October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement
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@ajfirecracker I see your point, but still think it is a fair comparison for the purposes of showing workshop's effect on artifacts. If all the artifacts cost -2, but other lands could only cast artifacts, why would i not just run whatever lands I chose and 9x 0-1 cost spheres, 4x 2cc juggernaut/golem, 4x 1cc tangles, etc? It would still be more powerful than most decks.
In fact, the issue is more compounded because it's not just a world of -2cc artifacts we're in, because then any color deck could equally run their own 2 mana juggernauts and 1 mana tangles to fight back. As it is now, ONLY workshops can play the 2-mana golem, 1-mana tangle game while other decks don't have access to that. So, yes, workshop comes at the cost of not running FoW and ancestral (which would be awful with spheres anyway), but it gives them access to a world of undercosted artifacts that no other deck has access to.
Once upon a time, I ran 5-color workshops (TMS, Riddler), and they played chains of meph, goblin welder, ancestral, walk, etc. I even had a cute hanna's custody platinum angel combo in the Riddler. This was even before Urborg, tomb and chromatic lantern. So a shops deck CAN squeeze in a select amount of colored spells with rainbow lands to complement the workshops/tombs. When's the last time you saw a non-shops deck squeezing in some tangle wires and juggernauts with their 1-mana lands?
There is never going to be a perfect analogy to what workshops does. It's not lotus on a stick. It's not -2cc on all artifact spells. It's not going to be akin to anything other than "workshops cast powerful artifacts too fast." But that doesn't dismiss the argument that Workshop gives powerful artifact spells the "effect" of -2 mana compared to all other lands. It allows them to play really good artifacts that other decks can't reasonably cast in a time frame that matters. The whole purpose to artifacts from the beginning was that any color could play them, but they had to pay more mana than was reasonable to do so. A 3/3 could cost 2G or 2W, but as an artifact was probably 4. Then along comes Mishra's Workshop, and it made that artifact feel like it cost 1 in comparison.
I don't think anyone can say tangle, ballista, golem, wurmcoil, spheres, etc. are "crap cards" (though someone in this thread earlier implied as much) that workshops are "trapped" into playing. The reality is that those are GOOD cards that shops can play MUCH FASTER than any other land would allow.
Now, with shops being unrestricted, you also face the problem of multiples. You can play a steel hellkite or wurmcoil or staff of nin or ballista with 3 counters or whatnot for 2 lands? And all other decks would need 6 land drops to do that? You mean other colors have access to 2/1s and 2/3s for 2 land drops while shops is dropping triskelions? Yeah, seems totally fair.
Here's an alternate thought experiment. Let's say workshop could tap to play any color mana and ALSO 3 mana for artifacts. Are you telling me it wouldn't play golem and tangle and spheres because the colored spells are "better"? It would rather take 2-3 lands to play something like In the Eye of Chaos and thalia and wingmare than 1 land to play sphere, thorn, trini (assuming it was still on the prison plan)? It would rather play 2 lands to cast grizzly bears than 2 lands to play juggernaut (or wurmcoil if both lands were shops)? -
@thewhitedragon69 said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
Consider for a minute if thorn/sphere cost 0 and tangle wire cost 1 (with the offset of the 2 mana extra shops gives you). Are you telling me decks like dredge wouldn't run those? Would blue NOT play jar (even without tinker) if it only cost 3? Would aggro decks not love a 2 mana juggernaut? Granted, you won't ALWAYS have workshop in an opener (just like you won't ALWAYS have ancestral, FoW, bazaar, X-card-name-here), but as a 4-of, it happens regularly enough that it can be a +2 mana in the opener a LOT. Even if you draw it turn 3, jar is now a turn 3 play whereas it's turn 5 if you play any other land.
I find this most funny, because your examples are all so bad. I mean, the analogy itself leads nowhere, but come on, those examples are not good. Like, you know that there IS a Juggernaut that costs 2 mana right? It's called Tarmogoyf and it's nowhere to be seen in Vintage.
Also, Dredge would definitely not run Spheres, since it runs just a few lands and would not want to stop their turn 2 Dread Return by themselves. Also, Tangle Wire would be bad for it too, since they don't need the tempo play and most answers to Dredge cost 1 so it's irrelevant if you tap them out on upkeep.EDIT: sorry if I sounded rude, it wan't my intention. I really found your post way off and laughed a bit on my way to work. Putting what Workshop does into paper, trying to bend rules or compare it with other cards is a very hard thing to do that mostly amounts to nothing. It's good because it's a great tempo play, and that's it. This is Magic Theory from the 90's: tempo vs card advantage battle is old as the game itself. My worry is that without Workshop the tempo strategy will get too hurt. But I guess the printing of Thought-Knot and Reality Smasher really made a good ground for Shops to go away.
@thewhitedragon69 said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
Here's an alternate thought experiment. Let's say workshop could tap to play any color mana and ALSO 3 mana for artifacts. Are you telling me it wouldn't play golem and tangle and spheres because the colored spells are "better"? It would rather take 2-3 lands to play something like In the Eye of Chaos and thalia and wingmare than 1 land to play sphere, thorn, trini (assuming it was still on the prison plan)? It would rather play 2 lands to cast grizzly bears than 2 lands to play juggernaut (or wurmcoil if both lands were shops)?
It wouldn't. It would play Fastbond and Timetwister and most blue spells in a storm-combo shell and try to win before passing the turn, mainly because it would be very, very bad to play sphere effects when your opponent has access to 4 lands that produce 3 mana.
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@seksaybish Well to be fair... That's a function of restricting Thorn rather than Sphere.
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@bobbyvictory Mishra's Workshop, the "second best card ever"... arguably the better even than Lotus. So good in fact, that decks running 4 of them, have won Vintage Champs... is it twice? Ever?
That's pretty amazing if you think its about as good as Lotus... or better than Ancestral let's say. I feel like if you gave me 4 Ancestrals I could outperform this number... (pssst, you are actually speaking in hyperbole.)
Twice is one more time than Lord of Atlantis... which is arguably the best creature ever printed... by which I mean, I'm pretty sure I could draw someone around here into an argument about it, because we are being totally, utterly ridiculous.
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@bobbyvictory said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
@ajfirecracker The Shops archetype isn't trying to cast other spells though so that argument doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Riiight, because Mishra's Workshop decks wouldn't play Time Walk and Ancestral Recall if they could cast then consistently
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@topical_island Stop taking what I am saying out of context and making a bad comparison. You can't compare lord of atlantis to black lotus, they are two entirely different types cards. You can compare workshop to black lotus as they are both accelerants. Workshops sticks around to continue pumping out giant ballistas/hangarbacks. The lotus is a one time use. Taxing effects also increase the cost to bring lotus out. Mishra's Workshop is more powerful than black lotus in the shops deck. It comes out for free and can't be countered.
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@ajfirecracker Shops doesn't need time walk/ancestral....The deck is already busted lol.
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@ajfirecracker welp, Bobby says it's "busted". I guess there's nothing more to discuss...
I was gripping to Andy once about DCI lack of transparency, and I remember he made a really good point, giving the DCI their due, by pointing out what a mess it would be if players made those decisions...
I guess all I can say is, this thread is great evidence of exactly what he was talking about.
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@fsecco said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
@chubbyrain said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
The people saying "restricting Thorn of Amethyst killed Eldrazi" are simply wrong. The deck saw little play because of Shops even prior to restriction - we just have more data from Champs that confirms it.
Forgot to mention this in the SMIP thread: Steve said that Eldrazi had a good matchup against Shops and that's why it saw play last year. I may be wrong, but I remember it being quite the opposite. Am I wrong? I really don't remember but I vaguely recall it being something like 75/25 in favor of Shops. (or was that record against White Eldrazi and not Colorless?)
What I said was that in 2016, Eldrazi had a much better Shops matchup. Pointing to the September data which showed that Eldrazi had only a 20% win rate against Shops in 2017 (with a small sample size, though), I predicted that Eldrazi would be less prevalent than in 2016, and Shops more.
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@smmenen I remember one episode where Kevin laid out Eldrazi winrate against Shops and you laughed because it was so bad that it single handedly explained why the archetype did badly. But I don't remember if it was for champs 2016 though...
Edit: but yeah, it wasn't the 20/80 it's now. That's just abysmal and probably because colorless Eldrazi is more resilient to Ballista but Thorn hit it pretty bad.
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@topical_island Dude, you can sit here and try to discredit me or make it seem like my ideas are terrible all you want, it's not going to change the fact that vintage is the least interesting it has ever been in 3 years. It's not going to change the fact that vintage is the least diverse it has been in 3 years. Stop being in denial about workshop being too powerful and that it needs to get restricted. We all know it's overpowered. Even the players that use it know but they will always pretend like it isn't or threaten to quit if their toy is taken away. Sometimes a sacrifice needs to be made for the greater good, Mishra's Workshop is one of two sacrifices that needs to be made.
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@bobbyvictory I won't discuss WS without you anymore, but the only time in recent years I feared for Vintage's diversity was in July/August when Shops and Mentor were 75-80% of the field by themselves. It nowhere near this right now.
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FFS, cards like ponder and imperial seal are on the restricted list. Do you mean to tell me that these cards have a higher power level than mishra's workshop? lol stop it already, the card is busted.
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@fsecco That's because top players are purposely not playing shops to create the perception that everything is fine. Then the next major tournament will roll around and the top players will bust out shops showing how OP it is again lol. It happens every time there is talks of a deck/card being on the chopping block. "quick, everyone stop playing shops, lets make it seem like its not a big deal that way we can continue to run the train on everyone in the future!"
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@bobbyvictory for the last time man: the restricted list is NOT about a card's power level in a vacuum. Please, PLEASE stop saying that.
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Actually, it's one of the main reasons for the restricted list. Cards that are way too powerful that warp the metagame are put on it.
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@bobbyvictory said in October 17, 2017 Banned & Restricted announcement:
@fsecco That's because top players are purposely not playing shops to create the perception that everything is fine. Then the next major tournament will roll around and the top players will bust out shops showing how OP it is again lol. It happens every time there is talks of a deck/card being on the chopping block. "quick, everyone stop playing shops, lets make it seem like its not a big deal that way we can continue to run the train on everyone in the future!"
Wow. Just. Wow. Really? I give up.
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@bobbyvictory Uhhh... let's see. No?
Yeah, my answer is no. I'm not going to stop, because I think your ideas are... pretty bad. Pretty bad.
As for you. You seem cool. I don't really know you, but whatever...
I think Shops is fine. I think people tend to freak out about... well pretty much whatever just happened in the last month. For example, Shops had a great showing at Champs... GREAT showing. Good for shops. I really wish vintage players were cool enough to leave it there... but they aren't.
Remember when we were on a rampage about how broken tempo blue was... I do. It was 3 months ago. And now, Shops has been the best deck for 3 straight years... and Shops is the best or second best card ever printed...and... other claims... sigh.
Oh oh... remember when Oath was "busted' when it won two Champs in a row... I do. You know what... I'm beginning to think that when someone says a card is broken and needs restriction, it's far more correlated with certain attributes of the speaker, than anything about the particular card.
As for your request that I stop responding to you... all I can say is, respond to me however and whenever you want.
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@fsecco It's happened several times in the past when there were uproars after many of the vintage challenges about shops. It's like all the shops players disappeared for the next challenge thus lowering the amount of shop decks in the metagame/lowering shops' chances of taking up many top 8 spots. It's one way to skew data.
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I dunno. I can't make a perfect analogy because none exists. That doesn't mean because there is no perfect analogy, that no argument is valid to restrict workshop. I doubt anyone could honestly say that Mishra's Workshop is not an absurdly broken land and is not more powerful and meta warping than half the cards on the restricted list. With eldrazi printed and things like sol-lands, and giving thorn back to fish decks (maybe chalice too), this boogyman of storm running roughshod over everything is just not legit. Workshop is not needed to keep the field in check. All it's doing is narrowing the meta to workshop vs blue vs dredge. Fish, drazi, and 1-shop workshop decks could easily live in a meta without 4-shop decks, and the boogyman storm is not going to crush any and all contenders.
