@vaughnbros said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

Brainstorm and Ponder are broken in part because of Fetch lands.

And fetchlands fall into that restriction resistant zone because there is so much overlap between them and the duals and the need to run some basics that eve a restriction might see the swap of one fetch to another. At least having to run shocks over more duals provides some sort of penalty for when you naturally draw them.

For what its worth most top end 4 and 5 color edh lists do not have issue in 100 cards getting the mana they need when they need it and that is already singleton.

@protoaddict

I wonder if you could make a 4 color deck with singleton fetches?

@john-cox said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

I wonder if you could make a 4 color deck with singleton fetches?

Depends how distributed your color costs are. Players almost don't even pay attention to it anymore because it has been such a given for so long.

If we assume all fetches and true duals are restricted, in a 4 color deck with fairly evenly distributed color costs you can still run 6 fetches and 6 dual lands that have a relevant colors. I think the step after that is Shocks and basics, but likely what you would have is a deck that may forego an awkward colored dual or 2 in favor of more favorable shocks or basics. Thats before we even get into all the 5 color lands that exist, or another mana strategies like Snow Astrolab stuff.

Like I said, I think it would force more creativity and diversity, and would tone down a handful of problematic decks that really have abused the ease they can generate mana with. Use of off color moxen may even fall off, basics may increase as decks with fewer fetches can be punished by wastelands more, and as a side effect of needing fewer moxen and duals, easy the cost of entry for new players needing that many less reserve list cards to join in.

Like Steve was saying in the other thread, It pretty much boils down to some people wanting to play highlander and some people wanting everything (or a lot) unrestricted. We've become as polarized as the U.S. political system. Maybe there should just be two separate formats. Highlander type 1 saturday and unrestricted type 1 sunday. I would probably enjoy both formats honestly.

@john-cox said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@protoaddict

I wonder if you could make a 4 color deck with singleton fetches?

Why couldn't you? We already saw a spreading out of fetches when sorcerous spyglass was printed.

@protoaddict said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

For what its worth most top end 4 and 5 color edh lists do not have issue in 100 cards getting the mana they need when they need it and that is already singleton.

EDH decks have a lot fewer wasteland effects per deck size than vintage decks are allowed, of course.
I don't dispute that fetches+duals is absurdly powerful, but probably moreso in legacy than vintage due to having 4x brainstorm and ponder. or do we blame that on the blue cards?

Fetch + Duals make mana fixing too easy. Anyone that has played another format knows the difference between a Legacy/Vintage land base and whatever random lands are available in Standard/Limited. The issue is also not just the number of colors, but the number of color combinations. Being able to cast UU, WW, and R all in the same deck with basic land access, and minimal life payment is not something that you see in other formats.

You can very easily build a manabase that can support these multiple color combinations without fetch lands. Those manabases are way more vulnerable to Wasteland though, and/or have penalties associated with them (like paying 1 life each time you tap a land). That balances the fact that you are getting access to more color combinations than you really should.

As for specific cards that are impacted, I think the most obvious card that can come off the restricted list with Fetches/Duals gone is Gush. Beyond that, you have things, like Ponder/Brainstorm, that typically want a shuffle after being used.

@vaughnbros said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

As for specific cards that are impacted, I think the most obvious card that can come off the restricted list with Fetches/Duals gone is Gush. Beyond that, you have things, like Ponder/Brainstorm, that typically want a shuffle after being used.

Even in a world where you restrict fetches and true duals, a typical 3 color deck is probably still going to have enough fetches and island to make Gush and cantrip shuffles work. Like lets just say your playing some BUG Variant, you still likely start your build with:

1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Polluted delta
1 Misty rainforest
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Underground sea
1 Island

Then you can probably run at least one off color fetch just because it gets most of what you need, and maybe even a shock land or 2

1 Scalding Tarn
1 Breeding pool
1 Watery Grave

Now is this starting configuration as strong as it used to be? Absolutely not. Maybe if this this list is Oath and are are already starting with 4 rainbow lands the mana base is equivalent, most other decks are forced to think about what they run and what utility lands they can afford. However, this base is still very strong at enabling a 3 color deck, or even a 3 color + splash list. If the worst case scenario is that we put a little more pressure on life totals like we see in most every other format of magic the change would already have gone a long way to even out the playing field and give cards like lightning bolt and delver more of a chance and depowering some of the other problem cards in the the format like the cantrips and Deathrite Shaman. Decks with easier mana requirements like Fish decks might even see a come back, or dare I say it, aggro.

@protoaddict

Here is the manabase from one of Stephen's Pyromancer Gush decks (VSL Season 5):

1 Flooded Strand
1 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island

This is already running 1 of each blue fetch. You'd be restricted to playing off-color fetches that can only find your duals (and not basic island). It also runs 2 Trop, 3 sea, and 2 Volc. You'd have to play 4 shock lands in places of duals to get that same mix. So that is a significant downgrade in terms of mana base to support Gush in the same fashion.

Taking repeated lightning bolts, and shocks in your Gush deck may seem fine in some matchups, but against Shops, Delver, or any other aggressive strategy that damage will add up and it would hurt the deck's overall win %. Reduced ability to fetch basic island as your first land is also a pretty big limiter in matchups against Wasteland.

EDIT: Woops should have gone back further, original example was post restriction.

if duals and fetches are restricted, which they might as well be given the DCI’s track record, then you can just play 5c lands like in old school. It kills Gush but we’re not allowed to have that regardless so what’s the difference?

And you know old school has 4 Strips and no fetches? 5c Keeper is still the best.

No matter what happens we’re all just going to be playing worse versions of the same decks.

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

No matter what happens we’re all just going to be playing worse versions of the same decks.

I'm not sure that a worse version of the same deck is actually the same deck. What is a shops deck with 3 fewer shops? Is it starting to border on being Affinity? Is Trinisphere even worth maindecking in this case, or do stax decks become colorless eldrazi / Null rod style builds.

Dredge without 4 bazaar may very well decide to forego the serum powders as well, and maybe that deck becomes a Crop rotation build that now can run utility lands, or a Burning inquiry list with Hollow ones and the like.

How many Deathrites do you run in a list with only 5-6 fetches? Is Goyf good if you cannot ensure land in the yard like you used to? What about DDT and Treasure Cruise?

Does blood moon come back into prominence to punish greedy mana bases or would Force of Vigor still hold it at bay? Do decks running lightning bolt start to consider running more burn because of more vulnerable life totals?

@protoaddict

Agree with this. Manabases are the most important component of a deck in Magic because you simply can't do anything without one that functions properly. Change the overall options for a manabase, and you change the overall options for decks entirely.

Look in the opposite direction, what if we unrestricted Lotus, and Moxen? The format would be homogenized super fast due to all of the best mana sources being available as 4-ofs instead of singletons.

@protoaddict said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

No matter what happens we’re all just going to be playing worse versions of the same decks.

I'm not sure that a worse version of the same deck is actually the same deck. What is a shops deck with 3 fewer shops? Is it starting to border on being Affinity? Is Trinisphere even worth maindecking in this case, or do stax decks become colorless eldrazi / Null rod style builds.

A Shops deck with only 1 Workshop is still a Shops deck. Just like a Gush deck with only 1 Gush still embodies the spirit of a Gush deck. It would want to play Wastelands, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein, some fast artifact mana and just power out Spheres and Lodestone Golems. If you recall the mtgo classic format, all the best decks were just worse versions of all the current vintage decks. (Classic didn't have the entire Vintage cardpool such as power) No matter how you slice it -- Null Rod or Eldrazi or whatever, its still the Shops deck.

Dredge without 4 bazaar may very well decide to forego the serum powders as well, and maybe that deck becomes a Crop rotation build that now can run utility lands, or a Burning inquiry list with Hollow ones and the like.

Yes but its still the "Dredge" deck. We effectively just made every deck in the format worse, but the matchups are the same and play out the same way.

@vaughnbros said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@protoaddict

Look in the opposite direction, what if we unrestricted Lotus, and Moxen? The format would be homogenized super fast due to all of the best mana sources being available as 4-ofs instead of singletons.

I happen to know exactly what happens in this hypothetical metagame. I'm assuming that if moxes are unrestricted, then so is Gush. At which point, the best blue deck is still a Gush deck that plays 15 lands and just a few moxes. So once again, you've created a metagame that features the Gush deck against the artifact-dense "Workshop" deck.

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@protoaddict said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

No matter what happens we’re all just going to be playing worse versions of the same decks.

I'm not sure that a worse version of the same deck is actually the same deck. What is a shops deck with 3 fewer shops? Is it starting to border on being Affinity? Is Trinisphere even worth maindecking in this case, or do stax decks become colorless eldrazi / Null rod style builds.

A Shops deck with only 1 Workshop is still a Shops deck. Just like a Gush deck with only 1 Gush still embodies the spirit of a Gush deck. It would want to play Wastelands, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein, some fast artifact mana and just power out Spheres and Lodestone Golems. If you recall the mtgo classic format, all the best decks were just worse versions of all the current vintage decks. (Classic didn't have the entire Vintage cardpool such as power) No matter how you slice it -- Null Rod or Eldrazi or whatever, its still the Shops deck.

Dredge without 4 bazaar may very well decide to forego the serum powders as well, and maybe that deck becomes a Crop rotation build that now can run utility lands, or a Burning inquiry list with Hollow ones and the like.

Yes but its still the "Dredge" deck. We effectively just made every deck in the format worse, but the matchups are the same and play out the same way.

If all these decks are powered down enough it still opens the door for other deck archetypes to have presence that they do not now. In a format with restricted mana bases, less consistent brown decks, slower dredge decks you may see rituals come back. Maybe fish decks. We simply don't have that now.

Also, we lived in a meta not long ago where unpowered eldrazi, ravager shops, and stax shops all coexisted and I assure you they were not the same deck.

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

A Shops deck with only 1 Workshop is still a Shops deck. Just like a Gush deck with only 1 Gush still embodies the spirit of a Gush deck. It would want to play Wastelands, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein, some fast artifact mana and just power out Spheres and Lodestone Golems. If you recall the mtgo classic format, all the best decks were just worse versions of all the current vintage decks. (Classic didn't have the entire Vintage cardpool such as power) No matter how you slice it -- Null Rod or Eldrazi or whatever, its still the Shops deck.

Technically, that is true but this won't happen. Reason is that you forget something in that analysis : shop deck are running about 40 artifacts because because 4 workshops make it worth it. Now if you have only 1 workshop and no (or few) way to tutor it would you still want to play that many artifacts ? Would not you want to add some color and get all nice effects that brown is missing ?

Ultimately, you will play a whatever-deck with a more than average number of artifacts to still get nice use of the singleton workshop (could be for exemple some kind of turbo-tezz or something like the 5C shop decks that used to be played). I am not sure if such decks would be still shop decks.

On the other hand, singleton Bazar does weaken Dredge decks but does not kill them : They are called dredge decks not bazar decks ... they loose their best tool but not their reason of being.

@albarkhane said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

shop deck are running about 40 artifacts because because 4 workshops make it worth it. Now if you have only 1 workshop and no (or few) way to tutor it would you still want to play that many artifacts ? Would not you want to add some color and get all nice effects that brown is missing ?

the card you're trying to think of is called thought-knot seer

@blindtherapy said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

the card you're trying to think of is called thought-knot seer

I speculated about this for some time a year or 2 ago when I had thought Shops had to be considered. If you restrict shops I see the deck bifurcating in 2 specific lists:

The first deck you would get would be 2 drop ravager shops. You still have a shop and academy, but would have to replace 3 shops with either sol lands like City of Traitors, utility land like inventors fair, or more Moxen or something like that. The deck is already low on the curve but I suspect it would look towards trying to get its top end costs even lower by dropping anything that could clog the hand, including singleton copies of things like Traxos, Scourge of Kroog, Precursor Golem, or Mystic Forge. Other than that it is basically the same deck, it will have a few slightly less explosive starts and it cannot slam all its stuff indiscriminately, but it's basically the same deck.

The second deck would be Brown Eldrazi Stax. Eldrazi already have 2 of its own sol lands in Temple and Eye and probably wants to play a little higher on the curve, I suspect that the way it may be built is similar to the unpowered build we so a few years ago, where the only artifacts it runs are ones without activated abilities so it can run Null rod. I would run the singleton workshop to be able to power out first turn trinisphere, Sphere of resistance, or Null rod, but the rest of the deck would be eldrazi based. Creature base would revolve around 4 thought-knot seers but I could see it either going towards the high end with Cavern of souls allowing uncounterable Reality smashers or stay relatively aggro with Mimic and Matter Reshaper.

Basically the restriction of shops would take nothing from this deck but rather add a copy of shops to it. In the past as soon as you added one shop you had to ask yourself why not just play the better deck, but if Shops is powered down by half a turn and a little more vulnerable, and your drazi deck suddenly has a new tool and is resistant to most of the shops hate, that questions starts to answer itself.

While I do not think you can restrict Shops in a void, I think it needs to happen with other restrictions and maybe even unrestrictions, I 100% content it would be the healthiest thing for the meta.

@albarkhane said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

@desolutionist said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

A Shops deck with only 1 Workshop is still a Shops deck. Just like a Gush deck with only 1 Gush still embodies the spirit of a Gush deck. It would want to play Wastelands, City of Traitors, Crystal Vein, some fast artifact mana and just power out Spheres and Lodestone Golems. If you recall the mtgo classic format, all the best decks were just worse versions of all the current vintage decks. (Classic didn't have the entire Vintage cardpool such as power) No matter how you slice it -- Null Rod or Eldrazi or whatever, its still the Shops deck.

Technically, that is true but this won't happen. Reason is that you forget something in that analysis : shop deck are running about 40 artifacts because because 4 workshops make it worth it. Now if you have only 1 workshop and no (or few) way to tutor it would you still want to play that many artifacts ? Would not you want to add some color and get all nice effects that brown is missing ?

Ultimately, you will play a whatever-deck with a more than average number of artifacts to still get nice use of the singleton workshop (could be for exemple some kind of turbo-tezz or something like the 5C shop decks that used to be played). I am not sure if such decks would be still shop decks.

On the other hand, singleton Bazar does weaken Dredge decks but does not kill them : They are called dredge decks not bazar decks ... they loose their best tool but not their reason of being.

Sounds like you've never been run over by shops when they dont draw workshop and just draw 1 of multiple sol lands and any of their thousand or so 2 drops.

I am advocating nothing and just trying cold analysis. It is near impossible to foretell how a meta would evolve but there are still a few obvious things.

@blindtherapy
@Khahan
@Protoaddict

My point is that with only one shop (and no tutor) it is not optimal any more to play 40 artifacts. So what do you put in ?

• I can only agree that Eldrazi creatures are so much better than artifact ones so this way is the most obvious and the easiest.
• @Protoaddict about the first deck you suggested. That was my point : it could exist but it would not be worth it. Other options would be much better.

Starting with existing shop decks and trying adapt them is the wrong way to go. For that particular problem, reasoning should start "from scratch" as if shop decks never existed and brew starting with 1 shop and nothing else.

Or put it another way : if probabilities are very low that you naturally draw your single shop, you should design a deck that does not need it and when you get it, it is just added bonus.

Why would you want to play 2 drops or more when you can now play many 1 drops that will let you draw thousands of cards ? That is why i suggested colored shops but another way to see it is that the single shop would just become academy number 2 for any decks that rely on such a card.

@albarkhane said in Rules for Vintage B&R list:

I am advocating nothing and just trying cold analysis. It is near impossible to foretell how a meta would evolve but there are still a few obvious things.

@blindtherapy
@Khahan
@Protoaddict

My point is that with only one shop (and no tutor) it is not optimal any more to play 40 artifacts. So what do you put in ?

• I can only agree that Eldrazi creatures are so much better than artifact ones so this way is the most obvious and the easiest.
• @Protoaddict about the first deck you suggested. That was my point : it could exist but it would not be worth it. Other options would be much better.

Starting with existing shop decks and trying adapt them is the wrong way to go. For that particular problem, reasoning should start "from scratch" as if shop decks never existed and brew starting with 1 shop and nothing else.

Or put it another way : if probabilities are very low that you naturally draw your single shop, you should design a deck that does not need it and when you get it, it is just added bonus.

Why would you want to play 2 drops or more when you can now play many 1 drops that will let you draw thousands of cards ? That is why i suggested colored shops but another way to see it is that the single shop would just become academy number 2 for any decks that rely on such a card.

I have witnessed enough shops match ups to know that they often have superfluous mana and have plenty of games where they win on sol lands. Shops already did not come up as frequently as that deck wanted and it still dominated for years. The decks most critical drops have always been and are still are 0 and 2 drops, nothing changes there either.

I don't see why you need to throw the baby out with the bath water and redesign the deck from the ground up. We know through heuristics and our observational knowledge that the deck not only still works but is also still competent at doing what it does. We also know that the decks largest predator right now is not mana but rather a free green spell that does not care about your mana.

How good the deck is in the meta has not actually been about the card workshop for some time, it's about the hate that is played and if it can get in under that in the first place. Shops is not good because of 3 mana, it is good because you do not take damage/lose a card/etc to use it. If eldrazi were to become the better of the deck it is almost undoubtably because of other factors.