@revengeanceful By me completely forgetting what that card said...

Looks like I was actually playing it in Legacy Ascendancy with Lingering Souls and a cheeky Ancient Grudge

@cattleprod
The back side is clearly vastly better than the front.

@moorebrother1 At least it doesn't get blunted by narset/leovold/hullbreacher!

@stormanimagus
I have been proxying this in breach its real good.

mmm cc3 is a lot for a 2/3.
you play it turn2/3 and then wait one full turn to get your extra land. In mid game it's easier to get that land and play it. Without coven is too slow (even if intel is always good).
It pitches !
in the end it's playable but slow/unexciting.

@botvinik said in [MIC] Gorex, the Tombshell:

The reason I have rather little hope for this card in vintage is the decks that can use that body effectively, get creatures in the yard fast enough to activate it, and make black mana to cast it, would much rather have cards in the yard for things like the gak then cast a 2 mana 4/4. This is a bad sign but the ability is interesting and maybe saves it? Unfortunately, no delver would really like its spells back in it's hand but hogaak wants them in the yard to take advantage of. Keep in mind I am not a zombie lord my skill lies far more with the doomsday decks so I may just be wrong but this one looks like a miss to me.

Gak requires far more of a commitment to include, since the delve number is so high. This needs 3 creatures which you can typically just get in the yard through course of play. There are probably also some shenanigans you can do with Anger and the like to make this more aggressive. It reminds me a little of Soulflayer, which has always been a pet card of mine, in that it needs a creature heavy shell to work, but as pointed out Wraith and Deaths shadow both work great here as well.

Very good, the anti oko work may even mean you play one or two in jeskai if you expect a large amount of BUG.

I was also thinking Oath with maindeck mb trap.

@magicmike

I really don't want to run it, you know how tight the list is these days, more likely we would see a return of the maindeck chain.

@brass-man I check this site everyday, I check Discord twice a week, and I look for youtube content about once a week. The format is healthy but I personally can only take so much MTGO so I play in spurts.

I am really waiting for paper events to fire again and engage with players face to face that is the part of the community that I enjoy the most.

I miss the content and articles from some of the old guard that was posting here before but have not posted in a longtime. Voices like Steve Menendian @Smmenen and Brian Kelly and others. I really appreciate the work that Joe Dyer is doing over at MTG Goldfish. I love the work that Justin Gennari @IamActuallyLvL1 is doing, and he is a true asset to the Vintage community. Vintage also gets some love from a few podcasts out there like The Eternal Glory podcast, Leaving a Legacy, and Eternal Durdles but those are all mainly Legacy casts that has some Vintage updates from time to time.

I'm not sure how we have more conversation on the site. I try to write posts to engage in conversation and most of the time I feel like I'm failing. I won't stop trying but I do not have the time to sit and write lengthy articles with tons of data points. I want to discuss strategy and innovation.

The promise of apps/sites like Discord is that you get more voices but I feel that the opposite may actually be true.

I come here is feel some since of a community but if I'm being honest it has been fading and it is noticeably less of what it used to be. I'm hoping that will turn around as we get out of Covid and people come back together.

Thanks for keeping this site going, I really appreciate your work!

I think this card is great for true human lists like my mono-white rick lists. Definite positive add-on

@botvinik There are a non 0 number of decks this affects that are not specifically blue decks. Looking at the deck by color as opposed to archetype in vintage is a lacking evaluation strategy to be honest.

Getting this down early against shops can yield a lot of damage on that first turn. Likewise survival decks cast a lot of free madness stuff that all trigger this.

My biggest question about this card is honestly is it actually better than pillar? Generally speaking when you play pillar you do not care about the self damage so this being one sided may not matter much in many matches, but pyro can potentially hit every spell, not just the ones after the first, and is not a targeted card. Pillar does not see much play so if this card is questionably better than pillar it would be hard to imagine it seeing much play.

@moorebrother1 Massive MASSIVE difference between a 1k Modern deck and a 50k Vintage deck.

And of course it's up to everyone to choose, I'm saying the risk to reward for me is nowhere close enough. I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself while always having to be extra careful about where everything is at all times.

@blindtherapy Looks like a new toy for BUG. Helps against Urza's Saga and BUG can easily flip it after turn 3, they don't really play that many action spells at a time.

@botvinik doomsday is definitely a tough matchup, for me at least it is less frustrating to play against than tinker and it has also fallen out of the meta a bit compared to where it was so I wasn't really thinking too much about it but I would still say that tinker is a worse matchup for jund than doomsday and more relevant in a discussion of the current meta.

That said, while jund does not have spheres or forces, and it is difficult for us to beat a turn one nut draw from doomsday, I think we still have the tools necessary to compete in the doomsday matchup. In my experience mana denial through wasteland and collector ouphe can be very effective since doomsday is running on very few lands. Collector ouphe especially forcing pass the turn piles most of the time can be very relevant since you have some good clocks. Disruption like opposition agent makes it hard for them to combo if you can make it through the first turn or two and you can ramp to it with deathrite shaman. Postboard cards like mindbreak trap can help shore up the early turns. Endurance has also been a huge improvement to the matchup.

@botvinik
I think its more for use in oath. Endurance is 100% better.

There will always be Vintage players; whether or not they have access to Moxen/Power is another question. It's a shame prices are driven by jerkwad collectors these days vs. actual players; however, I need a downpayment for a house and hopefully the Moxes will fill the gap. That being said, going to a "Vintage" tournament w/o proxies it tough to find but when you do, you can usually wreck shop. We used to have a following here in Houston for proxy tournies but I am unsure if anyone still plays.

My biggest peeve about any event is the fact you have to prove you actually own the cards and carrying cool fifty thousand in your pocket just to prove you are legit is a little risky.

@moorebrother1 said in Control decks:

@moorebrother1 The issue with the deck is that the deck does not do a good job at attacking any particular arch-type or strategy in the format.

As far back as M10 I remember hearing this from guys like Rakso, Menendian, Zherbus et al. and so if you feel this way, it's just the usual sentiment for control; ironically, that was at a time when control was still at its peak especially for skilled players. Just looking at some of these new decks drops my jaw. Who remember's Tan's builds from 20 years ago? Abyss, Moat, and Morphling. And then we moved on to some other crazy crap and routine use of balance to address oath/fittest, somewhere in the mix of all that people started running kaerevek's torch as a secondary win against FoW. Somewhere along that line workshop hit with Chalice and we went back to more traditional wins with colossus and added REB/Pyroblasts, some guys went full tilt with 4 in the maindeck and another 4 in the sideboard and welders. I left right around the time painters was a thing and that was the beginning of the re-emergence of control-combo. Pivoting to agressive combo to quickly win the game vs. Control lock like the "Good ole days."

That's when everyone was crying Vintage hit "Critical Mass." Hah! Far from it!

I did see a few posts above it was mentioned about "having the right play" at the right time and that will always hold true for control. It's rarely a proactive deck; it's a constant reactive chain that requires intuitive solutions and meticulous setups for the win.

Consider the draw engines in the evolution: Fact or Fiction, Gifts Ungiven, Divining Top, Brainstorm, Gush.They were all effective for their time period albeit a bit slow sometimes. I think we're about as streamlined as it gets on that in the current era.

If you're looking for the next Moderately stable evolution of control, you'll need to get the timeline and progression down like the back of your hand and build from scratch. That's how the "Masters" have always edged it out. I have not yet set out to see the new builds yet in action from a decade of walking away from the game.

I hope that's helpful to your quest. God Bless.

@throwaway
I should clarify contemporary vintage as online vintage. In that case, the current meta is less relevant to an article that quickly goes obsolete. Streaming captures that much better and is (IMO) a better medium for that content. At least much better than a podcast that takes a month to develop and publish.
Vintage also doesn't have the audience it had over the first few years of SMIP. There were several monthly power tournaments in most of the world. There were pick up games of no proxy vintage between games of standard. The world has changed.
I originally got into vintage because there were more vintage tournaments than legacy tournaments in my area and the barrier to entry was about the same.
I like when SMIP covers MODO, they usually do summarily, and I'm fine with that.

That's really sad news Rob. I played against Nick in the 2007 Top 8. He was a nice guy and it's awful to see that he's passed at a young age. Condolences to you and to everyone he was close to.