Un-restricting cards
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@marland_moore I didn't say my opinion was popular or going to happen, it is just what I would prefer.
I actually disagree with you though that games would degenerate into bombs only. I think forcing singleton actually forces player to play at a higher skill level as resource management (options you have left in your deck) becomes harder to track and plan for.
There are plenty of cards that have redundant effects but that offer different play against different strategies and being able to understand that is going to be the thing that wins you the game more often than not.
The closest parallel we have to singleton is commander, specifically cEDH, and if you watch those games you'll see decks filled with 2 card combos but also extremely smart plays and resource management, tons of counterplay, and games that do not come down to who drew a bigger bomb first but rather games where the winner was the person who was able to best position themselves in the race.
It also opens the format up to things like Dredge decks that use actual mana and cast spells, workshop decks that have to use a much wider range of cards buy then by necessity have a larger range of counter play against decks they did not otherwise have it against, and pure keeper style control decks that we have not had in some time.
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@chubbyrain1 Give me 4 Chalice and I'll consider it. Call it a prisoner exchange lol!
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I wasn't expressing much of an opinion on Saga or Ragavan, I was just pointing out that if you don't like the play patterns of Saga or Ragavan (like OP), unrestrictions such as Misstep and Chalice might exacerbate those play patterns. The format could still be defined by Saga and Ragavan, but those decks would then take advantage of Misstep and Chalice.
While the position that "people should play different decks" makes sense on the surface, it doesn't really happen when those mirrors are "decks that run fast mana" and "decks that draw cards" in a format that has been defined by fast mana and drawing cards. I think Narset was in 7/8 decks the Eternal Weekend before it was restricted. People just warped their card-drawing decks around dealing with Narset and that reduced the diversity of the format.
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@chubbyrain1 said in Un-restricting cards:
While the position that "people should play different decks" makes sense on the surface, it doesn't really happen when those mirrors are "decks that run fast mana" and "decks that draw cards" in a format that has been defined by fast mana and drawing cards.
I think vintage more than any other format in magic is very guilty of presuming that swapping 4-5 cards around in a single list constitutes a new deck. There are decks and then there are broader archetypes and like you pointed out, a there is so much commonality between the structures of these things that very often even decks that are different on paper feel and play basically the same.
Ragavan decks are typically better than lists still using delver, but at the end of the day the archetype of stick a creature, counter and draw is what it is. Playing a different deck within that structure, even if it has totally different match ups, may wind up feeling very samey and to your point, just feel like your playing a "deck that does X".
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The deck that won the Mox Ruby event reminds me of Team ICBM’s Gush Meloku deck from 2007-2008ish. Just a collection of good cards that don’t necessarily conform to some pre-existing archetype definition. If Gush was the culprit before, I think Saga AND Ragavan are now filling that role.
Looking at spoilers, no one probably thought they were going to play Ragavan and Saga in the same deck, however they actually boost each other up. (Well Ragavan boosts constructs and is by itself an incredible early game strategy)
Well here we are. It’s like we’re nearly playing Workshop and Mana Drain in the same deck. It’s like there aren’t any deck building restrictions anymore that can’t be overcome. Your deck can be Aggro/control/combo all in one and you can play any color with a plethora of cards that don’t cost any mana at all.
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Can anyone please help me understand why the card Flash is restricted in Vintage?
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Hulk
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@daniel-worobec
Flashing a Protean Hulk can get you numerous instant wins. In todays meta people would probably just use Academy Rector to get Yawgmoth's Bargain.
To be clear Flash would put the creature on to the battlefield and it would instantly die. The goes to graveyard trigger would go on the stack. For a while Flash was subject to errata that put the creature directly into the graveyard. This has been reversed. -
To be fair, I doubt Flash would be dominant. One of the downsides of Oath is the dead draws and inconsistency of a two-card combo in a format with a large number of answers. Hulk requires a larger number of slots dedicated to it which will limit the protection package and Rector is vulnerable to improved and more prevalent graveyard hate. It would be a deck with a pretty high turn 1 win rate and play/draw disparity as being on the draw exposes the combo to Flusterstorm and 1 drop interaction while being on the play just exposes you to Force.
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Especially since fluster, force of negation, and mindbreak trap are cards now. They used to be able to win on turn 1 with Flash at like a 70% rate or something. Often with double counter backup. It’s still the most degenerate deck ever though. It’s like a modern Tibalts Trickery deck. Janky as hell but terrible gameplay patterns
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@daniel-worobec It's one of those cards that was given the "un-fun" label. It has a toxic play pattern similar to Oops all spells but is slightly more re-silent.
It is probably safe to un-restrict but would have some turn one wins that would just cause feel bads similar to how people feel about Oops all spells, Belcher and to some extend Doomsday.
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@marland_moore
Flash before restriction
4 brainstorm
4 merchant s.
4 flash
......
If unrestrict only flash deck Is strong but not tier 0 -
@lienielsen I'd think it could be even more busted now. LotV was always a solid stop to the deck, but now we have FoV, and the flash decks were mainly UGx. They could remove your turn 0 leyline or turn 1 cage to still oops-win on their turn 1. Anything you have to "cast" to stop them likely isn't resolving. Macabre fairie would be your best bet!
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Out of all the cards that could be safe candidates for unrestriction, it seems weird to be talking about Gush, Probe, Narset, Karn, Misstep, Mentor and Chalice.
If anything, cards that don't see play restricted and don't enable degenerate deck building in multiples should be the first ones to be considered.
Looking at cards like Windfall, Library of Alexandria, Imperial Seal, Channel, Necropotence, Memory Jar, Mind's Desire and Flash ; all powerful cards that barely see any play restricted and have a chance of adding something new to the meta with acceptable levels of risk. -
@macdeath I viscerally hate this argument. I did not want any of the cards you listed to be restricted in the first place. And, yes I did play a lot when they were legal.
The new cards are actually just as powerful and in some ways more powerful. I am not sure what type of balance you think restricting these cards gives us but Vintage is supposed to be a broken format. People get Vintaged in Vintage so let's be that format.
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@marland_moore
What argument are you referring to? That we should unrestrict cards that hardly see any play restricted over unrestricting cards that see a lot of play restricted?
According to MTGGoldfish tournament data, the cards you are advocating for are all seeing a fair to huge amount of play. From 06/01/2021 to today this is how much players were running them in their maindecks:Mental Misstep played in 79.90% of decklists
Gitaxian Probe played in 64.81% of decklists
Narset, Parter of Veils played in 47.56% of decklists
Gush played in 34.04% of decklists
Chalice of the Void played in 26.19% of decklists
Karn, the Great Creator played in 20.66% of decklists
Monastery Mentor played in 10.71% of decklistsIn contrast to the cards I was talking about:
Necropotence played in 7.49% of decklists
Library of Alexandria played in 0.90% of decklists
Windfall played in 0.20% of decklists
Imperial Seal played in 0.20% of decklists
Memory Jar played in 0.15% of decklists
Mind’s Desire played in 0.15% of decklists
Channel played in 0.10% of decklists
Flash played in 0.05% of decklistsWhich do you think are safest? The cards currently played in tier 1 decks or the ones that are fringe?
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@macdeath Thanks for making the clarification here. The fringe cards mostly do not matter. The tier 1 cards should mostly be set free in my opinion. Gush is not safe to let loose in with the current mix of cards but I'd like to have the tier 1 cards back.
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@marland_moore
I am all for the smallest B&R list possible. But I don't think most of those cards are safe or desirable unrestrictions in the current environment (aside from maybe Mentor and even that one is iffy).
That's why I would like to see the fringe cards get unrestricted first, maybe the metagame balance shifts enough after, to where some of the cards you mentioned could safely come off.Flash might not be the most welcome of unrestrictions (mostly due to old fears), but at least it has a real chance to add diversity in the combo control part of the metagame. Its power level/consistency would not be very different than Doomsday for the most part, with more deckbuilding constraints and more exploitable weaknesses. The cards that made the deck consistent are restricted. And there is a lot of splash hate for it in the meta already.
Channel probably ends up in Belcher Style decks and/or in a Lich's Mirror build. Belcher is so fringe at this point, and Channel does not do that much to make it a better deck that it most likely would make 0 impact on the metagame (similar to Fastbond).
Mind's Desire could help make Storm viable again in a completely new shell than the old Dark ritual shell. There are also a lot of answers to the card across archetypes to keep it from ever dominating.
Memory Jar is so far outclassed by Citadel as a tinker target, that it's unlikely to ever see play in a Blue-based combo deck ever again. It probably just ends up being a worse than Mystic Forge, Combo shops draw engine.
Imperial Seal is pretty bad in a world of restricted Gitaxian Probe and with better alternatives in Burning Wish, Dark Petition and Wishclaw Talisman.
Windfall is not objectively better than Day's Undoing or Echo the Eons which see very marginal play. Even with Hullbreacher being so prominent, you seldom see players bother to run it when they have the perfect shell for it.
Library of Alexandria is worse than Urza's Saga and the metagame bears that out. Vintage is simply too fast for Library at this point. Pure Control is completely dead, and it's unlikely 4x Library does much to change that. It's pretty bad in a Hullbeacher and Pithing needle world. It would be a sideboard card at best.
Necropotence sees play in Doomsday an already tier 1 deck, but it's mostly as a placeholder/ setup spell for Doomsday. The deck runs 5 rituals and 5 BBB spells, it seems doubtful that it starts packing Cabal ritual for additional Necro copies.
On the other hand, Necro could resurrect TPS which has been largely dead since Brainstorm was restricted. It might also give birth to a completely new style of combo control deck or create a black-based shell for a disruptive Tempo/prison archetype. Necro as a card is not that great against tempo strategies and straight-up awful against Workshops, so it should be fine. -
@macdeath First, I'd like to thank you for making clear and coherent points. I think that you are correct about the list of fringe cards. I view this as more of a symbolic thing to unrestrict the cards that you listed in your previous post.
I'd like to go back in time a bit to 2015. Let's look at the time line that @Smmenen created - https://www.eternalcentral.com/timeline-of-vintage/
Without going through an entire history lesson here, I believe several cards that were restricted from 2016 - 2020 would not be restricted today based on power level and game play and the mulligan rules.
Mental Misstep is a very divisive card but in the current Ragavan meta game, I would welcome that card. It would also make several more blue cards that see a Pyroblast as their primary answer more playable.
Narset is considered unfun and I still do not see the difference between that and Hullbreacher. I know @chubbyrain1 pointed out the "Impulse" ability but in a meta where you get free tokens from Urza's Saga, I do not see how it is restricted.
Cards I avoided to point out like Grave Troll should be restricted and Gush should remain restricted but Gitixan Probe makes me scratch my head. You get punished for running that card against the various hatebear decks out there. Mystic Forge cannot be unresticted in Vintage as long as Misrha's Workshop is unrestricted. Golgari Grave Troll should not be unrestricted as long as Bazaar of Baghdad is unrestricted.
I do realized you have a pointed list and this is more free flowing but I would like you to look at the timeline of restrictions from 2015 to now and ask if the cards that exist in MH1 and MH2 were available would these cards have been restricted in the first place.
Personally, I'd like to see Eldrazi be playable again. I like glass canon decks that have a chance at being tier 1 or tier 2. This current meta is expense because all of the "good" cards are new cards. There are a lot of cards that were restricted because of bad meta games and unfun play where solutions now exist.
Force of Negation and Force of Vigor answer Chalice of the Void and Thorn of Amethyst.
The other very notable thing about the restricted list is going from 2015 to 2019 the mulligan rule changed twice. The London mulligan has changed Vintage more than any restriction. The fringe cards you listed will do almost nothing to change Vintage because MH1 and MH2 are so strong and the London mulligan has muted most of the cards that could have any impact - sorry Windfall.
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@marland_moore said in Un-restricting cards:
@macdeath First, I'd like to thank you for making clear and coherent points. I think that you are correct about the list of fringe cards. I view this as more of a symbolic thing to unrestrict the cards that you listed in your previous post.
I'd like to go back in time a bit to 2015. Let's look at the time line that @Smmenen created - https://www.eternalcentral.com/timeline-of-vintage/
Without going through an entire history lesson here, I believe several cards that were restricted from 2016 - 2020 would not be restricted today based on power level and game play and the mulligan rules.
Mental Misstep is a very divisive card but in the current Ragavan meta game, I would welcome that card. It would also make several more blue cards that see a Pyroblast as their primary answer more playable.
Narset is considered unfun and I still do not see the difference between that and Hullbreacher. I know @chubbyrain1 pointed out the "Impulse" ability but in a meta where you get free tokens from Urza's Saga, I do not see how it is restricted.
Cards I avoided to point out like Grave Troll should be restricted and Gush should remain restricted but Gitixan Probe makes me scratch my head. You get punished for running that card against the various hatebear decks out there. Mystic Forge cannot be unresticted in Vintage as long as Misrha's Workshop is unrestricted. Golgari Grave Troll should not be unrestricted as long as Bazaar of Baghdad is unrestricted.
I do realized you have a pointed list and this is more free flowing but I would like you to look at the timeline of restrictions from 2015 to now and ask if the cards that exist in MH1 and MH2 were available would these cards have been restricted in the first place.
Personally, I'd like to see Eldrazi be playable again. I like glass canon decks that have a chance at being tier 1 or tier 2. This current meta is expense because all of the "good" cards are new cards. There are a lot of cards that were restricted because of bad meta games and unfun play where solutions now exist.
Force of Negation and Force of Vigor answer Chalice of the Void and Thorn of Amethyst.
The other very notable thing about the restricted list is going from 2015 to 2019 the mulligan rule changed twice. The London mulligan has changed Vintage more than any restriction. The fringe cards you listed will do almost nothing to change Vintage because MH1 and MH2 are so strong and the London mulligan has muted most of the cards that could have any impact - sorry Windfall.
Cards are never restricted for power level reasons, only cards that lead to metagame dominance or unfun games too often. But yeah, almost assuredly Gush, Narset, Karn, Misstep, Probe, Chalice would all warrant restriction right now. Mentor is less sure, as said with mh 1 and 2 power creep. But all of those other cards are miserable in their own way and are still format defining as 1 ofs.
I would be fine if Thorn was unrestricted, if Sphere took it's place. Still leaves the same number of spheres for workshops and lets Eldrazis exist.
If you look historically, the DCI pretty much only ever unrestricts cards once they are guaranteed to have no impact, unless it's Gush which gets unrestricted every 5 years.
I do think that some of those fringe card would see play if unrestricted, Flash is basically unplayable as a 1 of aside from Academy rector applications. As a 4 of, it becomes it's own archetype.
4 Memory Jar should have some workshop potential as well.
Necro and Desire too, at least some players would enjoy playing with those cards.
