MTG Salvation

I was sleeving up a deck today and noticed I had a Rancor (Urza's Legacy) with square corners on both the top and bottom on the right side. The corners on the left side are normal, and the card looks almost perfect otherwise, NM/NM+. Is this worth anything?

Anyone tried the new Max Pro "shuffle tech" sleeves yet? The improvements they've made from their previous sleeves are described here. Right now they're only available in //www.bcwsupplies.com/?params[search_text">=shuffle+tech+magic&go.x=0&go.y=0¶ms[search_module]=products_zoom§ion=search_results"]a few different art designs. I'm waiting until they're available in solid colors before trying them, but based on what I've read they seem pretty good. If anyone's tried them out already, what did you think of them?

Anyone ever used or heard anything about Card Accessory Collection sleeves made by Hobby Base? I stumbled across some of their sleeves while browsing a Japanese hobby site, and have been unable to find any reviews for them. It would be appreciated if anyone could tell me anything about their quality, consistency, and durability.

Quote from Koopa

What do I get in my Guild box when I go to the prerelease?

Does anybody have a picture of the Dryad Arbor?

Pic is attached.

Digg did themselves in with the v4 debacle.

Quote from some_guy123

I have a few of these on hand. They're ultra pro but I can't find them anywhere. They aren't rigid, they are like a normal sleeve but thick and built like a tank. The seams are like a thick weld, so I can't see them splitting, ever. I guess they stopped making these in favor of sleeves that must be repurchased periodically due to failure.

I believe that sleeve is from Ultra-Pro's "Deck Bynd'r" series, the first sleeve Ultra Pro made specifically for gaming cards.

They were only advertised in Inquest #5 (Sept. 1995), p. 10, Inquest #6 (Oct. 1995), p. 13, and also Scrye #9, p. 7. The ad is identical in all 3 magazines. It looked like this:



As you can see in the ad, you got 10 of those sleeves with one of those deck boxes, or you could buy a box of 100, which came in that pink box shown in the lower left corner. Here is a close up:



I don't remember seeing those deck boxes in the store, but I definitely remember seeing the box of 100 sleeves in the store. The package said they were mainly for protecting cards you weren't playing, not for protecting cards you were playing, which explains why the deck boxes only included 10 sleeves. I never bought any of these, but a friend used those sleeves on a deck, and I remember they were awkward to shuffle and even stack straight because of the protruding welds, and also that they very wide compared to the Deck Protectors I had, thanks to the substantial weld area.

You can find a lot of pictures of the Deck Bynd'r deck boxes online, including some for sale, but I was only able to find one other image besides yours with the sleeve(s), and it's only of the 10 sleeves that came with one of the deck boxes, here: magic_deck_bynder.jpg.

The first sleeves Ultra Pro released that were designed for play, which were much closer to what they still offer today, except they originally only came in clear, and had the smaller hologram and a very small weld spot, weren't released until a couple months after the Deck Bynd'r ones. Inquest #8 (Dec. 1995), p. 17, had the first ad for them:



I don't remember ever seeing that box design in the store, with the skeleton hand holding the sleeves. The ad in Inquest #9 (Jan. 1996), p. 27 and Scrye #12, p. 7 shows the box design I remember, with the old witch hand holding the sleeves:

Ihsan - No Divinity of Pride because it costs 5 mana.

BassKnight - Did you playtest the deck very much before the PTQ? Why did you run Warnock's exact 75? A few weeks ago OwenT was streaming MTGO matches, and Warnock was in the chat. He said that he threw the SB together 10 minutes before the tournament started and it was so awful that he didn't sideboard at all during the 6 Modern rounds. The Modern meta has developed dramatically since Worlds because of the bannings, all of the events on MTGO, and of course the PTQs.

flyersfan9191 - Did you watch any of the live GP: Hoth coverage yesterday? One of the 3 undefeated players after day 1 is Andrew Ohlschwager who is running a WB Martyr deck with a lot more black than I've seen before. [Edit: The deck tech is up, so here's his list again]:



He was featured on camera in round 8 against Gerry Thompson who was playing UW Tron. It was the best feature match all day. You can watch it here: http://www.twitch.tv/magicprotour/b/309007471/?t=199m21s

IxidorVersionTwo - Thanks for the report. Sorry to hear it didn't go better for you. Best of luck at the PTQs - after the luck you had at the GP, you definitely deserve some better luck!

monkeysammich - Thanks for the report. What made you decide to play mono white instead of the W/b version you posted the other day? Card availability or something else?

_Batutinha_ 3-1'd another Modern Daily on Monday with Martyr Proc. The only change from his list that 3-1'd on 12/16 (link) is that he replaced the 4 Mana Tithe in the board with 4 Surgical Extraction.

With the bannings going into effect on MTGO today, it will be interesting to see what the new metagame looks like.

Two more Martyr Proc decks went 3-1 in MTGO Dailies. Note: These were both before the bannings.

My Predictions (FWIW, I'm much more confident about my Modern prediction than Legacy prediction):

Vintage
No change

Legacy
Brainstorm is banned.

Modern
Punishing Fire is banned.

Standard
No change

A Martyr Proc deck went 3-1 in a Modern Daily on MTGO on Friday:



I like most of the changes from Warnock's list, but I still don't like 4 Mana Tithe in the board. Are they really worth it?

I hope that they make a cycle of double-faced lands so that it will be possible to run a deck that's 60 checklist cards.

Don't know if you guys saw this already, but in Craig Wescoe's 9/23 article "Financial Predictions for Innistrad" (link: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=10025), at the end of the article he has a list of 24 rares that he says are garbage and doesn't expect any of them to rise above $1. Then in the comments Brian Kibler said "I have already preordered nearly 200 copies of a card on your 'not a good buy' list."

Here is the list of the 24 rares:

Creepy Doll
Rooftop Storm
Dearly Departed
Angel of Flight Alabaster
Devil's Play
Falkenrath Marauders
Daybreak Ranger
Elder of Laurels
Manor Gargoyle
Instigator Gang
Endless Ranks of the Dead
Sturmgeist
Undead Alchemist
Back from the Brink
Ludevic's Test Subject
Runechanter's Pike
Divine Reckoning
Kruin Outlaw
Curse of Stalked Prey
Heretic's Punishment
Charmbreaker Devils
Gutter Grime
Kessig Cagebreakers
Unbreathing Horde

Any guesses on what Kibler's spec pick might be? My guess is either Kessig Cagebreakers, Back from the Brink, or Rooftop Storm.

No one's posted here in over a week now, so I guess that either means all the decks people have tried based around Maniac are terrible and everyone's given up, or they're really good and everyone's trying to keep their tech secret until it's legal in a week.

Granted, it's probably the former, but I really want this to work since Laboratory Maniac is by far my favorite alternate win condition card ever printed. So far I've spent most of my time working on a Legacy version pairing Laboratory Maniac with Thought Lash. The big advantage of Thought Lash over the other available options (Paradigm Shift, Divining Witch, Leveler, and Mirror of Fate) is that its damage prevention can give you multiple turns to find the Maniac, counters, or card draw for when you try to win.

Here is my current list:



The #1 criticism I've seen about a deck based on Maniac is that if they have a bolt or other removal you just lose. Frustratingly, the people making this criticism seem to think this is a fatal flaw of the deck that can't be overcome. The simple solution is to just have a bunch of cards that you can use to draw a card in response to their removal. When you exile your library, you want to have at the very least 2, and preferably 3 ways to draw a card in response to their removal so that they'll need multiple removal spells to make you lose. Obviously as long as you can draw in response to each one, you don't need to counter them since you'll have won before they resolve.

The cards that do this here are Sensei's Divining Top, Disrupt, Mind Stone, and to a lesser extent Brainstorm and Ponder.

Sensei's Divining Top is perfect here. Just by itself it can help you find what you need with the shuffle off the sac lands, and once you resolve Thought Lash, Top can help you find exactly what you want extremely quickly. Then once you resolve Laboratory Maniac, you exile your library with Thought Lash, then flip your Top to try to win. Top is so good here, I'd probably run 12 if I could.

After I figured out how good Thought Lash plus Sensei's Divining Top was, I searched to see if anyone had thought of that before, and of course they had. In 2007 Xandercoon posted a list for a deck called Thoughtless Sensei here: http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=79099. Obviously that's a very different deck, but there are some cards in that list that are good here, too.

Disrupt is here for the same reason. When you're trying to win you don't care if they can pay 1 or not, you just want Disrupt to resolve so you can draw the card and win.

Mind Stone will probably raise the most eyebrows, since the mana acceleration it gives you pales to other options that are available in Legacy (e.g., Grim Monolith), but its 1,t,sac ability is why I think it's better for this deck, as that ability lets you shrug off another removal spell.

Brainstorm and Ponder also can count here, but most of the time you're going to have to use them before casting your 2 key spells.

The 2 cards I've seen mentioned most for the instant draw after exiling your library are Gitaxian Probe and Street Wraith. I don't like these because they're not nearly as versatile as the card draw I've included, and are mostly only good after you've already exiled your library.

Intuition and Long-Term Plans seem like the best whole library search options for Lash, Maniac, or whatever else. Most of the time you're probably going to want to find Thought Lash since Lash plus Top can find the Maniac really quick, which should make Intuition better most of the time. Right now I have a 3-1 split in favor of Intuition, but I'm not sure if that's right. I want to run more than 4 total but don't know what to cut.

Counterbalance plus Sensei's Divining Top is always good, and is straight up bonkers when you add Thought Lash into the mix. I think the good it does before you exile your library is enough to warrant its inclusion, since it's worthless for the card draw vs. removal fight after exiling your library.

Sideboard:

I haven't thought too much about possibilities for the sideboard, since so far I've just tried to make the main deck as good as possible. After all, if the basic strategy in the main deck isn't good enough to be a contender, then the sideboard doesn't matter.

Opposing strategies and cards of note:

Permission: The deck has 4 FoW, 4 Disrupt, and 3 Counterbalance main to fight opposing permission. You'd definitely want more cards in the board against heavy permission decks (although these will probably be less common with Misstep leaving). The 4th Counterbalance for sure, and maybe some Defense Grids, too. Grand Abolisher would be perfect, but that would strain the mana pretty hard.

Split second removal (Krosan Grip and Sudden Shock/Death): Fortunately Sudden Shock/Death don't see much play, but Krosan Grip is rough if you don't have Counterbalance out (in the main deck there are 8 3s to leave on top).

Permanent creature / enchantment kill (Grim Lavamancer, Qasali Pridemage, and the like): Not as scary as they first seem. Depending on what they can destroy, just play the piece that doesn't die to what they have first, then play the one that they can kill, so you can try to win in response to them trying to kill it.

Thoughts, criticisms, and suggestions are welcome.

Quote from nicoG

you make me laught with your leveler/hermit druid combos. only 2 guys have mentionned demonic consultation in 16 pages..
it's really better to win during your upkeep with an instant speed spell no?
But it can be dangerous without tefeiri and u can loose the game with a split second spell such as trick bind or Sudden Death

That was the first card I, and probably most everyone, thought of. But it's not available in Modern, banned in Legacy, and restricted in Vintage, so there's not much to say about it.