MTG Salvation

Quote from h4mx0r

So from what I understand, the main reason why Will is broken is because of ritual cards and a final storm effect? That's kind of depressing, I'm not a big fan of storm combos. I was hoping I could use it with some regular combo or something. You still have to pay to play the cards in your graveyard correct?

And on that note, when I first came back into magic after a 4 year drought (last time being middle school magic), I was shocked to get hit by a storm combo on MTGO. I didn't realize these combos were commonplace accepted, but I still think all storm cards are broken.

Will is not only a combo enabler, it's great in control decks because it lets you replay all the card draw and tutors you just used, allowing you to pull way ahead in card advantage. Honestly, just being able to play ancestral recall twice makes it broken enough. And it's also great in grow, replaying all your stuff and making quirion dryad huge.

I'm fully powered too, but it has to be yawgmoth's will.

Quote from Caselogik

Weldering a Titan is a good way to bring it in and out. My team recently spent a long time with Sharuum and Master Transmuter amongst other cards and we found they are okay cards, but staxx doesn't have a lot of extra room for acceleration and MUD or Workshop Aggro doesn't really run any colors at all. When we did use Master Transmuter, we found that it wasn't as reliable, and when we did get it out, it was simply a win-more type card.

Right, but with the loss of thirst, getting titan in the grave becomes much more of a chore. Plus, as you can see, I'm not trying to make this work in a MUD or Staxx shell, it's a slaver shell. This is a deck that can sit back and build incremental card advantage, generate tons of mana and eventually go crazy with transmuter through a number of different paths. It plays much like slaver in this way, with the bounce card costing more to cast and maintain, but with less reliance on the grave.

Quick Edit, updated the list and I'm probably going to run something similar to this in blacksburg, va in september.

I guess the title of the thread says it all. This card has so much vintage potential in spite of it's casting cost that I just have to give it a go. What I want to do is use a psuedo-slaver shell essentially using the hand instead of the grave which seems to be less prone to hate and allows me to cut red from the deck if I want. I like the cerebral assassin creature suite minus worldgorger dragon because they all beg to be transmuted in, but the deck runs so much acceleration that it's not entirely unreasonable to cast any of it. Lastly this brings me to thoughtcast, a card I believe is also very underplayed. I figure with the full artifact mana accel, plus a tormod's and top, plus the whole win strategy of the deck being artifacts, these seem to fill the 'thirst' slot in my 'slaver' shell quite nicely. Here's a super-rough draft.

Quote from mobilecommand

custom textless full art foil mutavaults altered by the artist

Those mutavaults are the nicest alterations I've ever seen. Does the artist do commissions through a website or do you know the artist personally?

Oh man, I forgot thoughtcast. That's actually pretty reasonable, two artifacts down and it's the same net card advantage to cost as thirst. I think I like it.

edit: just found out about this card- three wishes . Seems kind of awesome and potentially a thirst replacement because it can put robots in the yard. Neat.

So I'm trying to figure out what a good deck is versus the metagame which seems to be vault/key and the newer bant fish decks that pack hate and exalted tarmogoyfs and whatnot. I'm thinking oath should perform very well here because it both hates out tez-style decks and beats creature strategies like fish. I'm thinking I want to run drain here so I can play artifact creatures from my hand as well as make tinker good in the deck. I am aware that null rod shuts off my artifact mana too, but the idea here is to create an oath/orchard situation and then lock the board down to prevent vault/key. Here's my tentative build:

Hey all. I was hoping now that thirst of knowledge is restricted we could post the better draw engines available now in vintage. What I have so far is:

Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge
Mystic Remora/Meditate
Dark Confidant
Night's Whisper
Skeletal Scrying
Sleight of Hand
Impulse
Ophidian
Cold-Eyed Selkie
Dimir Cutpurse

And my personal favorite, Shadowmage Infiltrator.

So if anyone has more to add to the list or any comments regarding preference or viability toward any particular engine please don't hesitate to post.

This is what I think I'll be running for a little while, seem descent?

Why do people keep saying 'oh noez, 5 strip/academy/bazaar!' Crop rotation helps you find these cards quicker, but it's not at all the same as running five of them, especially strip mine. Once you use that strip or your academy/bazaar gets wasted, unless you have a crucible of worlds online (which only stax really plays) those extra crop rotations become fetchlands. The way I see it, this unrestriction is really good for stax and maybe, maybe puts oath back in contention.

Also, I think the restriction of thirst was actually quite a good idea. People keep calling for the restriction of drain, but in reality drain isn't the culprit and it never was. A card that provides card advantage, is blue, AND sets up goblin welder is quite overpowered as a four-of. Granted, it's nice and all to cast it off drain mana but when you look at the decks running drain you will see that there's so much acceleration in there already that cutting drain to one won't slow them down enough at all. The trick to solving the drain 'problem' is exactly what they did and should continue to do: neuter blue card draw/selection/quality while giving other colors their big guns back. I think balance should be next but I know most people don't agree.

So, it seems to me that the next best replacements for thirst are:

night's whisper
mystic remora/meditate
intuition/accumulated knowledge

Any other worthwhile replacements that I'm missing?

Hey! So I just picked up my first power pieces and am looking to play vintage. I'm looking at slaver because I play landstill in legacy and the decks seem to play similarly, plus I'm betting on Tez getting restricted. So, what's the best agreed upon build for this deck? I'm still putting together some staples so I have a month or two before I can play 0 proxie, so what should this deck look like if tez gets restricted?

If they're actually korean and white bordered then they're from the second fourth edition printing of that set. You sure they're not japanese? I've never seen a white bordered korean card because the only sets done in that language are fourth, visions, weatherlight, tempest, stronghold, exodus and saga and I didn't think they did second fourth edition printings in white border like they did for revised. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Quote from JeroenC

So Top slows down games? If that was the case, fetchlands would have to be banned, brainstorm would have to be banned and most of all, Standstill would have to be banned. Those cards slow the game down as much or even more than Top. The only deck where Top slows the game down a lot is DDFT, and that's Storm Combo: nobody is going to complain for it taking too much time for a game.

This is actually a solid point, credit where credit is due.

And oh yeah, to whoever said trinisphere is symmetrical, most decks that run it don't play cards that cost less than three. It's like saying balance is symmetrical in vintage stax.