Tinker is the Grandsire of a large percentage of archetypes in Vintage.
Time Vault is also such a card.
And Tendrils of Agony.
The thing is, no Time Vault deck would be caught dead without Tinker, probably few to zero Tendrils cards would be caught dead without Time Vault.
Many many cards are broken in Old School Magic, and many of them lead to dominatingly powerful decks.
Tinker just might be one of the EASIEST to see exactly what you do with it and make decks that do stupid things, though. I mean you don't have to own or have played against Moxen to know that your Ornithopter is one of the best cards in your deck when you look at Tinker.
Wizards tries to avoid printing undercosted cards because they lead to fast ways to win. But they LOVE making ALL KINDS of over-costed shite, especially in Artifacts. Tinker cheats on Mana and on Tutoring to do such incredibly stupid things that I wouldn't be s... (see all)
Posted By:
DarthParallax
(10/6/2012 12:21:56 PM)
forget inkwell, or darksteel, or Aladdin's lamp (don't really know why that was even mentioned), i like the gleemax idea, but really, i think darksteel forge would be one of the best cards to have early game, simply because if you have a pretty good guaranty that every card you cast will be very difficult to kill (if not impossible), than you can pull some very destructive combos, (see Nevinyrral's Disk) yes the colossus could win you right then (well, decide the game any way) fewer people are going to be running artifact exile (or permanent exile) than creature exile, and exiling all you creatures (thus making your forge useless,) is harder than exiling one
Posted By:
bijart_dauth
(10/25/2010 7:59:04 PM)
I guess this has been fixed by Kuldotha Forgemaster.
Posted By:
LeoKula
(4/7/2011 4:53:29 AM)
chaosfire has clearly never actually played vintage
Posted By:
Purple_Shrimp
(11/29/2011 3:04:51 PM)
i like how mike raabe included the card Jhoira's Toolbox in the artwork..
that's one cool hidden art..
Posted By:
zenitramleirdag
(4/30/2012 11:55:24 PM)
@Kami_Kira12485
Or use Reckless Charge if you wanna keep Blightsteel colorless. Also, I don't believe in overkill.
Posted By:
tankthebest
(5/21/2012 4:34:20 PM)
Highest rated card in Urza's Block.
That's saying something.
Posted By:
TheKazu
(11/28/2012 7:29:27 PM)
This is banned or restricted in every format other than block constructed and freeform which basically has nearly every insanely busted degenerate deck already available to it in order to balance itself out. That tells you something very important about Urza Block.
Posted By:
TheManakinTransfer
(6/11/2013 7:18:03 PM)
Poor Jhoira, nobody likes what she can do.
Posted By:
Earthdawn
(6/18/2013 8:51:51 AM)
Re: Some people suggesting ways to make it balanced.
The amusing thing is that they already printed a balanced version of this -- years before this card was printed. Transmute Artifact is still overwhelmingly powerful, but not game-breaking. (It didn't get as much attention, because there were fewer artifacts when it was current, and it never got reprinted after Antiquities.)
Anyway, this card is even more broken than it seems at first glance. Usually, cost-cheating cards are balanced by the fact that you have to have an expensive card in your hand at the same time to use them; if you draw either one alone, they're useless (or less useful.) Combining tutoring and cost-cheating in one card is almost always going to be gamebreaking. See also Stoneforge Mystic, which made the same mistake.
Posted By:
Aquillion
(9/28/2013 3:13:58 PM)