@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

@revengeanceful I'm not totally up to date with what a mana ability is anymore but no you should not be able to counter a lotus or moxen or sol ring with this because they do not use the stack, they just instantly resolve so long as there are no targets on the mana ability.

The things that it does counter that are pretty interesting are Oath, Survival, Time Vault, Voltaic Key, a bunch of the Tormods Crypt analogues. I believe it can also kill Urza's saga as soon as they play it and trigger the lore counter being added to it, before they can even squeeze it for mana.

Card is a total hodgepodge of things but it seems like Mystic Snake for artifact and enchantment abilities is pretty good and novel. Foretell has proven to be solid in some other formats as a way to protect the card from thoughtseize, and the 2/2 body is just gravy.

Obviously this is most likely to show up in a hate bear sideboard than anything else, but I think it merits a look.

Curious if people are trying this guy out. Most people slept on this when it was previewed as just another rare looter but it's proving to be a real all-star in at least modern and now potentially legacy as it is very trivial to activate its ability, sometimes multiple times a round. Vintage would have no problem seeing this guy potentially getting 2 triggers a turn and in addition to making this guy pretty big and evasive the filtering it provides would power out quite a bit stuff that needs the yard.

You may be asking yourself if there has ever been a card I wanted to see get played in vintage more, and the answer is no. I totally recognize the powerlevel is not there even though it does a lot of things right for the format, but damn the powercreep is real.

@thewhitedragon69 Agree with everything you just said, though I will add to it. I don't see that even something like breach or PO truly added anything new to the format, they just were of a powerlevel that made those decks possible.

You could technically play some kind of eggs bouncing deck before PO with retract and wheel cards and what not, it was just a matter of PO doing it better because it was all in one card. Breach is a new variant of graveyard storm combos that used to play Yawgs will. Different pieces, still sort of the same gimmick.

The other piece that is kinda important with all these new engine cards that get anywhere is that they are not restricted, which is why they fee like something new when in reality they are very much more in the same.

It's been a while since Vintage got a truly new archetype at all. Dredge, beyond being just a comical design mistake from day one, is one of the only moments I can think of where you actually got an archetype that did not play almost any of the same cards as existing lists and played the game in a fundamentally different way. There was a point in time where eldrazi looked promising as well in that it was incentivized to not to use staples like moxen or lotuses and had a totally different mana and creature base, but the powerlevel was just not quite there, maybe one day that could happen, and frankly I think it would be great if we could create a tier 1 pillar deck that did not require more than a few money cards like Drazi did (City of Traitors I believe was the only thing).

To me this argument is more fundamentally what is a new archetype versus variations on existing deck types. How different does a deck need to be from something else to be a new archetype, or at least enough of an innovation to take notice? There were several years here where I remember people calling their decks X,Y,or Z archetype and then when you compared the lists they were like 8 cards apart and basically just trying to win with a different creature suite. To me that is not enough for a format that has every card from the games history.

@marland_moore said in Format Inertia:

The interesting thing about cost online is that when you compare Modern to Vintage the cards that are expensive in Modern are what is pushing up the costs in Vintage. Cards like Force of Negation, Ragavan, Urza's Saga, etc...

I mean, cards that are good in EDH also drive up the value of a card. That is not anything specific or particularly mysterious, more demand = higher value.

That being said, I think the answer here is much simpler than you realize, and it is that the new cards are not as good as the old cards most of the time. I don't just mean that for power level mind you, i mean many of the more causal cards don't really do anything compelling that cards that already existed didn't do.

I am looking at new Capena and seeing not a ton of stand out cards bluntly. The ones that I am seeing as potentially having vintage chops are honestly pretty similar to other thing. The Tri lands are similar to other CITP tapped lands. We have a more expensive abrupt decay which could see fringe play but really adds little to the format.

@marland_moore Teferi can be used besides this, they have different play patterns and are not mutually exclusive.

Otwara is a land and therefor not pitchable, a strong attribute of this card, but again not mutually exclusive.

@marland_moore said in Format Inertia:

I think you are mistaking a discussion for a debate

In what way is debate not a form of discussion.

@marland_moore said in Format Inertia:

I did not ask if the format is balanced. I wanted to discuss why we don't see more deck diversity in the format when we have gotten so many new playable cards over the past 3yrs.

You cannot talk about specific cards and strategies without discussing the overall ecosystem we play within. If the format is broken, or even if it is not, it will affect decisions people make.

@marland_moore said in Format Inertia:

When it is time to be competitive I am very competitive, but part of the this GAME is that we all to play how we want to play.

Vintage the format is one small part of the game of magic overall, and it happens to be a typically competitive one. Not every format is uniformly every thing to all people, much in the same way that EDH is mostly casual but still has a fringe competitive group.

@marland_moore said in Format Inertia:

Playing Modern I see a lot of deck diversity for a format with smaller card pool but a much larger player base. I think Vintage could have a much larger pool of decks and players and part of this is inertia.

Because you do not have gatekeeping cards in the format like that on the reserve list, you don't have baselevel decks that cost 10k+, and you have a flatter power level. You could add any number of cards to the format of vintage an unless they were demonstrably better than the stuff people already use why would they bother with them, even for casual play?

@marland_moore Being the colors that it is makes me believe it is a sideboard option for some lists. If it did not have blue I would agree with you but just being pitchable as well as a way to disrupt an onboard combo that is in color. It fits in decks that cannot run Abrupt decay but do have Esper mana sources.

The vindicate example was literally just to point out that a 3 mana desert twisters exists and are not particularly strong on their own.

@wagner Vindicate does exist, but yes, Instant and uncounterable would be too much.