I drained a Gush, and it was everything I hoped it would be.
I have been playing Vintage since 2004. I love the format and was previously a pretty active member of TMD under the name TheShop. My area is averaging one vintage tournament every 5 years in paper! I got my first job so I could save up enough to buy my first forces, duals, and power after reading a SCG P9 tournament report in 2005. Sadly, I never got the funds to fully develop the collection and fly to attend an event. Thankfully, MTGO now allows me to play vintage online. Invite me if you see me, I would love to play and talk about Vintage.
Interesting to me that the wording on the card differs from the oracle already:
Remove Jeweled Bird from your deck before playing if you're not playing for ante.
Tap: Ante Jeweled Bird. If you do, put all other cards you own from the ante into your graveyard, then draw a card.
An errata that replaces ante with exile was how our old 5-Color 250 group used to play it. Exile clearly isn't enough drawback on the ante cards. Changing the owner of your lotus is a bit more serious...
I have been watching a ton of VSL, champs coverage, and Randy's twitch lately and had noticed some of the B&R comments.
Personally, I would prefer some additional balance in the commentary. I'm cool with some griping, but I don't remember hearing much griping that wasn't related to lodestone, tomb, chalice...etc. I think at one point on Randy's stream I heard "die dirty shop player." :). May be my own biases though.
I like the idea of pairing back some of the cards that aren't blue or black so that you can fit in some protection and adjust some lands into basics/sacs.
Also, there are so many creatures in the format that I doubt crop rotation for orchard is necessary.
Does anyone know whether there is a Wizards article up yet about champs? I am a little confused. Normally, they have the obligatory picture of the winner with the portrait and a written interview with some quotes. I googled for this and didn't see it anywhere on wizards website.
Also, last year Randy interviewed Brian. Did I miss a similar interview in the coverage on twitch?
I may need to look harder. Or, it may be too early.
Unless the results are overturned or under official review, then this guy needs to get at least the basic coverage any other vintage champ would get for posterity. Imbalanced press doesn't look good for the event.
I posted in the TMD name change thread as well -
Old TMD Username: TheShop
New TMD Username: Balanceftw
MTGO Username: Balanceftw
My name is Nick and I am excited to finally have the opportunity to play with you guys! Send me invites, I am trying to be on around 9-11pm CST.
I realize this is an old thread.
From 2003ish to 2004ish I was Balanceftw on TMD. When I went to college, I changed my handle to TheShop because I lost my login info during a year hiatus from vintage. I havent been active on TMD since 2012 and decided to go back to Balanceftw.
If you go look at the archive...I was a good bit more high strung than I am now. I am not super proud of everything I have posted in the past, but there are some gems in there. I think a lot of that was really wanting to play and struggling with the cost of the format and the lack of players in my area.
I have sold my paper collection and gone full MODO in the last month. I look forward to actually getting to play with all of the personalities I have been reading and discussing the format with for 15 years now.