@MSolymossy said in Yawgmoth's (Bargain Not Will) Unrestrictable?:

I've said for a year that Windfall and Bargain, and even maybe Memory Jar, were candidates for unrestriction.

Rarely do decks play ANY Draw 7s, let alone conditional ones. Windfall was always the first card I cut. I could only see Workshop decks fearing this card due to Hurkyl's Recall/Not interacting when on the draw.
We have a Super Bargain with a split cost of 1G/2U (Oath/Show and Tell).
Memory Jar as a 4x isn't busted. It costs 5. There's probably fun things you can do with it, but I almost always hated drawing my Memory Jar, I don't think I want 3 more chances to draw that shitter; plus, we live in an environment where Goblin Welder dies 8 ways from Sunday. (Mistep/Plow)

Here's the problem with memory jar being unrestricted - and I did this to plenty of people in the mid to late 2000's with just 1 copy in my deck:

activate jar, have a way to look at opponents hand.
activate jar a second time, look at opponents hand.

Stack jar triggers to give your opponent the worst hand of the 3 choices (their original hand vs 1 of the 2 jar hands). That is if you don't just flat out win. Usually by the second jar activation tendrils count is high enough to kill your opponent and get you a game 1 win in the next round, too.

But from your opponents perspective its - Oh look , a solid hand going to waste, at least I have a decent hand face down I'll get back. Oh wait, you can stack the triggers? I get this 5 mana, 2 nothing spell hand back and just watched all my counters and business spells go to my yard? Yeah, I guess I'll sit here and hope for a top deck while you kill me at your leisure.

Its honestly not fun to play against. It really pisses people off and takes them out of the game just as sure as, "Shop, mox lodestone, go. turn 2 thorn, wasteland" takes somebody out of the game.

@Khahan Sure, but if you're activating 2+ Memory Jars, you might as well just hardcast GOD. Or you have welder, etc (That was a trick I did with slaver), but realistically, if welder stuck around, I deserved to lose for not killing a shitty 1/1.

How about Gush?

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=14996&d=290696&f=VI

Next!!!

But, seriously, I do think the concept is a good way to have a fact based discussion here about unrestriction.

@MSolymossy show me the decklist

Wouldn't you play 4x jar in a deck with 4x workshop to make the mana cost less relevant?

Colored decks have better things to do than Jar (Paradoxical Outcome). I could buy a Workshop-based strategy to try to implement Jar, but then we're talking about a two-card combo. It's also hit by Needle, and Revoker and even more subject to blowouts by Null Rod than PO decks are. It usually has to pass the turn in which case Dack flips the advantage completely. This assumes it gets past Force and, even more scarily, Drain. This is nowhere near as broken as what some decks are currently doing.

@Khahan Still that requires getting two 5 mana artifacts into play in the same turn and most decks are able to win with spending far less resources than that. And since you should also be winning over 90% of the games where you draw 14 cards and know your opponents hand, how relevant is it going to be that you are able to give them a meh hand...
All that not even taking into account the fact that jar is so easy to answer being an artifact with an activated ability that often requires you to pass the turn to maximize it.
If you really think Jar would be too broken as a 4 of, then show us a list with 4 jars that breaks the meta.

When Flash was last unrestricted, it was abused with 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, and most importantly, 4 Merchant Scroll to tutor it up.

Even with all of those cards, Flash was never dominant or more than 10% of top 8s. It's also a 2-card combo that becomes a 3-card combo with Leyline in play.

I'm not saying Flash should be unrestricted, but let's not mythologize it either.

@Topical_Island I would love to see a deck with only 1 Gush (or 0) that can abuse Fastbond. I mean I guess you can play the Zuran Orb/Crucible/Fastbond combo ( kill with the new desert that does 1 damage when etb), but with 4 Derpstep, and artifact hate maindeck and rods and stonies every where I dont think its viable. I truly believe Fastbond could be unrestricted and would have little to no change to current lists or the meta in general.

@Smmenen In 2007, I@n Degraff turn 1ed me through Pyroblast, force, Force on a mulligan to 6.

Lotus, Flash, Hulk, Force of will, Pact of Negation, Pact of Negation, and he drew a blue card.

Flash is more annoying than Oath.

The point is that Flash is much MUCH weaker with Scroll and Brainstorm restricted.

@MSolymossy Right... this is an example of exactly the arguments that I remember. I distinctly remember playing against flash on workstation back in the day and losing whole matches in the course of 2 minutes... but also probably beating it 65% of the time's I saw it? It just never struck me as that potent, but people HATED how quick it was... I dunno how good or bad it actually is/was for certain. These are just the impressions I remember. But the fact a deck had an unreal match one time doesn't necessarily mean it was anything great or terrible really. Though I bet that one match wasn't very much fun... fast forward to Dredge I guess.

@MSolymossy said in Yawgmoth's (Bargain Not Will) Unrestrictable?:

@Smmenen In 2007, I@n Degraff turn 1ed me through Pyroblast, force, Force on a mulligan to 6.

Lotus, Flash, Hulk, Force of will, Pact of Negation, Pact of Negation, and he drew a blue card.

Flash is more annoying than Oath.

Meh, I don't know if Flash should be unrestricted or not, but this is exactly an example of mythologizing it. That hand is kind of insane, and is most certainly not the norm. I've most certainly also lost to Oath that way.

It's like what people often do with Balance. Yes, it's probably still broken but what's the point of referring to the Rack Balance deck when trying to prove it is?

I think that to me, the most tempting unrestrictions are the ones that open up options and new lines of play. I feel like Flash isn't perhaps as brutally dangerous thanks to restrictions, but its unrestriction would probably just open up one or two decks that would swoop out of the blue occasionally to generally piss off unsuspecting, eye rolling opponents.

Even Dredge has different iterations and the ability to turn into Dark Depths. As such, while I might be rolling my eyes game one as I get zombied to death, there is a sort of grim poetry to Dredge that tests an opponent's ability to answer a strong, rule bending line of play. A lot of folks seem to think Flash is just a little obvious and boring. Kinda like the way some folks look at Belcher.

Cards like Windfall, Jar, Bargain (heck and Will), Channel and Fastbond at least look like they would give you more Choice when playing, spiraling into novel combos, bolstering pillars and maybe even opening up room for others. Without breaking the format or making people ragequit vintage.

Do we have a recent "most unrestrictable" poll? Might be good to start there to develop a Top Four to pursue the "are these empirically broken?" Line of thinking.

@Topical_Island said in Yawgmoth's (Bargain Not Will) Unrestrictable?:

I'm also trying to remember the conversations I used to have on Magic Workstation about flash with... can't remember his real name now. He won a big tourney in Chicago at one point, using Uba Shops with Bazaar, Squee, and Barbarian Ring... Who was that?)

Robert Vroman?

@brianpk80 That sounds right to me. I remember that name/deck combination from back the last time I was playing Vintage regularly in the mid-2000s.

I think you are right that Flash was better with 4x Brainstorm and 4x Scroll, but you have to remember that the gush decks that people were playing then could utilize that too, it isn't that hard to assemble a combo that has 4 pieces and 8 pieces respectively, even with restricted draw spells and 4x preordain though (it isn't that hard to do this with 3 and 2 pieces in a painter deck a lot of the time).

Remember that summoner's pact is a fine card in the deck, giving 8 copies of protean hulk, if you go for that kill.

Finding flash is a little harder, but in our BUG deck we do have a fair amount of tutors to give access alongside the aforementioned ability to play the new standard blue draw engine of restricted cards + 4x Preordain. I think there is room for all that, but I can sketch out a list when I have a couple minutes later today (look for the edit). I am scared of this deck, as it sounds a lot like a faster oath deck with less weak to shops mana.

@brianpk80 The one and only! Thank you so much. Man he would just crush me over and over again.

SInce you sent that I was able to look it up. Here's the deck he played that I thought was so cool. http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=18475

@garbageaggro I think you make exactly the point. It's not that Fladh would be So powerful, but rather just sort of predictable and annoying to deal with. Oath Might be a similar kind of trick, but with more interesting lines of play and more opportunity for interaction, it's one that we go "Fine for vintage"....

My question is in some way, why do we have this reaction to Flash?

Is it that it's a rapidly unloading, relatively consistent combo deck? So is Storm (DPS or PO), that can have easy Turn 0 victories with the right hand. Dredge teeters on the same precipice but for whatever reason is tolerated and even enjoyed. One presumes there might be a few folks just itching to flash hull the day lights out of people, but from this thread it seems people aren't so keen.

Is it that it is just so hard to disrupt? People have said of Bargain that it wins when it resolves, but the same is fairly true of other clinchers in the format right?

Something about Flash seems to be too unfun for Vintage. But why?

A lot of the emotional reaction from unrestriction conversation seems to hinge on "ugh I remember when we had to deal with that" or "but just think of the awful deck that would enable"...The specter of Channel Emrakul gets a lot more gagging sounds than "Maybe we could do something with windfall!"

@BandsWithOthers said in Yawgmoth's (Bargain Not Will) Unrestrictable?:

A lot of the emotional reaction from unrestriction conversation seems to hinge on "ugh I remember when we had to deal with that" or "but just think of the awful deck that would enable"...The specter of Channel Emrakul gets a lot more gagging sounds than "Maybe we could do something with windfall!"

Yeah, this is what I posted about what I termed "negative nostalgia". People tend to remember the decks they had to deal with and are understandably biased against that.