I liked the article (hell, I'm hosting it on my site so of course I like it!) but I wish you'd addressed why Bob is better than Night's Whisper with a little more directness.

One of the issues with Painter/Grindstone, I think, is that Blightsteel Colossus in opposing decks screws up your kill math. If I knew your wincon was Grindstone, I'd probably tutor up Will as soon as I could and just let you mill me into Christmasland.

Hey, so happy to see continuous interest in this! Quiet Speculation will be at GenCon in some form or another and we'll be happy to sell you a copy of the book there, if you'd like.

Selling these things as ebooks through Kindle has been considered; I've looked into it but we haven't made firm plans on it yet.

Twaun, excuse me but I already seen this
from a better track by GZA the Genius
Don't step to hate on the Mean-ness
I'll toss you my jersey like Mean Joe Green and say clean this

my creature subtype is a Human Fighter
yours is a lameass rap tune biter
you gotta be Legendary cuz I just get bored
by knockin' you out with the Wu-Tang sword

I am the, wrong rightin' pit fightin' take you out in the dark of night an'
firebreathing unstoppable inferno titan
you're brand new like a Mirran pre-con
now show respect to this Mythic deacon.

Our server is right now getting CRUSHED by Steve's 21k word article on our site! Things are moving very slowly, so check back throughout the night, whether you want to subscribe to Insider or just buy the review.

This has been made free to Insiders. Expect it to be online this evening. I'll edit in a link for subscribers when we've got it up.

Edit: here's part 1, which links to parts 2 and 3 internally:

http://tinyurl.com/6l2dpv6

We have definitely broadened the site's appeal, and most of our content is free. We charge for financial stuff only. I would love to get to a point where we can efficiently post Steve's stuff for free, but that's not feasible right now (since we can't pay him enough on the back end).

One thing that I will be developing this week is a survey to talk to our Insider subscribers and see if this is something they'd be willing to pay for. I may just be misreading it that they wouldn't want a vast amount of their subscription money to go to Steve, but I don't know.

As an owner of QS, let me explain a little bit about the pricing.

Steve's articles are worth money. I think we can all agree that he should be compensated, somehow.

Steve wanted to work with QS and we want to work with him, but we simply do not have the money to pay Steve what it would take to retain him as a full-time writer. These reviews are cool, but they don't generate the conversion rate we would need to finance it as a piece of advertising that converts people to Insider. Thus, we're in a bind - we want to publish Steve, he wants to write for us, but the material he generates isn't related enough to premium to make fans of his stuff want to pick up Insider. It would be unfair to our Insider subscribers to make them subsidize a non-financial article, when what they are paying for is financial articles. Insider money goes to pay the Insider writers, who also generate content worth paying for. Of the money charged for this review, QS pockets very little; I am not trying to rip you off, and neither is Steve - this is simply what this kind of content costs, on a bare a la carte level.

CorwinB , I am going to try to work out something positive for Insiders on this. The margin we make, again, is so small that we don't have a lot of room to maneuver much of a meaningful discount. I am trying, though. Insider wasn't set up to give access to Steve's stuff and iI don't think we represented it that way.

Drop everything and put Thousand-Year Elixir in here.

Try Thran Turbine, since it's another Sol Ring for Rebel activations. Heartstone also makes things cheaper.

I noticed you don't have Pariah; tacked on Cho Manno, it's great protection. When added to an opposing creature, it becomes great removal and protection.

Remember, especially, that with Children you can gain a lot of life. Imagine someone hits you for 9. You heal that damage, then use Lin to shuffle them back in. You get them out with Lin, fire them off to gain another 9, then shuffle them in again to let any other Rebels grab them out!

I suppose that the best answer is that, although QS is primarily a financial site, we would be stupid to pass up the opportunity to give Steve a forum, since we like him a lot and he is a superb writer. We're not set in stone on our mission statement such that it would mean we couldn't run Steve's articles! QS is approaching this in the view that whatever Steve wants to write about is great with us. If it gets us more readers, like this thread indicates, we're happy to run it!

More than just on QS, I am a co-owner! I have already written some articles on buying and selling collections and cards, as well as some Legacy-specific work. Take some time to browse around the site and check out our archives; we've got a lot of really smart folks writing for us!

I *did* get my Misty Rainforest, hooyeah!


It was the other Sower, Will is right.

I will work on my penmanship for the next event : )

The parking around the event is 2hr free street parking. There is a garage to the South of the event site that is either free or VERY cheap on weekends (like $5 for the whole day, I think), other than that, parking is kind of a beast long-term in downtown Bloomington.

Mike, what places do you suggest for after-tournament festivities? Kind of hard to find some places on a Sunday; Nick's is an option.

Note: Indiana will not sell you alcohol of any kind on a Sunday unless you're in a bar, thanks to our blue laws. Another reason why blue sucks.

This will be really, really sick.

PLEASE bring your Peasant Highlander decks! Pleeeeeeeze.

If I go, I will bring mine. It is unsleeved and mostly proxied, but hey, it's a Peasant Highlander deck!

Gawd, coming up with something within proxy limits will be a beast...

I only got to cast Acquire once, for Juan's Time Vault. I put it in a Gifts pile but I could have put my own Vault there anyway and won. It's kind of risky because Juan bluffed that he'd already drawn his Vault. I never tutored for it (nor did I think to) because I kind of didn't remember that it was in my deck or whether it would be good or not. Some people take out DSC, some keep it in. That slot is good, but I'm not sure if you're going to be boarding in Acquire, TFK or Tezzeret there. You need some great topdeck in the Tezz mirror.

My whole sideboard is me basically being cute. The Psi Blast wasn't even sided in after awhile. I thought it'd be a good flexible card for Tezz and Fish decks but I never even wanted it.

I played against Mana Drains all day long, it was glorious.

Transmute is the guy that photocopies your memo the night before the presentation and takes it to Kinko's to get bound. He's never the star but he makes a lot of other things easier.

I really want this to be good. I think the biggest hurdle for it is that it loses to the Rebuild/Hurkyl's that every combo deck packs in the main.

Alternatively, it's a great card for Monoblue countering strategies, since your counters become Last Words.

Calm down, turbo. Getting four cards off this is pretty good IMO, and being able to replace flipped land with a supplemental card for some life points is good too.

Also, kobold-clamp.

I'm going to keep this thread in my mental bookmarks section right next to this gem of a thread to remind myself how bad people are at actually predicting how good/bad a card is.

This card is more comparable to Fact or Fiction than Moonlit Bargain. The instant speed is pretty ridiculous. Being able to draw tons of land off this and still go hunting for spells is amazing.

Hit the enter key a bit more, that last post just got the tl;dr treatment.

Personal Tutor is just too hard to exploit. I'd want Future Sight in play.

I would much, much rather get Gifts than Will. If we're talking about MDG, I could use the Gifts to set up a win anyway and I could get Gifts to set myself up. Gifts is a ridiculous card that can put you in situations that are much better than having the Will. For example, ending up with Mana Drain and Mystical Tutor in my hand is ace.

I feel like you're calculating it like:

step 1: find Tinker/Will
step 2:
step 3: profit!

Vintage just doesn't work that way.

Merchant Scroll was good because it could get you FOW when you were down, Mana Drain when you were even, Ancestral when you were even, or Mystical Tutor when you were ahead. It also tracked down Hurks and Fire/Ice. Personal Tutor only really does something when you're in a position where Will can win you the game.

In any case, I encourage you to test against competent people and report your results. I reserve the right to be wrong about all of this.

There's no real good sorcery-speed draw in this format. Deep Anal is about as close as we get. That's problem #1. You can't use PT to actually make an incremental gain, it's just a bad answer-finder or a middling bomb-finder. #2 is that outside of Will, there's really no sorcery that guarantees a win in Vintage. Even Will requires a bit of setup or time to actually be relevant.

If a deck is out there that will exploit Personal Tutor, it will involve getting Time Walk over and over again while killing with Tarmogoyfs.

Yep, you'd Lobotomy them if they were Sligh and had burn that you had to worry about, otherwise you'd Inspiration them to death. Basically, you cast Inspiration on them and then Lobotomy them, after you've Lobotomized their whole hand. Playing against Sligh, you hold a counterspell when you Inspiration them, since they might have drawn a red card and a red burn card. If they don't burn you, you can Lobotomize their burn out. You do this because they'll be drawing every card in their deck, so they see all their burn and Fireblasts hurt a LOT. I built the deck in paper form, since it's actually the worst to MWS with. It still takes like fifteen minutes to kill with.

The first step involves paying about $200 to have a lawyer write a letter to him.

The Shining, a combo-Keeper deck from old times, did this:

// Dülmen 11.05.2003 3. Carsten Kötter


1 Black Lotus
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Zuran Orb
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
2 Future Sight
2 Gush
4 Mana Drain
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Power Artifact
1 Time Walk
1 Fastbond
4 Burning Wish
1 Enlightened Tutor
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 City of Brass
3 Flooded Strand
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Tropical Island
2 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island

SB: 1 Balance
SB: 1 Circle of Protection: Red
SB: 1 Deep Analysis
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 1 Innocent Blood
SB: 1 Kaervek's Torch
SB: 1 Mind Twist
SB: 1 Primitive Justice
SB: 1 Pyroclasm
SB: 2 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Regrowth
SB: 1 Vindicate

Check out Zvi's old Dream Halls deck. It solves a lot of problems that your Dream Halls deck has, namely showing an opponent a whole pile of cards with every D7. Your Halls turns on their Drains and all that stuff. Zvi used Ancestral Memories and Gaea's Blessing along with Mana Severance to blaze through the deck over and over again. To solve the D7 problem, you could also run Defense Grid.

Slyfer, Repeal looks hands-down awful in Dream Halls.

Things like Ophidian make me think of Skeletal Scrying as a replacement for it.

I don't know where these ballers are coming from. Too many rookies, not enough pros.

I'm a hustler baby, that's what my daddy made me.

I don't get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars.

Gifts Ungiven. It's unreal awesome and just about the only piece I'd want to hang on my wall.

The Homelands Merchant Scroll is great, the 8th-ed one, not so much. I don't know why they even gave it new artwork, the old one is much better.