I remember going to Dallas a few years ago looking for card vendors and for T1. It's more or less dead in that area. Your best bet is San Antonio or Austin. Also, you might want to consider seeing if there is anything around Oklahoma.

I think what Xyre was getting at is that trying to play out the combo in a single turn is too mana exhaustive, which I would agree.

EDIT: Specifically, I used to run a single Parrallel thoughts in my Xcc back when scourge was first printed. It was a terrible idea; anytime I could have played the spell I needed to play something else in order to maintain control of the board. If something as slow as an old style Keeper deck couldn't fit it in back then, how can you expect Storm Combo to utilize it with no extra innovation in mana accelerance? It's hard enough to cast bargain for six mana let alone an additional card for five mana that merely supports it.

Aggro has historically been a problem for MBC, but there are ways to overcome it. Staples like Edict, Spinning Darkness, and Contagion have always come into play here. Factory has eight land destruction spells to contend with, so Factory is not a problem. Worse case, you can always Wish out Edict. I feel this deck has a good chance against the upper tier if steered correctly. Its biggest weakness is Chalice and Decks that run Sphere/Thorn considering black has no real way of getting rid of artifacts. It kills Drain based decks, and can contend with most of the fish variants.

This is an interesting build I've been recently testing; I feel that night's whisper makes a good addition along with Confidant. They both seem to give the deck a more necro-ish feel and come close to accomplishing an old style feel.

You can replace extirpate with Leyline or Tormod's if you wish to strengthen your graveyard hate. Extirpate is fun; however, when you remove a welder with thoughtseize; it's also strong removal for Force of Will and Mana Drain so your Discard can remove real threats.

On a sidenote, I will point out that Hypnotic Specter no longer has strength as it did in the old days. I also removed Nantuko shade because I feel he's a little dated as well. Yeah he pumps and can be ruthless sometimes, but I can't really say I've won too many games solely on him being in play.


Feel free to adjust this deck as to how you see fit; this is my base and I modify it from time to time to see how it's doing.

// Lands
    3 Mishra's Factory
    3 Wasteland
    1 Strip Mine
    1 Maze of Ith
    14 Swamp

// Creatures
    4 Phyrexian Negator
    3 Dark Confidant

// Spells
    1 Necropotence
    1 Vampiric Tutor
    3 Night's Whisper
    1 Death Wish
    1 Demonic Tutor
    1 Nevinyrral's Disk
    1 Chainer's Edict
    1 Yawgmoth's Will
    4 Thoughtseize
    1 Mox Jet
    2 Crucible of Worlds
    3 Extirpate
    4 Sinkhole
    4 Hymn to Tourach
    4 Dark Ritual
    2 Duress

Something interesting I read off CNN about the proposed Bill that's going to be voted on Today:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/28/news/economy/Sunday_talks_bailout/index.htm?cnn=yes



Almost seems fair but it seems to me that all these original executives will be getting off scot-free. They need to limit the use of golden parachutes period.

Thank you; I lucked out pretty well since I live on the west side. My prayers go out to the people on the coast. Galveston got hit hard, I hope everyone on TMD made it out of the storm.

I always bid on auctions at less than one minute; I'd rather be outbid by a watchful eye than someone who places a high bid.

If I wanted to splash blue I would cut hyppie, add Dimir Cutpurse and remove confidant entirely in place of sinkhole or AK. Actually at that point you might as well just go old school and build HulkSmash or better yet, GAT.

Besides the fact that it works well with Lake of the Dead, it works well to play after an attack 2nd turn with negator; chances are they're going to lose the life why not sooner than later? It's also good bait for Fow or Mana Drain which you can then extirpate.

As far as Duress/thoughtseize is concerned, don't forget the 3 MD extirpate.

Nights Whisper Nets me more cards in one turn than confidant; it's cheaper in respect to loss of life and much more reliable to cast sucessfully. If I wanted more creatures I would be running +2 Mishra's Factory.

I've actually been testing an MBC build recently that has given me a hope for a decks like these in the future. I really think that it could go all the way given the right pilot and maybe a little more optimization. This deck is one of my favorites and I've played varients of it as far back as Ice Age. Here's my current build; maybe you can gain some information from it.

// Deck: Vintage Thug's MBC

// Lands
    3 Wasteland
    11 Swamp
    2 Mishra's Factory
    1 Strip Mine
    2 Lake of the Dead

// Creatures
    4 Phyrexian Negator
    1 Masticore

// Spells
    3 Hymn to Tourach
    1 Tormod's Crypt
    1 Yawgmoth's Will
    3 Null Rod
    1 Death Wish
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Black Lotus
    4 Night's Whisper
    1 Necropotence
    1 Demonic Tutor
    2 Crucible of Worlds
    3 Sinkhole
    1 Temporal Extortion
    2 Thoughtseize
    3 Duress
    3 Extirpate
    4 Dark Ritual
    1 Diabolic Edict

// Sideboard
SB: 2 Contagion
SB: 1 Nevinyrral's Disk
SB: 3 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 Powder Keg
SB: 3 Chalice of the Void
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 3 Cursed Totem

A lot of people want to give MBC a junkyard status, but I've seen this build do some very nasty things. Your biggest enemy with this deck is Chalice for 1 or 2 which hoses the majority of your spells. the key is to get null rod in your opening hand in order to shut down their artifacts so they can't hit you turn 1.  Extirpate is essential to getting rid of welders, in fact they are a complete necessity. Especially against decks that use 4-of draw engines like AK, Thirst, Strat. Hosing down their big draws makes it tough for them to gain speed and usually you can pull through in late game against their topdecks. Cursed totem puts the hurt on their creatures by stopping any sort of welder tricks or disruption that may accompany them. you also want to side in tormod's crypt to kill their graveyards.

Necropotence is a no-brainer for any mono-black deck. Draw through as much as you can, and then sac to the negator. Night's Whisper allows you to get a little draw, and it has been very useful. Kinda like a baby-necro it always gets you what you need in order to make the game pull through.

I've been a fan of temporal extortion as a finisher, same with Death wish. Temporal Extortion is great in to positions to where all you need is another swing with Negator in order to close out the match, also deathwish is great for when you play Will turning your graveyard into a Storm combo win with tendrils. If I could find room to MD tendrils I would, but it seems so tough, there never are enough cardslots these days.

I agree with around 20 proxies to start with. Especially if you don't have enough product to push and especially if your clients don't have deep pockets. You want them to be able to get at least a little more than 2/3 of their deck built. Once you have that for almost all the players, then lower the maximum and be sure you have the T1 cards they need in order to stimulate growth.

The easiest way to not make blunders as far as which staples to buy for your players is to make each player come with a printed decklist and have noted as to which cards they have proxied. You can then input all of this data into a spreadsheet, see what cards players have proxied the most, and then you can start searching for the cards they need. This also helps with defining what cards you should put up for prize at a tournament.

So at 8 people per a tournament you should be looking at anywhere from $40-$50 in prize value distributed to 1st and 2nd for a $10 tournament. You're looking at $30-$40 profit if you had to physically spend $50 in prizes. A good shop owner should be able to make more money by obtaining high prize value cards at a lower rate, so usually your profit margin will increase. The more entries you get, the more prizes should be allotted. you can even do store credit for anything other than the grand prize.

If you're looking for T1 in Texas, then here's the perfect chance to help develop the format in your home state.

Our Current regional focus is:

Austin
College Station
San Antonio
Houston

More or less, we're looking at an area of 3hrs or less drive time give or take for tournaments. We want to help organize tournaments, get people up to speed with the format, and present detailed results of Top 8's for use on sites like TMD, Morphling, Et Cetera. We really would like some community support for all you T1 Texans out there. Give us your support!

http://www.tgcgaming.com


A little background information about myself:

I've been playing magic since around 1995, I've always been a fan of using the largest cardpool in order to achieve the strongest most broken decks. I played various builds of Xcc from 2000 to 2004 and am now looking for a place to play tournaments in my area. Unfortunately, after multiple closings of some of the best card shops in Houston occured, Vintage has pretty much reached a stale only talked about and never considered environment here in our area. I found it quite unfortunate and it left me wondering where all the good players went.

Anyways, once again if your from Texas and looking for T1, join the forum. We hardly have any members at the moment, but give it time and keep working towards developing the format and we might find ourselves in the newest T1 hotspot.

I remember being at a tournament and seeing foil proxies of the P10.

I wish I knew where to go to get those.

I'll agree with you that the deck isn't that powerful; however, when every player is packing Ichorid-hate in half their sideboard then the one needs to start thinking and really wonder if something is really wrong with that. My main problem with the deck is that it does not allow for its opponents to optimize their sideboard against other crucial decks. Grant it, there are still a ton of decks that use graveyard manipulation but is it really necessary  to have 7-8 of 15 card slots devoted to that cause plus more maindeck hate?


Gas was $2.00 a gallon in my area at that time... =(    ...Still it is nice to rewind the clock 8)

Outside of Ichorid, I really do enjoy the current Meta. Anyone who has played Vintage for a reasonable amount of time already knows the matchups and knows the output of their decklist. It's funny how since Bazaar and Workshop were unrestricted the typical debate has been to restrict both. What is the community's target for the format? I think that's exactly the question the original poster intended to be answered. I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that neither workshop/bazaar are completely handsdown broken. Yes, they're powerful and the decks structured around them really make it a point to abuse every inch of their mechanics; however, one must face the fact that this is a competative format. Anyone who insists that the speed of the game should be slower, then check out an alternative format. Most everyone should be happy that flash is out of the picture, and now hopefully DCI has their eyes on Ichorid. Remember this is a step by step process and the ruling body does not want to over impact Vintage. I think setting the clock back to a setting similar to 2005 is good because that allows for a firm controlled environment for the next vintage experiment.

The meta I would like to see is the one we're playing in right now; slightly altered and a bit hostile.

Mabey he wants to discard all those cards, I mean it would make for one heck of a dramatic Yawgmoth's will... lol

I just moved from houston to Alexandria VA, and I was wondering if there's any place to play in the DC area. I'm not worried about the quality of the players or anything, I just want to find something to do during the days when I'm not busy. Anything within 30-40 minutes will do. I would also like to know the local metagame if possible.

Here's what I noticed when I playtested this deck

Standstills were good in general. They did allow me to build up my mana sources quite easily.

I did notice that third decree really helps this deck becuase there's not much in gatekeeper to really toss into play early game. Decree especiall becomes important when you want to add pressure to your opponent under standstill. I noticed that my opponents were more likely to play a spell when I cycled decree for two or three.

Dust Bowl under standstill is a godsend. had it not been for this little trick, I would have lost several games.

Eternal Dragon did very little to improve the overall ability of this deck, It hardly ever showed up, and when it did, the game was almost over anyway. I really think something else could make better use of this slot.

I've had pretty good success with the unlimited proxie rule. When I first started playing T1 seriously two years ago, the only deck I had was my brother's suicide black deck, and a handful of decent cards. My friend had told me about Bdominia, and told me to read the primers. He told me to proxie out the cards I didn't own, and play the decks as if I had the cards. I started to play keeper, becuase I've always been a big fan of control. Playing that deck made me realize the true value of power and other more expensive cards. At that point, I knew I had to finish the deck, and it was only 20% complete. I began to rip myself off in trades tryng to get more valueble cards, and the proxie deck that I once had started to look real. I'm only missing a few pieces of power and a Library now, and I have to say, If I would have never been allowed to use proxies at tournaments, I would have never developed an interest in competative Type One.

Great, I was right all along! my friend owes me ten dollars! thanks for the ruling

If I play Trinisphere and I Chalice for three, does that mean all spells that cost three or less are countered or does Trinisphere act more like Sphere of Resistance where the mana cost is just simply added on like a static ability?