Very brave, and very informative of you to show a game where you make a number of mistakes.  Thanks for the article.  Definitely a good one to play along at home with.

It is an interesting article.  But I do have to agree with marske for the most part.  I also think that the sideboard plan against Stax is telling.  Tombstalker, and  a single copy each of Hurkyl's Recall and Swamp ain't going to cut it.  The man plan is weak, and, as maske points out, the deck was invented to deal with a first turn 3Sphere.  I think that the "need" for the man plan comes mostly from the potential explosiveness and broken topdecks being taken out of the deck.  The presence of Dark Confidant on the deck does possibly make a man plan a little stronger, though.

I'm actually interested by the fact that he brings in Engineered Explosives in every matchup but some of the Drain ones.  It seems strong, and given that it does comes in in almost every matchup, possibly even strong strong enough to make it to the maindeck as a singleton.  It's not like it's useless against Tez. Particularly now that they're more like to be packing Dark Confidant, an EE at 2 seems a fairly reasonable play.

Absolutely correct, MaxxMatt.  This is why we put basic lands in the sideboard.  Neither Stax, nor Fish are going to suddenly blow you out of the water.  But against an unknown deck, most likely to be Tez, you want the larger threat density in the mainboard.

Duress is a particularly important card to the whole strategy of TPS.  It should be played early.  By playing Duress, you gain invaluable information.  You get to see what you opponent is playing, allowing you to pick the best lines of play and engines of choice.  You get to see how much time you have to craft your hand before you must either get more disruption or make something happen.  This information gathering and disruption is Duress' primary function.  The fact that it's also kind of handy for removing obstacles to your own path to victory is just an important bonus.

So, GNU, play it ASAP.  As Steven points out in has article, you should also be on the lookout for opportunities to chain a couple more spells off a ritual, and see if you can actually advance the game at the same time.  Trust that the deck will cough up something useful to you.  If you don't play the Duress first, and the useful thing that it coughs up is a tutor, for example, you will be in a far worse position to make the right play.

... additional ...
For tutors, it depends on what your critical resources are.  As a general rule, if you're short on mana and/or time, play the tutors out and get yourself into a position where you know you can win.  Otherwise, you're probably better hanging onto them, keeping options open, and building storm count.  Of course, if you're going for the Tinker/Robot plan, storm doesn't matter so much.  If in doubt, hold them.  It's called The Perfect Storm for a reason.  "One big turn" is your primary line of play, supported by every engine in the deck.  If you're playing out tutors, and even more so, moxes; you're using up valuable spells that could be part of that Perfect Storm.

Usually, I would say that a blue deck without brainstorm was misbuilt.  But in this case, there are zero shuffle effects, and very little space to shoehorn any in.  I think that Timetwister has some definite potential, though.  The deck functions by restricting for your opponents mana, the chances are that you will be able to make far better use of the extra cards than your opponent.  Also, the graveyard clearing effect could be very valuable for a deck that doesn't interact with its own graveyard in any way.

My major issue with this deck is that against a Null Rod, you either lean on Esperzoa or you basically enter the scoop phase.  Only Karn can handle a Tarmogoyf if a rod is on the table.  Null Rod decks are particularly popular at the moment, this deck seems far too vulnerable to them.

One has the colour of, or is made from gold, the other is coated in gold.  So while a gilded lotus would more than likely be golden, a golden lotus need not be gilded.  All that glitters is not gold, or even foil.

I really don't think this has any future in vintage at all.  Even if everything goes right for it, it's not usable until turn 2, and that's if you draw a saphire, stifle, and this.  3 lands is an enormous price when it enters play tapped.

Yes, it makes a huge amount of mana.  But given that most of the time you're going to be holding around 4 cards when you play this, I really can't see it being that good.

It's too slow, too conditional and too much focussed on the big, splashy play.  I can see it making an impact in some of the smaller pool formats, where some plays are really hard to find an answer for.  But in vintage, where every threat has a cheaper answer, it's just too many eggs for any basket.

I don't expect this card to set the vintage world on fire.  It does seem like it has something in it though.  I can definitely see this having a a slot in some deck, I just can't see what deck it could possibly be.  It needs to be something that's in for the longer haul and unfortunately Wisescale Serpent doesn't really do anything to prevent your opponent advancing his plan.  But neither does the dryad, so there's definitely some potential here.

One thing about the inky vs DSC on the board thing, if you're winning the race with inky, you're very likely to continue to win it. Where DSC can be blocked all day by either DSC or Inkwell Leviathan, Inky can usually islandwalk past your opponent's robot.
Edit: I could have sworn that inky was 7/12.  Carry on, nothing to see here.

To be a little more specific, I found this linked to from one of those articles.  I've been reading through some of the other stuff though, and it's well worth a browse.

Balance, without a doubt.  It's a great card, and a very good Wrath versus well, pretty much anything, with other application, too.  Enlightened Tutor, I'm not so sold on for most Tezzeret builds that you might try to add white to.  Other than your win conditions, there really isn't much that it can find for you.  I think that the test of a tutor, particularly one in what tries to be a control deck is that it finds you answers.  If it finds questions too, that's a big bonus.  Merchant Scroll is a pretty good example, it finds counters, bounce and other tutors, it also happens to find Ancestral Recall and Gifts Ungiven (note that I'm talking about now, not in a Gush/Scroll engine).  I tend to think of cards in Vintage decks as "I'm staring down a loss next turn and have minimal resources; how does this help me pull myself out of the fire?".  Decent vintage decks are well and truly powerful enough for winning to take care of itself, all you have to do is make sure your opponent doesn't win first; I don't see how Enlightened Tutor really helps with that.

But I'm inclined to agree with your assessment, jerk (heh).  I don't think that adding white is a very good idea.

Or worse yet, to discover that they were just waiting to draw another ritual so that they could play the Will and Tendrils in their hand.  Or that they respond to the Cap activation with Gifts Ungiven and get all their win conditions out of harms way.  Or to have your next artifact drain, opening up a turn of Tezzeret + Vault, both in hand, because, as you say, you've been wasting time try to get cap online, rather than disrupting their ability to produce .

desolutionist, I believe you are seriously oversimplifying the deck.  I think that a number of people participating in this thread (yourself included) would do well to read Steven's series of 3 articles dedicated to the deck.

The Perfect Storm
Playing The Perfect Storm
and Winning with TPS
along with First Place: A Post-Shards Vintage Tournament Report where Steven shows how he think through real tournament conditions with the deck.

If you read those articles you will learn that there absolute is a qualitative difference between incidental draw/filter cards such as Brainstorm (which isn't even mentioned in his breakdown) and engines which win you the game, such as Necropotence, Timetwister and Memory Jar.  What FFSF is saying, correctly I think, is that cards such as Fact or Fiction and the suggested Thirst for Knowledge and Meditate are closer to these cards in application than to Brainstorm.  They have to be at that sort of price.  Take a look at the cards that remain in your "draw/tutor" list after removing cards I've mentioned and the much more tutor oriented Gifts Ungiven and the complete bomb, Tinker.  Nothing is left with a CMC > 2.

I think this indicates that anything that you're looking to add to the deck to replace the Brainstorms (which I actually completely disagree with some posters about the relative impact of the loss of) must also have a CMC <= 2.  This leaves Night's Whisper (which I have also always found underwhelming), Serum Visions, and Sensei's Divining Top.  Serum Visions is closer in its actual play to Brainstorm (or, more accurately, Ponder), but I think that the Top is the stronger card.  I say this particularly since, contrary to what others in this thread have been saying, TPS is not a particularly fast deck.  It's built for resilience and redundant, complementary engines over and above speed. 

The deck's name is apt.  As FFSF points out, often, and I think more often than not, the deck rewards patience and crafting the perfect hand to produce The Perfect Storm.  If you want to run out cards and draw heaps of them and raw speed to overwhelm you opponent, then perhaps something like Ad Nauseam combo is better suited to your playstyle.

Completely agree, FlyFlySideOfFry.  Infernal Tutor is definitely a powerful card.  It's Demonic Tutor when you have no cards (and I can't think of a card I'd rather have than DT in those circumstances), and at worst it's a search for a component that's central enough to your deck that you decided to put 4 of it in.

The major issue is, of course, what sort of deck to put it in.  Most decks really quite enjoy having some cards in their hand, and the decks that most benefit from tutors, combo decks, like them more than most as they're after 1 big turn.  Couple that with the fact that combo decks in vintage tend to play a large percentage of restricted cards, and it's difficult to see what the home for IT is.

To make use of IT, you need to be able to use it in both of its modes, and I just can't see a vintage deck that wants to.

Firstly reaperbong, I'd debate your use of "strictly" better here, only because slower, continuous draw, I believe is better for control decks.  But the loss of life, particularly with 7 cards with CMC >= 5 strikes me as too much of a disadvantage to make it worth the risk.  Thirst is a very good card, and Tezz decks lend themselves to a high concentration of artifacts.

I still really like the European (I think it's mostly Italy) approach to the Tezzeret deck.  Lots of really low casting cost artifacts, including Seat of the Synod, lots of mana acceleration, and Thoughtcast (as well as TfK).  The idea of treating Tezzeret as a combo deck, rather than a combo finish in a control deck is definitely interesting, and I think it has some merit.
Um... You run Confidant, which deals about the same damage on average in your deck, only in less predictable chunks. 

Edit: Oops, missed a close on a quote level there.

Jester's Cap is a card that I think is played pretty much exactly as much as it should be.  The issue with it is that it does not affect the state of the game as it stands, nor does it affect any card that the opponent has already drawn, or otherwise taken from their library.  So, while sometimes it can completely cripple a deck, particularly in the current environment, far too often it's a card that does nothing but affect some probabilities.

Still, it's not a terrible card, and it sees a little play, which I think it deserves.

I do like the Tog idea.  I like it a lot.  Seems like a far better idea that Dreadnought.

TopSecret, I'm really wondering why you mention Standard legality.  Who cares?

Clique is not dead?  Surprises me a little. With the lack of speed, I would have thought that often, Clique would just be giving the a chance to dredge.  Of course, you can always use it on yourself.

You should probably consider upping the sideboard hate with Wheel of Sun and Moon if you have Ichorid in your metagame.

Versus Remora blue, your best bet is to try and get 2 or more dudes to stick.  Cursecatcher is probably better against Remora than it is against just about anything else, but I don't really see how you can squeeze it in.  In the Eye of Chaos (edit: or City of Solitude) would be downright funny if it ever hit the table.  I think you should be prepared to abandon what is a fairly weak counter suite, or relegate it to forcing one of these strategy destroying cards through versus Remora.

I think that the Drain shell is inherently suited to the Vault + Key combo moreso than any other.  Firstly, the combo costs 4 colourless mana.  Mana Drain fits well here, in that it provides colourless mana, this is easier for Drain decks to get behind than Yawgmoth's Will, Tendrils of Agony, or pretty much any other win condition in history.

Secondly, it's a two card combo.  Unlike the 1 card combos of Yawgmoth's Will or Tinker -> Colossus, Key + Vault requires finding two specific cards, and having them in play at the same time.  Because of this, it is more suited to a more controlling deck, willing and able to play a long game while it waits for the two components to come around, and able to defend them on the way to the table, and while they sit there, or in hand waiting for the other half.  No other shell does this better than Drains.  The deck is designed to impede the opponent's ability to win, while establishing card and board advantage in small increments.  The TPS shell is designed to set up one big turn, sooner, or a little bit later.  While it's capable of playing the long game, it's more at home winning in the early to middle turns.

I really don't think that there has ever been a win condition that is more perfectly placed to slot into a Drain shell than Time Vault + Voltaic Key.  Tezzeret being able to find the Vault and untap it is a bit of a bonus, too.  And what other established shell can practically guarantee  ?

I think that not losing definitely has the potential to win some games.  Unfortunately less than one might expect with Time Vault being the win condition of choice.

It does seem like a neat trick.  It's definitely more along the lines of some of the stuff that you can do with a goblin welder than, say painter + grindstone.  If it weren't for the fact that both halves are quite useful on their own, I wouldn't have said anything.

Energy Field (Not a bad card vs Oath or Colossus)
Wheel of Sun and Moon (Anti graveyard tech + combo)

While it's not exactly a game winner.  Taking no damage as a result of playing two otherwise useful cards seems like a pretty decent start.  Doesn't stop tendrils, but if you're playing against tendrils, you're probably targeting your opponent with wheel, and only stops time vault if they're out of ways to bounce something. 

It still seems like a pair of cards that could go together in some sort of fish deck though.

Basically this thread is to throw the idea out there and see if anyone thinks highly enough of it to construct a deck around it.


I think this could probably become another "what cards do you think are underplayed" type of thing, since unless I'm wrong, there's not a great deal of length in the main discussion.  So are there any other small combos that are underplayed?  Bear in mind that any 2 card combo that doesn't win the game immediately (time vault) and where both components don't stand on their own (Wheel + Field, I suggest) is not really worth considering.

I have no idea if I'm right or not.  I just think that Uba Mask is a strong card that deserves more than a passing fling.  Given that in a Master Transmuter deck, you're going to be playing a bunch more instants than the Stax decks that played it in the past, and that you don't have the mana disruption base of those, it may be that Jester's Cap is actually the better card.  But only testing will show that, and I'm asking you as a pioneer of the card in this deck to keep up that testing.

Unfortunately, I don't think that there's space for caps in the sideboard.  I think that at this stage, I would drop one of the Triskellions and play a 3/1 or 2/2 split of Masks and Caps, respectively.  I doubt that it's optimal, but I think it will allow you try the two cards together and get a good feel of which is the right one for the deck.

By the way, the complete lack of basic lands in your build of the deck worries me greatly.  Stifle isn't exactly a widely played card at the moment, but Wasteland is.  Do you find that your coloured mana producing lands tend to survive because you opponent is focusing on workshops, or is it a real problem, rather than just on that I see in my head?  I feel that with 8 coloured mana producing lands and only two colours, there's definitely space for a fetch base with basics.  That would also open up Brainstorm, which can literally become Ancestral Recall under Mask.

Stormanimmagus, I do think that the newer decklist has some definite advantages, but having rediscovered Uba Mask, I'd definitely encourage you to not give up on it too soon.  Uba Mask completely shuts down Mana Drain and it gives strength against any form of card draw.  I think that with testing and experience, it has the potential to be a stronger card than Jester's Cap, and is definitely applicable against a wider variety of decks.  It's much stronger against the fish decks that you say give you so much trouble.  It also, in combination with Transmuter or Welder gives you the same RFG potential (though obviously slower and less targeted).

Uba Mask actually affects the game as it stands, rather than just as it could be.  While Jester's Cap is stronger in vintage over other formats, due to the sparsity of win conditions in decks, the great number of tutors, and the potential to actually cripple a deck, leaving it no way to win, it's still a card that does not actually affect the game state at all.  Jester's Cap requires luck, luck that your opponent hasn't drawn one of their Tendrils, or their Time Vault, or Tezzeret, or whatever.  If they're playing a creature based deck, you cannot take away their ability to win, all you can do is shift some odds around, and you can do nothing to affect what's already happened.

Congrats, smasher.  Must say that yours is the first build of TMWA that I've seen that actually looks focused and dangerous, rather than a janky pile that relies on a fair chunk of luck, and the result seems to indicate that it's a pretty solid deck.

A singleton Mox Monkey worries me a little, but I can't see where you'd fit more.  The thing that really strikes me as just not right is the lack of the fourth copies of Null Rod and Wasteland.  Wasteland is pretty strong at the moment, even if players do seem to be waking up and playing more basics, and Null Rod is one of the premier foils to the hottest win condition going around.  Playing less than the limit, particularly of Null Rod feels like opening yourself up to an unnecessary world of hurt, in what otherwise appears to be a pretty strong deck.

Yes, yes you can. 
Not a bad move.  It's been done before and Mask is fairly annoying card all by itself for any deck attempting to gain card advantage through drawing cards.
No can do.  It's a cost, not a trigger.  Not that I can actually see any capsules in your decklist.  Then again, I missed the memory Jar on first reading.

I did actually completely forget about the effect on your own fae.  I don't believe that bouncing an attacker is worth the cost of a card in most circumstances, and Evermind can pitch to Force.  If you allow a little margin for random interactions and discount the CiP effects (which you shouldn't, but oh well), then I'll stand by my statement

My major point is that Edict is far more generally applicable than Curfew.  I'm also not saying that we should discount Curfew entirely, but if your meta includes a significant aggro proportion, you should run Diabolic Edict and give it some spines to contend with.  If you think the chances of aggro are low enough that you can afford to roll over and present a soft underbelly to it, then play the card that costs half as much, pitches to Force and is a very least Edict's equal versus Colossus and Oath creatures.

Edict hits aggro, already a stupidly hard matchup.  Not hard, but it hits it, and maintains card parity.  Curfew does precisely nothing vs aggro.  Edict also helps vs other fish decks, particularly in these days where fish decks are more creature light than they have been in the past.

That said, I do think that the idea of reducing the Edicts to up the blue count has merit, and bounce is probably the way to go.  Not having tested it, Bitterblossom seems a little sluggish for Vintage, but I'd want to see it in action before I said "trim it".  Spellstutter Sprite seems like it could be pretty good without the assistance.

It's funny, I feel like this probably belongs in the improvement forum, but I also think that there are some ideas here, Vendillion Clique in particular, that deserve a place on the serious and cutting edge side of TMD.

The more I read and think about this format, and what should be done to fix it, the more I think that the answer is "not much".  I think there should be some unrestrictions, mainly, as supported by bluemage's argument for unrestricting Brainstorm, Ponder.  I don't believe that Brainstorm itself should be unrestricted, but Ponder has most of the effect that bluemage is calling for, with the bonus of being sorcery speed, making it less palatable for Drain decks.  The are other, more subtle reasons for unrestricting Ponder as well, which have been mentioned elsewhere, but I can't remember them, and don't have time to dig for them at the moment.

The reason that I don't think that very much should be done about the format at the moment is that I think that the metagame is very much still adjusting to the introduction of another powerful win condition based on a restricted card.  When Yawgmoth's Will was ripping up the format, there were calls to ban it, but the metagame shifted, firstly becoming Will vs anti-will and then becoming powerful decks incorporating Will, vs decks with strong answers to Will, but not specifically designed to be a foil to Will decks.  The introduction of Darksteel Colossus caused a similar, if less dramatic metagame shift, with bounce becoming a standard feature of most decks to deal with an 11/11 creature that had no right to be in play and other very useful effects as well.

I think that Time Vault is similar to Yawgmoth's Will in power, except, instead of requiring setup of the graveyard, it's either a 2 card combo (so takes effort to set up), or costs .  These two attributes mean that it's a win condition that suits itself well to Drain decks, who tend to play longer games (time to set up a 2 card combo) and play more blue (making easier).  Unfortunately, being suited to the Drain shell means that it's more difficult to defend agains this combo, that the best defences (I can think of at the moment) for are shutting down one or both of the combo pieces, mana disruption and instant speed artifact destruction.  Those walls of counters make getting any of this through difficult, but there are ways.

What is required is a change in the way that decks are built, and those changes tend to come slowly.  I think it was Brian Weisman who once said "Every deck needs at least two Disenchants".  I think that is becoming fairly solid advice, but with Disenchant itself replaced by one of the myriad instant speed answers to artifacts, or a strategy that makes using Time Vault as a win condition inherently difficult.  This is just like in the past when decks had to pack incidental graveyard hate, basically as a price of coming to the table in an environment with Yawgmoth's Will.  Or where every deck needed bounce or Swords to Plowshares to handle the cheaty-faced Colossus.

One interesting (well, to me) observation on this deck.  It is one of the few that can actually regularly make use of Time Vault without Voltaic Key.  Rich shows one use for it when he uses it to allow him to untap his Old Men of the Sea and swing, but I would imagine that the more common use is to simply store up a turn when you have some mana and Mystic Remora in play.  Gifts used to use Time Walk to allow Darksteel Colossus to swing for the win, and this deck can almost use Time Vault as another Time Walk.  Very cool.

I think Disrupting Shoal definite deserves some testing.

The issue is that such cards destroy entire strategies in other formats. Wizards have been doing a great job recently of printing cards for Vintage which also affect other formats in good ways.  They're simply not going to print cards like the ones you describe for a format that makes them basically no money directly.
Because Force of Will, Polluted Delta, and Flooded Strand are, have been, and will continue to be used in a very wide variety of deck archetypes and shells.  They do not represent a huge swing in tempo or mana and stupid unfairness like, say Black Lotus (another card that, if unrestricted would see play as a 4 of in almost every correctly built deck).

Mana Drain is used in 2 deck shells with little variety in the strategy of the decks which use it.  Its very nature lends itself to certain strategies, and only limitted sets of those are viable.
So, if we don't base restriction arguments on tournament data, what do we base them on? 

Oh yeah, it is.  But I think that the data shows that there is a potential problem here.  There's no harm in discussing potential fixes to a possibly emerging problem.  Changes to the restricted list come around so infrequently that we should discuss these things at length, we should know what we want as a community and make our voices heard.
The problem is that Goblins, while a good deck against Drains is not a generally good deck.  The very warping of the metagame that we're talking about probably factored into the choice of the Goblin deck that you faced.  A metagame that consists of one archetype, decks designed to beat that archetype, and a small smattering of other random stuff is not healthy.  It's the exact kind of metagame that caused the banning of some nine cards at once in Standard not so long ago, and lead to the only ever emergency bannings before a set was even legal.