Are you sure you're using the word "meta" correctly? Against what field would this become a good call?

If it's so important to you to be able to topdeck the 1 Tinker to get out a Trike, why not run some Trikes?

If with 5cStax your answer to Chalice locking out your bombs is to Bazaar them away, why not run more Bazaars, and then just play Uba?

My point about the manabase is mostly in regards to the mirror. Sure, if no one's putting pressure on your manabase, you can probably chug along with Gemstone Mines under 2Spheres all day long, but we're talking about theoretical optimization. It just seems to me that with 5c you end up cutting the best cards in the deck for cards that end up...tutoring up copies of the cards you cut back on.

At this point I, personally, would not run a Workshop deck that ran less than 4 Bazaars. 5c Uba is an option, but understand how important Barb Rings can be. By switching away from Mono R Uba you're cutting four removal effects right off the bat. And then, what are you cutting? Are you cutting Smokestacks? Then you end up short on removal effects, and you end up having to compensate, when you could just go back to Smokestacks and Rings in the first place. If you're not cutting Smokes then what exactly are you cutting?

Encroach pwned my face so hard. Although I really should have mulled that hand anyways, but to some extent that's what I get for not playing for like three years, and it's not like it wouldn't beat up a 6 card hand too. In any case, props for the proxied Encroaches! Card is some serios loltastically svg tech.

Anyways, good games all around. It was great meeting people. Pretty tough driving from Nashville and arranging all of that, but if this happens again I think I'll try to make it.

-August "Weird A Name" Desmond

The short of it is if you're running Spheres a 5c manabase will fall apart on you, and you lose the removal qualities of Barb Ring, which makes you want to run things like Powder Keg that I'm not really a fan of at this point. On the other hand you're also cutting consistent pieces for random brokenness; DT is pretty lame if you can't cast Tinker in the same turn. I think I'd rather have another Sphere there or something so I'm sure they don't slip out of the lock next turn. And adding anything broken to Tinker for will stress the curve; you might randomly draw it when you can't cast it. Crop Rotation and Fastbond are cool but that's two card slots vs a stable manabase. Ultimately you have to ask what you're cutting, and if it's worth losing not just utility of those slots but also the solidity of the mono red base.


Here's my stance on Karn. Right now, decks are running very low amounts of power, which means quickly wrecking their Moxen is a lower priority; however, being able to do so is somewhat important. When Chalice at 1 is such a common play, when you're only running 2 Mox Monkeys understand that it'll seem like at least half the time you draw one, it'll be after you've locked yourself out of casting it. Karn on the other hand allows you to switch roles, and turns a soft lock into a 1 turn clock. At worst he also is a huge body, and can stop the offense of a Q Dryad as well as the other guy's Tinkered out Sundering Titan. I'm honestly considering adding the third one myself.

Really, whatever else people had to say about him, Legend brought the lols.

Personally I dropped the Oxidize pretty quick. I hated seeing it and never Wished for it. I would just stick to the R+R and Grudges.

I'm getting back into Magic again, and while before I played 1.5, I'm pretty exclusively doing type 1 now. The only problem is that there are basically no tournaments; it's hard to find anyone to playtest with, for that matter. I plan on driving 3-4 hours to a couple Mox tournaments in October and we'll see if I can get in on some small local things in the meantime, but I think when the only tournaments are in New England everyone else just goes blah.

Personally I don't prioritize Library in the same slot as another basic. I either run the 2nd basic main (over the 6th fetch or something) or I don't. I would still consider Library to be in the same slot as an off-color mox. Ultimately, I use it as a colorless mana source that happens to randomly activate into awesome mode and be an uncounterable engine. If all it does is cantrip, then you still used a cantrip, and have an extra random mana source on the table.

I agree that Library isn't what it used to look like; but it's still the same card. I just don't emphasize it as an engine over whatever gameplan happens to be most useful. Usually the opportunity to abuse it becomes obvious; the rest of the time you should just try not to force a gameplan that won't work for the moment. I've had at least one game against Stax where they didn't find a Waste for my LoA fast enough and I just ripped through my deck and raced out of their soft lock. That may be anecdotal but the fact that it's another mana source that can also help win you the game should be what is understood about Library.

10 years ago or so it was probably powerful as Yawg Will, and far more important in the control mirror. Some people might now be underwhelmed by it, recalling that legacy. However, so long as you're not still stuck in that mindset, Library should still prove its utility.

There was, in fact, a reason. Please address it or cease with your apocalyptic rhetoric.

Glix and Gexzilla, your arguments are still centered around power levels. That is not the issue. The fact is that there is an effect that the card produces that you are admitting to forcing you to start CONCEDING GAMES because of an arbitrary time restraint; this is especially strange in light of the fact that you are arguing that the proper strategic play is to concede to an admittedly lesser deck. The DCI wants to keep the matches functioning as reasonably as possible, and the only time this would be an issue is with unreasonable play or specifically with Shahrazad. The only way to arbitrate against Shahrazad's match stalling is to ban it.

No one is arguing that Shahrazad is "broken." The fact is that it screws up the very structure of a match by creating more and more and more games; your only option, in the interests of time constraints, is to lose. Frankly that seems stupid. I don't know that Shahrazad is a problem and I wasn't previously of the opinion that it needed to be banned, but it always seemed so strange anyways, so I guess I'm not opposed to it.

Would you rather Shahrazad had become a staple in some deck before they banned it? Would that have pleased the collectors more?

There hasn't really been a counter-argument to the reason they banned it. That's not the same as there being no "good reason" to do so.

Also, comparing the fact that it may be "good strategy" to concede a subgame to using Brainstorm EOT? That's crazy! You Brainstorm EOT because you decide to; it's how your deck operates, and you're leisurely allowing the opponent to play through their turn before you decide how to prioritize the cards in your hand. You then proceed with the rest of the game having used a solid cantrip to improve card quality. This is not something that is inherently disruptive to the very structure of the match. On the other hand, some random guy shows up with 4 Shahrazad/4 Burning Wish.dec and drags out 27 games in a match and forces you, the player of the better deck, to start conceding games just because 27 is a big number and 50 minutes suddenly don't seem very long, and you think that's just fine?

You're seriously going to have to do better than that to just compare a cantrip to a card that can create more than 24 extra games in a single match. Whatever.

I think the issue is that while you do certainly have the choice of simply conceding the subgames in the interests of time constraints, you should not HAVE to do so.

The fact that the card has not been notably abused is not really indicative of anything in particular. Sometimes it takes time, or new elements in the card pool, for some niche cards to find a home. Though I agree that Shahrazad is not a card to be particularly concerned about regarding power level, that was not the argument I understood from their end. Their concern seems to be regarding the practicality of trying to force a possible 8 (or more! 4 shahrazad + 4 burning wish + death wish?) subgames per game and thus a possible 27+ games per match in a typical 50 minute round.

In any event it seems to me that that angle is what you have to address when discussing the legality of the card.

lolz. I remember Nobel Panthar!

Always thought that pic was funny because it looks like there's still a Lotus on the board so you're not technically "tapped out" but you are still t3h decked!

Man, I remember old The Deck lists with the 1 Feldon's Cane (it was restricted, if I recall)...take that, nobel panthar!

Seriously though, didn't the guy type it like "nobel" or something? Or am I thinking of when people started running everything funny through a 12-year-old AOL kid translator? (Long live t3h berserked 2g!)

Hm. Bazaar I think. I'm partial to AN myself.

French WB Mana Vault or S Chinese Portal Mountain Goat?

Doesn't everyone (those who splash red) play with the REB main?

In any case you seem to be arguing that Mr Menendian deliberately crafted a metagame with his influence for the purpose of personally exploiting it. Basically you would have to show how the metagame is artificial; in your mind, is GAT really so bad that people shouldn't be playing it?

While I don't take issue with the bulk of your argument regarding Scroll's power level, you are technically incorrect here; in fact, the reverse of this statement is true. Only if you want to get purely technical are you using two cards; two are in the decklist that you have now seen, two are in the graveyard when the dust settles. As a practical concern, however, your hand size has not diminished by two - it has diminished by one, just as if you had cast Ancestral.

A card that replaces itself does not cause card disadvantage. Saying Merchant-> Ancestral is -2 +3 is like saying a resolved Brainstorm is -1 to hand size.

I cast Merchant. While it is resolving, I have lost a card. When it resolves, it is replaced by Ancestral; I have lost, and then gained one card. -1 + 1 = 0. You use one card to get one card to get three cards. (-1 +1) = 0 -1 +3. Merchant for Ancestral is the same as Ancestral itself in terms of raw card advantage.

On the other hand you only have one Ancestral, so in a way, you can't really say you're playing with four Ancestrals; you are playing with four ways to find it, but hardly for free, and if it's countered, or after it's cast, it's gone, and if your opponent gets one off, you can't very well dig for another to top them. I don't really see how Demonic for Ancestral is the most broken play to be worried about. In a way that play itself is restricted, as it were. There's a powerful level of consistency to be measured but 1 Ancestral/4 Scroll is not the same as the 4/4 Gush/Scroll core. I think Ancestral should be measured on its own, certainly as a related, but ultimately separate issue. It sort of takes more than just Ancestral to justify a multitude of Scrolls; the option to Merchant for Echoing Truth isn't all that dangerous on its own. Remember that you can't just get any answer you want with it, and just understand that what it really gives is flexibility; we're not talking about an LED or Ancestral type card, even if it would ultimately benefit the format as a whole for Scroll to be restricted.

In the end regarding the b/r list I definitely agree on -Fact +Flash. I'm not sure about Scroll and the DCI has assured us that Gush is safe, so I'm willing to wait on these issues. I know that Fact is a very powerful engine, but I don't see it negatively impacting the format; I don't expect to see a deck with 4 Gush 4 Fact, as Fact suits itself to a different sort of core, so I don't see any direct critical mass issues or anything. As more cards are released, there will be a measurable power creep and with today's card pool I would like to see a mix of control decks using Fact at least as long as we have Gush, so that there is a pointedly significant reason not to "just play Gush" or whatever, if that were the argument.

The heart of the issue is that Scroll is not the card that makes Flash decks dangerous. Flash is a deck that consistently asks "FoW or no?" by the end of their turn 2 every game, and even if you answer yes you probably still lose. Changing the deck by -3 Scroll alone will not slow down the deck, at least not in a way that one would think in terms of a combo deck that still only needs to cast a 2cc spell once to win the game. The deck feels cheap, and it's not like there aren't enough tutors in this format to augment the loss of Scroll. I still wouldn't like seeing it at tournaments, no matter what you did with +/- 3 slots to its tutor core.

To be honest I'm considering running more REBs maindeck in GAT just because of Flash. I don't know how much it would help, and then I wouldn't know what to do about siding them out vs Stax, but Drain just isn't fast enough. Make of that what you will.

In the end, I won't argue against the numbers on Scroll. I just think it's misleading to not distinguish between Gush Scroll decks and Flash Scroll decks. What I mean by that is, in decks that don't run Flash, Scroll is not a good card because it fetches Flash. In that case it has independent reasons that I feel should be understood. If they restrict Flash, would we see as many Scrolls? I understand that the answer may still be "yes," in that non-combo decks may still run some number of Scrolls even if they aren't running the 4 Scroll/4 Gush core, and I also know that Scroll may independently warrant restriction. But I do think there should be some awareness of the fact that it's partially coincidence that Flash is a blue instant that happens to make it fetchable with Scroll, and that in and of itself doesn't make Scroll itself more or less unhealthy for the format as a 4-of.

In the end there may just be too many Scrolls in decks in general for comfort, but I don't know how often Bomberman for example runs more than 2, or that any non-Gush deck will be running it as a 4-of. Critical mass in regards to Gush may be argument enough but in the end I think that's an argument that should be distinguished from the Flash issue.

On the topic of Gush v Trinisphere, I will step in, but first a caveat that my experiences with current GAT are limited to my testing, and I am currently without a team and much of my perspective comes really from testing in a vacuum and none of it with recent tournament experience. In short, I feel I have enough understanding to go into a tournament without The Fear and with a largely correct understanding of the right plays, but if you want to argue points by crunching numbers please take my perspective with a grain of salt.

Playing GAT, I feel confident about my matchup against currently established incarnations of Stax. I win an awful lot of game 1s, just because it's very difficult to get a true hard lock against a deck that runs so much cheap draw and responses that they never really run out of steam, while the Stax deck eventually does. The game states I consistently lose are when they get, for example, both Sphere and an active Smokestack while I'm short on permanents, whether from being early enough in the game or if I've overextended with Gush, or when they get enough ancillary lock components to make sure I can't actually regain momentum, but the fact is that Stax is a less consistent powerhouse; they only run one Memory Jar, and so many ways to find it. Jar will consistently allow them to recoup and put me in a losing position, but its game presence is inconsistent. Overall I couldn't give you a number even if I wanted to in terms of wins, but I feel like I've just won a lot of game 1s, and I feel it's largely because I can keep up with their most important threats with the knowledge that I have the threat of inevitability.

For the sideboard games I believe my matchup improves because most of my sideboard is dedicated to them. I don't need to Scroll for Drain or Force or whatever nearly as much because I run 4 Ancient Grudge plus some Mutations and so forth. I don't know that my current sideboard configuration is beyond dispute, but I do know that I feel comfortable siding out all my Duresses and replace them with card advantage generating answers that require them to already have invested tempo in their lock pieces. The answers serve to consistently limit their options rather significantly, usually rendering their present effect on the gamestate nil and sometimes directly improving mine.

Overall I expect that I will lose games to Stax but, whether from blind confidence or from more dynamic factors involving efficiency of answers vs inconsistency of threats, I feel I have a good shot at sweeping them at least some percentage of the time, and that does say something about the overall matchup.

Now that I've given some illustration of the current issue of Shop vs Gush, the issue with Trinisphere is this: most of the time, if I don't have Force, against turn one Workshop Trinisphere, I should just scoop. The rest of the time I'll probably still lose anyways. Thankfully, they only have one of those, but if you really did want to turn a strong matchup into one in which I suddenly lose 30% more games than before or whatever, unrestricting Trinisphere is the way to do it. The problem is, I don't know if that's the right thing to do. All of a sudden, where we once had interactive games in which I feel I have the (or at least some) advantage, suddenly I very well might be at a significant disadvantage because they have a card that will literally make me lose the game before I even get a chance to play any cards at all. As I've seen it, the consensus is that "just mull into Force" is not a respectable gameplan against Trinisphere plays or a significant argument for its existence as a 4-of. It would also ignore the whole dynamic of baiting with 2Sphere, or anything else in the deck really.

It seems pretty well agreed that Shop decks need a new evolutionary step, and the Metalworker combo/otherwise dump your hand turn 2 concepts seem promising. For all the talk about Staxless Stax builds however I do feel Smokestack is an important card vs GAT, but regardless, the lesson seems to be that the current identity of Shop decks is not set in stone and can improve based on the resources of the existing card pool, so I wouldn't jump to arguing for unrestrictions yet on really any basis. Trinisphere is a dangerous card and multiples will cause headaches.

As it stands, Stax is not a pushover, and it wouldn't surprise me that at my next tournament I could even lose a match to it. However, I do find at least the impressions of such a dynamic change as +3 Trinisphere instructive, as what is quite possibly a good matchup becomes randomly horrible half the time because of one card.

The lesson does seem to be that patience is the most valuable commodity when manipulating the mechanics of the format.

Personally I'm not convinced forcing Flash decks to go -3 Scroll would seriously impact that deck's metagame presence. And the consensus seems to be that Scroll's numerical prominence is directly caused by Flash and Gush themselves; I'm not sure that is really the strongest case for restriction, even if you were to elaborate on a critical mass analysis of engine redundancy. I just know that it's a good idea to also look at what the card is fetching in terms of power balance, which seems to be the reasoning for Gift's restriction.

On the issue of Gush itself, I get the impression that people just feel uncertain in general about the overall effect the card has as a 4-of on the metagame when taken with the usual dynamically changing factors. It's not really helping non-interactive combo, if that says anything about any negative Fun Factor.

I would think that eventually these issues would be a case of comparing actual archetype evolution. In other words, what kind of a format are you looking to create? Or, is Drain-based control suppressed by the presence of GAT, or is it just the nature of being in a format with Ichorid and Flash?

Why? Isn't it the most effective method of creating an ideal metagame, even if it is an artificial way of doing so? Aren't all restrictions on available cards defining any card pool artificial in the same way?

As far as I've seen, it's been pretty clear for a long time that The Suck will never get their shit together. If there's hope for the format through communication, it has to be on a forum other than The Suck. So, if you axe the Legacy forum here, you're either giving priority over the issue altogether to some other function (like bandwidth or moderation effort) or you're voicing your confidence in another forum. If you honestly feel that there's another forum that's proving it deserves that kind of confidence, I'd like to know where it is.

Bad command or file name.

Doesn't Brainstorm actually help alleviate some of the problems you're trying to solve by cutting them?

Wouldn't Shadow Rift be superior to Infiltrate?

In my experience, Crypt has been a suboptimal "hate" effect against Hulk. Grave hate rarely functionally stops the draw engine, and it's more hand size than grave size that makes Psychatog influential to the game state. In any case I would be much more inclined to look at REB before Crypt if Tog was the issue at hand.

Actually, I'm not quite sure what's with the spellbook power deal. It only lets me run 4 ofs in 40 card decks, but my 60 card deck right now runs 6(!) Swords.

Cruel Tutor would have no impact on type 1.5. If Dragon, the premiere combo deck in the format, suddenly decided to switch from Lim-Dul's Vault to Cruel Tutor suddenly all my matchups against it would get considerably better. Don't worry about it.

It's cool how you insult him for using Oaths but don't mention to, you know, take out the 11cc creature when removing Oaths. Just thought I'd mention that. Also 1 Oath for the 1 Colossus isn't like a good idea so I think we can come to the conclusion that you're missing the point here.

Chain Lightning is debatable. The idea of something like Hulk sitting around to wait for you to draw your Lightning and then triumphantly bouncing it to your face isn't exactly scary.

You're underestimating Firestorm too, especially in a deck based on drawing an extra three cards a turn (which is where it was first popularized if I'm not mistaken, at least the first time I saw it was in Lauerpotence). Though we're going to have to fix that Land Tax thing.

Saying "This sucks, but you can play it in 1.5" doesn't make you seem very esteemed to me.

Haha you lose.