If I were to use something like Cranial Extraction in a tournament setting to write down my opponent's entire starting library, would this be considered stalling?
I like this idea. When C was first leaked in all of two cards for the latest set, I was all on-board the OMG SIXTH COLOR MAGIC RUINED bandwagon. Then I came to my senses when I saw that Wastes is a basic land without a basic land type.
Does money laundering count? I've considered hypothetical ways of making money illegally, and it seems like buying Power Nine cards then flipping them at cost on eBay would be a pretty good way to wash dirty money through Paypal.
Older cards read t: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool, whereas the current standard is (and has been for a while) t: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1 was only used in mana costs, not mana abilities, because 1 was generic mana. This change is actually entirely due to one card printed in Odyssey: Nantuko Elder. Its mana ability as-printed read t: Add 1G to your mana pool. R&D didn't realize that this card said to add generic mana to your mana pool before the set was released, and the rules at the time didn't allow this thus making its ability dead, so the rules team scrambled to make t for 1 a thing.
Now here we are, 15 years later, replacing 1 with C. Check Nantuko Elder's printed text versus its Oracle text. The link in the previous sentence takes you to the Gatherer page for it rather than using the card tag for your convenience.
Edit at below: you quoted me before I was fast enough to edit that part out, having realized your interpretation is right.
Necro into what? Digging through one-quarter of your library on turn one, plus your ***** banned list from Unlimited Edition onwards, plus Enlightened/Mystical/Worldly/Personal/Sylvan Tutor could probably find Drain Life and Channel [as just one example of a combo] if they're not drawn outright as four-ofs.
Basically, what I'm getting at here is that if you had a white-bordered-only format, you'd better expand your banned list in a manner similarly done in Tempest/Urza's Type II: "ban everything until Necro is good again, then ban Necro".
This idea is idiotic, especially with no restricted list. Sixth Edition and the Portal sets alone would wreck your ***** as far as tutors go, and Dark Ritual into Necropotence would give one a 95% or so success rate.
Yep. I for one jumped onto the "diamond mana is a sixth color, **** you Rosewater!" bandwagon when the first two cards were spoiled. Since then, I've realized that Wastes being a basic land without a subtype interacts with even eternal formats just fine, it actually adds value to painlands such that they're not strictly better than duals, and seeing Wasteland/Ancient Tomb/Strip Mine reprinted in foil is pretty awesome.
Pile: when raw bad luck can't un**** you out of a mana screw/flood after two mulligans.
Broken: when a singular card warps meta-games (usually Standard) such that the only good options to win tournaments are to run the card four-of, or efficiently hate against it main-deck.
Tech: any two-piece win combo, or a deck with mad synergy.
Luckbox: Swamp, 4x Dark Ritual, Phage, Lightning Greaves. That's one example. Vintage Flash/Hulk with countermagic is another. You get the idea.
Mise, foreign: shooting for a win strategy against the odds, relying on luck, as in "mise well, amirite"
Mise, modern: drawing exactly the card you need on your draw step.
With regard to playing with any variety of control or combo: sometimes, whether I win or lose is determined by the next two cards I draw. I'll usually ask my opponent if I can peek at the top two of my library to determine whether I should concede now or play it out. My opponent usually agrees, and about 2/3ths of the time I'll concede.
Edit: is it a dick move to concede the turn before my opponent has the satisfaction of killing me with a surefire lethal attack? I usually do- not out of spite, but just to speed things up.
How to win against slowdowns, esp. Stasis:
1. Play B/U
2. Either sneak Voltath's Shapeshifter into play, or force it into play. This is half the reason to play U/B: for countermagic and discard
3. Wait until the discard to seven, pitch Phage, swing
Edit: For U, Force and Misdirection definitely. Misdirection is for countering counterspells by the game rules, since no ***** a Stasis player is going to run countermagic. For W, Abolish. The pitching a land thing was more of a set mechanic at the time than a mana-less Stasis-blower-upper, but I haven't seen better.
Looks like I specialize in the most annoying play types. I don't have a problem with lockdown because having played it so much, I'm very good at counteracting it. I don't mind combo either because worst-case scenario, my sideboard's gonna win me games two and three against that. My vote is for slowdown (Stasis), because I have very unfond memories of playing specifically against Stasis at my LGS some time ago.
First off, howdy. I've been in the MTGNews community since 2003 until DarthCow unfortunately sold out, Rancored_Elf migrated us lot here, and the email address I used to register for these forums no longer exists, so I've been lurking for a while and have very much appreciated your near-live spoiler updates. That's my intro, now onto the thread title.
Assuming you were allowed to rig your entire Vintage deck however you damn well pleased, your opponent could do the same, and current DCI restrictions had to be followed otherwise, what would your winning strat be? I'll answer first naturally.
1. Starting draw: Flash, Hulk, Manamorphose, 2x Elvish Spirit Guide, Ancestral Recall, Pact of Negation.
2. 2x Elvish Spirit Guide into Manamorphose into UU, use U for Ancestral, draw Elvish Spirit Guide and 2x Pact of Negation.
3. Use the floating U and the third Elvish Spirit Guide to Flash/Hulk out for Disciple/Ravager/0-drops, causing 32/36 loss of life.
That's turn-zero, beginning of the first upkeep regardless of who wins the coin-flip death with three counterspells to back it up. I'm guessing a deck with Leyline of Anticipation could beat this but I can't brainstorm how.
Problem solved. Pack Enlightened Tutor and make the other 52 cards in your deck work with this.
Older cards read t: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool, whereas the current standard is (and has been for a while) t: Add 1 to your mana pool. 1 was only used in mana costs, not mana abilities, because 1 was generic mana. This change is actually entirely due to one card printed in Odyssey: Nantuko Elder. Its mana ability as-printed read t: Add 1G to your mana pool. R&D didn't realize that this card said to add generic mana to your mana pool before the set was released, and the rules at the time didn't allow this thus making its ability dead, so the rules team scrambled to make t for 1 a thing.
Now here we are, 15 years later, replacing 1 with C. Check Nantuko Elder's printed text versus its Oracle text. The link in the previous sentence takes you to the Gatherer page for it rather than using the card tag for your convenience.
Edit at below: you quoted me before I was fast enough to edit that part out, having realized your interpretation is right.
Basically, what I'm getting at here is that if you had a white-bordered-only format, you'd better expand your banned list in a manner similarly done in Tempest/Urza's Type II: "ban everything until Necro is good again, then ban Necro".
Pile: when raw bad luck can't un**** you out of a mana screw/flood after two mulligans.
Broken: when a singular card warps meta-games (usually Standard) such that the only good options to win tournaments are to run the card four-of, or efficiently hate against it main-deck.
Tech: any two-piece win combo, or a deck with mad synergy.
Luckbox: Swamp, 4x Dark Ritual, Phage, Lightning Greaves. That's one example. Vintage Flash/Hulk with countermagic is another. You get the idea.
Mise, foreign: shooting for a win strategy against the odds, relying on luck, as in "mise well, amirite"
Mise, modern: drawing exactly the card you need on your draw step.
Edit: is it a dick move to concede the turn before my opponent has the satisfaction of killing me with a surefire lethal attack? I usually do- not out of spite, but just to speed things up.
1. Play B/U
2. Either sneak Voltath's Shapeshifter into play, or force it into play. This is half the reason to play U/B: for countermagic and discard
3. Wait until the discard to seven, pitch Phage, swing
Edit: For U, Force and Misdirection definitely. Misdirection is for countering counterspells by the game rules, since no ***** a Stasis player is going to run countermagic. For W, Abolish. The pitching a land thing was more of a set mechanic at the time than a mana-less Stasis-blower-upper, but I haven't seen better.
Assuming you were allowed to rig your entire Vintage deck however you damn well pleased, your opponent could do the same, and current DCI restrictions had to be followed otherwise, what would your winning strat be? I'll answer first naturally.
1. Starting draw: Flash, Hulk, Manamorphose, 2x Elvish Spirit Guide, Ancestral Recall, Pact of Negation.
2. 2x Elvish Spirit Guide into Manamorphose into UU, use U for Ancestral, draw Elvish Spirit Guide and 2x Pact of Negation.
3. Use the floating U and the third Elvish Spirit Guide to Flash/Hulk out for Disciple/Ravager/0-drops, causing 32/36 loss of life.
That's turn-zero, beginning of the first upkeep regardless of who wins the coin-flip death with three counterspells to back it up. I'm guessing a deck with Leyline of Anticipation could beat this but I can't brainstorm how.