I know Shattering Spree doesn't see a lot of play these days, but this is better than it in a lot of cases, right? While it's an additional colorless for the first one, generating additional colorless seems a lot easier than generating additional red mana for each target after the first.
I won an 18-person event yesterday with the Asia Vintage Champs winning list, swapping out Spell Queller for Dryad Militant. Played against blue decks every round (including Outcome once, where the high density of Stony/Null Rod really paid off) and got quite lucky in my top 8 matches, but the deck felt really good.
Assassin's Trophy BG
Instant
Destroy target permanent an opponent controls. Its controller may search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle their library.
Abrupt Decay has been on a bit of a downswing lately, but this seems to have potential in that same slot of flexible removal for BUG and/or Oath decks. Losing uncounterable hurts, but the additional ability to hit any permanent might make up for that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Serious congratulations on making it to the end of this monumental effort. I look forward to picking up a copy when it gets compiled into a book.
One thing I'd love to see more of is gameplay videos that aren't just streams posted after the fact. I get why we don't have a lot of these, since they take more editing work and time commitment than just posting a stream, but I'd love to have more of these.
@mdkubiak I agree wholeheartedly. Let's let the players play for a while, let the dust settle and see what shakes out. Vintage should be by its very nature the slowest-moving format; restrictions every six months or a year are far too frequent to let the metagame correct for surface-level issues.
I just watched the replay of @hierarchnoble's stream with this deck, and it looks like an absolute blast. One thing that jumped out to me is that the mana base seems stretched a bit thin with the blue power, the black tutors, and the white sideboard cards. The black tutors also seemed a bit slow. I'm loving the discussion on this deck; with some fine tuning it could be a real factor in the metagame.
Stony Silence is probably the single best hate card against the deck, but I've found the best way to beat the deck is a combination of early disruption and a fast clock. Even if you land a hate card early, if you don't end the game soon thereafter they might find a way to draw out of it.
@dr-j Could a one-of Consecrated Sphinx be an alternative to the Geyser? Closes the game quickly, is a decent way to spend Drain mana, and makes it hard for your opponent to claw back into the game if you're ahead on cards.
@jclnc007 If you plan to add Dreadnought, then it seems your deck will be kind of a weird hybrid of two old archetypes from back in 2003/2004- MaskNaught, and 7/10 Split.
An example list of 7/10 Split from around that time can be found here.
An example MaskNaught list can be found here.
While neither is particularly relevant in Vintage these days, they're still fun archetypes to play around with. My recommendation would be to pick one strategy to focus on, rather than try to mash two fairly different decks together. I think you'll have more success and more fun that way. 
@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.
@moorebrother1 You cannot. When you cast a spell, you remove it from its current zone and place it on the stack, so the Ancestral won't be in the graveyard to be cast again.
Re: Blast Zone:
Still, the design space on this card is simply explosive
Oh you! Great stuff, as always!
Another good article, Joe. I like the addition of opening hands to these, it's something that has increased relevance to Vintage games compared to other formats, and it should help generate discussion. On these hands:
Ravager Shops #1 - Agree with keep. Lead on Tomb + Emerald --> Sphere, follow up will depend on what opponent plays, but having lots of options is nice.
Ravager Shops #2 - I definitely wouldn't go down to 5 here, I think this hand is keepable. I'm really torn on whether to send back Ballista or Ravager, but I think I agree that Ravager is the right one to push to the bottom. I'd sequence this with Tomb + Lotus --> Stonecoil for 3, followed by Sphere to get both disruption and a clock on the board. Unfortunately, this line only allows for a Ballista for 1 on turn two, so maybe this isn't the right line. Curious what others would do.
Golos #1 - Agree this is a keep, should keep your opponent disrupted long enough to draw more action. Tomb --> Thorn is probably how I open with this hand, though that does leave you pretty vulnerable to Wasteland.
Golos #2 - Even on the draw, I think this is a keep. Trinisphere is still disruptive enough even if your opponent gets the first turn that I'd keep it and lead with that. Following up with back to back Golos's on the next couple turns should give you a big mana advantage to leverage for the rest of the game.
I'm really excited for this. PTs used to be must watch events for me, and I'm looking forward to watching them again!
I agree with @ssasala. After resolving Lotus, I would have played Cavern on Human followed by TKS. You're fairly likely to draw the single mana source you need to play one of your many 2-drops on turn two, and this is probably the only way to get your TKS on the board.
@darkr3x I submitted an event. It's not a Vintage event, but I hope you don't mind including it. It's a charity event that I'm organizing for a friend of mine that passed away last year. All are welcome to attend.
