Vintage 101: Time to Golem
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http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/vintage-101-time-to-golem
Why Did Lodestone Golem Get Restricted?
Here is the official statement from Wizard's of the Coast:"We continue to see an imbalanced metagame. In particular, Mishra's Workshop–based decks continue to be significantly overrepresented, reducing the competitive metagame. While this issue could be solved by restricting the namesake card, if possible we would like to keep the deck at a competitive level, but played to an extent that the format is more diverse overall. Lodestone Golem leads to some of the less-interactive games. We are hopeful that limiting Workshop decks to one copy of the card leaves the deck at an appropriate strength. For that reason, Lodestone Golem is restricted."
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Nice article, Joe. I love playing Oath decks with Show and Tell.
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@gribdogs thanks. I worked hard on this one.
I'm just waiting for the inevitable "I am glad LSG is gone" comments.
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Great read. I really enjoy your articles every week.
One question, though, how is 'Dominance' calculated in there card lists?
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@Fred_Bear I actually have no idea. I'll email my boss and ask.
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Very good article Joe. I think the latest restriction was quite lazy on the part of wizards. The notion that the workshop deck is format warping or over represented in some way isn't a reflection of workshops now that chalice is restricted. To me it says that the rest of the meta is not respecting the deck appropriately. Why doesn't dredge consistently appear in top 8s in ridiculous numbers if it's virtually guaranteed to win game one and is heavily favored game 3? Because people respect the deck and respect the power of it. If shops also received the respect as a deck I deserves then I think it would have seen less numbers in top8s. I'm not suggesting people stack their boards with 8 pieces of shop hate but assuming you can put 3 pieces in with no plan on how to use them is just asking to be beaten.
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I wrote a similar comment in the restriction thread and I agree with you 100%. This restriction had more to do with the type of deck they want to be powerful rather than actual % of the field. Similarly, I think they were actually being honest when they wanted Chalice restricted because "we want people to be able to play their moxen" - just like LSG is now on the restricted list for creating too many non-interactive games.
Where this leaves the metagame post-LSG restriction remains to be seen. I suspect that, without a fair number of shops decks to keep explosive combo decks and gush decks in check, we are likely to see another restriction necessary from the emerging decks...
