Gifts with Flame-Vault

[Cross]

he used flamevault and went 0-2 drop.

[rakso]

How did that variant do in general?

[mr_rogers]

I saw there was one gifts deck in the top 8, did it run flame-vault?  Anyone know?

[Komatteru]

I saw there was one gifts deck in the top 8, did it run flame-vault?  Anyone know?

It was Gifts oath piloted by Josh Rayden, same list from the interview with Randy article.

[doylehancock]

I saw there was one gifts deck in the top 8, did it run flame-vault?  Anyone know?

It was Gifts oath piloted by Josh Rayden, same list from the interview with Randy article.

same list?  holy crap.  I didnt think the mana base was good enough to handle all those stax decks

[Greenebean]

I played the same list at a way smaller tourney and did quite well with it. The mana base is very vulnerable, but still plays quite well despite that fact. It is a fun deck to play, but I guess that is to be discussed in another thread...

[mr_rogers]

Well no Gifts decks with the flame-vault kill made T8 in Chicago.  Was this just not a good tourny for the deck?  There was a lot of Oath.  I wonder how it will do in Rochester if a better Gifts is not made by then.  Any thoughts on why Gifts failed to do well at Chicago, with the exception of the Gifted-Oath deck that made T8. 

[Greenebean]

Well I could talk to you about this in person, but I can do it here as well. I think that the biggest reason for the lack of Gifts based decks was the Chicago meta game. Everyone knows the area consists of a plethera of Workshops and this could be one of the reasons. I think at Rochester Gifts will be running around, but I would not be surprised to see a lot of oath again for three reasons: One, the numers it came in at chicago. Two, the price; oath unlike many other decks can be made on a small budget. The list from Chicago that cut mana drain and used Leak instead is a point that backs my previous statement up. Three: Oath can give most any tier 1 deck a tough match-up. This includes pre and post sideboard. I really like Gifts based decks a lot, and again, IMO I think that Gifts will be out in numbers in Rochester. I feel it could be like the last Rochester, but replace all the fish decks with gifts.

[mr_rogers]

Well I have yet to see any gifts lists with the Flame-Vault kill yet so I think I will post my newest version.

Mana
3x Island
4x Volcanic Island
2x Underground Sea
2x Polluted Delta
2x Flooded Strand
1x Library of Alexandria
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
7x SoLoMoxen
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Snow-Covered Island
1x Lotus petal

Creatures
1x DSC
1x Gorilla Shaman

Counter/Disruption
4x FoW
4x Mana Drain
2x Pithing Needle
1x Echoing Truth

Draw/Combo
4x Brainstorm
3x Thirst for Knowledge
3x Gifts Ungiven
1x FoF
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Fame Fusillade
1x Time Vault
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Burning Wish
1x Recoup

Broken
1x Tinker
1x Time Walk
1x Yawg Will

Sideboard
1x Flame Fusillade
1x Rushing River
2x EE
3x Pyroclasm
2x Stifle
1x Mind Twist
2x REB
1x Pyroblast
2x Rack and Ruin

I have bolded the differences from my first list.  The most notable change is upping the Gifts count to 3 instead of 2.  Also I have cut Merchant scroll and the main deck Engineered Explosives.  I can't believe I forgot to run a petal and snow-covered Island in my first build.  I'm really liking this list right now.  I need to test it more but it seems able to handle most of the big decks right now. 

I was thinking about cutting the Demonic tutor since I only run 2 underground Seas and it can be hard to get the black for tutor when I want to save it for Will.  I would appreciate any thoughts on this build or questions on card choices.

[Dozer]

How did that variant do in general?

At the Dutch Champs, we (that is rvs, Michael Heiduk aka Blitzbold and me) didn't run any additional combo kill. Blitzbold and I had been testing on the train for a couple of hours, and then we got together at Rudy's to figure out what the best build would be. First, we cut the Flame Vault combo from the maindeck and put it in the side for the random aggro matchups we were expecting, and then we cut it entirely because the deck just doesn't need it. I scrubbed out, but Michael ran the same deck to a 6-2 finish, missing T8 by a match. The Gifts deck does not need an additional kill. Yes, you can randomly lose to Jester's Cap, but Pithing Needle stops that cold. Right now, I see no need for the Flame Vault kill especially with Bribery in the SB, which was the tech we played and which worked out very very well since noone saw it coming.

(Thanks to sa-x, who suggested Bribery to me first.)

I can't say how an optimal build for Flame Vault Gifts looks, because regular Gifts with Needles is just better. That's my conclusion from this weekend.

Dozer

[mr_rogers]

@ Dozer: I was looking at the top 8 and saw a Gifts deck running Flame-Vault.  How do you explain that?  The kill must be good to have made T8 over other Gifts decks.  I think a second kill is needed in Gifts, especially with all the Stax running around lately. 

[Skink_123]

Its the gifts ungiven that wins you the game, what cards you personally like to gifts for is irrelevant as long as they are capable of winning the game.

Gift is broken!

[MoxMonkey]

Gifts is very powerful card yes but it doesn'tr win games unless your deck can grab really good cards that are usefull with it.  Having Recoup in oyur deck makes Gifts that much better since the Sorcey spells you get will end up being cast anyway with Recoup in the pile.  Other Piles are more difficult to make and can win or lose the game for you.  Its not the 2-3 Gifts its the other 56-57 cards that support it that make it so good.

[warble]

I can't say how an optimal build for Flame Vault Gifts looks, because regular Gifts with Needles is just better. That's my conclusion from this weekend.

Despite the fact that critiques of a control deck are usually...no always...wrong, I will give my 2 cents.  Gifts decks hope to reach a critical mass of recursion and counterspells quickly.  In the same fashion that TPS prays for a clutch of 2 dark rituals, 2 duress, Tutor and Tendrils, Gifts would like 2 Force of Will, Mana Drain, Tutor/Gifts and 6 mana.  The issue that arises is that for TPS, that clutch is based on not only draw power but having 4 of a bunch of the combo card.  For Gifts, you can "go off" very safely with a pure gifts deck, or less safely with additional win condtions (like Flame Vault).  However, with a deck like CS that splashes Gifts, you now lose your safety but gain additional aggression and another gameplan.  It is that gameplan that makes gifts so far superior to TPS even with gifts.

Having a dedicated gameplan that will execute by turn 5-6 guaranteed (CS players, please back me up here) is one of the safest bets you can play in magic.  That's why people love CS...not only is it broken, but it's also very consistent.  The question of if Flame Vault can execute by turn 5-6 guaranteed is pretty safely no.  Especially if you are running only one of one or more win conditions.  However, the question of if Flame Vault fits into the another gameplan mentioned above is perhaps yes.  Everyone knows you can put Tinker/Colossus into a deck and voila, it has a turn 3 kill that is really hard to survive.  With decks already sporting blue, this should be a no-brainer.  However, can a deck that sports "some red" also support a new Tinker/Colossus that not only isn't useful a large portion of the time, but requires 2 spells instead of 1 to resolve?  We can consider time vault a "good investment" because it will protect your resolution of flame fusillade.  However, we cannot ignore the fact that both spells must resolve, instead of one spell in the case of Tinker/Colossus.  This makes this gameplan not only flawed, but succeptable to all sorts of disruption, counters, and most fatally mana disruption.  Because Tinker is one less mana (3 if you count time vault) I do not consider the Flame Vault kill on-par.  Sure, it's very fast, but if I could resolve 6 mana worth of spells odds are it would be Tinker + Mana Drain.  This uses all blue mana, protects the win, and uses only 2 cards from your hand including the mana drain.  While flame vault is very tempting, the only thing that would make me consider playing it as a win condition would be a large portion of the deck dedicated to adding charge counters to the time vault and utilizing it as a non-dead card.

I apologize for the abstractness of this post, but would definitely love to see another resilient combo deck break out into vintage.  The problem I see with the current usage of Flame Vault is that it tries to fit directly into the control shell.  Time Vault is broken, and because it is now legal to play the deck that most effectively breaks time vault should deserve the "vault" name.  Odds are this is infinite turn recursion coupled with kill conditions, not a single win condition, and to keep vault on the board it may be necessary to run goblin welders in the deck.  Again, just my 2 cents.

[Necrologia]

While flame vault is very tempting, the only thing that would make me consider playing it as a win condition would be a large portion of the deck dedicated to adding charge counters to the time vault and utilizing it as a non-dead card.

Time Vault uses Time counters. If it used charge counters it would have been broken ages ago. Right now the only way to add counters to Time Vault outside of skipping turns is Giant Fan, and that's lost out in Silver-bordered land.

[mr_rogers]

This Gifts list was for the Dutch Champs tourn over the weekend.

Steffen van Veen                             
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Underground Sea
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Volcanic Island 
1 Tundra
1 Snow-coverd Island
2 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby 
1 Mox Emerald 
1 Mox Pearl 
1 Sol Ring 
1 Black Lotus 
1 Mana Crypt 
1 Mana Vault 
1 Lotus Petal 
1 Time Vault 
1 Darksteel Colossus 
2 Gorilla Shaman 
1 Recoup 
1 Flame Fusillade 
2 Duress 
1 Vampiric Tutor 
1 Demonic Tutor 
1 Yawgmoth’s Will 
1 Skeletal Scrying 
4 Brainstorm 
4 Mana Drain 
4 Force of Will 
4 Gifts Ungiven 
1 Ancestral Recall 
1 Time Walk 
1 Tinker 
1 Mystical Tutor 
1 Merchant scroll 
1 Cunning Wish 
SB:
3 Sacred Ground
1 Balance
1 Rack and Ruin
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Coffin Purge
1 Darkblast
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Claws of Gix
1 Sundering Titan
2 Pithing Needle

This deck placed second I believe running the Flame-Vault kill.  This should start to prove that Flame-Vault is a decent alternative kill in Gifts.  This Gifts managed to beat all the other Gifts decks that run "better" kill conditions. 

[JigglyPuff]

the dutch meta is ENTIRELy different from the usa meta...

NE is ususally all about control...with the hint of workshop...

out west (for what ive heard) is more of a shop/oath infested area where down south stax is everywhere...

In Jersey there is a huge meta of fish...where gifts should smash house....

but in chicago the mass amounts of oath could give gifts a run for the money...

it depends on the metagame whether the deck can prevail, and the steps you take to beat the meta, whether through the maindeck reb/RnR/m.monkey or EE

Saying that onbe deck housed the dutch meta doesnt mean that it is NESSECCARILY the best deck(in our case the better kill), but was fine tuned and was a right call....

[mr_rogers]

Jiggly Puff I wasn't trying to say it was the best deck.  I was trying to prove to those who said the Flame-Vault kill was bas that is can place well in big tournies.  The last few posts by people have been saying that Flame-vault is not a good choice ever in Gifts, but obviously it can be.  I'm not saying Flame-vault is always the best kill but I am saying that in the right metagame in can be a house.

[JigglyPuff]

I'm just gonna toss this out there......(for like the millionth time)

Neither deck is bad, but One has to be better or more suitable...
People are saying that "ooh time vault beats stax"
That is incorrect...(If you say otherwise  You....ARe...a..noob...) any good stax deck will run mox monkey and eat the vault, or pithing needle it(where belcher would'nt help much either...

flame fusilide can be cast straight up after a Darksteel Beat and win the game..(im glad i have a foil one..), where a belcher could probably do ALMOST the same thing...

If you have only one piece availible at any time...belcher can come shining through with an EOT belch for 6...where a vault probably wouldnt help race against a juggernaut...

fusillide can take care of welders and fish but belcher can do the same and you'd end up with a mox and in both situations both combo pieces would be in the yard...

I'm gonna end this with some stats...In the top 4 at waterbury crossman belched for 12 cards before hitting a volc and winning a game....

I personally like the belcher combo/ because half the time when im desperate i'll tinker for it and hope to get lucky with 5-6 lands left..it's your preference and your choice....you choose whether you go 6-1 or 1-6...(not saying that one deck will do better), but saying how well you're ready for the meta...Both combos die to pithing needle( where Fusillide and severence can be SOMEWHAT useful...where one biffs and the other means drawing nothing but business....thats right: business...what a funny word to be associated with magic...)

Any Who..(again)....they both die to needle, but belcher can hit through a supression field(which is surprisingly played)...

If you look at the deck lists you'll see that the oter 73 cards ARE EXACTLY THE SAME!!!

Jiggly Puff I wasn't trying to say it was the best deck. I was trying to prove to those who said the Flame-Vault kill was bas that is can place well in big tournies. The last few posts by people have been saying that Flame-vault is not a good choice ever in Gifts, but obviously it can be. I'm not saying Flame-vault is always the best kill but I am saying that in the right metagame in can be a house.

I know that it can survive in any meta...but how easily the deck can answer the threats of the oppenent while holding the cards is my problem...belcher takes care of platinum angel, (where flame might be able to do the same..) and flame wwipes the board of fish..or takes out a FIXED amount of life points (where belcher is Random, but could pay off )

...i said i was going to end about fourteen minutes ago so'll make it short and sweet ...play whatever works for you in the metagame you're going into...

[Thug]

Guess Ill chime in a bit since I basicly constructed the deck Steffen played to a second place at the dutch championships.

Time Vault + Fussilade was in the deck for a couple of reasons:

- It makes racing combo much easier, it very easy to set up a will that will find both part and combo out in a time walk turn.
- Time Vault dominates every gifts mirror and control mirror!!! (no kidding, end of their turn you skip your next, they can now either do nothing, so no loss for you there, or they decide to play some spells, which you can counter or just let resolve, and then take your turn with them tapped out. Once you have an untapped Time Vault in play if even becomes dangerous for them to play spells at the end of your turn, since you might just take another and take advantage of them tapping down.
- I don't like Burning Wish and Fussilade is about as useless from time to time, but it also steals games from time to time.
- Time Vault is pretty neat against Stax

A reason the deck did will was the aggresive role it can play, it runs the full acceleration, but adds Duresses to that which seem to fit the aggresive role better than multiple Merchant Scrolls.

And off course having double Shaman in your deck wins games by itself.
Till 1 hour before the tournament I was thinking about playing the deck myself, but in the end I didnt run it because I didnt want to play mirrors all day.

Koen

[Vegeta2711]

Guess Ill chime in a bit since I basicly constructed the deck Steffen played to a second place at the dutch championships.

Time Vault + Fussilade was in the deck for a couple of reasons:

- It makes racing combo much easier, it very easy to set up a will that will find both part and combo out in a time walk turn.
- Time Vault dominates every gifts mirror and control mirror!!! no kidding, end of their turn you skip your next, they can now either do nothing, so no loss for you there, or they decide to play some spells, which you can counter or just let resolve, and then take your turn with them tapped out. Once you have an untapped Time Vault in play if even becomes dangerous for them to play spells at the end of your turn, since you might just take another and take advantage of them tapping down.
- I don't like Burning Wish and Fussilade is about as useless from time to time, but it also steals games from time to time.
- Time Vault is pretty neat against Stax

I was waiting for someone to actually figure that out. ^^ Nice deck btw.

[Dr Evil]

True true, though the second shaman should have been a burning wish all day long, believe it or not, even with 0 to 3 sorcery's in your sideboard, it would have been so much easier to win in so many matches.

Don't get me wrong shaman is really nice and I only battled 1 deck without moxes (round 1), but 1 should really be enough.

My matchups were like this:

Round:
1 u/w fish 2-0
2 5color stax 2-0
3 gifts 0-2  :s when shuffeling my deck he revealed a card in my deck, I called in a judge, he got away with a warning, during the game he got an aditional warning for tapping mana, play a draw effect and assinging colors afterwards, after the match I discovered that he now had a total of 5 warnings, which is suprisingly tolerated at a rel 3 event, during the match i drew in game 1 no more then 1 land, game 2 i tricked him with a time vault in play, pas the turn with time vault at his eot, he gits i drain, tap time vault to take the turn back, only to get mana burn for having nothing but lands in my hand, even after a brainstorm.
4 tps 2-0
5 tpsoath 2-0
6 landstill with oath? 2-1
7 5color stax 2-0
8 5/3 ? 1-1 not intentional though, i came up one turn short of killing him in overtime.

T8
1 tpsoath 2-0
2 gifts 2-1
3 "o so vulnerabel to hate" oath 1-2

Pretty f*cked up matchups don't you think.

To bad I didn't have much cards against the actual enchantment, only one claws of gix.

Maybe i'll ad some extra aditions if i will still remember them.

Greetings,

Steffen

[Dozer]

@ Dozer: I was looking at the top 8 and saw a Gifts deck running Flame-Vault.  How do you explain that?  The kill must be good to have made T8 over other Gifts decks.  I think a second kill is needed in Gifts, especially with all the Stax running around lately. 

I actually attribute that to LoA, Duress and 2 Gorilla Shaman. The point here is that I did a good amount of testing that convinced me I don't need the Flame Vault kill. If you look back a couple of posts, I have actually been a proponent of Time Vault over Fusillade Belcher, so *if* you run a secondary/ tertiary kill in Gifts, you should run Flame Vault, in my opinion. But you don't need to, or at least I don't think the deck needs it. If you look at Steffen's list, you will notice it actually replaces 3 Merchant Scroll with 2 Flame Vault and 1 Scrying and has Duress instead of Burning Wish. Of course this configuration wins games against other Gifts decks, just because it has Duress maindeck and an LoA, which really sucks to play against. LoA is not played by many, but I lost a game to it against Landstill because the deck has no way to remove it and must power through as fast as possible once LoA hits the table. Unless you have LoA or Boseiju, which is actually preferrable because it beats almost everything LoA coughs up, winning against an LoA that has been active for a while is next to impossible.

So why did this Gifts deck T8 over any other? Looking at the 6-2 performance of Michael aka Blitzbold, I don't think it was on the strength of Flame Vault. The idea to take out Burning Wish, though, never occured to me even once, and I think that if you have Burning Wish, you need/ want the Tendrils kill. My point is that the core of Gifts decks is so strong that the other cards around it are often just gravy.

4 Brainstorm
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
3 Gifts Ungiven
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Recoup
1 Demonic
1 Will
1 Burning Wish
1 Darksteel Colossus

This is the core, 24 cards. All other cards are optional, but include draw (Gifts #4, Thirst, Scrying), tutors (Merchant Scroll, Vampiric, Oath) and defense (Needle, Darkblast, Fire/Ice, Misdirection, Rebuild, Truth). I think Burning Wish is a core card, btw, because you want it for the Walk interaction at least and also for Bribery, Tendrils and other Wish targets. On these cards alone, you can win any given match. Given the standard 25 mana sources, you have 11 customizable slots, or 10 if you run the fourth Gifts as you should. That is more than in other Vintage decks and leaves enough room for personal stuff. If any of the possible configurations is better than the others, I don't know.
Some are strong against control matchups, like Steffen's, some are strong against aggro matchups, like Rudy's with Fire/Ice + Merchant Scroll. Is there an optimal build? No, so these cards are highly metagame dependent, or rather dependent on which matchups you think you will face. I came to realize during the weekend that the Gifts decks are not that much different, just that they have different pre-board plans. Looking at how Steffen made T8, I guess re-testing the Duress MD that my teammate Carsten Kötter is advising and/ or putting Flame Vault in again seems appropriate, but if Michael had won another match, we'd have had two different Gifts in the T8. I will test more and see what happens.

In theory, supported by my testing so far, Flame Vault is good in principle. But every time I had a choice between Time Vault and Merchant Scrolla as two-drop, I chose the Scroll, and the deck killed with random Tinker often enough that the extra randomness of Flame Vault was unnecessary. I'll guess we will have more to talk about on this subject, so I'll try to make it to a couple of other tournaments to eventually show you my conclusion which deck is the actual better one: Gifts with Flame Vault or regular MD Gifts, or if it really is and will remain a metagame choice what to pick.

Dozer

[kras2005]

Round:
3 gifts 0-2  :s when shuffeling my deck he revealed a card in my deck, I called in a judge, he got away with a warning, during the game he got an aditional warning for tapping mana, play a draw effect and assinging colors afterwards, after the match I discovered that he now had a total of 5 warnings, which is suprisingly tolerated at a rel 3 event, during the match i drew in game 1 no more then 1 land, game 2 i tricked him with a time vault in play, pas the turn with time vault at his eot, he gits i drain, tap time vault to take the turn back, only to get mana burn for having nothing but lands in my hand, even after a brainstorm.

Steffen, Congrats on your T8. I didn't know you made T8, I dropped after 4-2-1.

In addition to our match, you were trying to win from me very, very nasty. Besides, I only had 1 warning before round3. You had me get a warning for reveiling one card, and after that, you wanted my Tinker not to resolve beacuse I tapped Volcanic? Would you have done the same if I played another Thirst?

I don't think FlameVault is good enough for Gifts. I'm interested in how many games you won without DSC. I play Burning Wish-Tendrils as second WinCondition and it has been enough for me all day. I lost because of superior drawings from my oppenents in round 6 and 7 (both German :S:P).

Greetings Kras

[JigglyPuff]

im going to re-emphisize the fact that belcher can be played out over turns...where flame vault needs to pull it off in one turn...

I was testing last nite against shop...
I third turned severenced(holding 3 lands and a fetch...i left in an undergrround sea...)
drew brainstorm into tinker into win...
 
My opponent was holding a next turn pithing needle...
If i was playing vault i'd be fucked in the ass...

another game i was holding severence and top decked recall(belcher, time walk, fetch land)...with two untapped, i time walked, untapped drew a land, fetched played belcher, and passed turn, forced a tangle wire and a needle, drew a land to play severence and belch, while he was holding a next turn null rod...

again the fact that belcher can be played out instead of being forced into one turn is what is going to make it superior...Yeah the whole Eot skip my turn take and extra is cool and all (simetimes really useful)...the belcher is the way to go...Look at the brassman at chicago...0-2...

[mr_rogers]

Does no one run Gorilla Shaman?  I can't see how needle fucks the time vault kill but not the belcher kill.  I don't think I could lose to pithing needle because I do run a shaman main deck and bounce main deck.  So if Pithing Needle shuts down the time vault kill, then it also shuts down the Charbelcher kill.

[JigglyPuff]

Does no one run Gorilla Shaman? I can't see how needle fucks the time vault kill but not the belcher kill. I don't think I could lose to pithing needle because I do run a shaman main deck and bounce main deck. So if Pithing Needle shuts down the time vault kill, then it also shuts down the Charbelcher kill.

Needle stops both(unless you're like me and play 2xGoriilla shamana main along with a RnR). but i was able to win because i could lay off the combo in two turns instead of waiting for both to be played at the same time. The belcher could be played turn 4(saying without moxes or drain mana) and the severence could be played turn 5 and activated.

I guess you could also win turn 4 if you dropped a 2nd turn vault turn 4 fusilide....(saying no acceleration)...

not going to argue about this for the millionth time but just stick to what you liike.....
I like belcher (because its kowal's korean foil)....because it is chanced... it's like russian roullette......Or as that black guy said in that movie "GO B1G OR GO HOME"....I like to go big and that's what belcher does for me...

I'm currently running 1 shaman and 1 maindeck REB and an echoing truth....

[Dr Evil]

Round:
3 gifts 0-2  :s when shuffeling my deck he revealed a card in my deck, I called in a judge, he got away with a warning, during the game he got an aditional warning for tapping mana, play a draw effect and assinging colors afterwards, after the match I discovered that he now had a total of 5 warnings, which is suprisingly tolerated at a rel 3 event, during the match i drew in game 1 no more then 1 land, game 2 i tricked him with a time vault in play, pas the turn with time vault at his eot, he gits i drain, tap time vault to take the turn back, only to get mana burn for having nothing but lands in my hand, even after a brainstorm.

Steffen, Congrats on your T8. I didn't know you made T8, I dropped after 4-2-1.

In addition to our match, you were trying to win from me very, very nasty. Besides, I only had 1 warning before round3. You had me get a warning for reveiling one card, and after that, you wanted my Tinker not to resolve beacuse I tapped Volcanic? Would you have done the same if I played another Thirst?

I don't think FlameVault is good enough for Gifts. I'm interested in how many games you won without DSC. I play Burning Wish-Tendrils as second WinCondition and it has been enough for me all day. I lost because of superior drawings from my oppenents in round 6 and 7 (both German :S:P).

Greetings Kras

Ok, i thought you said that you already had 3 warnings, not that it matters now though. About revealing card in my deck, you got away with it real good, in vintage knowing your opponents deck is sooooooooo big advantage, I do know that you didn't do it on purpose, but I was really frustrated about during the entire match. I ussually don't play the way that I did at that time, ask any dutchman.

After the game we were cool, i even asked you several times during the tournament how you were doing.

About tinker/collossus versus flamevault, when i as doing some last minut playtesting in the mirror, the one to actualy tinker for colossos was almost made fun of because flamevault is so much better, also tinker is carddisadvantage, if it gets countered it causes you 2 cards, including a manasource which is o so important. + you need 2 extra turns to win which is a lot.

[JigglyPuff]

i'd give up card advantage for a first/second turn darksteel colossuss....
expecially if the two cards im holding are force and blue card....
congrats on the dutch finish....(i have no idea whats goin on but good job....)

Have you tested both belcher and flamevault?....(if u did, which did you like better)

I've tested both severence belcher and flamevault and i have to say that i like the belcher more...(pages 1-3)

[mr_rogers]

Well after reading all the replys again, I have to agree with Jiggly Puff that the choice between flame-vault and sev-beltcher comes down to preference.  I prefer to play with the Time Vault kill.  I like that it can race combo and aggro decks, which I see a lot of in my area.  I also like learning all the tricks with the Time Vault and being able to kill with a Timmy style combo .

I think now the discussion should focus on how to make the rest of the deck better.  Are there ways to more insure you get the Time Vault and Flame Fusillade together more often?  I would really like to hear suggestions on either of the deck lists I posted in this thread.