Thanks for writing the article, Steve.

Minor typo in the "Matchups vs. Workshops" section, just before the sideboard plan:

Thanks Rich, Steve, and the rest of the crew for doing the VSL. I happened to randomly come across the archives of Season 1 after it had finished, and took some time to go through and watch the lot.

I hadn't played any magic in about .. 10 years, or something like that. I had to keep pausing and looking pretty much everything up on Gatherer, since I don't recognise most of the stuff that sees play these days, nor most of the mechanics! It certainly seems like Vintage has changed significantly - last I knew about anything, people were drawing Superman logos on Morphling, and Psychotog had turned up to start wrecking house. The overwhelming mindset was that if your opponent had played a creature, that was pretty much a signal that you had already lost the game. Mana Drain was an instant four-of inclusion in pretty much every deck.

Everything is different! Dredge is just ... mind-boggling. Mana Drain doesn't even see any play, because some how it isn't powerful enough any more. Turns out all those Chicken Little fears about Wizards never printing anything Type 1 / Vintage playable again weren't just unfounded, but thoroughly ludicrous. If you have that opinion today, know that people held that belief ten years ago, and now what used to be rock-solid staples (in blue, no less) are just not good enough anymore.


Seeing the videos of the VSL on MTGO has got me interested in mtg again, and I'll quite probably try to get in to Vintage on MTGO. I like the presentation style also - having the other players commentate and able to see both competitors' hands so they can make properly reasoned arguments about possible plays keeps it quite entertaining to watch.

Um... no. Sunburst does not make it coloured. Notice the casting cost? It's just a simple X. Sunburst just looks at the colours of mana used to play the card, it doesn't alter the colour of the card itself.

The best use I see for this card is that you can sell it.

Other than that.. it seems far too fragile for a combo relying on stacking sorcery effects - you'll end up with a hand full of shit sorceries that you can't do anything with cause you don't have this artifact in play. While duressing someone in response to their brainstorm is interesting, the card seems like too much investment (you'd need 3 or 4 in your deck, plus the mana to cast it, plus all copies of it after the first are useless) for too little reward.

You cannot just rely on a single shuffling method... while riffling multiple times is good (and is something you should do), you should not rely on only riffling. Riffling by itself will leave cards that were near the top of the deck still near the top of the deck, for example.

What non-power do you have? Full set of Drains and FoW's? Duals? etc. You could be brave and try something like fish.. buy an ancestral with your cash. It'll be useful in general, anyway.

Nameless, I don't think anybody has said that every tournament should allow proxies - instead the point being made is that there is a place for some tournaments to allow proxies, and even to allow a large number of them.
The prizes for winning these tournaments allow you to build your collection, and then enter tournaments with more restrictive proxying rules.

Should (or would) something like GenCon ever be a proxy tournament? No. Should people be able to play the game in competitive environments locally to practice and aquire needed cards to enter "big name" tournaments like that? I say yes, and can't really think of a convincing argument for the "no" case.

So far, all I've read from this thread backing up the "no" side summarises as "I have power, so nobody should be allowed to proxy anything anywhere, ever". T1 will never grow with this attitude.

I'd rather have a strong environment at a tournament that truely tests the skill of the players than worry about how much a Lotus will cost tomorrow. In my opinion, this can only happen when every player has the abliity to put together any deck they want.

We obviously have different priorities.

I'd like to see some justification for that statement. Is being able to proxy 16.5% also idiotic? Is 14% only mildy stupid?

Could you try working through your obvious anger issues, and say something coherent? The obvious truth is that by allowing proxies, more people will play. I don't think anyone has said that absolutely every tournament ever must allow proxies - just that the existance of proxy tournaments is a good thing. If you don't like the idea of losing to a better player than you that hasn't spent the money on power yet, don't play in them. It's pretty simple.

The problem with Oath is that your opponent needs to have a creature out before it starts working ... and if your opponent has a creature out, it's likely that you've already lost.

I don't see how winning Power could ever be bad..

You run a once-a-month proxy tourney, and then a once-a-quarter non-proxy tourney with a larger prize. Winning the Power is then not only "not bad", but genuinely useful.