Banned/Restricted List for June 2008

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
<sigh> This is really getting nowhere. Obviously neither of us is making each other see the other's view, it appears.
I'm thinking that you're convinced my "view" is more complicated than it might really be. That you've mentioned how up-to-date I am or asked about it so much seem to indicate that maybe I'm basing what I've said on the way things used to be. Is that right? As far as I can remember, things have never been quite this way before and it doesn't seem likely that past Vintage metagames are clouding my view of this. Now, not knowing all of the relevant tournament data or missing certain trends, that I'll certainly admit to. And I'll grant that the DCI has spent more time analyzing the situation before making this decision than I've spent on it. As I think you realize, the part about Brainstorm being the worst restriction ever, my comments about Trinsiphere, general policy, etc. has mostly been ranting. And yes, ranting from someone (me) who I wouldn't pay much heed to if I were in the DCI. Part of it's inspired by the fact that so many cards were restricted at once. Maybe some of it's left over from the Shahrazad ban. And the explanations this time around struck me as poor. It's not that I think the DCI doesn't care about Vintage (I agree with you that they do now, if not earlier). It's that even if the restrictions were well thought out, the explanations were not. It would have been easy to put something together that said more. Showing some statistics, citing how one deck would dominate if they'd only restricted one of the cards, so they had to restrict that more in order to fully balance things, explaining the direction they want to take the format, or anything really. There was so little substance in those explanations.

The one thing that's different is that central argument. The explanations rubbed me the wrong way because with each case except Ponder, the explanation relied on the premise that these cards were too dominant (with Ponder, it was more of a preemptive strike argument). And knowing that it's completely different archetypes relying on these cards (Flash relies on Flash and GAT relies on Gush, although many other decks use Gush) is enough to know that the explanations are, at least, not entirely truthful.

I already said that at the time, a good 90-95% of the top 8 decks in the tournaments at the time (as listed by the Duelist) were using Strip Mine and the Factory. Not 50%. Not 60%. 90-95%. No matter what theme or color the deck was. So yes, that makes it the vast majority.
Yeah, I was going to expand this part, but it got lost in my massive post. I'm aware that the vast majority of decks were using Strip Mine (and I'm not too surprised about Factory either, although I'm guessing that had that statistic only taken into account the decks using Strip Mine, rather than the decks using both cards, it would have been close to 100%). I was nitpicking that you gave vast majority as your definition of popularity when in something having a vast majority is more exclusive than just being popular. And I was also trying to point out that a card being popular or even being used in a vast majority of decks doesn't necessarily mean it will be restricted or banned.

Oh, and I just realized I should probably never have gotten on this topic in the first place. I mean, we were talking about Brainstorm, right? And it's used in almost every deck. But it's not comparable to Strip Mine, because if The Duelist was really bringing popularity into the explanation back then with Strip Mine, they certainly didn't do it this time with Brainstorm. There's one mention of "while Brainstorm is popular in many decks" and that's really just to note that even though it's used in control decks too, it's strongest in combo (which is like any other card really, but whatever). So there you go. Prevalence supposedly isn't the issue in this case, regardless of whether it was in the past or whether it should ever be.

Which is probably the root of our discussion here, as I guess I *did* take you as sort of an expert on the scene, when you DID play (I guess when you first came here?). If that understanding was totally false, then again I apologize for making that missumption (a new word!) and I guess that makes my concerns and assumptions I was making in this discussion totally off-base and false.
Ah. Not sure where that misunderstanding came from. Well, it might be because I write as though I think I know everything, but that's not (consciously) intentional and I certainly don't.

I was trying to make my post short but it appears that I shouldn't have. What I was trying to say there was that the quote I posted "out of context" was actually in context, and I was agreeing with you in that I don't vote for the same reason as you stated. It had nothing to do with the DCI or restrictions.
Man, I suspected that for a split second, but only because it seemed uncharacteristic of you. Like I said, if you'd been a new person I'd have instantly assumed you were trolling. And then for some reason I went back and still assumed you were taking me out of context. Well, sorry for ever doubting you, then. :eek:

Back to my ranting again because I'd forgotten about something...

It also occurs to me that the two powerhouse cards in this aside (Flash and Gush), we really have three cards restricted that might not have needed to be, even if one of them was going to be a problem. The explanations don't explicitly state that storm combo is the archetype these cards are making overpowered, but that seems to be the only candidate. Now what is necessary really depends on whether we restrict Flash and Gush. But if we do restrict Flash and Gush (which I would probably have been alright with), we take away some of the strongest opposition storm combo decks have, but we also weaken many of them substantially because they rely on Gush too. Now all the decks that weren't hurt by these restrictions are gunning for first tier.

For one thing, no one can completely predict what would happen. My guess would be that the decks facing the most problems from GAT would start to do a lot better, but I'm not even sure which decks had the weakest matchups against GAT anyway. But if we assumed, in advance, that storm combo would be dominant, why not just restrict Merchant Scroll along with those other two cards. Leave Brainstorm, the card that most decks use, and Ponder (the card that most decks don't use because it's crappier than Brainstorm and they don't need it) alone and restrict the one card storm combo decks use a lot, but other decks use very little.

And down the road, I highly doubt we'd be seeing storm combo dominate the rest of the metagame. If we did, well we could restrict Brainstorm then, but it would seem pretty unlikely.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Showing some statistics, citing how one deck would dominate if they'd only restricted one of the cards, so they had to restrict that more in order to fully balance things, explaining the direction they want to take the format, or anything really. There was so little substance in those explanations.
As this is also a common theme in your replies, like I said preveiously, the front page stuff at WOTC is not really the venue to go into deep explanations. I don't know how much interaction WOTC employees do with users on their forums, but that would be the first place to check, to see if Turian and others might be explaining about it more in depth. There could possibly be a deeper explanation and data for the restrictions that you are not looking for but solely relying on either the link which goes to the WOTC front page or second hand info from someone not involved in a discussion directly with WOTC.

And I was also trying to point out that a card being popular or even being used in a vast majority of decks doesn't necessarily mean it will be restricted or banned.
True, but I was trying to use the example of where popularity meant it DID actually get restricted. Admittedly, times were simpler then and there might have been different criteria overall when looking for the kind of card to be restricted though.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
True, but I was trying to use the example of where popularity meant it DID actually get restricted. Admittedly, times were simpler then and there might have been different criteria overall when looking for the kind of card to be restricted though.
But even at the time there were other popular cards that didn't get restricted. If popularity alone were enough, like I said, basic lands would have been gone a long time ago.
 
B

BigBlue

Guest
I'm not going to delve into the quagmire of this thread much more... I don't play the tourney scene or pay attention to it enough to care that much what WotC does these days... ages ago when I was a judge it mattered to me, but not anymore. :)

I do want to point some things I caught at the top of one post: "Vast Majority is necessarilly over 50%"....

I would like to state a couple things...

1) Vast is subjective... To me, it's an attempt to bring emotions into statistics and should be avoided whenever possible. Each person is the judge of what Vast means to them.
2) If it's a 2 choice question - majority is 50% or greater - so if we said a 10% spread was vast then 55-45 could be "vast". That's only 5% off from a pure split...
3) If it's a 3 choice question - majority isn't necessarilly 50%... This is what most polls offer: Choice A, Choce B, or No Opinion/I Don't Know... With these choices, the undecided choice bleeds away votes which if pressed would swing one way or the other - though those force votes. It's better to tally a No Opinion vote than to tally false votes in terms of accuracy.
4) Obviously, the trend continues and degerates quickly in terms of 4 or more choices...
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
BigBlue said:
1) Vast is subjective... To me, it's an attempt to bring emotions into statistics and should be avoided whenever possible. Each person is the judge of what Vast means to them.
Yes. I think I said something like this. But if I didn't, well, I do completely agree.

2) If it's a 2 choice question - majority is 50% or greater - so if we said a 10% spread was vast then 55-45 could be "vast". That's only 5% off from a pure split...
I don't think that's what most people would call "vast" but it is, after all, subjective.

3) If it's a 3 choice question - majority isn't necessarilly 50%... This is what most polls offer: Choice A, Choce B, or No Opinion/I Don't Know... With these choices, the undecided choice bleeds away votes which if pressed would swing one way or the other - though those force votes. It's better to tally a No Opinion vote than to tally false votes in terms of accuracy.
I think you're reading too much into this. No one's goal so far in this thread has been to develop a comprehensive metric for determining what constitutes a vast majority. In our particular case, there can't be a "no opinion/I don't know" because people either used Strip Mine or they didn't. And really, like I already said, I was nitpicking the conflation of "popular" with "vast majority." The important part was the vast majority of decks in late 1997 using Strip Mine, and I fully agree with Spiderman that this was the case.

4) Obviously, the trend continues and degerates quickly in terms of 4 or more choices...
Well yeah, that's why I invented the whole field of statistics. :p
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Oversoul said:
But even at the time there were other popular cards that didn't get restricted
Yes, but none as popular as the Strip Mine or Mishra's Factory. No other pair of cards (heck, even one card) had as much of a percentage of participation in top 8's in tournaments. Not even basic lands :)

There's popular and there's popular. The two above were the latter; i.e. "super-popular".

BB: I said "vast majority" mainly as a disclaimer for myself, since I can't remember the exact percentage. But since it was above 90%, that's definitely the majority (above 50%) and since it's almost 100%, the "vast" was tacked on as emphasis to it's almost perfect showing (and to show that it wasn't 55% or 75%).
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
Yes, but none as popular as the Strip Mine or Mishra's Factory. No other pair of cards (heck, even one card) had as much of a percentage of participation in top 8's in tournaments. Not even basic lands :)
Where are you getting that? Are you seriously saying that no one card has ever been in as many decks as the combination of both Strip Mine and Mishra's Factory in 1997? I highly doubt that. Strip Mine by itself (and even Factory by itself at some point) are certainly contenders, in part because they're colorless and in the case of Strip Mine could go into any deck. But another thing was that Strip Mine was running rampant everywhere because it fit into every deck. I remember one player writing about how not using Strip Mine was like not using Swords in a white deck or Bolts in a red deck. And that was in ANY deck. The tempo loss if you didn't use it and the opponent did was dangerous. And with Wasteland out, nonbasic lands that weren't one of the two would be completely hosed. It was degenerative. It was bad for the game.

I think that's why Strip Mine was restricted. I also think that for a card to reach that level of usage, it generally has to be doing something huge. The use in the vast majority of decks is symptomatic of the card's power. But it's not the problem.

But Brainstorm in 2008 wasn't as prevalent as Strip Mine in 1997. It was extremely popular. Workshop decks were still very good though, and they would go without Brainstorm.

But like I already said, even if Strip Mine had been banned only because it was being used so much (and I really don't believe that this was the case) and even if this was still the policy (I haven't seen any evidence that it is), the explanation didn't mention anything about that. It only mentioned that the card is used in a variety of decks, but it cited combo decks as problem. So I'm not sure where you're going with this Strip Mine thing, because even if you had some sort of proof that Strip Mine was analogous to Brainstorm, which you don't even seem to be claiming, it wouldn't matter because the explanation already gave a different reason for restricting the card.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Where are you getting that? Are you seriously saying that no one card has ever been in as many decks as the combination of both Strip Mine and Mishra's Factory in 1997?
No. I'm saying that at that time (which was around 1995 I believe), no other card was in as many decks as the combo. Not in 2008. Not in 1993. Not in 1997. At the same time. Which is why only those two were restricted at that time.

The whole reason why I brought it up is because I postulated that Brainstorm and the other blue cards were restricted because they were being used in 4 ofs no matter what the deck type if the deck was blue. And so far, nothing has been shown to the contrary, which is why this is still relevant.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
The whole reason why I brought it up is because I postulated that Brainstorm and the other blue cards were restricted because they were being used in 4 ofs no matter what the deck type if the deck was blue. And so far, nothing has been shown to the contrary, which is why this is still relevant.
Um, that's not true of the other blue cards though. Ponder and Merchant Scroll weren't even making it into a majority of blue decks. Gush was pretty hugely popular though. Flash was only being used in, well, Flash.

Also, see the explanation. That sure looks to the contrary. Where do you see anything that leaves room for "We restricted Brainstorm because it was being used in so many decks"? Don't you think if that were the case, Mike Turian would have said so right out, rather than talking about how easy the card makes it to find Yawgmoth's Will? Granted, I have already claimed that explanations he provided were pretty poor and even contradictory, but that doesn't mean I'm going to assume that there was an important "popularity" criterion he simply forgot to include in the explanation. And even without the explanation, there would be a lot of details making the idea that Brainstorm was restricted because it was in every blue deck shaky.

Dark Ritual shows up in nearly every black deck, but isn't restricted.

Mishra's Workshop shows up in every artifact-heavy deck, but isn't restricted.

Force of Will shows up in every control deck, but isn't restricted.

Past explanations for restrictions have focused on why the card was dominant or created an environment that was bad for the game, not on whether it was being used in every deck meeting certain qualifications. Popularity doesn't seem to be an issue, despite you raising an example of one card that was popular and which you also recall being restricted due to popularity based on something you read in a magazine a decade ago (so I can't verify it and even if I could, the game was completely different back then).
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Ponder and Merchant Scroll weren't even making it into a majority of blue decks.
Well, Ponder, yeah, apparently that was more a preemptive strike. But the Scroll seems like it could get a lot more than just the Will as it can get any instant, be it the Recall or a counter or whatever. And I may be reading more into why they got restricted. But due to the absence of any data showing otherwise, I'll go with the DCI.

Dark Ritual shows up in nearly every black deck, but isn't restricted.

Mishra's Workshop shows up in every artifact-heavy deck, but isn't restricted.

Force of Will shows up in every control deck, but isn't restricted.
Ah, but the first two *were* at one point restricted. Times have changed that they got unrestricted, but that's not to say that they're on the watchlist now in case times change again.

despite you raising an example of one card that was popular and which you also recall being restricted due to popularity based on something you read in a magazine a decade ago
I said it before and apparently it needs saying again: I actually lived through it because they were in my tourney deck at the time. The reason why I remember it so clearly is because it affected me directly. The only reason why it was in a magazine is because the Net didn't have the power it does today and the Duelist was pretty much the only source of info you could get about WOTC back then.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
Which is why only those two were restricted at that time.
I know you said it was for a short time, but I can find several online sources all giving the same dates for Strip Mine's restrictions. It was restricted on January 1st, 1998. These same sources give no such details for Mishra's Factory. It doesn't appear to have ever been banned or restricted in Vintage. And I'd checked to make sure that other cards which were restricted and then unrestricted still have dates. They do. Maybe all of these websites got their data from the same source though, and there were some omissions, including the restriction of the Factory. So I'm not sure yet, but I'm having doubts. It's a pity the DCI homepage doesn't have scans of the old Duelist issues. That would make this easy...

Trying to waybackmachine some old Magic sites to see if any of them have 1998 restricted lists, but so far nothing's come up...
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Spiderman said:
Well, Ponder, yeah, apparently that was more a preemptive strike. But the Scroll seems like it could get a lot more than just the Will as it can get any instant, be it the Recall or a counter or whatever. And I may be reading more into why they got restricted. But due to the absence of any data showing otherwise, I'll go with the DCI.
Get what Will? Force of Will? That's not what people use it for. And yeah, it can get any blue instant, but it's always been able to do that. You're just saying that the card does and always has done. What data would you want me to show, anyway?

Ah, but the first two *were* at one point restricted. Times have changed that they got unrestricted, but that's not to say that they're on the watchlist now in case times change again.
Dark Ritual restricted? You've already got me digging around for evidence that Mishra's Factory was restricted and I still haven't found any. Are you absolutely positive that Dark Ritual was restricted?

And this doesn't even have anything to do with my point. Mishra's Workshop was indeed restricted back when the environment was so different that the comparison is irrelevant, but it's not restricted now and it's being used a lot. It's used in basically every artifact-heavy deck because the mana boost is so great for artifacts. But it's not restricted. There are many cards that make themselves so useful in certain decks that they're almost always included. Brainstorm was this way for a wide range of decks.

My point was that this wasn't grounds for restricting cards in the past (you know like a year ago, or two years ago or three years ago--even if you have perfect understanding of a decade ago, the game was so different then, it just doesn't matter) and it doesn't appear to have affected any other popular cards other than Brainstorm (and Gush to some extent, but Gush was also broken and had extremely powerful synergy with Psychatog and Fastbond).

Besides, we do have that explanation. You know, the one that talks about combo decks and NOT the percentage of decks Brainstorm was being used in?

I said it before and apparently it needs saying again: I actually lived through it because they were in my tourney deck at the time. The reason why I remember it so clearly is because it affected me directly. The only reason why it was in a magazine is because the Net didn't have the power it does today and the Duelist was pretty much the only source of info you could get about WOTC back then.
Yeah, but that just illustrates how long ago it was. Don't forget, I was playing Magic then too (but not tournament Magic, to be fair). Times have changed, Spidey.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
but I can find several online sources all giving the same dates for Strip Mine's restrictions. It was restricted on January 1st, 1998/
Crystalkeep does indeed list the 1998 date for Vintage, but 1996 for Legacy and Standard, of which I must be remembering (I did note earlier that I couldn't remember the format since everything was in flux back then).

I can't find the Factory being banned or restricted though also so I am humbled.

Dark Ritual restricted?
Indeed, right here

Times have changed, Spidey.
Yes, I believe I said that too earlier.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
The link you posted was for when Dark Ritual was banned in Extended (not Vintage). I remember that one quite clearly. I wasn't playing Extended, but I knew a lot of people who were and they were universally surprised that Dark Ritual got the axe instead of Necropotence. A lot of players flipped out over that one...
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
<sigh> I'm going to stop talking then. Apparently I remember stuff, just the wrong stuff when it applies to our discussion :)
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Interesting that they came back and addressed this now. I kind of forgave them anyway after the September unrestrictions.

I find it odd that he groups decks into Dark Ritual decks, Mishra's Workshop decks, Bazaar of Baghdad decks, and Force of Will decks. The Vintage community has used categories like that, but with Mana Drain decks, not Force of Will decks. Mana Drain decks always used Force of Will anyway, but Mana Drain is the card they use to power out spells and it's what makes them so powerful. Dark Ritual and Misha's Workshop, which have been the other two competing strategies, are both cards that produce mana, just like Mana Drain. And it's quite possible for a non-Drain deck to use Force of Will. They do, in fact. Aggro decks that use Null Rod to shut down control and combo also pack Force of Will. I don't think I've seen it in a while, but Dark Ritual-based combo decks have also used Force of Will. Mana Drain seems a much better indicator of archetype, whereas Force of Will, a card that blue-heavy aggro or combo decks might use to protect their bombs used to define an archetype would cause the "Force of Will deck" group to bleed into the other groups. But that's just me being crazy about classification. It doesn't have anything to do with restrictions (except that it makes this guy sound like he doesn't know what he's talking about).

Alright, so there's this claim...

The first was that Force of Will decks were much, much stronger than decks built around Mishra's Workshop, Bazaar of Baghdad, and Dark Ritual. The second issue was that Brainstorm and Ponder had a homogenizing effect on Vintage blue decks. Once you put four Force of Will, four Brainstorm, four Ponder, a bunch of restricted cards, and some mana sources in your deck, there simply isn't much room to put in anything else. This meant that the differences between different Force of Will decks were usually very small, and that hurt the format's variety.
Well, I'm going to ignore the Bazaar strategies because they're newer. Bazaar only became a powerhouse for the first time in quite a while after the introduction of some newer cards. It's possible that Mana Drain decks being so powerful was holding Bazaar decks back, but there are too many extenuating factors.

As for the other two categories, Shop decks and Ritual decks were still quite strong before June. And let's not rewrite history. Brainstorm was cited as a problem because it supposedly helped combo (Ritual) decks more than other decks. And Ponder was because it was feared that without Brainstorm, combo decks would have an advantage. They can't go back and pretend that it was actually "Force of Will" decks (Mana Drain decks) that they were trying to weaken when they specifically stated that combo was the problem. Okay, so there was also Gushbond combo, but it certainly wasn't dominant and had it been, restricting Gush took care of it anyway. Speaking of which, there's also that bit about "Force of Will" decks all being so similar. Doesn't Gushbond combo play completely differently from GAT? Oath? Control Slaver? But I do concede the point about a lot of decks having the same sort of skeleton of blue spells. I maintain that the prudent course of action, should this be considered degenerate, would be the restriction of the one worst offender, rather than choosing four cards from this skeleton (and one that is arguably outside it, since Ponder was only used in some of these decks) and restricting them.

The developers believed that restricting Flash, Gush, and Merchant Scroll would mitigate the first problem because they were the key pieces to the most powerful Force of Will decks. They considered restricting only Brainstorm to solve the second problem, but Ponder was strong enough that many players who did not play Ponder before would just replace their Brainstorms with Ponders and the situation would be similar. Therefore, they chose to restrict both cards instead despite how odd it felt to restrict a card as innocuous as Ponder.
If they believed that restricting Flash, Merchant Scroll, and Gush would mitigate the problem, why also restrict Brainstorm and Ponder? This is pretty similar to my criticism from last year when this announcement was actually made, but it's like this paragraph is tailored to bring it up again without actually addressing it.

Also, better players than me have made the argument that with Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll restricted, Flash isn't a threat. That didn't get addressed either.

In the end, even though restricting Brainstorm and Ponder looked strange, it accomplished our goals for Vintage because it forced blue players to make meaningful decisions about what cards they would play with their Force of Wills. Many players have chosen Mana Drain and Thirst for Knowledge. Others have experimented with Intuition and Accumulated Knowledge. Some players are willing to play four Force of Wills with as few as seventeen blue cards in their deck and accept the inconsistency that this invites. Any of these decisions is meaningful, and the format is much more diverse even within the blue decks.
Wait, Mana Drain? The rest of this seems fair, but Mana Drain? Decks were either using it or not.

Is it just me or did this not clarify anything? Oh well.
 
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