[Premium Article] So Many Insane Plays: Q&A

Hi Stephen (and others). My name is Chadd and I have been a lurker on TMD for close to four years. Let me first quickly thank you for all of the articles and posts that you have made over the years. However, what prompted me to register and post was something in this article (I am also a SCG premium member) that I have not yet seen addressed on TMD regarding Ichorid and Gifts.

You have been discussing Ichorid a lot and supporting it for quite some time now. You posted an article in which you show how powerful Ichorid is over Gifts (in game 1) on SCG ("Manaless Ichorid Versus Meandeck Gifts - A Matchup Analysis"). In your most recent article (the subject of this thread) you state, "Ichorid: this deck fears nothing except for Combo". My question to you is this: in your testing, do you feel Ichorid has a clear advantage game #1 against Gifts if Gifts is running a maindeck Timetwister?

Some background on this question: I play Vintage in the NE area. I am by no means a good player, but I do try to test and look at things as objectively as I can. Recently (due largely to Brassman popularizing it), most Gifts lists in this area all include Timetwister. From my (and my Vintage playing friends) testing of Ichorid, we seem to be only breaking even game #1 against Gifts if the strategy of the Gifts player is to find and resolve Timetwister in the first 1 to 2 turns and then concentrate on winning afterwards. This testing is done with the assumption that both players know what deck they are facing. Ichorid just seems to commit too much setup to the grave while dredging and if Gifts resolves Timetwister, Ichorid can't dredge and come back fast enough before Gifts combo's out.

Again, I don't feel that I am an optimal player and thus my playtesting results might be horrendously skewed, but these results have been bothering me for a few weeks now and I'm curious if you or other members of the community might offer their own opinions.

Thanks for reading.