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    Brass Man

    @Brass Man

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    Best posts made by Brass Man

    • A friendly reminder

      Your life is short.

      Too short to spend it doing something that brings you suffering.

      There are many games and many hobbies and many communities.

      People use Magic cards to play many different formats. Some people create their own formats. Many people prefer other formats to Vintage, or have no interest in Magic at all.

      Playing Vintage is optional. Participating in the Vintage community is optional. Posting on TMD is optional.

      You can disagree with someone without making fun of them. Or antagonizing them. Or invalidating their subjective experience.

      You can make a good faith effort to understand why someone may not come to the same conclusions as you, and you can decide to engage them on those terms or decide not to engage them at all.

      There are places on the internet where you can talk to people who are actually involved in the vintage banned and restricted process.

      There are places on the internet where your well thought-out arguments and clever retorts won't get deleted.

      Please try and have a nice day. You only get so many of them.

      posted in Vintage Community
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Favorite Abnormal Victories

      The year is 2003 and I'm piloting Dragon Combo, a graveyard-based combo deck based on the glitchy things that happen when you cast Animate Dead on a Worldgorger Dragon. Dragon Combo grinds through 4-color control decks, like the one my opponent is on, using Bazaar of Baghdad and Squee, Goblin Nabob as a powerful, uncounterable card-advantage engine. My opening hand has multiple Bazaars and multiple Squees, which leaves me confident in my ability to win a long game.

      On the end of my third turn, turn my opponent casts a Vampiric tutor, untaps, and drops a completely unexpected Blood Moon. I have no basics, and Blood Moon completely cuts off my draw engine. We fight over it emptying our hands, and he wins. My beautiful board is now 4 Nonbasic Mountains and a Mana Crypt.

      I sigh, untap, and draw
      Worldgorger Dragon
      The combo plan behind me, I tap out to play the Dragon, which exiles all of my mana and gives me a 7/7.

      Two turns later, I've drawn blanks, but my opponent is at 1 life. I pass, and he has one turn to find an answer.

      He draws his card and casts a Cunning Wish. Wish resolves, and he goes to his sideboard to pull out:

      Hero's Reunion

      I look confused for a moment, until he smiles and announces:

      Isochron Scepter

      With Hero's Reunion on a stick, he goes up to 8 life each turn, leaving my Dragon (still the only permanent on my side of the board) one power short of killing him.

      ...
      ...
      ...

      Unless, of course, the top card of my library is

      Black Lotus

      which I immediately use to cast

      Squee, Goblin Nabob

      which attacks for 1 and wins the game.

      posted in Vintage Community
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • TMD feature pipeline - same direction, new channels, increased fervor

      Hiya!

      Your humble site admin and friendly neighborhood Brass Man is in between jobs at the moment. I've decided not to jump right back into muggle work and use this opportunity to take a little time off to refocus on the things that really matter in life.

      Like The Mana Drain.

      There's a whole stack of features I've been wanting to implement and bugs I've been wanting to fix, as well as some development quality-of-life improvements that you guys won't notice, but will make it much easier for me maintain and build more in the future.

      Beyond that, I've wanted to branch out into other channels for the "TMD Brand" to make that Patreon a legitimate deal. A regular podcast, blog, and other content. (The first episode of the podcast was recorded last night! though there's a bit of work to be done before it's published)

      Because transparency is awesome I've made a public Trello board with what I'm working on. Items in the "To Do" column are the pieces slated to be worked on next.

      https://trello.com/b/xyvw3uHx/the-mana-drain

      If there's anything that you want in the backlog that you don't see, feel free to reach out to me here, or on Twitter @tmdBrassMan. I also plan on using the "Official" TMD Twitter more for announcements, etc. so feel free to follow @TheManaDrain for updates.

      posted in TheManaDrain Metadiscussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Historical Vintage Exhibition

      Making a mistake as a newer player running a 7 year old deck for the first time feels like a more plausible explanation than producing an entire 3-video match just to troll 3 people on TMD.

      If you want people to decide that making vintage content isn't worth it, just keep making posts like that 😛

      posted in Vintage News
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor

      I deleted a few posts in this thread. I wanted to delete a lot more.

      Protip: If you're starting a post with "I wasn't going to resort to personal attacks but .." or "I was going to be civil, but ...", it's not a good post

      Protip: Succinct arguments are more persuasive and understandable.

      Protip: Winning arguments on TMD is likely not an efficient path to policy change, especially compared to "talking with someone who actually has influence over policy"

      I mostly deleted posts involving clear personal attacks, and those directly replying to them (which weren't necessarily bad posts, but would make no sense with the missing context).

      Frankly this thread shouldn't have existed in the first place, as the conversation is exactly the same as the other two B&R threads, despite the fact that each thread has a distinct opening post - people can't seem to stop from discussing their pet policy issues in every thread where someone mentions any policy issue, no matter how related they are.

      It's clear that there is another issue in these threads. Too much rhetoric, not enough dialectic. Too many people are trying to win arguments and not enough people are trying to figure things out.

      Did you know that different people enjoy different games?

      Did you know that different people use similar terms to mean the different things?

      Have you noticed how rarely people make an effort to understand how their goals and preferences might differ before emphatically stating that their policy for the format is unimpeachably better?

      posted in Vintage Community
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • ANNOUNCEMENT: archive.themanadrain back online

      http://www.archive.themanadrain.com/ - the old site, is now back up. I'll be disabling new posts, but you should be able to log into your old accounts, read old PMs, view old threads, etc.

      Let me know if you have issues accessing the site - but any support issues regarding the archive site are much lower priority than TMD-proper.

      posted in TheManaDrain Metadiscussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Yawgmoth's (Bargain Not Will) Unrestrictable?

      I'm not trying to be combative, but I find this thread incredibly frustrating.

      The idea that Yawgmoth's Will or Flash could be unrestricted lacks so much historical context that it makes me retroactively question things the suggester has said before. This is not unique to this thread.

      The idea that it "was known" that flash wasn't resilient and didn't need a restriction is genuinely confusing to me. In my experience it was the most consistently fast and resilient combo deck the format has ever seen. It had an upsettingly good Shops matchup, and the only thing that kept it in check was 4 Gush 4 Brainstorm 4 Scroll 4 Ponder Combo-Control decks.

      I try very hard to stay neutral on TMD about B&R issues, because I feel like my position as site admin is an unfair power imbalance. Still, in the wake of the recent restriction, when I see threads like this, I can't help but wonder. Is the fact that Wizards is paying more attention to vintage now a net negative for the format?

      posted in Vintage Community
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • Ability to Block individual users

      Carried over from a discussion in another thread, this is a request to let a user block an individual other user, which would prevent them from PM'ing you, and hide their posts.

      posted in TheManaDrain Metadiscussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • Heads up about B&R discussion on Monday

      We're going to be trying something new on monday when the B&R announcement drops.

      All discussion of B&R is going to be limited to a single thread in community. Any existing threads at that time will be locked, and any new threads will be deleted. The initial post will contain only a link to the announcement and the summary of the changes, if any (no editorialization). This includes discussions about cards to restrict, unrestrict, ban, etc. This will be the only thread for B&R until the next announcement.

      As always, the site is a living experiment, and if it doesn't work we can reverse the policy and try something else.

      posted in TheManaDrain Metadiscussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • The Mod Squad - decklist and primer
      # The Mod Squad
      ## Andy Probasco - 5th-8th place,
      ## Power 9 Challenge, January 2017
      Threats (21)
      3 Animation Module
      4 Arcbound Ravager
      1 Hangarback Walker
      1 Lodestone Golem
      4 Phyrexian Revoker
      4 Steel Overseer
      4 Walking Ballista
      
      Lock Pieces (14)
      1 Chalice of the Void
      4 Sphere of Resistance
      4 Tangle Wire
      4 Thorn of Amethyst
      1 Trinisphere
      
      Mana (25)
      1 Black Lotus
      4 Ancient Tomb
      1 Mana Crypt
      3 Mishra's Factory
      4 Mishra's Workshop
      1 Mox Emerald
      1 Mox Jet
      1 Mox Pearl
      1 Mox Ruby
      1 Mox Sapphire
      1 Sol Ring
      1 Strip Mine
      1 Tolarian Academy
      4 Wasteland
      
      Sideboard:
      3 Crucible of Worlds
      2 Dismember
      3 Foundry Inspector
      4 Grafdigger's Cage
      2 Null Rod
      1 Spatial Contortion
      

      How about that Walking Ballista, huh?

      I shouldn't need to tell you by now that Ballista is the real deal, but if you haven't been paying attention, it defined the January Power 9 event, and I strongly suspect it will define the meta until something new is printed or we see a B&R change.

      I don't think it makes a lot of sense to write up a play-by-play, I streamed the event, and the entire video can still be watched on my Twitch highlights. Instead I thought I would write-up a little mini-primer on the deck, and why it looks the way it looks.

      Genesis

      The day Aether Revolt became legal, I played in a local 20-person vintage event. I was positive to I wanted to play Workshops with 4 Walking Ballista, but I wasn't sure on the build. There are/were three primary Workshop Aggro builds coming into Aether Revolt, Cars, Thought-Knot Shops, and Inspector/Chief of the Foundry.

      I decided to build off of an Inspector / Chief list I saw Montolio and i_b_true playing in vintage dailies. All three versions have merit, but I went with Inspector/Chief for the following reasons:

      • Inspectors and Chiefs have more synergy with Walking Ballista than Fleetwheel and Thought-Knot, so I figured it would give me more useful testing data.

      • Some of the lists were running Steel Overseer in the sideboard, which is a pet card of mine and also felt strong with Ballista.

      • The deck looked more resilient to Null Rods, which I knew would be present, and I assumed adding 4 Walking Ballista to a deck would make it weaker to Null Rod. More on this later.

      • You can't go wrong betting on Montolio

      I cut 1 each of Inspector, Chief, Tangle Wire, and Sphere of Resistance to fit the 4 Walking Ballistae. Generally that kind of move is a bad idea when it comes to tuning a deck or sideboarding, but it can be useful if you're testing multiple new cards and don't know which interactions are strongest.

      Basically everything in the deck impressed me. I won the tournament, and had a post-mortem on the ride home with Brian Schlossberg, who played a different 4x Walker shops build in the event. As we talked about the cards that over and underperformed for use, the pieces began to come together.

      General Deck Philosophy

      Tempo, Tempo

      I'll dig a bit into this later, but this list has a strong focus on running cheaper spells to make early game tempo plays. This goes hand in hand with added consistency. All workshop decks are fairly redundant, but this list has the highest range of "lock piece + threat + enough mana to cast both" hands of any Shops list I've played.

      The Null Rod Dilemma

      Null Rod is a huge factor for deckbuilders right now, and predicting the amount of Null Rod in the metagame is going to be key for making decisions in the coming months. It would be fair to guess that adding Ballistae to every shops deck would make the archetype as a whole weaker against Null Rod, but so far results haven't borne that out. While Ballista can't throw counters around under a Null Rod, an X/X for XX is not dead against Null Rod, and most of the time ends up better than Triskelion was.

      In my experience the weakest Workshop Aggro deck against Null Rod are Car shops lists, with high cost threats that can't be crewed through Null Rod (though sometimes the one Null Rod-proof attack with Fleetwheel Crusier can be pivotal). On the other end of the spectrum, the newer Chief of the Foundry/Foundry Inspector lists are quite strong against Null Rods, even ones running 4 Arcbound Ravager and 4 Walking Ballista. This list is somewhere in the middle.

      I've yet to lose to a game with a 4x Ballista deck where my opponent played a Null Rod, though this is a pretty small sample of about 5 tournament matches. The pattern is pretty consistent though. The player with Null Rod, often facing down lock pieces of mine, spends a lot of time and mana playing the card - which either shuts off their own artifacts as well, or precludes them running artifact mana at all, which is otherwise generally strong against Workshop strategies. In response to the Rod, a Ravager or Ballista on my side of the table responds by getting large or picking off a key blocker, and the Workshop deck is able to get there with vanilla creatures in the extra time it stole. In practice Phyrexian Revoker has been a bigger problem than Null Rod has. In particular, Null Rods out of Mentor decks usually aren't coming down until turn 3 or 4 through Spheres, and by then even a Steel Overseer can do something relevant. A turn one Null Rod out of Eldrazi can be much scarier, but if you can follow up with Spheres or Wastelands of your own, you can buy a lot of time for your cheaper creatures to get in there. The Foundry Inspectors out of the sideboard go a long way in games like this.

      Of course, there are hands (particularly those with Overseer), that are weak to Null Rod. I have absolutely played games that I would probably have lost if my opponent had Null Rod at just the right time, but didn't.

      Due to the adoption of anti-Null Rod Chief/Foundry shops, and the increased presence of Shops in general making Paradoxical Outcome worse, I expect Null Rod to hold steady or drop a bit, even though it hits Walking Ballista. This deck feels to me in a sweet spot between Null Rod counterstrategies, and powerful anti-aggro activated abilities - exactly where I want a shops list to be right now

      If that prediction doesn't hold, and Null Rod continues to rise in popularity, it would make sense to alter the deck to be more resilient against the card, probably approaching the Chief/Inspector lists. If Null Rod became entirely ubiquitous, it would probably make more sense to drop the list entirely for Mentor, or to play a far more specialized Workshop build. On the other hand if Null Rod dropped out of the metagame entirely, I still like the deck, but it does make cards like Fleetwheel Cruiser a lot less risky, and therefore tempting. In the unlikely event that people continue to move to decks that are weaker and weaker against Rod, without Rod itself becoming more popular, there's probably a case for a Chief/Inspector list with its own maindeck Null Rods ... which opens itself up to slower Mentor decks, and the great wheel of the metagame keeps spinning!

      Tradeoffs

      Consistency basically always comes as a trade for power or explosiveness. An early Fleetwheel Cruiser puts a lot of pressure on quickly, and the trample can reduce your opponents options for good blocks dramatically. A Thought-Knot Seer disrupts the opponent on a non-mana axis, and is naturally immune to Hurkyl's Recall and Dack Fayden, and a quick Reality Smasher gives an opponent almost no time to react. These draws don't happen as often as a turn 1 Steel Overseer, but they're not exactly rare, and when they hit, they hit harder. Still, with most blue decks packing huge numbers of Swords to Plowshares these days, the expensive haymaker cards really aren't much scarier than a Ravager, and going wide with a few 1/1 Servos can actually be harder to answer than a 5/5 Reality Smasher. Still, you lose the opportunity for putting on heavy early life-total pressure with a single card - your Lotus is probably worse than theirs is.

      While under the right circumstances, the threats in this list can be quite fast together (I managed to attack for 20 on turn 3 in a vintage daily), on their own they're definitely slower than Cruisers and Smashers. If the metagame shifted in a way where reach became a lot less important than life-total pressure (e.g. if shops and Eldrazi dropped in popularity), cards like Animation Module make a lot less sense.

      In non-blue matchups, higher cost threats can be even more devastating, and they're less likely to be removed. Ideally, your cheap threats come out underneath a back-and-forth flurry of mana denial, and over a few turns become strong enough to handle your opponent's 6-drop threats. But if you don't get a few turns, a topdecked Steel Overseer might not be fast enough to answer a Wurmcoil Engine - doubly so if your opponent lands some well-timed Revokers. Basically, if your haymaker-driven opponent has 2 more Mishra's Workshops than you have Wastelands, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. Being on the play with a Mana Crypt or Black Lotus really rewards you for running more expensive cards - and while you can capitalize on those draws with a large Hangarback Walker, a 3/3 Walker on turn 1 or 2 is really not as good as a Skysovereign or Precursor Golem.

      So far in my experience, not enough games open that way to be concerned, and even when they do, a well-timed Dismember can save you. If you can hold off just a few turns, sometimes that unexciting Walking Ballista teams up with a Ravager or an Overseer and ends up being able to handle those 6-drops just fine.

      Card Breakdown

      Creatures and Mana Curves

      4 Arcbound Ravager
      1 Hangarback Walker
      1 Lodestone Golem
      4 Phyrexian Revoker
      4 Steel Overseer
      4 Walking Ballista
      

      Walking Ballista is an upgrade over Triskelion, but it's more than that. The 6 CMC on Triskelion had always prevented me from wanting to run more than 2, especially in competition with cards like Wurmcoil Engine and Duplicant, but Walking Ballista is an easy 4-of for me.

      Obviously a 2 cost card is easier to cast than a 3 cost card, but the differences aren't linear. Decks have their own sweet spots, and it's important to look at what kind of spells you want at different points in the game. There's a game-state pattern that comes up a lot in Workshop Aggro. In most matchups you want to keep mana pressure on the entire game, and that usually means playing a Sphere on turn 1, and follow it quickly with Strip-effects, Tangle Wires or additional Spheres. That means there's often a window early where have an extra 2 mana on turn 1 or 2 (Workshop+Mox being the most common), but won't have an extra 3+ mana until turn 5 or 6. Making a 3 drop a lot more costly than a 2 drop.

      Consider a pretty average opening hand with Workshop, Wasteland, Sphere of Resistance, "Threat". In a matchup against an unknown opponent, it's safest to lead with the Sphere, and in many cases you're going to want to follow that up with a Wasteland on turn 2. At this point you can play your threat if it costs 2 or less, but not if it costs 3 or more. If your draws include more Wastelands or Spheres or Tangle Wires, there's a chance you're not playing a 3 drop for a little while. If your draws DON'T include Ancient Tombs or Workshops, there's a chance you wouldn't be able to play a 4 drop (especially the Thorn-sensitive Fleetwheel Cruiser or the Workshop-sensitive Thought-Knot Seer) for a long while. If your opponent has their own Wastelands, you might never get that chance.

      So two-drops are important in Shops. But they're not so important that it's worth running a bad card over a good one. Porcelain Legionnaire was solid in some metagames, but loses some of its lustre when Triskelions roam the earth, and Thought-Knot is more common than Lodestone Golem. Steel Overseer is an aggro-mirror sideboard card, that's a little too slow to justify running in large numbers. While there were certainly players that liked to run 4x Arcbound Ravager, I was always uncomfortable running more than 3, if that, I tend to see the card as a game-two anti-removal/Dack Fayden card than a true threat in it's own right.

      Four Ballistae suddenly changes the value of all of these cards. The 4th Ravager is an easy sell, and it didn't take many games to figure out that the Overseer/Walker synergy I thought would be "cute" was actually just strong. Legionnaire goes from medium to unplayable, but the count of quality 2 drop threats still rose drastically, from 7-8 to 16. This, of course, has other repercussions, which we'll talk about later.

      Lock Pieces

      Lock Pieces (14)
      1 Chalice of the Void
      4 Sphere of Resistance
      4 Tangle Wire
      4 Thorn of Amethyst
      1 Trinisphere
      

      There's nothing notable about the cards in this list, every Workshop deck is running some combination of these cards, and plenty max out on them like I have. Some of my recent workshops lists haven't run all 14 though, (usually only running 1-2 Sphere of Resistance), and even in lists that run them all, it's usually a tradeoff.

      Running such a low curve makes it a lot less painful to run as many Spheres as you can. Between Ballista, Walker, and Module, you have a lot of things to do with mana that aren't affected by Spheres or Wires, which is an added bonus. Overseer gives you something relevant to do in a turn where you're spending all of your mana playing another Lock piece, and Module or Hangarback Walker are great at using up the odd mana you have left over at the end of turn. Workshop decks in general are "a pile of cards that are synergistic with Sphere of Resistance", but this list is even MORE synergistic, for whatever that's worth.

      Manabase

      1 Black Lotus
      4 Ancient Tomb
      1 Mana Crypt
      3 Mishra's Factory
      4 Mishra's Workshop
      1 Mox Emerald
      1 Mox Jet
      1 Mox Pearl
      1 Mox Ruby
      1 Mox Sapphire
      1 Sol Ring
      1 Strip Mine
      1 Tolarian Academy
      4 Wasteland
      

      All Workshop decks share a lot in common, and building one isn't terribly complex.

      4 Mishra's Workshop
      3-4 Ancient Tomb
      5 Strip effects
      6-8 Artifact Mana

      If you're not starting with that, there's a good chance you're doing something wrong. I also suspect that the addition of Walking Ballista to the format adds Tolarian Academy to this list.

      For this list I wanted the full set of accelerants - all the Tombs and all the artifacts mana. Basically every Workshop deck wants to guarantee they can play a 2 drop on turn 1, but this deck has so many 2s that hitting 4 mana early is very relevant as well. I've had Ancient Tomb deal massive damage to me before, but I don't think it outweighs how good the card is.

      If you've decided to max out on all the accelerants, you're basically left with 4 lands in a 26 source deck. Thought-Knot lists can use this to run Eldrazi Temple, or you can fit in powerful utility cards like or Karakas, Ghost Quarter, or Inventor's Fair. My choice to run Mishra's Factory here isn't exactly groundbreaking, Factory is probably the most common card in this slot. It's common for a reason though, and the added synergy with Ravagers and Overseers was too good for me to pass up.

      Perhaps notable, perhaps not, while I tend to think of 26 sources as the standard count for a Workshop deck, my lower-than-average curve made me feel comfortable only running 25, hence the 3 Mishra's Factory, rather than 4. Obviously this isn't a dramatic difference, but I think a similar list could get away with even less.

      Notable Cards

      Animation Module

      The deck's namesake, alongside Ravager's modular mechanic. No doubt, this looks like a gimmicky card and when I first started playing with it, I expected it to be. My original goal was to build a Servo-centric deck to play on stream in between tournament matches. I quickly realized it was a lot stronger than I had predicted.

      Cards that look like this are usually bad. Consider Thopter Foundry/Sword of the Meek, a pretty reasonable analog. Neither card is dead on it's own, but you're not excited to draw one without the other. When you assemble them both you get a neat interaction, something that gives you a big edge, but doesn't necessarily operate at Vintage scale - Thopter tokens will win a game where both players have average hands, but they won't beat a good hand that has Paradoxical Outcome or Monastery Mentor. Compare it to Time Vault/Voltaic Key and it comes up short, you need a really good effect to justify running cards that are sometimes dead, and Vault/Key doesn't even see the play it used to.

      Animation Module is definitely a Thopter-quality effect, and not a Time Vault-quality effect. The reason it works out is that you're not filling your deck with Swords of the Meek. Every card that works well with Animation Module is a card I wanted to be running anyway. You're not sad to draw Ravager if you don't have a Module, but the deck has so many cards that interact with Module, you're not sad draw it without a Ravager, either! Multiple Modules are not dead, but not exciting, either - but I've definitley kept lock-heavy hands with Module and no creatures and been happy with it ... you're going to draw a card that works with Module before the game ends, and you're going to have a little more reach because of it.

      Even given the sheer volume of synergy, I don't think I'd be running Module if it didn't cost 1. Remember everything I said about 2 drops earlier? This applies far more to 1 drops, it's just that there aren't a lot of good 1 drops for Workshop decks. It is so common to have 1 mana floating on the first turn, that Animation Module is almost always a freeroll. A Workshop, or an Ancient Tomb with a Mox give you a very pleasing curve of "Turn 1: Module+Sphere, Turn 2: Threat + Servo + (Wasteland or Land + Threat). With nine 2-drops that come into play with counters, this isn't particularly hard to pull off.

      When the deck is working, you get out threats that get scarier over time, you get them in play before opposing Wastelands can do any real damage, and you free up your mana for lock pieces and activated abilities. If and when your opponent manages to cast anything scary of their own, Animation Module gives your team the reach to beat it.

      Hangarback Walker

      There's nothing particularly special about the 1x Hangarback Walker here, I wanted another Ravager/Overseer/Module synergy card and Hangarback was the next best card I wasn't running. If another slot freed up somehow, I'd add another. If I had to cut a card, it would be the first to go.

      Sideboard: Foundry Inspector

      In a vintage-timescale Foundry Inspector is a fairly new card to show up in Workshop decks. There's a good chance you've seen it around by now though. There are different use-cases for the card, but in my experience I've found it strongest in matchups where my opponent has Wastelands and/or Null Rods.

      There are times it acts as an accelerant - with a 4 mana hand it's a psuedo-2-drop, you can play it, and then a Sphere, and then your second turn play out more than you would otherwise. In a deck with more 3s and 4s, like the Chief/Inspector lists, this might be worth a maindeck by itself, but with the overall low curve in this list, that's less important for me - I can play 2 cards on turn 1 and 2 without using an Inspector.

      The ability to counteract a Wasteland, Null Rod, or Sphere without spending a turn ignoring my board presence, however, is very attractive in the matchups that revolve around those cards.

      Sideboard: Null Rod

      Obviously this deck has a lot of cards that get turned off by Null Rod. Still, there are popular matchups right now, notably Car Shops and Paradoxical Outcome, that get hurt enough by Null Rod that you end up ahead by bringing them in. Don't just swap these in without thought. If you're bringing in Null Rod, you're probably bringing in Foundry Inspector as well, and you're cutting some artifacts with activated abilities. Don't cut everything out of desperation though - Null Rod won't be in play every game, every turn, and Walking Ballista still scales based on your mana. Arcbound Ravager can be surprisingly effective if it comes out before Null Rod hits, it still has Modular, and you get to eat up those soon-to-be-dead Moxes in response.

      Even if the metagame became weaker to Null Rod, I wouldn't add more to the sideboard or maindeck of this list without changing some of the other cards around.

      Mulligans and early game considerations

      None of this should be surprising to a Workshops player. What you're looking for against an unknown opponent is 2-3 lock pieces (at least one of which is not a Wasteland), 2 threats, 2-3 mana, and that mana has to be enough to play a lock piece on turn 1, and a lock piece or threat on turn 2.

      Against a known aggro opponent (Workshops / Eldrazi), you want 3-ish threats and the mana to cast them, lock pieces are nice but not critical. Against a known non-aggro opponent (Mentor / Outcome) you want 3-ish lock pieces and at least 1 threat.

      If you don't have a turn one play and you still have 6 or 7 cards in your hand, mulligan. Once you hit five, I honestly don't know.

      Notable Interactions

      Walking Ballista + Arcbound Ravager
      Sacrifice some artifacts to Ravager, sacrifice the Ravager and modular those +1/+1 counters over to Ballista, and throw them at whatever you want. If you can attack unblocked (or move the counters from ravager to an unblocked Ballista mid-combat, hint hint), you'll hit them for that damage twice. 10 artifacts in play? Take 20.

      People have been doing this with Triskelion for years, but now you can do it for a lot less mana.

      Animation Module + Arcbound Ravager

      Sacrifice any artifact to Ravager, pay 1 to make a Servo token. Sacrifice the Servo token to Ravager, pay 1 to make a Servo token. Repeat as often as you want to give Ravager a +1/+1 counter for each mana you pay. Terrifying for your opponent whether or not you've drawn a Ballista yet.

      Animation Module + Steel Overseer

      Module triggers once for every creature that gets a counter, so with Steel Overseer you'll double the number of creatures you have each turn, up to the amount of colorless mana you have.

      Animation Module + Ballista, Hangarback

      Less exciting, but still good over time. Activate Animation Module for 3+1 to add a counter and get a Servo. With a Hangarback you can get 2 counters and 2 Servos each turn. Walking Ballista + Animation Module won't get out of hand under normal circumstances, but if you happen to have an Academy, things get ugly fast

      Animation Module + Tangle Wire

      This hasn't come up for me, and I suspect it's rare that you'd want to, but Module can be used to keep a Tangle Wire alive forever. You can respond to the trigger on your own upkeep to add counters before your mana is tapped down. I suspect this could be strong if you had something else to do on your upkeep before tapping your board down, like activating an Overseer or Hangarback Walker.

      The fact that Animation Module is a 1-drop permanent that works while it's tapped can be pretty handy with a Tangle Wire out, too.

      Animation Module + Null Rod

      Not exactly synergy, but an interaction worth knowing. The Servo-generating ability on Animation Module is triggered, which means it works under a Null Rod. Null Rod turns off most of your ways of adding counters to things, but you can still get one Servo every time you play a Ravager, Walking Ballista, or Hangarback Walker.

      I haven't tested this yet, but Metallic Mimic + Animation Module combos off entirely under Null Rod - Cast a Ravager or Walker to start things off, then pay X mana to get X 2/2 Servos. Not backbreaking, but possibly worth keeping in mind.

      Mishra's Factory + Ravager, Overseer

      Not new to this deck but often overlooked. Ravager and Overseer can both put counters on Mishra's Factory which don't go away when it turns back into a land. Where this can give you a big edge is matchups where the opponent wants to do something powerfully anti-creature or anti-artifact on their turn. Factory and +1/+1 counters, if timed correctly, can turn certain defeat into a victory against a Serenity, Pulverize, or Oath of Druids.

      Sideboard Guide

      Mentor

      -2x Steel Overseer
      -1x Animation Module

      +2 Dismember
      +1 Spatial Contortion

      I've tried a lot of anti-mentor stuff, but Dismember is consistently "alright" and everything else I've tried have been consistently "bad". Mentor being sideboard-resistant is one of the reasons the deck is so strong - so it's best not to hurt your maindeck trying to get too clever. Spatial Contortion acts as a 3rd Dismember here, because casting 3 Dismember in the same game will kill you. I would consider fitting a 2nd Contortion in the board, but there's definitely a diminishing return on removal against Mentor decks.

      If you see or strongly suspect Stony Silence/Null Rod, you can also:
      -1x Animation Module
      -2x Steel Overseer
      +3 Foundry Inspector

      Most Mentor+Rod lists these days have 2ish Stony Silence and run the Swords to Plowshares/Fragmentize+Snapcaster/JVP plan. The presence of Dack Fayden could make Hangarback worse than Overseer/Module, and if my opponent had 4+ Null Rod effects it could make sense to drop some artifact mana over a creature or two. Opposing Wastelands probably make Crucible better than the last Animation Module.

      Workshops, Eldrazi

      -4 Thorn of Amethyst
      -3 Tangle Wire
      on the draw:
      -1 Trinisphere
      -1 Chalice of the Void
      on the play:
      -1 Tangle Wire
      -1 Sphere of Resistance

      +3 Crucible of Worlds
      +3 Foundry Inspector
      +2 Dismember
      +1 Spatial Contortion

      I like keeping Spheres around because the mana curve is so low to the ground. Your aggro-mirror cards all cost 1 and 2 rather than the 5s and 6s you often see in Workshop mirrors. Foundry Inspector plays into this plan, by providing an extra threat, but also smoothing out your mana in games where either player is heavy on Wastelands or lock pieces.

      Your activated abilities are so good here that I don't think I would board them out even if the Eldrazi player was on Null Rods. You could drop a piece of artifact mana to fit in another Sphere/Wire if you wanted, but I'd be cautious about doing any more than that.

      Paradoxical Outcome

      +2 Null Rods
      +3 Foundry Inspector
      -3 Animation Module
      -1 Hangarback Walker
      -1 Steel Overseer

      Module/Overseer is just way too slow here, and obviously bringing in Null Rods isn't doing them any favors. Inspector isn't particularly good in this matchup, but it's better than what you're taking out. Your goal here is just to throw down lock pieces and never let up, sometimes Inspector lets you get a threat on the table without slowing down the mana pressure, and this is matchup where a 3/2 now is better than a 5/5 later.

      Oath

      -1 Hangarback Walker
      -3 Steel Overseer
      +4 Grafdigger's Cage

      Steel Overseer and Hangarback Walkers are the only creatures in the deck don't either count as a lock piece themselves, or sacrifice themselves at a moment's notice if an Oath comes down. This matchup needs more testing, as Oath isn't very popular online.

      Dredge

      -4 Phyrexian Revoker
      +4 Grafdigger's Cage

      Four cards is pretty small for an anti-dredge package, and I would consider running more in a different metagame. The maindeck here is pretty strong game 1 though, with 5 Strip effects, all the Spheres, and 9 Bridge-Busters. If you drop a Sphere to hold off Dread Return, your creatures should be able to handle quite a few Zombies, Prized Amalgams, and Ichorids.

      Big Blue/Landstill

      These decks vary a bit much to have a hard and fast rule, you have to try and get a feel for what they might be running in game one. If Crucible looks like it would be good for them, it's good for you. If they have Null Rods, you want Inspectors. If there are creatures that you can't beat without Dismember, run Dismember.

      Post-Event Updates and Conclusions

      This feels sacrilegious to type but I have mixed feelings about Crucible of Worlds. Historically Crucible is a huge asset in Shops vs Shops and Shops vs Eldrazi. Unexpectedly, in the games I've played where a Crucible came into play (on either side of the table), it was just too slow to matter. I suspect that Workshops matches are become increasingly about tempo, and that one turn spent playing Crucible, not affecting the board, is getting more and more costly. Crucible has such a strong history that I don't want to be too hasty, but I'm definitely planning on trying other anti-aggro cards in that slot.

      I'm very curious about running Metallic Mimic alongside the Animation Module as a further hedge against Null Rod, but I would guess there are some serious consistency issues there, and little space to fit it.

      It's hard to predict where the meta will go from here. The recent trend of 4-8 Swords to Plowshares effects makes Thought Knot Seer and Fleetwheel Cruiser a less exciting bargain, but Fragmentize, which is also gaining popular, is less great against either. I expect increased presence of Workshop aggro, and I like this list's position against those decks. Of course, more Workshops means more decks built with resilient manabases and answers to large artifacts, which changes the value of everything in one direction or the other. In the near-term, I think the adoption or falling-off of Null Rod is going to have the biggest impact on how people build Workshop decks.

      posted in Workshops
      Brass Man
      Brass Man

    Latest posts made by Brass Man

    • Catastrolabe!

      Catastrolabe

      # Catastrolabe
      
      ## Combo/Threats/Kill
      1 Bolas' Citadel
      1 Brain Freeze
      3 Displacer Kitten
      1 Monastery Mentor
      3 Teferi, Time Raveler
      1 Snapcaster Mage
      1 Tinker
      
      ## Disruption
      1 Flusterstorm
      1 Force of Negation
      4 Force of Will
      1 Soul-Guide Lantern
      
      ## Draw/Selection/Fixing
      1 Ancestral Recall
      3 Arcum's Astrolabe
      1 Brainstorm
      1 Dig Through Time
      1 Gitaxian Probe
      1 Mental Misstep
      1 Merchant Scroll
      1 Mystical Tutor
      1 Paradoxical Outcome 
      1 Ponder
      2 Preordain
      2 Senesei's Divining Top
      1 Time Walk 
      
      # Mana
      6 Blue Fetches
      3 Snow-Covered Island
      2 Tundra
      1 Tolarian Academy
      3 Urza's Saga 
      9 Moxes, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Lotus, Mana Vault
      1 Mox Opal
      
      # Sideboard
      1 Balance
      1 Flusterstorm
      1 Grafdigger's Cage
      3 Hurkyl's Recall
      1 Lavinia, Azorious Renegade
      1 Pithing Needle
      1 Prismatic Ending
      1 Rest in Peace
      2 Soul-Guide Lantern
      1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
      2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
      
      

      I haven't been playing much vintage since the pandemic. It's been a long time since I've been able to be ahead of the curve on MTGO so I couldn't resist the opportunity to build around a card that hasn't been released online. I played this [[Displacer Kitten]]-centric deck at the Team Serious Invitational this weekend and thought it would be fun to do a quick writeup. I may put together a report for the event later but that will probably focus on the social aspect and not the deck itself.

      Fair warning, my record on the day was an extremely mediocre 2-4, leaving me with little hard evidence to reccomend the deck. However, the games themselves felt very smooth, almost surprisingly so. My losses were close, and didn't involve the new cards. There were no consistency issues. The first round of the event was the first match of Vintage I had played in months and I believe tighter play would have turned several of my losses into wins. I don't think I'll be attending any other events in the near future, but if I was I would continue to refine/test/play this deck. Maybe someone on TMD can pick up the ball and run with it.

      Plan A

      The core combo is [[Displacer Kitten]] and [[Teferi, Mind Raveler]], and any free or mana-postive permanent:

      • Tap a Mox Sapphire for U
      • Use Teferi's -3 ability to return it to your hand and draw a card
      • Replay the Mox, using Displacer Kitten's ability to flicker your Teferi, resetting its counters

      This can be repeated until you draw your entire library. I decided to use [[Brain Freeze]] or [[Monastery Mentor]] + [[Time Walk]] as my finishers (on accout of their utility outside of the combo), but you could use any finisher you prefer. Some perhaps non-obvious notes about the combo:

      • As you start drawing your deck you'll hit more artifacts and each of those artifacts can trigger Kitten and flicker something else. It should be easy to generate mana in any combination (you can, for instance, kill by hardcasting Bolas Citadel and tapping it twice despite no Underground Seas)
      • Any spell will reset Teferi's loyalty and start the loop, so you don't need to be conservative about saving loyalty counters before you go off
      • You don't actually need to generate mana to keep the combo going. That means that in the face of a [[Null Rod]] or a [[Sphere of Resistance]] you can stil draw your entire deck and generate 40ish storm. Every spell you draw gives you an extra flicker above and beyond what you need to sustain the combo, which can be used to flicker Teferi and bounce an opponent's card, which means [[Null Rod]] has no effect on the combo outside of making it harder for you to cast [[Displacer Kitten]]
      • [[Displacer Kitten]] can flicker itself as well as Teferi, which means you can use an instant like [[Brainstorm]] to counter a removal spell

      Additional Synergies

      Unlike, say [[Time Vault]] + [[Voltaic Key]], the two combo cards are very functional on their own. [[Arcum's Astrolabe]] isn't necessary for the primary combo but it works really well at stitching the deck together and independantly synergizes with each of the deck's various lines. [[Displacer Kitten]] + [[Arcum's Astrolabe]] makes all of your spells draw an additional card, and I won several games where that synergy created an overwhelming advantage that locked everything up by itself. It serves as an extra permanent for [[Paradoxial Outcome]] and an extra artifact for [[Mox Opal]] and [[Urza's Saga]], the fact that it cantrips makes it very low-cost for the versatility it provides. [[Urza's Saga]] is a generally solid card, but the high artifact turns it from a utility player into something that can lock down an aggro deck. [[Snapcaster Mage]] and [[Soul-Guide Lantern]] as well are perfectly playable cards that can get out of hand when a [[Displacer Kitten]] is in play. [[Sensei's Divining Top]] can draw you a card if you play an instant in response to it's tap abilty, or be used to generate extra flicker triggers the way you use it with a [[Monastery Mentor]]. All of these cards lightly synergize with Teferi as well, you should basically always have SOMETHING in play that you can profitably bounce with his -3 ability.

      Comparative Strengths and Weaknesses

      This began as a [[Paradoxical Outcome]] deck which shifted around during the deckbuilding process. It shares some of the weaknesses of Outcome's manabase with the additional burden of Snow-Covered Lands. The Astrolabes make splashing late-game spells easier but early-game spells harder. I suspect you'd have difficulty supporting something like, say [[Duress]] or [[Deathrite Shaman]]. The deck is capable of explosive draws but certainly not like Outcome gets. I don't have the reps with the list to be sure, but I did once stall out with [[Bolas' Citadel]] and I'm guessing it's a little worse in this list than it is in Outcome. While it wasn't a problem in my games, the 3U cost on [[Displacer Kitten]] is not cheap, and it's competing with cards like Outcome or [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor]]. At 2U I would be confident the deck was top-tier, but at 3U that's anything but certain. It's especially bad to pay four mana on a 2/2 blue body which is so vulnerable to one-mana removal like [[Pyroblast]] and [[Lightning Bolt]]. This particular build doesn't really take much advantage of the 2/2 body, you can't really leverage attacking for 2 the way you could in a deck with more creatures.

      But the list is a good fit for me, personally, because it's strong in a few places that I happen to value a lot. The pieces of the combo are all functional on their own, leaving you very few dead draws. It takes advantage of the graveyard and artifact mana without being very vulnerable to graveyard and artifact hate. I think it really can't be overstated how big a deal it is that Teferi's abilities are baked right into the combo. While this technically a three-card, 7 mana combo compared to vault+key's two-card, 4 mana ... in practice, winning often requires assembling counter backup, removing a hate card or two, and being extra cauteous not to walk your 1-of Time Vault into removal. Half the time you need something like a Teferi to win with Vault+Key anyway. The fact that Teferi already protects you from hate and countermagic is huge. The fact that none of the cards are restricted AND they're good on their own means you can get a level of redundancy other decks can't, and happily burn your combo pieces for value if needed.

      Possible Adjustments

      Because you draw your whole deck and get tons of mana, choice of win condition should be very flexible. You could defintely push the list to be more explosive by upping the [[Paradoxical Outcome]]s and [[Mox Opal]]s. Alternatively you could probably make it more midrangey and leverage the 2/2 cat body by adding more creatures, bonus points if those creatures have enter-or-leaves-the-battlefield triggers. I ran 3 Kittens because I wanted to get more chances to see them in action. That number wasn't a problem, but you could make an argument to go to 2. The [[Arcum's Astrolabe]]s aren't strictly necessary for the combo and cutting them (along with maybe the Sagas) would give you room to try other colors out ... but I was pleasantly surprised by how much work they did. I don't consider anything in the sideboard to be essential and it can be adjusted to your taste/metagame (though don't forget that [[Urza's Saga]] makes one-of cheap artifacts better).

      posted in Big Blue
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: StoneBlade

      @botvinik said in StoneBlade:

      The ledger shredders look like the worst card in the deck by a mile as to name one they take at least 2 turns to get bigger than delver.

      I don't know what their average growth speed is, but you might have missed how many times this can trigger. Up to once per player, once per turn, so up to 4 times per turn cycle. You could play a Ledger Shredder on turn two and it could be a 7/9 by the time you attack on turn three. Of course that'll almost never happen, but I've seen plenty of games where Delver doesn't flip for five or six turns, so this may just be faster than Delver on average. (Not to say it should replace Delver in every deck, 1U and U are very different mana costs)

      posted in Vintage Strategy
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Format Inertia

      It's definitely a shame if a stagnant metagame is pushing creative decks out of the format, I love to see variety at a tournament. I can't speak for the newer generation of MTGO Vintage players but a lot of older planeswalkers really LIKE the inertia, it's the appeal of the format. In my circles, when the power level of Standard changed such that every new set had a dozen Vintage playables, Vintage play leveled off and interest in fully static formats like Old School and Middle School shot up.

      There's no SHAME in wanting an inertia-free format. Standard is an inertia-free format, it's much more popular than Vintage (even at stores where Vintage is free-to-play), there's a bigger online community for it, more strategy content available, better tournament support at every level of play, and people at Wizards are actually paid to figure out how to make it better. If you want it there's no reason you can't have it right now, and there's absolutely nothing about playing more Standard that's going to take away from your Vintage experience. But maybe you can learn to love format inertia, too?

      Inertia is the ability to enter a tournament on the weekend and fully engage in the game without having to research the metagame. It's the ability to make long-term investments in time, attention, and cardboard. Inertia is the ability to write a meaningful primer, learn from and become an archetype-specialist or craft a battle-tested rogue deck. Format inertia is the thing that Chess has that an abandoned MMO doesn't, the thing a novel has that a tweet doesn't.

      It's funny that you mention rental services as a possible solution to format inertia that failed. I think maybe that's backwards. Format inertia is a possible solution to the problem of rental services. For a lot of people, Vintage is or was appealing as a format for people who want to own things. This is true for cardboard, but it's just as true when you're playing for free with your friends. A 10-year-veteran workshop pilot owns their deck in a way a standard player cant', even if none of the cards are real.

      If you get bored playing the same matches every week, don't play the same matches every week! Play another matchup! Maybe play a little standard or draft or invent your own format, or get dinner or write a poem or build a bookshelf. And if you get the itch to play Vintage later, it'll still be there when you want it. That is, as long as there's enough format inertia.

      posted in Vintage Community
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Looking for old decklist... control circa 2001

      @schmakt

      Welcome back! I'm not sure I can help find you your specific list - there were a LOT of decks back then that fit those criteria. However you might have luck searching the old-old site! I've kept it up at www.archive.themanadrain.com . The search feature still works, if you ever posted it to the site, you may be able to find it. I couldn't find your list, but here's a post where you talked about cutting Timetwister from your Keeper deck, if that helps jog your memory 😄 http://www.archive.themanadrain.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=9o7rqav6ml33iqhj5847a2lfa4&topic=11832.msg224306#msg224306

      Oh. Also, there was a program we used to use to play online before MTGO was a thing. Pseudo-graphical... no card art... everything just represented by little colored squares with hover text... any memory of that?

      Ah, I remember it well 😄 There were a few programs people used. The two most popular were Apprentice and Magic Workstation. I'd bet you're thinking of one of those two. The modern free equivalent to those old programs is Cockatrice https://cockatrice.github.io/ . There are a few online communities that still regularly play with that. During the Covid pandemic we saw a rise in people playing online games of Vintage with webcams over video chat software. There are a few Discord communities dedicated to that sort of thing, but I can't recall the links offhand, maybe someone else can chime in and mention them in the thread!

      posted in Decks
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Merry Christmas!

      Merry Christmas! 🎄☃️🎅🦌

      posted in Vintage Community
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Need some creative help and ideas for a new format (Wild Card Commander)

      @joshuabrooks I wonder if five piles overcomplicates the variant. You should play it a few ways to see how it feels, but what about a single pile and a house rule that you can use any color mana to play the cards you draw from it? I don't like the idea that some commanders might have a serious disadvantage because they don't happen to be in the color that happens to have the best stack. If you do a good enough job balancing, or if people design decks with this rule in mind it might not be an issue

      If you really don't want to houserule "any color mana", definitely consider using as much hybrid mana as possible. [[Nature's Chant]] is way more interesting in this format than Disenchant.

      Consider color-identity cards that have a color identity but can technically be used by anyone. You could put a [[Granite Shard]] or a [[Foriysian Totem]] in the red stack, and every once and a while a mono blue player might want to cast it.

      A variant you could try is letting players cast spells directly from the top of that stack at any time, without worrying about replacing draws. You can limit things to once a turn, or not limit them at all (makes ramp better, but so what? any rules change makes SOMETHING better)

      The idea that you have multiple piles and each pile has a face up card is kind of interesting though. It adds a neat choice dynamic - but you can get that by splitting up piles differently, or taking a shuffled 5 color stack and cutting it in half

      Don't underestimate how important ergonomics are for a game mechanic. That is, a single stack of cards in a unique set of sleeves means it's going to be a lot easier to set everything up and put it away. That means you can get more games in, it's going to be easier to convince someone unfamiliar to play, etc. If you do want to play with the idea of having separate stacks, I'd recommend sleeving each stack differently (probably color-coded, in sleeves that you wouldn't expect players to use) to make cleanup as seamless as possible. I think if you just had a single stack of cards that worked for any deck, that gives you the best possible chance of bringing that stack to a tournament and finding a group of people with their own commander decks to play. If you're sure you just want to play this with an established group that's invested in trying different formats, you have a lot more leeway

      The top card being face up adds an interesting dynamic. I would try to look for cards that raise questions when you know your opponent might draw them. There isn't much you can do to prepare for a Timetwister, but a Wrath on top of a deck changes how everyone plays. I like the Disenchant scenario you described, I especially like the dynamic of "Alice has a threat that NEEDS to be killed, and there's a Disenchant on top of the white pile. I could take it, but can I convince Bob to skip his draw and take it instead?" I think it's good to focus on conditional cards that are a dilemma to take, over anything that's just going to give you a raw advantage like draw spell.

      There's another direction you could try which is splitting cards into piles not by color but by general effect. There could be a "cheap utility cards" pile, a "disruption/answers" pile, a "big splashy threat" pile etc. That approach almost gets more interesting if you CANT see the top card of the deck before you draw it.

      I think "draw from a pile instead of your draw for turn" is more interesting if the top cards are face down (other players don't know what you got), but keeping the top card of the pile face up works really nicely with "you cast directly from the pile to the stack". Personal preference, maybe.

      One kind of card that can be pretty neat in a shared-deck format is anything that affects deck order. For instance, you could rule that a card with Scry, played off of a shared deck, Scries the shared deck, not yours. You don't want to overdo it, and you definitely don't want any reusable effects like Divining Top, but a handful of those cards can be pretty fun, letting you try to set up or deny another player.

      posted in Off-Topic
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Just checking in

      @john-cox this might be possible if one of those aggregator sites has a public API. I can look into it, but I'm not sure what's out there.

      Another possibility, if one/some of the site regulars want to maintain a list of important decks in a thread or dedicated subforum, I can sticky it or make a banner for it. I wouldn't trust my own ability to maintain an accurate decks-to-beat section right now

      posted in TheManaDrain Metadiscussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • Just checking in

      Site upgrades and maintenance have been back-burnered for me, and I haven't been able to follow the highs and lows of the format too closely for a while.

      I know activity has been pretty light here on TMD-proper, most newer players are spending time in newer online communities, and the old guard keeps getting older. But even though I haven't been too involved in actual Vintage matches lately, I still care about you folks 😄 .

      So for everyone still kicking around - how are you doing? Are you getting what you want out of the site? If not, is there any way I can help? If you're reading this, this is for you.

      posted in TheManaDrain Metadiscussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: Initiative to help save Paper Vintage

      @magicmike you could run a tournament right now at an alternate venue, with alcohol, sanctioned or not. I've been to lots of Vintage events like that. Is there anything particular you'd want to get out of a sanctioning body that you think is holding you back?

      posted in Off-Topic
      Brass Man
      Brass Man
    • RE: [D&D] Maddening Hex

      Three mana is A LOT for this kind of effect. But it's kind of neat how the random element can hurt your opponent's ability to plan. There was an era where [[Pyrostatic Pillar]] was a popular card, and storm players would have to think things like: "I can cast 6 more cheap spells this game, I need to cast 9 spells in the same turn to win. I can afford to cast Ancestral any time, but I can only afford to cast this Mox if I KNOW I'm going to win this turn.". With Maddening Hex the storm math rapidly hits combinatorial explosion, e.g. "If I play a Mox and roll 2 damage, I can cast on average 5 more spells, which is enough to win, but if I roll 3 damage I can only cast on average 4 more spells, which is enough as long as I don't roll any 6s, but if I roll 4 on my initial damage roll, I'll have to stop going for it this turn, so I have a 33% of having an 80% chance of winning, an 18% chance of having a ....".

      I'm not sure if a deck can afford to spend 1RR on this, but increasing the algorithmic complexity of your opponent's game state is an underrated tactic, and this card does a hell of a job of that.

      posted in Single-Card Discussion
      Brass Man
      Brass Man