June 2006 Banned/Restricted Announcement

[Spiderman]

June 2006

Aaron Forsythe Explains

No real impact, just MTGO Prismatic Bannings, really.

 

[Nightstalkers]

So in other words they decide to stick with thinning out the online game formats and leave the older formats alone.

 

[orgg]

"fairing out" the online formats.

They do run tournaments of those formats.

 

[Nightstalkers]

Sure they do, but they're trying to take care of the newer or gimmick formats that they've started.

 

[Ransac]

"Bannes/Restricted"? Something tells me Spiderman is trying to learn the "World Keyboard"


Ransac, cpa trash man

 

[Oversoul]

I'm not sure how tournaments have been going, but I'm fairly content with this. I don't think any changes should be made to the Vintage restricted list. There are still some cards that I think should leave the Legacy banned list, maybe not all at once, but at least one of the following should be unbanned in Legacy...

Mind over Matter
Land Tax
Worldgorger Dragon

MoMa isn't going to create any new decks that are competitive and it won't make High Tide dominate. It would probably be too expensive for High Tide. Land Tax would strengthen white-heavy control decks that are already underpowered compared to more blue-heavy control decks. But again, it wouldn't dominate and might not even shake the metagame up at all. Worldgorger Dragon would be the most dangerous because it could lead to a new (competitive) combo deck. But with no Entomb or Bazaar of Baghdad, the deck would probably be stuck with Intuition or Buried Alive, which is much less scary.

And I'm wondering if perhaps Time Vault should be banned as a precaution. I haven't heard of it winning any tournaments, but I'd rather have it thrown on the banned list without ever finding out (just like every other card that started out on the banned list for Legacy) than see tournaments dominated by decks containing multiple copies of a $60 card.

 

[TomB]

Didn't they fix Time Vault?!?!?

 

[Oversoul]

Yeah, back in 1994 or so. But it's not infinite turns that would be the problem. It's infinite damage with Flame Fusillade. I haven't heard of anyone actually using it to win a tournament. But if there is a danger of it actually being a tier one deck (and I don't know that there ever will be), Time Vault is less accessible than any other staple in any other competitive deck in Legacy.

 

[TomB]

I don't get it:

Flame Fusillade:
Until end of turn, permanents you control gain “Tap: This permanent deals 1 damage to target creature or player.”

Time Vault:
Time Vault comes into play tapped.
Time Vault doesn’t untap during your untap step.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may untap Time Vault. If you do, put a time counter on it and you skip your next turn.
Tap, Remove all time counters from Time Vault: Take an extra turn after this one. Play this ability only if there’s a time counter on Time Vault.

So how does this work to create infinite damage?

 

[Oversoul]

What? There was nothing about an upkeep before. I guess they changed it AGAIN (Time Vault certainly has had more errata than any other card I can think of). On one hand, it solves any problems about that combo being used too much in Legacy, but on the other hand, I'd much rather see the card be in danger of banning than be literally useless. It seems as though every time something is printed that might possibly make Time Vault playable, the card gets errata'd.

Anyway, it looks like the upkeep thing wasn't added until April, so I'm almost sure it was done because of Flame Fusillade...

 

[Ransac]

The upkeep thing has been there for a while. Even I remember when that happened.


Ransac, cpa trash man

 

[Oversoul]

Well, I remember that is wasn't there when Flame Fusillade came out, and Crystalkeep seems to indicate that it was last changed in April...

 

[orgg]

It was about a month and a half ago they erratta'd it and things similar to it, such as Brass Man.

 

[Oversoul]

It was about a month and a half ago they erratta'd it and things similar to it, such as Brass Man.

So they did! I guess that's too bad about Brass Man--he's back to being little more than a wall...

So they basically cleaned up all the old cards that had activated abilities originally only intended to be used once each turn by changing them to having triggered abilities instead?

 

[Spiderman]

Sounds like it. And that's not a bad thing, having cards go back to working as they were intended.

 

[Oversoul]

Sounds like it. And that's not a bad thing, having cards go back to working as they were intended.

I consider it a mixed blessing. It cleans things up, which is good. But it hurts the handful of people that might have been using Brass Man as a modified Horseshoe Crab. I'm not sure how many people might have actually been doing that (I wasn't--I prefer the real Horseshoe Crab). Probably not many.

The Time Vault thing seems to be the biggest impact out of those errata, but I don't think people really want to be smacked for infinite damage by a card that they couldn't come close to affording themselves...

Alas, poor Time Vault. Will they make it totally impossible to break you?

Say, we should try to break Time Vault under its current state, which is crappier than ever before...

 

[DarthFerret]

What is its current state? can it still be animated? if so, then Jandors Saddlebags will give you infinite turns...

 

[Ransac]

That can be our new mission, since the Build-A-Decks are on hold (while we're waiting for these games to play out). ALL IN FAVOR FOR BREAKING TIME VAULT?!?!



Ransac, cpa trash man

 

[orgg]

You still have to skip a turn to be able to get a turn. Jandor's Saddle Bags don't work.

 

[Spiderman]

Oversoul: Well, yeah, of course it "hurts" the people who have been "mis-using" it. But since that's not how it was intended to be played/used, I can't really see them complaining about it.