the deck posted top in the swiss 5-1

was 2nd over all in the tourney and I lost only to ichorid (YUCK) and a MUD variant, the deck just refused to cooperate in the finals 

anyway I'll edit my first post for my final decklist

usually I would agree with playing the sphere over the cotv, but in our meta there are hardly any combo decks at all, so cotv does way more damage than sphere of resistance does. as for the replacement of crucible, I guess I could cut them but I don't know I guess I'm still banking on the chance of a soft wasteland crucible lock in case I do get my pieces out ^^ anyway thanks for the help guys tourney is today! I'll just post the results later 

yeah that could work, so i'm wondering whether or not i would need ancient tombs for easy casting of the magus? or is my mana base fine?
 

Hi, I'm playing in a non-proxy environment and I have just managed to get my hands on some power and some shops, the tourney is this sunday and I really need help in tweaking my list, our meta is a lot of fish decks, rg beats, land still and oath decks, there will be other shop decks and some ichorids too

here is my list so far, i don't have the 5th moxen so i'm just running 4 any comments?

ok modified so it should look like this

lands 19
 
4 mishras workshop
3 mishras factory
6 mountains
4 wasteland
1 stripmine
1 tolarian academy

artifacts 22

1 lotus
4 moxen (no jet)
3 solring, vault, crypt
4 thorn of amethyst
4 chalice of the void
3 sword of fire and ice
2 crucible of worlds
1 trinisphere

creatures 8

4 goblin welder
4 magus of the moon

artifact creatures 11

4 juggernaut
4 solemn simulacrum
3 triskelion

sideboard

2 duplicant
1 sundering titan?
4 reb
3 pithing needle
2 shattering spree
3 tormod's crypt

-2 duplicant -1 sundering titan -1 gamble / +4 magus of the moon

is my sideboard good though?

hmm i think playing seething song in this deck is bad, its not cast-able when you don't have the other rituals and it doesn't help your match up against stax based decks, it looks like a win more card to me. Salvage Titan might be good but I think personally that Tombstalker still deserves the slot, the chances that you would have 3 idle artifacts are slim while the chances you fail to go off in a round is high and so tombstalker would be of great help there.

yeah i guess its all about whats prominent in your area's metagame, here most people play chain of vapor over ETs and although they do have ETs they're mostly just one offs. I also agree about aggressively taking a mulligan as you cannot ever have a weak opening hand and play it.

I'm just curious, if you do gold fish i mean play solitaire with the deck, how many times out of 5 do you get killer opening hands? ^^

we pretty much have the same stuff, what did u have difficulty with? was it more on bad opening hands or was it more on opponent's deck tech against your deck? how did storm entity go? were u able to side it in?

could you post your decklist and sb?

why not play sensei sensei with that sculptor? i think he'd be great in the deck

i dont think defense grid is good personally i love the gluttoral responses, they pitch well to the chromes and they are a surprise protection for the belcher player

hmm.. yeah that could work, thanks I will try playtesting this and give some feedback some time later

I've been a huge fan of high tide decks in the past, but most of the time i was playing it on the legacy format since it really gets beaten up in vintage. so here goes
how does playing 4 time spirals make this deck instantly viable? i always thought diminishing returns was already a very good card for this deck but it never really went main stream since it lost way too much to chalice, and now that brainstorm has been restricted to one, i think this deck just might be a little too underpowered compared to the other combo decks out there. just my thoughts ^^

now that you point it out i think you nailed it. anyway i always had trouble figuring out what to come out of the deck when it comes to sideboarding, so having living wish really helped me on that end anyway what are your suggestions for the SB and what cards do you think should come off for them? I mean in facing post SB cards such as null rods, needles and chalice?

grim monolith, yeah that seems to be a good choice the wishes however i have to think through i just seem to be so hooked on the idea of being able to reach for my sideboard at anytime during the match!

yes i'm playing in non proxy tournaments, sadly its not really power deprived. a lot of people pack power and do have the cards to make tier 1 decks, there are decks such as stax, grim long, ichorid which are all fully powered. I just really don't have the money for the power 

ancient grudge does seem like a good land to put in the sb, i'll take note of that tombstalker is a very good call since people SHOULD be taking out their stps after game 1 ^^

oxidize and shattering sprees are good too, i also considered them but I just thought I might need a way to deal with enchantments in case the game drags along. BTW what can i remove from my list to make way for the 3 chrome moxes? any ideas?

no academy rector?

well i went up against dragon stompy on the first round, had no difficulty with this one, but i might've been just lucky since i got insane hands, i was able to warrens out turn one in the first game for 10 and killed him the next turn, and i got him to mul to four on the next game and just belched him on my turn.

the second round was against a mono blue type fish deck i think, its kinda rogue since it uses wizards n ol for control, but it did have forces drains n stifles so it was kinda tricky, it was in this game that the wish for a tolarian academy got me the win.

the third round i paired up against oath, i lost badly to that one due to hand disruptions and counters, i just couldnt get anything to go my way. the 2nd game i was able to belch on the first turn only to flip land at the very first flip. so needless to say i lost that one.

the fourth round was against stax, the deck has a bit of a difficulty coping with stax especially turn one spheres, with thorn of amethyst its easier to maneuver around it but with sphere its kinda difficult to build up the right amount of mana to go off with anything. i lost badly both games.

fifth round was against ichorid, no difficulty on this match up, i might cut tormods because of this but well i think its just a fail safe anyway. ichorid is not a problem for belcher decks, we're hella lot faster and they usually can't get a first turn therapy out since what they'd wish for is bazaar, and although unmask just rapes you, its usually just one card you can recover from draws.

6th i was against blue white fish. i won the first game with a first turn tombstalker i was so lucky he didnt draw an stp or a bounce spell but tombstalker just rocks!
i lost the next two games because he had meddling mages, counters and needles that blocked my way.

anyway i really think i goofed with my sideboard for this tourney but i can say living wish really bails you out a lot, its like having an instant extra mana source, extra welder and suddenly a xantid swarm, having those two other lands in my sideboard was a fail safe for me since a lot of people ran wastelands so in the event that i need it i still had a means to get one into play.

ok i played belcher today at a vintage tournament, right now its still pre-unrestriction of chrome mox so i had to revamp my decklist, played with a black lotus though so it kinda offsets that fact anyway here's the decklist

4 elvish spirit guide
4 simian spirit guide
2 goblin welder
4 tinderwall
1 tombstalker

15 creatures

4 dark ritual
4 manamorphose
4 gluttoral response

12 instants

4 rite of flame
4 land grant
2 living wish
1 demonic tutor
1 yawgmoth's will
1 tendrils of agony
3 empty the warrens
1 wheel of fortune
1 channel

18 sorceries

4 goblin charbelcher
1 chrome mox
1 black lotus
1 grim monolith
1 solring
1 manavault
1 manacrypt
1 lion's eye diamond
1 lotus petal
1 memory jar

13 artifacts

1 taiga
1 overgrown tomb (yes i know, i wasn't able to get my hands on a bayou so i had to play with this)

2 lands

sideboard

2 tormod's crypt
2 ingot chewer
2 xantid swarm
2 naturalize
1 goblin welder
1 taiga
1 overgrown tomb
1 tolarian academy
1 tombstalker
1 storm entity
1 ancient grudge

i finished with a record of 3-3 in 6 rounds of swiss, it was a bad record but they deck showed consistency in first turn plays, its just that i was outplayed on some games and on some just belched out a land too early. anyway i plan to play this again this time adjusting for the 3 other chrome moxes what are your thoughts?

btw tombstalker was a stroke of genius, i played it on the first turn and beat my opponent down with it, it was totally unexpected and a real great tech

good arguments, but i think pacts aren't worth it unless your actually putting blue in as a color, it can't be fed to chrome mox and since etw is a very used kill option, i think it would do more harm than good.

as for necropotence, i think it has to go too, why not plop in demonic consultation or a burning wish maybe?

and as for generic sideboards what do you think should be in the deck? i'm thinking welder, tolarian, storm entity, 2 ingot chewers, taiga, bayou and.. i couldn't think of anything else maybe demigod of revenge could get a slot?

actually counterspells we have gluttoral for, i think wishes are good since you can use esg mana to put it out, and have creatures like ingot chewer deal with cotv and needles *actually needles are sideboard hate, almost nobody mains needles

I think the wishes should stay since they are probable solutions for main decked hate against belcher, street wraiths don't seem to help much, why no vampiric tutor?

its a nice deck and i'm testing it out, the only thing that worries me is that esg wasn't in the deck, is playing street wraiths better than playing esgs? and i was wondering since the current format still doesnt allow the use of the currently unrestricted cards, could the deck run using esgs without the 3 other chromes? waht are your thoughts?