I think every leyline probably merits attention. If you can force your opponent to play a fair match this could do gobs of damage. Probably not a contender in vintage but who knows.

Patently nuts in modern and maybe legacy.

Not sure if there is any chance at 4 mana but is there any utility to the fact that its a bigger pyromancer that makes flyers off more cards and has a sac for mana outlet. If Mentor was not restricted I would not even post this but it feels like if you wanted your Jeskai list to have 6 pyromancer effects this could be ok.

Maybe there is some chain of cards you can play and sac over and over again to make this a combo piece. You can endlessly loop Tops with it :p.

If the format actually took off because of proxies, I suspect it would still encourage counterfeiters to make cards, if only because WOTC would never allow proxies at an event. The prices on these cards are not being sustained by the player base but by scarcity, which is what attracts the counterfeit market. More players could only make that demand go up.

As long as the reserve list is a thing and as long as the only viable decks in the format require a few specific subsets of cards, there is no getting away from the counterfeit issue.

The deck would have to want Vamp, Seal, demonic, and possibly even Mystic or Worldly tutor first before this was even considered. So right now even with Citadel, which removed the colored mana issue from consideration, I'm not sure this sees play.

I would note that if your playing multiple in a turn the downside on subsequent copies you cast is mostly negated, unless your opponent needs to pivot because of what you have done.

The issue with this discussion was the OPs contention that all of vintage should be 100% proxy. As it stands right now the number of proxies allowed in a game of magic is 0 for sanctioned, and what ever the hell number you want to use for anything else that you decide to run.

So if we extrapolate that we understand that this conversation is actually "should WOTC allow proxies in sanctioned events" which is a silly and moot discussion because the answer is that they have already said they will not.

If the issue proxies are trying to solve is ultimately the reserve list, then up until this point they really have not done much to solve it considering we have proxy events all the time and the player base has not exploded. Proxies are not the thing holding back the format, because people still see the format as a costly and elite one even if it costs them a grand total of 75 basic lands and a sharpie.

If the conversation is about how do you grow the format, then your discussion lies somewhere in the nexus of:

• Print new cards that make reserve list cards unnecessary or options as opposed to manditories - Not possible for some cards but I think you could get away with replacements for some things
• Print strategies that do not require Moxen/Lotus - Dredge was the first and really only one we have had.
• Restrict a few pillar cards - Workshops and Bazaar come to mind, though the effects of that would have to be tested and new cards printed to fill the roles in a less powerful way.

Quick life story here. One day I just decided I wanted to play vintage. I had a good job and a deep legacy collection so I thought I would make the effort and try to get back some of the cards I had when I was a kid. I started looking at lists and found Dark times, which was basically mono black with a jet and that was about it. You could play lotus but some lists did not. So I traded some stuff, store credit for some more, and bought a Mox Jet.

From that point on I started building out my collection. Eventually that dark times deck moved me into wanting to try Dredge, and I got 4 bazaars (when they were about $250 each) once again by trading standard, modern, and legacy stuff I was not going to use into store credit and trades. I played that list for a long time, and then finally I decided I would collect power. My Bazaars went towards some moxen, I got a good trade at Gencon for a timewalk from a vendor, and finally I managed to trade in something like $1500 to cardkingdom for a reasonable condition lotus.

I was basically able to collect my vintage staples without directly spending a dime, by carefully saving my cards that I was getting via limited, speculating on stuff that would go up and trading into it, and spending the time. For what it's worth most of my vintage collection today was only available to me because I bought 100 copies of Deathrite shaman at 2 dollars store credit each which then sold at 18, and 200 copies of collective brutality at less than a dollar store credit which I think went for damn near 25. I was smart and lucky, but I don't think you have to be to have a similar story to me.

Point is, the quest to actually get these cards was part of the game to me, and quite frankly I think of it as being more fun and challenging than a lot of the rounds of magic I have played in my life. If scarcity was not part of the inherent design of the game, cards would not have rarity, and if owning the cards was not important people would not buy and sell them at the rates they do. During the period of time where I was collecting my power I never once said to myself, I wish I could proxy some crap I don't own at a tourney. I just played a different list or played a different format.

I am basically making the argument here that I view ownership of the game pieces as a critical part of the game itself, or at least the meta game around the game, and I do not think you can separate the two. I would go as far as saying that owning the cards will make you not only have more respect for them, but opponents and spectators alike will have more respect for you, and I think that is important to the life of the format itself.

@desolutionist said in [M20] Chandra, Acolyte of Flame:

There’s already a million mirror breakers for Xerox. They can’t fit this 3 mana planeswalker unless it’s better than Dack or Narset.

This also doesn’t do much the turn you cast it, worse than Recoup on a lot of days.

Vintage unplayable, but I could be wrong. I don’t even think Dreadhorde Arsonist is good.

There are decks other than Xerox and colors other than blue. In a grindy prison deck like Blood Moon this could compliment the Kalidesh Chandra by allowing us to not only pump her but to replay our lightning bolts. It could also enable you to do something like turn on Koth of the Hammers Ultimate a turn after you play him, which is a deck full of mountains seems strong.

Has anyone considered trying to run a copy of Muldrotha, the Gravetide, Karona, Falae God, and/or Sidsi, Brood Tyrant in their lists?

Muldrotha functions like a bad sun titan in the list in that if you have not played a land that turn he allows you to play a bazaar from the yard. If you are so inclined he also lets you replay tormods crypt every turn he is on the field. Sidsi is kinda just a 5th bridge effect when she is on the battlefield. Karona is a stretch but she has some ability to fill the same role as Flame-Kin Zealot if you have enough things that can just attack that turn without needing haste.

Normally I would not even consider them but the reason I ask is because both of them pitch to Force of Will, Force of Vigor, Force of Negation, and Unmask and are not just totally dead cards that do not fit the theme of the list otherwise. With all the pitch stuff the deck as it feels like at this point we going to have to start evaluating what pitches to what almost as much as we look at number of dredgers and the like.

@smmenen said in [M20] Chandra, Acolyte of Flame:

I almost never post in spoiler threads, partly because I do set reviews.

But WTF is going on here. There are three sets in three months with likely Vintage playables? This is an insane time to be a Vintage player.

And the - ability in this card is nearly Tiny Jace, without the hassle of having to flip it? AND you get as many activations as Tiny Jace does?

I mean you are talking about a 1U card vs a 1RR card. Chandra is far more difficult to cast and cannot be pitched to either of the blue forces, and should be more powerful all things considered.

I think that we may just have to consider the fact that walker cards are inherently just so strong because of how they work within the rules and their interaction with other cards that every set likely has something that is in the grey area for vintage. Hell there are walkers from sets from years ago that never saw play that I'm starting to look at again just because they may have a place now.

I mean, for 4 mana (and its blue) Narset, Transcendent would let you double cast 3 spells without extra mana.

@brass-man said in Should all Vintage be 100% proxy?:

But there's a false dichotomy here which is annoying. There's no reason you can't run an event and say "You can run proxies but they have to be legible." For me, the best proxy is a computer printout, on a plain piece of paper, cut out and put in a sleeve in front of another card. I use these for testing and for lower-key paper events. There's never any confusion, and when effort is taken to print the image out at the right size with the right sized border, bystanders and opponents rarely notice I'm playing with proxies at all.

So this brings up the argument of what is the difference between a really good proxy and a counterfeit. Since we are not selling the proxies we can put the discussion of morality/ethics aside, but once again going back to the OP why would WOTC enable this? Why would we buy cards from them if we could just print them out?

Yes, I agree there needs to be a standard for proxies if you intend to use them, I just don't think you should use them. There is no other format where people are clamoring for this, even though there are some decks in legacy that are now pushing up against the edges of vintage prices and quite frankly, affordability is subjective. Hell, standard is mostly more costly than vintage in the long run because cards are replaced so frequently and tend not to hold value, but no standard players are asking for a break.

Once again, sanctioning and coverage are the only things that are at all different here. WOTC would not sanction a proxy event, nor would they broadcast one where you can see fake cards on screen. If you can deal without those 2 things then you already have all the ability to run proxy events with whatever criteria you would like to have them in.