::Brushes off dust::  I haven't talked in a while.  I have been observing.

Anyway, I think that again, Magic in the Rosewater era, did the right thing and unrestricted something and that was it.  I think Wizards has a sort of innate caution when it comes to restricting and banning cards.  This is a good thing.  I think, however, they need a sliding scale.  Block and Standard have been AWFUL for years now.  They just suck beyond belief.  One deck and the anti that deck have been the set up since Odyssey.  They need to be more liberal in smaller formats with their actions.  The cards cost less, there is less of an outcry from collectors, the formats are more easily dominated and so on.  Some of these are proper considerations and some are not, but I think they all factor into Wizards thinking.  

Ideally the attitude towards restriction would fit into this rubric:

Block and Standard are like amateur wrestling, tight technical grappling where all the parameters, like weight and height, need to be controlled carefully in order to have a good fair match.

Extended is like UFC, lots of power and damage, but still weight classes and the like.  

Vintage, in this analogy, is Thunderdome (two men enter, one man leave).  Throw two poor bastards in there, let em beat the hell out of each other, and whatever happens, happens, for the most part.

They need to really look at having a more nuanced format based approach.  The artifact lands are ridiculously weak in comparison to most of the cards on the lists in other formats, but in Standard they are insane.

Name: Child of Rawls

Machinus:  Standard is not the biggest money maker for Wizards, in fact, it is probably just slightly more profitable than Vintage.  Limited is obviously the most lucrative format, followed by Block.  After that there is really no difference between the formats.  Standard gets a new exclusive set once every 2 years.  Yawn.  There is no money in that.

I also want to predict the collapse of constructed MODO, if this has not already happened.  The business model for Constructed MODO is a disaster and a half.  The Limited portion is fine.  

The import of this is that it points to a fundamental shift in the game--constructed formats are not what they once were.  They are really afterthoughts now.  We have to be proud of the fact that Vintage is really the only place where there is a continously growing constructed format.  What is the likelihood that constructed gets slowly phased out.  I am not saying this is going to happen, but it is not IMPOSSIBLE.  What do you guys think?

I'd obviously defer to a combo deckbuilder, but Imperial Seal has some potential.  With enough tutors could combo just drop search like Brainstorm and use a suite of tutors instead?  Demonic, Vampiric, Imperial Seal, Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor.  That is a lot of go get it.  Any other Portal tutors worth mentioning, not that 2B tutor?

I am not sure if Spoils of the Vault is openly superior to this card.  Demonic Consultation is the broken Spoils and it is vastly less dangerous.  Imperial Seal is worse than Vampiric Tutor, but Vampiric Tutor is definitely deserving of restriction.  In practice, how much slower is Imperial Seal than Vampiric Tutor?  No EOT action, granted, but both still are a loss of a draw.  I am not saying that it is even close to Vampiric Tutor, but it would still get restricted and deserve it.

That said, I am DEFINITELY in favor of adding Portal to the Vintage cardpool.  They would have to immediately restrict a few cards, but who cares?  They had to do that when they printed Mirrodin (see: Chrome Mox).  I am totally in favor of adding Portal.  




I never said anything about reprints.  They aren't happening.  But it is not because of the reserved list.  For the billionth time, the reserved list has no legal import at all.  They can do whatever they want with their intellectual property.  The reserved list is a marketing gimmick and nothing else.  It will remain in effect so long as it is profitable to do so.  And I mean profitable in the long term.

Everyone seems to think that I hate this format.  I don't.  I love playing with Yawgmoth's Will.  But Wizards is interested in opening the format up.  Forsythe asked people at SCG II what could be done to open the format up to new players.  There is a concerted effort to lower the barrier of entry and given what they did to 1.5, I am not sure if it is safe to say that they will never ban a card, never restrict the number of restricted cards, and the like.  They will not reprint cards and they will not make proxies legal, but short of that, I think anything is fair game, especially in the long term, which is what I am trying to look at.  One solution that I see is banning the cards that allow for geometric abuse.  It will still leave the moxen, which I believe are the defining element of Vintage, but it would make decks that run moxen and nothing else at least regularly competitive.  The only other solution I have heard is the one Steve put out there.  Does anyone else have an idea?  

It is important right now because this is perhaps the most interest there has ever been in the format.  Can anyone recall when Wizards, former enemy of Vintage, sent an official "face" of the game to an event?  When there were multiple national tournaments?  When there were cards regularly being included in new sets aimed at the format?  Wizards is interested in Vintage now more than ever and we owe it to them to respond with some genuinely good ideas.

I am not sure if this has been emphasized enough, but every deck in the format that is worth playing can win or be in an "unloseable" position on turn 1, given the best possible hand.

Prison can drop Trinisphere.

Combo can go off.

Control Slaver can drop Slaver.

Aggro can bust out crazy wins (see Virtual Madness).

The idea is that this format, like Forsythe said, is two decks doing crazy shit a lot of the time.  We have to accept that this is a possibility.  But that alone cannot make a card restriction worthy.  Consistent first turn kills goldfishing is not enough.

My other point about these upper tier unrestricted cards is not that Wizards should restrict all these cards, but that if one goes the others will likely dominate AND there is really no reason one of these cards are favored over another other than the quirks of the current metagame.  Change a few things here and there and I honestly think that Dark Ritual, MWS, Mana Drain, or Intuition could be in the problem child slot.

Also, again I am not saying restrict it, but really Brainstorm is fucking pure nuts.  It is uber good and while it makes things more consistent, it is sort of like the blank in Scrabble, whoever gets the most Brainstorms (aside from ridiculously bad ones) wins.  Brainstorm is often times the second most important spell to resolve in any game of Vintage.  It is just innocously powerful.

My Pro Team of Vintage:

Steve Menendian
Jacob Orlove
Rich Shay
Grand Inquistor
Diaionc (Corey)
Carl

Imagine this scenario:  Wizards opens up Vintage to Portal.  In comes a ton of garbage and a few really good Tutors.  

Imperial Seal comes in and a few other tutors accompany it and all of sudden even Brainstorm is too slow for a combo deck.  The deck becomes broken win condition, free/cheap acceleration, draw 7s and tutors.  I am not sure how restrictions could solve this problem.  Admittedly some of the awful acceleration does not see play, but too many good tutors is a bad idea.

Imagine this scenario:  Wizards prints cheap green and white creatures that truly hose Blue Power and Workshops.  Think about how innocous this creature would be in non-Vintage formats and how kickass it would be in Vintage:

Green Hoser Creature
G
1/2
Artifacts that cost 0 can't be played.

That would really change the score.  

Imagine this scenario:  Wizards unrestricts a card and a recently printed card combos with it ridiculously...oh what don't imagine.  It happened.  Beacon of Destruction's interaction with Doomsday is exactly the sort of critical mass that makes combo dangerous and in my mind makes it clear that eventually, if they keep printing cards, Yawg Will or another uber-broken card will get the ax.

As far as making the game more accessible I feel that banning cards would make the game more accessible.  Before you go crazy let me say that this is in the long term, not right now.  Here is my argument:

1.  Decks that cannot go broken geometrical, that is lack a way to abuse broken cards, cannot, by in large, win consistently over time in Vintage.  Fish is a perfect example.  

2.  Most of the cards that are capable of geometric abuse are the most egregious offenders on the restricted list.  Academy, Will, Bargain, and Jar come to mind.  All of these cards make other, more expensive cards better.  Academy with Moxen and MWS, Will and Bargain with Blue Power, and Jar with MWS and Moxen.  

3.  Cutting out these geometrically abusive cards will make less broken inhabitants of the restricted list merely good cards.  

4.  Decks that lack the ability to geometrically abuse expensive cards will no longer have an inherent strategic superiority to decks like Fish, Zoo, and other decks that are cheap to make.

I am not sure if that makes sense, but in the long run getting rid of these cards might help.  I am open to suggestions and I am aware that people really like no banned cards.  I just think that in the long run, after 15 years of Magic, the format will be suffering a great deal because of this predisposition.

The point of the thread is to try to predict was is going to happen down the road.  I am trying to scope out inevitable changes.  Obviously it is impossible to predict card design and short term changes, but certain things are almost certain to happen so long as more cards are being made.  None of these things are things I would advocate for.  They are just observations that I think are likely given what will happen.  I even said they were my opinion:




As far as the 187 I am sorry for the misnomer.

There are a number of threads right now discussing which card should be restricted (if any) in the format.  These short term views are extremely helpful, but I have been thinking about the long term.  What will the format look like in five years?  I know that this is really speculative, but there are few trends that I think are inevitable.  They may not come true today, tomorrow, or even next year, but unless something radical happens I think the following are a given:

1) A card or cards will be banned in Vintage.
2) Mishra's Workshop will be restricted.
3) There will either be a major reset on the power level of restricted cards OR the upper most tier of unrestricted cards will be very heavily populated.
4) A major combo piece will be hammered onto the restricted list.
5) Amazing expensive card hosers will be printed or reprinted.
6) Combat creatures will not get better than Troll Ascetic.
7) 187 creatures will not get better than Eternal Witness and ability creatures will not get better than Welder.

1) Bannings

Oh boy will this raise the ire of some people.  I think that we all know that as more and more cards get added to the format restriction is not enough.  This is the critical mass argument, writ large.  In five years, if Vintage is still around and new cards are being made, there will eventually be a card that is too good even with only one per deck.  Tutors, fast mana, and Draw7s, despite their corrupting influence on Vintage, are still being printed.  Add more of these and the restriction of these types of effects is useless.  Most likely to go in the following order:  Yawg Will (but then you knew that, Aaron told us as much), Tolarian Academy, Yawg Bargain (huge drop off after this card) then Mind's Desire, and Memory Jar.  Imagine how few cards would be on the restricted list without these craptacular design mistakes?  

2) MWS gone

One of the bg complaints about MWS, its best strike in favor of leaving it alone, is the fact that MWS decks are inconsistent.  But the more quality artifacts you make the more consistent this deck will be.  Eventually only inherent inconsistency, that is the randomness of a truly random shuffle, will limit the power of MWS.  I am not sure if we are there yet, but it might be getting close.

3) Reseting the bar or lots of great cards

I think the Crucible thread shows what I am talking about.  Either one of the problem child cards (cards that the community has complained about on and off for years) is going to get the axe and the rest will fall down a slippery slope, or Wizards will tolerate a huge number of explosive cards.  Is there really any historical proof that Mana Drain is worse than Crucible?  What about Dark Ritual, Intuition, Goblin Welder, MWS?  All of these uber good unrestricted cards are right on the cusp.  Kill one and it makes sense that eventually you'd have to kill them all.

4) Killing Combo

Again with the publishing of more and more cards, more and more combos are going to be discovered.  Sooner or later a major engine card like Dark Ritual or Tendrils will have to go.  But Tendrils being restricted probably won't do much.  What about ESG, Charbelcher, or some other card?  I don't know what the card will be, Dark Ritual seeming like the most likely choice, but eventually something has to give.

5) Hosers

With Forsythe going to SCG II and playing it in and the printing of cards like Chalice, it is clear that Wizards is trying to support Vintage.  I think that it is safe to say this trend will continue and we will see more cards of the Null Rod ilk in the sets to come.  Lowering the cost of entry and shaking things up is a good thing for the format.  Now if they could just print a maindeck Blue Power and Yawg Will hate card, Green based decks would have a chance.  Maybe put them on the same card, like a cheap creature.

6) Combat Creatures

I think we have come to the end of the line, design wise, with Troll Ascetic.  Really can they make a better combat (non-ability) creature that is any better for three mana?  I don't think so.  I also think it is easy to extrapolate from here the baseline of combat creatures.

7) 187 Creatures

Eternal Wintess, likewise is the best we will see in terms of 187s.  Same with Goblin Welder.  How could they make better creatures like these with ruining the game?

Any thoughts?  What do you think about my predictions?  Any of your own?

First thing first.  I am not saying restrict Mana Drain, etc., merely that if you restrict Crucible how can you leave these other equally powerful cards unrestricted?  I really believe that Mana Drain is as powerful as Crucible.  If you restrict one and not the other all you are doing is merely ignoring other problem cards, that for one reason or another, aren't perceived as problems right now.  And that is the heart of the issue--restrictions should not be based on perceived problems, but actual ones.  It is a classic slippery slope argument.  If you do X and X is virtually indistinguishable from Y, then you should do Y as well, and so on...If Crucible goes I just can't see why some of these other cards wouldn't take its place as the problem child.

As far as Brainstorm is concerned, it is one of those background noise cards.  It is so good, and has been for so long, that people have stopped seeing it for what it is--ridiculously broken.  Brainstorm, in this metagame, with fetchlands and all, is crazy good.  To quote the Jacob Orlove: "Brainstorm is better than half the cards on the restricted list."  While that quote is accompanied by a dollop of hyperbole, I think it belays a truth--Brainstorm is amazing.  It may not be offensive in the same way that a Strip/Crucible lock is or a turn 1 3sphere, but it is equally powerful.  How many Brainstorms are in the average top 8?  TONS.  If mere bountiful presence is enough to get restricted then Brainstorm should be looked at.  And if performance over time is a factor then Brainstorm should be looked at.  

If Crucible goes then so should Brainstorm and at least four other cards.  Our biases and preconceptions about what should be restricted is the only thing blinding us into missing the truth.  

I say hold off on axing Crucible and wait and see.

As far as 3sphere is concerned, I would have made my statement stronger if I did not believe that another card is actually more the source of the problem....

I agree with Shockwave about Trinisphere.  It is a great card at keeping combo at bay, but it is not the end all and be all of combo hosing.  My experience with combo since Chalice was reprinted is that Chalice forces combo off its game.  It may not shut down combo like Trinisphere or Null Rod, but it does make the matchup more fair.  When the combo deck is siding in Overloads it is diluting its power.  Even without Trinisphere I think there is a sufficient amount of combo hate to stop or slow down most of the combo decks out there.  Steve, what combo deck are you thinking of that can walk all over Chalice?  I can't think of a combo deck utterly unaffected by Chalice (though Dragon is close, but Dragon is not a problem deck).  

As far a Crucible is concerned I think that it represents the upper most limit of unrestricted cards in the format.  My big concern is that if Wizard's restricts Crucible we will see good reason to restrict other cards as well.  Previous eras of Vintage have shown that Mana Drain, Intuition, Workshop, Dark Ritual, and other cards are all really busted.  Though it may not seem so right now, perhaps a turn in the metagame will vault these cards or another card into the problem child slot currently occupied by Crucible.  If Crucible goes then these cards very similar in power seem to be in jeopardy.  Right now it may seem hard to believe, but taking a long, historical look at the format, I think it is clear that Mana Drain and Crucible are of roughly equal power.  Whatever the difference is, it is insignificant over the long run.  And there are ton of other cards in the same situation.  What, besides the changing vicissitudes of the metagame, is the power difference between Crucible and Ritual, Ritual and Drain, Drain and Intuition?  Restricting Crucible, in my mind, is almost nearly arbitrarily choosing to restrict it over any of the other cards I mentioned.  And seriously, how can we talk about restricting a card without looking at our favorite deck manipulation card--Brainstorm.  I think that Brainstorm is better than all cards so far mentioned.  It has been very good, in tons of different decks, for a long, long time.  If Crucible goes can we seriously and reasonably claim that Brainstorm should remain unrestricted?  I don't think we can.  

Personally, I think we should wait a little longer and see what happens.  Two major tournaments with many different decks in the top 16 is a good thing.  And if Crucible goes, then they should just reset the bar for restricted cards and take out a bunch of stuff, otherwise they are just forestalling the inevitable.

As a criminal defense attorney I have FANTASTIC idoit stories.

Story #1:  

Man has his license taking away for DWI.  Gets caught operating after suspension (driving after having his license taken away).  Drives to court for operating after suspension trial.

Story #2:

Man (different person) shows up to DWI hearing with a T shirt that reads: "Too drunk to fuck."

Story #3:

Man steals purse at Wal Mart.  Remains in store after police arrive.  ID'ed as suspect because he is the only man in the store carrying a purse.

Story #4:

Man on probation has a urinalysis test.  Test comes back positive for pregnancy.  Probably not his pee...whaddya think?

Story #5:

Man blows a .5 on his BAC, after the waiting period.

SAT style ballots.

Lemme say that if people didn't vote today, for whomever they wish, they are pieces of shit.  You heard me, non-voters, PIECES OF SHIT.  If you don't like your choices, write in yourself or don't vote in that given election.  BUT VOTE.  If you haven't voted, go vote.

One of the things that this thread seems to have become transfixed with is this idea of distorting the metagame.  To paraphrase what was said above: every good card in the T1 metagame INFLUENCES the metagame.  Only problematic, and restriction worthy, cards DISTORT it.  There is really no way to define these terms other than example.  We need to reason by analogy when we are applying Steve's restriction tests.  We need to show why X is more like Y, where Y is already on the list.  These arguments that try to show definitively that a card is too good for purely theoretical reasons, like most people try to do with Workshop (i.e. in theory it is a permanent lotus for artifacts therefore it MUST restricted), are baseless.  Use real data, real tournament results.

I will synopsize my remarks in the first version of this thread.  Crucible is not worthy of restriction for the following reasons.  Of the tests that apply to Crucible the only one that fits is the distortion of the metagame test.  However, cards that warranted restriction because of metagame distortion had much greater impact than Crucible has.  The ideal example of metagame distortion, to me, occurred in Standard right after the formats split and Vintage was created.  Black Vise had yet to be restricted and the incohate Pro Tour players were wrestling with the Beast that is Vise.  They loaded their U/W control decks with 8 cantrip spells that cost 1 or less (4 Barbed Sextants and 4 Urza's Bauble), in hopes that they could drop their hand to get out of Vise range on the first turn without a loss of cards.  Even with this ingenious solution, the format was dominated by Black Vise decks.  Crucible of the Worlds meanwhile has caused people to up the basic land count to some degree, but the changes were no where near as drastic as those that occurred in response to Vise, and even more important, said changes worked to limit Crucible's power.  

A few people have expressed Crucible's wing potential or combo potential with Workshop and Strip Mine respectively.  First, in combination with Workshop Crucible is a great card but it does not qualify as an early game swing as I defined in my StarCity piece.  In a format with Force of Will, a card has to nearly win the game on the first turn to be too good.  And a combo on the first turn...well that will never be too broken too early without a kill.  Second, we play a format where two card kill combos are not played (see Illusions/Donate with tutor help even), and 1 card combos like Charblecher and Tendrils are the standard.  A two card combo that locks out an opponent without killing them, no matter how light on the color commitment it is, is not too good.  

Crucible is not distorting, it is merely influencing the metagame.  I think it is a positive that new cards are doing that.  It is not as warping as the cards on the restricted list are.  Also it is not too good too early, even with Workshop.  Finally, it is not too powerful in combination with Strip Mine.  

For the above reasons, Crucible is not worthy of restriction.  The fact that it is its own silver bullet cannot be overlooked either.

Nate Heiss recently wrote an article about the top 10 budget cards of all time.  Personally, I find it hilarious when people make statements about things they really haven't thought too much about.  Its like Susan Sarandon talking about the environment, Curt Schilling campaigning for Bush, or asking a TRL guest what their favorite piece of literature is.  For the most part, if you haven't thought things out, better off to keep your ideas to yourself.  Here is the article:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/nh38

So here is the topic for this thread (changing it a bit from Heiss's topic): if your not an idiot what would the Top 10 commons of all time list look like?  

Here are the criteria: 1) rank the card historically, that is based on its performance over time and not just at its peak power; 2) look at the card's strength in different formats (for this thread lets just look at Constructed power); and 3) look at the card's strength in different eras of different formats.

Here is my list:

10) Red Elemental Blast:  This is perhaps one of the best, if not THE best SB cards of all time.  It is an amazingly powerful card and showed up in impressive numbers in every format it was legal.  Furthermore, it still shows up in Vintage, which means it is truly an all time great.  Obviously Pyroblast is worse for rules reasons and the blue blasts are worse because Red is really the Official SB color of Vintage.

9) Fireblast:  Though this card does not show up in our format it was popular in every format where it is legal.  It is the anti-Force of Will.  When it was legal in Standard it ruined the format in a Affinity type way for about 3 years.  This was right around the time they instituted the Block Rotation program and as a result we got to spend an extra year with Fireblast.  Yipee.  I am so excited.  Irony is impossible to convey over the Web.

8) Lightning Bolt:  This card was the standard bearer burn spell for the first five years of the game.  Creatures were usually deemed good if they were outside of bolt range, an indication to the dominance of this card.  I think the subtle but significant difference between this and Shock is an indication of how good this card is.  The third best boon.

7) Kird Ape:  Though this guy has lost a lot of its luster it is still an amazing creature and was for a long, long time.  Now that combat creatures have been superceded by ability creatures, this guy can't be the beast it once was.  All he does is attack.  Booo!

6) Rancor:  Can you name another creature enchantment that has a deck based around it?  When Rancor first came out it was a deck building revolution.  Stompy was a good, in fact, very good deck.  Going from the Rogue Elephant version to the Albino Troll version, Rancor was the backbone of the deck.  And then Three Duece picked up this beater of a card and ran with it.  Though not incredible in Vintage, Rancor is still an amazing card.  Oh, and it was an ass whupping in Limited, even though I didn't give it any credit there.  Only Empyrial Armor or maybe Pestilence was a better common in Limited.  

5) Wild Mongrel:  Among the best creatures of all time (in my opinion 4th on the all time list behind the unrankable Tog, Welder, and Ravager), Wild Mongrel is the prototype of the new amazing ability creatures.  

4) Counterspell:  Basic, boring, and too good for Standard.  Really, if Mana Drain and Force are not both available is there any reason NOT to play Counterspell.  Though Mana Leak is better in Vintage, Counterspell is better everywhere else and good even when Mana Leak is not good.

3) Dark Ritual:  Simply an amazing card.  I am not sure if people realize just how good this card is.  I am serious when I say that it is only slightly worse than Lotus in the vast majority of decks that use it (i.e. combo decks).  Very impressive in a ton of decks and only once did it really fall out of use when it was legal.  And I think that was largely because we were idiots back then.

2) Duress:  Personally, I think this is better than Counterspell.  It is cheaper and preemptive.  One of the weaknesses of counters is that you have to have them at the exact right time--when a spell can be cast.  Now Duress is still no good if the card is in play, but there is really no reason to wait to cast it if you know they have something good.  It has always been played.  It can be agressive or controlling.  

1) Brainstorm:  So we did not understand Brainstorm for a long, long time.  It was Impluse's retarded brother.  But now we realize that with a bit of shuffling Brainstorm is like Impluse's autistic, card counting, Vegas beating little brother.  Perhaps the best unrestricted card in Vintage and certainly the best search card of all time, Brainstorm's power in a deck with fetchlands cannot be denied.  

Honorable Mention:  Elvish Spirit Guide:  There are certain cards that are good because they do something no other card does.  This is Elvish Spirit Guide.  It took us a while, but we now know just how good this little creature is.  

Accumulated Knowledge:  While not a skill testing as Brainstorm, AK is the workhorse of most blue decks in every format where it is legal.  With Intuition you have a might card drawing engine.  

Nate's comments show a great deal of blindness or lack of preparation.  Comments like Birds of Paradise are the best creature of all time is simply lunacy, and the comment with Counterspell is not elegant, cute, or humorous.  

Any thoughts?

Steve the primer was excellent and the deck is quite impressive.  I am glad to see Meandeck make a comeback after getting their collective clocks cleaned in the last SCG event.

Crucible of Worlds is the best example of a new card at a good, competitive power level.  It does not deserve to be restricted for reasons we have gone through in the original thread.  It is a new generation of good cards for Vintage and I, for one, love seeing them.

Plus it is its own silver bullet.  How elegant is that?

Your right.  I misspoke.  I should have said there was never more than one SUCCESSFUL type of Oath deck in Extended at one time.  If you look at the Oath of Beasts deck it was never better than tier 2 and even Kibler only played it in one PT.  The format was in flux and even then Cognivore Oath was just better.  Also there really was never any difference between Oath decks running Cognivore.  Even Justin Gary's original build of the deck included B for cards like Pernicious Deed.  There may have been some U/G Oath decks running around at the time, but they were not good and they were really just a few cards off from Gary's build.  They didn't do anything different, they were just bad versions of Gary's deck, if they existed at all.

As for the difficulty, I think JACO stated best my reply.  Those guys have never played Long.  And when I asked (the last PT Boston) Long did not exist.  Either way, Maher Oath was a bitch to play.  Maybe Long is more complex, but it is not significantly more complex.  The other issue is that Long played badly can just win sometimes.  Maher Oath played badly cannot win with the same frequency.  There are just some outright lay down hands with Long.  Most hands aren't but there are few that are (were).

The Oath decks in Extended were really one deck.  Zvi's Turboland deck was a pet deck played by a great, great player.  It is not fair to say there was a multiplicity of Oath decks.  There was MaherOath and then stuff got rotated out and there was SuicideOath with Cognivore, then there was YMGs PT NO Oath deck and that was awful.  I am not sure how this bears on the subject of a multiplicity of Oath decks in Vintage, but if we are being honest there was never really multiple strategies using Oath that were viable at the same time.  

As a sidenote, I find it highly intriguing how different this iteration of Oath is from the Maher Oath deck.  One deck is the epitome of focus and redundancy.  The other is perhaps the most elegant, flexible Magic deck ever designed.  Oh and Maher Oath was a bitch and half to play.  A few pros I have talked to all agree on one thing: Maher Oath was the most complex deck to play ever.

The idea that I was getting at was that the 1 and 2 of set up of Fish, coupled with the mana denial strategy was JUST ENOUGH to keep other decks using 1 and 2 ofs off balance.  What if he Stifles my Deed?  What if he MisDs my Ancestral?  So on and so forth.  This threat of a card coupled with Null Rod and nb hate was effective against multi color control decks that ran 1 and 2 ofs of their own.  Think about this:  both Suicide and Anhk Sligh ran Null Rod and without the power of blue and the singleton threats (and perceived threats) of Fish are what made it different and this difference made the deck successful.  That is all I meant.

Two things make me think that Steve is on to something.  First, the role of Fish was that of spoiler, as a metagame deck.  As the metagame shifted it lost its role.  But that is more of a cutesy explanation than anything substantive.  I personally think that the big issue with the deck is that its philosophy of tempo and 1 ofs is no longer acceptable.  In a metagame with decks like 4cc and Tog where there are a good number of 1 and 2 ofs, the ability to matchup with those 1 and 2 ofs with 1 and 2 ofs of your own is huge.  Couple this extremely efficient use of deck slots with tempo and it is easy to see why Fish's unusual deck list can hold off Tog and Angel juggernauts.  This is the true story of why Fish has fallen.  One only needs to look at the decks that have arisen as foils for Fish--5/3, Mono U, and Oath--to see that the way to beat the 1 and 2 ofs tempo tangle is to run a HUGE number of highly redundant threats.  That is exactly what the anti-Fish decks do.  The original thing that stymied so many people was that Fish could not be "teched" out of the metagame because the traditional method of doing this was adding a few cards in one's SB to use as bullets.  So often the fear of the random 1 of or the actual use of a 1 of, couple with the tempo advantages of the deck rendered these silver bullets ineffective.  It took a change in deck design, not just SB design, to beat Fish.  And I think that given the decks winning right now we have seen that.  Only Control Slaver is a deck that beat Fish by using the silver bullet strategy and this has to do with the fact that it really is redundant too (the Welders giving the deck psuedo redundancy).  Redundancy overcomes 1 and 2 ofs and tempo.  The metagame figured that out and Fish is likely relegated to a small spot in the format.

I am a lawyer, admitted to the bar in NH.  I have some knowledge about criminal law, employment law, labor law, con law, intellectual property, and a teeny bit about contracts, torts, and real property.  I also know an unhealthy amount about philosophy, though that is likely to be useless.  I have a video camera that I try to bring to every event so say "Hi" if you want.  I am always willing to playtest, but probably can't host folks because the Mrs. works on Saturday.  If you need help in any of the legal areas above I can give you some guidance but advice is limited for ethical reasons (the whole attorney client relationship formalities).

What about this:

CARDNAME
Legendary Instant
U

Do something incredible.

When this is cast, search your library for all other cards named -this-.  Remove them from the game.  

When this resolves remove it from the game instead of placing it in your graveyard.

The LSAT is pretty much like every single other standardized test.  It has no math, but other than that is exactly the SAT but with a slightly increased difficulty.  It is, like all other standardized tests, good at standardizing non-standard objects, but HORRIBLE at predicting anything useful in terms of a career.

As I said Steve, I agree with your sentiment about the appropriate number of proxies.  That said I have two questions:

1) Do you disagree with the notion that, at least right now, 5 proxies is the standard?

2) Don't you think that 5 proxies is better than 0 in terms of generating some useful metagame data?

I think that it is pretty safe to say that college is becoming a foundational degree.  You can hardly get a job without a college degree.  College is today what high school was in the early 50s.  

With this expansion and the splintering and specialization of knowledge the ability for college professors in undergrad especially to teach you something meaningful is very, very limited.  

So......sell out, do something easy that makes money like management or business.  My roommate had classes three days a week from sophomore year on and he was a business major.  Now he is making fat cash.  Follow that path.  Sell out, otherwise you are kidding yourself.  There is no wisdom, profound insight, or meaningful exploration of ideas in college.  Undergrad is basically high school without parental involvement everyday.



Oh shit.  Wait for the fucking bar.  If you think that the LSAT is hell, what for the first year of law school.  And if that is hell buy an asbestos jacket for that summer that is the bar prep.  You can make though.  The tests are the worst part of law school.  Just remember--law school is not the end objective.  The end objective is being a lawyer.  All that other crap--1L hype, law review, internships and the like are all means to an end.

I hope nothing I said made you believe that I was trying to put words in your mouth Steve.  I too think that five proxies is flawed, but it is better than no proxies in terms of creating as good as metagame as possible.  I love the idea of infinite proxies.  Nonetheless, I think that 5 proxies is the standard right now.

The best way to prepare for TMD is focus on the top tier of decks, that is, those decks that have every card they would want.

Zherbus, thanks for saying elegantly what I could not in too many, too long posts.  I think, if Royal Ass. and nataz are being honest, you have settled the debate.

@nataz:



I think Zherbus answered this when he said:



5 proxy is the standard.  Many people in NE with 5 proxies can make near idealized decks.  With 10 proxies or unlimited proxies everyone can make idealized decks.



I think you are mistaking a concretized metagame for the only kind of metagame.  What we have with the major events is an evolving metagame, which in my mind is healthier than a static game.  It is indicates true metagame effects, namely people preparing for known winning decks.