@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.

@serracollector said in [DOM] Squee, the Immortal:

If black is included in lists it gives you access to Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor and Cabal Therapy. Also, Pyrokenesis is an option, exiling Squee to take out an army of MUD dudes, or a handful or Tokens/Snappys/Pyros/Bobs/Vryns etc etc.

That is an absurd amount of value.

@ssasala That, I think, is the real issue. The cards are probably just barely too inefficient to really be competitive.

Really--I think the deck has two things going for it. First, you can almost certainly beat shops if you want to, since you can play a gazillion ETB kill an artifact creatures, and your aggro plan isn't that bad (though Ballista makes life harder). You've got cost reducers to fight through Sphere, and cards that make many shops draws look positively embarrassing.

Second, the goblins engine is pretty dumb in the number of cards it assembles (just in raw quantity). Better still, your engine isn't just spinning its wheels, it's also getting them dead. You've got a real shot against fair blue, as you're not really all that harmed by Force of Will (most of your cards are just goblins!). Yes, we're going to get roflstomped by the unfair blue hands, but we're not just dead to the volume of cards from Ancestral if we're caverning down Ringleadeader et. al.

Our problem is that the aggro plan is the worst of all viable aggro plans, and our combo plan is likely necessary, but quite fair all things considered. It can and does fall apart to a lot of things, and it's only barely a legacy strength plan (and the legacy deck relies on Vial+mana denial). Sure, there are truly busted and unbeatable starts (Lotus, Mountain, Warchief, Piledriver x2, they're dead), but you need more going for you than other decks, and you're subject to the whims of your opener.

@hierarchnoble said in [DOM] Squee, the Immortal:

The goal is absolutely to use Squee, the Immortal as a way to make the deck stronger than it had been before. So what can Squee do that we couldn't do before? The Serum Powder trick was the one that immediately came to mind, since it both synergizes with Squee to create card advantage and treats the deck as more of a combo deck by factoring in aggressive mulliganing. The Gemstone Caverns trick was also one, since the 2005 FCG deck didn't have that extra bit of acceleration in a deck that is sorely lacking on fast mana. Siege-Gang Commander as a way to grind out an opponent by having infinite fodder wasn't as sure of a thing back then either.

All reasonable points.

One card which you haven't pointed out (which is an incidental Squee Synergy, so, there's that!) is Faithless Looting. That card seems like it does a lot for just smoothing draws, and, to boot, we can discard Squee to it so it's not just straight card disadvantage.

That said, 4x Cavern of Souls does seem like a necessity--once Goblins actually gets going, it draws a lot of cards, but we need to make sure we have help getting going.

I also think we want to MD a bunch of the FTK an Artifact cards. You can potentially outgrind blue, we're not actually that good at beating Sphere of Resistance once it resolves.

Can we play black and Cabal Therapy/DT? Maybe some of the black Lorwyn Goblins are good enough.

@hierarchnoble This is actually pretty interesting. For example, casting Lackey on one makes a lot of shops hands embarassing, and "I cast recruiter, my next 4 draws are Tin Street Hooligan, good luck" also seems very good against Shops.

The problem is (1) resolving Food Chain and (2) having any game at all when we don't have Food Chain, as the straight Goblins Plan seems like it's unlikely to be good enough most of the time.

That said...it's not like Food Chain+Recruiter+Ringleader didn't kill them before hand, on the same turn you described. We need to have a further reason to go deep here (Powder is actually a pretty good one, since we can 'find' Squee via Powder).