It's not completely dead in other match ups. Youre always going to get a free untap step for all of your artifacts, which is generally pretty relevant.
Not always -- you'll get a free untap step half the time. The other half of the time, you'll win the die roll and Leyline will be completely dead if you're trying to go off on turn 1.
It opens up casting critical spells at EOT and then during your is a great way to put a tax on your opponents resources.
Again, this is a deck that really wants to be winning by turn 3 at the very latest. If the game is at the point where attritioning out your opponent's resources with strategies like this, I suspect you've already basically lost.
Also against other turn 1 combo decks going on the play is critical.
So is being able to counter their shenanigans, which is why Force exists in the first place. It's a safety valve. If you play Force against those decks, you cripple them unless they have a Force of their own. If you play Leyline against another combo deck and you have the reources to get a decisive advantage but not to outright win on the spot, you're screwed.
Hitting your mana sources before they play a draw 7 or casting a draw 7 of your own before they can do anything can easily win you a game.
Sorry, could you go into more detail here? If they draw badly off your draw 7, you're good... but how often is that going to happen to a well-built deck? How often is your opponent going to play a draw-7 that cripples you? (That's not rhetorical, I'm not familiar enough with the Vintage meta to know)
My biggest reason for wanting leyline over force was that force required me to pitch a card. This was not something that I ever wanted to do
Force is never a card you cast because you want to. It's a card you cast because you have to.
nor was I even capable of doing sometimes.
This, however, is a legitimate issue I've come into often. I can't really think of any way around it, though -- going in without Force backup is frequently suicide -- and sometimes you have the spare mana to hardcast it. In the situations I've needed it and not been able to use it, Pact would not have been a viable replacement, and I doubt I can get away with Mana Drain.
The deck is already running 4 chrome mox as one of its primary blue sources. I would find myself in situations it would cause me to fizzle if I were to pitch a card to force. If I was pitching a card it would usually end up being a preordain, which could potentially just dig for the card I'm saving.
For what it's worth, I usually pitch Gitaxian Probe. It only digs down 1 card, and is consequently often not that useful beyond being a nearly-free cantrip.
This is what I was using leyline for against workshops. It would basically provide me the time to play and activate map before they could do anything. I don't know how many workshop variants you are playing against that have null rod, I personally haven't seen that in years. You can and probably should respond to their first cast instead of trying to go off in the upkeep. This gives the information advantage to you. You know what lock piece you have to play around and they won't be able to revoker your key mana source.
That's good advice; thanks. I was judging Null Rod by the Workshop deck I originally built, which ran several Null Rods as answers to most of the stuff that goes on in the mirror.
I don't know if I was playing this differently than you or not, but I would win off vault/key almost as often as I was directly winning off belcher. The issue I'd see with transmute artifact is that its UU, which makes it pretty much only castable off tolarian.
I can reach UU reasonably often. The issue is opposing counterspells, and Time Vault is one of those things people tend to expect and plan for
What would you personally cut for Transmute? It's gotta be worth a try, at any rate.
