October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement
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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.
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You think so @fsecco ? I respectfully disagree. Ballista is insanely synergistic but is a pretty below-rate effect in comparison to some of the other offenders. Point taken on the spell-like effect, but I think those have always existed (eg Serrated Arrows) at similar curve points.
I think if you're gonna go after Shops it has to be to address the overall curve inequality. If you don't go after the top offender in lowering the curve (Shop) then you go after the next best ones. So that would be Tomb, Sphere or Inspector.
By no means is this an endorsement of restriction. Still interested in figuring this metagame out. Just my 2c on a hypothetical.
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@fisken said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
@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
In my experience Blue matchups have always been a favorable matchup for Ritual storm combo (especially when gravehate is something like cage/priest and their dedicated combo hate is in the form of null rod/stony). Mental misstep, mindbreak trap and Flusterstorm are less effective against a good storm pilot than some people seem to believe.
If you knew all of your pairings were going to be blue decks, you would crush through that field with a storm deck. The only arguable downside would be the mental concentration required to navigate the matchup over many rounds.Workshops post Lodestone Golem printing have always been the thing keeping rituals back. Since last b/r update modern workshops have a harder time mulliganing to a t1 sphere and have shifted their approach to become an extremely aggressive creature deck that happens to play lock pieces for tempo. You would think that storm stands a better chance since it's very hard to race a storm deck and hurkyl's recall has become much more effective in the matchup.
White Eldrazi is a ritual storm deck's boogeyman but it does not currently take much of the vintage metgame share and since it now has a much lower number of artifact lock pieces it looses some of its resiliency against the answers ritual storm can use in the matchup.
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@ribby Serrated Arrows doesn't give the deck range, that's one key difference. It's also not a 2 mana threat. Ballista is able to control the board, give the deck range and direct removal of PWs and creatures; and is also a pseudo-Berserk for Ravager (the 2017 Psychatog). It just does so much.
I truly believe it's the reason the deck kept it's presence even after the restrictions.
The range it gives is crucial, because NOTHING solves the problem other than a hard counter (or Null Rod). If you're low on life and wasted counters on other stuff, you can just pray they don't draw Ballista.
I think almost every Shops game changes if they have Ballista or not. -
@fsecco The ravager/Tog comparison is interesting and illuminating
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People have kept repeating the mantra that "Shops is the deck that keeps Storm in place." Yet, I haven't seen much in the way of evidence to support this claim. If you look at the champs results, Combo (Storm and decks like 2CM) had a losing win percentage against Shops (37.5%) but was even worse against Big Blue (25%) and Blue Control (26.7%). And xerox was a 50% match up, so it's not like you gained much against other archetypes. Granted, this represents a small sample size, but I haven't exactly seen data that supports the hypothesis - just people's opinions.
And Paradoxical is even more slanted...It was 46.9% against Shops, 27.3% against Xerox, and 16.7% against Blue Control (Big Blue was 50-50).
If anyone wants to test this on MTGO, let me know. I have a spare set of power...I will stream it. I really do think this is an assumption that needs to be reevaluated, though.
