@Brass-Man If we only posted threads about cards that met that criteria this board would be vacant of posts save for people congratulating people for tourney wins and talking about when the 37th revision of the Gush book is coming out.

I think there is a line, but most threads are not devoid of content, its not like people are posting draft filler here, and most people can look at a card without play test and at least understand from heuristic metrics if it is worth discussion, not necessarily if it will or won't see play.

@yespuhyren said in [Free Article] Menendian's Suggested Banned and Restricted Lists (2018):

Especially with Traxos just having come out, being able to ramp up counters and toss them on a massive trampler seems insane

I find some unstated irony in the fact that you have issue with Ravager putting counters on Traxos but not the land that lets you play Traxos consistently ahead of schedule.

I disagree with ravager.

1 - I cannot tell you how many times I had heard the following from people on these boards: "Workshops may need to be restricted, but lets restrict Lodestone and see what happens".... "well, workshops is still too powerful, Workshops may need to be banned but lets add Thorn to the list" .... "well workshops is still too strong but lets add ravager to the list and see what happens."

At what point do we stop moving the goalposts for this one card? I've said it before and I think I'll say it again, I don't think there is any other non restricted card in the format that has caused as many restrictions as Workshops.

2 - Ravager has answers that workshops does not. Stifle is actually a powerfully demoralizing play against the modular trigger. The issue there becomes that stifle sees no play because of Mental misstep right now and is something the workshops deck can handle because of sphere effects which are powered out but, you guessed it, workshops.

At the end of the day I just don't see ravager being that big of a deal. The deck was strong before anyone used ravager and the decks it faced were very similar to what the field looks like now.

I'm ok with fastbond in the abstract, less so because your justification for it includes the prominence of Mental misstep. If MM gets to the point where it needs to go (as some very openly speculate it will) then I suspect Fastbond would have to go as well.

Infect affects how creatures deal damage, this simply prevents it. This would "win".

This feels really winmore to me. 4 mana do nothing on its own enchantments do not have any track record to speak of in the format, I actually can't think of any other card in the format right now that does nothing on its own, to the point where I think this is actively bad.

Then, assuming you land it and it's not blown out from a 1 mana counter, you need to resolve another spell, best case scenarios is you resolve Ancestral and draw 6, but you only net 4 cards on the first exchange and you have spent 5 mana, 4 at sorcery speed. A 5 mana voltron to make a slightly better Tidings does not ring out as a winning strategy.

I actually think this card is bad also because it takes up a slot that could have just been a draw spell. Draw spells tend to lead into other draw spells and resolving ancestral into treasure cruise or Ancestral into Snapcaster seems way more reasonable and mana efficient to me than this.

There is a very real possibility that LSG was banned for aesthetic purposes more so than any other factor. Vintage is now being covered in streams and videos and WOTC wants the format to feel more like the other formats when it comes to that. Because WOTC can make money off of streams for vintage, more so than selling cards they cannot reprint.

Regardless of if LSG was balanced or not, some games against a turn 1 lodestone last 5 turns of one player attacking and casting rocks and another player saying land go. Even if these are perfectly acceptable situations for a balanced vintage for the players that happens an acceptable percentage of the time, they give the perception of turn one wins with no interaction to a viewer.

WOTC does not want to stream games that look both boring and like a blow out, they want games that have both players playing over powered cards at each other on camera that make for good TV. They banned second sunrise in modern for this exact reason.

I will never fail to be amazed by people defending Mishras Workshop as some sort of untouchable format pillar and instead just trying to restrict everything around it.

I cannot name another card in vintage that remains unrestricted that has caused so many restrictions because of its legality. One could make the argument that Trinisphere, Thorn, Lodestone, and to some extent Chalice are all on the list either entirely or in part because of the power of workshops. Maybe even Mana crypt. Thorn and Lodestone are mostly innocuous enough in any non shops deck, if they see play at all. Now we are discussing getting rid of Ravager or Inspector, 2 cards that are utterly unimpressive on their own. Ravager has been in the format for how many years without any real presence, and how good would it be without fast mana to ramp it out along with it's pals. Like you say in your article it is a card with inherit risks associated with it. Inspector has the potential for crazy plays, but only if it hits the table early via consistent early game mana, and only one land in the list has the consistency to do that by itself. Even the example given in the article of a stifling turn one play of shops, inspector, sol ring, Sphere cannot happen without shops, any other configuration requires 1 additional card to generate enough mana or lotus, which is as we all know, restricted and cannot be used on subsequent turns to finish off your opponent like shops can.

How many cards on that list are there because of solely because of Bazaar? Or Oath? Standstill? I guess you could make the argument that Brainstorm and Ponder are there because of Force of Will maybe? Library because Island is legal?

That being said I don't disagree about the blue arms race, and perhaps Misstep does need to go, but I contend it may be because of factors other than balancing shops.

I would be curious to know how many of the games you played did not have you land a turn one shops or lotus, or a shops at all, and what the win rate on those matches were.

Well well

Perhaps one of the factors they considered when restricting COTV? Humans are being given all sorts of gifts this set.

I don't think the point of this thread was ever to really dissect what is good or bad in the Standard meta but rather to speak about how mistakes in that format have long reaching effects on non rotating formats and the overall health of the game.

Most of this thread boils down to this: Any mistake in standard, be it actual or perceived, will have a negative result on vintage.

For the most part I think that is correct.

@maximumcdawg said in SMIP Podcast # 78: Dominaria Vintage Set Review:

Does anyone seriously disagree that the Pillars of 98 are really critical to what makes Vintage Vintage instead of Powered Legacy?

I do. Being powered alone to me is enough of a change from the legacy meta that it validates the formats existence. But to be realistic, there are more than just power cards in the format that change the contours of it from legacy.

Actual Power - Moxen, Lotus, timewalk, timetwister, recall
Restricted cards not in legacy that enable prominent strategies in vintage - Demonic tutor, Fastbond, Vampric tutor / Imp seal, Yawgs will, Wheel of fortune/Windfall, Academy, Sol ring, library of Alexandriam, even more.
Cards that are super powerful that are allowed without restriction in vintage - Shops, Bazaar, Survival of the Fittest, Misstep, etc

I contend that the presence of power alone is enough to define the format and are really the only pillars it could have to still be a unique format, but it goes far beyond that. The very presence of any one of some of these restricted cards is enough to enable some lists and disable others that would have otherwise been lists in vintage. it would not be different if you only had 1 shops instead of 4, the formats would still be unique and play out very differently.

I mean, case and point, I think that mono red burn is a tier one list in legacy because of its speed, yet in vintage where you can make it even faster because of lotus and mox ruby its not even a list because the power alone changes the scope of the entire format.

I have no words

@thewhitedragon69 I'm just saying there are cards that are good because they are generically good in a lot of decks, thinks like Lotus and Force of Will, etc, and then there are things that are good because they have a narrow but powerful effect like PO or Doomsday. This is in the latter group of cards.

This card brings me back to the old thought experiment of how much life would you have to gain with 1 card for 1 mana for it to be playable with the inherent card disadvantage. It's an odd one to answer because we know there are 2 drops that see play that do nothing but gain life but no 1 drops. The paradigm has changed because the answer basically used to be there is no amount of life it could give that would make it see play that would also see print. This card kinda asks, how much does a giant growth have to give to push it over the top, and right now +4/+4 is damn close. I think if this was +5/+5 for said creatures it would cross some sort of threshold where we actually needed to worry about it not only in vintage but possibly in every format.

@thewhitedragon69 Pregame you need to have a sticker deck, which is 10 sticker cards minimum. You randomly draw 3 at the start of each game and those are what you can use for the whole game. Each card has 3 names on it, so you cap at 9 names per game. You know what you have access to before you cast anything that needs it.

Of all the sticker cards, there are 9 with with words that have 4+ vowels on at least one word, many of them are 5, and I believe only 1 of them is 6. Some cards have multiple 4+ words on them. I didn't do the permutation math to figure out what your odds are, but they are pretty good. So you can build your deck to always be mana positive, at least by 1 even if you draw the 10th bad sticker card of your 3. So its not always a seething song but at the worst it's a better priest of Urabrask the first few times you cast it, but you cannot loop it like something with a fixed number.

I'm not saying this card is going to be better in every deck, it really only ever has to be good in one to be an important player. Doomsday is hot garbage outside of doomsday lists, it is still a star card of the format.

As a for instance on how they would go off. Gobos on a lotus/Mana Crypt/sol land Mox hand could cast this turn 1 for 5 mana into Snoop -> recruiter with 1 floating. With the recruiter they can stack prospector -> Torch Courier -> Kiki jiki -> Sling gang. Cast prospector, Sac _____ Goblin for 1, cast Torch Courier, use it to give Snoop haste, make a million tokens, sac enough to prospector to cast kiki, reveal Sling gang, sac board and win. Prior to this getting to 5 mana on turn one required using quite a few more cards and was less likely to be a starting hand, but that of course is not really your plan A anyway, it's just something new this enables.

@thewhitedragon69 said in [UNF] Embiggen:

A 2/2 goblin is a neat little bonus, but hardly imposing

Making it a goblin makes it searchable, sacrificable, activates death triggers, and is cost reducable by a deck that was already using all those cards. I would not call that little. I can imagine plenty of gobo hands that can now go off a full turn earlier because of this.

@thewhitedragon69 I feel like at this point the way to correct this is to just make an unconditional +4+4 giant growth and phase this out of formats, if that is the case. This already gives the bonus to the most powerful and dangerous creatures it can, may as well just make that the standard right.

The ritual goblin is the one that really scares me the most. I'm not sure they would have ever considered in the past giving seething song a 2/2 goblin body but because of the sticker mechanic it seems to have gotten a pass. Could they ever just print a 2r 2/2 gobo with when this ETBs gain RRRRR?

I do hate that every time I do play embiggen in legacy I'm going to have to explain to people how everything does not have Phyrexian printed on it and pull out the oracle text. Maybe they will give us typeline corrected promos in the future.

@blindtherapy God there is a lot in that set I missed, mostly because its been out for what feels like -2 days. To many releases, my bad y'all.

@thewhitedragon69 I mean, I would imagine you are already running invigorate and Berzerk anyway right? I play it in legacy every so often and I know I run more that just that, so at the least it is an upgrade to might of old Krosa.

I know in legacy the card you actually really want to hit is scale up and this does not play nice with it, though scale up is generally not used more than a 2 of because you never want to hit it 2 times, I could even see this replacing that.

It only just occurred to me how much of a problem this card is if it is a player in the meta but it does not exist on MTGO. Just had to put that out there.

Just a follow up, there are 9 sticker cards that have a word with 4 or more, capping out at 6. Since the rules of this are pick 10, get 3 at random each game, you can guarantee that your first 2 casts will be mana positive, and highly likely that you get at least one sheet with a 5 or 6 mana sticker in the 3.

I am only posting this because I know infect pops it's head up every so often as a rouge deck.

They recently erratad a bunch of stuff with Phyrexian so now Glistener Elf, Blighted Agent, Ichorclaw Myr, Necropede, Phyrexian Crusader, Plague Stinger, Plague Myr, and Vector asp all get +4/+4, no restrictions. Maybe more Legacy relevant but its pretty much the best Giant growth variant for the deck now.

It's an Abrade variant that is better against go wide x/1 strategies. I feel like this could get play. Sorcery speed does hurt though, not sure if it is enough to kill it completely as a sideboard option.