@Arcranedenial said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I know it's vintage and all, but am I the only one who thinks certain cards need to be removed completely from the format? I mean banned not just restricted. A restricted Mentor or Misstep is such a high variance thing to play against.

Banning cards in Vintage has come up from time to time as a topic of interest without either a firm resolution embracing it or rejecting it. The format has a history of banning cards purely for power level (Channel, Mind Twist, and certain interpretations of Time Vault) and the idea was flirted with in discussions of Tinker, Yawgmoth's Will, and again Time Vault after its disastrous re-re-re-re-re-wording in 2008. Banning Dig through Time and Treasure Cruise has been raised recently as one possible amelioration to the 1x-Gush Mentor deck's nuisance factor. I have no objection to bans in the abstract if they make the format more enjoyable. The banned list already has an absurdly high # of cards on it for many different reasons and power level bans are not without precedent.

Kudos to Rich for a very substantive high-caliber post. I'm agnostic on whether Preordain is restriction worthy. I do think it's generally better than Ponder as Stephen suggested and there strong arguments for either case.

For all of the problems Mental Misstep creates, I'm hesitant to unleash the ones it abates. E/V/M Tutor, triple Voltaic Key.dec is disgusting and I would prefer Wizards printed something to adequately address the Thoughtseize/Duress conundrum before taking the blue Phyrexian lid off the trash heap.

Awesome post, Rich! I don't often post here but had to speak up in agreement.

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I was simply highlighting the incongruity of a post that frames the issue in terms of Turbo-Xerox (TX), asserts that TX is dominant in the format, and then opposes the restriction of Preordain.

If TX is dominant, you attack the cantrips, which is why Ponder and Brainstorm are restricted, not win conditions. Because if it's TX that is dominant, and not the win condition, then restricting Mentor should have no bearing on the dominance of TX, according to the logic Rich set out. The analysis as presented and conclusions of the OP are logically inconsistent.

Steven, you're using your lawyer powers for evil here - you strawmanned Rich's argument. He doesn't argue that it's bad that TX is dominant. If he were to have argued that, then I agree the correct approach is to kill the cantrips.

However, Rich actually advocated for diversity. I can't imagine anyone arguing against diversity as a hallmark of a good metagame. His proposed policy for achieving that was to weaken TX decks without killing them - a fine line to walk. The point of banning Mentor is that it (1) allows for greater diversity of TX shells, and (2) reduces the overall power level for them (because Mentor is so ahead of the curve). This allows the rest of the metagame dilate to target different sets of decks.

It's fair to question if TX will still be dominant and if so to what extent with the restriction of mentor, but I'd guess that it would open the format up considerably more than banning Preordain would.

@phazonmutant said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

Awesome post, Rich! I don't often post here but had to speak up in agreement.

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I was simply highlighting the incongruity of a post that frames the issue in terms of Turbo-Xerox (TX), asserts that TX is dominant in the format, and then opposes the restriction of Preordain.

If TX is dominant, you attack the cantrips, which is why Ponder and Brainstorm are restricted, not win conditions. Because if it's TX that is dominant, and not the win condition, then restricting Mentor should have no bearing on the dominance of TX, according to the logic Rich set out. The analysis as presented and conclusions of the OP are logically inconsistent.

Steven, you're using your lawyer powers for evil here - you strawmanned Rich's argument. He doesn't argue that it's bad that TX is dominant. If he were to have argued that, then I agree the correct approach is to kill the cantrips.

However, Rich actually advocated for diversity. I can't imagine anyone arguing against diversity as a hallmark of a good metagame. His proposed policy for achieving that was to weaken TX decks without killing them - a fine line to walk. The point of banning Mentor is that it (1) allows for greater diversity of TX shells, and (2) reduces the overall power level for them (because Mentor is so ahead of the curve). This allows the rest of the metagame dilate to target different sets of decks.

It's fair to question if TX will still be dominant and if so to what extent with the restriction of mentor, but I'd guess that it would open the format up considerably more than banning Preordain would.

My point about restricting Preordain was slightly disingenuous, as I'm not really advocating, at this point in time, for the restriction of Preordain. I developed that argument to highlight the limits of over-emphasizing TX as an explanation for the ills of this metagame.

I think everyone agrees that the format is in bad shape. The disagreement is over 1) what to do about it, and 2) how we got here (the theory as to why the metagame looks the way it does).

Rich's solutions are not unreasonable. There is broad support for restricting Mentor already. I would have restricted Mentor, not Gush, in April. And there is certainly plenty of support for restricting Misstep (although I disagree with that).

The problem is with his theory of the case.

His theory, at bottom, is that TX strategies are propping up Workshops. The solution, therefore, is to weaken TX strategies, by restricting the two cards just mentioned, upon the belief that Workshops will decline.

But we just tried that, and it didn't work. We restricted Gush, which most people recognized as one of the core cards in the TX shell, as well as Probe, which was widely used by TX decks. Not only did it not work, but it actually led to a 2.5 times increase in Workshop decks in Vintage Challenges (if you compare July, 2016-March, 2017 with the 10 Challenges since April 24th).

As I said before: Rich already suggested, on the VSL broadcast, that restricting Gush would lead to a reduction of Shops upon the exact same theory. But this didn't happen. And, in that same broadcast, he explicitly opposed the restriction of Mentor. So something is wrong with the theory. Science is based upon falsifiability. Not only did it fail to predict what would happen, but it fails (without supplementary reasoning) to furnish an explanation for why Mentor deserves restriction now, but didn't in April.

And this is the problem. To understand why this is a problem, a little more context: There was a running debate in Vintage running for year prior to the Gush restriction about whether Gush or Mentor should be restricted, if either or both. The terms of that debate were simple: which restriction would have a greater effect on the other?

The pro-restriction of Gush crowd believed that restricting Gush would render Mentor less of a problem, and this is the position that Rich apparently took in the VSL interview, and why he opposed Mentor's restriction, but called for Gush to go. Critically, people, like Chubby Rain, who propounded this view repeatedly also argued that the win condition was not the issue. Chubby Rain repeatedly said that if Gush were allowed to continue to exist unrestricted, but Mentor were restricted, then the Gush decks would just run other win conditions, with roughly the same effect.

On the other hand, the opponents of the restriction of Gush, like myself, argued that, at root, Mentor was the issue, not Gush, and argued that restricting Gush would have little to no effect on Mentor's prevalence. In other words, I argued that the restriction of Gush would have little effect on reducing Mentor, but restricting Mentor would have a greater effect in reducing Gush. In fact, there were detailed numerical forecasts developed by myself and VaughBros, where we actually predicted ranges of either Gush or Mentor resulting from the restriction of the other.

Now that the evidence is in. As we can see, restricting Gush had zero % reduction on Mentor. And since Rich is calling for the restriction of Mentor, that suggests the possibility that it was Mentor, rather than Gush, that should have been restricted in April. To minimize the number of restrictions, it's advisable to begin with the most targeted restriction to the problem. Depending on whether you thought Mentor or Gush needed restricted reveals how you understand the problem.

It is of course possible to argue, as Chubby Rain has consistently, that both Mentor and Gush should be restricted, because they do different things to the metagame. But this was not Rich's position, as he articulated it on the VSL or wrote elsewhere. And even if you believe that Gush and Mentor do have different effects on the metagame, there remains at least a decent possibility of over-inclusion or over-restriction because they are often played together. (And yes, the DCI has said that the goal is to keep the Vintage B&R list as short as possible). This possibilty - of over-restriction - was implied by the numerical ranges that were debated by Vaughbros and myself. I was right about the effect of the restriction of Gush on Mentor, and it's not unlikely I would have been right about the effect of a restriction of Mentor on Gush. I predicted a meaningful decline in Gush decks if Mentor was restricted. Specifically, I predicted 33-50%, while VaughBros predicted 22%, of Gush players would have switched to non-Gush decks.

Rich's position, now advocating for the restriction of Mentor, suggests the logical possibility that Gush's restriction was unnecessary, in that the restriction of Mentor in April may have reduced the % of Gush to an acceptable range, and opened up the metagame somewhat. But his opposition to the restriction of Mentor in April and insistence on Gush instead, suggests an inconsistency that is not explained by his theory: If he believes that restricting Mentor will tamp down TX decks, why did he not believe this in April?

And if, upon reflection, Rich's current position, backward casting, suggests Mentor was a legitimate target for restriction in April, then again, it suggests the possibility that Gush's restriction was unnecessary. That's because it's virtually untenable to believe, based upon what we know now, that Mentor's restriction would have had less of an impact on Gush than the restriction of Gush did on Mentor.

This is the most important critique of Rich's position(s). The opposition to Mentor's restriction in April cannot be squared with support for it today without conceding the possibilty that either one of the positions were wrong or that one of the restrictions may be unnecessary.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's patently obvious that the restriction of Mentor in April instead of Gush would not have produced a worse metagame than the converse has.

The blind spot appears to be that Rich is overly focused on TX theory (which occupies a large part of my Gush book - and has since it's first edition in 2010, so I don't underestimate the power of TX principles), while I place the blame for metagame problems much more squarely and directly on Mentor itself.

Reiterating here the position I took in early April, and adopted last year: Mentor is simply the best win condition in the format, with or without TX shells. As I said on April 8th:

Monastery Mentor is the best win condition in the format. It's easy to resolve, protect, fast, and difficult to remove, answer or address.

That's true with or without TX shells. Suppose for the moment that none of the decks in this format were built on TX principles. Mentor would still, I believe, be predominant. Not because it's the best win condition in Turbo Xerox decks, because, in this thought experiment, there are none. But because it's just the best win condition in Vintage, period. It's incredibly productive and hard to remove, and wins very quickly. PO Mentor, which no one could say is built on TX precepts, illustrates this (like the version that Top 8ed the NYSE).

And I also believe that Workshops would also be dominant, as they are now. Again, not because of TX decks (because there are none in this hypothetical), but because Shops are simply so fast, efficient, synergistic, and disruptive to the entire format, and there are now more tools at their disposal than ever before thanks to printings in the last 5-7 years, cards like Revoker, Hangarback Walker, Ballista, etc. I believe that non-TX decks are weaker against Shops than non-TX decks were before the last unrestriction of Gush in 2010, and it this fact which, in part, generates the illusion that TX decks are propping up Shops. Shops are just much more powerful, flexible and adaptable than they have ever been.

Restricting cards in blue decks isn't going to weaken Workshops. That may have been true ages ago, but is fallacy today.

You want a litmus test, in case Rich's proposed restrictions occur? I'll offer one: if the restrictions he recommends happen, I predict Workshop will not decline below their average baseline from the last 12 months. Then, we can see, again, who turns out to be right.

TL;DR: Rich places far too much explanatory power for Mentor and Workshops dominance on TX theory, and that's why I believe his recommendations will fail to achieve his hoped-for outcomes, just as they did in April. IMO, Workshops and Mentor are dominant for much simpler and more fundamental reasons: Mentor and Workshop are too damn good, and it has much less to do with TX than he believes.

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I was simply highlighting the incongruity of a post that frames the issue in terms of Turbo-Xerox (TX), asserts that TX is dominant in the format, and then opposes the restriction of Preordain.

If TX is dominant, you attack the cantrips, which is why Ponder and Brainstorm are restricted, not win conditions. Because if it's TX that is dominant, and not the win condition, then restricting Mentor should have no bearing on the dominance of TX, according to the logic Rich set out. The analysis as presented and conclusions of the OP are logically inconsistent.

That assumes the entirety of the problem is with the engine. The way I view @The-Atog-Lord 's argument is that the engine has been sufficiently hurt, but the end game is still too strong, and insulates itself too well from interaction.

I tend to agree that the best answer to mentor is mentor, and the second best answer to mentor is to hope you can prevent it from entering play. The third best way, going over the top, is only feasibly done by oath at the moment, and as has been said; all the hyper efficient hate pieces to over the top strategies have been printed in the same color as mentor.

I have said since it's printing that mentor is at the same power level as tinker, though in a shell designed around it that should probably be amended to more powerful than tinker. I am firmly in the camp of restricting mentor.

As far as gush getting an unfair axe, I'm very doubtful. Gush happens to be the best draw spell for control decks, and the best draw spell for tempo (or TX) decks, and allows for far too much flexibility to switch roles seamlessly in the middle of a game for no real cost (in terms of game play or deck construction).

It isn't a good thing when two control decks can whittle themselves down to a topdeck war and then one flips a gush and chains off ending their turn with win conditions in play and protection in hand. Without gush you get win conditions or protection during the topdeck war, with gush you get both.

In terms of misstep, I believe it is overall unhealthy for the format. While it does keep the 1 mana tutor and vault key decks in check, there are other cards that do that too. Unfortunately it also knocks out a variety of excellent answer cards.

I run 4 of them in salvagers oath because in addition to disrupting the opponent's normal game plan it is also better than force of will in protecting my own plan. Countering that swords to plowshares after I oath and before I draw has won me lots of games and made lots of salt. Being able to counter those grafdigger's cages, even against workshops, is a huge boon. And still I will be one of the first to say it is a dumb, no cost, no skill counter that needs to go.

This already feels like too much of a wall of text so I'll leave out my thoughts on workshops.

-Wiley

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

Shops are just much more powerful, flexible and adaptable than they have ever been.

This is objectively false. Modern Shop decks are no where near the power level of the 4x LSG, 4x Chalice decks. I can respect an argument that the archetype could be too strong right now but let's not get carried away with hyperbole: we are no longer in the era of "oops I'm dead before I can play spells".

@The-Atog-Lord Thank you for writing this. I've been basically saying this same thing for a while now. I even wrote about how Mental Misstep and Monastery Mentor should be restricted, although not in the same article.

Monastery Mentor makes every creature in the format a joke. I mean, a friend and I were brainstorming a reanimator type deck once and we were going to run Mentors just because it was cheap, broken, castable, and gave the deck a plan B against graveyard hate.

Mental Misstep has forced most blue decks into playing the card. Also it makes certain strategies much, much worse. I wonder if stuff like Elves, Goblins, Dark Ritual Storm, and more could have a shot at coming back if Misstep was restricted.

On the topic of Gush: If I asked you (or anyone) to rank the best draw spells in Vintage what would that top ten look like? In my opinion it would go like this: 1. Ancestral Recall 2 and 3: Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time (I have a hard time deciding which is better, but I lean towards Dig being number two) 4: Gush,

Beyond that I'm not sure how I would rank them off the top of my head. Brainstorm should probably be on that list but it technically doesn't provide more cards (just insane selection).

Now if Gush is the fourth best draw spell ever printed it seems to make more sense that it got restricted for a third time .

From my article "Changes": The legacy of Gush/Mentor is kind of a strange case. Gush didn't need Mentor to be the best blue deck in the format, and apparently Monastery Mentor didn't need Gush to be the best creature in the format either. I think the case was that Gush Mentor was the perfect storm of degeneracy and that's why it was so good for so long. The best way to counteract both of the namesake cards was to make sure that individual spells were more difficult to cast. One or two Thorn of Amethyst effects negates the advantages of Gush while making Monastery Mentor much, much worse by limiting it to one (or less) trigger a turn.

Again Rich, thanks for writing this out. I appreciate reading your thoughts. I am both glad and saddened by the Gush restriction. One of my paper Vintage decks was Grixis Therapy and I spent money getting extra copies of Gush for that deck AND my Gush Oath deck. I loved playing with Gush, but it felt troubling the entire time.

So in all honesty, what is it that changed since the 2015 Vintage Championships? I personally consider 2014/2015 to be one of the finest metagames of recent memory.

There was such a depth of choice.

Want to play Oath- you could play normal Oath, Show Oath or Salvagers
Want to play Shops- choose from Stax, Martello, Terra Nova, or even Tiny Robots
Want to play U/R or U/W- You could play Delver, Monastery Mentor, Blood Moon, or Standstill
Want to play control- Thieves, Tinker, Control, etc
Want to play combo- Belcher, Doomsday, TPS, Dark Petition, or Dredge.
And even rogue decks like BUG, WW, Humans were very relevant.
Any one of those decks could top 16 Worlds or win a local tournament (except maybe Belcher

So what happened? How did the meta change so abruptly?

My thoughts:
I think Chalice getting restricted, might have done more harm than good. People moan about x4 Chalice shops, but some players were already starting to cut Chalices right before it got restricted. Chalice penalized the "turbo lifestyle," but also penalized shops with some dead draws, or variance cards.

The power of Monastery Mentor was too new.

The printing of Hangarback took shops players into the dormant area of Ravagers, perfecting the deck. Many players weren't even playing 8 spheres in 2015. Now instead of having some situationally dead cards (Chalice, Tangle Wire), they could be all in on the ground assault.

Lastly (late edit): I also think that during this metagame, there was a foil to each deck. The Rock-Paper-Scissor was in full effect. If you were a shop player, you were not excited about sitting down across from Oath. I think right now, Mentor and Shops are so powerful, they really don't have an enemy deck. Hence the fatigue with the format. If there is any positives to the current Meta, I would venture that "matchup luck" is at an all time low.

@joshuabrooks I think it just took people too long to realize that Mentor is just that good. It took a few iterations to figure out which version was the best. Once that was figured out the net-deckers joined in and now we have the best Blue deck - Mentor.

@joshuabrooks I agree with this. Unrestricted Chalice puts serious pressure on the Turbo Cantrip Crap. I would unrestrict Chalice and Gush (and perhaps some other stuff that barely sees play like Bargain/Windfall) and see where that lands us.

@Smmenen

I 100% agree with your last post.

I want to start by stating I am mostly a Legacy player. The options to play Power are limited in Australia, but I do get to play now and then. I don't consider myself an authority in any way on the topic of Vintage. I do have thoughts though.

I play Stax. Well Shops, but I lean towards as much of Terra Nova as possible when I play. I love the deck style. It's because of this my views may be tainted. That said, I think MM has to go. When I first started getting into Vintage I played Grixis. I played with Will, Vault/Key and Blightsteel. I learnt quickly what I needed against other decks and I meet pain against Shops.

The issue was in part that I had to play 4 Mental Misstep, regardless of whether I wanted to. I was also playing a pair of REB, all these cards felt like a requirement to play Grixis and a millstone against Shops.

When I bought my Shops I first meet the complainants about how powerful it was. But I was playing one Blue card and one 1cmc card main. I was playing only five 1cmc cards total. This meant that the need to play Mental Misstep as a way of defending against Mental Misstep became a problem when you versed Sphere.

But this issue was already well known, the need to play it as an answer to itself. It's the reason the card was removed from all other formats. It's not any different in Vintage and the cost for running it is far more punishing. You are almost required to play it if your casting Cantrips, Swords or other 1cmc cards. You can't avoid it. Because if you sit across from someone playing 4 MM and you have none, your in for a rough time.

I don't have strong feelings any which way about other cards, I will play whatever Prison option is available. But I do feel it's unfair on both myself and my opponents to always have at lest 4 cards up on them for no reason other than they must play it for self preservation elsewhere. Its unfair on me because it's not my fault they run MM and REB main, find them of limited value and then lash out against my deck. It's unfair on them because they really are forced into that position regardless of desire thanks to the forces MM pushes upon Blue players in any format it has been legal in.

(Disclaimer, I can't speak for Standard, I haven't played Standard since Onslaught.)

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

if the restrictions he recommends happen, I predict Workshop will not decline below their average baseline from the last 12 months. Then, we can see, again, who turns out to be right.

It looks like many, if not all, discussions about possible evolution of the metagame as result of hypothetical restrictions are based on one very strong assumptions - the metagame (market) is efficient. This assumption means that players have access to all cards, have plenty of time to spend on MtG, and can immediately adjust to changes. However, players do not have access to all cards, especially in paper, have some attachments to decks they play and are hesitant/slow to change them. Additionally, many players play occasionally and just want to have some fun without carving out too much time from their busy lives.

So any prognostication about metagame changes should take into account all Magic-unrelated factors. Otherwise, such discussions will remain only theoretical discussion quite disconnected from the reality.

@Chronatog said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

if the restrictions he recommends happen, I predict Workshop will not decline below their average baseline from the last 12 months. Then, we can see, again, who turns out to be right.

It looks like many, if not all, discussions about possible evolution of the metagame as result of hypothetical restrictions are based on one very strong assumptions - the metagame (market) is efficient. This assumption means that players have access to all cards, have plenty of time to spend on MtG, and can immediately adjust to changes. However, players do not have access to all cards, especially in paper, have some attachments to decks they play and are hesitant/slow to change them. Additionally, many players play occasionally and just want to have some fun without carving out too much time from their busy lives.

So any prognostication about metagame changes should take into account all Magic-unrelated factors. Otherwise, such discussions will remain only theoretical discussion quite disconnected from the reality.

Except now, with MTGO, Players do have cheap access to all cards, and can react immediately to the changes. Hell, anyone trying to test hypothetical restrictions can EASILY do so on MTGO.

The irritating thing that I had brought up last mega-thread that's rearing its ugly head right now is a difference in definitions.

"Gush decks" were the problem, always and forever, the baddy in the room that needed to be taken down, a HUGE chunk of the metagame, according to many people. The error with analyzing the meta that way, as defined by a single card within a set of decks, is the notion that once that card goes away, the "problem" goes away, and that clearly did not happen. Many people saw "the Mentor deck" as the problem, and only now that we don't have this classification of "Gush Decks" to point the finger at, we're resurrecting the older, more accurate designation the problem decks should have had all along, which is Turbo Xerox.

I just find this very irritating, I never understood why "Gush decks" were lumped together, any analysis from that lack of distinction other than "x percentages of decks would like to draw cards at some point during the match so I need to prepare for that" are tending to be inaccurate. Dominance, prevalence, longevity, percent in top8s and top16s, etc. In April, nobody was referring to the Pyromancer decks when they were discussing restriction, nobody was referring to GushBond, they were referring to Gush Mentor. Gush was a part of TX strategy and might have been a defining card within a good portion of those decks, but the problem with the "Gush Mentor" deck was that Mentor was generating win conditions while the deck was doing it's thing. It was enough of a degree better than the next best, -1CMC card that it replaced almost completely. Now it lives on in the most effortless transformation in a 1-of-Gush world.

I don't think Gush was ever the problem, going out on a limb here, I can see why people would be irritated by it (especially if they had the "Gush decks" are all X and they are all problematic viewpoint), but because the DCI hit Gush/Probe and not Mentor/Misstep, we are now discussing bans in Vintage. For those who are saying a 1-of Mentor deck will still make top 8s... Yes, it will. There is no doubt in my mind, even if that deck just replaces the other three with Pyromancer. Mentor restrict will still have a greater effect on the deck's performance than Gush restrict has had, and I would much rather play in a format where the Mentor/Pyro/Tutor deck is making top 8s, instead of now where I've stopped playing Vintage because it's uninteresting.

Rich's comments come 4 months too late. If this was the recommendation given then (which it was by the majority of players) and taken by the DCI, we would have had a healthier format over the past few months and have been able to assess whether or not "pushing other blue decks out of the format" is a reason to restrict Gush, without Mentor dominance. I don't really mourn Gush so much as I just wish the DCI had listened to more people and had made the more correct choice, I'd still be playing Vintage.

@joshuabrooks said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

So in all honesty, what is it that changed since the 2015 Vintage Championships? I personally consider 2014/2015 to be one of the finest metagames of recent memory.

There was such a depth of choice.

Want to play Oath- you could play normal Oath, Show Oath or Salvagers
Want to play Shops- choose from Stax, Martello, Terra Nova, or even Tiny Robots
Want to play U/R or U/W- You could play Delver, Monastery Mentor, Blood Moon, or Standstill
Want to play control- Thieves, Tinker, Control, etc
Want to play combo- Belcher, Doomsday, TPS, Dark Petition, or Dredge.
And even rogue decks like BUG, WW, Humans were very relevant.
Any one of those decks could top 16 Worlds or win a local tournament (except maybe Belcher

So what happened? How did the meta change so abruptly?

My thoughts:
I think Chalice getting restricted, might have done more harm than good. People moan about x4 Chalice shops, but some players were already starting to cut Chalices right before it got restricted. Chalice penalized the "turbo lifestyle," but also penalized shops with some dead draws, or variance cards.

I agree that Chalice was a force for diversity in the format. People did moan about x4 Chalice shops and it is likely that they were right to do so but there are two cards being moaned about in x4 Chalice shops. One enforced diversity and the other is oppressively format distorting. So long as Shops are unrestricted Chalice isn't safe which means that other decks can't play it against the Turbo Zerox strategies which means that those strategies push others out of the format more easily and reduce strategic diversity even further; all because of Mishra's Workshop. Would Chalice need to be restricted if Mishra's Workshop were? I tend to believe it wouldn't. Even if a singleton Mishra's Workshop was powering out multiple Chalices it would have a very hard time dominating the format without the consistent tempo boost and virtual card advantage provided by Mishra's Workshop. Having Chalice around gives players the choice of opting out of playing Mental Misstep in Favor of just hammering all one drops if they chose to build their deck accordingly. This not only provides strategic diversity in the immediate with the advent of an entirely different strategic direction but it also opens the format to different strategies which don't thrive in an environment where one drops and mental missteps hold supremacy.

I didn't hear anyone calling for the restriction of Mental Misstep when Chalice of the Void was not restricted. In a vacuum the card never deserved to be restricted, much the same way that, in a vacuum, Lodestone Golem never deserved to be restricted. Neither of them would be oppressive or format warping if it weren't for the fact that they are powered out by the best unrestricted card in the game. A card which happens to be better than most of the restricted list today not only in performance metrics but also in every theoretical metric as well. People on this site are writing about restricting Thorn of Amythist or Sphere of Resistance for crying out loud. These are two of the only remaining cards which are played to some effect against TX strategies. These cards are played in so called "fair" decks seeking an edge against the TX engine which the same people claim is egregious and yet they are calling for their restriction because of their performance in Mishra's Workshop based decks as if Mishra's Workshop based decks are the only "legitimate" strategy against TX. Nonsense! Yet that is a prescribed solution to the issues of the format rather than hit one of the cards that is overtly distorting the format into a two deck meta. This is not only because Shops is pushing out any deck wishing to cast spells costing more than one mana but because the deck is so pervasive that the cards which are good against spells costing only one mana are to be restricted one by one to try to curb this ridiculous mana denial strategy. The fallacy remains, as ever, in believing that restricting the opposition to Mishra's Workshop will somehow make Mishra's Workshop worse instead of better. Shops strategies are not good against ONLY TX strategies, they're good against ALL strategies. Mishra's Workshop simply incentives playing all of the same mana denial tools in one deck by offering its tempo and virtual card advantage in exchange for playing only artifacts which almost all of these spells happen to be anyway. We lost Chalice and we lost Lodestone but the deck is still the king of tempo and the king of the format. Instead of creating a prison on turn 1 or two we now just end the game a turn or two sooner. It's all the same and it all stands on the shoulders of Mishra's Workshop.

People used to play cards that cost more than one mana even when they didn't have to but the best deck in the format for the last decade or more makes it a requirement instead of an option and now people think Mental misstep is a problem... ...

The power of Monastery Mentor was too new.

Probably true. I think that Chalice, and of course Lodestone, had an immense impact; maybe even more than people's naiveté in this case. It's difficult to measure. Either way the card is better than Tinker and has contributed to the restriction of other cards which didn't warrant restriction. If it doesn't get restricted, nearly every card that synergizes with it will eventually get restricted and it will still be better than Tinker in that case. There's no way any format adjustment could ever even come close to affecting its metagame performance without just straight up restricting it. The card synergies with all non-creature spells... Are we going to see all non-creature spells restricted? I hope not. Most of the restricted list is non-creature spells already, shall we just throw another several dozen spells on that list? How many non-creature spells will have to be restricted without seeing any net effect on Mentor before someone concedes that Mentor is the card they have a problem with? We shall see.

The printing of Hangarback took shops players into the dormant area of Ravagers, perfecting the deck. Many players weren't even playing 8 spheres in 2015. Now instead of having some situationally dead cards (Chalice, Tangle Wire), they could be all in on the ground assault.

Exactly.

@Dice_Box said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I want to start by stating I am mostly a Legacy player. The options to play Power are limited in Australia, but I do get to play now and then. I don't consider myself an authority in any way on the topic of Vintage. I do have thoughts though.

This would seem to heavily favors shops in that meta since Moxen are the only effective way to fight the mana denial of that deck.

I play Stax. Well Shops, but I lean towards as much of Terra Nova as possible when I play. I love the deck style. It's because of this my views may be tainted. That said, I think MM has to go. When I first started getting into Vintage I played Grixis. I played with Will, Vault/Key and Blightsteel. I learnt quickly what I needed against other decks and I meet pain against Shops.

The issue was in part that I had to play 4 Mental Misstep, regardless of whether I wanted to. I was also playing a pair of REB, all these cards felt like a requirement to play Grixis and a millstone against Shops.

You had to play 4 Mental Misstep to resolve your one drops and to stop opposing one drops because the entire metagame was conflated around one drops. In legacy there are very limited resources for playing two drops on turn one so most decks require a considerable bevy of 1cmc spells to be interactive early enough to stay relevant. In Vintage there are moxen and the curve can start at 2 instead of one if one so chooses. It is still a good idea to play one drops but over the last decade Workshop decks have received better and better tools not just for mana denial but also for closing out games before our opponent gets to the mana requirement for their critical turn. Because of this the need to play cheaper and cheaper spells and bring the curve down as low as possible has been heavily incentivized which is why you don't see this as much today.

When I bought my Shops I first meet the complainants about how powerful it was. But I was playing one Blue card and one 1cmc card main. I was playing only five 1cmc cards total. This meant that the need to play Mental Misstep as a way of defending against Mental Misstep became a problem when you versed Sphere.

But this issue was already well known, the need to play it as an answer to itself. It's the reason the card was removed from all other formats. It's not any different in Vintage and the cost for running it is far more punishing. You are almost required to play it if your casting Cantrips, Swords or other 1cmc cards. You can't avoid it. Because if you sit across from someone playing 4 MM and you have none, your in for a rough time.

It's not any different in Vintage unless you're playing a strategy that doesn't rely entirely on two drops which has been completely pushed out of the metagame over the last decade by mana denial strategies and compounded by the restriction of Chalice of the Void. Almost all of these mana denial strategies hinge on Mishra's Workshop to generate the immediate tempo advantage to lock out opposing mana sources but also the virtual card advantage to grant the staying power that prevents the opposition from breaking out of prison before the game ends by robot beats.

I don't have strong feelings any which way about other cards, I will play whatever Prison option is available. But I do feel it's unfair on both myself and my opponents to always have at lest 4 cards up on them for no reason other than they must play it for self preservation elsewhere. Its unfair on me because it's not my fault they run MM and REB main, find them of limited value and then lash out against my deck. It's unfair on them because they really are forced into that position regardless of desire thanks to the forces MM pushes upon Blue players in any format it has been legal in.

(Disclaimer, I can't speak for Standard, I haven't played Standard since Onslaught.)

They are forced into that position because all strategies must reduce their curve to be competitive against mana denial strategies such as those used in Mishra's Workshop based decks.

For a long time Force of Will has been hailed as the glue that keeps Vintage and Legacy playable because it allows for some interaction against strategies that aim to win the game or lock their opponent out on turn one or two. Mental Misstep serves the same purpose in Vintage but is splash-able. I posit that the reason it is so pervasive that people are calling for it's restriction is that the majority of cards which are still viable in the modern Vintage meta are 1cmc. That didn't used to be the case when Misstep was first introduced to the format. People used to be able to afford to spend as much as two mana on spells. To say that it is oppressive to strategies which aim to win through comboing off with one drops before any non-Force of Will-deck has a chance to interact is to say that the only decks which deserve a place in the format are ones which play enough blue to support Force of Will or those strategies which can main deck 4 Mindbreak Trap and try to be ok with getting blown out by combos that don't need to resolve more than two spells in a turn such as Time Vault, Tinker, Painter-Grindstone, Leyline-Helm, etc.

To everyone: Please know that I respect all of you and hold each of your opinions in high regard.

@Aaron-Patten said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I agree that Chalice was a force for diversity in the format. People did moan about x4 Chalice shops and it is likely that they were right to do so but there are two cards being moaned about in x4 Chalice shops. One enforced diversity and the other is oppressively a format distorting. So long as Shops are unrestricted Chalice isn't safe which means that other decks can't play it against the Turbo Zerox strategies which means that those strategies push others out of the format more easily and reduce strategic diversity even further; all because of Mishra's Workshop. Would Chalice need to be restricted if Mishra's Workshop were? I tend to believe it wouldn't. Even if a singleton Mishra's Workshop was powering out multiple Chalices it would have a very hard time dominating the format without the consistent tempo boost and virtual card advantage provided by Mishra's Workshop. Having Chalice around gives players the choice of opting out of playing Mental Misstep in Favor of just hammering all one drops if they chose to build their deck accordingly. This not only provides strategic diversity in the immediate with the advent of an entirely different strategic direction but it also opens the format to different strategies which don't thrive in an environment where one drops and mental missteps hold supremacy.

I may have missed something but i fail to see the link between chalice and worshop in your reasoning. I mean : unrestricted chalice was played most of the time at 1, some times à 0, and rarely at 2 (basically against oath). If the goal is to prevent a chalice turn 1, then you must also restrict/ban also the sol lands and ban every mana artifact (moxen, sol ring, ...). Restricting workshop won't change much about that problem.

As for the taxing effects, IMHO the real question is : why shop are playing them (or so many of them) ?

When you don't have access to any form of counterspell and you know that you are living in a format where broken stuff can happen and kill you on the spot (vault/key, tinker, storm, ...) what are your options ? I mean that there is some kind of balance : the more degenerate the format is, the more sphere effect shop will play, and the reverse is true ... that's my whole point : if the meta manage to shift toward less broken effect, shops decks will adapt and play less sphere and that will open the meta even more. One could say that mentor is not an 'instant kill' but actually when you are playing shop and try to fight the chaining spells that leads to the mentor end-game, it is not so different as fighting a storm deck.

I am far from being an expert but from my little experience, when there are 2 dominating decks in a format the usual solution is a third deck that can predate on both of them. Maybe that question has already been debated and more expert people had concluded that such a deck can't exist but IMHO both shop and TX decks (in its mentor incarnation) shares some common weakness such as being creature based for the kill and the need to have access reliably to their mana. I don't know if it can lead somewhere but here are my thoughts about it.

@albarkhane said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

I am far from being an expert but from my little experience, when there are 2 dominating decks in a format the usual solution is a third deck that can predate on both of them.

This deck ought to be Oath of Druids, but I think the reason people call for Mentor's head is that a Mentor in play is often better than an active Oath. Mentor+3 Tokens+a grip probably beats Griselbrand handily.

Similarly, the big mana "i'm going to resolve Moat/other large spell" decks don't work because you don't actually out control and out-resource the TX deck. If they have an out at all, even if it's total jank like "Ultimate small jace, deck you"--they can stop everything you do and assemble it because they outdraw you so heavily. This isn't legacy, where the delver deck can be beaten with individual large spells, because you get to build resources while they try to cantrip to an answer--this is Vintage, where they'll build to 7 in hand versus your none in hand.

The closest to a good answer are the Outcomes decks (and, to an extent, the Gifts deck), because they are a big mana TX deck. They cash in some consistency in draw for "my cantrips draw 2-ifninity", but at heart, they are chaining draw spells until they find an answer/something that kills you, and have a passable shops matchup because they're playing a lot of mana.

The other angle to approach is Fish, but you lose so badly to Mentor->make 3 guys (not some insane sequence) and/or Walking Ballista that it's hard to justify the deck. You also have the problem of putting your TX opponent far down, and then them chaining spells into a balance and a full grip--things go wrong too easily.

Individual pilots have had success on other decks--but it's often something I chalk up to the pilot rather than the deck. Until anyone other than Josh Potucek picks up his Landstill deck and wins with it consistently, I'm going to say it's Josh being very good and the deck being at least playable, and not the deck being very good. Same story with @ChubbyRain .dec.

So yeah, people have tried, and so far, everyone has failed.

@cutlex said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

Shops are just much more powerful, flexible and adaptable than they have ever been.

This is objectively false. Modern Shop decks are no where near the power level of the 4x LSG, 4x Chalice decks. I can respect an argument that the archetype could be too strong right now but let's not get carried away with hyperbole: we are no longer in the era of "oops I'm dead before I can play spells".

Guilty, as charged. I confess to hyperbole to drive home a point: that Workshops performance today is not best understood as a function of their role as a top predator for TX strategies.

I am probably guilty of not acknowledging this enough in recent debates, but it is true that the in the two previous Gush eras (late 2002-June, 2003 & July, 2007-June, 2008), the rise of Gush strategies prompted and was coincided by a metagame spike of Workshop decks. In fact, Workshops first full flowering in Vintage directly followed the rise of GroAtog in early 2003. My metagame reports from 2007-2008 document this. So, the theory that Rich outlines has a historical basis.

The problem is that it just isn't true today.

First, the historical period in this just recently passed "third Gush" era doesn't fit that pattern. When Gush was unrestricted in late 2010, Workshop were already surging. Gush was a tiny part of the metagame when Worldwake was released a few months later, and Lodestone Shops quickly became a top tier deck, while Gush remained relatively small % of the metagame, on average, for several years. Take, for example, the 2012 Vintage Championship. 50% of the Top 8 was Workshops. Gush was a comparatively tiny part of that metagame. Shops performance during the Worldwake through 2012 Vintage Championship period and even a bit beyond cannot be explained by "Gush" or "TX propping it up."

And neither can it be explained today. Gush was restricted this past April, but Workshops increase by nearly 2.5 times in the Vintage challenges since compared with the preceding Vintage challenges of equal number. That fact cannot be squared with a theory that TX is propping up Workshops. If that were true, then Shops should have subsided, at least a bit. Not increase by 238%.

The point I was trying to make is that Workshops are much stronger today against non-TX decks than they were in the earlier eras where TX decks were more accurately propping them up. Specifically, the 2011-17 era of Workshops is very different than earlier eras.

As I said above:

Restricting cards in blue decks isn't going to weaken Workshops. That may have been true ages ago, but is fallacy today.

The idea that restricting Mentor is going to reduce the % of Shops is ridiculous, IMO. Mentor is one of the best cards you can play against Shops. Unlike Gush or Probe, which were maybe of questionable direct value against Shops, Mentor is extraordinarily effective against Workshop decks. It's horizontal growth potential outpaces cards like Tangle Wire or Smokestack, and it's vertical growth potential can even race cards like Ravager, with similar growth potential.

No matter what kind of indirect effects you can present or articulate to support the notion that restricting Mentor will weaken Shops (a tortured chain of logic, IMO), there are countervailing factors and other unaccounted for variables which disrupt and undermine that chain of logic. The most obvious being that Mentor is insanely good against Shops itself.

As I said yesterday, "Restricting cards in blue decks & expecting Workshops to get worse is the Vintage Magic version of trickle down economics. It doesn't work."

At this point, the specific restrictions being discussed and proposed seem like throwing darts blindfolded, aiming in the right general direction, but hoping - fingers crossed - to produce good results. It's a kind of: "Whelp! Gush/Probe didn't work, let's try Mentor/Misstep now!" And if that doesn't work, what then? I'd like to have a much better sense of the next steps, if this doesn't work (as I predict), and a much clearer and more precise picture of what we expect to happen, before pulling any triggers.

@p3temangus said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

@Chronatog said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

@Smmenen said in Turbo Xerox and Monastery Mentor:

if the restrictions he recommends happen, I predict Workshop will not decline below their average baseline from the last 12 months. Then, we can see, again, who turns out to be right.

It looks like many, if not all, discussions about possible evolution of the metagame as result of hypothetical restrictions are based on one very strong assumptions - the metagame (market) is efficient. This assumption means that players have access to all cards, have plenty of time to spend on MtG, and can immediately adjust to changes. However, players do not have access to all cards, especially in paper, have some attachments to decks they play and are hesitant/slow to change them. Additionally, many players play occasionally and just want to have some fun without carving out too much time from their busy lives.

So any prognostication about metagame changes should take into account all Magic-unrelated factors. Otherwise, such discussions will remain only theoretical discussion quite disconnected from the reality.

Except now, with MTGO, Players do have cheap access to all cards, and can react immediately to the changes. Hell, anyone trying to test hypothetical restrictions can EASILY do so on MTGO.

Exactly.

The "herd mentality" explanation for the concentration of Shops and Mentor in the metagame is quite weak for a host of reasons.

The "strong" version of that argument, which suggests that players deck choices are fairly sticky, and not very responsive to changes in performance and metagame dynamics, is ultimately self defeating by it's own terms. If that were true, then B&R list policy is not an especially useful metagame lever for promoting diversity, since the relationship between B&R policy and metagame chance is attenuated by deck "stickiness."

More generously, if that theory really had merit, we would see much less deck turnover and metagame change over time. Yet, as the MTGO Challenge metagame breakdowns show, there are wildly dramatic fluctuations and representation from event to event. In February of this year for example, PO spiked to nearly 20% of the metagame, from under 10% the month before, and fell back under 10% in March. And Mentor in the first few months of the year saw equally dramatic swings.

But most importantly, the herd mentality theory overlooks how little it takes to completely change a metagame. A single player in a single tournament is theoretically capable of winning a tournament. If someone has brilliantly found a metagame niche, it could literally transform the metagame overnight, as imitators mimic the first mover's performance. Even if a single performance is insufficient, a repeat performance is usually enough to get entrants to move into that market niche. Vintage history is filled to the brim of examples of this, like Eric Becker's Intuition Tendrils or Vroman's Uba Stax.

This happens in the real-world all of the time as well. Think about how google displaced bad search engines or how Netscape was once a dominant web browser, despite having use built-in advantages from existing user bases. If there is a metagame niche to be exploited, and profit or wins to be achieved by doing so, it will happen. The fact that it hasn't happened suggests that no such niches exist. Markets don't have to be "perfectly" efficient for this to happen; just somewhat so. After all, we mostly just count the top 8 players out a much larger pool.