The list of their "explanations" for restrictions could be endless, e.g.:
- Oath of Druids tutors for some of the best creatures in Magic circumventing their cost.
- Mishra's Workshop is a reusable Black Lotus for artifacts.
- Bazaar of Baghdad is a very powerful draw engine.
This wouldn't clarify anything without putting their decisions into a context.

They could have explained why
- Gush needed to be re-restricted when the restriction of Scoll, Brainstorm and Ponder already weakens the Gush engine
- the DCI restricted 5 cards at once when they used to be conservative about restrictions before
- Ichorid was left untouched
etc.

I haven't followed the development of Flash decks closely but I had the impression that Gemstone Caverns was tested in Flash and being dismissed. That would be the only way to get turn 0 kills if I'm not mistaken. And how often do turn 1 kills actually occur with Flash?

The explanation of the restrictions is worse than the announcement. It's just stating the obvious: Merchant Scroll tutors for good cards, Brainstorm and Ponder dig for cards and Gush is problematic. Who would've thought?

If you take away someones toys you'd better have a good explanation beyond "because we can". Is an in-depth explanation behind the DCI's thought process too much to ask? That way one would be at least be able to understand their intentions better even if one is not 100% o.k. with them.

All in all this is very disappointing.

My first reaction was: WTF!?!
And I always thought that the DCI's approach to B&R list changes was a more cautious one to see what happens after a change. I'm just wondering why they restrict Ponder while cards like Mishra's Workshop or Bazaar of Baghdad are still allowed as four-offs.

Also, I just realized that Brainstorm, Ponder and Merchant Scroll are now added to the list of cards unbanned in Legacy but restricted in Vintage. This means I cannot even port my Legacy Threshold into a Vintage setting anymore.

Maybe they really want to restrict everything until Skullclamp becomes good, and then restrict Skullclamp (I can't remember where I read that).

To give you an idea what might happen without proxies:
In Germany you have almost only sanctioned Vintage events. So what happened? Tournament attendance is much lower than it used to be with now 20-30 players being a good turnout for the "big" tournaments.
It seems that most unpowered players switched to Legacy where you don't have to rely on hate or budget decks to at least stand a chance against the powered players. For Legacy there are several regular tournaments with 50+ players each month (sometimes approaching 100 players). Also, the prices of the P9 have dropped noticeably since less people play Vintage.

Maybe I'm missing something but why couldn't Mana Drain be restricted?
(And to make things clear I'm opposed to any restrictions at the moment.)

Could you please go into more detail about this kind of deck? I can't really imagine a creature-based deck winning on the second turn (not counting stuff like EtW).

So all of those were restricted at the same time? That's totally mind-boggling. It makes sense that unrestricted Voltaic Key might be too good with both Mana Vault and Grim Monolith unrestricted but I think that those mass restrictions were a little bit too much and probably not tested in detail.
I'm sure that with 23 changes to the restricted at the same time there were too many possible combinations to thoroughly test the possible impact so they probably wanted to be on the safe side.

I voted for Voltaic Key as the obvious choice.

Also, I wonder if Gush would ever be a candidate for unrestriction. It was only used in Gro-A-Tog, Turboland and Stasis, right? None of these seem too frightening.

You're only playing a total of 13 blue cards in your initial list. That seems to be not enough to support 4 Force of Will. So I would either add more blue cards or cut the FoWs completely (and play more black hand disruption).

Ivory Tower is too slow for competitive Vintage. Don't play it.

No love for Disco on these boards?

Currently I'm listening to 21st Creation – "Tailgate" (on Motown Disco). Feel the energy!

Impulse already got rid of the "shuffle your library afterwards"-clause with the release of foreign Visions releases (e.g. German Visions). The same goes for the beatdown-box version and as mentioned the foil promo. So it seems to be clearly a printing mistake.

The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind) - The Bucketheads

I guess no one around here will know this.

That sounds about right.

+2 Intuition (why would anyone want to restrict this beauty?)

Grim Tutor 10
Dark Ritual 8
Mishra´s Workshop 10
Goblin Welder 8
Intuition 10
Mana Drain 9
Tendrils of Agony 10
Elvish Spirit Guide 10
Cunning Wish 10
Thirst for Knowledge 10
Crucible of Worlds 10
Bazaar of Baghdad 10

The results of Aaron Forsythe's poll on magicthegathering.com can be found here:
Latest Developments: Don't Leave Empty-Handed

Less than 30% of the participants in that poll own more than 4 duals. I didn't think that the results would be so much different. Well, their numbers are obviously skewed because of some T2-only players.

I have right now:
4 Underground Sea (4 FBB)
4 Tropical Island (3 FBB)
4 Volcanic Island (2 FBB)
4 Tundra (1 FBB)
3 Savannah (1 FBB)
4 FBB Taiga
1 FBB Bayou
1 FBB Badlands
1 FBB Scrubland
1 FBB Plateau

That's 27 altogether. Badlands, Scrubland and Plateau I only have for my collection but I never use them in Vintage or Legacy.

Shouldn't Stifle be a good option against combo? A great amount of decks is already running blue anyway.
Stifle should be of help against the main combo decks (Storm-based combo and Dragon, Belcher to some extnd) while also being useful in other areas.


Regarding the article itself I found a statement from Aaron Forsythe himself regarding the discussion about this article on the Wizards forums. There, people voiced their opinion that the DCI banned cards due to people complaining a lot about cards being "unfun".

As I guess that some people won't read those forums I thought I might just copy his statements from there:
"One, very little about this makes me happy.

Two, it wasn't banned because of whining. Whining happens a lot all the time (witness the glory of these boards). It went beyond whining... tournament attendance dropped (not sales, btw, we don't ban cards for sales), shop owners were reporting flagging interest in the format, sanctioned tournaments fell. Re-reading my article, that isn't super apparent, granted, so I'll go over it more next week.

If people want to whine, fine by me. We learn stuff from whining. But when they actually start acting, it is clearly a real problem (unlike, say, the card face change before 8E... lots and lots of whining, no noticable change in customer behavior... in fact, 8E went over better than 7E)"

He obviously is addressing Standard here, but the same can probably applied to Vintage.

White would give you access to Meddling Mage and Swords to Plowshares. These might be good in the Control Slaver matchup.
StP and the Mage might be helpful against Oath as well.

Anyway, did you consider Disrupting Shoal? It seems you have a decent amount of cards in the 1-3cc range.

Some of my favourites:

- Shakespeare in Love
- Moulin Rouge
- Forrest Gump
- Ice Age
- Gandhi
- American Beauty

Also: Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings

I would play a deck that would be unaffected by these restrictions. So I would probably play Oath, maybe even GAT.

A)
What cards do you collect and save?
Only the T1 cards your currently playing with? T1 and other format cards? A large or small pool of usable cards? Collect sets or card that interest you?
I'm keeping cards playable in both Eternal formats and some cards for casual play as well.
And I'm collecting cards with artworks from my favourite Magic artists (mainly Rebecca Guay and Rob Alexander).

B)
How is you collection sorted and stored?
Do you use binders or boxes? Sorted by set, color or play environment?
All the rares ( a good 500) in one binder and some part of the uncommons and foils in another binder. The rest is stored in a cupboard.

C)
How do you keep track of your cards?
Collections pretty small keep track of it in your head? Computer spread sheets, database or other program? Note book? What about cards your collecting for sets?
I use Excel sheets to keep track of all my rares and playable/ valuable uncommons and commons. Also I'm estimating the value of each card in an extra column there to get an idea of the total value of the collection.

D)
Do you trade and if you do how?
How do you set up your trade binder? Do you trade online? Picky trader? Trade in only T1 or also in other formats cards?
I always carry a small binder with tradeable cards with me. Everything I want to keep in my collection I always leave at home (for security and weight reasons). I try only to get Legacy/ Vintage playable cards in trades, unless it is very much in my favor.

F)
What environments do you play in?
T1, 5-color, Type 4, Highlander, T2 etc?
Vintage & Legacy for tournaments; casual for fun

G)
How do you acquiring cards?
Buy boxes, singles, draft, trade. Where stores, ebay, online?
Most of my cards I get through eBay. Sometimes I aquire some cards on MOTL.
If a Magic set seems promising (e.g. Mirrodin) I'm byuing a booster box, otherwise I'm only buying a few boosters/ tournament packs per set.

Why would you want to start restricting cards not because of power-concerns but because they are expensive? [sarcasm]While you're at it you could start banning cards for money reasons as well to make the format more accessible [/sarcasm]. For those who want to play their old cards but don't have the most expenisve ones WotC already restructured "T1.5". The new Legacy is designed to be the accessible format for those players (opposed to Vintage).
Also, I don't follow your reasoning here that a restriction of cards like Bazaar of Baghdad would get more people to play Vintage. The main problem for starters really is getting the P9.
And I'm not  saying all this because I own Drains and Bazaars myself (which I got before my first power cards to use them in old "T1.5" as well) but it would really worry me if the DCI started restrictions for other reasons than sheer power.

Just to correct this: Library is U3 (at least to my information)

A quote from crystalkeep.com again:
"31,000  Arabian U3 -or- Arabian C1"

So theoretically there should be 31,000 Libraries and 7,750 Bazaar playsets in existence.


I don't think that they will reprint P9 as promotional cards although I won't say 'never'.

The tournament was nice and I'm glad someone else already posted the results. To me it was amazing how many powered player there were but maybe that's just because it was my first tourny this big.

For anyone who cannot figure out the prizes:
1st: Mox Jet
2nd: Abyss + Tropical Island
3rd-4th: Itl. Moat
5th-8th: 50 DK coupon (maybe worth $8)

Thanks for your help. That sounds really good.

I didn't expect there to be that much T1 action as Aarhus only has half the number of inhabitants Bremen has.
The only place where you can participate in T1 tournaments in Bremen (about 540,000 inhabitants) is at our university. And only once in its history it had to be 5 rounds due to 19 people attending. It's always aggro-heavy with only very few people with power (3 fully powered, 2 semi-powered including myself).
Maybe someone local knows what kind of decks people like to play there but it's good to know that there's a lot of power running around.

Hi all!

I will be travelling to Aarhus this weekend and will stay there for 8 weeks as part of a traineeship. Now I had searched the web for information on T1 in Aarhus but couldn't find anything.

The only thing I know is that there are T1 tournaments in Copenhagen ffrom time to time but there are probably T1 players in the Aarhus region as well. My hope is that someone on TMD knows if there are tournaments held there or if there are any players gathering privately or in public locations (like pubs) to fight some matches. Maybe someone can give information on the local metagames as well (if there are any).

Any help towards this matter is appreciated as it wouldn't make sense to take decks with me for nothing.

Greetings,
mogote

What do you mean with "and Michael French dissappeared"? I guess you are talking about Michael French on MOTL, right?
I just got some Japanese stuff (including foil) from him in todays' mail. Maybe you should take a second look. His trade & auction thread is still there on page 3.

Have you thought about Brain Freeze in the SB? At least I haven't seen it already mentioned in the thread.

It could be an accesible win-condition via Cunning Wish. It's not good when you play against Stifle but cannot be misdirected or countered opposed to Stroke of Genius.

That's perhaps true. Your opponent should have the same odds of seeing Force of Will as you have. Salvagers.dec can win sometimes as well but that doesn't make it an overall good deck.
I also wonder why you "kept a hand of 5 mana sources and 2 Stifle and just hoped they didn't win first turn" after you lost the die roll. Shouldn't you have mulliganed that hand without a doubt? That's really not a good hand to keep. If you're going second you cannot defend against your opponent. And as you're playing combo yourself you had a hand with no tutors, no card drawing and no hard counters. You can be glad your opponent played a draw7 and not Bargain or Necropotence.

I'm sure that isn't Singapore. I looked it up. According to Magigthegathering.com's Arcana it depicts a landscape from the Philippines:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/arcana/231

Also, does anyone value Portal basic lands? I really like to use them in my decks as some of the artworks by Rob Alexander, John Avon etc. are not otherwise available. And those Portal1 and Portal2 lands are blackbordered as well.

This one's for you:



Guru lands are probably the best. My preferred ones are the APAC and Eurolands, e.g. this Australian one (one of my favourites):

Imo this is what seperates T1 from the Pro Tour. All the decklists from important PT related events are available to the public. While in T1 decklists from big tournaments are sometimes withheld by request this is not the case there. Withheld decklists will hamper the evolution of decks and the development of metagames. It would help if tournament organizers made decklists obligatory for the top8 so everyone knew that participating in combination with a good enough final standing result in a published decklist.