Thoughts on restrictions
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As someone who plays Cavern decks I +1 xouman's statement. Players will have to adapt to beat me or they will continue to get crushed by the cards I'm playing more often than they want to. But it isn't a simple binary of like "I'll run X-hate card that folks have SAID was good vs. Humans and then I'll win." No no no no no. That is a VSL attitude and only works when your metagame is as inbred as that one is. Players are going to have to become smarter deck builders and stop net decking. I can think of no better punishment for a net decker than falling prey to the same deck over and over because he/she refuses to see the holistic picture of the matchup. If beating dredge was just about running more cages and and hate cards then more players boasting that strategy would be crushing dredge. Clearly dredge adapted though with the "cagebreaker" variant. If folks think humans are just going to fall to someone running "more plows" then they are sorely mistaken and in for a rude awakening.
My 2 cents.
-Storm
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This whole thread seems to be an argument between people saying "Hate bears isn't fun to play against" and people saying "What are you talking about? Hate bears isn't overpowered!"
Those two points don't conflict at all
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@ajfirecracker said:
This whole thread seems to be an argument between people saying "Hate bears isn't fun to play against" and people saying "What are you talking about? Hate bears isn't overpowered!"
Those two points don't conflict at all
While what you say is true on both counts, I think people saying either of these are talking about ancillary issues and are missing the mark. Its not about hatebears itself. Its about a seemingly changed philosophy from R&D.
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This thread is a beating. My primary frustration in listening to the non-prison players is that they never want to bend a f'ing inch and actually include removal in their designs (or the decks they copy). It's a 2 toughness man. Removal has scaled with creatures as well over the years. The typical retort is something about how not playing Mental Misstep x X, Flusterstorm and Pyroblast main weakens their 'blue' mirror matchup. Spend some time to think about the benefit of being able to remove permanents. A classic example is @brianpk80 's deck from Champs. He actually decided that removing permanents his opponent might deploy was a priority, instead of exclusively fighting a stack battle. He was rewarded by being able to navigate a field of varied decks because he engineered varied answers into his design. Prison has been a strategy from the inception of the game, it's a shame people cry about it so much. The metric of 'funness' or 'playing Magic' is the worst and most immeasurable out there. If I have fun denying you resources, building my own and locking out your plan on the axis of resources then that's still fun. Someone once said Magic is a zero sum fun game, if I have all the fun I'm fine with that. Orchard, Mox, Oath go isn't much fun for the guy about to be Griselbranded. Measuring how fun it is is a wasteful exercise.
~Sean
@TeamTuskMTG on Twitter
Sometimes caster on Tusk Talk -
@nedleeds just to be clear, I'm not against the hatebears. I just find them irritating sometimes.
I actually like the variety. -
[Spoiler: Irony, sarcasm and exaggerations may occur in this post]
Here is what I have learned from following this thread:
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'People' apparently prefers playing 'real' Vintage (I'm not sure which category players who play hatebear deck belongs to then, or which Magic game they are playing)
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'Real' Vintage consists of 'People' playing blue decks (please read the first line in this reply before you blow a gasket)
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'People' apparently think that the prison that a hatebear deck can impose on people are much much more unfair and not fun than the prison that an old style shop deck could impose on them. Even though they will be able to play various sweepers and other 'more-than-1-for-1-ones' which they were not able to play against the shop decks of old where there were more sphere effects than a single Thalia.
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'People' knows that the skillset to pilot a hatebear deck is vastly inferior to the skillset 'people' need to pilot a 'real' Vintage deck. The deck building, metagaming, sequencing, curving, and other aspects is waaaaay easier in a hatebear deck (a few 'People' among the 'People' seems to disagree - thank you!
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'People' tend to forget that many of the 'real' Vintage decks can still mop the floor with many of the hatebear strains and the archetype doesn't take up much of the meta
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A broken card potentially belongs in a 'real' Vintage deck. A broken card with a body attached is not broken but unfair/not fun/not 'real' Vintage (unless it is Monastery Mentor, in case it is better categorized with Tendrils than with the hatebears - which per definition makes it ok after all!)
Do you still remember the first line of this reply?
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'People' thinks it is more 'honorable' to lose to a 'real' Vintage deck than being pecked to death by a 2/2 body or two.
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'People' don't want aggro to be wincon in 'real' Vintage unless it smells like Monastery Tendrils or Blightsteel. An exception could be that you sprinkle it with counters (fish) or a few spheres (Slash Panther) - side note: The sphere is not allowed to have a body and be called Thalia
And more general and not linked to this thread, but the first line of this reply still applies:
- 'People' sometimes have a hard time adapting. The 'hatebear'-equivalent deck that everybody hated some years back was Affinity Robots. A deck that failed misserably against either Stony Silence, Nullrod or Rest in Peace (as 'Modular' doesn't trigger). But nooooo, white, like red, wasn't a 'real' Vintage color in those days. So 'people' lost and complained about robots.
Why not just play some hate against the hatebears? I wont insult anybody intelligence by starting to list them, but the list is long and strong. Even with hatebears on the board.
[End Irony, sarcasm and exaggerations]
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@Uvatha said:
[Spoiler: Irony, sarcasm and exaggerations may occur in this post]
Here is what I have learned from following this thread:
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'People' apparently prefers playing 'real' Vintage (I'm not sure which category players who play hatebear deck belongs to then, or which Magic game they are playing)
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'Real' Vintage consists of 'People' playing blue decks (please read the first line in this reply before you blow a gasket)
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'People' apparently think that the prison that a hatebear deck can impose on people are much much more unfair and not fun than the prison that an old style shop deck could impose on them. Even though they will be able to play various sweepers and other 'more-than-1-for-1-ones' which they were not able to play against the shop decks of old where there were more sphere effects than a single Thalia.
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'People' knows that the skillset to pilot a hatebear deck is vastly inferior to the skillset 'people' need to pilot a 'real' Vintage deck. The deck building, metagaming, sequencing, curving, and other aspects is waaaaay easier in a hatebear deck (a few 'People' among the 'People' seems to disagree - thank you!
) -
'People' tend to forget that many of the 'real' Vintage decks can still mop the floor with many of the hatebear strains and the archetype doesn't take up much of the meta
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A broken card potentially belongs in a 'real' Vintage deck. A broken card with a body attached is not broken but unfair/not fun/not 'real' Vintage (unless it is Monastery Mentor, in case it is better categorized with Tendrils than with the hatebears - which per definition makes it ok after all!)
Do you still remember the first line of this reply?
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'People' thinks it is more 'honorable' to lose to a 'real' Vintage deck than being pecked to death by a 2/2 body or two.
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'People' don't want aggro to be wincon in 'real' Vintage unless it smells like Monastery Tendrils or Blightsteel. An exception could be that you sprinkle it with counters (fish) or a few spheres (Slash Panther) - side note: The sphere is not allowed to have a body and be called Thalia
And more general and not linked to this thread, but the first line of this reply still applies:
- 'People' sometimes have a hard time adapting. The 'hatebear'-equivalent deck that everybody hated some years back was Affinity Robots. A deck that failed misserably against either Stony Silence, Nullrod or Rest in Peace (as 'Modular' doesn't trigger). But nooooo, white, like red, wasn't a 'real' Vintage color in those days. So 'people' lost and complained about robots.
Why not just play some hate against the hatebears? I wont insult anybody intelligence by starting to list them, but the list is long and strong. Even with hatebears on the board.
[End Irony, sarcasm and exaggerations]
Short answer?: Because blue players are used to having good matchups across the board and don't think they should have to pony up sb space for a non-"real" deck. This whole argument that hatebears are too strong is ridiculous and I have zero sympathy for blue players whining about it. Period.
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@nedleeds Christ, this again...
When you build your Shops or Eldrazi deck with 10 Thorns, what decks are you trying to beat? The Blue decks. Why would you assume that Blue players should try to beat different types of decks than you and other prison players? Contrary to popular belief, there is NO Blue Cabal that tells Blue players what to play. We don't meet up after the tournament to distribute prizes that we win to every player that sleeved up Gushes. So why build your main deck to beat an archetype that is less than <25% of the field? That's just stupid if you are trying to win a tournament and so is this argument that's based on some comical misconception of how metagaming works.
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@ChubbyRain said:
@nedleeds Christ, this again...
When you build your Shops or Eldrazi deck with 10 Thorns, what decks are you trying to beat? The Blue decks. Why would you assume that Blue players should try to beat different types of decks than you and other prison players? Contrary to popular belief, there is NO Blue Cabal that tells Blue players what to player. We don't meet up after the tournament to distribute prizes that we win to every player that sleeved up Gushes. So why build your main deck to beat an archetype that is less than <25% of the field? That's just stupid if you are trying to win a tournament and so is this argument that's based on some comical misconception of how metagaming works.
+1
@Sean it's really time to move past the restrictions out of Workshops; you've had three in ten years it's going to be OK buddy.
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As a noted Noble Fish pilot I find a war between blue counterspell players and hate bear players to be a bit bewildering.
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@mickey.nobilis said:
As a noted Noble Fish pilot I find a war between blue counterspell players and hate bear players to be a bit bewildering.
I wouldn't say there's a war so much as idiots on both sides? This whole thread is a bit bewildering to be honest but then again it has the word restriction in the title so.
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There's no war...people just have a different idea of what Vintage should be like. And that's fine. The annoying thing is the generalization, the straw men, and the "us vs. them" mentality in these posts.
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@Khahan said:
@Smmenen said:
@gkraigher said:
There are other card games that have trump cards for other cards, that is not magic.
Oh really? So, Circle of Protections, etc. are a novel element in Magic?
The very first Magic set was designed with a plethora of trumps for various strategies. Virtually every conceivable strategy was 'answered' in some way shape or form in the early game. Land destruction? Play Consecrate Land. Hand destruction? Here, play cards like Psychic Purge. Reanimation or recursion? Tormod's Crypt. And so on.
That's why Wizards typically designs an answer to almost any strategy in each set. That's why cards like City in a Bottle were created. They created fail-safes to ensure strategic balance.
Far from some external and nefarious force, the very essence of magic is strategy and trump/answer.
rather embarrassing fact that a card like Ponder is restricted in Vintage.
Ponder isn't just restricted because it's a spell count enabler. It's almost a 1 mana impulse. It's absurdly powerful. Imagine how good that is in 2-card combo decks like Oath, which just need to find Oath and Orchard.
From my perspective, what matters for design is cards that increase the number of playable cards in the card pool. (Which I argued here: http://www.eternalcentral.com/so-many-insane-plays-designing-for-eternal/ ) I think Wizards has excelled recently in doing that. It's possible that right now we have a larger playable card pool than at any point in recent memory.
Smmenen - I often find myself agreeing with you, even when its you vs 10 other people. And I can't argue that we have a more diverse card pool now than any other time in Vintage. Especially if you simply count the number of playable cards.
But I have an issue with the quantity vs quality in this. And this is a more abstract concept than simple card pool diversity. As many have pointed out - vintage is about manipulating the stack, drawing extra cards, using individually powerful spells. Its about using cards or combinations that cheat the rules of magic.This is a kind of Vintage essentialism. That's like saying the United States is a "christian nation." It's a very narrow, and exclusionary definition of what Vintage is. And no where found in the Constitution, etc. Essentialism is always a dangerous thing, because it risks naturalizing something that is artificial or a product of circumstance.
If Vintage is defined as you say, then what room does that make for Workshop decks, which don't manipulate the stack (generally), draw extra cards (generally) or use individually powerful spells (whatever that may mean)? Workshops most powerful card is arguably a land, not a spell.
Vintage is defined by a card pool structured by what sets are legal, and what is not. That card pool has always changed, and will continue to change. By definition, the Vintage card pool is always growing. So, to say that it is "one thing or set of things" is by definition wrong.
Vintage has also always been a very slowly evolving metagame. Yet in the past year (year and a half) we've seen more restrictions than in some 5 year periods of Vintage history. We've seen more cards printed that are vintage playable but they are playable for different reasons in the past. When dredge came out those were vintage playable because they cheated regular magic rules and strategies.
I don't think that the words you are using here are technically defensible. In no way does dredge actually 'cheat" regular magic rules. I know what you mean, but what you mean is a kind of folk taxonomy that, like all folk taxanomies, is not scientifically defensible.
However lately with the restrictions and the mass printings of anti-vintage effects on creatures it seems like R&D is taking a VERY heavy hand in the shaping of the vintage metagame. I do not like that. Players are not developing strategies, watching them grow and prosper, learning to deal with them and then countering them. R&D is telling us, ''This is what your strategy will be now."
I don't think this is a defensible thought either. The idea that R&D is designing Vintage more than they did, say, during Odyssey or Onslaught block is probably an indefensible position. In some of those sets, they actually designed strategies down almost to the exact decklist.
@Khahan said:
@ajfirecracker said:
This whole thread seems to be an argument between people saying "Hate bears isn't fun to play against" and people saying "What are you talking about? Hate bears isn't overpowered!"
Those two points don't conflict at all
While what you say is true on both counts, I think people saying either of these are talking about ancillary issues and are missing the mark. Its not about hatebears itself. Its about a seemingly changed philosophy from R&D.
So, what, exactly, is the point of this thread? The OP tries to set up a frame that suggest that instead of restricting cards, Wizards should print answers instead. That's a perfectly reasonable idea to my mind. It's consistent with the basic notions of magic that we should print answers to problems, and let metagames adjust, then try to regulate through restriction.
Some people seemed to object to the idea of Wizards designing answers for popular strategies.
Hatebears (or utility creatures) are not a new concept. Gorilla Shaman was printed in 1996. is there any evidence that R&D is suddenly printing more hatebears cards than cards for other decks? Do we really believe that hatebears have gotten more quality tools in the last 4 years than Gush or Workshop decks?
There are a lot of half-baked ideas in this thread.
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@Smmenen said:
So, what, exactly, is the point of this thread? The OP tries to set up a frame that suggest that instead of restricting cards, Wizards should print answers instead. That's a perfectly reasonable idea to my mind. It's consistent with the basic notions of magic that we should print answers to problems, and let metagames adjust, then try to regulate through restriction.
Some people seemed to object to the idea of Wizards designing answers for popular strategies.
Hatebears (or utility creatures) are not a new concept. Gorilla Shaman was printed in 1996. is there any evidence that R&D is suddenly printing more hatebears cards than cards for other decks? Do we really believe that hatebears have gotten more quality tools in the last 4 years than Gush or Workshop decks?
There are a lot of half-baked ideas in this thread.
The whole point of the thread (basically everything after the OP) is that not all answers are created equal. OP's recommendation to make more "You don't get to play Magic" bears is upsetting to people because those games are less interesting. In the long run, Vintage isn't going to be a format unless people have fun with it. Whatever philosophical intuitions you have about what is scientifically defensible take a back-seat to the brute fact that this is a product and if you want a company to produce that product it has to be something people are willing to buy. That applies not just to new cards but also to hosting Vintage tournaments and investing in the Vintage community via outlets like TMD.
I have no doubt that one could design cards which are technically "fair" and increase diversity but nonetheless kill the enjoyment of the format. This would be a far more grave injury than upsetting your notions of scientism.
For example: Take the most diverse standard of the past 10 years, make a supertype called "Boring" and make a virtual reprint of every card in that environment with the "Boring" supertype. Then attach an ability to every card you're printing that says "Reveal this from your hand: Exile all non-Boring spells and permanents other than basic lands". Congratulations, you just destroyed Vintage and numerically diversity probably went up slightly. Because the loss is not scientifically measurable and the gain is, your current position would require you to declare this a great success.
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@ajfirecracker said:
@Smmenen said:
So, what, exactly, is the point of this thread? The OP tries to set up a frame that suggest that instead of restricting cards, Wizards should print answers instead. That's a perfectly reasonable idea to my mind. It's consistent with the basic notions of magic that we should print answers to problems, and let metagames adjust, then try to regulate through restriction.
Some people seemed to object to the idea of Wizards designing answers for popular strategies.
Hatebears (or utility creatures) are not a new concept. Gorilla Shaman was printed in 1996. is there any evidence that R&D is suddenly printing more hatebears cards than cards for other decks? Do we really believe that hatebears have gotten more quality tools in the last 4 years than Gush or Workshop decks?
There are a lot of half-baked ideas in this thread.
The whole point of the thread (basically everything after the OP) is that not all answers are created equal. OP's recommendation to make more "You don't get to play Magic" bears is upsetting to people because those games are less interesting.
In the long run, Vintage isn't going to be a format unless people have fun with it. Whatever philosophical intuitions you have about what is scientifically defensible take a back-seat to the brute fact that this is a product and if you want a company to produce that product it has to be something people are willing to buy. That applies not just to new cards but also to hosting Vintage tournaments and investing in the Vintage community via outlets like TMD.I have no doubt that one could design cards which are technically "fair" and increase diversity but nonetheless kill the enjoyment of the format. This would be a far more grave injury than upsetting your notions of scientism.
For example: Take the most diverse standard of the past 10 years, make a supertype called "Boring" and make a virtual reprint of every card in that environment with the "Boring" supertype. Then attach an ability to every card you're printing that says "Reveal this from your hand: Exile all non-Boring spells and permanents other than basic lands". Congratulations, you just destroyed Vintage and numerically diversity probably went up slightly. Because the loss is not scientifically measurable and the gain is, your current position would require you to declare this a great success.
I'm also saying that this is nothing new in Vintage. For as long as I have been playing this format, people have complaining that the format "isn't what it used to be." I even wrote an article about it... in 2003. http://www.starcitygames.com/article/5978_Old-Format--New-Conflict--Old-School-Versus-New-School-In-Type-One.html
A good deal of what I said there is applicable here.
People have always complained that the format is no longer fun, what it was, lost its way. They complained when Trinisphere was printed that the format wasn't interactive. They complained about Storm, when that mechanic was created, and about Mind's Desire. They complained about Oath and Dredge. The most heated complaints were often about Time Vault and Tinker for BSC. People were pissed about the errata to Time Vault and the printing of Blightseel. And now people are complaining about... hate bears.
Enjoyment and fun are inherently subjective concepts. That's why I have objectified fun into a more quantifiable concept: "Meaningful Choice." People want to have meaningful choice in 1) deck selection, 2) color selection, 3) tactics, 4) strategy, and 5) in game decision making. As long as a format is diverse, with lots of card options, I have faith that players enjoy meaningful choices.
Sure, some people may not like the choices available. People who didn't think that Time Vault was fun probably stopped playing Vintage when Time Vault was everywhere. But, as maxx pointed out, you can play almost anything in Vintage right now. Complaining about hatebears is picayune. It's a tiny part of the metagame, and they can be beat.
The lesson: one person's idea of fun is another person's unfun. Just because some people don't like hatebears doesn't mean that we should do anything about it. There is no way of neutrally privileging one person's fun over another's. If some people don't like hatebears, others welcome their arrival (I happen to be in the latter camp).
People have always complained about the format, always chicken-littling along the way.
The format isn't dying, it's just evolving like it always has.
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That doesn't address my point. If diversity is the only metric that matters, go find the most diverse format of all time and play that. It's static and stale and probably not the kind of interaction you want, but diversity is the only metric that matters.
As to the complaints in this thread, they are not "chicken littling" (nice straw-man) but rather identifying a trend towards a bad solution to a real set of problems. There's nothing illegitimate or "chicken little" about voicing a preference for certain cards and designs and against others.
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It's "chicken littling" to say/suggest/imply that current design trends will or might doom the format. to wit:
I have no doubt that one could design cards which are technically "fair" and increase diversity but nonetheless kill the enjoyment of the format. This would be a far more grave injury...
You aren't the only person who said something like that in this thread. E.g.:
I ranted a little more than I expect, but anyway the point is that R&D is terrible at balancing the game. Restrictions are necessary, and they need to be more aggressive about them before our format dies again.
Pointing out the hyperbolic framing of these complaints as well as the historical context of format complaining/griping helps illuminate, to any rational reader, their inherent absurdity. It seems that almost every feature of Vintage is hated by at least some segment of the player base. If we listened to every complaint, the format would be ten times worse than it is now.
If diversity is the only metric that matters, go find the most diverse format of all time and play that. It's static and stale and probably not the kind of interaction you want, but diversity is the only metric that matters
I didn't say diversity was the only metric that mattered. I said "meaningful choice" is the core metric that matters, and that diversity is an expression of it, but not the only. Meaningful choice in game play also matters.
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Pointing out that it's possible to design away the joy of Vintage is hardly chicken little. To deny that would imply that no matter what WotC prints it will be good for Vintage which is clearly absurd. Under that point of view, cards would never need to be restricted.
As to the other comment you posted, it's not about hate bears or card design at all. I don't deny that some people are alarmist, but painting everyone who disagrees with you as doomsayers is not productive.
Diversity vs Meaningful Choice is a word game. Go play the format with the highest "Meaningful Choice" if that's all that matters.
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@ajfirecracker said:
Pointing out that it's possible to design away the joy of Vintage is hardly chicken little.
It is when there is no realistic chance of this happening.
You can't design a card or set of cards that will destroy the joy of playing Ancestral Recall or Black Lotus. The best you can do is making them marginally less powerful.
In any case, the "joy" of Vintage is, as I said, inherently subjective. Some people hate Time Vault. Some people love it. Some people hate Workshops (see my article); some people love it. Some people hate Dredge; some people love it. Some people hate hate bears, some people love them. Rich Shay wants Brainstorm unrestricted; I am glad that it is.
Almost every feature of Vintage is hated/loved by some one. The premise of your argument, that there is some inherent joy to vintage, is fundamentally misconceived. The format changes and evolves over time. Some people will love those changes, and others will hate them. This is as it has always been, and always will be.
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What a bunch of relativistic garbage. Some people (like me) enjoy Dredge but it's objectively bad for the format. Look at how many people love it compared to how many people hate it. The fact that the number is greater than zero on each side doesn't negate all other differences.
