Yet another Vintage Solitaire deck for Magic Online

 It could be a lot faster, yet I made it with several win conditions and it has a wide range of turn wins: as little as three turns with the average being seven. I use several solitaire rules to give the experience some variance: no mulligan and only basic lands. Here is the deck. Near the end of the gameplay I took out Djinn for another clone, but the change in gameplay is minimal. Also, only the 'draw three, return two' (the 2nd ability) for JTMS can be used.

Djinn out, second Clone in, for the final state of the deck.

There are some turn ones loaded with mana thanks to Black Lotus and/or how many Moxen are in the opening hand.

The one hydra enables some early wins. Before I added it, every game was a turn six or turn seven if Blightsteel Colossus did not get lined up perfectly.

Here is a sample of typical wins by turn. Lining up green into Elvish Piper and dropping a big critter is the most streamlined win, but there are many routes to victory. Here is a turn three win, obviously enabled by Black Lotus.

Here is a Black Lotus-enabled turn 4 win.

And another Black Lotus-enabled turn 4 win, this time with several Moxen and even more mana to load up the Hydra.

Turn five Blightsteel Colossus via Elvish Piper. No need for Black Lotus for this one. Infect did it all.

Another turn five win, this time with a 10/10 hydra.

Turn six Blightsteel Colossus via Elvish Piper. 

Turn six via Elvish Piper plus Hydra (since it has Haste). 

A late Blightsteel (turn seven).

Cloned Blacksteel Colossus (for fun, one is enough to win) turn seven.

Turn seven with Elvish Piper. The second big critter was not needed, just here for fun.

There are slow games. Here is a turn eight end. The deck has enough power (no kidding, as in Power 9 power), tutors, and so on. It's rare to go more than eight turns.

Cubing with Foundations (Early Thoughts)

 I have continued to play Magic Arena but since the last core set was issued, I have not thought about collecting paper Magic or cubing with paper Magic. I love core sets, which I guess makes me a minority in the Magic playing community given the two times Wizards has gapped core sets since Origins. Yet finally someone came to their senses and we will soon have a new core set, Foundations. Here are some previews.

Not only is this set featuring many classics from the previous core sets, it is also featuring reprints from non-core sets (which is the usual fare). Progenitus with the original art is easily the best pick. It's a singularly Johnny card and I am a Johnny, and that artwork is amazing. 

I would like to cube Foundations by itself, but I would also like to add my own list to the cube from Tenth Edition, my favorite Magic set of all time (did I mention that I love core sets?). On paper, the price of the most expensive cards, which are those that are more expensive than the pain lands, is a small number (thank you Wizards for the perfect reprint policy). Here they are.

This means that even the most expensive cards are not prohibitively expensive. Remember, this set has 363 cards (383 when you include the lands), and that is 121 each of commons, uncommons, and rares. I have all of the commons and the uncommons, but I am missing probably 30 or 40 of the rares. So that's what I have now as far as affordability of the paper cards. I already have a good selection, but I will never have enough Xth edition cards, and that means that I will be buying a few more. 

In Magic Online, I am in much better shape. I have at least one of every non-land card.

And so there is a physical cube and an online cube. It's early days since Foundations comes out roughly three weeks from today. A new core set, finally!!!