@desolutionist believe me, you would have gotten sick of seeing lurrus real quick. Bad timing though for sure

Him and the BUG guy are very much playable. Magus of the Chalice seems incredibly good. Iam glad wizards does not shy away from printing powerful new cards.
However the modern magic design heavily favouring creatues and creature based decks, printing hate for spells and not printing powerful spells anymore concerns me a lot. (Yes i know they printed cruise and dig, but not because they wanted to pront good spells, but because they underestimated the power).
One of the reasons i love vintage is that it is not another boring creature based format, that spell based decks are not only viable but very strong and that creature combat is not the only good win condition. I fear that if the modern design philosophy will go on, in time Vintage will be a creature dominated format as well...i dont want to play just a fast modern.

I am very glad that you are not on the R&D team, they are already going way to hard in that direction.

Lets just make Vintage like every other format! Playing a 2 drop creature on turn 2, winning by attacking, interacting by blocking. Wouldn't it just be so unfair if somebody could counter your cool creature? lets make them all uncounterable, we wouldn't want someone to interact with you outside of combat. Somebody drawing more cards than 1 a turn seems kind of unfair, lets stop that with something...i know how about an ability on a 2/2 so we can attack and block with it?! Uh this guy is trying to produce more mana on turn 1 or is trying to not play basic lands, that seems kind of unfair, i am not doing that so he shouldn't be able to do so as well! Lets get something that hoses non basic lands or any kind of mana acceleration, better lets put that on a creature! This other player wants to play multiple spells in a single turn, i don't understand that, isn't it supposed to be 1 (creature) spell a turn? Lets enforce that by...mmh let me think...putting some hate on a creature! That player is trying to win by some kind of spell or combination, that seems complicated and unfair to me, he should try to win like everybody else by attacking with creatures! The proper way!

Don't draw cards!
Don't win by casting non creature spells!
Don't put 2 things on the stack at once!
Don't counter my creatures, in fact lets just get the stack out of here!
Don't cast more than 1 spell each turn.
Play 1 land a turn
Play 1 creature a turn
Attack
Block
That's magic!

Alright i am sorry for the rambling, you probably get how i fell about that design approach.

the TSI Coverage is currently up at
https://www.twitch.tv/tmdbrassman

Come join us to look at drunk idiots playing wacky Vintage paper Decks!

This much.

@volrathxp common tricks from the top of my head:

• triggering things by casting pyroblast on a nonsensical target. For example, triggering mentor or dack by casting pyroblast on a land.

• common sensei's top tricks like tapping top, holding priority and untapping it with key to tap it again to draw an extra card and put top in hand. Or the tapping top and in response bouncing it by any means (PO, repeal...)
  If you want to draw with top, but don't want to have the top on your library as the first card you can activate tops order ability and in response put sensei's on the library to draw your card. Now when the order ability resolves, you can order sensei's anywhere in the top 3 you want.

• there is value to be gained with triggers that have a scaling factor which is checked upon resolution. For example if you have a Aetherflux reservoir on the battlefield and you cast 2 instants in a row you can gain 3 life total if you let everything resolve individually, or you can cast the second instant while the first reservoir trigger is still in the stack to gain 4 life instead.

• since probe is restricted there are a few sneaky bluffing possiblies available again. Letting a blind cabal therapy on you resolve even though you have a misstep in hand to counter it might be worth it in some situations. Most players will not name misstep with the therapy if it resolves and you save yourself a misstep and some life. (The cost of course is that your opponent could hit something else, sees your hand etc.)

• An oldschool bluffing trick would also be selectively skipping to your second main before casting a spell to bluff having a mana drain in hand.

There are so many more...

@wagner said in Single Card Discussion - Lavinia, Azorious Renegade:

Seems the only type of interaction people are willing to accept is counterspells because it's somehow "fairer" to gets things countered instead of not being able to play them.

Counterspells take some thought to use. You have to keep up mana (or blue cards to pitch, or nothing at all in case of MM i guess...), you have to choose what is a thread that has to be countered, what is just a bait, what you can handle in a different way etc. You have to think about using your counterspell to discrupt your opponents plan or to protect your own, when to pick a counterwar, and when to just hold back. It is most of the time a 1for1 trade and can be played around by your opponent.

Permanents that say "opponent cant do X" are a very different beast. They are not reactionary, but instead preventetive. They are not a 1for1 but instead a Y for 1, while Y should be a high enough number to make is worth it. Because just hating a card you dont know your opponent even has in hand, is not nearly as powerful as handeling a specific card that they already drawn and payed mana for. So you basically you have to carpet bomb a bunch of their deck to get your hits.
You cant play around those kinds of cards in game, or at least not very often, but instead "playing around" those cards consists of deckbuilding choices instead of gameplay choices.
It doesnt take skill to play these cards and it doesnt take any skill to play against these cards. These cards basically just limit potential choices to be made by both players immensely. When a card says "You cant play your cards" there is literally no choice to be made. This is just bad game design, there is nothing interesting about it.

Hexproof, Cant be countered, protection and other mechanics in the "you cant interact with me" vain are guilty of that as are cards like Lavinia, CotV (which sometimes at least has a meaningful choice on what number to set it, but its 0 or 1 95% of the time) , Leyline of the Void, RIP, Cavern of Souls and many more.
I get that hate cards are needed, and while i personally dont like the gameplay of hatebears style decks (i dont believe lavinia is only playable in those kinds of decks btw.), i can appreciate well designed cards that hate specific strategies. Cards that say "if you want to do X, you can but Y will happen" instead of "you cant do X"
Scap clan berserker , Thalia or Mystic Remora are examples of hating spells while still giving your opponent a meaningful choice.
Dont print cards that say "Opponents cant draw more than 1 card each turn" instead print cards that say "whenever an opponent would draw a card other than the first one of their turn, they have to pay (1) for each card"
Dont print cards that say "Hexproof" instead print cards that say "whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls they have to discard a card"

Edit: more card ideas: "whenever an artifact enters the battlefield, it's controller discards a card"
"Whenever a card is put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere, this player loses 1 life"

TLDR: "X cant be done" cards are incredibly boring, dont take any play skill from both sides and are just very lazy and bad game design. The more cards like this see print, the worse MTG gets as a whole.

I am afraid there are too many permutations to make a useful list unless you try to categorize them. (with x disruption spells, without any disruption, playing around spell y etc.)

As soon as some of the cards in Kaladesh where spoiled i began brewing in my head. The whole set is great for Jonnys and is full of potential, especially in vintage where powering out artifacts and casting blue spells is as old as the format itself.
With the following post keep in mind that i could not test this deck in the amount and quality to my liking. I did however spend this weekend in front of my PC and played as many matches with this deck as possible.

The deck builds around two new cards: Aetherflux reservoir and Paradoxical Outcome.

The goal of the deck is to stick a Reservoir on the table and then cast as many spells as possible to gain life and nuke your opponent for 50. Paradoxical Outcome is one of the best enablers in this regard, i think this card can truly become a big player in vintage, it is incredibly powerful if resolved. If played on a board state with enough cheap repayable artifact mana, this card draws ridiculous amounts of cards and often even generates mana to keep going, chaining them together works great.
Do not underestimate this card: Resolving a paradoxical outcome on a board with Aetherflux Reservoir and enough replayable mana usually immediately translates into a victory.

Here is my current list:
Maindeck
Manasources
1x Inventors' Fair
4x Island
1x Minamo, School at Waters Edge
2x Ancient Tomb
Library of Alexandria
2x Mishra's Workshop
1x Tolarian Academy
Black Lotus
Lotus Petal
Mana Crypt
Mox Emerald, Jet, Ruby, Pearl, Sapphire
4x Mox Opal
Mana Vault
Sol Ring
2x Grim Monolith
28 Manasources

Spells
Ancestral Recall
1x Flusterstorm
4x Mental Misstep
Ponder
3x Preordain
1x Sensei's Divining Top
2x Voltaic Key
Time Vault
Time Walk
1xEchoing Truth
Time Twister
Tinker
4xAetherflux Reservoir
4x Paradoxical Outcome
4x Force of Will
Memory Jar
1xWurmcoil Engine
32 Spells

60 Cards

Sideboard:
1x Echoing Truth
2x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Mind's Desire
2x Mindbreak Trap
1x Mishras Workshop
3x Tomrod's Crypt
1x Void Snare
1x Wurmcoil Engine

15 cards

Manasources:
The deck is currently mono blue. I thought about splashing a color, black, but then i realized that i mostly just wanted to play fetchlands and didn't really want to put in the spells. Not playing fetchlands is however a problem, since the ability to shuffle would be great, especially since i am playing a Sensei's Top. Top gets considerably worse without shuffle effects, but the ability to repeatedly but it on the top to find a cantrip, and draw it again just to repeat still keeps it in the deck for now (to add storm). Not playing shuffle effects also significantly reduces card choices that would traditionally be considered or even a must play. Iam talking about more Sensei's Tops, Scroll Rack and Brainstorm. Yes, there is no brainstorm in this current build, crazy, right? That just feels kind of wrong. Maybe adding fetchlands without duals is the way to go, just for the shuffle effect.
Earlier builds had 4 Mishra's Workshop and no Ancient Tombs. I very much like the idea of playing Workshop in a non prison deck, powering out combo artifacts. Workshop does a great job of playing an Aetherflux Reservoir on turn 1 or dumping a hand full of artifact mana. However the biggest problem with Workshop is that it doesn't help at all casting the 4cmc spell Paradoxical Outcome, which should be the perfect followup after playing a Reservoir and a bunch of artifact mana. Since this Spell costs 4 and i want to be able to play it as reliably and early as possible i cut the workshops for Ancient Tombs. The life loss from the tombs seems counter intuitive in a deck trying to reach 50 life at first glance but it very rarely mattered. Most of the time, if you get to 50 life, just 1 more spell will bring to say 57 or something like that. The land helping to power out more spells renders the 2 lifeloss irrelevant most of the time. Ancient tombs however significantly reduced the turn 1 explosiveness of the deck, since now you cant just play Ancient tomb + 1 piece of artifact acceleration to cast a Reservoir. Also, since i was already playing Wurmcoil in the maindeck, i really liked the idea of beeing able to hardcast it as a secondary wincondition, which attacks from a totally different angle but still advances Plan A. Currently i am playing a 2/2 split in the maindeck and 1 more Workshop in the sideboard to bring in against prisony matchups.
I play the new legendary land, Inventors Fair, as a one of and i am quite happy with it. Its a uncounterable tutor for your win conditions, i could not be happier with it. Works great, not much opportunity cost, easy to just activate end of turn. The lifegain from it of course seems to play right into the strategy, but to be honest it doesnt matter. If you are going off, the 1-3 life you got from this land over the course of the game are mostly irrelevant.
I quite like the high count of basic islands. At first i thought i might want to play Seat of Synods, but they aren't really needed since Metalcraft is rarely a problem, i don't play any affinity cards and i really want to be able to cast my bounce spell on Null rods or stony silences. A deck full of easily ho sable artifacts needs some basic lands to be able to cast an answer.
I am not playing chrome mox or mox diamond because you don't really want to bounce them. I like to bounce reusable mana sources to not only come out on 0 or actually generate mana.
Mana Crypt and Grim Monolith work wonders in this deck, not only because you obviously can untap them with a voltaic key but also because they work great with bouncing and replaying them to generate mana. I use them pretty liberally and rarely regret it.
The difficulty with the manabase is to balance both fast sol ring like effects and enough permanents to abuse with paradoxical outcome and enough humble blue sources to be able to cast your spells in the first place. I also want a critical mass of bouncable, mana generating permanents but do not want to draw hands without action and just mana sources.

Win Conditions:

Plan A: Aetherflux Reservoir - i like this card a lot. It looks so innocent and cute, but actually has the potential to escalate out of nowhere.
Turn 1: Mishras Workshop, Mox Jet, Aetherflux Reservoir - pass. Turn 2: Grim Monolith (gain 1), mox Opal (2), Island, Preordain (3), Paradoxical Outcome (4) bounce Monolith, Mox, Mox draw 3. Just by replaying the you already had you now generated 28 life. Don't forget you just have just drawn 3 card, cast 1 more and the game is over.
Hell i have forced my own spells a few times just to get an additional 10 life or so.
The real powerhouse here is obviously Paradoxical Outcome, Aetherflux Reservoir is just a neat win condition that fits pretty nice if you ask me. The life gain over a few turns often buys a lot of time if you are not able to just win with it, which happens not rarely - this deck is not designed to go off on turn 1 or 2 as often as possible like Belcher, i would rather classify it as Combo - Control. The deck definitely has the potential to play a long game. I am currently playing no tutors, apart from the one Inventor's Fair and Tinker, but a full playset of the Reservoir. I am not sure about that yet, maybe 3 is the better number, it needs more testing. What happens when you draw multiples? Well, you don't really need multiples, but they are also not dead. If you manage to stick 2 of them on the board and then go off, the lifegain effect stacks and you will crack that 50 life mark very fast, however drawing 2 of those also is clunky and reduces the chances of you going off. This is one of the reasons i would love to play something like Brainstorm or Scroll Rack. Since this is your Plan A, just casting through countermagic or destruction is valid since you play 4.

Plan B: Vault/Key. This is a no-brainer in this deck. It wins the game on its own, they are artifacts, so easy to cast, while there are only 2 Tutors, there is also a lot of card draw which sometimes just finds you the pieces. It just fits.

Plan Wurmcoil Engine. This just is great against most creature based or prison decks. It hits hard, trades favorable with everything and even synergises with your main plan of gaining life. It is of course vulnerable to Swords to plowshares, but at least the lifegain is relevant. Why not BSC? Because having Workshops and Sol lands main deck makes Wurmcoil absolutely castable and not just a tinker target. There is a second one, as well as a third Workshop in the Sideboard for Eldrazi, Shops or the hatebears matchup where having lands that tap for 3 mana and win conditions that don't rely on casting a lot of spells are very nice. I also considered BSC just because of the pure powerlevel or Myr Battlesphere to go broader.

The rest of the Deck is mix of card draw/selection and control/protection elements. I do not believe that i have found a fine balance between those elements yet. I always feel that i like more cantrips AND more countermagic.
I tried different configuration of countermagic and cantrips already and currently i havent testet enough to be sure what works best. I am considering playing Probes, Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor, Thoughtcast. I would like to be able to play Brainstorm. If i have shuffle effects i would consider Scrollrack or a second Sensei's Top. I considered not playing much countermagic but instead go for Defense Grids and going for a more "all in combo" approach. However this leaves the deck incredibly vulnerable to Artifact hate, also i think this would play more like belcher, which is not what i was going for with this deck. I pondered about including Manadrains to power out the more expensive spells, however currently the count of blue mana sources is too low to support it.
There is one bounce spell maindeck because some decks run Null Rods or other hate (Kataki...) in the maindeck, and i like to at least have an out in the deck.

Notable might also be the Mind's Desire in the Sideboard. I had this maindeck for a while but i found myself not really wanting to hold all my spells to generate Storm in case i would draw it and if i dump my hand and then draw it, it feels terrible. Mind's Desire is one of my favorite Spells, maybe it will find a place main deck again. It is currently in the sideboard when i feel my opponent will out control me most of the time (Landstill for example) and having a storm spell is just harder for my opponent to handle.

As far as i tested, the deck works suprisingly good against Powered Eldrazi, Delver, Storm, Mentor, Pyromancer and Shops. The matchup against Oath and Turbotezz seems fine. Hatebears, JacoDrazi, and everything playing maindeck artifact hate is a hard matchup. I played one match against Standstill and got destroyed, it always felt like i had just 1 threat and maybe 1 way to defend it against my opponents hand full of counterspells and postboard hate.
As for today i did not play against Dredge, Belcher or Doomsday. Postboard the deck struggles the most against effects like Kataki or Energie Flux, Null Rods and Stoney Silences can be bounced when the time is right to go off, but these will kill your board. Im having problems finding suitable answers to those, especially when Kataki gets cast by a Cavern of Souls. Keep in Mind, the cards are not even released so testing is not easy at the moment.

I would love some feedback and ideas, thanks!

I would love to play in those dailies but im just not willing to invest in mtgo. Im building my first real Paper Vintage deck atm and that just has priority over mtgo. If the software would be better i would probably consider it, but as it is its not worth the money for me.

[
W
Creature- Human Wizard
Magecraft - Whenever you cast or copy an insant or sorcery spell, Clever Lumimancer gets +2/+2 until end of turn.
0/1
]

This seems incredibly pushed. Just 1 white mana to get your win condition on the battlefield.
Since this doesn't trigger on Artifacts or Enchantements the ability seems not on Prowess level quite, however it does trigger on copied spells, which means this is quite insane with any storm card.

I think this card is immensely pushed and could see play in pretty much all formats.

@meldesmond Ah, T-shirts, i see. Thats a pretty ncie collection you got going there. Would love to see some pictures!

Sorry English isn't my first language: What are 'tees' ?

The more i think about this the more i realize that i cant quite put my finger on why exactly i think crossover IPs coming into MTG is a bad thing. It feels to me like some MTG identity is lost, however it is replaced by something else.
I am still thinking that this isn't a good development, but i cant really rationalize why i think that currently.

As many of you already know Hasbro announced in an investors earning call that they will have Crossover MtG Products with other IPs naming Lord of the Rings (Hobbit etc.) as well as the Warhammer franchise.

TLDR: Crossover bad, pessimistic view.

While i like Lord of the Rings as much as everybody else, i am highly concerned about this. No i am not saying this will the death of magic or anything as dire as that. On the contrary i strongly believe that a Lord of the Rings Set will be financially speaking a massively successful if not the most successful Set ever released if correctly developed.

That aside: for a long time a have the feeling that MTG is, while not dying, getting worse by a thousand cuts, some of which are more personal and some are pretty widely spread not liked by the player base:

• creature power creep
• asymmetrical hate pieces
• some art direction
• some borders
• some mechanics
• general WotC greediness
• Lack of WotC testing for eternal formats
• The resulting massive bans for nearly every set

And i would like to add to this list: Crossovers with other IPs.
Until now we had 3 kinds of Crossovers happen all of which where handled differently:

First of we had silver bordered crossovers like My little Pony and Transformers. I personally do not care at all for these, but i see that some people really liked these. I see no negative to this approach and would be fine which WotC to peruse more crossovers in this manner, since none of these cards are legal in any official formats.

The second type was more intrusive and i am of course talking about the Ikoria/Godzilla crossover. In this case the crossover was handled as official alters of existing cards. All the Godzilla names and Artwork was printed on cards that where also available as "normal" MtG cards with different artworks and names.
This felt strange to me to see Modern military hardware or buildings together with normal MTG cards, however with time i believe that this kind of crossover is not that different from people just altering their cards anyway with which i have no problem at all. Its your cards you can do to them whatever you want, and you can play whatever version of a card that you want, even if i don't like your specific version.

The third kind of crossover is pretty infamous and had a ton of backlash, but, and that's way more important, was financially incredibly successful. This was a clear sign to Hasbro and WOTC that fan backlash is worth it if the product still sells. (this is of course just a presumption by me). Why was this product so hated by most fans? First of all it was very limited and expensive and secondly the cards where newly designed cards, not reprints, that where only available in this version, and where black bordered, meaning legal in official formats. Now this was not just a fun thing to do, but it was actual legal, official cards that depicted modern real world weapons, equipment, clothing and faces of real people (we had real faces on cards this done before, but in a very different context).

I fear that these new crossovers will be black bordered and will change mtg for the worse while still being highly financially viable.

Yes it is Lord of the Rings and i am myself very much eager to see this crossover. However this is just one of them, pretend it isn't Lord of the Rings (which at least is a fantasy setting) but any of the other IPs that will surely follow if this makes enough money.
Warhammer (already confirmed), Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Battlefield, Stranger Things, Cyber Punk, Grand Theft Auto, Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad...
Sure some of them you might like, but now we don't have a choice anymore with playing these cards. Together with modern power creep and card design you wont have a choice to just not play a playset of [Going Warp Speed] in your deck because it synergizes so well with [Professor Dumbledore] if you want to stay competitive.

I know this seems pretty over the top and pessimistic, but is it really that different from The Walking Dead?
And if this makes money, which i am pretty sure it will, why would WotC and Hasbro have any reason to stop? For the last couple of years they definitely showed that they prefer short term profit over the long term health of the game.

Edit: Added pictures and TLDR and Poll

Iam actually really excited for this

@botvinik That sounds like one of the most valuable flusters

Love that thread idea

@duke ah so we arent alone, and that format actually already exists, nice!
Ill check out mtgoldframe for sure

@brass-man Thank you so much for your very detailled response! I myself have gone through the B&R timeline to get the list, but just wasnt fast enough to post here, sorry!

My go to deck for this era would definetly be TPS.

As for the B&R List: I agree that there are many cards on there that seem pretty harmless conpared to other, even unrestricted cards of that era, however since i myself did not play Vintage back then, but actually just startet out with magic in general around that time, my own judgement on those cards is purely theoretical.

Another good point brought up is that the metagame back then was highly regional and very slow to develop compared to modern times. Iam aware that this might let the metagame of that period seem more open and wide, while in modern times it could very much happen that a couple of best decks will dominate the meta by a lot. A counterpoint to this is the wide range of 93/94 Decks that are absolutely viable and see play.

Generally i like to test the format with the orginal B&R List before making any changes to it.