Damping Sphere isn't good. It's a prison piece in a deck that doesn't particularly want to prison.

There are a few real problems with the deck as constructed.

First, you're a little softer to Jeskai now, as everyone and their mother has maindeck ways to kill artifacts. You used be be able to say "my sword will survive if it's not Dack'd" with high certainty, and now you can't.

Second, Inferno Titan Oath is a bigger part of the metagame. Stoneblade can beat normal Griselbrand Oath, albeit with some difficulty. You can never in a million years beat Inferno Titan Oath. You just don't have the tools to do that efficiently, and you're too aggressive of a deck to simply play control until you find Mentor.

Third, the outcomes decks have homogenized into a cleaner variant than before. You used to be roughly favored against people trying to really durdle a lot with outcomes->Tendrils. Now you can just die to the secondary effect. You're still probably favored, but it's by less than before, and it's less clean than just casting Stony Silence.

Basically, the metagame changed. This deck attacked Shops decks and trash deck (White Hate/Merfolk/Humans/Other) players better than a lot of the rest of the metagame, while still being effective enough to get wins against Jeskai and Outcomes if you could outplay your opponent. Now that you don't have as much trash to take out (we're a ways away from Champs, for example, and the metagame has consolidated), and the good decks are better against you. So...you end up with a deck that's fundamentally a metagame call against a meta that no longer exists.

One of the changes i've made which I like is cutting the Library of Alexandria for a maindeck Ancient Tomb. You just don't want to be playing a long game with the deck, so just having more ability to just slam Karn onto the table is great.

@chubbyrain Honestly, the thing I hate the most (and the most unfixable problem with the deck) is how hot and cold the deck runs. Sometimes, you're like "HURR DURR here's Karn->Outcomes", and other times you're "...I have cast 1 business spell, it got countered, I'm drawing nothing but mana".

When you're running hot, you're utterly unbeatable. When you're running cold, it's a miserable experience.

@smmenen said in April 16, 2018 Banned And Restricted Announcement:

Which I think would be interactive and fair by vintage standards. Certainly no worse than PO, Dredge or Workshops.

Which is crux--PO, Workshops and Dredge all require relatively specialized tools to beat (in order of specialization). Adding another one of these decks to the format in Combo Lands brings Vintage closer to Modern, where you simply can't have all the right tools. Modern is a roaring success of a format--so that's not necessarily a bad thing.

@mdkubiak You can't justify it right now. It's a bit more than 10k for a set of unlimited power.

Going to champs (or SCG Con or another sanctioned event) is a dice roll. You're bringing an easily stealable car (and for some players, a house. Roland comes to mind) to a room. I've seriously considered not bringing real power to proxy events because it's insane to take the risk.

Paper vintage feels non-viable as a growing format already. I'm close to to the youngest person at a lot of Vintage events, and I'm going on 30, where 5 years ago, the 'younger players' crew was 25, and I can hardly remember when a new player became a regular--I show up to only a few events, but it's always the same crew.

You simply cannot "graduate" to Vintage (or Legacy, to be 100% honest, though it's a lot easier to borrow decks for that format) without a high paying job--and how many of those people are really going to be active members of the community?

Thanks Matt (and the various people crowdsourcing this!).

Basically, I read this as there 4 decks that make any sense to play:

Paradoxical
Dredge
Xerox
Shops

Anything else is hoping and praying Variance comes your way.

(Just to get an idea--what are the various 4c Dark Confidant Piles classified as? Xerox?)

@protoaddct said in [DOM] Muldrotha, the Gravetide:

I think the reason I am up on this card is because without an infinite/auto win combo it still provides insane value compared to other options

Another big consideration: is this card better to oath into than Sun Titan? Sunny T isn't that much harder to cast, and does 90% the same thing as an ETB trigger, rather than a "it needs to survive to my main phase" deal. Not to get down on this card--but if we aren't going super nuts (so, "if we flip our Lotus, they exit, stage left"), Sun Titan seems like a somewhat more stable oath target.

@hierarchnoble said in [DOM] Voltaic Servant:

Is this little 1/3 the key to unlocking possible Vintage synergies?

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!

I see a positives:
-this doesn't get misstepped
-combos with Vault at 4 mana, just like Key

But it also dies to Bolt/Abrade/Swords, and doesn't have nearly as much incidental value as Key (e.g. untapping Grim Monolith/Mana Vault for a Pseudo Ritual, Sensei's Top Tricks).

Seems likely that someone tries this, but it ends up worse than Key most of the time. (Somehow, in other eras of Vintage where we didn't play Swords/Bolt as much, this might have been better, as the simple "doesn't get hit by misstep" would be enough incentive enough to play it!)

@forceofnature Dark Petition Costs 2. Kind of, you had to jump through hoops and be going off, bu it costs 2.

This costs 5. Like...maybe if we were binning Past in Flames and getting LED, but it requires more things to be going right before it's good. Seems almost certainly certainly not good enough.

@jonhammack I think you can feel entitled to a reasonable, polite response, even if not necessarily a handshake. For example "I don't want to shake your hand because I'm not comfortable with it, thanks for the games" is declining a handshake, but nobody should get mad about that.