What's the over/under that 3+ of the champs top 8 this year feature this card?

@brianpk80 There's no way they had Vintage at all in mind when designing this card. It's designed to either be a commander, or to slot nicely into the GW Cat beatdown archetype they're bolstering. The new cat avatar bro is very strong; this is to go with that.

Played with her today. She really screws up combat. Like Banding++. Give it a whirl, kids.

Thought-Knot Seer, kind of.

That said in many cases I think your notion of redundancy doesn't really matter. Like, having a second Null Rod does nothing more than the first, but, it may be important to cast the second one to reduce your storm opponent's outs from, e.g., 4 to 2, if they have 2 Chain of Vapor and 2 Hurkyl's. Same goes for Grafdigger's Cage, or single-use redundant cards like Tormod's Crypt.

@thecravenone The main function of that removal spell slot is to kill shops creatures. UB4 + double spheres is totally uncastable unless you have already won the game. What you want to do against shops is just grind their threats and spheres down and emerge on turn 4-5 with an at least healthy mana base, a decent board, and some cards in your hand, and you will usually win. The bridge to get there is to 1-for-1 remove their stuff, and Snapcaster is a good tool there to buy back a removal spell and trade/chump in combat to help you make it to the end game. With snuff out he's totally useless. I think Dismember is very strictly better in this list than Snuff Out given the presence of Snapcaster, and Cut is probably better than Dismember.

Snuff out was a house for me at EE and the 5 weeks after of top 4s and top 8s
Also not sure why we're eschewing fatal push here?

Snuff Out is a real option. BUT: 1. It can't be Snapped back, and 2. Fatal Push is approx. as unreliable as Murderous Cut and can be misstepped. That said it is close; I think I give the nod to Murderous Cut over all.

yar the main nod I give to bot over sphinx is, Sphinx is terrible against shops and Tinker is amazing against shops. Metamorph is at an all-time low so Tinker is almost always GGs. Meanwhile, in a world full of Precursor Golem, it's very easy to cast a sphinx (if you can cast it) and still lose to their onslaught. Meanwhile, they're both about equally good vs. blue decks, on average, I'd say.

If I had to go to champs tomorrow, this is what I'd run:

I need to work more on Mentor. Shops is very solid. Storm quite good, though I might try and make MBT/a 3rd Rod work. Eldrazi is good, though tense.

Thoughts:

• Tried white, but the mana doesn't work.
• Abrade is the real deal, folks. Perfect card for this deck.
• Wasteland is a requirement for this deck idea to work reliably. You must keep their mana occupied, whether through Wasteland or through answering your little threats. So, cutting Wasteland while keeping the deathrite/leovold/1-for-1 removal core of the deck just doesn't work very well.
• Leovold is really good against Mentor.
• Thoughtseize is good against storm, bad against shops, semi-decent vs Mentor. Not sold on it either way; but I think its value is too variant to be worth it in the context of a large tournament. Also I'm not happy blind-fetching a sea into Wastelands in a shops-rich environment, given how tenuous the mana situation here is.
• I wish there were more good draw spells for this deck that aren't Preordain or Gush in Vintage. Merchant Scroll is a good addition for this archetype to this end.
• Dack is really powerful here. I think this is the best Dack deck I know of.
• I don't know which black removal spell is best. Murderous Cut is, I think, like 5% better than the rest but it's very close.
• The tutor package is beautiful, and Tinker is a very clear improvement imo. The improvement your shops match gets by including Crypt alone is notable.

@Khahan It also hits Thalias and Wingmare. And every single other card in their deck except TKS and Smasher.

On the play vs Eldrazi, which would you rather have?

1. Fetch, Fetch, Mox, Abrade
2. Fetch, Fetch, Mox, Ancient Grudge

Think about it. Your grudge might hit two of their artifacts, but it's more likely they'll have 0 artifacts and 2 creatures, or 1 of each. In this case, I'd rather have the one Abrade.

Agreed you still need STP but I think there's a strong case to be made that this is better than Grudge against Eldrazi, and it's more maindeckable, as it hits JVP, as well as Mentor about half the time, not to mention scads of random dorks.

Isn't this the dream sideboard card vs. Eldrazi? It's very difficult to sideboard against them because hitting only artifacts isn't enough and hitting only creatures isn't enough, but the best removal cards in vintage (fragmentize, grudge, chewer, swords) only hit one or the other. This kills everything in their deck except TKS and Smasher.