Thoughts on restrictions
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@Smmenen said:
@vaughnbros said: There's no real interesting lines of sequencing or combat just drop them in, and swing until your opponent is dead.
I really don't agree with that. Sequencing bears around countermagic and removal and to best attack your opponent's strategy is actually a vital skill of the hatebears pilot, and far from obvious in many situations. In addition, determining the specific ratios and quantities of hatebears to best attack the metagame is also far from evident. There are probably multiple equilibria for any given metagame.
I already wrote a response to this. It used to be the case, but not since they power creeped the hell out of all the hatebears. Play my 2 mana thalia followed by my 3 mana thalia is not difficult sequencing.
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I think that's unduly dismissive of the skills needed to optimally sequence hatebears. The presence of so many good hate bears actually makes this more difficult, not less.
The presence of so many good hate bears also makes restrictions less, not more, necessary, imo. It also makes the format more accessible, not less.
All the hate for hate bears is truly mystifying. It should be a recruitment tool for Vintage, not a complaint.
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I think that's unduly dismissive of the skills needed to optimally sequence hatebears. The presence of so many good hate bears actually makes this more difficult, not less.
Its much easier to sequence things when they have no negative effect on you, and have very little synergy with each other. Magus of the Moon used to require that you sequenced your lands correctly to ensure that you didn't lock yourself out of an off-color. Qasali Pridgemage used to require you to make tough decisions and when to sacrifice it, and whether to use the exalted trigger or attack with multiple bears. These cards were much more intricate and took time to consider the impacts of playing it / using its abilities.
All the hate for hate bears is truly mystifying. It should be a recruitment tool for Vintage, not a complaint.
Its the hate for the power creep of creatures. It obsoletes years and years of creatures that have been printed that were previously our favorites to play with. I loved the original fish creatures, spiketail hatchling, lavamancer, ect. These creatures are mostly just garbage now. I love Morphling, and Masticore. Atrocious cards now. (Even morphling and masticore obseleted other creatures) This power creep hasn't occurred with other card types, at least as dramatically, so you don't see people getting disgruntled about it. Creatures that were printed just 5 or 6 years ago are already becoming obsolete. The power creep of creatures wasn't just a finite point in time, its been occurring continuously and its awful.
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Let me approach it from the angle of the hater of hatebears. I think Mentor is hatebears' worst matchup. And so, if you want to see less hatebears in the metagame, I think you don't want to see Mentor get restricted. But Mentor is too strong currently, so we need Workshop back at full strength to keep it in check. That can be done by unrestricting Chalice/Lodestone...but then Workshop will be too strong again! So I'm suggesting that carefully designed hate (not necessarily in the form of bears) might be able to do the trick of keeping either deck from dominating the metagame.
Obviously, this road is filled with perils of unintended consequences, so I wanted to lay out the possibility to see what others with more knowledge and perspective might think.
Edit: With that said, I do share your opinion that the quality of hatebear design has deteriorated over time. They take less skill to use than their predecessors, by virtue of featuring continuous effects rather than activated abilities. I wish this were not the case.
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@Smmenen said:
I think that's unduly dismissive of the skills needed to optimally sequence hatebears. The presence of so many good hate bears actually makes this more difficult, not less.
The presence of so many good hate bears also makes restrictions less, not more, necessary, imo. It also makes the format more accessible, not less.
the presence of all the hate bears makes it more difficult? how exactly? the deck almost builds itself at this point its .
8 thalia 4 revoker 4 contain priest 4 spirit of david bowie 4 thot not
4 waste 1 strip 2 karakus 4 cavern 2 ghost quarter 7ish plains
1 lotus 1 mox 4 plow
and then you choice of 10 cards from the following list based on your meta
stony silence/null rod/RIP/cage/santum prelate/crusable/displacer/stoneforge/cannonist/kataki/thorn/trinisphere/chalice/ -
@snowydude said:
@Smmenen said:
I think that's unduly dismissive of the skills needed to optimally sequence hatebears. The presence of so many good hate bears actually makes this more difficult, not less.
The presence of so many good hate bears also makes restrictions less, not more, necessary, imo. It also makes the format more accessible, not less.
the presence of all the hate bears makes it more difficult? how exactly? the deck almost builds itself at this point its .
8 thalia 4 revoker 4 contain priest 4 spirit of david bowie 4 thot not
4 waste 1 strip 2 karakus 4 cavern 2 ghost quarter 7ish plains
1 lotus 1 mox 4 plow
and then you choice of 10 cards from the following list based on your meta
stony silence/null rod/RIP/cage/santum prelate/crusable/displacer/stoneforge/cannonist/kataki/thorn/trinisphere/chalice/When the hatebears are of clearly uneven or unequal quality, then sequencing is more obvious than when the cards are all really good.
You've built a White eldrazi deck. Here's the Winner of the Bazaar of Moxen this year:
RUPPON Michael - 5CC Fish - Top 8 Vintage
Main Deck 60
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Scab-Clan Berserker
3 Dark Confidant
3 Mantis Rider
2 Grand Abolisher
3 Mayor of Avabruck
2 Reflector Mage
3 Containment Priest
3 Qasali Pridemage
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
4 Mana Confluence
1 Strip Mine
1 WastelandSideboard 15
1 Grand Abolisher
1 Containment Priest
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Reflector Mage
2 Wasteland
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Stony Silence
3 Izzet StaticasterThis deck features all kinds of difficult sequencing decisions. Even if you update it with new cards.
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Deckbuilding for hatebears is incredibly tough, certainly while this is in the pioneering stage.
- Wasteland package or no?
- Play the Null Rod package and give up the fast mana, or play the fast mana to have consistent t. 1 plays?
- What colors or cards are worth splashing for? Is Ancestral/Walk worth its own splash? Confidant?
- Do you give up on a draw engine?
- Do you include removal? What kind?
- Do you include SFM package?
- Do you include Black tutors?
- Go Tribal?
- How do you get past the bigger creatures in Shops? Eldrazi?
- What's your anti-Decay plan against Oath?
- Do you maindeck the swingy Containment Priests?
- How do you stop Vault/Key if you're not on the Null Rod plan?
- Does White have enough effective artifact hate to avoid the superior red and green offerings?
- Include Mental Misstep or not? the free Gitaxian Probe or not?
- What do you name with Meddling Mage?
- How many copies of each "bear"?
- What's the blue-card count (including planned SB changes) for possible FOW inclusion?
- How much Dredge hate if you maindeck Priests?
These are just a few of the endless deckbuilding decisions that came to mind, and these riddles are not easy to solve. Deckbuilding for other archetypes is much easier as you have established lists, the metagame is less important on card choice (compared to hatebears, though very important admittedly on whether to run a given deck at all), and the removal answers are very generic - FoW counters ANY spell, STP "counters" ANY creature.
I like Hatebears since I like going Rogue. If not for Hatebears, I'd probably play Belcher or dedicated DarkDepths combo more, but those decks have a hard time recovering if the initial cog piece gets countered, which usually happens. At that point, it is the Blue deck that is pretty mindless instead as it can just play all the draw-more cards and horde counters.
Playing Hatebears is not so easy either (though I'm a terrible player). I'm constantly realizing subtle play mistakes like pauses, lack of pauses, Caverns names, Caverns sequencing, Meddling Mage, pitching FOW fodder, Misstepping too early or too late, Wasting the wrong lands, playing Moxen too early or late, exposing lands too early or late, keeping Quellers in hand or playing them on an empty stack or countering the wrong spell, missing Karakas bounce options (either side), Displacer bounce options (including forgetting my own Priest interaction, fetching for the wrong land given three colors, playing Flash creatures main phase when the possible opposing counterspell doesn't matter, forgetting what are key cards, not playing to outs, not playing to opponent's outs, sideboarding. Time and again I find myself screwing up and losing percentage points.
Back on topic, for me, the least fun commonly-played card is Tangle Wire
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im adding mantis rider to my list of things im not ok with dieing to in vintage. also there are very few hate bears in your "hatebear" list in fact its just thalia and containment. also 1 wasteland what a monster. i always saw hate bears as being the deck with 16 creatures that have "dont do X" written on them. this is more like moderately effective aggro midrange. that list seems fine wouldnt be too unhappy to play it. not sure how it beats storm or vault+key but it looks like it should have positive matchups in everything else.
wait was that wat people are moaning about? the only things in that list i see as not really vintage cards are mayor and mantis. and i might question noble a bit but ive never doubted if birds was good so slide on that. if 5c bros are why people are mad then i am truely just confused.
look if you want to build the jund of vintage thats fine by me
i happen to prefer winning my games of magic without 45 minutes of work that such a list is clearly going to incur
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I think a point that might be overlooked is a problem with "you can't do X" cards that is also what lead to the most complaints about workshops:
The prison strategy makes it exceptionally important who goes first / drops their card first.
I can play land, mox, ancestral and a hatebear deck has no chance to stop me. They can drop Cavern, remove Elvish Spirit Guide and play Spirit of the Labyrinth. It is basically me having a starting hand of land, mox, sol ring and my opponent going Workshop + Trinisphere on the first turn. The impact of the sequencing of cards is very troubling, especially when cards are not just getting worse by your opponents plays, but completely being shut off.
I understand that variance is important and enjoyable, but people value different kinds of variants as good or bad for a game. The hatebear strategies don't really appeal to me, as (mostly) hatebears are very distinct and turn down different things - I wouldn't get much satisfaction out of having the exact right hatebear in my first turn, because I know I could have just sa well had the one that misses my specific opponents deck. Personally, I like to have the most control over what my deck is doing: tutors, library manipulation. But that is something that other people find boring.
With that in mind, I think that Magic is indeed moving in a direction that some of us don't like - be it because we are used to our "old ways" or because we just have a preference for specific types of variance or strategies. But I think we have to acknowledge that many people actually enjoy these new ways to play - Standard and Modern (and MTG in general) are exceptionally popular, so the kind of interactions that R&D showcases seem to resonate with a LOT of people.
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I don't understand the hate for hate bears I'm hearing here. Vintage is still the format where you do broken things. Those broken things now have checks that have opened up the playing field to other kind of strategies. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.
I'm sure Wizards is trying to move other axes as well, it's just harder to notice because the P9 + Dredge + Shop such up so much air. Remember we got cards like:
Mizzix Mastery (aka Show and Tell for Spells)
Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time (attempted competition for P9)
Planeswalkers (a totally new card type)So yeah, it's the creature strategies that are proving competitive now, but that doesn't mean they're not trying.
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@Hrishi I hate the dislikebears. I mean, I dislike gatebears, sorry.
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@MaximumCDawg For me at least the issue isn't hatebears but the precise form of hatebears. I don't want to play a bunch of matchups where you just count the hate cards and count the answers to hate cards and whoever has the higher number wins.
(I realize I'm a Dredge pilot, but my Vintage 'career' is entirely composed of trying to make Dredge not rely on counting to a higher number of anti-hate cards than the opponent can count hate cards)
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I think the issue with Hosers and Magic bullets is that the game should not be based around rock paper scissors but rather large series of counter plays from both sides, and ebb and flow. Most hoser cards are literal "You cannot win" cards unless you have a "Now I can win" answer card.
A good example is something like Faerie Macabre VS Leyline of the Void. Faerie is a roadblock, and it requires good timing and can be removed from an opponents hand forcibly with Cabal therapy. It is not game over, but it is a good card to have as an answer against dredge that has other applications (like surprising a snapcaster which you cannot do with leyline, or just casting as a body). Leyline on the other hand in most cases reads "screw you, you cannot win until you find your answer that you included singularly to defeat this card."
I think hate cards would be better if they had less direct effect on a specific deck and more actual utility against many lists. There are a few cards like this, lightning bolt is a great example of a card with utility against many decks and something that provides a use in and of itself, but more and more the game is just becoming a silver bullet sideboard fight. And that is really in all formats.
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This might be obvious to everybody, but aren't we just seeing the initial effects of something MaRo and multiple other R&D members have said - namely that creatures have been perennially under-powered, and a new-ish stated goal of R&D is to increase this powerlevel to be equivalent to the 'best' instants/sorceries?
If we look back, I remember when Workshop decks would win with Welder beats (e.g., no other creature was needed), or Control Slaver would just essentially make you concede after they activated Mind Slaver. Psychatog was arguably the best creature in vintage, and he is nothing compared to Mentor or Pyromancer today. Creatures were so poor I happily played Faerie Conclave in Standstill. Goblins was probably the exception, and it pretty much was only played by people who couldn't afford power.
I think the Eldrazi was an attempt from Wizards side to create a create type with serious power, and a type that was flexible enough to go into multiple colors and wasn't artifacts-based. While BFZ and OGW weren't exciting standard sets, they have re-defined vintage. They have also vastly expanded white, primarily by extending its credo of 'answers to everything, but no way to get those answers.'
We will have to get used to creatures becoming more of a force as Wizards tinker with solving this historic imbalance. I personally think that we will see vintage strategy evolve along new and previously unexplored axes.
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I was just rambling in my earlier post on here, so here are some more ordered thoughts on the matter.
Following is my current opinion (which can always be changed by good arguments or experiences):Bad hate card design (Roadblock) - mostly contain phrases like "(players, opponents, you, spells etc...) can't". Those cards shut of strategies on their own without any wiggle room and demand specific answers before they hated player can proceed with his game plan. I think this is lazy and bad game design. Also abilities like "cant be countered, hexproof, shorud, unblockable etc. live here. Also my personal most hated mechanic: Split second. it literally says: Your opponent cant react to this, cant interact with you, this just happens.
Examples: Ethersworn Canonist, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Rest in Piece or (in my opinion one of the biggest mistakes ever printed) Cavern of Souls, etc...Better hate card design (Punisher) - mostly contain phrases like "If (player, opponent....) does x, then you may y" x is the game action you like to punish and y is a positive effect that you get out of it. If well designed those cards punish a strategy harsh, but still keep some wiggling room where the opposing player may find a way to play around or force through the effect. Those cards don't stop a strategy but give you a massive advantage if your opponent still tries to pursue it.
Examples: Thorn of Amethyst (other taxing effects), Consecrated Sphinx, Standstill, Scab-Clan Berserker, Leovold, Emissary of Trest's second ability, (i believe the original skull clamp design was meant to be punishing removal on the equipped creature. A last minute change on the card made it to be a active card drawing engine in the right deck), etc...
I believe designing a good punisher card is extremely difficult. Make the punishing to strong and it might just be a Roadblock in disguise, make it too weak and it wont have an effect at all. Make it slightly too strong and try to balance it by just raising its mana cost and you have a card like Consecrated sphinx. So expensive and with such a powerful effect its not a real "hate" card but a finisher.My favorite "hate" card design: Counter spells, removal spells, discard... Don't laugh, yeah i put those cards in the same category. These are still cards that are not designed to advance your own game plan, but to stop your opponent from advancing his! I love this category. Its very interactive, it doesn't hose entire strategies but still can stop them. They demand the most skill how and when to use them, are very interactive and are still very powerful.
Trap cards like Mindbreak- or Ravenous trap live somewhere between category 2 and 3. I like them, they can be interacted with like category 3, but have very powerful effects that punish an opponent for playing a particular strategy more than just normal category 3 cards.
As you read this you may observe some problems. I personally would love for mtg to not have any of the Roadblock card, to have very few punishers and to have most of the last category. But sadly this wont work, i am not trying to fool myself. Currently there are some strategies that would be way too strong without the existing roadblocks. Dredge is probably the most obvious example here. Why? Because this deck is designed to only minimally care about the third category and is equipped to handle most of it with easy. Punisher cards would be cool here (like "whenever a card is put into an opponent's graveyard from anywhere that player loses 1 life" or "whenever a spell is cast from a graveyard you may discard a card, if you do counter that spell" stuff like that) But those probably wouldn't see play since we have enough Roadblock cards, which is sad.
Why do i dislike dedicated hate bear decks so much? The whole deck is a pile of mostly category 1 and 2 cards. It discourages interaction and strafes to stop the opponent from playing at all. It is probably the most boring way to play magic.
You might say "but aren't decks like Storm also trying to not have your opponent play magic by winning as fast and as non interactive as possible?" to which i answer: Yes, combo decks like this try to do their thing as fast as possible, and of course are happy if the opponent doesn't interact. However this wont happen a lot, and you are trying to force through your game plan mostly by category 3 "hate". Sometimes category 2 (f.e. Defense Grid) or even category 1 (f.e. Xantid Swarm) are used, but they make for the more boring games in my opinion.Since a lot of Roadblock cards already exist, i only can hope that Wizards wont design any more of those. Yes, punisher cards are very hard to design and get right, but if you hit the nail on the head, they can be pretty cool cards. I would love for wizards to, if they want to design more hate cards, to put in the extra work.
Edit: corrected some typing or phrasing errors. Added some abilities to category 1.
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I really like the line of thought that has emerged about certain types of hate making for better gameplay than others. I whole-heartedly agree. Above all else, Magic games should be demonstrations of gameplay skill (not just deckbuilding skill). And continuous-effect cards lack decision points and so don't provide as many opportunities to demonstrate gameplay skill, on both sides of the table.
I think one step that WotC can take to improve gameplay is to avoid publishing continuous-effect cards. Like @ajfirecracker wrote, "More Cursecatcher...and Deathrite Shaman, less Ethersworn Canonist and Containment Priest".
With that said, I still stand by my original thesis that the best way to shape the metagame is by publishing new hate. Ideally that hate does not take the form of a continuous effect, and it need not take the form of a bear.
So for example, if we were to unrestrict Chalice of the Void + Lodestone Golem and sought to reduce Workshop metagame dominance, perhaps we could publish something like...
Anti-Workshop-Forest: Legendary Land. Tap: add G to your mana pool. Tap, sacrifice, pay 1 mana per artifact you control: add 1 to your mana pool for each artifact target opponent controls.
Requires gameplay skill, hates without saying "you lose", non-bear form to appease the hatebear-haters. I think I rather like this card idea.
Of course, like I said earlier, the risk with such hate is that you might make the best deck better. If Mentor turns out to be the best deck and is able to derive value from this card, then it makes the metagame worse. Which is why putting the hate on a bear is the safest decision from the card designer's point of view.
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Disruptive creatures have never been better and more worthy of Vintage play. We lost Lodestone Golem which is annoying, but TKS has basically taken its place and quite nicely bolsered and reinvigorated several strategies. Existing dudes like Thalia 1 and Revoker are amazing, and we're seeing interesting and flexible new pieces like Thalia 2 and Chalice cleric. (Edit: forgot Spell Queller!)
The individual pieces are good enough that non-disruptive threats like Ravager and Reality Smasher are getting action. I eagerly anticipate new innovations to use e.g. Stoneforge Mystic.
On the other side you have plenty of tools and strategies to fight hatebears. All of the Gush based strategies have terrific ways to integrate creature interaction into their core game plan. For example, Grixis Therapy with Baleful Strix is a work of art.
It's like @wappla said in his recent article - driving Vintage towards a midrange format is awesome. It really doesn't have to be a format where every deck rolls with an 11/11. You can actually play meaningful interactive games, as long as you come to the table prepared with the right interaction - which can change weekly, and isn't just a question of which removal spell you board 2x this time. Side note: knowing on which interaction axes your deck is strong or weak is a defining feature of Standard; and you may disdain Standard but on average it's been incredibly fun and popular over the last couple years. To be compared to Standard is a compliment.
And to conclude, it's not like you can't play degenerate strategies - you just have to dedicate yourself to it (e.g. Storm, which I'm actually digging; or Steel City Vault, which seems ripe to abuse Welder). Vintage is better when you actually have to work to win with Yawg Will and Tinker.
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For those wishing to interact against Hatebears, you have creature removal, counters (the "exile target spell" variants get around Caverns, not to mention Wastelanding the Caverns), and you could be very proactive and use cards like Cranial Extraction. Instead, a lot of people fill up their hands with useless draw spells (hi, Spirit of the Labyrinth!) instead of good cards like Moat or Vedalken Shackles or Pyroclasm. Play more black tutors (there's four good ones) to find these hate-Hatebears cards to punish those practitioners. There are lots of cards that make Hatebears look utterly silly, so it sounds like complainers have a metagame problem more than anything else.
I don't buy the Faerie Macabre argument...while the card may be selectively intriguing on a stack-to-stack basis, in general, its power level is so far below Preordain, much less more broken card draw. Drawing the wrong answer at the wrong time is a recipe for disaster, so the answers need to be powerful enough (think "continuous") to be playable.
By the way, some of this post was facetious, just in case you couldn't tell.
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Restricting Gush is absurd. Vintage should be preserved as its own ridiculously powerful metagame. If you can't hang with it just pivot over to Standard. It's funny how you categorized the top three strategies in Vintage because land destruction (technically mana-advantage but not how you meant it) USED to be completely dominant. Players simply had to work around those strategies, so certain land-destruction defense cards that are never played these days used to be ubiquitous. WotC: Your default should be to print a new card or two to even out any given imbalance in the metagame before restricting cards!
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@Evoclipse i really agree with evo's presented things about hate cards. you benefiting from me doing stuff is preferable to me not being able to do stuff.
its much more fun for me to try to beat 3 counterspells a duress and 4 power on the board while playing storm than it is for me to beat you cant cast 4+ drops, you cant target me, you can only cast 1 spell per turn. even when my opp has 3 misteps 3 forces and a mindbreak trap.
down with continuous effects!
