@ten-ten said in [GRN] Mission Briefing:

@khahan
The choice between Snapcaster and Mission Briefing is highly dependant on your build and what role you want/expect it to perform. I do run two Gifts Ungiven/ Thirst for knowledge in my deck since I'm heavily relying on the Salvagers/Pyrite Spellbomb combo, so, Mission Briefing might give me more mileage than Snapcaster. Although, Snapcaster doesn't get hit by Flusterstorm, so, there is that.
My only gripe is the double blue for Mission Briefing.

This card is definitely not easy to evaluate without further testing.

I played 1 mission briefing and 1 snap caster in my build yesterday in a 24 man tournament. Entered top 8 as the #1 seed but lost to Dan Miller in round 1 of top 8 after taking him out in the swiss rounds.
Through all my games I drew mission briefing twice. Once it got pitched to FoW, though if I was able to untap without needing to pitch it, I had planned to use it. The other time it got put back on top with brainstorm and shuffled into the deck because I just didn't need it. 2 of my swiss rounds were against shops and I sided it out in both of those games 2 and 3. So all in all, I didn't really get much experience with it.

See everybody there tomorrow. Dont forget, Boyertown is having a fall fair this weekend. Arrive a little early to figure out parking!

@ten-ten said in [GRN] Mission Briefing:

I'm testing one in bomberman and a playset in Legacy solidarity minus the Snapcasters. So far, feels better than SC in solidarity since it actually digs us further into our deck and more likely to chain multiple Mission Briefing ,thanks to Hightide.

Would mission briefing serve better as SC #2 instead of replacing snap caster mage in bomberman? Maybe its meta dependent but I dont know how many times flashing in snap caster as a surprise blocker to take out an inspector or revoker has saved my hide. But instant speed UU - find a combo piece is pretty juicy.

@moorebrother1 said in Counterspells:

I played during the Trinisphere era and I remember being locked of the game on turn 1 unless you had a Force of Will but you had to have a Force of Will, not a Mental Misstep or a Flusterstorm or a Pyroblast but a Force of Will plus a blue card.

We not anywhere close to those days but the response so far as been that we need a bunch counters to stop from losing on turn 1 when the only tried and true answer is Force of Will to that scenario.

But, you still lose to Dredge on turn 2 or 3 even with Force of Will. Again, I play counterspells - a lot of them. My current deck of Blue Moon running 12 main plus 2 on the board.

Is this really the best way to play magic in Vintage? What is the effect of this on the meta-game?

Look at combo decks. If not for the need to work around counterspells combo decks just got all-in on their combo and whoever wins the die roll probably wins. I'm a big fan of bomberman. I've won on t1 occasionally. Without the need for counterspells, those extra slots (4 fow, 3 mana drain, 2 flusterstorms) probably become 2-3 more salvagers, more fast mana and another walking ballista or two along with rounding out my trinket mages. Possibly add in a lion's eye diamond for once salvagers is in play. I've now increased my chances of a t1 kill by an extremely high percentage. And its still probably too slow to beat dps or doomsday etc if they could pack their deck and not worry about counter magic. Shops is still a thing, but they mulligan hardcore for sphere effects to slow down combo.

how about basalt monolith? Nothing jumps out right now, but if we're talking has the potential for brokeness down the road, 3 free mana sitting there until you need it is something to look at.

Its most certainly a contributing factor. As a TO we pray for 25 people, hope for 20 and expect 15. And this is at a very popular store in the heart of the NE meta. With that said, 2 things kill us more than anything else. Legacy is not one of them. Double booking a vintage event within a 3 hour radius or booking an old school event. When you are talking 20 people, losing even just 3 people is a 15% reduction. Show me another format or another game that can consistently take a 15% drop off and I'll show you a game that people are in a panic about having it fail.

Is it the only reason? No. Card prices, losing interest for players after 10-20 years of play prize support (related to card prices) all contribute. But we can directly measure old school's effect.

2 weeks to go

@neo_altoid said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

@brass-man said in Gifts and Intuition Piles.:

lethal gifts

• The cheapest deterministic Gifts kill with no additional requirements is Time Vault/Voltaic Key/Argivian Find/Reconstruction which clocks in at 6 mana post-Gifts. I don't know if I'm into this because of how much worse it is to naturally draw Find/Reconstruction than the cards that other kills use.

The Auriok Salvager pile of Lotus, Salvager, (some sort of Salvager combo wincon), and Unburial Rites kills for 7 mana. If you already have a wincon, it kills for 6! Just a "worth noting" one, as another known Gifts pile which works, and doesn't include too many bad cards

And having salvagers in play already, you get lotus, walking ballista any 2 cards you want and win for effectively no mana.

Its been suggested many time before by the many members of the community (myself included). Have never heard one peep from Wizards about it. Nothing say, "we'll consider it." Nothing saying, "It will never happen." Nothing at all to even acknowledge the idea. Which to me is an even more harsh way of saying, "not going to happen."

@evouga said in [GOR] Thousand-Year Storm:

@joshuabrooks The worst part about this card is that it counts only instants and sorceries, rather than all spells. So you now need to track two different storm counts: vanilla storm, and spell storm. Spells with storm, like Flusterstorm, will then create (vanilla storm count) + (spell storm count) copies. (As usual, the copies contribute to neither storm count.)

They should have just printed "Instants and sorceries you cast have storm."

No need to count 2 storm counts because this wont see play in Vintage. Unfortunately. Still, the idea of a turn with this in play going gitaxian probe, gush, ancestral, time walk, snap-caster into time walk is enough to make me do the Balki Bartokomus Happy Dance.