If you don't have Yet Another Aether Vortex in the stack, you absolutely should. Maybe active player controls the creature? We used to play Type 4 with this card always in play and it was a blast.

@brass-man said in The best format in Vintage history ...:

@revengeanceful said in The best format in Vintage history ...:

he was kind enough to sign my Memnarch after smashing me in the round 2 of that event that didn't count.

Oh my god, the phantom round two! What an insane event that was. I ran TPS and ended up in a t4 or t2 split. I won the advertised Black Lotus which it turned out was damaged heavily enough to be unplayable in a sleeve. I had a good time as well, but that will surely go down in history as one of the worst-run Vintage tournaments of all time. Perhaps second only to the Baldswinsville catastrophe. Someday I'll have to write that stuff down.

lol, yeah that event was a total disaster, but I had a great time anyway. Now I'm curious about the Baldwinsville catastrophe.

My personal favorite periods of Vintage history have very little to do with the format itself, and more to do with who I was able to spend time with. My most active participation in the Vintage community was from 2003-2006 period, and I'll always look back fondly at periods 50-54 and 58 in particular.

50 - The Age of Storm (aka Beginnings)

This was shortly after I arrived at college and realized that half of the people on my floor played Magic, and several of them were interested in getting into Vintage. We really bonded over playtesting janky decks, and one friend of mine who has since passed away even won a Mox Pearl in a local tournament piloting a hacked together version of Burning Tendrils - turns out you don't really need power if you have 4x LED, 4x Burning Wish for Yawg Will.

51 - Burning Tendrils Flames Out (aka Falling in Love)

During this period I got my first taste of a big Vintage tournament, piloting Oshawa Stompy to a top 16 finish at Andy Stokinger's Dual Lotus tournament in Storrs, CT, iirc, which also happened to the first and only time I met @Smmenen - he was kind enough to sign my Memnarch after smashing me in the round 2 of that event that didn't count. This tournament was great fun, and really sealed my love of the format and the community.

52-54 - Control Slaver Emerges to The End of Type 1 (aka Give Em the Clamps)

I'll always remember the time spent helping a friend tune an Affinity list featuring the newly printed Genesis Chamber and Skullclamp, culminating with him winning a Mox with it in a local event. That deck was super sweet and did some really busted stuff with the right draws. Subsequent to that, I worked tirelessly with the help of others to try and break Arcbound Crusher, exploiting its interaction with Genesis Chamber and Affinity creatures. This ended up not being quite as good as just playing Trinisphere, but it was really fun to work on and play, and one of the co-creators did top 16 an SCG Power 9 tournament with it so there was some merit to the idea.

58 - Meandeck Gifts (aka Re-connecting)

After taking a brief break from the format and getting into the Vs System competitive scene for a bit, I circled back to Vintage. Being in Western MA at the time, I had the opportunity to connect with a great group of local players. It was great to be a part of the community again, and I'll never forget cramming onto the floor of a hotel room the night before a Waterbury with what felt like 12 other people. I remember very little of the Magic from that weekend other than @Brass-Man winning a huge game of Type 4, but I'll remember the experience forever.

The following summer I sold off my Magic collection to fund the necessities for my summer internship, and I fell out of the loop with Vintage and the community. It wasn't until after my friend passed away in 2015 that I came back to the format to help organize a Vintage tournament in his memory, and I'm really glad that I did.

@protoaddict said in B&R Announcement - May 18, 2020:

This entire discussion pertains to the B&R list, which is for sanctioned formats. If you want to play proxy or have your own banned lists that is your prerogative, but I do not see how you can decouple this discussion from sanctioned play.

Literally every paper tournament I have played in that has allowed proxies/playtest cards has followed the current B&R list. I think it is a bit silly to limit the discussion solely to sanctioned events, of which there are roughly 1-2 per year as someone noted earlier. It may be your opinion that sanctioned is the lifeblood of the format, but that is an opinion, not a fact. I tend to hold the exact opposite opinion, for instance. I think paper Vintage would die completely if not for proxy events.

I maintain my hope that the action they will take for Vintage is to ban Lurrus, but only as a companion. Allowing it to still be included in your 60 maintains some measure of consistency with the (eminently arguable) spirit of the format as the one place where you can play every card. There may come a time when an outright ban of a card is the only correct action, but I don't think this is it.

I think the most elegant solution I've heard of to the Lurrus issue is to ban it as a companion, but not as a card in your deck. It keeps the supposed spirit of the format alive (a place where you can play "any" card), while solving the issue of Lurrus being the companion for literally every deck.

You might want to check out the Vintage 101 articles on MTGGoldfish. The author, TMD's own @volrathxp , takes a fairly indepth look into a different deck each week. Not exactly a full primer, but should give you some foundational knowledge.

@tittliewinks22 It is, yeah. There's a Discord and Facebook group both dedicated to helping folks get set up and finding games. I think discussion of this event will be taking place in both.

I could see Jeskai running one of these to smooth things out a little, but overall probably not a big impact on Vintage. Kind of insane that they made these, though.

I know Landstill isn't particularly in vogue at the moment, but could this be a finisher for that archetype? Or is it too narrow/slow?