Why not eternal witnesses, survival of the fittest, genesis & timewalk which JP posted a long time ago?  The blue splash also gives you back to basics in the board for more hate.

If nothing else, you should add squee and survivals for some form of card advantage and more silver bullet creatures.

The progression of the average Magic player goes like this:
kitchen table->play in stores for fun->play FNM->play PTQs->play PT. 

The real money maker is PTQs followed by play FNM.  To get here, you need a successful 'play in stores for fun' element.  Some people obviously can skip steps or not progress further depending on who introduces them to the game, or if they don't have an interest in getting better. 

While people who play at the kitchen table can make whatever rules they want, there comes a time for a lot of players when they want to play against people they don't know.  At this point, having a defined set of rules is very important.  The vintage banned/restricted list is often the first set of defined rules that these players will encounter.  Therefore, vintage restrictions are important to this group of players.  In order to get players to the next level, Wizards needs players to have an enjoyable time at this period in their growth as a Magic player.  At this point, having fun win or lose=healthy.  At the PTQ level, winning=fun so the game being fun to play and still lose becomes less important.

It is true that a lot of factors go into deciding what to restrict, but ultimately, what Wizards wants to do is keep tournament attendance at its highest level.  As long as people are playing in tournaments, no matter how bad the metagame is, they are progressing towards playing in PTQs.

My point about Starcity and restrictions was to illustrate that healthy means different things to different people.  Perhaps that wasn't clear. Using health, fun and interactivity as measures is ultimately too subjective.  If these are your criteria for restriction, you risk needlessly upsetting people with the decision.  Doing what is necessary to keep tournament attendance at its peak ensures the most people are happy.  Wizards is happy, TOs are happy, and the most players are happy because more of them are showing up to play.  It is true you may lose some players because of a restriction.  However, if more people would have left because nothing was done, Wizards made a good decision.

I work for a reinsurance company.  While we are competitive on our own, we need the insurance companies we work with to be profitable in order for us to be profitable.

Wizards is in the same boat.  They make money because TOs make money.  If a TO is not successful in any given area, then Wizards cannot make money from that area.  They do indeed make a lot of money off vintage/legacy because its one of the most played formats-although it involves unpowered decks and often unglued cards. 

Look at the polls on Aaron's articles.  Of the players who even read Magicthegathering.com, 68% have never been to a PTQ.  40% just read MTG.com.  These are the most serious of the casual people.  Many players read no Magic websites at all.  Most Magic players suck, and they have no interest in playing at a high level.

Stating that Wizards doesn't make money off vintage means they don't make money off competitive Vintage.  Vintage is the oldest format in Magic and is therefore the default format in Magic.  Most players have a vintage deck.  You'll see shadow vs slivers with sol rings or other cheap restricted cards thrown in.  These people buy new cards and play things worse than All Suns Dawn in their vintage decks.

These players couldn't care less what Mike Flores says about interactivity, and whether trinisphere is an interactive card by definition.  They know that when someone plays with it, the game is no fun.  If the game is no fun for long enough, instead of going to FNM, or a casual Sunday gathering, they will go to a movie with their frinds who also play Magic.  This drop in attendence can fuel further drops in attendence.  If the decrease doesn't reverse itself, the area will eventually dry up, and the store will go out of business.  At that point, Wizards can't sell Magic cards to people in that area.

People run tournaments all the time for Vintage where playing top tier decks is discouraged.  The goal is just to set a date to get all the players in an area to come together and have some fun.  A lot of stores sanction these events, and while Aaron didn't do a Dr. Sylvan style table, they have access to statistics that show how often most Magic players are playing.  If they see a downward trend with these numbers, it is important to act.  The best vintage players will play whether trinisphere is restricted or not.  Whether or not the worst vintage players will play or not is greatly dependent on whether trinisphere is restricted or not. 

As an aside, It is also important to note that since you can get a trinisphere in a pack right now, it has a bigger target than mana drain.  Wizards was unhappy about having to restrict chrome mox.  They will take action for the health of the format for the better players at the expense of the bad players as in chrome mox's case, but sometimes cards like trinisphere which aren't that bad in the eyes of good players, will get the axe for the benefit of bad players.  Vintage serves two very different populations, and they have to restrict cards to make both groups happy.  Keeping attendece up for both audiences is the goal of the restricted list.

It’s obvious that the people arguing w/ me have not worked in corporate finance.  Of course Aaron isn't going to say that they restricted trinisphere to make more money, but that is the root of the issue.  It doesn't matter how some guy who got an article published on starcitygames says in interactivity.  The definition of profits is universal. 

Trinisphere kills local magic.  It drives down attendance at local events played in by scrubs, and that hurts the bottom line.  They can restrict any 10 cards and TMD players will keep playing.  They do the best with what is available.  They will suffer through the boredom of trinisphere and even argue that it is interactive.  Most players won't.  They say, trinisphere is unfun and they stop showing up.

The asinine reply of eepeguy there proves that he is inexperienced with profit driving concepts.  You are free to assume Magic isn't a for profit venture if you want, but there really isn’t anything else to say so I’ll drop it. 

With all due respect, you must be young/uneducated in business if you don't understand the relationship between Wizards and TOs/Store owners. As a wholesaler, if Wizards doesn't take actions to keep their customers profitable (TOs and storeowners, not you), they themselves will not be profitable. 

Banning cards often has a very negative connotation as everyone who writes for Wizards has said.  Banning cards leads to people quitting.  They have to make sure more people will play than not based on bannings.  That is directly tied to tournament attendence-make sure more people play.  They don't ban and restrict things lightly.  I am not implying that they do.  It is a very serious part of their job.

With regards to timing in standard vs vintage, they aren't done the same way because banning cards in standard sends the signal that wizards messed up.  Everyone knows they don't test vintage so it doesn't matter if there are errors there.  You can't expect as quick action in standard as in vintage.  The company reputation isn't on the line like it is in standard.  Regardless, at the heart of the matter is that Wizards wants to make as much money as possible.  It does that by maximizing the profits of TOs. 

I am basically saying that the decision to ban/restrict cards isn't made with the top tier of players in mind.  It is made with lower tiered players in mind who pump the most money into the game.  The reason behind the decision is to make sure these players have fun and show up to tournaments.

For most people, see crazynlazy's comments in this thread & I@n's in the 'mail on the stack' article, Magic is just a game which is above all else supposed to be fun.  If it is not fun, they don't play the game.  I am arguing the policy is based on economics more so than what is in Aaron's articles.  The key point in Aaron's articles is that in Wizards view, unfun is measurable by tournament attendence.  His analysis of trinisphere as unacceptably unfun represents a belief that it will hurt attendence.  I@n's comments demonstrate that this is particularly true at the FNM level which is the bread and butter of the business.

Being a TO isn't exactly a lucrative business.  You won't see the guy who owns SCG on cribs and he's one of the most successful TOs/owners.  If Wizards isn't proactive, like banning 8 cards in standard, then there won't be any TOs.  Magic isn't just a hobby.  It is a business for both Hasbro and TOs.  It is a business that has no problem losing one player to gain three new players especially at the local level.  The core of the business is local communities.  It is most definately not the pro tour or big vintage tournaments.  Wizards policies are primarily geared towards supporting TOs/store owners because without them, there is no Magic.  Without regular players, there aren't TOs/store owners.  The restricting of trinisphere is a direct result of this.  To prevent decreases in tournament attendence, Wizards has to take steps to make the game fun.  Trinisphere is not fun=people don't play.  Hense, the measure for restriction is tournament attendence.  

Mind's Desire was restricted before it was legal.  Just before long.dec could really break out, it was restricted out of existence.  It was already scaring people away from getting into vintage because of its reliable turn 1 kill ability.  The DCI acted in a very proactive way to prevent tournament attendece from dropping.  Once it drops, it is hard to get it back up.  It is far better to stop the drop before it happens.

Wizards policies are fairly easy to understand when you think about it from their point of view.  

In 'Eight plus one' Aaron begins his discussion of Trinisphere by staying "I could repeat many of the paragraphs above with some of the words changed to cover the Vintage changes" so clearly the whole part about standard was not intended to be seperate from the discussion of trinisphere.

Further, Aaron chose to run a letter which states: "They view the restricting as unnecessary and if anything most believe it [Trinisphere] made Vintage healthier. In the end though, I believe it will be a good thing, as Trinisphere was lowering the turnout for our Type 1 events. Thanks for continuing to support Type 1."

Aaron is clearly pointing to the underlying restriction philosophy.  It is true Aaron tried to convince people who fell in the camp that trinisphere promoted a healthy metagame that the card is unfun.  That was an important part of the message.  The reason is important is because the issue that is vague here is not restriction criteria but what 'healthy' means.  Good players see the value of trinisphere.  Most players don't.  To good players, trinishere is a healthy part of the metagame.  To most players, it is unfun so they don't play the game at all.  To Wizards, a healthy metagame is one with many attendees.

Wizards customers are store owners and TOs.  In order to help their customers, Wizards needs to do what they can to get people into the stores.  Not showing up to play the game doesn't help people sell cards.  I can promise you that if Wizards told Pete at StarCity they could restrict 10 cards (doesn't matter which ones) and they could double his attendence, he would gladly tell them to do it.  He doesn't care about a 'healthy' metagame as proposed by the games' best theorists.  He cares about making enough money off the SCG Power 9 events to make them worth running.  A 'healthy' metagame that can't get people to show up to events really isn't 'healthy'.

First reread 'Eight Plus One'
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/af56

The portion regarding standard is about low tournament attendence being the reason for restrictions.  Perhaps you skipped this part because you don't play standard.  Because he lead with this portion of the argument in the standard section, Aaron doesn't specifically get into it with trinisphere.

Now read Aaron's column 'Mail on the Stack':
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/af61

Tournament attendence is specifically mentioned with regards to trinisphere. 

While most players latched onto 'Not Fun' as subjective, Aaron states "the evidence of the general public's disdain for what the format looks like has gone from anecdotal to measurable."  The measure is tournament attendence.

Again, you are free to disagree with the policy, but it is clearly stated in these articles.

Many players have posted elaborate criteria for restriction.  Wizards posted quite clearly what their criteria for restriction is.  The objective criteria for restriction is tournament attendence.  When tournament attendence drops, the DCI will restrict stuff to get attendece back up.  If only restricting trinisphere is the best way to raise attendence, that makes trinisphere the correct card to restrict based on the criteria for restriction.

If you disagree with this criteria for restriction, that is your business.  However, these constant posts about trinisphere being restricted without objective criteria are ignorant in light of the candid disclosure the DCI has had about its restriction.