Man, who says Magic isn't dangerous? This entire week, whenever I've gone to throw some cards around at my local shop, I've either been knocked unconscious or skinned alive.

Last Saturday night, I hitched a ride home from the weekly Vintage tournament at Fat Cat Books from Josh O., who is one of the strongest overall Magic players in the area. About two blocks from my apartment, we were driving through a green light when a black Ford of some sort smashed into Josh's door. Josh's head smacked into mine, effectively rendering me unconscious, and then into the bar above his window. We apparently spun one hundred and eighty degrees across the street while the inebriated driver of the other car just drove off, screaming obscenities with his car leaking fluids and missing chunks of metal.

It wasn't a big deal for me as, I was just knocked out for a few minutes; unfortunately for Josh, though, the bar left a huge gash on the top of his head. At the emergency room, they shaved half of his head and stapled it shut. He's fine, though, aside from having to walk around wearing a bandanna all the time now.

On the following Wednesday, I returned to The 'Cat for a multiplayer "bounty hunter" tournament, in which you can bribe other players to do things for you by paying them life. It was a good time; Josh O. was there, alive and well in his blue bandanna, looking like a mixture of low-life gang member and early 1900s bearded Hungarian immigrant housewife (trust me, I'm part Hungarian and have pictures of my ancestors so I know).

After the tournament, I managed to miss the bus back to my swinging West Side bachelor pad. I called up my mother, hoping for a ride home, since she's usually out commuting all the time and is happy to shoot the breeze with me.

Now, I realize that this doesn't paint a very pretty picture, as I'm sure we've all encountered the stereotype of the gaming dork who is thirty-five, lives in his parents' basement, and couldn't get a date to save his life. Let me assure you; I'm only twenty-two, have my own apartment, and still couldn't get a date to save my life. And I have never uttered the phrase: "worst (insert noun here) ever..." Well, not that many times anyway.

I waited by the phone for a little while until my dear mum's muffler-less car showed up and just drove right past me. I would have assumed that she would be swinging around again to get me if I hadn't been aware of her terrible night-blindness, so I took off running after her car with the hope of catching her at the next red light. I made good time and begun to catch up to her until I took a wrong step.

Now keep in mind that I'm in decent physical condition: I can run relatively fast for a smoker of over seven years and I do it fairly often. I'm guessing that my little fling with Mrs. Head Injury had affected my equilibrium in some really bad way. I probably shouldn't have sprinted down Main Street like that after having my head smashed a couple days prior, but I guess I'm just used to leaving the hospital with the full one hundred life after I get wasted.

But I went down, and I went down hard. Since I was running at about twenty miles per hour, I ended up sliding for about two feet on my elbow, which is now the most grotesque thing that I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

Next time I go to a Magic tournament, I'm wearing a foam helmet, safety goggles, steel toe boots, a jock strap and a radiation suit. And I'm renting an armored car. But enough about my beatings and injuries.

Allow me to regale you with the story of how I once met Mark Rosewater:

It was at Worlds, 2001. My friend Smack and myself had driven the six hours to get to Toronto, Ontario Canada from Binghamton, New York. We were there for two reasons: first, to be able to say that we had been to the Magic World Championships; and second, to play in the eight-hundred-dollar Vintage tournament.

It was going to be my first sanctioned Type 1 event since the1998 Stronghold Pre-Release side event where I first fell to the combo of Necropotence and Mirror Universe. Back then, you waited until the end of the phase to die as a result of having no life, for those of you who were still plating kickball during recess - or smoking in the bathroom, if you went to pre-school in my little juvenile-delinquent-infested armpit of New York. My opponent set aside twenty cards and so generously gave me his life total of zero during his upkeep.

But that's well beside the point.

Sorry. This old-timer does ramble on at times...

So Smack and I were hanging out on the second floor of the convention center - which I must add was the nicest venue for a Magic tournament that I have ever attended - when I heard about someone getting disqualified from an event due to having marked sleeves. I thought it was a bit harsh and unlikely to happen in the Vintage tournament, but grew increasingly paranoid about it as time passed.

I decided to ask a judge about my three-year old Deck Protectors and their tournament legality. But I didn't want just any judge; I wanted to hear from one of those high-ranking officials with the black-and-white striped referee shirts. So I walked up to this shortish fellow with whitish hair who was wearing a black and white striped shirt and tapped him on the shoulder.

Me:"Excuse me sir, are you like a high ranking judge type?

Mark Rosewater:"Yes."
Me:"Great, could you tell me if my crusty, seven year-old sleeves are marked?"
Mark Rosewater:"Sure."
Me, pulling out my moldy sleeves:"Here ya go, your honor."
Mark Rosewater:"Eew, disgusting."
Me:"Hey! Aren't you Mark Rosewater?"
Mark Rosewater:"Yes; yes, I am."
Me:"Wow! Nice to meet you, Mr. Rosewater. So what do you think?"
Mark Rosewater:"Get those nasty, crusty, muhfugly things out of my face."

Me:"Sorry, I thought you needed a closer look. So are my sleeves marked, Mark?"
Mark Rosewater:"Umm, I would say so."

So that's how I met Mark Rosewater once upon a time. He seemed like good people.

That being said, he seems to have an at least moderate dislike for Type 1. Whenever he mentions the format in any article that he writes, it seems to have an undertone of "Type 1 is unplayable and I wish it would just go away." That attitude is completely understandable, considering the rules interaction nightmares that Wizards of The Coast R&D has to put up with when considering the effects of new cards on Vintage - after all, we have over three thousand cards to worry about as opposed to the few hundred in Standard. I won't chew into Mark for just wanting his job to be easier; I'm sure we all have the same desire. After all, I've never heard of anyone complaining about his or her job not being difficult.

However, when reading his mail bag article on MagicTheGathering.com, something else grabbed me.

The first letter that Mr. Rosewater answered was about how the anonymous author attempted to play Butter Knives - an old deck that is absolutely horrible by modern competitive Type 1 standards, in a tournament and ended up getting rolled by what could be considered Blue-based control."Fourteen counters, the restricted list and some dual lands" was this person's exact description.

I'm not going to nit-pick about how that definition deviates from an optimal Keeper build: That's Oscar Tan's job. However, this does bring up an issue that has been on my mind for a while.

Contrary to what a lot of Vintage players have been saying, Type 1 is not an easy format to get into. To succeed in Type 1, a player must have both excellent playing skills and excellent deckbuilding skills. One mistake in deckbuilding or playstyle will cost you countless games. Money has almost nothing to do with it.

Even with two thousand dollars to spend on your initial Keeper deck, you will still need to know how to play it well and build it correctly. If you can't play your deck properly, you will lose to inexpensive decks like Sligh, Suicide, and Stompy when they're piloted by skilled players. A great player makes a great deck; a great deck does not make a great player.

Let me just repeat and simplify that statement:

In Type 1, whether you win or lose depends on your overall skill, not on the value of your deck.

Couple that with the fact that Butter Knives is the bastard mono-black deck that nobody talks about: It is a dirty little secret that Yawgmoth keeps hidden in his basement and feeds only gruel. Even Pox is invited to mono-black family reunions before Knives.

In short: Yes, Mr. Anonymous letter-writer, I understand that you may have had an"optimal" list for your Butter Knives deck. However, an optimal list for a bad deck is still just a bad deck.

Butter Knives is essentially just the name used to describe a Suicide Black deck with larger (and as a result, more difficult to cast) creatures and less disruption. I have been unable to find an exact deck list for a somewhat modernized build anywhere, but I can give a rough estimate from memory:

Creatures:
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Juzam Djinn/Phyrexian Scuta
4 Flesh Reaver
4 Phyrexian War Beast
4 Phyrexian Negator

Hand Disruption:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Mind Twist

Utility:
3 Powder Keg
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Mana:
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
14 Swamp

The deck is more than likely off by a few cards, but this list is a good example of a typical mono-black Butter Knives deck.

Now since Mr. Anonymous Letter Writer had only seventy-five dollars to build his deck with, we can assume Phyrexian Scutas instead of Juzam Djinns, and the Mox Jet and Black Lotus were replaced by basic Swamps and maybe another Wasteland, therefore cutting into some of the deck's explosiveness.

Does anyone see a problem here?

Excluding Sol Ring, Dark Ritual, Duress and Demonic Consultation, the deck's mana curve starts at two. Aside from the four Flesh Reavers, sixteen of Butter Knives' threats cost three mana or more to cast. Without a Dark Ritual on your first turn, your non-Flesh Reaver creatures are going to give your Mana Drain-wielding opponent an early Morphling for the low, low price of two blue mana - or an Abyss for the bargain deal of one black.

Assuming a competent player is using this deck, he will Hymn and Duress his opponent's hand away before playing his threats, which will stay in his hand until about turn 4 without any acceleration. That is if he can even draw three or four mana sources to cast them with when the time is right, which rarely happens in a deck with only two search cards. This gives the control player a grace period to recover from the first wave of disruption. The control player will often merely lay land and then topdeck or tutor for an answer in this situation.

In short, the deck is slow as molasses. It also lacks versatility. Versatility is usually the only reason for playing a slow deck - unless, of course, you somehow have a sick desire to beat down with Craw Wurms.

Additional peril involved with playing an aggro deck with high casting cost threats is the need to include additional mana sources so that you can reliably cast your threats.

Including more mana sources dilutes the power of any deck's draws. Control offsets this problem by including extra card drawing and tutors to the point where the deck only consists of a few silver bullets and mana sources aside from the card drawing and search. Aggro decks cannot afford to do this, as they kill with consistency.

A bit about Oscar's take on White Weenie
Recently, Oscar Tan wrote an article denouncing White Weenie in Vintage. Contrary to Oscar's article, White Weenie is not the auto-loss to just about any deck in Type 1 that he makes it out to be. Not even Keeper, although the WW player will need the right draws, an excellent deck list and impeccable play to have a chance.

If you play in an environment full of random decks and do not expect to see much power, then White Weenie is an excellent choice. Academy is a much better deck choice for this type of environment, mind you, but I am addressing a more budget-oriented audience here.

Vintage metagames without power-nine-laden decks are much more common in the real world than environments in which you will face Keeper in every matchup beyond the first round if you win your initial match. This is where White Weenie shines.

White Weenie has the best creature removal and the best combat-ready creatures: This is very useful against Sligh, Stompy, and Suicide. Aside from Stompy's creatures and creature pump, WW owns just about every aggro deck out there.

Against blue-based control, White Weenie can still hold its own. Many of its creatures evade The Abyss and can be made to evade Morphling with Mother of Runes. A White Weenie player can also usually manage to slip in a shot with a creature enchanted by Empyrial Armor as a control player will sometimes let it resolve and take the extra damage if they have a way to kill all of your creatures on the next turn. This will often let the WW player squeak in a deathblow with a small, post-Balance creature horde a bit later.

The most important weapon that White Weenie has against a control player is the underestimation factor. Oscar's opinion of White Weenie is shared by many control players, and being able to exploit that very underestimation is key when attacking with small white men.

At the very least, it's a better deck than Butter Knives.