You know that Strong Bad Email where he does “The System Is Down” as a techno song? I’m pretty sure that came from an actual loss of productivity at work. Our network server keeps going down and that leaves me very little to do except self-contained things like blogs.
Unfortunately, I also can’t reference anything on the Internet, which somewhat limits my topics since, well, I haven’t really thought of one yet.
I think we, you (my readers) and I, need to develop some sort of dialogue that allows me to, you know, cater to your needs and that kind of thing. Seriously. I will read and respond to my comments as soon as I get some I don’t write myself.
(By the way, if you haven’t seen it, Mark Gottlieb wrote me back about the Time Vault errata, so if you’re still interested, you might want to check that out.)
I just preordered playsets of Infernal Tutors and Ghost Quarters. Hopefully they’ll turn out to be worthwhile and not complete jank. Actually, if I get full worth out of the Tutors I’ll be happy. The Quarters were a dollar a piece, ironically. How can you go wrong with a tutor, though, really? It’s like playing 56 better cards in your deck.
Yeah, it was weird because yesterday afternoon I convinced myself that I had a Grim Tutor. It’s plausible. I mean, I think I got some Starter at some point, maybe, and the picture seemed strangely familiar in my mind’s eye. When I got home from work, I checked right away. Alas, it was not to be, which is probably good because I would have had seller’s remorse when I unloaded that thing for a cool $75.
I keep reading a lot online about Vintage Gifts decks, which is bad for me since I’ll probably go out and buy gifts at some point. It’s a tutor; it’s a draw spell; it ruins your opponent’s end of turn step.
I spend a lot on Magic and it’s not good for me. Thus is the burden of having a reasonable income and only one relatively expensive hobby. I rationalize the purchases by noting that I’m buying fewer CDs, movies, new books, and alcohols. Also, my new car is slightly more reliable than my old one, so I save money on maintenance costs.
Plus, in Vintage, cards stay good for a long time. Gifts Ungiven should stay playable until it either A) gets restricted or B) something better comes along. And in case B, you’ll still have a few days to trade or sell your Gifts before their value plummets like a Time Vault kicked in the erratic zones. If you can recognize the better newer card before it gets noticed widely—a tough thing to do in the Internet age—you might even be able to trade for it straight-up or better for the old version.
When I started playing Vintage, I bought the restricted list from Crop Rotation to Tolarian Academy that I didn’t already own, so probably from Windfall to Tolarian Academy minus a few cards here and there. It’s amazing how far those cards can go to increase the winning percentage of a deck. And they’re so much fun to play with too!
That was back when I was playing Easter Tendrils pretty much exclusively, and let me tell you that sleeving up Yawgmoth’s Will and slipping it into the deck made it go from okay to really good in an aggro environment. Suddenly being able to tutor up Will with rituals and draw spells and tutors in the graveyard let me win without refilling my opponent’s hand. Bonus! It’s hard to tell whether the best day was winning on the first turn and second turn against one opponent, or whether it was winning against Stax on the first turn because, well, I had to.
Either way, comboing out while your opponent is just forced to watch is one of the best things ever.
I’m not sure I could play Dragon Combo just because it ends too fast. You prove your combo, get your win condition, and end the game. What’s fun about that? Storm combo is far more fun because there’s always still the chance that you won’t win because you won’t find the last tutor or the last mana or the Tendrils FTW.
Thinking about Dragon Combo just sparked something in my head. One of the problems Jeff had when we were building Dragon Dredge Combo was emptying his hand and not being able to find the proper tools to win. Infernal Tutor could be the key to alleviating this problem since it gets decidedly better when the hand is empty.
Hmm…
Bazaar of Baghdad isn’t such a burden when you can empty your hand, find one of ten or sixteen spells and just win.
I shall have to suggest this to Jeff.
Actually, I probably won’t because he’ll read it here.
Here is some tech that you just might enjoy. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
4 x Worldgorger Dragon
3 x Animate Dead
4 x Dance of the Dead
1 x Necromancy
1 x Demonic Tutor
1 x Cunning Wish
1 x Shivan Hellkite
4 x Cabal Therapy
3 x Xantid Swarm
1 x Demonic Tutor
4 x Infernal Tutor
8 x Dredgy Guys
4 x Bayou
4 x Polluted Delta
3 x Swamps
4 x Bazaar of Baghdad
5 x Moxes
1 x Black Lotus
1 x Lotus Petal
4 x Gemstone Mine
Okay, really I have no idea if that works, but having five tutors that can potentially find any card in the deck for just 1B seems really, really hot. The problem is that I’m not really sure how well they work early. With a Bazaar out, you could easily Tutor Infernally for so many broken things even with a full hand since you could pull up an extra dredger guy, more mana, or whatever else you’ll need to win. This may actually be a case where using Dark Rituals would be better than using Moxes because they could be tutored for.
I don’t know. Testing will commence shortly. Then we’ll make the buggers’ eyes water.
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