Banned/Restricted List for June 2008

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Here

Brainstorm is restricted
Flash is restricted
Gush is restricted
Merchant Scroll is restricted
Ponder is restricted
Probably will have to wait until Friday for Devin Low's explanation :)
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Not much of an explanation from Friday

(from Mike Turian)

Merchant Scroll tutors for the most powerful cards. Likewise the access power of Brainstorm and Ponder make finding the powerful restricted cards in a deck too easy.
Gush returns to the restricted list. Last year, we removed four cards from the Vintage Restricted list. Of those cards only Gush has proven problematic as a free card-drawing instant.
 
M

Modus Pwnens

Guest
I guess wizards wants to involve a bit more luck in the format..
 

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
Second worst only to the artifact lands :rolleyes:

I had a conversation with some players about this the other day. We agreed that this was good for the game. It makes players think about playing different cards. Personally, I'm sick of seing vintage decks that have to play the same 25 cards before you consider what deck you want to play. I love blue and all, but I'm pretty sure that the world will go on without these cards.


Ransac, cpa trash man
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
What are those 25 cards? I don't know anything about the vintage environment.
Are blue decks dominating the landscape?
Are most other search/draw cards restricted or banned?
 

Ransac

CPA Trash Man
I exaggerated to make a point. It just seems like a fair number of cards are predetermined if I want to play my favorite color (blue), which just takes a lot of fun out of the game.

Ransac, cpa trash man
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
It's just the nature of blue, since card drawing and countering are blue's main domains... as is most search cards.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Restricting Brainstorm won't make blue less prevalent. Mana Drain decks won't be bothered by it. This only hurts combo decks.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
That explanation didn't really explain anything. They pretended that the format revolved around Yawgmoth's Will. It's an awesome card, but the decks that use it frequently kill without it and they face strong competition from decks that don't use it. I mean, Workshop decks and Mana Drain decks still exist, and for a while it was just them and storm decks. Now we also have Flash decks, Oath decks, MaskNaught decks, Dredge decks, Tog decks, and probably some other stuff I forgot about. The format was healthy and with two exceptions (I want to say only one, but I'll be safe and say two), I find every single one of these restrictions to be totally stupid. Soapbox time...

Major Jerkface said:
The Flash-Hulk deck needs just two mana plus two particular cards in hand (Flash and Protean Hulk) to win the game. The frequency of turn-one and turn-two kills this card enables exceeds other combo decks that have faced restrictions. While the Flash combo requires some other combo elements in your deck, its speed and consistency contribute to an overpowered deck. This deck has also been getting noticeably more powerful as extra sets are added. Future Sight added Summoner's Pact and Pact of Negation. Morningtide added Reveillark and an instant speed kill which allows the deck to use Pact of Negation on Turn 1 and then win on the second turn's upkeep. While Flash hasn't dominated to the same level of some of the other cards on this list, the ease and quickness with which it allows first and second turn kills means it is too powerful to leave unrestricted.
Flash I don't really care about. It was interesting, but for some reason, I'm apathetic as to whether it goes or stays. It doesn't seem to have domintated at all. It just makes for a solid deck that can compete with other first tier decks. This seems like a good thing to me, but for the sake of the argument, I'll pretend Flash decks are just too good and something needs to be done. There's just one small problem: earlier, this guy justified the restriction of blue card-finders because they're making it too easy to get Yawgmoth's Will (or Fastbond, but I'm assuming he's talking about the decks that use both and would prefer Yawgmoth's Win in most situations, but can also use Fastbond if circumstances call for it). If Flash decks are so dominant, how is Yawgmoth's Will being thrown around so much. Flash decks don't use it.

And if Flash truly is the problem, why restrict the other cards? Restricting Flash kills Flash decks as we know them. If we accept the premise that Flash is dominating, rather than simply winning its share of matches, then that invalidates the restrictions of the other cards. If Flash decks were dominating, which they weren't anyway, restrict Flash and be done with it. Restricting Merchant Scroll and Brainstorm too won't affect this.

One minute, it's the powerful blue searching cards that are the problem because they find Yawgmoth's Will so quickly, the next it's Flash that's the problem. Flash decks don't even use Yawgmoth's Will. This makes no sense.

Now, I one argument I can see being made (although it's stupid, in case you were wondering), is that combo decks in general are dominating, but if it's these blue card finders that are the problem, wouldn't restricting them and NOT Flash solve the problem. Restricting both is overkill. If ChannelBall were dominating in some hypothetical metagame, we'd expect Channel to be banned, but Fireball left alone, but we would certainly not expect BOTH cards to be banned.

Lying Scumbag said:
The most efficient unrestricted tutor in the format, Merchant Scroll was problematic even when it "just" acted as four more opportunities to get Ancestral Recall, Gush, a combo piece like Flash, or whatever countermagic was needed to force through your big turn. Merchant Scroll will continue to fetch Ancestral Recall or the likes of Mystical Tutor, which in turn will fetch other cards from the restricted list like Yawgmoth's Will, Tinker, and Time Walk, to name just a few. When Gifts Ungiven was restricted Aaron Forsythe wrote, "Powerful spells that tutor for a single card are generally restricted in this format." Merchant Scroll's flexible power to find cards on demand, including restricted cards, has led to increasing dominance in the format, so Merchant Scroll will be an exception to this principle no longer.
I don't even know how to rebut this because it relies on a scenario that doesn't exist. Merchant Scroll isn't even that good. Actually, I'm pretty sure most decks I've seen with it don't even use a full set anyway. Lots of decks use 1 or 2 copies and many decks that like to use blue card-searching don't even bother with Merchant Scroll. The idea of Merchant Scrolling into Mystical Tutor into Yawgmoth's Will is ridiculous. The whole notion is ridiculous. Come on people, we're talking about Merchant Scroll. It only finds instants! And they have to be blue! Am I in an alternate universe?

Most decks will be able to ignore this. It will probably only hurt a handful, and they won't be the decks that are the best now anyway, so this restriction is really pointless and it's just plain bad for the format.

Malicious Peon said:
Brainstorm has been under scrutiny as one of the most powerfully efficient cards in the format for many years, and has long teetered on the edge of restriction. For one mana, at instant speed, it fuels an unacceptable level of consistency and searching to dig out whatever is needed at the time, and it is particularly powerful in combination with the many shuffling effects in the format. Arguably the most efficient unrestricted card in Vintage prior to the June 1 announcement, it is stronger than many of the cards that have been restricted over the years instead of Brainstorm.

Furthermore, while Brainstorm is good in many decks, it is particularly powerful in combo decks. For one mana it finds combo elements that might have been as far as three turns away, while putting unneeded duplicate combo elements back on top of the deck. These decks often win before having to redraw those cards, or shuffle them away with effects like Onslaught's fetch lands. Restricting cards like Brainstorm, Ponder, and Merchant Scroll may also allow other cards to stay off the restricted list in the future now that they are harder to find so quickly.
Brainstorm is a utility card. I could use this rationale to argue for the restriction of ANY card a combo deck uses. Duress? Well, it's powerful, but it's really powerful in combo decks, where it can block the opponent's ability to stop the combo easily on the first turn. Dark Ritual? The mana boost is useful to any deck, but especially combo decks, where it can cut down on the number of lands needed to consistently get the combo, pay for powerful cards like Yawgmoth's Will by itself, increase the storm count, and (thanks to the fact that it's unrestricted), build up a large pool of black mana to fuel multiple restricted sorceries.

Pointing out that a card is good doesn't mean you've shown why it was restricted. Did I miss the part where everyone but me started hating Vintage so much they wanted to change it into a different format? Restricting Brainstorm nerfs Tendrils decks more than other first tier decks and makes everything else slower. This was supposed to be the format where decks get to be fast, the format where you get to use ALL of your cards, the format where the only cards restricted at all are the broken ones--you know, the ones that aren't Brainstorm?

Ugly Moron said:
While veterans of the format may agree or disagree about Brainstorm getting restricted, it probably comes as no surprise that it was at least considered. Ponder, on the other hand, would naturally raise more eyebrows. The reasoning behind this choice was overall health of the format. The increasing dominance of blue combo decks playing two to four copies of Ponder has demonstrated that in a Vintage context, Ponder's ability to filter to key powerhouses contributes an excessive consistency to blue combo decks and has become a significant factor in their overrepresentation. While Ponder is less efficient than Brainstorm, it is still very powerful in Vintage. Having the most efficient unrestricted deck manipulation card left in the format be a sorcery would inherently power up combo decks (which don't mind tapping mana on their own turn) while hurting the control decks (which really don't want to tap mana on their own turn) that are important for keeping the overall health of the format in balance.
Ponder? Do people use--Ponder? I mean, they can if they want to, I guess. I prefer cards that are actually good, but if you'd rather rely on luck, that's cool too, I guess.

Ooh, ooh, can we please get Snowfall restricted too? No one uses that either, but it's blue and we sure do like restricting blue cards.

There is one thing about this explanation that really bothers me though. According to this guy, with Brainstorm gone, Ponder would be a sort of replacement and would benefit combo decks more than control decks. And this is true. But the notion is then that after we've already restricted THREE other cards in order to weaken the dominance of combo decks, a weak potential replacement for one of them needs to go too, because combo is just that dangerous.

Some of us like combo decks. Sure, if they're completely dominating the metagame, that's bad, but then we fix the problem that's making them too good, not fix the problem AND fix other problems we don't have to keep them in check even more. The idea seems to be not that the metagame is unhealthy, but that we just don't like it and we want to change it from a fast-paced game with combo decks and control decks being in some sort of balance to a slower game with nothing but control decks. Vintage used to be like this and I got the impression that people didn't like it as much and were happy to see the pace change. But it kind of changed on its own because of some key new cards arriving and people coming up with new decks that altered the balance of power. It wasn't because the DCI said, "Let's shake the format up" and restricted or unrestricted a bunch of cards at once.

I was uneasy about the Trinisphere restriction because they were going after a card that wasn't dominating. But back then I never imagined that it would be this crazy.

Creepy Fellow said:
Gush and three other cards were unrestricted last year. As we announced at the time, the DCI knew this was something that would need to be watched carefully. At first this went well, but recently the Gush + Fastbond engine has proven to be unhealthy with an ever-increasing dominance in Vintage Top 8s. With Fastbond out, Gush plays as a 0-mana instant that draws two cards, adds Blue ManaBlue Mana to your mana pool, and costs 2 life. This often finds another deck manipulation spell that finds another Gush, then another Gush, creating an avalanche of free cards while gaining mana in the process. Increasingly, Vintage tournament results have demonstrated that decks can put this powerful engine together too reliably for the format to have good diversity.
Gush made GAT viable again. GAT competes with combo decks. Of course, after you neuter the combo decks, I guess you'd better take out the thing that would dominate without them. This restriction is entirely unnecessary and, once again, explaining that a card is good isn't the same as explaining its restriction. But in the context of the other restrictions, yeah, I guess I would be afraid of Gush.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I'm just curious, I thought you stopped playing Magic in real life. Do you still follow the Vintage scene?
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Short answer: I was following the format to a minor extent and after this last round of restrictions will probably stop entirely.

Long answer...

Not too much this year because I'd been busy with school. Also, some things kind of turned me off to the whole competitive scene. Specifically, I really disliked the Trinisphere restriction not so much because of the effects as because the rationale seemed to be that because Trinisphere made lockdown viable and some people couldn't stand being locked down, the card needed to be restricted. The Shahrazad ban was even worse because I had a soft spot for that card and the rationale there seemed even worse. More importantly, I've also realized that I probably won't be throwing out the kind of time and money I'd need to in order to actually compete in Vintage tournaments, which years past I'd had some hope of eventually doing. On the other hand, Gush being unrestricted, Flash becoming good (again), and storm combo catching up to control decks (in part thanks to the restriction of Gifts) changed things up and made the format more interesting and diverse. So I've tried to keep some track of what's stayed good and what's fallen by the wayside as well as what emergent decks are doing well in multiple tournaments. I've checked StarCityGames and TheManaDrain on occasion, read some articles, and mostly just browsed recently (I used to do more). I'm by no means an expert on the current state of Vintage or anything, but I've seen what's generally been doing well.

If it had been any one of these cards except Ponder, I would still have questioned it, but I wouldn't have been so critical, especially because I haven't been keeping up with Vintage all that much for the past several months. Part of what makes me more confident that I'm not missing anything too huge in my assessment is that it was all of these cards at once. Restricting Flash and Gush both at the same time is huge by itself because these restrictions don't attack similar problems at all. They're key cards in very different decks. I'm always wary of an action like this.

Merchant Scroll just doesn't make any sense. At least it probably won't affect the format much. But the combination of Brainstorm and Ponder is even more severe than the other restrictions. Brainstorm isn't a combo card. Combo decks use it because it draws cards. Control decks use it for the same reason. It's part of a small core of cards that are nearly ubiquitous and help control the pace and nature of the format. I'd put it in the same category is as Force of Will. But even disregarding all of this (and ignoring that we're already shaking up the format by restricting Flash and Gush), I can't accept that not only is Brainstorm so bad it needs to be restricted, but a card that's hardly ever used and could potentially serve as a crappy supplement for the loss of Brainstorm also needs to be restricted.

So while I may not be perfectly on top of the state of Vintage, for something this big, I don't need to be. It's so over the top it seems like a joke.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I'm just wondering because presumably, WOTC has been following the Vintage scene and is seeng something or a trend in decks to make these restrictions.
 
B

BigBlue

Guest
Oversoul: Tell us how you really feel!

I thought WotC didn't care much about Vintage anymore... so it's curious they would monkey with it so much.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
I'm just wondering because presumably, WOTC has been following the Vintage scene and is seeng something or a trend in decks to make these restrictions.
Then why didn't the explanations cover that trend? It would have been easy to do.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
What do you mean "cover that trend"? I assume they did when they mentioned the Flash-Hulk is gaining prominence, Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm, Ponder, and Gush must be used in sets of 4 in blue decks. Maybe that's a bad assumption :), but since they get the data from all of the tournaments, they must be seeing these elements dominate in the Top 8s.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
What do you mean "cover that trend"? I assume they did when they mentioned the Flash-Hulk is gaining prominence
So "gaining prominence" means "must be stopped"?

Merchant Scroll, Brainstorm, Ponder, and Gush must be used in sets of 4 in blue decks. Maybe that's a bad assumption :), but since they get the data from all of the tournaments, they must be seeing these elements dominate in the Top 8s.
That's true of Brainstorm. It's a 4-of in almost every deck using blue cards. But that's been true for a long, long time. There are other cards that turn up as 4-ofs pretty often often. Duress, Dark Ritual, Force of Will, Mishra's Workshop, and Mana Drain (oh, and also Gush), off the top of my head. Brainstorm might be the most prominent of these only because it's good it smoothes out every deck. It's not fueling turn 1 kill after turn 1 kill. It's taking hands that couldn't kill or couldn't gain control of the game and giving a better chance than other cards. So basically, it stabilizes decks.

If we're going to restrict cards just because they show up in a lot of decks, say goodbye to Underground Sea.

Gush shows up a lot because it's a very good card. But it's always been a good card. And it makes certain decks really powerful. GAT in particular really gets a lot of mileage out of Gush, and that's why Gush was originally restricted. But it was unrestricted because the environment changed to one that wouldn't be dominated by GAT. And the environment hasn't been dominated by GAT. It does well, but it has to struggle to compete with storm decks, Mana Drain decks, Workshop decks, Oath decks, etc.

Merchant Scroll and Ponder often don't even appear in full sets because they're filler, stabilizing decks, not as well as Brainstorm, but many decks want some redundancy in this aspect. I really don't buy the idea that the DCI knows exactly what would happen with Brainstorm restricted and so feels the need to restrict both Merchant Scroll and Ponder as well. That's too much of an extrapolation, no matter what the circumstances may be.

I've tried to be neutral with Flash. I mean, it's a new deck that arose because of a reverted erratum. But restricting it now really doesn't make sense, even with tournament data I haven't found or don't have access to, but is of vital importance in this decision (and yet was not mentioned in the explanation?), there's no "data" that could explain this. Here's why...

We're told that a core of "blue deck manipulation" makes "blue" combo decks too good. Presumably this is referring to storm combo, which has been one of the most powerful deck types. That's where some of these cards usually appear, and it might be where they're strongest. So we have Brainstorm, Merchant Scroll, and Ponder all restricted because storm combo (or at least some form of combo) is too dominant. In fact, it's so dominant that we need to restrict not just one card but three in order to stop it (so I guess that when Workshop Aggro wins a tournament, it's just a gigantic magical fluke that we can ignore).

The explanation about Gush only mentions its interaction with Fastbond. I'll admit that this can happen in combo decks, but those aren't the combo decks that are most prominent right now. The most successful deck to exploit the Gush/Fastbond engine is GAT. But really, it doesn't matter. If it's GAT that's the problem, when we were told that the other cards had to go because of dominant combo decks, that wasn't true. Restricting Gush alone would do the trick. And if it's Gush-reliant combo that's too good, restricting Gush would still solve the problem. Restricting Brainstorm and other cards is redundant.

And the rationale for restricting Flash is the Flash decks are dominant. If that's the case, then restricting Flash solves the problem.

Furthermore, not all three of these things can be true. We can't have storm combo, GAT, and Flash decks all dominating at the same time.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
<shrug> Dude, you're talking to the wrong guy. You need to be talking to Mike Turian and the other guy and asking them to explain the decision more in detail, as they presumably have more data and can back up their reasoning.

All I'm saying is that you're admittedly not up with the Vintage scene and so it sounds like your reasons are based off of what the scene was *when* you were up on it. Maybe you're not and basing them off of the latest tourneys, but again, WOTC has data on almost every reported tournament just for DCI points, if nothing else. They surely are seeing some trend somewhere; after all, these cards weren't unrestricted 3 months ago when the last decision was made.
 
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