all your report are belong to us

The tl;dr: the instant Tundra is a viable magic card in Vintage again, I have
success again. Coincidence? I think not. Also, Tasigur the Golden Fang is a
silly, silly magic card.

My list:

(10) Counterspells:

4 Force of Will
2 Mana Drain
2 Flusterstorm
2 Mental Misstep

(5) The restricted cards:
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tinker

(11) Not restricted Spells:
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Noxious Revival
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Disenchant
1 Unburial Rites
3 Gifts Ungiven

(10) Creatures
3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3 Trinket Mage
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Auriok Salvagers

(24) Mana sources
8 SoLoMox+Crypt
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Island
1 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra

SB:
1 Path to Exile
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Disenchant
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Rest in Peace
1 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Containment Priest
2 True-Name Nemesis

Some explanations on individual cards:

Tasigur: He replaced all of the Aven Mindcensor/Vendilion Clique/other creatures
in standard bomberman list. He serves dual duty here, as he hits a great deal
harder than they do, and is also a pyrite spellbomb once you're going off. He's
incredibly low investment, can provide more cards going long (even if they tend
to be bad ones). I basically was convinced to play Bomberman when I realized
that you no longer needed to play bad cards to one shot the opponent, and can
instead use Ancestral Recall.

0 Sensei's Divining Top: Card is the greatest, and should be in this deck. It
would be a darned shame if you FORGOT TO PUT ANY IN YOUR DECK OR REGISTER ANY.
If you take anything from this, it's that you should put at least one Sensei's
Top in your bomberman list. I wanted to fetch it with Trinket Mage multiple
times. It's a card which would let me play the control role as well as the deck
plays other roles. Still, you miss it less than you think, as you just keep
fetching up Lotus, and "Just kill them" as a forced line, rather than trying to
get fancy with Top.

Tinker/Bot: This was my hedge against Delver. Basically, Sphinx is unbeatable
for Delver. Tinker also had some marginal value in fetching up Lotus or
Spellbomb to set up the combo. I also thought it gave me more flexibility in
terms of Gifts piles, but this only rarely came up.

0 Vault/Key: You know how I played Tasigur to avoid a cycling card in my deck?
Now imagine what I think of Time Vault and Voltaic Key.

0 Yawg's Will: I have registered this card once in my life, regretted it, and
think it is highly overrated, especially, in the more or less midrangey decks
that I tend to play.

Unburial Rites: Sets up winning gifts piles, and does all the reanimation you
need in one card. Rites makes Gifts->full Salvagers combo possible in gifts
pile, which I don't think anything else can do. Is the card the worst when you
draw it? Sure, but it's fairly unique as a functional reanimation spell that
works out of the yard, and *nobody* expects the pile of Tasigur, Lotus,
Salvagers, Mox to kill them on the spot when they give you Lotus and Mox the
first time.

Noxious Revival: The "alternative" kill card, as well as a good Gifts target.
The alternative kill allows you to merely kill all of their creatures and take
all the turns if your recall happens to be binned. Noxious Revival then prevents
you from decking. Also has other modes, as I won a game by Revivaling a Red
Blast in response to a target from a Snapcaster.

True-Name Nemesis: The plan against other control decks (and Delver) was to be
more of a fish deck than a control deck, and this is the best of the fishies.
Most hard control strategies--like Landstill--are going to have a very limited
number of outs to TNN.

Containment Priest: He's an all around good hate card...and is boarded in as
Ashcoat Bear more than you'd think. The flash lets the deck play a more Faeries
style game, which is where you want to be in the blue durdling mirror.

A report:

Pops Ferrante on Mono-Blue Transmute Artifact: I am very bad at names, I
apologize. Both my opponent and his son are fun people to have in the Vintage
community! Thanks to Rob for helping me out!

Game one, he assembles Tezzeret, gets Time Vault, and passes the turn. I draw
Auriok Salvagers, and kill him before the Time Vault untaps.

Game two, we durdle for a bit, while I attack with Tasigur and a Trinket Mage.
He gets down to 7, and goes for the big finish, where he Transmutes a Grim
Monolith. I determine this is probably a problem, and Drain. He then Transmutes
again. We fight a counter battle, and I fire off a Flusterstorm for 8 which he
calmly pays for with another Grim Monolith, and gets Time Vault, and passes to
me. I battle him to 1, have nothing...and a miracle occurs when he simply
doesn't have the key to go with his vault, and dies.

Craig Berry on U/W: Game 1, we battle back and forth, both missing land drops,
and neither person really willing to blink. Eventually, Craig resolves a
True-Name Nemesis, but depletes his resources in resolving it. I tinker up
Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and am able to race when Craig fails to draw a Swords
or Disenchant. Even this is understating how tight the match was, because there
were shenanigans with Tasigur and Karakas and Vendilion Clique involved, and the
match hinging on a single Nihil Spellbomb.

Game 2, both Craig and I board in Containment Priests, and do battle with 2/2s.
Our fine game of limited was broken open by me using Demonic to find True-Name
Nemesis, which proved to be good enough in a world of 2/2s.

Mark Tocco on Landstill: Game 1, we both have Library after I DT for library,
and kind of durdle for a while as I hit land drops, and he unbelievably misses.
We fight over an end stepped Gifts, I untap, and Salvagers him. For the second
time today, I explain how Tasigur, the Golden Fang, kills people. Tocco is
fairly amused.

Game 2, Tocco chooses to draw, and plays library. Some reasonable amount of time
and unreasonable number of cards later, I scoop to Jace+Crucible+Strip.

Game 3, I resolve DT for Library, and bury Tocco with Library as he misses a
couple land drops. I think the coup de grace was delivered by Tasigur, who made
the sudden shocks in Tocco's deck look pretty awkward.

Matt Murray on Sensei, Sensei: I was 50/50 on running Matt's list on the day,
but decided I hated Yawgmoth and his Will too much, as much as I loved the Top
and Magus of the Future.

Game 1: Matt and I trade lots of resources, but he's mulliganed, so I end up one
card left to his none. I have a snapcaster left, and flashback DT for gifts.
Matt does nothing on his turn, I resolve Gifts, and he concedes.

Game 2: Matt mulligans. I play Trinket Mage on turn 1, and Tasigur+Walk on turn
2. Matt loses both his Mana Crypt flips, and dies in short order.

Rounds 4+5: ID

Round of 16: Jeff Anand, on U/R/(x?) control.

Game 1, I play land Mox, DT, and get Salvagers. Jeff plays Mox, Mox, Land, Dack,
and steals my mox. I play Crypt, Lotus, Salvagers, Tasigur with force backup,
and he dies on the spot. He too is makes me go through the motions of casting
Ancestral Recall 3 or 4 times, before smiling, realizing what was happening, and
conceding.

Game 2, we go back and forth for a bit, and he has some amount of advantage
because he has Red Blast, which is way more efficient than anything I have. when
I'm on 4 mana+Lotus, he casts magus of the Moon with 3 up. I respond with Gifts,
and he tries to Snapcaster a blast...but that blast is put back on top of his
library by Noxious Revival, I gifts up Rites, Salvagers, Pearl, and Tasigur, and
Jeff dies in a flurry of Ancestral Recalls.

Round of 8: Rob Edwards on Oath

Game 1, Rob casts Preordain, Brainstorm, Lotus, Will, Preordain, Brainstorm
finds the Oath and Orchard on turn 2, and kills me. It was brutal.

Game 2, Rob is able to beat Containment Priest #1, and Grafdigger's Cage, but
not Containment Priest #2, and dies to Orchard Tokens, the Priests, and a
Trinket Mage.

Game 3, Rob keeps a loose 6, and dies to Containment Priest and Tasigur, after
casting 1 Oath which is disenchanted on the spot.

Via Rob Edwards: "In game one of our match, I also played Thoughtseize turn one
and during the Will. It was even more brutal than you remember. In game two, I
mulled to five and you kept seven, but I still managed to empty your hand after
you played FoW pitching Misstep to counter my FoW on your Cage. After I dealt
with Cage and Priest and you were hellbent, you top decked the second Priest. In
game three, I Missteped your Cage, Misstepped the same Cage you Noxious
Revivaled, then you Disenchanted the Oath, but it was the fourth piece of hate
in Priest that got me. I assembled Show and Tell and Iona a turn too late. "

Top 4 split. Two byes are awarded by Calvin on the split, and are raffled
between Nick DiJohn, Hank Zhong, and me, as Keith already has one from crushing
me and Rob Edwards at the NYSE. I instantly lose raffle, and will be playing
round 1 of the Eternal Extravaganza vintage event.

Overall, the strengths of the deck are its ability to shift from aggro to
control to combo very, very quickly. I'm happy casting Trinket Mage into Tasigur
and beating down, but sitting back, and counter spells and killing creatures
into a Gifts is also viable, and the combo kill is always looming. The deck
rewards proper role assessment heavily, and basically allows/requires you to
re-evaluate your plan at the start of every turn.

However, some pieces are individually quite weak (salvagers is the biggest
offender, followed by Noxious Revival), and the deck is very, very mana hungry.
I didn't put in the time to figure out a more solid plan against Shops than
"play Disenchant+Swords+Pray", and was very lucky to avoid Shops on the day.