@ChubbyRain to say "And I'm sorry, if your deck folds to Mental Misstep, it's probably not a very good deck to begin with." is a bit unfair. Single hate cards can foil otherwise good decks.

For example if you followed legacy around the time Mental Misstep was banned in legacy, the High Tide deck started being a real player for quite a bit of time. It would not be fair to call that deck bad - it just struggled to fight through one specific heavily played hate card.

I like constant reevaluation of meta games. We could swing the whole process the other way. Many of the great 1-drop cards on the restricted list were put there before the printing of Misstep. Maybe since this car exists, they unrestrict fastbond, mystical tutor, imperial seal, or demonic consultation.

Having the conversation is, in my opinion, healthy...

Let me start by saying Mental Misstep:

• Is not broken
• Does not fit the guidelines for (vintage) restriction
• Vintage is in a pretty good place

That said, Misstep is by far my least favorite unrestricted card. I am a brewer at heart and Misstep does impact my ability to brew a consistently competitive deck.

While there is a good variety of viable decks, there are really only two viable castable archetypes right now - counter spell based deck or lock based decks. The other decks either don't have to cast spells to win (Bazaar decks) or only need to land a single spell (Oath decks)

With Misstep so heavily played, any deck trying to fight outside these spaces need to give up their opportunity cost of using limited early mana to progress their board state with one drops while the Misstep deck can progress their board state without need to use that limited early mana.

This keeps out more than just the more common known decks like welder decks, crop rotation decks, or ritual decks. It also stops yet to be proven potential decks like infect, non-prison zoo, and skull clamp decks.

The good news is that with the benefit of the rise of Survival Salad, Misstep has even fewer good targets. If the meta shifts enough that Misstep is dead more often, the number of copies will shrink. It looks as if this is already happening.

The one thing I think we can agree on is that we won't all agree. I will forever desire for shifting metas. Others like as little change as possible. Neither is absolutely right. Unless WOTC decided to start banning Vintage the same way they do Modern, I'll have to settle with playing decks that I am less excited about. At the end of the day, these are still pretty fun games - even if I feel the deck is stale.

@Hrishi I agree. No need to ban anything but I'd like them to take some stuff off.

I loved part 1 (and I'm sure I'll love the rest). I also look forward to the printed version. Thank you for putting this together.

Thank you for the thoughts. I guess I look at sportsmanship through the vein on American Football. When you are up and there is seconds left in the game, you take a knee. You don't try for a superfluous TD. I also don't feel like the losing team should just walk off the field once they know they are out of it. They line up and finish the game despite knowing they cannot win.

I probably should just scoop. It will likely always be a pet peeve of mine. Attacking me for 20 or 120 give you the exact same win and I do feel like it is showboating. To be fair, my response was a bit immature so I have some lessons I can learn myself.

I've had a trend of opponents that continue to xerox out pyromancer/mentor tokens when they have an attacking win on the board. Yesterday, this happened twice while I was empty handed so there was no threat that I could do anything to win the game.

I tend to play to a win, so I'll scoop with an attacking win or a demonstrated combo loop, but I expect people to win when they are able. I don't feel like I should have to scoop because they want to see how many tokens they can make. It's a waste of my time. Am I in the wrong here to be upset that these opponents don't just win the game?

Good Luck and Have Fun Everyone!!!

@garbageaggro It just didn't work out this year so I have to miss it. I would have loved to be there.

I'm pretty excited about the format. I built a group of 8 that fit both "premodern" and "middleschool" rules. In general in casual formats like this, I'm not super interested in combo which is really the only thing these banned lists are for (with a few exceptions). It's not like there is a super competitive scene where you need to win an event. I just got to build some of my favorites from history:

• Sligh
• Stompy
• U/G Madness
• U/G Control (Adrian Sullivan Style)
• Zombie Clerics
• Song of Blood Aggro
• Slivers
• Goblins

Should be a blast!

Contempt is pretty strong. More indifference from me right now. I share some of the same views made above.

I do feel like vintage has been muddled with the other formats. Many vintage decks are essentially just modern/legacy decks with power. It was not that long ago when vintage decks did not look like decks from any other format.

I don't like a lot of the cards printed recently, especially G.probe, Dig, and Mental Misstep.

Misstep greatly limits my ability to brew which is part of what fuels my fun in an environment.

I don't hate blue, but I do dislike that WOTC gave up on the balancing aspect of blue which was supposed to be poor creatures. Instead, blue has the highest percentage of best creatures among the elite creatures (Delver, Snapcaster, True-name, V.Clique all make my top ten list for best creatures).

Mostly though I am just not that interested in the competitive decks at the moment. I would love for something to shake up the environment in a different way. While PO is fairly new, all it really did was replace storm in the meta so it feels similar. Hollow One just made Dredge competitive again but it's essentially the same deck. I want something that shakes the format up a bit but is not so broken that it's just a short term meta that will be fixed via B&R. I'm not sure what that would take. I think the most obvious way to do this is drastic changes to the current B&R either with a lot of removals or additions, or with some rules changes (like banning instead of restricting) These are very controversial and would bring a bunch of discord. Eventually the meta will shift. It always does and when it does, I'll play more vintage.