@Aaron-Patten Not really following the "better than everything else". It plays almost no power making the deck not have any explosive lines other than Fastbond. Misstep is also a 4 of in a lot of lists. Hinging your whole deck around a 1 CC is not going to be hard to answer. Not to mention crazy amounts of enchantment destruction and GY hate in this format.

If the strategy were actually that good, youd see some legacy lands builds already.

So after seeing so much polarizing opinions about fastbond, I decided to run a prison oriented fastbond list against a standard vintage gauntlet (ravager shops, White eldrazi, Outcome, rituals, oath, key vault, dredge, monogush mentor) and while the deck definitely had some strong elements, it was really inconsistent, very fragile to disruption and unable to comeback from behind. It was a really fun and refreshing experience even though the list I ran was probably not optimal nor tuned, it still managed to win a couple matches when it had solid draws.

For reference here is the list:

Engine:
4 Fastbond
4 Crucible of Worlds
3 Horn of Greed (let's the deck go off like a combo deck)
2 Grazing Gladehart (only reasonnably priced zuran orb alternative that works under null rod)
2 Lotus Cobra (for chaining barbarian ring kills or canopy draws, without it you need to use two more landdrops for each chain with wasteland + other land)
3 Bazaar of Baghdad
2 Horizon Canopy

Control:
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Thorn of Amethyst
3 Null Rod
1 Trinisphere
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Barbarian Ring (Removal and wincon all in one)

Non utility Mana:
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Taiga
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
1 Tolarian Academy

Sideboard
2 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
4 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Barbarian Ring
3 Bojuka Bog
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Glacial Chasm

EDIT: Tweaked the list a little bit with the following changes:
Maindeck
-2 Grazing Gladehart (replaced with Glacial Chasm)
-2 Lotus Cobra (replaced with moxen for more turn one sphere consistency)
-1 Trinisphere (was only really good with workshop on turn one, it usually becomes dead pretty fast as you draw a considerable amount of cards compared to a standard workshop deck and usually have multiple of your spheres and thorns)
-1 Ensnaring bridge (Glacial chasm does same job)
+2 Smokestack (gives you something to maintain pressure in the long game and an answer to any problematic permanent)
+2 Glacial Chasm (zuran orb + moat all in one, uncounterable and unaffected by spheres/removal)
+2 off color moxen (solely to increase the odds of having a turn one sphere, it brings the total artifact number up to 6 but plays alongside null rod fine due to having bazaar and smokestack)

Sideboard:
-1 Witchbane Orb
-2 Ensnaring bridge
+3 Nature's Claim

@Macdeath Thanks for taking the step beyond theorycrafting and trying it out!

Some small changes to a Legacy Lands list would look like:

You could then cut something for combo an infinite combo / null rods. Notably these lands decks play most of their mana denial stuff out of the board. They would be very different if that was a main deck focus. Their MD is designed to be consistent, and have great card advantage. Similar to a slower version of Dredge.

@vaughnbros Legacy versions also don't have access to the Draw 7s so that might be something that could be included here.

Also, I think the differences between Fastbond and Exploration would allow for more explosive potential such as that included in Turbo Land decks of old. I remember Thwart being instrumental in that deck. The optimal 4 Fastbond deck probably wouldn't have to be bothered with as much of the incremental advantage engine side of things. It could probably afford to cut down on Punishing Fire for more draw for example.

@Macdeath Yes. Thank you so much for testing. I wish you would go ahead and just try 1 copy of Zuran Orb with 2 or 3 mainboard Abrupt Decay. In my testing against Stony Silence it didn't seem that bad. And when I goldfished against a Null Rod I seemed to be able to draw a ton of cards at the expense of most of my life, then locate Orb and Decay and get it all back.

@Aaron-Patten I built and played something along the Legacy lands build about 4 years. When you don't draw/resolve your cards that boost your land count, you are a really bad deck. I don't really see how Draw 7's or Thwart (also bad cards with land drop boosters) change things. If you go with a non-mana denial, pure combo build I guess maybe that's a thing, but that isn't really what has been discussed up this point.

Its possible that you need to play 4 exploration on top of the Manabond and 4 Fastbond.

@vaughnbros In order to not run out of cards you need more card advantage cards than they have reactive spells which I think could be accomplished by playing the right number of Horns and Wheels.

Another interesting line might be to use Bazaar of Baghdad as an un-counterable draw engine with Life from the Loam.

Argothian Enchantress and Dark Heart of the Woods? Fastbond is an enchantment. Enchantress with Draw 7s could be...fun. Maybe even competitive. Fastbond + Mystic Remora could be a thing too. Just give your opponent more targets than they have Missteps.

This thread has really gone far off the original topic, but I have to say I am really enjoying the discussion of trying to break restricted cards to prove they are either too broken or safe. If people would like to do this more often and with more cards, I'd love to help out too. I'm sure this could be done on freeform or something?

@Hrishi I think its all on the topic of the best cards to unrestrict. The OP changed too.

All the builds people are bringing up for fastbond sound and look dramatically different than anything that is currently played. Isnt that a prime reason for unrestriction?

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

All the builds people are bringing up for fastbond sound and look dramatically different than anything that is currently played. Isnt that a prime reason for unrestriction?

Well, you know I'm certainly on board.

@Hrishi I mean, I agree. Should we now start a new thread for every potentially unrestrictable card? I was actually intentionally not doing that... We could run a list for Bargain... I think it's pretty clear that would be really busted though.

@Topical_Island I don't think zuran orb is good for the deck as it really wants to get null rod out to shut off moxen in tandem with destroying their lands and sphere effects. The combo is a secondary part of the deck and only something you focus on once you've established control, I feel like this deck should focus on locking out the opponent of mana and then ride it's incremental advantages to victory. you don't need to go infinite, once you have crucible lock and spheres recurring barbarian ring every turn will be enough.
However I feel like the list I was testing was a little too vulnerable to non creature permanents, as it has no way of removing them. I was thinking maybe 1-2 copies of smokestack would be an option, seeing as it synergizes perfectly with the deck and can help you interact with permanents like rest in peace, pithing needle or oath of druids. I think Decay would be a stretch with the manabase. Nature's claim in the sideboard might be better as well.
Overall this kind of deck reminds me of welder UBA stax. A real prison deck with a draw engine that can be absolutely fantastic with the right draws but has some real consistency issues.

So PLEASE DCI unrestrict fastbond it's not degenerate, a ton of fun and it adds diversity to the format since it's not strictly worse nor strictly better than current prison decks.

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

This thread has really gone far off the original topic, but I have to say I am really enjoying the discussion of trying to break restricted cards to prove they are either too broken or safe. If people would like to do this more often and with more cards, I'd love to help out too. I'm sure this could be done on freeform or something?

I really like this idea as well, if properly documented it might be able to shake up some things with the current b/r list. It would take a lot of work and time, for each card you have to test and tune multiple shells against the meta and anticipate how the meta would shift in response to the unrestriction of said card. Test many games to have a somewhat representative sample.

@Macdeath But if you fail to Null Rod them, but do succeed in Zuran Orb... don't you lose next to never, to just about any deck in the format and win almost all those games? I think the only corner cases where you lose are Jace ultimates and Bomberman?

I think the deck can afford to play both Null Rod and artfact mana /orb as well as draw 7s. anything that allows you to take advantage of the fact that you can play all the lands while your opponent only gets one. Mass draw for both players is going to be mitigated by the huge tempo advantage provided by Fastbond.

@Topical_Island most blue decks have ways to kill you with infinite life, either through planeswalkers or blightsteel colossus/emrakul. Anyway i think glacial chasm is the better card for the combo (since it prevents fastbond from dealing you damage), it's a land so its uncounterable, isn't affected by null rod/spheres and is powerful on it's own/with crucible in many matchups.

I might leave it up to @Brass-Man whether or not we should have a seedy little thread on here somewhere where we could test Fastbond shells, and perhaps others in the future. Fastbond has really yielded some interesting conversation! Theorycrafting aside, this has been an interesting discussion of how we could generate what could pass as normative community driven data on the unrestrictability of certain cards.

From commentary by @Macdeath @vaughnbros and @Hrishi it seems that Fastbond appeals as something that people would "work" and playtest to unrestrict because it opens up new lines.

The real tests it would seem are first, "Is the best possible Fastbond (or any card in question) deck balanced enough against the current meta that its presence would not be disruptive or homogenizing" - Gauntlet testing

Second, "Does the potential unrestriction boost existing pillars up and above their current level of power, and as such to ultimate format dominance" ...I don't know how much anyone would like to see two turn 0 Mishra's Workshop's into Crucible for instance...BUT as long as other shops variants are strong who knows?...I mean...green MUD?....Grud?... +1 to the comparison to Uba Stax

Then, especially in the case that what emerges is a combo deck, "Would existing decks, with minimal changes to hate, be able to fairly compete against the deck in the current meta without simply succumbing to a coinflip match." Like Flash/Hulk as several mentioned earlier. Already people point to how MM and Fragmentize (and Wispmare! Woo!) exist and could make short work of Fastbond.

I'm on board if there's a good way to test it out, especially online.

Null Rod can be ran alongside darkheart of the woods and crucible all day long with zero inhibitions.