Podcasts about goblin charbelcher

Andy and Anthony revisit designing a Cube starting with a single card as inspiration. Starting with Goblin Charbelcher, they each explore themes and mechanics that could make the card relevant in a Cube, and build off those to create rough Cube skeletons. ⁠View all cards mentioned in the episode →⁠ Discussed in this episode: Episode 182: Emergent Cube Design by Example Our Teaser on YouTube UberCube Event Lucky Paper Cube Events Page Timestamps 0:00 - Introduction 3:11 - Overview of episode 4:37 - Meta show business, including the first edition of the Lucky Paper Mailbag 11:57 - All about our focal card: Goblin Charbelcher 16:11 - Anthony's Charbelcher Journey 31:14 - Andy's Charbelcher Journey Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay. You can find the hosts' Cubes on Cube Cobra: Andy's “Bun Magic” Cube Anthony's “Regular” Cube If want us to do a pack 1, pick 1 from your cube submit it on our website. Send in questions to the show at mail@luckypaper.co. You can also find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord. If you'd like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen. Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

I've revisited Goblin Charbelcher and in doing so, unexpectantly shot up through Platinum and Diamond strait into Mythic rank. I run through a couple of decks that I've built around the card and plans for the future. Here's the Naya Charbelcher deck  "Gob' Smacked!" in action (please excuse the sound): https://tinyurl.com/GobSmackedCharbelcher --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/teboda/message

Both Modern and Legacy have their respectively largest tournaments of the year on the same weekend! Modern has the Channel Fireball paper event in Las vegas and Eternal weekend online for Legacy are both happening this weekend. While the legacy meta is still pretty… bad, there are definitely some really cool decks in the results from the sunday challenge. Modern also had some pretty cool lists show up including a double feature win by Goblin Charbelcher. To wrap up the episode Matt and Jake talk about their opinions on the use of proxies in both casual play and tournament play. Contact us or check out our social media! Email - Cantripcartel@gmail.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/295644032315064/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/Matthew34263950?s=20 Check out iamactuallylvl1 for info on vintage Twitter - https://twitter.com/IamActuallyLvL1?s=20 Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/iamactuallylvl1 Timestamps Legacy Meta - 11:50 Vintage talk - 36:25 Modern Meta - 43:25 Proxy Discussion - 1:11:50 Tags: magic, magic the gathering, modern, legacy, mtg, Eternal Weekend, Vintage Thanks to Bensound.com for music files

This episode was originally released October 12th, 2020.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 Combo46:29 – Food & Drink: Myracles, Lobster, and Oyster Crisp1:12:48 – OutroTotal 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 Charbelcher4 Empty the Warrens1 Wheel of Fortune1 Memory Jar1 Tinker1 Timetwister4 Goblin Welder2 Veil of SummerMana Sources (42)4 Chrome Mox4 Elvish Spirit Guide4 Simian Spirit Guide4 Rite of Flame4 Tinder Wall4 Desperate Ritual2 Pyretic Ritual4 Manamorphose1 Channel1 Lion's Eye Diamond1 Lotus Petal1 Black Lotus1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire1 Mana Crypt1 Sol Ring1 Mana Vault | Sideboard (15)4 Leyline of Anticipation4 Storm Entity2 Veil of Summer2 Guttural Response2 Pyretic Ritual1 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 Charbelcher1 Timetwister1 Wheel of Fortune1 Memory Jar1 Tinker1 Demonic Tutor1 Demonic Consultation3 Goblin WelderMana Sources (47)4 Shatterskull Smashing4 Agadeem's Awakening4 Elvish Spirit Guide4 Simian Spirit Guide4 Tinder Wall4 Rite of Flame4 Dark Ritual3 Manamorphose1 Channel4 Chrome Mox1 Lion's Eye Diamond1 Lotus Petal1 Black Lotus1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire1 Mana Crypt1 Sol Ring1 Mana Vault | Sideboard (15)4 Empty the Warrens4 Veil of Summer4 Tormod’s Crypt1 Goblin Welder1 Necropotence1 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 Spy4 Undercity Informer4 Narcomoeba1 Cabal Therapy1 Dread Return1 Thassa’s Oracle4 Force of Will2 Pact of Negation1 Mental Misstep2 Thoughtseize1 Gitaxian Probe4 Preordain1 Ponder1 Brainstorm1 Ancestral Recall1 Mystical Tutor1 Vampiric Tutor1 Imperial Seal1 Demonic TutorMana Sources (24)4 Agadeem’s Awakening4 Sea Gate Restoration4 Dark Ritual4 Chrome Mox1 Lotus Petal1 Black Lotus1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Sapphire1 Mana Crypt1 Sol Ring1 Mana Vault | Sideboard (15)1 Echoing Truth2 Fatal Push3 Goblin Charbelcher3 Hurkyl’s Recall4 Leyline of the Void2 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, drained1/2 tsp salt1/8 tsp pepper6 strips cooked bacon, crumbled1 cup Parmesan cheese1 cup heavy cream1/2 cup crumbled saltine crackers2 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released May 2nd, 2020.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 ComBANion11:42 – Now THIS Is Podracing: Vintage Unleashed44:01 – Food & Drink: Staying Inside1:08:21 – OutroTotal 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released June 24th, 2019.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 ForgeTotal 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 Forge3 Manifold Key4 Karn, the Great Creator4 Sensei’s Divining Top3 Helm of Awakening4 Serum Powder1 Chalice of the Void3 Arcbound Ravager4 Foundry Inspector4 Walking BallistaMana Sources (26)4 Mishra’s Workshop1 Black Lotus1 Mana Crypt4 Ancient Tomb4 Grim Monolith1 Mana Vault1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire2 City of Traitors1 Tolarian Academy1 Mox Opal1 Lotus Petal1 Sol Ring | Sideboard (15)1 Manifold Key1 Time Vault13 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 Forge3 Aetherflux Reservoir3 Krark Clan Ironworks3 Manifold Key4 Karn, the Great Creator4 Helm of Awakening4 Sensei’s Divining Top1 Engineered Explosives1 Spine of Ish Sah1 Myr Retriever4 Scrap Trawler4 Foundry InspectorMana Sources (25)1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire4 Mox Opal4 Grim Monolith1 Black Lotus1 Sol Ring1 Mana Crypt1 Lotus Petal1 Mana Vault1 Lion’s Eye Diamond1 Lotus Petal4 Mishra’s Workshop1 Tolarian Academy | Sideboard (15)1 Manifold Key1 Time Vault1 Aetherflux Reservoir1 Goblin Charbelcher11 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 Forge4 Sensei’s Divining Top3 Skullclamp2 Cranial Plating1 Chalice of the Void1 Thorn of Amethyst4 Memnite4 Foundry Inspector4 Arcbound Ravager4 Walking Ballista4 Hangarback Walker4 Phyrexian RevokerMana Sources (21)1 Mana Vault1 Sol Ring1 City of Traitors2 Mox Opal4 Ancient Tomb4 Mishra’s Workshop1 Tolarian Academy1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire1 Lotus Petal1 Mana Crypt | Sideboard (15)4 Chief of the Foundry11 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released May 6th, 2019.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 Vintage26:56 – 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released October 12th, 2020.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 Combo46:29 – Food & Drink: Myracles, Lobster, and Oyster Crisp1:12:48 – OutroTotal 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 Charbelcher4 Empty the Warrens1 Wheel of Fortune1 Memory Jar1 Tinker1 Timetwister4 Goblin Welder2 Veil of SummerMana Sources (42)4 Chrome Mox4 Elvish Spirit Guide4 Simian Spirit Guide4 Rite of Flame4 Tinder Wall4 Desperate Ritual2 Pyretic Ritual4 Manamorphose1 Channel1 Lion's Eye Diamond1 Lotus Petal1 Black Lotus1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire1 Mana Crypt1 Sol Ring1 Mana Vault | Sideboard (15)4 Leyline of Anticipation4 Storm Entity2 Veil of Summer2 Guttural Response2 Pyretic Ritual1 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 Charbelcher1 Timetwister1 Wheel of Fortune1 Memory Jar1 Tinker1 Demonic Tutor1 Demonic Consultation3 Goblin WelderMana Sources (47)4 Shatterskull Smashing4 Agadeem's Awakening4 Elvish Spirit Guide4 Simian Spirit Guide4 Tinder Wall4 Rite of Flame4 Dark Ritual3 Manamorphose1 Channel4 Chrome Mox1 Lion's Eye Diamond1 Lotus Petal1 Black Lotus1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire1 Mana Crypt1 Sol Ring1 Mana Vault | Sideboard (15)4 Empty the Warrens4 Veil of Summer4 Tormod’s Crypt1 Goblin Welder1 Necropotence1 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 Spy4 Undercity Informer4 Narcomoeba1 Cabal Therapy1 Dread Return1 Thassa’s Oracle4 Force of Will2 Pact of Negation1 Mental Misstep2 Thoughtseize1 Gitaxian Probe4 Preordain1 Ponder1 Brainstorm1 Ancestral Recall1 Mystical Tutor1 Vampiric Tutor1 Imperial Seal1 Demonic TutorMana Sources (24)4 Agadeem’s Awakening4 Sea Gate Restoration4 Dark Ritual4 Chrome Mox1 Lotus Petal1 Black Lotus1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Sapphire1 Mana Crypt1 Sol Ring1 Mana Vault | Sideboard (15)1 Echoing Truth2 Fatal Push3 Goblin Charbelcher3 Hurkyl’s Recall4 Leyline of the Void2 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, drained1/2 tsp salt1/8 tsp pepper6 strips cooked bacon, crumbled1 cup Parmesan cheese1 cup heavy cream1/2 cup crumbled saltine crackers2 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released May 2nd, 2020.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 ComBANion11:42 – Now THIS Is Podracing: Vintage Unleashed44:01 – Food & Drink: Staying Inside1:08:21 – OutroTotal 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released June 24th, 2019.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 ForgeTotal 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 Forge3 Manifold Key4 Karn, the Great Creator4 Sensei’s Divining Top3 Helm of Awakening4 Serum Powder1 Chalice of the Void3 Arcbound Ravager4 Foundry Inspector4 Walking BallistaMana Sources (26)4 Mishra’s Workshop1 Black Lotus1 Mana Crypt4 Ancient Tomb4 Grim Monolith1 Mana Vault1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire2 City of Traitors1 Tolarian Academy1 Mox Opal1 Lotus Petal1 Sol Ring | Sideboard (15)1 Manifold Key1 Time Vault13 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 Forge3 Aetherflux Reservoir3 Krark Clan Ironworks3 Manifold Key4 Karn, the Great Creator4 Helm of Awakening4 Sensei’s Divining Top1 Engineered Explosives1 Spine of Ish Sah1 Myr Retriever4 Scrap Trawler4 Foundry InspectorMana Sources (25)1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire4 Mox Opal4 Grim Monolith1 Black Lotus1 Sol Ring1 Mana Crypt1 Lotus Petal1 Mana Vault1 Lion’s Eye Diamond1 Lotus Petal4 Mishra’s Workshop1 Tolarian Academy | Sideboard (15)1 Manifold Key1 Time Vault1 Aetherflux Reservoir1 Goblin Charbelcher11 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 Forge4 Sensei’s Divining Top3 Skullclamp2 Cranial Plating1 Chalice of the Void1 Thorn of Amethyst4 Memnite4 Foundry Inspector4 Arcbound Ravager4 Walking Ballista4 Hangarback Walker4 Phyrexian RevokerMana Sources (21)1 Mana Vault1 Sol Ring1 City of Traitors2 Mox Opal4 Ancient Tomb4 Mishra’s Workshop1 Tolarian Academy1 Mox Emerald1 Mox Jet1 Mox Pearl1 Mox Ruby1 Mox Sapphire1 Lotus Petal1 Mana Crypt | Sideboard (15)4 Chief of the Foundry11 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

This episode was originally released May 6th, 2019.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 Vintage26:56 – 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 seriousvintagepodcast@gmail.com.

Hello. We come right back at you by bringing you one of the more maligned decks of the format, Goblin Charbelcher. Is it an unfair blight on the format? Is it an inconsistent mess? Should […]

Belch for 98! You read that right. Goblin Charbelcher spawned an archetype in both Legacy and Vintage that strikes fear into players to this day. Brian Guess joins us to talk about Legacy's most resilient, turn-1 combo deck.Video Webcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBEAkP2mlI&feature=youtu.be

We are back with the first 2017 episode of “Humans of Magic”! Our first guest of the year is Kai Sawatari. Kai is half-German, half-Japanese, all amazing. He’s a serious Legacy player with 4th and 17th place finishes at Grand Prix events. This podcast was hilarious. We talk about: - How Kai’s father would let him win at games! - Getting destroyed by a Goblin Charbelcher deck when he was 12 years old! - Irrational confidence! - Bromance! - Japanese culture and the crazy smiley guy! - The biggest mistake Kai ever made as a competitive player! (spoiler: it involves sleeving up Terminus) Too many exclamation marks, for sure. Hope you enjoy the listen!

We discuss quite a bit.  Mostly Eternal Masters as Trevor breaks down the Goblin Charbelcher deck. Contact Info – You can find the cast on www.mtgcast.com or at www.cardconfidants.com Twitter – @willofthecast Email – WilloftheCast@gmail.com Zeki can be found at - @Zektown on Twitter Brian can be found on Twitter - @inkyscholar Renee can be found on Twitter - @mtgreunicorn Trevor can be found on Twitter - @darkr3x Eternal shout out to @BalduvianBears and Houston @TNSGingerAle .  Follow them and check out their podcast - Tap N Sac Our intro/outro music “Is Good vs. Looks Good” by cast friends Loud House is available at – https://loudhousephl.bandcamp.com/releases