Congrats on coming second Thomas!

@firemaw get to know locals, and you would probably get to a point where you could either borrow a deck, or borrow enough cards to build a proxy deck.

There are no full proxy vintage events at stores in the Bay Area.

In past years, there were three stores that sporadically ran proxy vintage events (anywhere between 10-20 proxies normally). There is currently only one store that runs monthly vintage (15 card proxy). This shop is Eudo Games. Their next vintage event is May 20th - this Sunday.

For the longest time, I have considered buying into MTGO. Today, this is still something that I am on the fence about. The buy-in cost is irrelevant. My two big inhibitions are time, and potential enjoyment factor. The challenge that I have always had, and continue to have, is overcoming the ever-discussed game client limitations, and losing some of the aspects of the game that appeal the most to me (i.e. the people aspect). Streamers constantly berate MTGO, but, by virtue that they keep playing (and streaming), things are not potentially as bad as they make them out to be.

My question for people is: does the fun outweigh the frustration or vice versa, and why?

I guess this depends on what you mean by viable. Any 75 cards jammed together are viable, but are not necessarily positioned well to win events. If you mean has someone else made a prison workshop deck that has consistently won events post thorn restriction that I am able to net-deck, I believe that the answer is no. Is it possible to make such a deck? Quite possibly. I am not going to pretend to know how or what such a deck would look like though. I know that I would start with the restricted artefact taxing cards, add spheres, bridges, smokestacks, null rods, revokers, and tangle wires.

Congratulations! The next step is to encourage any resulting children to play vintage!

@Brass-Man, I wonder if the masked question should revolve around the existence of sanctioned events and from the perspective of someone that does not play vintage. Clearly this is irrelevant to MTGO.

What I mean by this, is that there is often the perception that vintage is a dead format. This immediately turns to the question of: what is meant by dead? Every other format has a clear and direct correlation between the number/frequency/selection of sanctioned events, and the perceived health of the format. For a variety of reasons, events that allow play-test cards do not feed into this equation. Said events, despite being very similar, are still different. I am not at all suggesting that the perception of said differences are valid, but rather I think that it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that they exist. By existing, the whole RL discussion is able to act somewhat as a scapegoat, particularly as it relates to being a barrier to entry, and is hence, as the OP puts it: a red herring.

It would be amazing, if there could be some consolidation between the broader vintage community's this is how it is vintage, and the official perceived WoTC vintage format. That being said, at least several reasons for why this is not in WoTC's best interest right now to provide such consolidation are quite clear.

I remember seeing @tribet oath into DRS about 4 years ago. Everyone involved was surprised. I'm pretty sure that he won that game though...

@tribet I was wondering whether you were going to go back to your old tiny-robots mud build...

I wonder whether this will cause a fork from URW to URW and UBW. Red will continue to lean on the greatest thief in the multiverse, together with pyro. Black will move towards tutors and tendrils. Tinker is likely to re-emerge too.