My first two reactions:

I can't believe they didn't even mention Mental Misstep. That card was banned in every other format for the degenerative arms race it created, and the pressure it puts on Vintage one-drops is bad for the format IMO.

The next B&R announcement is scheduled for October 17th. Did they even look at their own calendar before announcing this date? Are they trying to keep people from attending Eternal Weekend for Vintage? The thought of potentially having to switch up my deck at literally the last minute (the B&R announcement goes into effect after the Vintage Trial but before Vintage Champs) sounds really really awful when I'm spending $1000+ (plane and hotel) to attend this event.

@vintage_rage i doubt they will have enough data collected to make a change for the October announcement, just because they'll want to give it some number of months to see how this change affects things and EW will be a good testing ground for them to see how things changed.

I'm sure someone has data or at least just the dates of all the previous B&Rs and we could find out an average amount of time between any change and another change.

Seems like Shops will just run over Jeskai Tempo now. Losing 3 Thorns is not that big of deal when they lost x Mentors. Young Pyro doesn't stand a chance, considering they replace 3 Thorns with Hangarback Walkers

Not having Thorns will hurt Shops chances of ever beating the new deck to beat: Gifts

I am not an expert but this sounds quite balanced choices. I would have enjoyed something about mental misstep too but maybe they thought it was enough change for now.
Both decks (mentor and shop) will need to go under deep changes now and that is a good news to me. I am curious to see where it will lead.

@jonhammack said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

@nedleeds funny you say that now since most of your campaign specifically called out misstep and thorn (by name) instead of sphere

Thorns vs. Missteps is all the format has been for a year. Hopefully that changes! If it's just Spheres vs. Missteps (or Defense Grid vs. Missteps) then who cares.

Unrestricted Bargain is a treat. I doubt that i would want to play 4 of them, but having 2 or even 3 + another cabal Ritual in TPS seems sweet. I need to test a new list as soon as i have time.

@desolutionist Yeah I'm not sure if this does anything at all if the Jeskai deck is still on 3.5 Missteps and 1.2 Fluster + Pyro. The current popular aggro shops deck can add Wire back in or even play more Strip effects to leverage only 1 Gush.

Big winner: Hurkyl's Recall and Moat, the one-card answers to Shops that previously were more likely to be stranded in hand based on so many Thorn copies. Combo is much more likely to achieve it's big turn, and Control is much more likely to play and cast the ultimate ground-control defense.

This all seems to make sense to me. These changes should knock the top two archetypes down at least slightly, opening up space for other things. Unrestricted Bargain shouldn't have a major impact, but it's good to see that they're thinking about relatively safe unrestrictions.

Once again the wizards cover themselves with ridicule:
Have restricted gush to limit mentor and have in fact depot urx aggro
They now reestrict amethyst because mud is too strong and the result is that they depot eldrazi..................

I thought restricting gush was going to fix the mentor issue?

Won't be playing 2 mb Sudden Shock anymore, woot.

@thermia The Mentor issue was Mentor, WOTC just didn't realize right away.

@desolutionist said in August 28, 2017 Banned & Restricted Announcement:

Seems like Shops will just run over Jeskai Tempo now. Losing 3 Thorns is not that big of deal when they lost x Mentors.

What did you want to happen then? No Mentor restriction, or a different restriction?

@sovarius

I don't care that Shops will run over Jeskai Tempo. I was just making a general statement. Like Shops probably runs over elves too, but who cares? Certainly not me. Personally I didn't think anything NEEDED to be restricted. But I'm not complaining about either restriction since I don't play with either card.

The following note has been added to the announcement.

Editor's Note: We’re aware of the proximity of the next B&R window to Eternal Weekend, which is why we’ve chosen to make necessary Vintage changes in this window. We don’t currently anticipate more changes to Vintage with the next B&R window, but in the event that they are needed we’ll have a solution for communicating changes in a way that respects the preparation of Eternal Weekend players.

@klep
All this is fine with me except making an announcement a couple days before EW.
I'm flying early the day after the announcement so I won't have time to test or get cards. If PO crushes everything between now and then and they have to restrict it, what are we supposed to do?

@elusive cry i guess

@elusive It's unfortunate that the window is so small ... but they have to pick a date, and there are a lot of formats to juggle. That editor's note adds a lot of confidence that they won't make a change unless it's really needed, and if they do, they'll try to mitigate the impact.

To me that moves wotc communication about this B&R announcement from "good" to "excellent"

As an Oath player I really like this, I also like that they will not be doing any thing prior to EW. This was a great move for WotC.

Crap, I was really starting to like the 3 Abrade in my Oath deck.

I'm generally against Bans and Restrictions in any eternal format, this one is no exception. Mentor has been the most exciting and fun card Vintage has ever seen and now it's restricted. They've been hacking away at shops for years now, one day the tower will fall and shops will go from dominant to unplayable, maybe we are finally here. Personally I think shops is an important part of the Vintage meta and think it's tragic that they continue to pull it apart.
I don't care if a deck or card is dominant, to me that's what new cards are for, like Mentor was. Vintage is supposed to be broken and I'm sick of these bans. Grumble grumble grumble.