Well well

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

@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.

@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.

So eldrazi decks looking to splash basics for colored mana (or wastes for bloodmoon) and anything using crucible just found a new best friend. This seems to me like it could be a real player, as the cycling is uncounterable outside of stifle and it feeds delve mechanics. I will certainly be picking up 4 copies of this card, I think people really should be on the look out.

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.

@reprint I mean, you can very actively take your high horse and shove it, until Maro posted a clarification that was on twitter and not on the official wizards channels this was entirely new to the format.

@chubbyrain1 said in Un-restricting cards:

While the position that "people should play different decks" makes sense on the surface, it doesn't really happen when those mirrors are "decks that run fast mana" and "decks that draw cards" in a format that has been defined by fast mana and drawing cards.

I think vintage more than any other format in magic is very guilty of presuming that swapping 4-5 cards around in a single list constitutes a new deck. There are decks and then there are broader archetypes and like you pointed out, a there is so much commonality between the structures of these things that very often even decks that are different on paper feel and play basically the same.

Ragavan decks are typically better than lists still using delver, but at the end of the day the archetype of stick a creature, counter and draw is what it is. Playing a different deck within that structure, even if it has totally different match ups, may wind up feeling very samey and to your point, just feel like your playing a "deck that does X".

@marland_moore I didn't say my opinion was popular or going to happen, it is just what I would prefer.

I actually disagree with you though that games would degenerate into bombs only. I think forcing singleton actually forces player to play at a higher skill level as resource management (options you have left in your deck) becomes harder to track and plan for.

There are plenty of cards that have redundant effects but that offer different play against different strategies and being able to understand that is going to be the thing that wins you the game more often than not.

The closest parallel we have to singleton is commander, specifically cEDH, and if you watch those games you'll see decks filled with 2 card combos but also extremely smart plays and resource management, tons of counterplay, and games that do not come down to who drew a bigger bomb first but rather games where the winner was the person who was able to best position themselves in the race.

It also opens the format up to things like Dredge decks that use actual mana and cast spells, workshop decks that have to use a much wider range of cards buy then by necessity have a larger range of counter play against decks they did not otherwise have it against, and pure keeper style control decks that we have not had in some time.

I take a fully different stance on this topic and think that we should have more restricted cards, and would be completely content with the format being a singleton format outside of those brave souls who would play a persistent petitioners deck.

It used to be that this could not work because you remove too many of the safety valves in restricting FOW and Leyline of the Void, but I think there is enough redundancy in answers now coupled with the removal of consistency from linear strategies for this to create a healthier format.

Some decks would be lost were this change made, as I don't think PO could work without 4x copies, but I think many staple decks could still exist in modified versions and that a slew of new decks could pop up in a format with less consistency, including linear decks like Sligh/Burn that were simply outclassed in older versions of the format. I even think that it would have the knock on effect of making some of the currently restricted cards less mandatory to most decks, as I can imagine a work where lotus and off color moxen do not compliment the spread of things your deck does or has to cover.

@blindtherapy said in [UNF] Water Gun Ballon Game:

magic continues to only have 5 colors.

Wow. They really need to figure out their sh#t if they want to keep printing 35 sets a year.

@blindtherapy said in [UNF] Water Gun Ballon Game:

this is a bad preview render, like the commander card that was previewed as 'when a creature dies' rather than 'when a creature an opponent controls dies'. all the actual printed copies will have the little foil acorn that differentiates the eternal-legal parts of the set from the purely un-cards.

Not sure why you say that, there are preview cards both with and without the acorn logo. This was an Un-card in past sets but it looks like they are making it legal for eternal as it really does nothing that cannot be done in a normal magic game at this point. Nothing in that article made me believe this is a misrendering.

Surprise! Some cards in the next Un set are officially legal in eternal formats (see here). They have not shown much yet, and even less that is relevant, but this caught my eye as a cheap token generator for a storm or xerox style deck. My guess is you would rather pay 2 for Pyromancer for 5 1/1s instead of 1 5/5, but being colorless and an artifact may have it's benefits as well.

Welcome to our brave new magic world everyone!

@marland_moore I normally give oddball cards the benefit of the doubt, as maybe they will have a corner cases where they can show up as a 1 of for situational use.

I just do not see that here even with saga being the card that it is.

@marland_moore said in [VOW] Kaya, Geist Hunter:

This card will not see play in Vintage unless someone really commits to make construct tokens, but I think it has potential.

If I am putting a 1WB walker in my deck, why would I ever pick this over Kaya, Orzhov Usurper? Even in token based decks where this is engineered to be good to its maximum potential, I fully believe that the old Kaya is more relevant to most game states you may see it in.

@blindtherapy I mean this is a side grade in the same way that all 1 mana grave hate artifacts are. It is probably more of a side grade to soul guide lantern than relic to be honest.