Posts made by Smmenen

Nice Job!

Nick,

If Lotus is $70 per head, then removing Lotus from the prize pool makes a great deal of sense. Perhaps you could still find a way to award power nine to all or most of the top 8 if it was among the least expensive range of the power nine. That would be my preference.

Cash is too variable for people to encode it as a meaningful prize.

Best,

Stephen

SCGCON top 25 decklists: http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/results/format/4/event_ID/17/start_date/08-06-2018/end_date/10-06-2018/w_perc/0/g_perc/0/r_perc/0/b_perc/0/u_perc/0/a_perc/0/order_1/finish/limit/25/start_num/0/

Full coverage page, Including in a video interview with me!

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/080618_invitational.html#Vintage_Power_9_Series_

No idea, unfortunately.

Remember that the earlier chapters were written years ago. The editor and I have to go through the entire book with a fine tooth comb (I've already re-written and expanded the Introduction and Chapter 1 - but it hasn't been uploaded yet). Then we have to format it for a physical book, and work on the layout. There are a number of places I want to 'touch up' and update the book.

It's really up to you whether you want to wait or not, but my guess is September or October.

Whoa, what the heck?

My first article on Starcitygames in nearly 8 years!

It's a brief history of the Power Nine series, and some metagame predictions and analysis for SCG Con.

Check it out, and please be sure to comment in the comment section, and vote it article of the day.

Thanks!

http://www.starcitygames.com/articles/37173_So-Many-Insane-Plays-The-Power-Nine-Series-Returns.html

blurb:

Don't adjust your monitors! It is 2018 and this is really Stephen Menendian! One of the pioneers of Magic content is back to talk Vintage as we approach SCG CON!

At looooong last, the book is complete.

This final installment is the 2017 Chapter, and an 8 page conclusion to the entire book, which summarizes all of the schools of Magic and offers some commentary on the arc of the format over 25 years.

I'm quite proud of this work! Enjoy!

http://www.eternalcentral.com/schools-of-magic-history-of-vintage-2017/

Promo Text:

Years in the making, read the conclusion to Stephen Menendian’s epic History of Vintage. 2017 was an incredible year of Vintage experiences, long anticipated restrictions, and surprising unrestrictions. Stephen’s book closes with a special review of the great Schools of Vintage Magic, and reflections on 25 years of an incredible game.

http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-podcast-episode-79-battlebond-and-scg-power-nine-previews/

Kevin Cron and Steve Menendian preview two Battlebond cards, as well as the upcoming return to Star City Games’ Power Nine Vintage tournament series at SCG Con. Thanks to Wizards of the Coast for sending us these preview cards to share!

Play
Podcast (somanyinsaneplays): Download (Duration: 1:16:23 — 85.7MB)

0:01:00: Battlebond Previews
0:09:40: VSL Update
0:29:30: Tournament Results: TMD Open 19 and Eternal Weekend Europe
0:45:00: SCG Con Metagame Predictions
Total Runtime: 1:16:23
Show Notes
– TMD Open 19 Top 15 Decklists
– TMD Open 19 Organizer’s Report
– TMD Open 19 Winner’s Report
– Eternal Weekend Europe 2018 Top 32 Decklists
– Eternal Weekend Europe 2018 Metagame Breakdown

Well...

It depends on how you define "correct." My preference for restricting Power Artifact over Consult in Old School '96 is a perfect example of a counter-intuitive narrow tailoring approach.

As I said above

Narrow tailoring assumes that there are multiple ways to solve a problem (which is usually true when it comes to B&R policy), and that the means by which you accomplish that end should be that which has the least collateral harms. Therefore, narrow tailoring will often lead to restrictions that seem facially absurd, in the sense that the restriction target is a less seemingly 'powerful' or salient card.

Demonic Consultation is used by a number of Old School decks in Old School formats with Ice Age. It makes Reanimator more consistent in Old School '95, and MaskNaught more consistent in Old School '96, thereby diversifying both metagames. It boosts mono black decks and a number of other decks that tend to be homogeneous as well.

On the other hand, Demonic Consultation makes Power Artifact combo decks too good (and even better in Old School '96, when Force of Will is available). Restricting Consult instead of Power Artifact collaterally harms Reanimator, MaskNaught and other decks unnecessarily. The more narrowly tailored choice is restricting Power Artifact, which is the best thus-far-proven use of Consult in environments with Necro restricted, and which used to be restricted in Swedish Old School anyway.

It's possible that Consult is so good that other decks can become too good by abusing it. If it were proven true, then the calculus would shift, and I'd prefer to see Consult restricted instead. But I haven't seen that to be the case in Old School '95 of '96 tournaments. And, part of my methodology is evidence-based decision-making rather than theory crafting around the power of a super-efficient black tutor. I invite folks to try to abuse it, and make a deck that is too good. If they do, then I'd restrict Consult instead. But until then, I'll go with the choice that maximizes strategic diversity while minimizing the number of cards restricted.

@stormanimagus said in Why do you think we have a restricted list?:

@smmenen Thank you, I changed it to the "DCI" in my initial post. I sorta knew that and had a brain fart.

Question: do you think their principles for restriction extend all the way back to cards like Ancestral and Time Walk? Was there ever a time when they would have said "these cards are not automatically restricted we have to evaluate the format?" What were the competitive balance reasons that any of the moxen should be restricted? What degenerate things did they enable that could not be enjoyed by many many different deck? I have my own theories as to why they got restricted in the first place, but I'd also like to hear from the community.

I preemptively answered these questions in my post you replied to:

"I ... found that the DCI's bases for restriction have evolved over the decades of Type I and Vintage play, and is not entirely consistent or internally coherent. They have evolved just as the game has."

It wasn't until 1995 that the concept of "card advantage" came into parlance. It makes sense that the regulatory body who manages Constructed Magic would also evolve their rationale and bases.

As I demonstrate in my History of Vintage, many of the restrictions that occurred in 1994 were done without the benefit of tournament data. Rather a handful of cards were immediately restricted after Antiquities and Legends were released. For example, 3 cards were immediately restricted after the release of Antiquities: Ivory Tower, Feldon's Cane, and Candleabra - but curiously - Workshop wasn't restricted until more than a month after that - suggesting that it was evidence, not just a preemptive design act, that precipitated it.

Similarly, Library of Alexandria was restricted more than 5 months after Arabian Nights was released, and well after other Arabian cards like Rukh Egg had been restricted. Again, this suggests that data or tournament experience/results played a role. And again, Mind Twist was restricted immediate after Bo Bell's victory at US Nationals. And, yet again, Balance and Fork were restricted after decks appeared abusing those cards in tournaments in early 1995.

After Legends, the DCI moved away from the idea of pre-emptive restrictions. The only card preemptively restricted - or restricted nearly immediately - after the release of a set, from 1995 until the present - is Mind's Desire. The soonest card's get restricted in that period is at least 2-3 months after set releases, compared to the virtually coterminous restrictions that occurred with the release of Antiquities and Legends.

If you follow the pattern of restriction from 1995 through April 1999, it's very clear that the DCI only restricted cards in Type I that were proven problematic, and was generally narrowly tailored in doing so. The main exception to narrow tailoring, of course, was the mass wave of October, 1999, when the DCI restricted 18 cards. But that occurred only after two prior attempts to deal with the problem proved futile.

Then, if you look at the restriction regime from late 1999 until roughly 2006 or so, it's clear that part of the rationale that the DCI uses for restricting cards is "function," like "fast mana" or tutors. Yet, it's very clear that by 2008 through the present, that rationale is jettisoned. And thus, cards like Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, Grim Monolith, Burning Wish and Gifts Ungiven are unrestricted despite being "fast mana" or "tutors."

In short, the DCI's rationale has evolved over time as the game has evolved, in both our collective understanding and the emergence of better and more refined data sources and data sets. The MTGO era gives the DCI more and better data than ever before. And it's clear from a number of recent DCI announcements, written mostly by Ian Duke, that they are using that data.

Beth Moursand wrote an Duelist article that explained the rationale of every restricted card in Type I from 1994 through 1996. And the DCI has offered public explanations since roughly 1999, so we aren't entirely in the dark on what their rationale is. Your post seems to suggest we are completely in the dark. We aren't. That doesn't mean that their explanations are entirely comprehensive, but this isn't entirely guesswork either.

I answered that question, from my perspective, here: http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-suggested-banned-and-restricted-list-updates-2018/

The main purpose of the restricted list, in my view, exists to maintain and promote competitive balance. The DCI is basically analogous to the FTC or the Justice Department vis-a-vis the market. The Restricted List is the regulatory mechanism, and the DCI is the regulatory body that manages that mechanism.

The restricted list also exists to ensure that the format is sufficiently interactive (or even better, that there is sufficient "counter play."

It accomplishes both goals by 1) regulating dominant strategies, both monopolies and oligopolies, and 2) ensuring there is enough counterplay by regulating decks that win too quickly or shut out an opponent from doing anything, like Trinisphere or Flash.

The reason that Vintage has a restricted list instead of just a banned list is so that there is an official, sanctioned format where Magic players can play all of their cards (to the maximum extent possible).

Also, a corollary to that is: What do you think are the criteria R & D uses to decide what is on the restricted list?

The DCI manages the Vintage restricted list, not R&D. R&D is the team of staff that designs and develops new cards.

But assuming you mean the DCI, they provide public explanations, so you can parse their explanations for Vintage. I have done so as part of my History of Vintage Series, and found that the DCI's bases for restriction have evolved over the decades of Type I and Vintage player, and is not entirely consistent or internally coherent. They have evolved just as the game has.

But, by and large, the grounds they offer in their explanations for restriction and unrestriction generally match those I articulated above.

Last night was a pretty interesting set of matches.

I'll share a few quick notes while trying to be as #spoilerfree as possible:

1. One of the things I noted in the twitch replay was that in the match I played against Oath, I pitched both JVP to Force rather than hardcast one of the Forces, and allow myself to play JVP.

Not only is there a bug where JVP may not successfully flip with Containment Priest in play, but the main reason I didn't do this play is that I was playing around Flusterstorm. If I recall correctly, they had 3 Flusterstorm in their sideboard. Having already Forced Pyroclasm, if I hardcast Force on Jace, I would have gotten blown out by a single Flusterstorm (which I assume he had mana to cast). But by pitching casting it, I could pay for Fluster.

2. The craziest other play I wanted to explain was my first turn balance. I had to wait about 4 minutes for the match to start, and I was originally going to just play first turn Time Walk, and follow up with JVP. But the longer I sat there, the better Balance looked:

• I had plenty of extra land
• Balancing a PO player from 7 to 4 cards seemed quite good for a deck that needs board permanents.
• Balance isn't very good mid or late game, so it was a "now or never" opportunity
• By Balancing, I'd be able to flip JVP immediately, as soon as he was played and activated.

When Balance resolved and he discarded 3 lands (!), I was flabbergasted. And then when he played T1 Tinker, I knew I had blown the game. But, I think, in a closed situation, not knowing your opponent's hand, it made sense.

Yes, thank you guys for this!

@maximumcdawg said in [Free Article] Menendian's Suggested Banned and Restricted Lists (2018):

The article is good, and I also like your banned and restricted list better than WotC's. That said, a few points:

(1) Interactivity

You mention that this is hard to define, but you don't actually give us your definition.

Intentionally. In my view, "interactivity" is a folk taxonomy, like "race," which can't actually be scientifically defined in Magic, or it quickly begins to break down. I wrote several articles about this many years ago for starcitygames. I won't recapitulate them now, but you can find them easily using google.

So, what I'm really capturing when I say "interactivity" as a factor, is the situations, decks and circumstances that most people regard as non-interactive, to such a degree that it merits DCI intervention. I don't have a definition from that - it emanates from the crowd. And I don't think it can be parsed in a scientifically defensible way.

@diophan said in [Free Article] Menendian's Suggested Banned and Restricted Lists (2018):

@smmenen Perhaps my reply was too terse. Your final point about thorn and (potentially) chalice being unrestricted is what I was getting at. These restrictions were anything but tailored--they nuked archetypes to save workshop from restriction.

Perhaps the DCI was acting to save a sacred cow, but in my framework presented in this article, 'saving workshop from restriction' is not an end in and of itself. Rather, the value of Workshop is instrumental to format diversity, in that it supports the existence of a range of archetypes and strategies that would not, presumably, exist without it. At least, that's likely how I would have viewed it were I the DCI deciding to restrict Golem.

The most broken reasonable-to-achieve hand from modern workshops is shop, inspector, mox, and lock piece. The odds of having 4 mana for this sequence go down significantly if you restrict workshop. I don't have a problem with a fast affinity aggro deck in vintage. The problem is that the workshop buys the deck too much tempo with a lock piece or two to kill the opponent before they can regain control. The fact that it makes bigger ballistas to mow down a board of helpless humans is the other half of the problem.

I wasn't arguing that restricting Workshop wouldn't have any effect. A narrow tailoring inquiry just tries to match the means to the ends in a narrowly tailored way to minimize collateral effects. Thus, any narrowly tailoring process needs to have a 1) a clear definition and understanding of the problem, and 2) a theory or prediction about the effects of any particular intervention.

Suppose that my facts are right, and that Shops is about 30% of the metagame, 25% of Top 8s (which it was in the April, 2018 Challenges), and 55% win percentage, and we all agree it's still too good. What is the goal we are trying to achieve? (I actually believe that Workshop underperforms in the post Champs to present metagame relative to it's 'actual' power, which I expect to be similar to last year's NA Vintage Champs.) But we have to be clear about our goals, because narrow tailoring is all about means-end fit.

Suppose that two things are true:

1. Restricting Ravager would cause Workshop Aggro to fall, to say, 27% of the metagame, 22% of Top 8s, and a 53% win percentage

2. Restricting Workshop would cause the Ravager Aggro archetype to fall to 17% of Top 8s and a 52% win percentage.

Both seem plausible. Obviously, there is a wide range of possibility around both predictions. But supposing that those are decent forecasts. What is the more narrowly tailored option?

Narrow tailoring assumes that there are multiple means by which you can achieve the same ends, and you take the least collaterally damaging path. Unless you tie the restriction of Workshop to the possible unrestriction of multiple cards, based upon those assumptions, restricting Ravager seems like the more narrowly tailored choice.

@wappla said in [Free Article] Menendian's Suggested Banned and Restricted Lists (2018):

@smmenen As you well know, the issue then becomes that any subsequent printing can undo the effect of the narrow restriction and push Shops back to a problematic place. You then have an unnecessary card on the restricted list (the one you hit to tailor) and the need to add another.

And this is arguably what happened when Walking Ballista (or Fleetwheel Cruiser or Thought-Knot Seer) was printed. The meaning of the Chalice and then Lodestone restrictions was destroyed by new printings. To restore the meaning of those restrictions, you had to narrowly tailor again, by adding Thorn to the list. We now have add three Modern-legal artifacts to the Vintage restricted list in as many years and are discussing adding another.

While I agree the strategy of narrow tailoring can be effective at achieving desired metagame percentages in the short term, it leads to restricted list inflation in the long term, as we have seen.

While a very plausible claim, the problem is that it isn't necessarily true. While there are many cases in which that claim has proven true (Necro vis-a-vis Dark Ritual in old Extended and Mentor vis-a-vis Gush last year), there are actually plenty of counter-examples or cases where this claim was made and it turned out not to be true. So, there is no neutral and objective a priori way to distinguish between times where it will be true and times when it won't. The short term view is actually all that matters, because the long term (the future) is fundamentally unknowable.

Also, there is problem of chronology. There were calls to restrict Workshop in 2003 and 2004, especially during the Trinsphere era. That actually presented a pure version of your problem: (that Y is the 'real problem', and if you restrict/ban X, you will ultimately have to restrict/ban Y), where Y = Workshop, and X=Trinisphere. But consider the fact that there were no other Workshop restrictions until 2015. That was an 11 year period where, arguably, no restriction was needed to deal with Workshop. Based upon the interval period, I think it's fair to say that restricting Workshop in 2004 instead of Trinisphere would have been the incorrect decision in relation to format diversity, which is my top line criteria.

I agree with you that the restriction of Golem has been swamped by events and recent printings. But a neutral and objective policymaker who was only looking at data could not know that at the time (even if the DCI were R&D members and tested a FFL Vintage, they still couldn't 'know' with confidence).

Assuming you (or anyone) believed that restricting Gush last year was necessary, does that make it 'wrong' to have unrestricted Gush in 2010? Maybe Nick Detwiler thinks so, but I think the fact that Gush was essentially under 15% of the metagame from 2010 to the summer of 2014 shows that it was the right decision in 2010.

Again, I don't think that restricting Workshop is unreasonable. I've been on record saying so. But I'm not sure that restricting Workshop would even solve the problem, since these Workshop decks lean less on Workshop than any other Workshop deck in the history of Workshop decks in Vintage since they are so low the ground, powering out maindeck spells that can almost all be cast for 2 mana.

But, most importantly, yes, you are correct in the general sense that, as I already said, a narrowly tailored policy approach has a higher risk of "failure" in the sense that more restrictions will be required than a more sweeping approach. That's a given. But there is an important trade off. While it may require more or deeper restrictions in the future, a narrowly tailored policy approach dramatically reduces the risk of unnecessary restrictions.

In my view, the risk of too many restrictions is a greater harm than the risk of insufficient restrictions, in terms of my goal of promoting overall strategic diversity. Once a card is taken away, it's much harder to get it back then taking away another card to deal with the original problem. To prove this, one need not look further than the fact that before 2015, every single instance in which the DCI had restricted more than 1 card, it later needed to unrestrict a card (with the only exception being Necro and Consult in 2000). For example, in 2001, they could have just restricted LED instead of also restricting Burning Wish and Chrome Mox.

While I don't think it is valid to speculate about what might happen in future when deciding what to do now, I do think there is one additional point that could justify choosing Y over X: If you discover that a long incidence of restriction debates involving Y, and also conclude that restricting Y instead of a new X would actually allow you to unrestrict other cards. So, if the DCI decided that restricting Workshop now would allow them to unrestrict, say, Chalice, Thorn and Golem, then I think that may tip the balance. So that would require two steps: both that card Y has contributed to several other restrictions, and that restricting Y would not only preclude restricting a new X, but that it could also allow an overall reduction in the number of cards on the restricted list. If only one of those conditions were satisfied, I would find that insufficient.

@diophan said in [Free Article] Menendian's Suggested Banned and Restricted Lists (2018):

Thanks for the article Stephen. My two cents:

Based on your criteria I don't see how workshop can be unrestricted. It chokes out any other strategy trying to play creatures and the entire metagame is warped around it. When we're at the point where we're restricting cards that are fine in modern we've really gone too far shielding a sacred cow.

That's essentially the position I took a few months ago, and after the NA Vintage Championship. I told Randy before the event, that if Workshop was 5 or more of the Top 8, I don't see how it can justifiably remain unrestricted.

Even before that, I said in one of the SMIP podcast that if the restriction of Thorn didn't do it, then maybe Shop had to go.

But... After watching all of the data since... which shows that Shops are about 30% of the metagame, 25% of Top 8s, and about 55% win percentage... and assuming that holds... I think a more narrowly tailored restriction could achieve the goal of: bringing Workshops Top 8% and overall win % to a more acceptable level.

I think part of my willingness to entertain non-Shop targets is: 1) restricting Shop is a radical act that harms other strategies, and therefore is not necessarily the most narrowly tailored choice, and 2) it's really hard to project what the exact effect of restricting Shop would be.

Let me tackle both separately:

The truth is that deciding what to restrict is a much more complicated subject than most admit or that DCI philosophy and practice acknowledges. The DCI has hardly been consistent in it's policy making. But there is a tendency to hit the 'name' or salient card over a seemingly less powerful card. That makes Workshop or Sphere a much more natural target then Ravager.

Narrow tailoring assumes that there are multiple ways to solve a problem (which is usually true when it comes to B&R policy), and that the means by which you accomplish that end should be that which has the least collateral harms. Therefore, narrow tailoring will often lead to restrictions that seem facially absurd, in the sense that the restriction target is a less seemingly 'powerful' or salient card.

But, there have been times that the DCI has actually taken a more narrowly tailored approach. Remember when they banned Dark Ritual instead of Necro? Trinisphere instead of Workshop?

We discovered that the restriction of Ritual instead of Necro was ultimately wrong, but it was, a priori, the more narrowly tailored choice. Narrow tailoring gives you a higher risk of getting wrong, because there is a greater chance of not doing enough, but it also means that there is a lower overall risk of over-restriction - of restricting too many cards (over breadth - or sweeping too broadly). I consider that a fair trade off. I think the 1999 and 2008 restrictions swept way too far, and were a mistake as a result.

I also think that there are too many instances where restricting the salient card led to the wrong restriction. Restricting Black Vise in 1997 instead of Prosperity, Mana Crypt and/or Mana Vault is an obvious example. Black Vise was simply the win condition abused by having a ridiculous amount of mana to cast Prosperity. That would have been like restricting Tendrils instead of the fast mana or the draw engine. I also regard restricting Gush instead of Mentor is an obvious example of this problem. Gush got too much of the blame for Mentor's behavior, IMO.

Restricting Trinisphere instead of Workshop in 2004 was a very successful restriction, IMO. It allowed three different strains of Workshops to emerge and diversify. It was the right call.

It's possible that no restriction short of Workshop itself can curb Shop deck's dominance. But it's also possible that restricting Workshop itself won't be enough. Take the current Shop Aggro deck, remove 3 Shops, and add 2 City of Traitors, and a Ghost Quarter. Then play Traxos instead of Precurser Golems to bend the curve down even lower. Or Eldrazi Temples and add TKS instead. Either way, that's still a top tier deck, is my guess. It's hard to know. I've been playing alot of Workshops in the last few months, like yourself, and it's not like the old days where you really needed a Shop to explode out.

I'm not theoretically opposed to a Shop restriction, as I've said many times; but it's also possible that you can achieve the same result by a narrower means.

@naixin said in [Free Article] Menendian's Suggested Banned and Restricted Lists (2018):

I like your B&R list so much more than the official list.

That’s the best possible compliment.

That's what we do in Old School :)

http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-suggested-banned-and-restricted-list-updates-2018/

In this article, I present a framework for restriction; that is, when to restrict and on what grounds. I then apply this framework to:

Vintage, Old School 94, Old School 95, Old School 96, and Old School 97.

The plan is to update this article once a year, to revisit key questions and watch the various formats evolve.

Enjoy!

Stephen