Preface to a Series of Crimes:
This is the first in a series of appendices intended to supplement and slowly transmogrify the primer of my good friend @thecravenone into a work all my own, in my usual subtle yet entertaining fashion. This mirrors my time with the deck itself, which I started playing after @JACO crushed me with his version in round one of Vintage Champs in 2015. Since that day I have not played another vintage deck. My life and love belong to 2 Card Monte.
My list, which I will vaguely reference throughout my supplemental material:
# Two Card Monte
## Shaman Ben Version
Lands:
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Mana Confluence
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Mana Rocks:
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
Combo Pieces:
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Helm of Obedience
4 Painter's Servant
4 Grindstone
Tutors:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Tinker
Card Draw:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
Protection:
1 Trinisphere
3 Defense Grid
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Disenchant
1 Ancient Grudge
Sideboard:
4 Nature's Claim
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Balance
3 Containment Priest
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mindbreak Trap
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 City of Brass
Addendum One: Goblin Welder is Not Your Friend
When you were young, you always felt like an outcast. The world was trying to dress you in the trappings of a life that did not fit you. To mold you into something else. Something ugly. Something uniform. You cursed silently and tried to resist, but each day took more from you. It was tearing you apart, and forcing the pieces back together to form some caricature of you that you could not recognize or embrace. It was slow torture and soon there would be nothing of you left. Just the shell of who you could have been forced into being what their world decided.
Things changed the day you met [[Goblin Welder]].
You were standing by yourself outside of a Mirrodin concert, trying not to look nervous or out of place. Feeling like an impostor, you felt only panic as the grimiest little guy in the street came charging your way. He was bellowing Agnostic Front lyrics and stomping about with questionable balance. He thrust a [[Mindslaver]] full of an unknown substance at your face, and you had no choice but to drink it. It burned as it went down, but with the warmth came inebriation. Fast and strong, it was a welcome departure from the emotions twisting about inside you like [[Teferi’s Puzzle Box]]. You would not remember much from that night, a theme that would recur throughout the years you would spend together. His methods and madness would rattle you like the [[Chains of Mephistopheles]] but they would leave you feeling alive.
From that day on you ran the scene together. You were unstoppable. A [[Juggernaut]] tearing through the walls that used to contain you. The world was yours. Side by side, your companionship was forged in darksteel and penned in aether. It felt like it would last forever, like nothing could knock you from the high of endless nights of consuming [[Serum Powder]] and [[Thousand-Year Elixir]]. The spirit of Lin-Sivvi was coursing through your veins.
When you were an [[Apprentice Wizard]] it was easy to ignore the writing on the walls as you tore them down like a [[Dwarven Demolition Team]]. Every moment was a new opportunity, and consequences never manifested if you did not look too closely. Never mind that the path was paved with problems, you had to keep charging into the light. It was more important to escape the darkness than face the music.
Punk Rock forever.
Each passing sunset made it a little harder to disregard the price of your friendship. The freedom you felt at his side began to show the true cost. He was always taking your things. Sometimes your nice things. Sometimes things you needed. Things you cherished. And he was trading them for things he told you that you wanted. That you could not live without. Things that he needed. His next fix. He was giving you the refuse from his crime-laden lifestyle and making you an accomplice. You could only turn a blind eye and swallow the truth for so long. Your [[Limited Resources]] were strained. Soon they would be [[One with Nothing]].
Times were changing. Your battle raged on, but the more you pushed against the [[Rule of Law]] the more you were left with only [[Exhaustion]]. The purpose of the fight had become so hazy that you could no longer be sure there was an enemy. You began to question why you were fighting at all. The [[spirit of resistance]] dwindled. You were working too hard and accomplishing too little.
Things had to change.
When [[Goblin Welder]] got locked up, it was a breath of fresh air. You took a job at the [[Bazaar of Baghdad]] to try and get your things together. After some courses at the [[Tolarian Academy]], you established yourself in a real career working for Mishra. By the time you went out on your own and founded [[Gifts Ungiven]] incorporated, your reckless Goblin friend was a fading memory.
We will fast forward through the years to last week, when [[Goblin Welder]] showed up unannounced to your Suburban home front to the extreme discomfort of your new and rather conservative wife.
At first, you are elated to see your old friend. Sealed away in the confines of nostalgia, you remember him as a safe, fun-loving brother from your [[Glory]] days. You [[recall]] things being much better than they were, and you are excited to catch up and maybe even get a taste of your former life.
So you spend an evening pounding beers and trying to keep him quiet as he tells stories that make your new spouse cringe and send you into a panic as you worry about your kids overhearing his steady stream of profanity and vulgarity as they are supposed to be asleep down the hall. You drop numerous hints that it is time to wrap things up. He has a comfortable disregard for your prodding and your wife’s discomfort, and after a few more beers he cannot possibly manage to get anywhere safe.
So he is sleeping on your couch.
He will be gone in the morning.
But when you get home from work the next day, there he is, cutting out lines of [[Serum Powder]] in front of your mother in law talking about the time you stole [[Squee’s Toy]] and hid it in the private chambers of the [[Adventurer’s Guildhouse]] after properly compensating [[Rubinia Soulsinger]]. As you erupt in anger to keep him from providing the most intimate details of your past in front of your nearby children, too overwhelmed to begin addressing the open use of substances in front of your family, he stares at you in disappointment.
His feelings are hurt.
He tells you that you have changed, and sulks off into the living room. He plops down on your couch as you follow him, wondering if he is right, too rattled to know what to do. Your new life is a little too close to the molded shell they were making for you when you met him, but it is a hell of a lot better than waking up smelling of vomit and holding your head to keep it from throbbing, trying to figure out where you are as you stumble out of an abandoned warehouse near the [[Rishadan Port]].
Youth has its place. And that place is the past.
You try to explain things to him, and he pretends to understand, but the conversation is distant and full of unspoken resentment on both ends. He agrees to pack his things and head out the next day, telling you about a fishing trip he has planned with [[Karn, Silver Golem]] that he was going to drag you along on as a surprise for your upcoming birthday, despite the fact that your birthday was a month ago. You begrudgingly agree to let him stay one more night in exchange for his promise to reign in his behavior, knowing well that you are already in over your head with your family for his exploits.
You look in on him from the kitchen as he drinks a bottle of your expensive scotch on your couch, dripping it down his GG Allin shirt that smells like it has not been washed since before the [[Time Spiral]]. It is a sad sight on tired eyes.
They say Legends never die. But let’s face it. The last thing your successful and happy life needs is an old legend bringing up the time you snorted [[Serum Powder]] off the belly of the [[Masked Gorgon]] to get so snow blind that she could not turn you to stone. Even as you reflect on this you have to worry that he is working on trading your four door sedan that you use to drop your kids off to school for a [[Goblin Charbelcher]], unaware that you no longer keep a stock of green mana around to fire it up by the pool. With any luck he has not already turned your lawn mower into some [[ticking gnomes]] or traded your satellite dish for a [[darksteel reactor]]. There is just no place in your life for [[Goblin Welder]].
Let go of the past. Punk is dead.
To Sum things up in a more direct manor, Goblin Welder does not make the cut these days. He is a liability at best. I played him for too long, trying to make him good, but it was more work than it was worth. He is at his best if they kill or counter him, fearing him from some memory reflex instead of practical application.
You are playing Leyline of the Void, making him worse against your opponent at least some of the time. Removal in main decks increases every day, and even when the Shops deck does not shut him down with a Revoker they shoot him with a Ballista. Goblin Welder is a weapon of the past, better left to rest in memory than tarnish in resurrection.
Next up will be addendum 2, the Draw 7 Diatribe, but I think this is as much as I have in me for the morning.
