This "enlightened toolbox" deck is awesome :D Thanks for posting these! I love getting a glimpse of Vintage in other parts of the world.

Here is another opinion I have: if you are playing Synod, you should probably be playing some number of Thoughtcast. Synod is a greedy card and you should be rewarded for your efforts.

It doesn't hurt that Baral discounts Thoughtcast but does not discount Preordain.

I don't think that running 0 Preordain is ever correct, but you could run a split perhaps.

Edit - I'm not sold on Shoal like the OP is, but at least Thoughtcast recovers the lost CA while Preordain doesn't. But you still often need Preordain for t1 to get things going.

@bazaarofbaghdad

Fascinating list. Part of me really wants to try to port it over to Legacy.

@vintage_rage
By Force has been great for me. I don't know yet whether I prefer 2 or 3 copies in the sideboard, but I'm very happy with the card ... but my approach to Shops seems to be a little different than some.

I wouldn't want to run By Force unless I was totally sure I had:

a rock-solid manabase enough cheap removal to survive long enough to develop my manabase

Postboard I'm running 19 lands (+5 artifacts) and 7 one-drop removal spells, which has been good for me. Typically I'm able to play a one-for-one By Force early, and get bigger value out of it in the late game.

I think if I were not already in a position to do that, I would run more lands or more 1-drop removal instead of By Force.

@PeAcH thank you!! I'm looking for something like these, not a fan of the card art ones that I've seen, i'll check them out!

I have seen most Mentor lists run 4-6 hate pieces. IMHO 2 each of Preist, Cage, and RIP, since those all also hit Oath (RIP if its Sun Titan Oath for example), have been the best combination. It also depends on if your list runs the singleton strip, or wastelands as well as those are hate on bazaar.

@PeAcH you can start an account on MTGGoldfish for free and that allows you to post your results there. It's simple cut and paste and I'd consider it a favor if you all did this. :) let me know if I can help.

during your games, what did you name on phyrexian revoker? i mean at this point, I'm wondering if running more null rod is not the way to go...
Also, I'm quite surprised not seeing any eye of ugin in the different lists

Wow even a drain friendly metagame like LCV has 6 decks out of 8 running Gush in the top 8... This is clearly going to be a problem going forward.

Restricted since 1966.

@gkraigher I've played some games with Wire and some games without ... I've had trouble figuring out the right ratio of threats-to-lock pieces in the Robots deck. I don't feel comfortable yet saying one build is better than another