@moorebrother1 You do realize that for many of us MTGO is the only place we can play vintage since there is no paper community, and for younger players the only way they can afford entering the format? I think without MTGO, vintage would be rather dead by now.

@john-cox so ugly imo. Then again, I only accept Beta basics so I'm probably too narrow-minded to give an objective opinion.

@yespuhyren Might be a dumb shops-noob question, but which 2 additional moxen do you run to get to 7 in total?

@chubbyrain Haven't tested in PO shells but in a UW planeswalkers control list and then in a UW Stoneblade list. I've liked DS a lot in both since both lists are geared towards keeping up counters while leveraging advantage from the planeswalkers/stoneforge mystic (i.e by not casting spells). That said, I too am struggling in the PO matchup and I've even boarded out sphere against them in favor of Mindbreak trap and more other counters.

@stuart Not really. There have been some ongoing discussions mostly regarding Mental Misstep and Mishra's Workshop but nothing too serious.

A very big thank you Joe from me as well. Take your time and come back stronger than ever.

Just had a taste of the current vintage "community" on MODO last night myself. I played in the tournament practice room just to kill time while overseeing a panel discussion at work (it was boring). Obviously, I could not focus too much and made a big mistake in the game. Sure it was a stupid play and I immediately noticed it myself and just laughed at myself in the chat. Opponent replied by writing that I was too stupid to ready (he meant read but apparently can't learn English properly himself...) what the cards do. Then he quit. I mean, what does a reply like that accomplish? Does that make him feel good? By being a jerk? I was just baffled... nonetheless, I still feel that the community is generally good and very friendly and welcoming. It's just that one bad incident like the one I had undoes so much of the good stuff in the community in one instance.

After testing various variants of decks with IA in them, I would say that the most consistent version probably is one with Ray of Revelation and Pyroblast to destroy the IA. @desolutionist already mentioned the idea of Ray of Revelation, so I take no credit for that : ). To have cards that destroy IA which don't get exiled by it (such as RoR in the graveyard) is really important. The list I'm currently using is trying to leverage Dack Fayden's loot ability by not only running RoR, but also by adding a few other flashback spells (Deep analysis, Mystic retrieval). I currently run three copies of IA which I've found to be enough. My thinking on IA is card drawing engine, not go-off engine. Sure, if you have Mentor on the table you kind of just "go off" but, in most cases IA just draws cards to give you enormous amount of options.

@desolutionist good point. I thought about focusing things to red for some reason, and try weird/surprising cards, and just overlooked nature's claim (though I usually have those in my sideboard). I've tested abjure and it might come back in, it sometimes just felt that I wasn't entirely in control of when I cracked my induced amnesia, but that's probably more of an issue when hoping to storm of in one turn. Ray of revelation is really smart due to the flashback so you have one in the graveyard for destroying the next induced amnesia with. I'll definitely test that.

I've carried on doing a bit more testing. Now I skipped the storm shell and tried tuning a mentor/pyromancer list with induced amnesia as draw engine/token generator. Colors UWRG to support Fastbond and one Sylvan Library and ancient grudges in sideboard to have a shot against Shops. Ways to get rid of IA are 4 x pyroblast and 3 Active volcano (can also be used as a tempo play to set opponent back on land drops) in main deck, and 4 x simplify in sideboard since it pulls double duty against oath. For sure a "for fun" deck but not too shabby results thus far. Obscene card drawing sometimes, so much that I contemplated running one copy of learn from the past to not deck myself