I wrote up a report about my first foray into the vintage tournament scene at Vintage Champs. I would love constructive criticism on the article. If you feel I'm wrong, tell me! I would love to discuss.

http://www.cardconfidants.com/vintage-mental-missteps-painting-columbus-blue/

I'm reading this right now. It's very good for a first article so far. Keep writing, it's just like with anything else, you'll keep building up your skill.

I felt like I wasn't sure about Daretti in the list until I saw your explanation for it. Killing a Null Rod is a big deal.

Thanks for sharing!

@Islandswamp Yeah it's good but it does have several weaknesses and I'm unsure I would keep him. As you finish the article you will see what I mean.

Thanks for the article! I just took a brief look, will read it tomorrow carefully. Just one comment: about folding to Null Rod/Stony silence: it depends on your draws. I have been playing painters for some months now, and with a higher number of creatures you can win some turns before finding painter+reb/pyro.

@xouman I would agree but my build did not have a huge amount of creatures to come around to that. What's your build look like?

The deck was centered around painter or blightsteel. Possibly a straight u/r build would have been better.

@mdkubiak As you have already guessed, mine is U/R link text

Got tired of swords and faydens, so I took out tinker->BSC. It's not an easy choice since it gives lots of "Free wins", but in a blue heavy metagame, it's not the best wincon.

Thanks for an interesting read. Just some small constructive critique (since you should continue writing): there are quite a few typos in the text. For example "than" is always "then" in your text, cast is often caste (which is a social hierarchy system in India : ) ). But besides these, as I wrote, a really interesting read and engaging style of writing.

@kistrand

Thank you for the kind words and thanks for noticing that the grammatical errors. I should have caught those myself.

I will do better on the next one.

@xouman

Quite the interesting build. I debated whether to get rid of black, but I liked the strong black cards. Especially the removal. However for the current meta this may be the more correct build of Painter outside of 2 card monte.

I would tweak the list to more of my play style. Is it wrong I'd want to find a way to put some Eldrazi in the list?

@mdkubiak Probably it's wrong. Painter is quite solid against Eldrazi, since Eldrazis are not colorless anymore and so Eldrazi lands cannot pay eldrazis. Also you don't have a decent way to ensure colorless mana unless you change your manabase a lot, and then playing 3 colors seems a bad idea.

What kind of environment are you facing, where moons and paradoxical outcome are not great? They are probably my best cards, painter shell is just the glue that combines them.

Haha I know it's wrong, I just love Eldrazi. That was meant as a joke.

Has paradoxical outcome worked out great for you then? I was curious about it, but never got around to testing it.

idk man, I think TKS Painter sounds pretty awesome to me. Ancient Tomb is a hell of a drug.

I played Painter for a while. It's a wicked fun deck and I feel like I enjoyed it MUCH more than Grixis Thieves. I also think it might be a bit cheaper in paper due to not needing Time Vault, but I could be dead wrong on that.

It is a tad cheaper certainly without the time vault. Though if you're buying power I'd assume you're not too worried about a time vault. Haha

@mdkubiak True I guess, although I'm of the opinion that every dollar counts. In other news if anyone has a BTS graded Time Vault, preferably creased and altered by a five year old with a crayon, please let me know.

Of course, every dollar certainly counts. I suppose I'm talking in general.

I know you've told me before but I'm blanking on BTS. Sorry. Something about lower end quality. Not the inappropriate kind of BTS.