Pyroblast
1 Mountain

I apologize if anyone came here for innovations – just a plain old Delver list. I guess it is still worth to talk about a few cards that didn’t make it.

Baby Jace: To be fair I’d have really liked to try some copies, but I just didn’t feel like spending money on an untested tech. I didn’t miss it much over the course of the day but it would have been quite useful in a couple of situations. Well, next time I will def have my set of it.
Since I couldn’t get any Jaces I opted to play Mystical Tutor instead. It was nice to have in a game or two, but mostly it was just Force pitch fodder.

Strip Mine: I’ve never been a fan of a random Strip Mine. Being a land is actually disadvantegous (can only play one per turn, doesn’t help with Delver and Pyromancer) and the moments where it shines are few and between. As a 1 of the card is not reliable enough to beat a Workshop / Bazaar / Library / Cavern and the hope to manascrew someone is more than random. I like to construct my decks to remove as much variance as possible and I feel this card adds more variance than it defeats. Most of the time I’d rather have another removal, threat, counterspell, or cantrip.

Gitaxian Probe: Without Jace or delve spells to fuel this card is not necessary. It’s quite cute with Pyromancer, but I prefer my cards to have a real effect, real impact. Too many Probes also often lead to flood and to be honest, in this deck I’d rather have more action than just information. There is no combo to protect or anything and let’s be honest, most hands in Vintage are so random that they are rarely amazing anyway. Only in a drawn out blue mirror where both players have equal resources I’d want to have a Probe.


Now let’s get to a round by round re-narration of what happened.

R1

Luckily for me I saw him sleeving up his deck before round one, so I knew he would be on BUG Fish. It’s one of the best matchups for Delver, even though it got more balanced with the restriction of Dig. He was playing it with a twist though, and added red – for Lightning Bolt of course, and probably some numbers of Dack Fayden and Pyroblast.

Game 1 was quite the weird game. I get an early Delver which he bolts, then decays (Misstep Inc.). I then deploy a Pyromancer while he gets Dark Confidant. As weird as it sounds, but none of us has any removal, so I cantrip through my deck just to find more Delver of Secrets while he is drawing another Confidant and a DRS. I count a bit and decide that attacking him is not worth it, since too much would die for not enough life, but his DRS would remain and give me headaches. Inevitably his Confidants start revealing 3 and 5cc, while my Delvers flip and we are shuffling for g2.

In Game 2 Thomas mulls and starts with a nice collection of jewelry, but no land. His threats get countered and destroyed and at some point Dack appears for me and steals a Mox Jet, which is enough to take out a color and seal the game. 


R2

G1 he starts with a Library of Alexandria, I get a Pyromancer into play on my second turn. May the race begin! Despite him drawing a couple of additional cards I was able to keep up with his disruption and when my Pyromancer threatens to kill him he tries to assemble something with Auriok Salvagers, but falls short to my disruption.

Game 2 is similar, except for him not having Library this time with me being able to go Pyromancer into Time Walk. A couple of counterspells later the game is over.


R3
This time my hand in Game 1 doesn’t wield a Misstep or Force but I keep it nevertheless. Being on the draw, that was probably a bad idea. He leads off with blue source into ukpeep Ancestral and all I can do against that is to draw a Misstep off the top. And another one the following turn… he on the other hand baits out a few counters, draws a couple of cards with Thirst and Thoughtcast and eventually Vaultkeys me.

In game 2 I get a pretty nutty hand and start off a Turn 1 Delver which doesn’t take long to flip. I counter a couple of spells and get to resolve Dack while still having Pulverize backup in hand.

Game 3 starts similar to game 2, except for that this time my disruption is weaker. My Delver gets to deal 3 damage before having to chumpblock a Blightsteel Colossus, but Dack Fayden appears to the party and proves why he is the greatest thief in the Multiverse.     

R4

Thanks to a high number of unintentional draws we are the only 3-0s and shake hands for an I.D. We still agree to play some (it can never hurt to know what other players are on and how they pilot it) and have some super interactive games of Delver vs. Mentor. In Game 3 I keep a 1 land hand without Misstep and only 1 cantrip, which of course he missteps and then follows it up with Library. Glad I did I.D.

R5

Finally I get to meet Zuzy in person and it starts with me apologizing for registering for a tournament just to not show up. He understood my priorities and told me about hopefully having another Vintage tournament in Prague in early 2016. It is always a pleasure to meet people who are the driving force behind a community. Anyway, I offer him another I.D. which he accepts, but this time we don’t play because he has to manage something and I’m just hungry 

Quarterfinals

In my quarterfinals I get the only Shop deck in the tournament. Thanks to being higher seed I may start, which is already a big advantage, but I also get a super nut draw with a turn 1 Pyromancer and double Force of Will backup. Preordain shows me Time Walk and I literally win without giving him a turn to breath

G2 also shapes up to be very fair, as his hand is quite mediocre. He has a lot of mana, some Wastelands and some Invokers, but no real lock piece. Until he finds any I already got an established board and just need to handle his Steel Hellkite.

Semifinals

Time for another match against BUG Fish, this time without any kind of splash, but with several copies of Tarmogoyf in the maindeck.
Again I get to start and I feel favored for some time, until he is able to grind me out while I’m drawing dead. Luckily his Confidants keep him low on life and a turn or two before he would win I find the critical Lightning Bolt.

Game two evolves similar, except for that this time my draw is even weaker and he establishes a superior board state early on. Getting eaten by Gofys in Vintage was certainly unexpected.

Game three made up for it all though as it is his time to keep a weak hand. He soon stumbles on mana while I get pyroboy with a couple of tokens into play. When he concedes, he shows me a hand full of counterspells which happen to do nothing against creatures. Phew.

Finals

Delver was apparently exactly the right choice for the tournament as my opponent also me also with a Delver deck. Again I get to play first thanks to being higher seed, but I’m not sure if it mattered in the end. Going first was good, but having 2 Pyromancers with a hand full of counterspells made it better. The whole match was quite anticlimatic and in each of the three games one of us had to have a Pyromancer with some backup on turn 2. Luckily it was me who got Pyro + Force for g3, which was just enough to force a quick concession.

I still can’t believe that I finally got play in my first paper Vintage tournament – and many more will follow. Thanks for reading, hope to meet all of you very soon. Now I just need another really good tournament finish or an addtional income cheque so I can afford the ticket to Eternal Champs.

Heh, I didn't mean to turn this thread into a discussion about cheating, but thanks to Brian and the Tangle Wire incident crowd for the insightful responses.

How is it unsporting to do something that is perfectly fine within the rules of the client? I can see where your anger comes from, but it's not the people's fault. If that is how chess clocks work, then so it be. I don't hear people complain about unsporting conduct when players decide to I.D. which is arguably as unsporting as your case. Just my humble opinion, but if you can't manage your time you probably deserve to lose. I'm not blaming you in general as I can see that it is on Wotcs side to clear these things up, but once you logged on Magic Online you agreed to lose if your timer hits 0. Does it suck? Sure. Is it a reason to complain? Of course. Is it unsporting to win a match that way? You may make arguments, but no player has done anything against the Code of Conduct, so from the Wotc point of view nothing unsporting happened.

Also, what was the mentioned incident with Roland Changs opponent? Is there any video footage?

I'm not a big fan of this card, in no format really. I'm sure it will see some play in Standard once Cruise and Dig are out but even there it is no card you just slam into your deck as a 4 of. While lifeloss used to be neglectable, is it a real drawback nowadays as you can't just chain copies together without losing the game. Even in Vintage there are a couple of effects that make you pay life so this becomes a very situationally card. Drawing 4 against Thalia sounds great unless you realize you face a soon to be lethal board. Sorcery speed plus the unrestriction of the instand speed no lifeloss force pitch Tfk put the final nail in the coffin. 

I'm missing a schedule for the oversea invitation tournaments. I also hope that for a win you receive a travel voucher, otherwise this is quite bad ev for everyone not living in Tokyo/ Japan. Just 300k Yen for fighting through a mass of previous champions and hall of famers? The money is not even incentive enough for a lot of qualified people to play in. Otherwise this a cool idea and I'm sure everyone would love to participate.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/MTGO/articles/archive/magic-online/october-2015-event-changes-2015-10-19

I guess I have to take back a good chunk of arguments that I made - I guess Menendian and Rish Shay of course have enough reach to apply for changes. Congratulations and good job. Now I hope you guys can get it to fire. 

I guess they don't want their event to fire so they have a reason not to do any further ones

All joking aside it is tough to schedule a tournament that has no overlay to others, in these modern times we are spoiled with more events than we can play in. If half of the remaining MTGO-Vintage players attends the EE though then I doubt there are enough players left to make this fire. 11 am PST is a good starting time for Europeans though, if any of them are still playing.

I enjoyed the article, but without a decklist or two it looks incomplete. I also don't think you addressed the replacement for the now restricted Dig well. Actually you even talked about removing Dack from the deck, which would lead to even more free slots, but there are so few options to replace them with. Jace is probably fine, maybe better than Snapcaster Mage. The two just work so differently in a deck like this and right now I'd rather have Jace in my deck than SCM, just because hitting 3 or 4 mana in time for him to be relevant can be tough at times. He also doesn't synergize well with Gush. But then, SCM actually attacks and can flashback counterspells.

There are also a couple of points that I think you didn't address, like how many Delvers you would run right now or how exactly the white splash looks like (how many Tundras, how many Volcanics, is Strip Mine needed or might it interfere with color requirements?).

To be honest, if I can fetch up a copy or 2 before the MKM Prague in 2 weeks I'm going to test it at the tournament My only concern with Jace is that he can only flashback counterspells on my turn.

It's the summoning sickness that keeps me from believing that this is the new format changing allstar. Plus the fact that it looks so slow - play it, wait a turn, loot and flashback, wait another turn, then probably wait another turn until you can flashback something... maybe it just plays out way different than I assemble it in my head.

Mind Sculptor is an amazing card - new Jace is not. Looting + flashbacking spells is sweet and he def has a place in Vintage, but the card is not flexible enough by itself. One side loots, the other side flashbacks spells, limited to sorcery speed. Snapcaster would lose a lot of value if you couldn't flashback counterspells. Giving a creature -2-0 is mostly irrelevant (even though it comes up at times) but often you just effectively do nothing by plussing him.

It's a fine card to pay 20-25$ for. Anything else is T2 hype. 

Great change! Back to the old payout. Now I can only hope that all of you jump into the queues ASAP, because this one line still makes me a bit sceptical: . Oh, and also this one:
Well, I guess dailies like we are used to them is better than nothing.

Why should I be less cynical or even optimistic? Based on what? I do agree with both the problem and the solutions, I just know that you might as well pray to a wall. WotC has proven many times that they don't care about this particular stuff and only act if the revenues get less or if Kibler/ LSV/ Turtenwald complains.


It would make sense if they only got rid of the premiers that did not fire, but they decided to retire that type of tournament altogether - Standard and Modern had terrible payouts, yet they always fired. I'm sure they stated another reason (probably events cannibalizing each other). Anyway, as I already said, this is the only point that I can actually see happening - not a monthly premier of course, these times are gone, but a bi-annual "Holiday-Style-Champs" is something that I could imagine. Emphasis on could, because since the switch to Play Points a lot of people stopped playing and I hear that even the new 8 player dailies are struggling sometimes.



Things may be different for you, but not for WotC. All formats are equal... at least when it comes to publishing decklists. You may say that Vintage and Standard are totally different beasts, but where exactly do you draw the line? The latest Modern and Standard are wide open formats and I'm sceptical that publishing more decklists would make these formats "solved" during a week.
Again, I agree, publishing more lists is always the better move. Yet it won't happen, because that is just how Wotc rolls. And arguing that Vintage is different and would profit as a format from more decklists published is just void and elitist as you could argue in a similar way for each and every format. Either it's "more or all decklists, period" or "everyone is a loser".


The way I interpret this is as the loophole that Wotc exactly needs to justify 3-round tourneys, no premiers and less decklists. The same is true for Legacy.


So, please guys, don't get me wrong. Your cause is right and you just express the everyman's opinion on the actual state of online Vintage, yet your ways to solve problems are just breaking with parameters that have just been set. I'm sure there are other, better solutions that you guys can come up with. So far your solution reads as "please Wotc, think about things twice and then turn back to the old state that we all enjoyed" - but it is not that easy. 

Ok, so on-topic this time.

So, while I agree with your basic ideas and I enjoy you spending time and effort to make the world a better place for Vintage players, the problem for me with your writeup is that it seems like you wrote it with your heart while hardly doing any research. Just going by your conclusions at least makes me think you did. But let's go through them point by point:


To be honest, this is the only one you got right and the only one that I *could* see happening. Not on a as large scale as monthly Premiers (they got rid of them for a reason) but at least on something like 2 big tourneys a year. Also, why is there no Vintage Mocs season? Perfect to show Vintage on the big stage.


Yeah, and that is the first wtf-moment. Or rather wishful thinking. The whole point of Play Points is to limit players and their winnings, to force them to literally spend their winnings on the next tourney. "Tradeable" play points would go against anything that was intended, every single person would use and abuse that system, no one would ever have more unwanted Play Points left than the ones they cant trade right now. It might also lead to Play Points becoming a fractional currency. Just an unrealistic wish in my eyes.


I would praise Wotc if they ever returned to just publishing all events, but that is not what will happen. Especially not for such a niche format that Vintage is. To be fair, your statement should just read "publish more results" - but there is no reason to publish more Vintage and not the other ones. Anyway, they got rid of publishing most events like 2 years ago, for whatever reason. Probably one that I will never understand, like "Richard Garfield intended the game to be played without perfect information".
Talking about that, Wotc "knows" way more than we do anyway. They have all the matchup percentages and stuff, yet they never make it public. Fighting on this ground seems like a pointless uphill battle to me.


Hah, yeah. I remember like 9 years ago when a deck called "Project X" was tearing up Standard tourneys. Of course it was unplayable on Modo without loops. Truth it: they don't know how to do it and they don't like external help. I'm sure if they have a list of things to fix, infinite loops are on the bottom of that list.

Uhm, that is exactly how each EA-Title and Pokemon games are handled. Considering Pokemon is already 20 years old and how the games themselves evolved, I can tell you there could have happened way more. The game got a bit more complex, but otherwise... just update the grafics and create some new Pokemon.
And I'm not even talking about EA. I'm sure you could play Madden 2005 and Madden 2015 and count the differences with a single hand.


Regarding this topic though I also have to add some points - I will edit this post later, time is running out for now

I don't get your problem. Shops and Dredge are effectively anti-magic decks (one preventing you from playing, the other just being... Dredge, I guess playing YGO disguised as Magic), so giving the real Magic decks better odds to actually play a game of Magic after they are already disadvantaged just seems like a super fair move. I also think that Shops gets a similar advantage as in, if you are already on a mull, you probably keep anything anyway as long as it has mana and either threats or disruption and the scry helps to find the necessary third piece of the puzzle. 

Obv best deck is obv. Not like anything would happen anyway.

Congrats to Brian Kelly on taking it down and congrats to the other t8 competitors of course. The coverage was great, Buehler and Maher did a great job and some of the feature matches blew my mind (some really amazing lines and some really terrible plays, really felt like a best of Vintage). I enjoyed it a lot even though some rounds had too much air (we need MORE feature matches next year ).

Anyway, great tournament, great coverage and congrats to all the winners and on breaking another record (next year we go for 500 competitors, don't we?).

A competitive player, a smart deckbuilder, and, even more important, a good friend and awesome sports. I even have a video to prove my point! video removed -- TAL

I guess that is why they cut prize support and event length. But hey, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, right?...



Good idea. Go with something silly and catchy, best case an abbreviation. Like VDL - Vintage Daily League