No surprises for vintage here, there is no way they would make more changes so soon after such a sweeping one.

If Once upon a time was White or Red I think it would be stone unplayable in vintage. Black could be fringe because the decks sometimes make black mana or play unmask/contagion. As a green card, or if it was blue, the fact that it pitches is a substantial part of the sales pitch.

@john-cox said in Fastbond Brainstorming:

Sensei's top gets ridiculous with Ramunap Excavator. Or just on its own with all the Fetchlands you can play.

The only reason I think I don't want to run top in the list for this exact reason is that I think I would rather just run 4x Null Rods. The thing I have come to realize is that playing Null rod can make your opponent play fair, but playing fast bond into nullrod makes it so that you become the player playing unfair.

@daniel-worobec said in [ELD] Once Upon a Time:

In regards to dredge decks. Is it safe to assume that you can take out Dredgers and put in some Once Upon a Time in place of those dredgers since it will find dredgers or and additional Bazaar of Baghdad?

You are not casting them with mana, so unless you open with one after a bazaar they are just pitch fodder, unless riftstone portal falls in to favor in a big way.

I suspect the only time you take a dredger with these is actually when you whiff on finding another bazaar, so no I do not think you can cut dredgers in any substantial number to accommodate this as a matter of fact you likely want to keep the count high enough to ensure you hit one if you whiff on bazzar in the first place.

Do you know how many people I see in other formats playing 2-3 Leylines, it's mind numbing.

Not for nothing but in addition to the bazaar math this card can also get you closer to the single dredge 6 the list still has, which is another value to consider.

2 gush, fastbond, this is draw your deck right? Not that there is any shortage of ways to do that.

I still think This + Trade Routes + timewalk is the way to go. Maybe add to that a sac outlet as well as Ramunap Excivator?

I mean, if key/vault works with one restricted piece why can't this

I would love to see a taking turns style deck in vintage one of these days, but that is a pipe dream I am sure.

No one would run 4 of these in most lists in most any format, If only because the broken stuff you can do revolves around fetching it and then bouncing and recurring it, but also how many timewalks does one need to take to win?

@desolutionist said in [ELD] Once Upon a Time:

Isn’t keeping 7 with this better than mulling to 2 with this in pretty much all cases? I don’t think mulling, with the intent of casting this spell, gets you any closer to finding something with it. The top cards of the deck are unknown in all cases.

Depends what your deck is doing. Dredge for instance would always mull a 7 hand with this in it and no Bazaar I think, because they can take subsequent mulls after that. It's not until they hit like 3 that they have to weigh if this is better or not, and in most cases it will be because even if you whiff you get 5 cards closer to what you need where as with mulls you would not.

A deck that plays in a more traditional way may not need just one card though, it is going to depend on the combination of things they have in hand, what they know about the opponents deck. etc. There will also be causes where people keep hands with this solely because it is a green card to pitch to FOV.

@thewhitedragon69 said in [ELD] Once Upon a Time:

Keeping a hand with this as your first or second land drop, hoping to see one in the top 5, is almost always worse than just mulling. The times you use it turn 0 and wiff on a land you wanted, it will cost you games.

Keeping a bad hand has nothing to do the strength of a card, I'm unsure why that argument always comes up.

This being worse than a mulligan sorta depends on how much you have already mulliganed. Digging 5, even if you don't see a land, gets you 5 closer to a land you need. I think If ii have already mulled 2 times there are many instances where this will be better (contextual to the hand you keep) and once you have hit the 3rd mulligan you have to start thinking long and hard about the risks of mulling again at -1 vs keeping this and playing the odds.

I don't think you can judge this card by that metric though because most of the play this card get is going to be in decks that already do things that a normal deck would not do like Mulling for 1 card and not playing mana. The fact that this pitched to Force of Vigor is huge and if it was blue we would not even be having this conversation. Pitch cards as well as brainstorm, Jace, and Bazzar have made it so that the low end of a card is not nearly as relevant as what the top end of it can do.