For episode 49, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter) and Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher) talk with Erin Campbell (@OriginalOestrus) about this year’s online Vintage Championships and learning to cook for yourself (and others!) during a pandemic.

Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
00:41 – Eternal Weekend 2020 Online
32:47 – Food and People
1:12:48 – Outro
Total runtime – 1:07:18

Vintage Championships 2020

It continues to be a weird year. This year’s Vintage Championship events, usually held in three events around the world, were instead held online using MTGO. Legacy was too, but we mostly talk about Vintage, as usual. The move online was received positively by most players as a safe, accessible option to experience the format’s biggest event(s). As part of signing up, both Legacy and Vintage gave registered players access to a “god account,” with all of the cards to build any deck, so players didn’t need to scramble or pay extra to build a deck. There were some initial gripes about not having access to odd ducks like the Walking Dead Secret Lair Drop cards in Legacy, but ultimately I think that was for the memes rather than actual format need.

Usually Vintage Championship events are held three times: one in Europe, one in Asia, and one in North America. As a nod to this, the online event also had three equal events but with different start times for accessibility. And the same trophies were available: paintings of Vintage-playable lands, mounted in a Magic-card frame. A player could register for and potentially play in any and all of these events, spending an entire weekend from Friday to Sunday playing Vintage.

And there were some impressive turnouts: 252 on Friday for a Tolarian Academy Painting, 391 on Saturday for Library of Alexandria, and 427 on Sunday for Mishra’s Workshop. There were 302 players for last year’s Vintage event in Pittsburgh, for comparison.

For decklists and analysis, I’ll recommend Joe Dyer’s Vintage and Legacy champs coverage. He was last episode’s guest and does a huge amount of work making eternal formats readable on a weekly basis.

Erin played in the Sunday events for Legacy and Vintage this year and we were happy to have her on to talk about it. After trying a few other builds she went with Jund Hogaak in Legacy and Dredge (as expected?) in Vintage and played some rounds and had some fun. Graveyard shenanigans are always fun, and Dredge even won the Saturday Vintage event.

We talk with Erin about the variety of decks in Vintage. There are plenty of decks and strategies available if you’re a player who finds themselves drawn to a particular thing. Artifacts and graveyards and spells and counterspells are all good at various times and in various matchups.

And we also talk about how the format is still somehow unfulfilling. We offer no solutions other than that there are so many fun ways to play Magic: The Gathering, so make sure you’re doing what you want to do. Maybe you want to play a 62-card Dredge Special, maybe you want to register Tarmogoyf, maybe you like Rage Extractors or Goblin Charbelchers. We cover a lot of ground, most of which is positive excitement about the Vintage play experience and the Vintage community, and some of which I would describe as nostalgic.

It’s in that mode that we talk a little about Andreas Petersen’s title from Sunday being stripped after evidence from his and his opponent’s stream revealed that he had exchanged favor for a concession into the top eight. This was far enough past that we didn’t need to report on it (you can review details on Star City Games), but we are able to comment on it. And the biggest reaction was just disappointment, mostly that there were people who felt this kind of exchange was commonplace for MTGO events and wanted to brush it off. Vintage (and other formats!) should focus on fun and community. What is the compelling need to try to get ahead in this way? I mean, I understand you could be 1/3 of a Vintage Champion and get a painting, but would you feel good about it? Be adult, have fun, drink responsibly.

Food and Drink: Cooking for Oneself and Others

We cover a lot of ground on this section too. To sum it up, early on Erin notes that, when the coronavirus quarantine started, she had friends concerned for her well being because she—quite admittedly and publicly—didn’t know how to cook! Now she’s learning how to cook, and from the looks of it, doing pretty well!

Also, can I just say how much better this breakfast turned out than the last? I put a little bit more milk in my eggs, and BAKED the bacon, which I had never done before. I could see and taste the difference. I'm so proud of myself.

— Erin Campbell (@OriginalOestrus) October 10, 2020

So we talk about some egg recipes (including Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for scrambled eggs) and baking bacon and how pancakes are kind of scary. Erin likes Miracle Whip and doesn’t like stuff in her eggs (so no omelettes) because it’s a weird texture thing. Nat likes mayonnaise and loves Anolon brand cookware. Geoff doesn’t like eggs at all.

We also bring up pancakes again, because Geoff and I do like pancakes. As we mention to Erin they’re not as intimidating as they seem. The cottage cheese pancake recipe I make regularly is in the previous link (skip the blueberries if you don’t like texture), and Geoff’s wife Sarah’s current recipe for buttermilk pancakes is this.

Ingredients
● 3/4 cup milk
● 2 tablespoons white vinegar
● 1 cup all-purpose flour
● 2 tablespoons white sugar
● 1 teaspoon baking powder
● 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
● 1/2 teaspoon salt
● 1 egg
● 2 tablespoons butter, melted
● cooking spray

Directions
1. Combine milk with vinegar in a medium bowl and set aside for 5 minutes to “sour”.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Whisk egg and butter into “soured” milk. Pour the flour mixture into the wet ingredients and whisk until lumps are gone.
3. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, and coat with cooking spray. Pour 1/4 cupfuls of batter onto the skillet, and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip with a spatula, and cook until browned on the other side.

I recommend just keeping buttermilk on hand since it’s surprisingly versatile and keeps for a while. Real buttermilk also generally works better than the milk-plus-vinegar (or you can sub in lemon juice for the vinegar) concoction. It’s great for biscuits. These are super easy and we make them all time (don’t let anyone put you down because a recipe is easy; eat what you want!).

Ingredients
● 10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, divided
● 4 cups cake flour (I use all-purpose)
● 2 teaspoons baking powder
● 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
● 2 teaspoons salt
● 2 cups buttermilk

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees and grease an 8-inch square baking pan with shortening or butter.
2. Whisk dry ingredients together and cut in the 10 tablespoons of cold butter, or smash it with your fingertips, into pea-sized pieces. Stir in the buttermilk until no dry pockets remain. Using a spatula, transfer the dough to the prepared pan.
3. Using floured hands, push the dough to the corners of the pan in an even layer. With an oiled or greased scraper or thin spatula, cut the dough into nine biscuits with two cuts by two cuts (like a tic-tac-toe board). Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes.
4. Let biscuits cool in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Pull apart at cuts and serve. Extras will keep in a sealed plastic bag or airtight container for 4-5 days.

We frequently serve these as breakfast sandwiches with ham, over-easy eggs, cheese, and perhaps a smear of tart jelly or jam. They’re also great warm with butter and honey.

Cooking food in general (and breakfast in particular?) is both a form of self-care and a way to show love for someone else, as we discuss. Cooking a meal—or even just one dish—is often a project that can be planned for and carried out to meet success. Personal victories are always welcome, and you can eat it! And if it didn’t work out, that’s OK too; you can still learn from the experience, and if you used good ingredients, you may still have produced something edible. Any day—but during the holidays especially—we find lots of ways to share food with friends and family, and putting time and effort into making a meal or a dish (or some cookies) can be a great way to show someone you care. You want to nourish them and enrich their life in even a physical way. Likewise someone making you something

We range pretty far in this section, so it’s difficult to cover it all, but the cooking and caring part is the best takeaway. <3

Questions for Discussion

Did you play in one of the Eternal Weekend online events? How was it? Did you miss being able to wander up to your awkward, bag-laden group of friends who were exhausted, discussing which of three mediocre restaurants to adjourn to after Steve finally loses his second match, so you could relate how much of a detestable lucksack your opponent was for topdecking Paradoxical the turn after you Thoughtsiezed them to nothing, and then they even had the nerve to tell you, “I topdecked that!” when you told them it resolved, so you had to watch them go through their long, tedious process of drawing cards and playing artifacts and drawing more cards before finally finding Monastery Mentor and playing Time Walk and playing more spells the next turn so they could win, and that was just game two? There’s a lot that online Magic just doesn’t quite capture sometimes, right? And yet we miss it. Who wants breakfast?!

Conclusion

Thanks again to Erin Campbell for being our guest for this episode! We always enjoy talking with her and hope you enjoy listening in on some fun conversation. Take care of yourselves this holiday season. Perhaps 2021 will look a little brighter. We’re looking forward to doing something special for episode 50! We’ll also look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

In episode 48, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter) and Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher) talk with Joe Dyer (@volrathxp) about the effect of modal double-face cards in combo decks. Joe is THE Vintage and Legacy correspondent to follow, with great weekly strategy and format articles at MTGGoldfish.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
00:37 – MDFC Lands in Eternal Combo
46:29 – Food & Drink: Myracles, Lobster, and Oyster Crisp
1:12:48 – Outro
Total runtime – 1:12:59

What Can Lands Do for You?

If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you’re probably aware that we have a bit of an interest in (or obsession with?) Goblin Charbelcher decks. From 2007 until 2010 or so, I played almost exclusively Belcher in Vintage. Goldfishing alone, I did a lot of work on that deck to make it a fast, effective weapon, especially good at taking advantage of opponents’ stumbles or setup starts.

That was an important period for Belcher because three new cards debuted that revolutionized the archetype: Rite of Flame in Coldsnap (2006), Empty the Warrens in Time Spiral (2006), and Simian Spirit Guide in Planar Chaos (2007). Two +1 mana sources and an additional, cheap, orthogonal win condition that fit next to Goblin Charbelcher in what the deck was already trying to do. They let the deck simplify its mana base and, with the later unrestriction of Chrome Mox, eventually let Vintage players cut Land Grants and lands altogether, so a Belcher activation was always guaranteed lethal and you didn’t have to show your hand to your opponent.

Holiday Goblins, by Serious Vintage

Business (18)
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Empty the Warrens
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Tinker
1 Timetwister
4 Goblin Welder
2 Veil of Summer

Mana Sources (42)
4 Chrome Mox
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Rite of Flame
4 Tinder Wall
4 Desperate Ritual
2 Pyretic Ritual
4 Manamorphose
1 Channel
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
Sideboard (15)
4 Leyline of Anticipation
4 Storm Entity
2 Veil of Summer
2 Guttural Response
2 Pyretic Ritual
1 Pyroblast

These same cards and developments carried the deck into Legacy as well, with a similar red-green build. Without the additional power cards, and to take advantage of unrestricted Lion’s Eye Diamond, that deck often made use of Burning Wish as an additional win condition, but the idea is the same. It’s surprisingly easy to switch from Vintage to Legacy by just increasing the counts of restricted cards and cutting banned cards.

When Zendikar Rising recently introduced the modal double-face cards (MDFCs), it felt like the same kind of watershed moment. Does this change everything?

My initial reaction was skepticism. Why play a card that’s really only a land in the best case, a Chrome Mox imprint in the second best case, and unplayable in the worst case? There was also something anathema to me about playing lands in Belcher, but tradition isn’t a good reason to not play good cards. After some consideration, though, I realized that lands are very good in this type of deck. Most cards in the deck—Rite of Flame, Tinder Wall, a Mox, and so on—are simply plus-one mana, the same as a land. And lands have the benefit of being uncounterable and also permanent. They don’t build storm for Empty the Warrens, but neither do Spirit Guides.

Finding the right balance of MDFC lands to provide mana, imprint extras on Chrome Mox, and not hurt storm too much would be great. In the above list, switching 4 Desperate Ritual for 4 Shatterskull Smashing (Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass) and 2 Pyretic Ritual for 2 Turntimber Symbiosis (Turntimber, Serpentine Wood) seems totally reasonable, within two or three cards. I don’t think you want any lands that enter the battlefield tapped, for example.

But there’s another version of Vintage Belcher that doesn’t rely on storm, and it could really use an additional source of black mana.

BuRGr Belcher, by Serious Vintage

Business (13)
4 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Timetwister
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Memory Jar
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
3 Goblin Welder

Mana Sources (47)
4 Shatterskull Smashing
4 Agadeem's Awakening
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
4 Rite of Flame
4 Dark Ritual
3 Manamorphose
1 Channel
4 Chrome Mox
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
Sideboard (15)
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Veil of Summer
4 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Goblin Welder
1 Necropotence
1 Blightsteel Colossus

I’ve played a version similar to the above (without the MDFCs, of course). It’s more all-or-nothing than the red-green version above, which has very consistent mana. BuRGr Belcher aggressively goes for Goblin Charbelcher, using Dark Ritual to fuel bigger plays, including tutors and explosive draw-sevens. The thing missing from previous versions was consistent access to the right colors of mana, since your starts come from green Tinder Wall, red Rite of Flame, or black Dark Rituals and try to make other colors happen from there. Adding more free, uncounterable mana should be a boon to this build, and having permanent mana sources means it is easier to activate a turn-one Belcher on turn two if necessary. I look forward to testing something like this as a much-improved version of its predecessor.

Joe helps us talk about playing Oops, All Spells, another combo deck that can’t have lands and doesn’t need storm but does need consistent access to the right colors of mana. Joe wrote about this list in one of his recent articles.

Oops, All Spells, by yashimoro

Business (36)
4 Balustrade Spy
4 Undercity Informer
4 Narcomoeba
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Dread Return
1 Thassa’s Oracle
4 Force of Will
2 Pact of Negation
1 Mental Misstep
2 Thoughtseize
1 Gitaxian Probe
4 Preordain
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor

Mana Sources (24)
4 Agadeem’s Awakening
4 Sea Gate Restoration
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
Sideboard (15)
1 Echoing Truth
2 Fatal Push
3 Goblin Charbelcher
3 Hurkyl’s Recall
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Surgical Extraction

I haven’t played Oops, All Spells in Vintage, but having played it in Legacy, the hardest part of mulliganing hands was trying to get the first black mana to pay for Dark Ritual. Even adding just Agadeem’s Awakening (Agadeem, the Undercrypt) to the list will be a huge help there. This list also looks like it might be happy to play a couple of lands and have a setup turn where it plays a draw spell or tutor. I still recommend Stephen Menendian’s exploration of the archetype for how to build and play a list in both Vintage and Legacy. Even with the new technology, the bases are the same.

Getting to four mana with a turn-one, landless, combo deck is tantamount to victory, as even Empty the Warrens tokens or Goblin Charbelcher waiting for activation mana will win the game soon enough, to say nothing of Balustrade Spy and Undercity Informer. However, these are still very much glass cannons. Belcher loses to counterspells and Null Rod, and Oops, All Spells loses additionally to graveyard hate. The pilot of these decks knows they have to make their opponent have an answer, but they also know an answer frequently means a loss.

Building these decks means making tradeoffs between more powerful cards, more reliable mana, and more protection like Goblin Welder, Veil of Summer, or counterspells. As better examples in these categories are printed (Veil of Summer coming out last year was huge), these decks will get stronger and stronger. The MDFCs are going to be big here. As I mentioned on the show, I think there’s going to be more done with them than what we’ve seen here.

Food & Drink: Myracles, Lobsters, and Oyster Crisp

Joe recommended a new restaurant in the Dayton, Ohio area: Myracles Bar and Grill. It sounds pretty good, particularly the idea of specialty egg rolls with different flavors. I’m a fan of bar food in general, and I notice they have $4.29 baked beans, so those have to be amazing, right? Anyway, good luck to them opening in the middle of a pandemic. Someday, perhaps, Team Serious will make it out there and dine as a group once again.

Geoff talked about his recent trip to his family’s undisclosed location on the coast of Maine. The cabin is rustic, but it has access to local lobster and a beach, from which it is possible to harvest oysters, at least for now. There’s lots of good talk about fresh and not-so-fresh seafood. I recommended Taylor Shellfish in Seattle, where they will help the uninitiated learn about shellfish and will sell you a geoduck (pronounced “gooeyduck”), which looks like this:

And now we can provide the recipe mentioned in the show for oyster crisp, which sounds pretty good if you can get the oysters. Definitely cook them if you’re unsure of their origin.

1 pint oysters, drained
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
6 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
1 cup Parmesan cheese
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup crumbled saltine crackers
2 tbsp butter, melted

Salt and pepper the oysters and layer with the other ingredients in a 9×13 inch baking dish. Bake uncovered at 400 degrees for at least 20 minutes, or until top is brown and bubbly.

Eternal Weekend(s) 2020

We didn’t get a chance to talk about this on the show because it hadn’t been announced yet. Eternal Weekend is going to be an online affair this year (thanks, coronavirus), but that means there’s more opportunities to win as there are still three paintings to give away. Everything is organized on MTGO by Wizards, so details are all online here. The basics are that an MTGO account is required, it’s $25 to enter, and there are three events for three different paintings:
● Saturday, October 24, at 12:00 AM PDT (Tolarian Academy)
● Saturday, October 24, at 2:00 PM PDT (Library of Alexandria)
● Sunday, October 25, at 8:00 AM PDT (Mishra’s Workshop)

Good luck! I hope you win on turn one a lot.

Questions for Discussion

Is it wrong to play lands in Belcher at all? What if you play 15 lands, but they’re all in your sideboard? Should Oops, All Spells get a different name now that it has lands in it? Should it have gotten a different name anyway? Is Oops, All Berries a good cereal? I don’t think so. Crunch Berries have a weird flavor, kind of perfumy. I’m not a fan. Oops, All Oyster Crisp might be a better cereal. Oops, All Geoduck.

Conclusion

Thanks again to Joe Dyer for being our guest for this episode! Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter and check out his articles on MTGGoldfish. Life has been stressful and weird lately with, you know, disease and injustice and whatever is going on in Washington, D.C. lately. Sheesh. Thank you for spending some of your time with us. We at Serious Vintage encourage you to be safe, and also to vote. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 47, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) talk with Jerry Yang. Jerry is a longtime Team Serious member and a big influence on many teammates’ love of fun Magic and incredible food. If you want credible, he also has multiple StarCityGames Power 9 Top 8 appearances to his name. But who are we kidding, you don’t listen to this podcast for credibility.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
00:42 – More Like ComBANion
11:42 – Now THIS Is Podracing: Vintage Unleashed
44:01 – Food & Drink: Staying Inside
1:08:21 – Outro
Total runtime – 1:09:06

Exit, Pursued by a Cat Nightmare

We open our show, picking up where we left off last time, with a discussion on the banning of Lurrus of the Dream Den in Vintage. This was recorded weeks ago, so I imagine everyone has already talked about this a bunch and moved beyond the topic. Some players liked Lurrus changing the face of Vintage, other players didn’t like how ubiquitous it was. Because of the staggered release of Ikoria online and in paper, thanks to coronavirus, many players never even got to play the card.

Anyway, it’s gone now. The cat’s out of the format!

Does this set a precedent for banning other problem cards? Maybe! Are there other problem cards that might need banning? Probably not. Wizards altered the function of the companion ability to make all of them less powerful. Does even Lurrus need to remain banned? Probably not. When will that change get made? Who knows?

UX: Vintage Unleashed

Some people play Vintage for the broken interactions. Winning or losing on turn one isn’t a problem for them, and powerful plays are what they crave. Recent trends in the format have been away from that, though. Vintage players used to be excited when cards were introduced to the format as it brought about much needed change. Now we’ve seen more restrictions pushing power levels down, and they’ve come faster. Karn, the Great Creator, and Mystic Forge were restricted within months of their printings, and Lurrus was banned even before it was playable in paper.

Vintage is still fun, but there’s so many more insane plays to be made. That, and the play-what-you-want mentality of the MTG Underground, led to the formation of the Unrestrict X movement and Vintage Unleashed. (Thanks to Rajah James, our guest last episode, for helping maintain the rules website.) With that format, the idea is opening up the top-end of Vintage. A rising tide lifts all boats, and the Vintage card pool is an ocean vast and deep, with very many boats to sail.

Here is the Vintage Unleashed restricted list in its entirety:
● Ancestral Recall
● Black Lotus
● Demonic Consultation
● Demonic Tutor
● Imperial Seal
● Lion’s Eye Diamond
● Mana Crypt
● Mana Vault
● Merchant Scroll
● Mox Emerald
● Mox Jet
● Mox Pearl
● Mox Ruby
● Mox Sapphire
● Mystical Tutor
● Sol Ring
● Time Walk
● Timetwister
● Tolarian Academy
● Vampiric Tutor
● Wheel of Fortune

The X in Unrestrict X turned out to be 31. Thirty-one cards are freshly unrestricted, and Shahrazad and Lurrus are unbanned. That’s less than half the size of the current Vintage list. What’s left restricted is limited primarily to the Power 9, fast mana, tutors, and unbounded three-mana draw-sevens. And there are a few cards there that are already being looked at for unrestriction. I’ll throw out Lion’s Eye Diamond, Wheel of Fortune, Imperial Seal, and Merchant Scroll as getting that scrutiny.

We talk to Jerry about some of these lifted boats and some of the misapprehensions from players who haven’t yet tried Vintage Unleashed. There are many claims of an unbeatable deck. Players tend to look at the list and immediately throw out something they like (or hate) as obviously the best. If that was your reaction, I very much encourage you to put a build together and try a few games. You probably haven’t found the format killer you imagined.

So what can you do? Flash can be a deck in the format, especially now that it’s reunited with its old friends Brainstorm and Ponder. Or maybe the combination of Channel and Veil of Summer is alluring. Win with Goblin Charbelcher or Memory Jar. Try the Workshop combo route with Mystic Forge and Time Vault. You can play Gitaxian Probe and Mind’s Desire, or Lurrus and Balance, or Gush and Monastery Mentor. Necropotence! Tinker! Yawgmoth’s Will!

Some of these explosive strategies are held back by other restricted cards. Workshops get back Trinisphere, Strip Mine, Thorn of Amethyst, Lodestone Golem, and Chalice of the Void to help lock things in place. Mental Misstep is back, joining the normally free or cheap counterspells: Force of Will, Force of Negation, Mindbreak Trap, and Flusterstorm. Jerry mentions that Collector Ouphe and Lavinia, Azorius Renegade are great with Cavern of Souls. Narset can still rein in an opposing draw engine, and Dredge (with unrestricted Golgari Grave-Troll) is still around keeping people honest.

Combos and decks from different eras get rebuilt or recombined. Do a lot of broken things. Have a lot of fun.

This Sounds Awesome. Where Can I Play?

Glad you asked! Vintage Unleashed is the format for the third tournament in the Team Serious Virtual Realm, July 11 at noon ET. I would love to have a great turnout for this inaugural event!

The signup sheet is here, including a link to the Discord and more complete rules for the format. As with our previous Virtual Realm events, we’ll have a Friday evening Pub Quiz leading up to the tournament on Saturday.

The event is free, but we’ll be doing a raffle for some fun prizes with proceeds going to the Equal Justice Initiative, which focuses on “ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”

Should be a lot of fun, and people are welcome to join the Discord, hang out, play Pub Quiz, or support the raffle even if they can’t play in the event.

Food & Drink: Quarantine

We admit in the show that having Jerry on to talk about food during a quarantine, when no one is really going out to eat, is kind of like having a fine arts expert talk to you about their kindergartner’s drawings, but it’s a good time.

Jerry in quarantine has looked for easy-to-prepare comfort foods. He recommends several kinds of instant ramen (try Nissin Raoh or Mi Goreng), hot dogs, and frozen burritos and things you can do to enrich them beyond their salty, preserved, comfort-food status. The number one rule is to add an over-easy egg (or boiled or poached egg), but you can also try cilantro and peanuts, lime, greens, fresh vegetables, pickled vegetables, bacon or other protein, various hot sauces and so on. The goal is to get a flavor profile that goes beyond just “salt,” possibly add some nutrition, and maybe add complex textures as well.

There’s also a discussion of macaroni and cheese, harkening back to Episode 43 with Elizabeth where we talked about that as a pregnancy food. For boxes of pasta + cheese, Jerry likes Kraft Dinner, while Josh prefers Cracker Barrel vastly over Annie’s. Josh mixes his “Macaroni+” with frozen mixed vegetables. If you need a pick-me-up in these dark days, I recommend hotdogtopus.

Jerry and Josh also compare the size of their vans (see pics of Josh’s van below), and Geoff talks on the difficulty of getting his young niece and nephews to eat. As it turns out, you can cook frozen chicken nuggets wrong but Marco’s Pizza and E.L. Fudge cookies bring people together.

Questions for Discussion

What cards have you always wanted to play unrestricted in Vintage? Maybe you got to play them and miss them. Maybe you never got to play them at all. What’s the highest ratio of lands to playable revealed cards you’ve gotten off a Mind’s Desire? Jerry’s gotten higher. What’s your quarantine food status like? Anything you like that makes you comfortable in uncomfortable times? And, hey! If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself? I know I would. First I’d smother myself with brown mustard and relish. I’d be delicious.

Conclusion

Thanks so much again for listening! And thanks to Jerry for helping us talk about the fun new format, Vintage Unleashed. We hope you enjoyed it, and please do join us for the inaugural tournament! Continue being safe and remaining healthy so you can fight oppression. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 46, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) talk with Rajah James (@rykerwilliams). Rajah is a Team Serious member and friend who organized the online Team Serious League and played in the recent Team Serious Invitational: Virtual Realm, so we’re talking to him about getting your Magic fix while dealing with physical distancing.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
01:17 – Team Serious Leagues
24:10 – Enter the Virtual Realm
37:47 – The Cat’s in the Vintage
55:28 – Food & Drink: MTG Pub Quiz
1:16:49 – Outro
Total runtime – 1:17:51

Missing: The Gathering

These are weird times we’re living in. The coronavirus, as well as thoughtful public health officials and good sense, has relegated most of humanity to stay physically apart from one another to prevent the spread of a particularly virulent disease. I was thinking about it and realized I haven’t been in a building other than my own house in seven weeks. Distancing is the norm now, and that’s a problem for a tabletop card game where players square off in intimate distance, talking, and often interacting with one another’s cards.

Wizards of the Coast provided the first solutions to playing Magic under quarantine with, of course, Magic Online (MTGO) and Arena. But these services might leave something to be desired for some players. Arena’s available collection won’t allow players to play Vintage (or Legacy, Old School, Modern, and so on), and while MTGO offers most of the cards, there’s still a barrier to human interaction. You can’t fully engage with your opponent: introduce yourselves when you sit down, congratulate them on a good play, or see their reaction when you have the answer or drop your big threat. It can feel sterile, like you’re one person against a machine.

To overcome that, Rajah organized the Team Serious Leagues (TSL) within our group. As he describes, it’s similar to the Vintage Super League: round-robin games are played in batches over multiple weeks, and players are allowed to change decks or strategies between batches. Eventually records are compared and winners are declared. The TSL allows games to be played over any reasonable medium: webcam, MTGO, Cockatrice, even in person since it was organized before social distancing protocols were in effect. It was meant as a way to get Team Serious members to play games against one another despite there being sometimes long distances between players.

Since quarantine, it’s been a relief not only for the players, who get to continue playing games and talking to people, but for other Team Serious members, who often get to watch the streamed matches and even interact with the players over the team’s chat and Discord.

You can follow along too if you like. The results and decklists from the first Vintage batch are on Rajah’s website, and here are the decklists from the second batch. When the three batches are complete, someone will win these keen lands altered by Daniel Anschutz, or this “Wild Thing” Force of Will altered by Bobby Lupo.

Welcome to the Machine

Inspired by the TSL and compelled by the coronavirus quarantine, Andy “The Brass Man” Probasco and I started talking about hosting a virtual Team Serious Invitational (TSI). We wanted an opportunity to get people together where they could hang out online, play some Vintage, and perhaps consume some frosty cool alcoholic beverages. Just like a real TSI!

The tournament itself, held Saturday May 9 in a Discord server, went surprisingly well! We had 24 players and did six rounds of Swiss plus a top-eight elimination. Vintage luminaries like Kevin Cron and Greg Hughes (Zias) showed up, and six countries were represented in almost as many time zones. There was a minor disaster at the beginning as the Discord server failed to allow video connections, but everyone moved quickly and acutely to get matches played in other formats: Zoom, Cockatrice, Whereby, and Discord DMs. It was a remarkable show of ingenuity and determination!

Brass Man did some lovely, fun, insightful commentary throughout the event, adjusting on the fly to be able to show the variety of media players were using to play. Here’s what Zoom versus Cockatrice looks like, for example, as well as Brassy, keepin’ it classy.

For a sense of the current Vintage environment, the Top 8 ended up with seven companions in the decklists, including two of them in one deck, played by Jimmy McCarthy. Zias won without a companion, playing Shops Vines. The full results are available on The Mana Drain, with some additional commentary and hot links. For example, for full TSI effect, Steve McGrew opted to drink a shot of Malört, as is tradition upon making Top 8. Congratulations and regrets to Steve, and congratulations to the rest of the Top 8.

How Companionable Is Companion?

Of course, the event was played under predictably lame-duck conditions. On May 11, Wizards of the Coast announced that in a week’s time there would be a change to the Banned & Restricted List that would include Vintage.

As I mentioned, six of the Top 8 decks at the TSI:VR, and indeed many of the top-performing decks in recent Vintage Challenges online have included creatures with the companion ability, recently printed in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. Lurrus of the Dream-Den is the main culprit, being a long-game advantage engine that happens to combo with Black Lotus very well, so it works even in a faster combo shell.

The problem is that the nature of companion means that restricting Lurrus will do nothing to prevent its being a problem. A player needs only one copy, which is safely stored in their deck’s sideboard until needed.

What to do? What will Wizards do to Vintage on May 18? Will the format get what will essentially be its first banning for power-level considerations? (There are other banned cards: ante cards, conspiracies, dexterity cards, and Shahrazad, all of which are banned categorically.) Will there be an effective power-level errata to make companion not work as written, or perhaps not work at all? Will all the companions be hit or just Lurrus? Could something instead be unrestricted to combat the cat menace? Will there be any consideration to Lurrus’s being used in multiple different archetypes or bringing unexpected cards into the format, like Seal of Fire and Dead Weight? If banning or errata eliminates Lurrus, will another companion follow the same path of degeneracy?

We talk about the implications of these questions and why any plan might be preferable over another. It’s a complex issue surrounding complex cards. And the whole situation is exacerbated by the current global pandemic as the cards have only been released in paper in some Asian markets and online. Many players haven’t even touched a paper Lurrus! They showed up at TSI:VR and in the TSL only because these are playtest events that allow proxies. It’s such a weird conflux of situations!

Anyway, we do a lot of discussing but come to no conclusions.

Food & Drink: MTG Pub Quiz

Part of the goal Brass Man and I put together for the TSI:VR was to have it feel like a real TSI. Part of that was making it two days, so people could start the festivities early on Friday. Encouraging people to just hang out in the chatrooms we always hang out in didn’t seem like enough, so I had the idea to put together a pub-quiz-style trivia game that would encourage both hanging out and drinking. There would be some fun questions and activities to encourage interaction, and with Discord we could do some proper trash talking.

So I put together a few rounds of themed questions, designed to pass a few hours pleasantly. People drifted in and out, but we ended up with four teams of three to four players, which was perfect. I asked questions over video and was even able to put a few visual questions on screen, like the Movie Magic posters with blanked out titles that were also Magic card names (see below), or Nam Quiz Tran that was Nam’s 2018 Vintage Champs finals list with blanked out cards. And teams were able to retreat to separate Discord rooms to collaborate on answers. It worked great!

We did six rounds, which I preview on the show. There was Magic trivia new and old, the movie posters and Nam’s deck, a retrospective of 1993 in honor of Magic’s birth, a lightning round where each team got to pick its own yes-or-no category, and “Drinking With Team Serious,” which we run through in its entirety on the show. I really didn’t think anyone would be able to identify one of Jaco’s custom-built cocktails by name, but here we are: the Charcnado. That’s your important food and drink lesson for this episode.

Congratulations to Fernando Aguiano, Jon Hammack, and Kaleb Woodward on their dominant victory!

Upcoming Events

I think the only questions for discussion are going to surface around the Banned & Restricted List change on Monday. What’s going to happen there, and what will be the long-term impact?

But we are planning future online Magic event since the coronavirus quarantine seems unlikely to be meaningfully lifted any time in the near future. And even if it is, we can still get together online to play Magic!

June 5 there will be another MTG Pub Quiz, and June 6 will be a Middle School MTG tournament, both again held online using the Team Serious: Virtual Realm Discord server. We learned a lot about both processes last time, so I expect this to go even better. There’s no entry, and we’ll have some nice donated prizes for winners.

This June event is open to all, so if you’re interested, let us know, and we’ll be planning more events in different formats in the future.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for listening! And thanks to Rajah for helping us talk about some positive Magic experiences in these weird dark times. We hope you enjoyed it and found it uplifting, and that you’re being safe and remaining healthy. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to let us know if you want to play some Middle School and be part of other online Team Serious events!

For episode 45, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) continue their discussion David P. Baum, longtime owner of a card and comic book store in Northern Ohio. He doesn’t have a personal Twitter account, but (Pop! the store has one. And if you’d like to support the store through the coronavirus quarantine, Pop! opened an online storefront to help get them through.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
01:20 – The Dangers of Supply: Fallen Empires, Chronicles, and the Power 9
30:00 – Dave Opens His First Store
38:49 – “They Stole Your Cardboard?”
51:55 – Changes, Inertia, and Model Railroads
57:26 – Digressions About Success
Total runtime – 1:15:19

If You Missed Part 1

We talked with Dave about his role in organizing Magic in Ohio in 1994–1996 or so, from selling his first boxes of product without knowing at all what the game was about to organizing the local event Sand Con and the Chinese 4th Edition prerelease at Origins in Columbus in 1996. (We suspected it was 1995 in the episode, but Chinese 4th debuted the following year, and 1996 was the first year Origins moved permanently to Columbus. Consider this a correction.)

There was a lot. If you have an interest in the history of Magic: The Gathering, you should listen. It’s very fun! I admit at one point to playing Icatian Moneychanger.

What Happened – Part 2

When we left Dave, he had turned down an opportunity to bid on continuing to organize events for Wizards of the Coast. He sold out of the organizing business and out of Magic entirely.

This first part of this episode contains a chronology of the beginnings of tournament Magic, from Dave’s perspective:
● We talk a little about the awkwardness that Wizards went through in its growth period, namely Fallen Empires and Chronicles, from the perspective of a store owner at that time as well as from the players at that time.
● From there we talk about Magic economics in general in those days, including the challenges of finding particular cards or finding someone to trade with you or finding an accurate representation of pricing. The Internet was still in its infancy and paper price guides were out of date as soon as they were printed.
● And we talk about everyone’s favorite topic, the Reserved List! We solve no problems and make no wild claims. You’ll be disappointed.

From here it gets pretty crazy.
● Dave tells about his first “store,” selling Magic cards in a hobby shop with an owner who’s, let’s say, a little unstable. Dave moves on, to a closet, with an owner who’s just a thief.

● Finally in 2000 Dave opens a small store on an upper story of an old building in Sandusky, Ohio (the one on the flyer). This includes a pretty interesting recollection of 9/11 and the store’s strange position as a refuge, of sorts, for the local kids who were around after school amid the turmoil of this unique situation. This compels him to move to a more customer-friendly location.
● Josh’s mom goes to the store and scopes it out for us. Josh is impressed in hindsight that his mom is that in tune with what the kids might like.
● Dave tells us about the store’s first robbery! And getting a new landlord, because, wow.
● The wheel keeps turning and the store moves again, gets sold, and opens anew. Dave talks about the risks of selling online and why he hadn’t done it in the past. As I mentioned, these unique times have changed that. They’re online now.
● We talk about the death of Magic, in relation to the death of model railroading.

And we close with some of the intangible benefits (and also potential drawbacks) of owning a store. Dave has been running Magic events for a quarter century. At this point he’s seen a couple of generations of players grow up, and he’s had a very real effect on them. Magic is a lifestyle game, but everyone experiences it differently, and everyone who experiences it has a different life that this game fits into somehow. We, as players, even as long-time players, don’t really think about that, but it’s pretty remarkable. Magic is over 25 years old.

Dave predicts that Magic will survive even another catastrophic event, “like World War II.” And here we are in a global pandemic that has disallowed the gathering part of Magic: The Gathering. Listening to this now, after recording it before quarantine events began, it’s a little strange. Where does the game go from here? Where do we go?

Questions for Discussion

Local game stores like Dave’s are being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus quarantine since they can’t bring players in for events, and thus can’t as easily sell sealed product, single cards, or even snacks and drinks. So the only question this week is what are you doing for your local game store, especially after they’ve done so much for you. Times are tough, but consider doing what’s reasonable for you.

If you want to support Dave’s store, Pop!, they have a new online storefront that will hopefully carry them through the troubled times. I’m sure they’d appreciate the business.

Conclusion

Thanks again for listening! And thanks to Dave for joining us on this special, two-part episode. We hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. Usually we talk a lot more about food. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 44, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) join David P. Baum, longtime owner of a card and comic book store in Northern Ohio. He doesn’t have a personal Twitter account, but (Pop! the store has one, as well as a Facebook page and Discord, if you’re interested.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
02:29 – Dave Discovers the Magic
17:39 – The First “Grand Prix” and SandCon
32:18 – Origins 1995
Total runtime – 45:39

Who Is David P. Baum?

We’ve talked about how hobby store owners need to focus on the store as a business rather, than as a hangout, so it can be challenging for someone who has fun with Magic: The Game to have it become Managing: The Gathering. But I believe Dave is an entrepreneur at heart. He’s not out to take advantage of customers to make money. He’s always been unassuming, welcoming, and respectful towards his customers, great at making connections, and being helpful beyond the normal cash register transaction. Instead he’s trying to create a better experience for customers, knowing that the money will come along with that.

So far it’s seemed to work out. Thinking about it, I’ve been to shops he’s owned in eight different locations: five in Sandusky under two different names, and others in Huron, Port Clinton, and Bowling Green. When one has closed it’s been mostly on David’s terms, and when one opens it’s with foresight and the hope that it will be an improvement on the last. He’s been able to work solely as a game-store owner for a long time.

For some members of Team Serious, Dave has been a part of our lives for many years. I’m 37 now and have been going to his stores since I was in high school, at least 20 years. He comes out to dinner with us after events and I’ve been to his house to play board games. He was at my wedding, and then last year was at the tournament and diaper party we had to celebrate the birth of our first child. I guess this is just a personal recommendation on Dave to go along with his years of experience as a Magic: The Gathering tournament organizer and store owner. He’s a great guy and valued member of the community, no matter what he says.

What Happened – Part I

My plan for this episode worked perfectly. I know that Dave’s a good talker and storyteller, so it was easy to just kind of turn him loose. We ended up with more than two hours of recorded audio that just happened to be pretty neatly divided between “The Early Days of Tournament Magic” and “What It’s Like to Own a Store.” So you’ll get more Dave soon!

This first part contains a chronology of the beginnings of tournament Magic, from Dave’s perspective:
● Dave gets his first boxes of Unlimited from a sports card dealer and sells them at a little sports card convention without knowing what they are. He opens some starters and “auctions” some singles, including Demonic Tutor. Did he sell a Black Lotus?
● He takes some of the cards home, learns to play, and becomes engrossed. He gets a Shivan Dragon.
● At another sports card show, Dave organizes probably the first Magic tournament in Northern Ohio, maybe one of the first tournaments ever.
● When Magic was still fresh and new, starting in 1995 or so, Dave and his brother and some friends organize a circuit of tournaments in Northern Ohio that they call the Grand Prix. One of these includes an event at a golf resort in Huron that is my first tournament ever, where I played a team event with future Pro Tour player Tim Aten. Tim and I were in the same class in high school, and on the same quiz team if you’re familiar with his Jeopardy! appearances. He was also coincidentally the Magic editor I replaced when I got hired at Wizards. Vermilion High School class of 2000 was apparently good for Magic editors.
● They also organize SandCon in Sandusky, which Geoff and I attend to buy cards and not be competitive in tournaments. I play Icatian Moneychanger in a deck at one point. The early days of Magic have such primitive strategy and buying options compared to those we have now. Dave starts a “zine” to promote SandCon and no one really knows how to build a deck.

● Dave runs the Chinese Fourth Edition release event at Origins. There’s no reference for any of the cards, so Dave makes a photocopied booklet to show what the cards do based on how they look. Two of the judges he brings down are Mike and Jeff Donais, both of whom eventually work in Wizards R&D and later go on to other game development jobs. Dave meets Richard Garfield, Peter Adkison, Brom, and other Magic luminaries.
● Magic weathers some of its early challenges, enters its first big growth period, and begins the Pro Tour in 1996, asking tournament organizers to bid to participate. Dave and his partners decline, and Dave takes a break from Magic entirely.

It covers a lot of time in Magic’s first big growth phase, up to and including some of the difficulties with Fallen Empires and Chronicles, and the Wild West days before everyone had constant information from the Internet. Prices were made up on the spot and the decks people built were largely terrible. Perhaps you remember the advice that 20 lands were enough? That has been wrong forever, but it was long-lasting as a baseline for deck construction.

Anyway, this is merely part one. Dave will continue in a second episode where he tells about running a store and some of the experiences surrounding that.

Questions for Discussion

When did you start playing Magic? Did you ever go to a small “convention” with a bunch of vendors selling sports cards and a few people selling gaming cards? I remember going to one and buying a couple of Star Wars CCG starters. That was a mistake. I also remember buying $1 cards like Shapeshifter and Tetravus, which were fine but rare and I had never seen them before so I had no idea what they were worth. That was a weird thing too: “I’ve never seen this card so it must be good or worth a lot.”

Conclusion

Thanks for listening! And thanks to Dave for joining us on this special, two-part episode. We hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. Usually we talk a lot more about food. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 43, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) join Nat’s wife Elizabeth (@eaeshelman) to talk about a gamer’s first GenCon, hosting a diaper-party Magic tournament, and pregnancy food cravings!


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
0:00:41 – GenCon 2019
1:13:25 – TSI Diaper Party
1:23:31 – I Need Some Pickles Right Now or I Will Fight You
Total runtime – 1:36:17

Everyone Enjoys GenCon

Hello! It’s been several months since we’ve had time to do any recording, and in that time Vintage has changed drastically at least twice, so obviously we’re not talking about Vintage at all. Instead, we’re looking back three months to the beginning of August and the best time of the year, GenCon. Geoff and I attended this year, along with several Team Serious members, and this year I had the pleasure of rooming with my wife (five months pregnant at the time) and her older cousin John. Being able to introduce (or reintroduce, in John’s case) people to GenCon is a real treat, and even offers a refreshing perspective for myself, who has attended for the past 10-or-so years.

My view of GenCon has always been that each year’s experience is slightly different, and usually gets better as you weed out elements that weren’t as fulfilling and replace them with something new. You learn something and improve each time. For example, as much as I love playing Magic, there’s so much more going on at GenCon that I now prefer to spend my time elsewhere with friends, unlike the first couple of years where I spent most of my days in the tournament hall. Elizabeth, John, and I played a nice Commander game on Wednesday night before getting to the convention on Thursday, and Geoff, Andy “Brass Man” Probasco, and I did an Andy’s Closet Cube Three Player Partner Nonlegendary Commander Brawl draft (patent pending) one evening to pass a few hours. Action photo and my deck below; ask Andy about it on Twitter.

Most of our time was spent in GenCon’s extensive exhibit hall, where new games and products can be demoed and purchased. Covering everything in detail would take a lot, but we talk about several games:
● Robo-Rally-like programming games were surprisingly popular. These included the rubber-duck racing simulator duck! Duck! Go!, Tremors: the Boardgame game Terror Below, and Dauntless Dirigibles, which is still in development but was a lot of fun.
● Elizabeth and I played Foundations of Rome, still in development and on Kickstarter, as the last game on Sunday. It’s got a lot of potential, particularly with well-designed game pieces. Elizabeth would like to remind you that she won, by a lot.
● Adventure Island was a fun, cooperative, narrative game, which sparked some discussion on the nature of those types of games and their replay value.
● Elizabeth and her family like the Lost Cities series of games. Lost Cities: Rivals is the newest addition to that group and is a fun bidding game. There’s also a four-player board game.
● I wanted to pick up Unearth, which we played at last year’s GenCon but which stuck with me. It holds up to my memory of it.
● Silver: Amulet was new from the creator of One Night Ultimate Werewolf but had some frustrating elements. We all had to try it twice to check.
● I also liked 3 laws of Robotics, a fun social-deduction game with a party game element. My only gripe was that I thought the instructions were missing an important clarification on how points work.
● Geoff was enchanted by the simple dexterity game Catch the Moon if you appreciate games that are easy to teach. This one is super cute.
● Elizabeth and I both liked Wingspan a fun, complex engine builder with amazing bird art. And I just learned from BGG that it was primarily developed and designed by women.

Outside the regular exhibit hall, Elizabeth, John, and I got to look at the First Exposure Playtest Hall, which always has a fun feeling of being able to offer constructive criticism on a game before it comes out. We also played in the One Night Ultimate Werewolf World Championship, my first non-Magic sanctioned tournament at GenCon, and they made a few fun twists to the rules. Elizabeth and John also played several games of traditional and Ultimate Werewolf over conference. And the three of us attended a seminar on “The Secrets of Magic: The Gathering,” hosted by frequent GenCon presenter and intellectual property lawyer Jason Webb, who went step-by-step through a pack of Magic cards and explained all the symbols, language, and other IP text. It was interesting. And free. And we each got a pack of Ravnica Allegiance. So it’s worth an hour to relax at an otherwise busy con.

For food, we talk a little about brunch at Cafe Pikachu and dinner (and shrimp cocktail) at St. Elmo Steakhouse. I don’t remember if we mentioned the best chicken fingers in the world, but this was also the first year I ever dined at the Steak ‘n Shake near the convention center.

Diapers for Little Magic Player

A few weeks ago, in anticipation of the arrival of our firstborn, Elizabeth and I hosted a Team Serious Invitational: Diaper Party (TSI:DP) at our house in Columbus. In addition to being a fun episode of camaraderie, where the entry fee was just some number of (unused, I really felt we needed to specify unused) diapers, this was also a lead-up to Eternal Weekend for the Ohio Vintage players. But in addition to the five rounds of competitive Vintage Magic: The Gathering, we also had some fun baby-related games.

Players were invited to stick balloons up their shirts to simulate pregnancy for example, and two of the balloons had tickets to win a Death Star beach ball! Guhstin used three strategically placed balloons for the full effect.

We also organized that game where players try to identify candy that has been melted in diapers. If you’d like to play at home, I’ll put the answers on Twitter.

And we had a basket of diapers for people to write messages on so that we could have some encouraging cheer for those late-night feedings and changings. Those will be fun to go through, as will the box of diapers that one Twaun P. Pwnertown sent, decorated with Orkz.

It was a great time! At least Elizabeth and I had a great time. I got to play some Vintage and she got to show off our house—including the newly finished nursery—and play hostess to a bunch of fun people. I think our guests had fun too, but who am I to speak for them?

Regardless, our attendees, along with a few who couldn’t attend and sent mail instead gave us more than 3,000 diapers, and nearly as many wipes. We also got a great assortment of books, toys, and clothes. Vintage writer Joe Dyer brought the rocking horse, and the day’s winner, David Lance, brought a personalized MTG onesie for the boy. (We had joked about first prize for the tournament being naming rights for our son, so maybe David just called his shot.)

There’s a more complete report on The Mana Drain. As I mentioned, David Lance won with Survival. Steve McGrew, Nam Q. Tran, and Rajah James rounded out the Top 4 on Paradoxical Outcome, Ravager Shops, and ZiasBond Lands, respectively. Prizes included sealed product from my infancy in Magic: a 4th Edition starter, an Urza’s Saga precon, and Ice Age and Fallen Empires boosters.

Food and Drinks: Pregnancy Cravings

For our food and drinks section, we talked some about the culinary highlights of GenCon, but we also talked with Elizabeth about her pregnancy cravings. Instead of the stereotypical strange combinations of pickles and ice cream, she wanted mostly comfort foods. Shells and cheese, or pot-roast sandwich with fries and a Coke from Bob Evans, for example. We’ve had several batches of shells and cheese over the past three trimesters, and this is the first time in our 10-year marriage we’ve ever done that. Here’s the recipe. It’s what you’d expect: delicious.

We also talk about how there should be more nonalcoholic cocktail options. Recently Elizabeth and I rediscovered Asterisk Supper Club, which is mere minutes from our house. There the bartender will concoct a “mocktail” to your taste preferences, and it’s a reasonable price because they’re making you a fancy pop.

Questions for Discussion

Why don’t you come to GenCon? You’d probably enjoy it. Also, why don’t you host a Vintage tournament (or whatever format you prefer) at your house? Invite your friends and have fun. Act like you like one another. Have you ever been pregnant? Did you enjoy restricting your diet? No alcohol, limited caffeine, avoiding foods like sushi, unpasteurized dairy, lunch meat? Did you have any weird cravings? What hot spots did you find for mocktails in your area?

Conclusion and Post Script

Thanks for listening! And thanks to Elizabeth for joining us. If you’re interested in some of her writing, it’s available on McSweeney’s and elsewhere under her authorial name, Elizabeth Eshelman.

And in the few weeks it took for us to get the podcast edited and the writeup written up, Elizabeth and I had a baby! Jesse John Moes was born on November 16 at 7:13 a.m. He weighed 7 lbs. 13 oz. and was 7+13 in. long, so he’s got some clear lucky numbers. Both mom and baby did just great. In fact, we’ve had him home for two weeks now and are having fun figuring out this whole “Living With a Baby” thing. So far, so good!

We’ll probably be on hiatus a bit longer as Nat and Elizabeth enjoy their newborn, but we’ll be back. Geoff loves editing these shows too much to let us quit. He is a harsh taskmaster. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 42, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) welcome back Andy Probasco (@tmdBrassMan) to talk about Mystic Forge, a free preview card from Core Set 2020, provided by Wizards of the Coast!



Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
00:28 – Surprise! It’s Mystic Forge
Total runtime: 33:05

“I Can Build ANY Machine.”

There are a lot of exciting cards in Core Set 2020 (better known as M20), but there are two I left design notes for that specifically mentioned Vintage. Scheming Symmetry I was intrigued in because a combo deck could potentially exist built around the now six available one-black-mana topdeck tutors. And my note on our preview card was that “If this hits Vintage, it will do something new and fun.”

We brought Andy “The Brass Man” Probasco back to the show to help us figure out what those new and fun things might be. He’s the owner of The Mana Drain and has been a participant on the Vintage Super League, and as winner of the most recent Team Serious Invitational with Death’s Shadow Survival, is one of the Vintage format’s more creative players and deck builders.

Mystic Forge has a lot of potential as a card-advantage engine in Mishra’s Workshop decks of all kinds. The question, as always, is what do you cut from an existing list to make room for a card that doesn’t do anything to your opponent on its own? You could trade one turn in the early game to play Mystic Forge and potentially accelerate all of your future plays, but that gives your opponent an undisrupted turn either free of disruption (like Sphere of Resistance or Phyrexian Revoker) or free of threat (like Arcbound Ravager or Walking Ballista). It’s a risk.

In today’s metagame, Mystic Forge also competes directly at mana cost and some utility with Karn, the Great Creator, who not only disrupts the opponent but also serves as card advantage.

But Mystic Forge has so many exciting benefits. Many Workshop decks and Eldrazi decks are built with fairly low mana costs relative to the amount of mana they can produce between Workshop itself, Ancient Tomb, Eldrazi lands, as well as Moxes, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt. If you get Mystic Forge into play, your next turn might include casting three or four cards from the top of your library, and you can exile a card you can’t or don’t want to cast. With enough mana, you can cast cards even through Karn or Collector Ouphe, potentially allowing you to overwhelm your opponent. This is helpful whether you’re playing more lock pieces or attacking with creatures or trying to combo off.

After we talked, Andy proposed this list, which is based on current Karn Workshops builds and is happy to play whatever role its opening hand and the game situation gives it (of course, none of the lists presented here are tested, and your metagame may vary, so good luck!).

Karn's Forge

Business (34)
4 Mystic Forge
3 Manifold Key
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
3 Helm of Awakening
4 Serum Powder
1 Chalice of the Void
3 Arcbound Ravager
4 Foundry Inspector
4 Walking Ballista

Mana Sources (26)
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Grim Monolith
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
2 City of Traitors
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Mox Opal
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
Sideboard (15)
1 Manifold Key
1 Time Vault
13 Other Cards

If you can use Sensei’s Divining Top or a similar effect to further manipulate the top card of your library, you can easily get around lands blocking the top of your deck. Top also goes infinite with Foundry Inspector to draw your library. Together with the variety of mana producing artifacts, including Grim Monolith and Voltaic Key, there might be a Mystic Forge combo deck that aims to play most of its library on turn one to some great effect. Potentially this deck wins with Aetheflux Reservoir or, my favorite, Goblin Charbelcher.

This could be the basis for a Krark Clan Ironworks-type deck in Vintage and potentially other formats.

Aetherflux Forge

Business (36)
4 Mystic Forge
3 Aetherflux Reservoir
3 Krark Clan Ironworks
3 Manifold Key
4 Karn, the Great Creator
4 Helm of Awakening
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Spine of Ish Sah
1 Myr Retriever
4 Scrap Trawler
4 Foundry Inspector

Mana Sources (25)
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Mox Opal
4 Grim Monolith
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Vault
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
Sideboard (15)
1 Manifold Key
1 Time Vault
1 Aetherflux Reservoir
1 Goblin Charbelcher
11 Other Cards

But maybe you just try to run Mystic Forge in a Tiny Robots list and try to cast a bunch of tiny creatures that will attack anything in sight. You can cast Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker for 0 to move them off the top of your library, and it might be better to have Chief of the Foundry main deck to get some value out of that play.

Tiny Forgebots

Business (39)
4 Mystic Forge
4 Sensei’s Divining Top
3 Skullclamp
2 Cranial Plating
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Thorn of Amethyst
4 Memnite
4 Foundry Inspector
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Walking Ballista
4 Hangarback Walker
4 Phyrexian Revoker

Mana Sources (21)
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 City of Traitors
2 Mox Opal
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
Sideboard (15)
4 Chief of the Foundry
11 Other cards

One last thing to notice is that these decks will all benefit greatly from M20’s other gift to Vintage, the London mulligan. Touring London will help players find a quality turn one: a hand with Mishra’s Workshop, or an early Mystic Forge or Karn, or both. Seeing seven cards at a time and picking your favorites will make a big difference in these kinds of decks, which are so reliant on opening hands and won’t be able to as easily fix their situation as a blue deck with multiple Preordains and other cheap cantrips. When it comes to this new era of colorless decks, mulligan often and mulligan with intention.

And the Hi-Res

For our free preview this time, I also had the time and forethought to ask Wizards about the high-resolution art from Titus Lunter. And they provided! So here’s the hi-res version of Mystic Forge from M20 for your eyeballs to enjoy (and click to download wallpaper).

Questions for Discussion

Will Mystic Forge be a hit in Vintage? What about in another format? It’s definitely legal in a bunch of them, and Legacy has a bunch of Sol lands to help play it. Did any of you play X-Men Legends games, where the character Forge is played by Lou Diamond Phillips? And you’d interact with him and he’d say lines like “I can build ANY machine” like he’s real smug about it? That was great. He was right too. He built a lot of really useful stuff in that series of games.

Conclusion

Thanks for listening! And thanks to The Brass Man for joining us on this special episode. If you found this show because of our free Wizards preview card for M20, welcome. We hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. Usually we talk a lot more about food. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 41, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) talk about Modern Horizons with Allison Medwin (@trulyaliem), who worked on the exploratory and vision design teams for that set. Nat was also on exploratory design and was the set’s lead editor. Then we also talk about…cats!


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
0:00:31 – Peering Over Modern Horizons
1:03:47 – Cats? Necessary. Rails? Optional.
Total Runtime – 1:14:38

How Modern Horizons Came to Be

Modern Horizons started its life as part of a “hackathon,” where several teams of Wizards were given the opportunity to brainstorm about a particular project and put together a proposal for its potential eventual publication. Ethan Fleischer presented it as Time Spiral II, “A Magic Set About Magic: The Gathering” that would have delicious references to previous cards, characters, and even strategies that longtime players would recognize and cherish. Mark Rosewater wanted to do the same but with a more mechanical focus, so it would be more like Future Sight II.

Being on the exploratory team at the beginning and as the lead editor at the end, I had a somewhat unique position of watching over the set throughout its life. Termed “Project Decadence” early on, it was great fun to see how much rich flavor and tactical sweetness could be squeezed into the set with just a handful of designers (including our guest, Allison) brainstorming on a deadline. As the Modern Horizons concept was developed further – particularly with the idea of the cards going directly into the Modern format, anticipating some of them would make a splash – it was fascinating to watch the power level increase without losing the sense of fun nostalgia. This is when the subthemes were fleshed out and the Canopy cycle were added, for example. And then, with that last layer of glitter, the names and flavor text are applied.

It would be hard to add anything in writing to what we talked about with Allison on the show. As we got to the end, it was obvious that between Allison and me, we could talk about nearly every card and just create a flood of notes. Which would be so much fun! But also a really, really long podcast. If you want more depth on one card, you can check out our previous episode on Collector Ouphe, our free preview card from Wizards of the Coast.

Anyway, here we covered our own highlights and were still able to leave something for players to discover on their own. There’s a lot. Even we were finding out new things as we talked.

And Then There Were Cats

Instead of our usual Food and Drink section we decided to talk about cats. There’s just a lot of love for cats on the show.

Allison is prone to posting her cats, sister and brother Emery and Evan, on her social media, and they’re pretty great.

You can follow the exploits of Geoff’s cats, Awbee and Oberon, on his Instagram, Tonkinesetime. That’s dedication.

And Josh also has cats, Ed and Eddy—indoor/outdoor cats in the mountains above Denver. He said of Eddy, he’s “the long-haired, dirty mouth killer.”

I’m limited to posting pictures other people’s cats because my wife is allergic. Recently I’ve spent time with Green Lantern (“Greenie”), who belongs to my friend Arnie, and who I would catsit for sometimes. It’s true that all cats have attitudes – good and bad – but Greenie is most prone to just crawl into your lap, plop down, and start purring, so I give him a high rating. What a goofball.

I can only imagine how excited Jaco was to receive our always-high-quality Vintage Magic: The Gathering podcast with a bunch of cat pictures in it.

Questions for Discussion

What cards’ backstories did we miss from Modern Horizons? Were there characters or references you were particularly excited to see? I liked Allison’s question, I think in reference to Shenanigans: “Is this what Vintage players want to see?” What do Vintage players want out of new sets? Is it more cats? It’s probably more cats. Cats are great.

Conclusion

Thanks for listening, and to Alli for joining us! We should have something special coming up so stay tuned to our next episode as well. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 40, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) are pleased to show off Collector Ouphe, a free preview card from Modern Horizons, provided by Wizards of the Coast!


01:25 – Oof
17:59 – The Real Collection Was the Friends We Made Along the Way
Total runtime: 25:22

Null Rodney

I’m sure most of you are here looking for the free Modern Horizons preview card, so we’ll get right to it.

It’s a Null Rod on legs! At long last!

This card was at the top of my list from the very beginning of exploratory design, and it went through everything almost unchanged mechanically. In my head I named it “Null Rodney.”

Null Rod has long been a staple of Vintage aggro-control decks because it helps prey on artifact-based manabases as Wasteland and Strip Mine take apart dual lands. It slows down explosive starts and combo finishes, allowing the control deck enough time to block paths to victory and win with creatures. That was one of Null Rod’s big weaknesses, in fact; it didn’t apply pressure to the opponent by itself. Without threatening creatures bearing down, opponents could find answers or additional threats and break out of their prison to win.

Collector Ouphe has the same crippling potential as Null Rod but brings its own threat.

As formats get older and smaller, and artifacts get more powerful, Collector Ouphe has increasing utility. In Modern it shuts down Affinity (the deck, not the ability), Aether Vial, and much of the Tron decks’ ability to fix colors and tutor for lands. In Legacy it starts hitting fast mana (Mox Diamond, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal, and Lion’s Eye Diamond), artifact decks with Grim Monolith, and powerful equipment, like Batterskull and Umezawa’s Jitte. And in Vintage, Workshop Aggro runs Walking Ballista and Arcbound Ravager, in addition to all the decks using Moxes, Black Lotus, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt as a big chunk of their mana base. Oh, and Time Vault is still an OK card, I think.

Anyway, we’re primarily a Vintage podcast, so we’ll go deeper into Vintage applications.

Obviously not every deck is interested in this effect, but there are probably a few. Stony Silence is one of the most important cards in Survival decks for buying time against Workshops and Paradoxical Outcome, and Collector Ouphe is a Stony Silence that can be tutored for (or discarded to) Survival of the Fittest. Maybe there’s some risk in making creature removal even better against this creature-heavy strategy, but all kinds of removal were good against this deck that has a key land, a key enchantment, big artifact creatures, lots of other creatures, and a relevant graveyard.

Ouphe Survival, borrowed from David Lance

Business (38)
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Thorn of Amethyst
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
4 Hollow One
3 Collector Ouphe
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Hooting Mandrills
1 Manglehorn
1 Spell Queller
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Wonder
4 Noble Hierarch

Mana Sources (22)
2 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Savannah
2 Tropical Island
1 Forest
Sideboard (15)
1 Chalice of the Void
4 Containment Priest
1 Energy Flux
1 Fairgrounds Warden
1 Force of Vigor
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 Collector Ouphe
2 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Stony Silence

BUG Control (which we’ve never talked about on this show before) is already looking to deny resources to the opponent with creatures like Leovold, Emissary of Trest, stopping card-draw, and Ramunap Excavator and Wasteland hitting important lands. Like Excavator, the Ouphe is another artifact that’s been given a body and a purpose – preventing the opponent from having nice things. And thanks to Deathrite Shaman, BUG Control can skip running a lot of the artifacts that would make the Ouphe a double-edged sword.

BUG Collector

Business (38)
4 Force of Will
2 Mental Misstep
1 Thoughtseize
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Ponder
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
2 Painful Truths
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Dig Through Time
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Collector Ouphe
2 Baleful Strix
3 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
1 Rumanap Excavator
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Gurmag Angler

Mana Sources (22)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Swamp
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
Sideboard (15)
4 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Yixlid Jailer
1 Forest
2 Nature's Claim
1 Force of Vigor
1 Pithing Needle
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Flusterstorm
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Infernal Reckoning

Another strategy, which hasn’t been around recently but could show up again, would be something like Christmas Beats. In Magic, red and green both hate Vintage staples blue and artifacts, so this deck focuses on those in an aggro-control shell. Christmas Beats foregoes playing most artifacts in favor of Elvish and Simian Spirit Guides, so it can disrupt mana with four Collector Ouphes and an additional Null Rod for moral support. There are lots of creature options beyond that: Magus of the Moon, Tin Street Hooligan, Scavenging Ooze, Tarmogoyf, Harsh Mentor, Vexing Shusher, Goblin Cratermaker. And for spells you get Pyroblast, Lightning Bolt, Ancient Grudge, the new Force of Vigor from Modern Horizons – whatever you think will make a difference in the expected metagame.

Santa’s Ouphe

Business (32)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Collector Ouphe
4 Tin Street Hooligan
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Magus of the Moon
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Null Rod
1 Blood Moon
1 Force of Vigor
4 Pyroblast
4 Lightning Bolt

Mana Sources (28)
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Lotus Petal
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Taiga
3 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
Sideboard (15)
3 Pithing Needle
1 Thorn of Amethyst
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Mindbreak Trap

There’s a lot of opportunity for Collector Ouphe to succeed in Modern and eternal formats. Artifacts continue getting stronger and allowing opponents to carry out nefarious, broken schemes. Ouphe says no!

How Many Team Serious Members Does It Take?

Because podcasts are a tricky way to reveal a free Wizards preview card, we decided we’d try something different, and perhaps unique. The Serious Vintage podcast looks at the Vintage format through the lens of community, rather than competition. We have fun playing Magic, but it’s also an excuse to hang out with people we enjoy. And it’s one of the reasons we always end our shows with discussions of food and drink, because the post-tournament meal is just as important as the event itself. Sometimes more so.

So thanks to everyone who helped us preview our card (in order of the word they read): Steve McGrew, Jake Hilty, Jon Hammack, JR Goldman, Guhstin Dewey, Paul Blakeley, Ryan Seeley, Nam Q. Tran, Duane Haddix, Rajah James, Anthony “Twaun” Michaels, Jimmy McCarthy, Andy “Brass Man” Probasco, Sam Krohlow, Frank Singel, Josh McCurley, Phil Thorson, Jerry Yang, Eric Caffrey, Mark Trogdon, Gilberto Rivera, Kevin Nelson, Justin Waller, Rick Gideon, David Lance, Kyle Lennox, Charles Rolko, Kevin Poenisch, Matt Hazard, Erik Butler, Joe Dyer, and Ben Perry. Lots of people had fun with it, none more than Brass Man, who provided the stinger for this episode.

Thanks also to Geoff Moes, who, when I said I wanted to have him splice 40 or so contextless words of a card together into a coherent whole, didn’t blink an eye. It was just that normal twitch thing he gets when I tell him I have an idea.

And thanks to Josh Chapple, who, since it was snowing in Colorado when we recorded, went up the road to podcast from the parking lot of his local bar, Snowpack Taproom, to get a working internet signal. He recommends Snowpack as having a strong selection of rotating local kegs, good food, and powerful internet. The next Team Serious Invitational he hosts in Colorado will definitely take a trip there.

Finally, thanks to Jaco for hosting our show at Eternal Central. He loves formats with old Magic cards and has put together quite a home for them. We exist in large part because of his help.

My job is easy; I just write words.

Upcoming Events

We close this episode with a couple of upcoming Vintage events, a section that we used to do and would like to do more regularly. If you have a Vintage (or Middle School or Old School) event that you want us to hype, let us know! If it’s reasonable to put on our next episode, we will.

First up, an event I found on The Mana Drain. The Lone Star Lhurgoyfs group is hosting a Vintage event Saturday, June 8 in Houston, Texas. They have a nice writeup, it’s at a bar, and they’re going to raffle off some pretty awesome looking Eldrazi proxies. Check that out if you’re near Houston.

In Warren, Ohio, there are two Vintage Eternal Weekend Trials, on Friday, June 14 and Sunday, June 16 at Bottom Dollar Trading. Those events should just be crawling with Team Serious members, so it should be a lot of fun.

And Josh is looking forward to the TinFinVitational events in Denver, being run the same weekend as that city’s Magic Fest at the Whittier Pub. There’s a Vintage event on Friday, July 19, and a Legacy event on Sunday, July 21. Take a look if you’ll be playing in GP Denver, and say hey to Josh.

Questions for Discussion

So! What do you think of Collector Ouphe? Did you know how to pronounce “ouphe” before we did? Did you see Filip Burburan’s great art? The Ouphe is stealing the power from an Aether Vial! Are there other Easter eggs in the art? What other Modern Horizons cards are you excited about? Do you have a local Vintage or other event coming up that you want us to give a shoutout to? Let us know!

Conclusion

Thanks for listening! If you found this show because of our free Wizards preview card for Modern Horizons, welcome. We hope you enjoyed your time here. We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].

For episode 39, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) talk about the role of planeswalkers in Vintage, speculate baselessly about some new cards in War of the Spark, and discuss sous vide and other novel methods of cooking.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
00:42 – A Brief, Half-Educated History of Planeswalkers in Vintage
26:56 – What Do We Do With 36 New Planeswalkers?
43:16 – Sous Vide? So What?
Total runtime: 55:29

Planeswalkers in Vintage

I want to start the writeup with a lament, actually, for the loss of Morphling.de. That website was a longtime store of Vintage decks and knowledge from the paper and early online days of the format, going back to 2002. I did a lot of research there for articles and podcasts and considered it a great source for questions like “Who was the first person to top eight with Rage Extractor?” and “Is there a recent 5C Stax list?” The archives are still available, but they’re not searchable. It’s a blow to people like us who enjoy the historical perspective.

At least the archives of The Mana Drain are still in good working order. Using those, it seems like the first planeswalkers, from Lorwyn, mostly missed Vintage entirely. Little Jace Beleren wasn’t explosive enough and too generously gave cards to your opponent. Chandra Nalaar and Liliana Vess were too expensive, and Ajani Goldmane was too creature-centric for the time. In fact it was Garruk Wildspeaker who had the most attractive power-level to cost ratio, making into an experimental Worldgorger Dragon combo build by Rich Shay and a novel mono-green deck from Guli. These weird, attackable enchantments with activated abilities didn’t really go anywhere

It wasn’t until Tezzeret, the Seeker combined with a newly re-re-un-re-errata’d Time Vault in 2008 that planeswalkers really took hold. Suddenly there was an entirely new deck archetype—two if you distinguish Turbo Tezz from the regular kind—that featured an entirely new card type. And it was winning! Tezzeret still won in a very Vintage-y way, that is, immediately. You had one to stop your opponent from taking all the turns, which meant short-term answers like counterspells and artifact removal were reasonable. Still, Thirst for Knowledge was restricted in 2009.

Then, in 2010, Jace, the Mind Sculptor appeared in Worldwake. There was a lot of discussion when the text first appeared, with players trying to determine the new card’s role, if it had one. You should really treat yourself to skimming that thread, as it’s hilarious in hindsight. Big Jace didn’t catch on right away, but it definitely left a mark on the format. Jace paired nicely with Dark Confidant as a draw engine in control decks, so well that Owen Turtenwald won the 2010 Vintage Championship with it as a three-of.

Jace succeeded in making the game longer, and Gush and Frantic Search were unrestricted in October 2010 to compete in that environment. It’s at this point that Vintage really turned more towards creatures as part of a strategic plan. Stuff on the board started being more important than stuff in the hand, and planeswalkers, creatures, and removal jockeyed for superiority. (This is actually where Jace Beleren (the card) started to show up, as a counter to players trying to push the envelope on Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Beleren was slightly cheaper and could strand an opponent’s Mind Sculptor in hand. It was kind of a weird time.)

There haven’t been so many planeswalkers that reached Tezzeret or Jace status. Dack Fayden certainly made an impact, particularly as an anti-strategy against Workshop decks, encouraging the use of Arcbound Ravager alongside Lodestone Golem and necessitating Phyrexian Revoker. And the bar has gotten lower for other planeswalkers to be tested. Even unexpected hits like Arlinn Kord, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, and Tamiyo, Field Researcher have made Vintage Top 8s.

So It’s WAR

Now we enter a new era of planeswalkers. Previously, they had been weird, attackable enchantments with activated abilities. Now they have static and triggered abilities too! This puts even more emphasis on preserving a board full of stuff as you increase your value as the game goes on. Not only do planeswalker abilities draw you virtual spells each turn, but you’re further rewarded for keeping a board full of stuff. Creatures and removal—particularly if it covers a variety of permanent types—thus get more important as well.

We look at some cards from War of the Spark completely without context aside from being a Vintage-focused podcast. Certainly there are a few standout planeswalkers that could slot easily into an existing Vintage deck or something similar, and War of the Spark seems like it will have a major impact on the format.

Consider Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, or Ral, Storm Conduit, as a fifth copy of Young Pyromancer with benefits like comboing a little with Time Vault or copying Ancestral Recall or any of Vintage’s other great spells. Teferi, Time Raveler, could make it into Jeskai as a control piece, or into Paradoxical Outcome as anti-counterspell technology. Maybe Teyo, the Shieldmage, or Dovin, Anarch of Bolas (don’t forget hybrid mana can be mono-colored!) find a place in a mono-white prison deck alongside various Thalias and other white weenies.

Karn, the Great Creator, seems like a shoo-in for a Mishra’s Workshop deck. Despite being a four-drop nonartifact, Karn’s one-sided Null Rod ability is powerful, particularly in the mirror and against Paradoxical Outcome, where it can’t be removed by artifact hate. Being able to get artifacts out of your sideboard or that were exiled is also strong, potentially game-winning and well worth four mana in an artifact combo deck like Two-Card Monte. Karn’s suite of abilities could also find a home in Paradoxical Outcome decks, similar to Teferi; Karn can shut down opposing Shops or the Mirror and provide an alternate route to victory.

Even getting old effects on new card types could be exciting. Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, is a new Laboratory Maniac, potentially with a built-in path to an empty library. Narset, Parter of Veils, is similar to something like Notion Thief in conjunction with Dack Fayden or any number of draw-sevens. And Ashiok, Dream Render, potentially shuts down tutor-heavy combo decks like a one-sided Mindlock Orb or permanent Shadow of Doubt. These may not see long-term heavy play without help, but they have some interesting applications.

Beyond planeswalkers there are plenty of other interesting cards in the set. Some combo-minded players are salivating over Bolas’s Citadel, which seems to combine Yawgmoth’s Bargain and Channel into one Tinker-ready package, and (particularly as I write that sentence out) seems nuts. An aggressive, black-based storm or Goblin Charbelcher deck make use of that if players aren’t too scared of Mental Misstep to run Dark Ritual. And if planeswalkers do run roughshod over Vintage, The Elderspell has some seriously exciting text for two mana.

I realize this section reads like a bit of a laundry list of card names, but that’s because War of the Spark has great potential. The addition to Vintage of this many planeswalkers (and associated cards) that are reasonably costed with reasonable abilities is unprecedented.

Food and Drink: Unconventional Ovens

We close this episode with a discussion of sous vide and other cooking techniques for the lazy hipster. Geoff likes the convenience of long-term, constant-temperature hot water baths for his bachelor chow of salmon. He can put his filet-o-fish into a bucket in the afternoon, set the temperature on the sous vide wand, and return later when he wants to eat. There’s no chance of overcooking, and a quick sear in a pan or on the grill adds caramelized flavor. It’s trendy and fun! And as you’ll learn in the podcast, you can sous vide pretty much anything, including phones.

Josh is intrigued by cooking salmon in the dishwasher or on top of a car engine during a long road trip. Nat adds that he used to cook Pop-Tarts in a hot pot in his dorm in college.

We all do what must be done to survive.

Questions for Discussion

Which is Jace, the Mind Sculptor’s best ability? What different planeswalkers have you played in Vintage? Did you ever go crazy and, like, BOOM! seven-mana Garruk, Apex Planeswalker instead of playing, like, Yawgmoth’s Bargain? What War of the Spark cards spark your interest? Did you ever cook fish in your dishwasher? How about just throwing a steak in the dryer to tenderize it? What’s the most expensive card you’ve ever sous vide’ed?

Conclusion

Thanks for listening! We should have something special coming up in the next few weeks so stay tuned! We’ll look forward to any questions or comments here or The Mana Drain or on Twitter. You can also email us at [email protected].