October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement
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@nedleeds said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
@bobbyvictory said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
Restrict Mental Misstep - Card is cancer.
Cancer isn't contagious. Misstep is actually contagious as it forces a Misstep arms race to Misstep the Misstep that Misstepped your spell. You have to run more of them because no mana is way way way better than mana, so solutions like Spell Pierce feel real bad when you pay mana and they flick a booger your way and toss another Misstep on the heap.
So many interesting 1 mana spells that could fight shops and blue stew just die on the assembly room floor because of Misstep ... or you are priced into playing 3-4 yourself.
It's the reason why misstep was banned in legacy iirc.
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@bobbyvictory Not really. Misstep made blue too powerful in Legacy; same as Cruise & DTT.
Legacy
Mental Misstep is banned.
Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.
Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.
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@qq said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
@bobbyvictory Not really. Misstep made blue too powerful in Legacy; same as Cruise & DTT.
Legacy
Mental Misstep is banned.
Force of Will has long been thought of as a card that helps keep combination decks in check in Legacy and Vintage. However, it doesn't directly help decks that aren't playing blue. One idea that was floated was creating a similar card that could be played in nonblue decks. When Phyrexian mana was designed, it was an opportunity to create such a card. R&D wanted a card that could help fight combination decks, and could also fight blue decks by countering cards such as Brainstorm. Clearly printing a card like this has a lot of risk, but there is also the potential for helping the format a lot. The risk is mitigated, because if it turns out poorly, the DCI can ban the card.
Unfortunately, it turned out poorly. Looking at high-level tournaments, instead of results having blue and nonblue decks playing Mental Misstep, there are more blue decks than ever. The DCI is banning Mental Misstep, with the hopes of restoring the more diverse metagame that existed prior to the printing of Mental Misstep.
How'd that work out for them?
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I don't play paper Vintage so I wouldn't know, but how does it feel to prepare for a deck that should logically be a much higher percentage of the metagame but, because of availability or private-preference issues, is not? I'm guessing it's frustrating since properly metagaming for strength could backfire in the face of numbers. Should the b/r list ever be implicated to address this if new card printings aren't available? It seems like the suggested Misstep restriction could work in this direction.
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Restricting blue cards when Workshops is the problem is precisely how we got into this mess in the first place.
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B-b-but restricting gitaxian probe, gush, and monastery mentor will open up the format for oppressed decks to rise and take out shops
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If anything has to go from workshop at this point it should be either foundry inspector either ballista. Not sure if anything has to go at all though.
I'm surprised we don't see more dark ritual decks, they should be able to navigate a field of 8 real lock piece workshops. Especially since null rod/stony sees less play after Paradoxical became a less popular deck.
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@bazaarofbaghdad Not sure if this answers your question, but if you're a "Spike" attending Vintage champs, then you should already know the meta is heavily Shops and Bazaar skewed. This has to be taken into consideration before netdecking -- sideboard composition should be different than what people put up in their local events.
I don't think it's frustrating at all, and I'm not sure why some people are so vocal about their grievances toward the meta. For example, my sideboard was 7 dredge-hate cards + 8 artifact-hate cards.
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I disagree from anyone that says Misstep should be restricted. I believe it's more important than FoW these days to keep the format slower and not broken as f***. Just the fact that Misstep holds Ancestral Recall in its place is already awesome.
I also don't get anyone that complains about Misstep wars - that's just like any counter war, folks, and we're talking about a very, very restrictive counterwar here. Complaining like "I played Ancestral with Misstep backup and he had double Misstep" is just as dumb as complaing that "I played Ancestral with counter backup but he had 2 counters".
Soly said well in his report: playing stuff that dodge Pyroblast and Misstep (like Night's Whisper) may be really good right now. -
@macdeath In theory this is great but when the ritual deck has to navigate blue instead it’s very disheartening. Over 14 rds of vintage spread over 3 events I only played shops twice
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Why is Mishra's Workshop still allowed as a 4-of in decks when Moxen are restricted and have been restricted for a long time?
At this point in Magic's history, Workshop is fundamentally as powerful or more powerful than a Mox, because cheap artifacts have become so potent.
There is really no reason to have Moxen and Black Lotus restricted and Workshop unrestricted when Workshop is now clearly on the same power level as the Moxen and the Lotus.
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@pathym You're very wrong about this though. Workshop is not even CLOSE in power level to the Moxen and Lotus. I hope you know this, but I'll say it anyway: It's a land drop, so multiple Workshops let you do not much turn 1; they can only play permanents, so that limits a lot of the kind of deck they can be; not even talking about the limitation on mana usage - they can't be used for abilities. They're played in only 1 archetype (maybe 2 if you count that new Shops Depths too). I mean, I shouldn't have to say this, but Moxen and Lotus are what make Vintage what it is, period. Workshop makes Shops what it is, and that's it.
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The restricted list should not be the 50 most powerful cards in Vintage. It should be the 50 (or however many) cards which prevent a fun and balanced metagame from emerging. Power level is obviously a consideration, but there are many others besides. Mishra's Workshop requires you to play with a very small pool of cards, so even if its power level were higher than some restricted card, that would not automatically imply that it should be restricted - you would also have to look at the power level of the cards which function in concert with the Workshop.
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@fsecco If there was a land that said "T: Add 3 blue mana to your mana pool, spend this mana only to cast blue spells", would it be restricted?
At this point in magic's history, there are enough powerful artifacts at extremely good rates (think: walking ballista, ravager, spheres, etc) that the "drawback" of only being able to play artifacts is almost irrelevant - the best artifacts in magic's history would still be good cards even if they weren't being powered out by a Black Lotus land.
Just like, even if there was that fictional 3 blue mana land (which would surely have been restricted a long time ago), blue spells would still be competitively played with lands that only generate one blue mana a turn.
If Workshop is restricted, the deck will still be powerful and functional but not oppressive, regardless of future artifact printings. The problem is really the degenerate mana ramp that Workshop provides.
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There are twice as many blue cards as artifact cards, and basic Island can contribute colorless mana for off-color or colorless spells.
Mishra's Workshop can cast about 10% of Magic spells. Basic island can cast about 20% without any other colored sources, and can contribute mana to ballpark 90% of Magic spells.
Mishra's Workshop obviously casts spells from a radically smaller pool of playable cards.
If you restrict it to just Vintage playables, there are probably 200ish cards you might want to cast off Workshop(s), compared to 1500ish cards you might want to cast off an Island or with the assistance of Islands. Most of the 200 cards Workshop gives you access to are basically available to other decks, so the trade-off is something like "I will give up access to hundreds of cards I might want to play in order to play these 150 cards more easily and have the option to play a few of these 50 cards at all"
@pathym said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
If Workshop is restricted, the deck will still be powerful and functional but not oppressive, regardless of future artifact printings. The problem is really the degenerate mana ramp that Workshop provides.
What is degenerate about it?
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@pathym Workshop only allows you to play permanents, which severely restricts what you can do. I repeat: how many different strategies does Workshop allow to exist? Two at best? Moxen do much more than that.
I won't discuss the "blue workshop" because it leads nowhere.
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Andy Markiton's deck had 26 mana sources. Academy produces variable mana, but the whole manabase produces approximately 41 mana. So the average mana per source is approximately 1.5.
So your Revoker or Sphere or whatever are realistically costed as 1-drops (ish). The aggressive Ravagers and Ballistas are 1-drops too. Precursor Golem is a 3-drop. Lodestone Golem is between 2 and 3. Foundry Inspector is reliably a 2-drop and not uncommonly a 1-drop, and can effectively double (and sometimes triple) your mana supply.
That's the real way to think about it. None of this "Black Lotus land" bullshit.
In isolation the Shop 1-drops are comparable to a few things that non-Shop decks have, like Delver. Their 2 and 3 drops are pretty world class. But Shops have no deck manipulation and some unevenness in their manabase so they will pay the cost of more mulligans.
It's not surprising that Oath does well since their 2-drop can outclass Shops' 2-drops. Spot removal isnt a "plan" because there are so many scenarios where even a Swords to Plowshares effectively costs more than the thing it's removing. It can complement a plan though, by taking out some of Shops' unbalancing elements (like Revoker) so that your actual plan can execute. If you don't want to Oath, you need to outclass Shops on curve some other way. I see a few ways to do this already in the Vintage card pool.
By the way, I have extreme happiness that combo is completely crushed by Shops and also oppressed by Missteps. I have no time for the line of thought that conflates the notion of "Dark Ritual is viable" with "Vintage is diverse and healthy".
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The only card in Shops that feels unbalanced right now for me is Ballista. And that's because it makes Workshops cast non-permanent spells. Ballista can be treated as a sorcery spell most of the time. It also stifles creature strategies so much that it single-handedly makes any creature-based deck seem obsolete.
