Creeps.

Wasn't this about Joel Rojo rather than PsychoCid?

Jup, they were cousins. Penny's real name is Julie, and she was indeed #TMD's favourite. Fever, originally FeverDog, was a pro for getting into fights with everyone around. Flames FTW.

There was also another girl who used to post a lot at that time, It is a shame I cannot remember her nickname, she was playing on budget and always designing pretty nice unpowered decks.

I'm surprised no one mentionned the German crew from CAB already, they were a huge part of the Vintage scene some years ago. Kim Kluck (Shades) invented Slaver, and Carsten Kotter (Mons) was the first player to win a tournament with a Gifts Ungiven package featuring Tinker Colossus as win condition. They were also involved in the design of GermBus, which dominated the Vintage scene for a long while (Exalted Angel Skeletal Scrying Decree of Justice Keeper). Stefan Iwasienko helped a lot too, and was another #TMD favourite back then (Womprax/Wompatog).

K-Run was a well known player back then, mostly for the design of Parfait. He is a great guy.

I'd also name Koen Van der Hulst and Arthur Tindemans for creating MUD circa 2003, from Netherlands.

Everyone from Duelmen too !!! The first huge Vintage scene in the World

I do!
/old

You joined Meandeck in 2004 and then stepped back to 2003 and got promoted to moderator because of this.

This thread brings me tons of awesome memories back. Maybe I should play some T1 again at some point ...
PennyLane and Fever have not been mentionned in this thread yet !

For info, a new season will start on monday, all accounts have been reseted! It's the best period for starting playing!

Spells cast on self kingdom

Blessing - Increases defense by 5%
Fertile Ground - Increases wheat production by 20%
Tranquility - Increases birth rates by 30%
Fog - Increases enemy return times by 20%
Mass Hysteria - Decreases troop speed by 10%
Counterbalance - 20% chance to counter a spell cast upon your kingdom
Berserk - Increases offense and losses by 10%
Dark Ritual - Produces gold
Healing Salve - Decreases losses by 10%
Pacifism - Land is gained immediately from attacks
Animate Dead - 50% of dead troops are turned into basic soldiers (defense only)
Metamorphose - Converts peasants into soldiers
Exploration - Creates a small amount of land (3-8)

Spells used for intelligence gathering

Peer Pressure - Info about enemy mages
Peek - Access to enemy throne page
Telling Time - Access to enemy military page
Ponder - Access to enemy mystics page
Careful Study - Access to enemy organization page
Portent - Access to enemy academy page

Offensive spells, cast on enemy kingdom

Tithe - Steals food
Mana Drain - Steals mana
War Tax - Steals gold
Pulverize - Destroys shukos
Fireball - Burns peasants
Stone Rain - Destroys buildings
Negate - 50% chance to remove a spell on the target kingdom
Terror - Puts troops back in training for 2h
Confiscate - Steals land!
Control Magic - Steals creatures

I'll be away for holidays starting from tomorrow, there should still be people available for replies on the external boards of the game (follow link in menu) even if you post in english.

Summer means less players, but that's still a good way to get a good grasp on the game mechanics

I know these tabs are in french, I'm waiting for a friend to make me the english versions, I'm bad at photoshop

Buildings are in french in the guide yes I'm still translating this!
You can see what the buildings do in the Organization section though.

I've always been a fan of games like Travian, Ogame or Utopia. I needed a motivation for learning PHP and MySQL, and ended up working on my own web based RTS game. This game has been running for more than a year already in a French server, and I've decided to translate everything into English some while ago in order to make it available to a broader community. This game is based in the universe of Magic the Gathering, with colors and legends, with a medieval inspiration. For those who know Utopia, my game is very close to it (I've actually started it as a solo Utopia with the authorization of Utopia developpers).

The game is played in seasons of 4 weeks, and the next season will start on sunday at midnight Paris time.
If you are interested in web based RTS games, have a look ! 


http://www.mvwars.com


I know the guide is not fully translated yet, I'm still working on it !

As weird as it may sound, European players tend to go to sanctioned tournaments more than they go to unsanctioned accepting proxies.

Hemgath, your prices suck ! <3
And once again I'm not available this week end, I'm seriously starting to think that you don't like me anymore

That policy was posted on the Judge list. I can't find the original email but here is the relevant excerpt I had archived :

And I hope you realize that if your deck is built properly, anything wins off an Aluren. This is why you focus on running cards which help you to find and resolve Aluren, and Recruiter fails at doing so. Recruiter is a dead card without Aluren out, which makes it a big no-no in the deck. Aluren cannot be built as a Combo deck because it relies on a 4CC Green enchantment. Aluren has to be built as a Control-Combo deck (some kind of Gifts deck), and thus has to minimize the amount of dead cards.

Maggot Carrier is also crap because it is a dedicated win condition, something Aluren does not need.

The lack of Imperial Recruiter is probably the only good thing in this list.

Regardless, Aluren is not viable in Vintage. I'd suggest you to look at Legacy instead, there is a thread about this deck in the Legacy forum.

According to the latest DCI policy, decklists are not public information and should not be given to the players during the Top8. That is not up to the HJ decision. Showing decklists is not permitted.

With Brainstorm restricted, people will have to play more lands and really work on their mana bases instead of running jank and simply relying on Brainstorm to do the job for them. And that's clearly not a good sign for Workshops. Furthermore, with the format less tempo oriented now, games will be slower, Mana Drain will come online, and that is another bad sign for Workshops.

Honestly, all these restrictions make me want to play Blue again. Blue as in, real Blue decks with Mana Drain and actual card advantage. Blue is still alive and kicking. Blue got stronger because the best decks at abusing the recently restricted blue cards weren't them.

I'm surprised about Ponder, but all the other changes are perfectly justified. Gush should not have been unrestricted, Merchant Scroll and Brainstorm should have been restricted long ago, and Flash was just dumb.

Now I'm wondering to which charity organization Ben Carp will donate the 1000$ he promised to donate if Flash was restricted.

There was a few trials organized in Europe, but not that much. And about no European went to the USA for that tournament, for obvious price reasons. It's quite true that tournament would be better labelled as "North America Championships". But well, since NFL, NHL and NBA winners are already "World Champions", I guess WOTC does the same for Magic. At least the MLS champion is not World Champion ...

Your opponent has to shuffle your deck, and after this you are allowed to perform a single cut on it. Pretty easy to cut right on the Ancestral Recall.

That card just completely kills Control decks. Turn 1 creature, Turn 2 creature. Cast this on your Turn 3. If they sacrifice lands, they lose the game because Control cannot afford to do this on Turn 3. If they don't, your guys gain both +5/+0 and Control basically loses too. This is way way too good. Balancing Act is a really fixed Balance.

Regarding the "As" clause on Mox Diamond, I'm not sure this would work. "As" clause are resolved before the permanent is in play, and at that point I don't think you would be able to sacrifice it. This is why you get to name a card with Meddling Mage under Humility, or why Overgrown Tomb CIPT if you do not pay 2 life under Blood Moon despite being a Mountain. Fixing Mox Diamond without using ugly design templates such as token or CIPT/untap effects seems pretty hard.

Actually, I'm not even sure the original intent of WOTC was to let someone cast Mox Diamond without discarding. Before Tempest, additional costs were not widely used. There are a lot of non consistent modern templating for all pre 6E cards. See Worthy Cause and Meditate for example, both have the very same template used on the printed card, and now one has an additional cost and the other one an effect.

All Ravnica Block duals have the "instead" word printed on them.

Make some German friends on TMD, this is how I got a good bunch of German cards

<3 Womprax

It is legal to name Empty the Warrens, but this will indeed do nothing since damage is not done by the card itself but the Goblins it created. There is no card named "Goblin" so you are not even allowed to name that to prevent damage from Empty the Warrens.

I think that card is complete crap, it will never prevent your opponent from winning. On top of that, if you consider the casting cost ...

Most of the matchups where you would want to bring in Oath of Druids are these where the opponent has disruption backed up by a clock (disruption without clock is handled by bounce), and these decks run creatures so I'm not even sure you need Forbidden Orchards if you take the Oath road. 4 Oath of Druids, a few Platinum Angels and Tinker looks fine to beat Aggro-Control.

I played Flash at a tournament with Reverent Silence in the board. I never brought them for the entiere tournament, and I'm still wondering why you would want to run Reverent Silence in the SB. That's something I don't understand.


Well the reasoning behind this is quite obvious if you have tested the matchup a bit, which I assumed (wrongly?) you did.
It depends on what Flash is doing Game 2 and Game 3.

1. Flash transformed. This makes your Leylines of the Void completely irrelevant (unless you aggressively mulliganed for it, in which case your opponent would thank you for playing Leylines) which could kinda end the discussion, but still ... Flash will usually go for Oath of Druids or/and Tinker, with Platinum Angel for target. This is the most common transformational sideboard plan for Flash. In this configuration, Flash's main plan will be to get a Platinum Angel on the board and then protect it, taking the Control route and forcing DeezNaught into Aggro role. It is pretty obvious that the key cards here are Merchant Scroll, either for finding Tinker with a Mystical Tutor chain or for grabbing Pacts of Negation to fight your answers, and Brainstorm to hide stuff from Thoughtseize and Duress, or to dig for more countermagic and sometimes mana sources.

2. Flash kept in Flash mode. Flash will be expecting hate coming, with Duress and Thoughtseizes as disruption. When expecting discard, it is pretty obvious that you do not want to sit with Flash into your hand. This is why Flash will rather want to cast Brainstorm in response to discard, or sit safe with Sensei's Divining Top on the board, with their key cards still in the deck. With Brainstorms and Sensei's Divining Top combined with the fetchlands, you will end up finding either a Flash, or a bounce for the Leyline of the Void. This is when Flash will want to cast Merchant Scroll, to grab the missing part of its equation, or sometimes a Pact of Negation or Gigadrowse when both are available. Once again, from Flash perspective, the key cards there are Merchant Scroll and Brainstorm, with Sensei's Divining Top being third.

Leyline of the Void thus has a marginal use in case 2, and is completely irrelevant in case 1. In both examples, Merchant Scroll and Brainstorm are the most important cards for Flash. Against DeezNaught I will always go for the Control role when playing Flash, which basically makes all your solutions to address the card Flash rather weak. I would pretty much compare this to casting Engineered Plague against Slaver, or naming Exalted Angel with your Meddling Mage a few years ago when playing against 4CC. It has no impact on these decks main game plans.


I would seriously care more about Meddling Mage naming Merchant Scroll than about Leyline of the Void being in play. This seems to be a very good SB plan for DeezNaught in the Flash matchup, assuming you can support the White splash. Good idea overall.

It actually sounds like you didn't read what I wrote. When I'm referring to "these" plans, I'm obviously talking about all the plans DeezNaught can have against Flash, not about Leyline of the Void only, in which case I would have had used the singular form "this" instead. This is what plural means, you should be better at English than me.

"These" included Tormod's Crypt (which Trinket Mage can fetch and is often run in the maindeck), Spell Snare (which was mentionned previously and has hard times dealing with Tinker), or Extirpate (which does nothing against Slivers, which is the reason I mentionned them).

You are good at flaming for no reasons, so you might want to focus on your reading skills.
I even posted what "these" were referring to :


Furthermore, if you think Leyline of the Void is the best plan against Flash, you probably did not test the matchup for real. Leyline of the Void is one of the lesser threats to Flash. It won't prevent Flash from casting Merchant Scroll or Brainstorm. Nor Tinker, nor Oath of Druids. Flash can actually be immune to graveyard hate G2 and G3.

This could actually be rewritten :

We talk about Flash destroying Deez Naughts because our pilots are experienced in doing just such. I hate to have to bring it up, but I'd strongly question whether your testing is running either correct lists or honestly if it's being competently piloted. Flash is not an easy deck to run, let alone in a matchup as intensive as Deez Naughts. If your theory doesn't match your results, generally there's some human error involved on one side of it.

Point is : playskills arguments are pointless. And the players I was testing against were playing Dreadnoughts and Tarmogoyfs decks before the deck got named "Deez Naught". They also play Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top, and these make the deck even stronger against Flash because you can hard lock them.

Anyways, let's assume DeezNaught truely destroys Flash. In the end metagame should become Flash + DeezNaught, and basically nothing else since everything else loses to Flash or DeezNaught. Your argument "Play DeezNaught it beats Flash" means that the deck is extremely format warping to me ... Flash limits deck choices to like, 1 option?


Well if you think Leyline of the Void is a relevant card against Flash, you can surely expect to lose to Flash "being competently piloted". Leyline of the Void makes them unable to win through the Reveillark Combo if they kept it, and only if they cannot find Chain of Vapor. Poisonous Slivers, Tinker or Oath of Druids are fairly immune to these plans. Once again, whenever ICBM people mentions how DeezNaught beats Flash, the arguments are usually Leyline of the Void, Extirpate, Spell Snare ... Did you guys actually test SB games where the Flash players actually had a real SB plan involving cards that do not die to what can be aimed at their MD? I seriously doubt so. While the matchup against DeezNaught is hard for Flash if Flash only brings in solutions to DeezNaught threats, it is very different if Flash has a B-Plan in the SB.

Flash can actually run 4 Poisonous Slivers, 1 Heart Slivers and Tinker + Robot in the SB while still keeping enough SB slots for standard SB cards. That's 2 distinct ways of beating a lot of your hate.

I've talked a lot with Carsten Kotter during our latest Paris tournament, where I played Flash. While he was surprised to see me play Flash (I'm usually playing Mana Drains or Mishra's Workshop), he recognized that the deck was dumb. What he added afterwards, right before the tournament, was something close to "Nevertheless, be ready to be bored to death for the entiere tournament, and to make your opponents want to quit Vintage". I laughed a bit, and in the end it turned out to be true. None of my opponent was happy to play against Flash, because playing against Flash is not "playing".

This feeling is actually a running one on french Vintage boards (which are the most active Vintage boards after TheManaDrain) : Flash makes Vintage boring. A lot of players refuse to play Vintage while Flash is around in its current incarnation. I can't remember seeing this feeling when Trinisphere was legal. It's really stricking.

Oh, and I've tested the DeezNaught matchup quite a bit. I don't really understand how ICBM got their "DeezNaught destroys Flash", and I find this completely untrue. Extirpate and Tormod's Crypt are cool, but DeezNaught still scoops to Gigadrowse.

The "players don't prepare for Flash" argument is a wrong one. I've faced prepared players all day long during my last tournament. All of them had at least 4 Leylines of the Void in their SB. The MUD player I faced in Quarterfinals actually had 4 Leylines of the Void, 4 Pithing Needle and 3 Tormod's Crypt in his SB along with the 8 Spheres and 4 Chalice of the Void MD. I couldn't care less about most of their plays, because Merchant Scroll would foil these regardless. Preparing properly against Flash is very hard since the deck is very compact, runs a lot of powerful cards, and can switch strategies at will. Graveyard hate is nice against Body Double, but quite atrocious against Poisonous Slivers, Tinker or Oath of Druids coming from the SB.

You do not worry about counterspells even without Boseijus. The only matchup where I wanted Boseiju was Prison because of Chalice of the Void, and in that matchup Ancient Tomb is better if you want to run lands in the SB, as it enables stronger Merchant Scrolls under Spheres and puts Rebuild online.

I really liked the article Richard, it is fairly easy to read. Nevertheless, I'm not sure I would want to see Flash restricted. When playing Flash, the cards I want to see the most in my opening hand are usually Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm and Island, probably in this order. Flash would be a distant 4th, and with the amount of hate you would face in sideboarded games, Chain of Vapor might be ranked above Flash. Merchant Scroll is IMO the truely dumb card in Flash, because it enables your kill (Flash), your protection (Force of Will, Pact of Negation) and your solutions to threats (Chain of Vapor, Rebuild, Gigadrowse). It also enables a B-plan when fetching Mystical Tutor for Tinker.

The Leyline of the Void argument is fairly accurate. People would mulligan into it, and lose regardless since they got forced to keep crap cards. Tormod's Crypt, Stifle or Extirpate are more efficient against Flash, and are nice if they resolve, but are kinda pointless when facing Tinker, or when the opponent simply Scrolls for Gigadrowse

From what i could see in Vintage lately, Merchant Scroll seems to be another glue card for the format, along with Force of Will. The fundamental between both is that while Force of Will prevents brokeness to some extend, Merchant Scroll enables it and pushes it to levels we never saw before. Current Vintage really evolves around Merchant Scroll, with Flash, GAT and Tyrant Oath behing top contenders.

That's what foreign girls usually tell me !

<3 Hemgath.