I have it too, though mostly for the foil Rootbound Crag. It caught a very hefty price elsewhere, and I just stuck in a foil Stomping Grounds to compensate.

I generally don't like Slivers, but I won't say no to something ridiculously shiny.

Also, now that the whole Worldwake spoiler is released - any impressions? I'm personally a little let down, despite some powerful cards.

Considering switching my lands from straight normals, to normals and snow covered. Any thoughts?

Do you have any reason to run snow-covered? Or is it just for flair?

Snow Covered counts as a different land tyoe then normal, and they're significantly less common. That way, if someone tries to burn my land by type, they'll only get part of it, and my Extraplanar Lens won't help someone else that has blues in their deck.

Yeah, that checks out. I guess that's an OK idea, except for the fact that then the Lens only helps your Snow-Covereds.. I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something that makes that sound very fishy. Ugh.

I technically have 2.

By 'recently' I do mean within relative recent history. Owling mine was around for a bit, but I think it was 4 years ago? I thought it was cute, only time I've ever seen people seriously play one with nothing, and it's worth noting that it DID get to quarterfinals at the Hawaii pro-tour, going up against possibly the worst matchup between any two decks in any pt ever, heh.

And I do also mean 'floating around'; I never said they were dominant at all (and I think I only ever saw either of them place 2-3 times in top 8 in ANY region, and neither of them ever higher than 6th), but they were examples of the archetype that did exist recently.

Twincast was quite relevant to that deck's style of mill, since one sanity grinding was never enough at all. Also, you would twincast your opponent's cryptics, your cryptics, your boomerangs, etc. It was kinda a tech card that also enabled a win, but it wasn't necessary persay (milling with Oona was more than enough). I found it interesting that twincast mill was actually a really rough matchup for a number of variants of 5CC during that block, it's the only real reason it ever placed (5cc wipes out competition, blinks in confusion at being milled). At any rate, I still agree that mill's not going to be seriously tournament-viable as anything other than a rogue list until it gets a bit more power behind it (reprinting terminate and bolt allowed u/b/r mill to stick it's head out, but it's not nearly as dangerous as anything else in those colours), and will probably take that back seat with stuff like quillspike combo. At the same time, I will happily proxy or borrow the pieces to make them if given a chance, they're just sooooo enjoyable to play, jank decks keep a quirky kind of fun in Magic. Besides, depending on your region's meta you might get random prizes or points; one of my friends brought a boatbrew r/w deck to the Seattle PTQ last year and placed pretty high on just silly balefire liege tech, and another almost made Canadian nat's three years ago with a u/g...simic...thing. If no one sees it coming, it's free packs most of the time, 'specially if you frequent FNM's.

Snow land still counts as basic land, destroying all mountains will destroy all snow covered mountains. I don't know of anything coming up that wipes out entire basic land types o_o but, if you're playing unrestricted you could have fun with skred, and scrying sheets can become pretty decent card advantage. It also finds mouth of ronom~

EDIT: Oh, twincast traumitize is indeed quite bad, though traumitizing yourself to put rites to yard and go infi with an izzet guildmage is hilaaarious, and will end with either you or your opponent face-desking.

This brings back memories. I played at the time of Invasion, other stuff, Apocalypse. Then there was a new story arc about some barbarian and a weird artifact so my decks went out of type 2 and was illegal in type 1 because I used 4 copies of Fact or Fiction (I think). Quit the game after playing a bit with the then current Type 2. I liked the Urza, Gerrard, Weatherlight, Yawgmoth story arc

Owling mine wasn't a mill deck, it was a bizarrely styled burn deck.

However, Ikkan has it right in saying that Owling Mine was a cute deck. I liked the way it worked, honestly - in fact, I had it assembled for all of a few weeks. I may have it still half-sleeved somewhere in my CRATE of assembled decks for levels of playtesting.

It was certainly entertaining. At the time I preferred gruul during the brief period everyone was playing rumbling slum (that guy was fun.) After it turned into giant solifuge all over the place it got a lot less entertaining fast.

I've never played in a tourney but in highschool I played with some friends at lunch, usually 5th edition/Urza's/Weatherlight arc. I had a decent Tolarian Academy deck that made my friend draw 3k cards once. Just so I could laugh at him

You sound like you played the infamously lame Tolarian Academy deck with Memory Jar.. but I dunno.

On the topic of Gruul, I miss Ravnica. It's probably my favorite set in recent history - in terms of sheer mechanics, power, and flavor being mixed with amazing art. I played a black/white/green control deck that took first place at my locals for a very long time - using the Kamigawa stuff to fuel some tricky spirit combos, a lot of discard, damage, and creature removal being the next step. It was in general a very fun deck, and I miss playing it. I may pull it out and play with some friends tonight.

I was a fan of Ravnica because in both limited and non-limited formats the entire block was just filled with good cards. Just about every card you picked out of a pack had enough power to make it fun to play. I'm a huge fan of rumbling slum myself, he's just so efficient, and it was nice to see control really starting to have some strong competition from boros deck wins or any of the r/b sligh decks. I really liked the flavour of the guilds too, while Golgari's probably the only one that's still around, all of the other ones had such fun interactions. I remember in particular Rakdos not having a single unplayable card other than maaaaybe riot spikes which is alright in limited.

I'm glad that Wizards came out with this EDH idea, all these nostalgic cards coming back! And the combos that people pull off just get ridiculous, it lets people play 'bad' decks without them feeling underpowered and everyone can have a good time (hive mind + pact of negation came up in a multiplayer EDH recently, best loss ever).

And yeah you're right, owling mine is definately more of a burn...I guess turbofog would be the mill of that era, then, and it didn't perform super hot anyhow.

Ravnica is absolutely my favorite set for just the reason you stated. The drafts were -SO- fun.

Oh also, to all the Unhinged fans in the house!

In fact, any Magic player will find that song funny. :3

Ravnica was top notch, but I also really enjoyed Lorwyn AND Shadowmoor. Hybrid works really well and Lorwyn was way more fun than onslaught, overpowered faeries aside.

I started in Beta, and stopped around... er... don't remember, but there were thallids. Despite having played MTG for several years, I completely fail to understand half of this thread. Or more.

I still have a frick ton of cards somewhere in storage. Maybe I should cash them out.

Thallids originated in Fallen Empires, like 15 years ago, but also came back in Time Spiral, which was about 4 years ago.

... it would be the 15 year ago one.