Not the smart ones, methinks.

As a note, I think that the Bishop eating his entrails card is from Knightmare Chess.

BTW, Orlove, I am a big fan of the Nietzsche quote here.

Harkius

Swing and a miss...

Keep it up, Orlove. You are making me laugh....

Harkuis

W
T
F
??????

Somebody was drafting wrong. Period. The only reason that I can think that this was an acceptable pass is if they were playing a deck with no red, no green, no red/green karoos, no red/green signets, and opened a Skeletal Vampire.

Harkius

See, this is why I don't play with creatures. :p

Harkius

Ah. Yes. I remember now. Regeneration used to remove them from combat and what not.

My bad.

Harkius

What? Is this a joke and I am obtuse or am I missing something?

Nevertheless, I wouldn't necessarily agree that this article proves that they are reading TMD. Rather it means that they read their email. How many of us emailed them about this issue within 48 hours of the last announcement?

Finally, this statement irks me:
This is not tantamount to power-level errata. Power-level errata would be designed to bring the power of a card into line. This was, rather, tantamount to saying what has always been the party line: Time Vault was not meant to be (ab)used the way that it has been and that the errata all along has been intended to prevent the misunderstandings, causing it to be used as intended.

Now, I don't think that they can honestly claim to know the original intent. And they don't make that claim. They finally admitted that they are guessing. This means that no one will ever really know, and that we will simply have to live with their guess, like it or not.

Edit: Good job, Matt. Way to think like a corporate shill.

Harkius

This is not actually correct. Winter Orb and Howling Mine had this functionality before. What they did was to clarify that all artifacts are normally active regardless of their tapped or untapped state, with the exception of these two (and Static Orb, too, I think).

Harkius

Ha ha. The debate rages on.

The fact of the matter is that none of us can really be certain what the original intent was, including Wizads. In all probability Dr. Garfield doesn't even remember what his intention was. Remember the Time Walk anecdote.

Face it: No one knows what the original intent was. This could very well be the removal of power level errata. It could also be another smokescreen. The fact is that no one knows. We never will. We do know that the current wording is intended to remove the possibility of untapping this bad boy without skipping a turn. End of story.

Harkius

Smmenen for the win!

Seriously, though, I think that this is a good sign. Wizards may not listen to single users, regardless of who they are, but they certainly seem to listen to enough of us if we make good, sound arguments about the insanity of some of their policies. Hopefully, this will signal the dawn of a new day, where the players and the management can learn to appreciate and understand one another. Or, alternatively, we can all act like children still.

Harkius

Nintendo games are worth money???

Wow! Savage tech!

Harkius

Regardless of when it happens, you ought to release it. I would pay for a DVD copy.

Harkius

I think that there are two interesting things here.

First, I didn't actually start this thread. I posted, laughing at green cards, somewhere else. It magically became its own topic. And that is pretty damned cool.

Second, I don't think that it is legitimate to list every singe green card that sees play in Vintage. I think that this should get cut to Oath, Regrowth, Channel, Fastbond, Crop Rotation, and Land Grant. (I cut Blessing from the list because I don't know that I have ever seen a good Oath player actually cast Blessing).

Harkius

It's actually Jewish mysticism. I think that it is spelled gemmatria, though.

Umberto Eco references it in Foucalt's Pendulum

Harkius

I've noted that pretty much the entire community agrees with a number of cards being easy targets for unrestriction. Does anyone know if Mssr. Buhler still reads these boards and/or whether he could point any of the luminaries at the DCI over this way to take a look?

It may do some good things.

Harkius

That's like saying that you would show him the fastest sprinter at the Special Olympics. Sure, but the guy's still special. Oath may be the best green card in MtG, but that is not saying a lot...

Harkius

There is a problem with your logic here... Uranium 238 splits to Thorium (if I remember correctly...lets go to wiki!!)

Nope. 235 splits to thorium. But I got the product right.

Regardless, it splits to thorium 231. That is a difference of four. You are bad at maths. In order to get one, you need a proton emission event. Since this happens relatively infrequently, we can only postulate that it is possible with something like tritium (which is an isotope of the element hydrogen, which has only one proton). This would destroy the element (like the Tarpan) and result in the 1 free change in energy (the released proton has a positive charge).

Therefore, I think that it must be

Tarpan
G
Creature - Tritiated Horse
When Tarpan is put into a graveyard from play, you gain one life.
1/1

It's obv not a NORMAL horse, so it retains it's special status. Plus, the laws of quantum chemistry are upheld. Voila!

Harkius

To what end?

(Not the Ultimus thing...that's pretty funny. )

Harkius

I will take a crack at it, as well. Why not, right?

From the current restricted list, I think that the following should be removed:
Black Vise
Burning Wish - Mainly here because of Will and Tendrils, and the former is far more concerning than the latter.
Chrome Mox - Tentatively
Dream Halls
Entomb - Despite its potential productive interaction with Friggorid decks, I don't think that they would get too out of hand. It should be watched, though.
Mind Twist - This sucks on the first turn, but it is Vintage. If you don't like getting pwned, go play in Standard.
Time Spiral - But it should be watched very carefully...

I don't think that Mox Diamond can come off, because I seriously think that too many decks would get too big a boost from it. Some decks would get a better shake out of the deal (combo, f'r example) than others (fish), and I think that the preference when changes are made should be to bring decks into each others realm of power, not to make the problem worse.

Banned List:
Nothing should come off. Obviously.

Additions:
I don't think that anything currently needs to be restricted in Vintage that is not already. I do think that Will ought to be banned. Gifts should be watched, but without Will, I think that a lot of the power would be taken from it. It would still interact productively with a lot of things in the environment, but I think that is okay.

There are some cards that I honestly don't think should come off.
Gush - Too much of a gift to Tog.
Frantic Search - Are you kidding me? Why would you unrestrict this? It doesn't look that good, but in multiples it is ridiculous.

I don't know whether Trinisphere should be on the list or not. Frankly I bowed out of Magic for a while (from Onslaught block to Rav) so I missed the Mirrodin debacle. So, I won't pretend to know.

Those are the changes that I would make. It may shake up the environment a little, or it may clear chaff from the lists. I don't think that anything tremendously bad would happen.

Regarding Will, though, I think that most of the Vintage community has read Smmenen's article and realized his argument holds a lot of merit. I always kind of thought of Will as just another power card, but he demonstrates in his article that it is fundamentally broken in ways that other cards simply aren't. As such, I wish that Wizards would just add it to the list. It is okay to have one card banned on power reasons...if that card is Will. The fact is that it is simply different from the other cards, and that is what the Banned list is for.

Harkius

C'mon...it's soccer. You absolutely must vote for a Hispanic country if you want to stand a chance. So, it's going to be Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, or maybe Texas.  :lol:

Harkius

It is unfortunate, but it is part of the collectibles market. Little Billy bought something that was very expensive and he should have done research first.

Here's a counter example. When I was young, I really, really wanted a Tyco Ricochet. I saved up the seventy dollars that it would cost, and then I asked my parents to take me to the toy store. There, I did a little research. I read the back of the box. I read the battery pack that cost another 25-30 dollars. Eventually I found a line on the car that said it was normal for the battery pack to power the car for 8-11 minutes. And for it to recharge for 4 hours. This meant that to play with my car for 45 minutes (about how long I was willing to bet I could play with it at one stretch), I would need four battery packs.

This was bunkum. I decided not to buy it. I went home and wrote a letter to Tyco. Their response? TS. I don't blame them, but I certainly didn't ever buy any of their products. It wasn't worth it to me.

Little Billy is in the same boat with the same responsibility. He bought a fake card. He is obligated to tell anyone that he sells it to that it is fake.

Harkius

Frogs and all amphibians can.

Interestingly enough, birds can change sex when they get older. Strange.

Harkius

Don't run from the POlice. They have insta-diesels.

Owned.

Harkius

This is actually not that bad in Limited if you draft for it. Playing Red/While and slapping this on a Legionnaire or the Goblin Balloon Replacement Brigade is not so shabby.

Limited?

Why would you?

Harkius

Wow...I had to reread that about six times to realize that I wrote it. Then, I had to go to my original post to see what I was talking about. To clarify, I wasn't kvitching about the loss of a two-card auto-win combo. Rather, I was kvitching about the lack of integrity on the part of Gottlieb and WotC. That is what I meant will hurt the game.

Brian:

Thanks for your addition to the thread. Your arguments were insightful and interesting. One note, though, is that they didn't return it to its original nature, but they tried to combine the 1996 errata with the original card. Cute, no? What, exactly, were they trying to do again (rhetorical question, everyone!!)

Harkius

:/ Only cuz ICBM has so many people on here already!

Edit: Joking! It's all friendly, 13NoVa!

Northeast FTW!

Harkius

Not to mention that it would defeat the purpose of trying to explain the errata. If you are simply going to answer, "Because I said so!", you may as well not answer the question at all. And, answering in this fashion is hardly going to inspire confidence in the players of any environment as to the rationality of Gottlieb and Wizards (and Big 'Bro), which makes everyone want to play less.

Harkius

Diopter:

First, thank you for actually making a logical argument. I disagree, but it is nice to see something that is not a tiger chasing its tail for a while.

One clarification, though. I think that you have overestimated your argument's efficacy. Granted, my training in formal and informal logic is probably not as good as yours, but I see a few issues.

First, it seems that a large amount of your post depends on the question of whether it is reasonable to untap Time Vault at times that are not your upkeep step. If the Gatherer pic of the Alpha card is correct, then a person who had never seen the card before and hadn't had any experience with the argument would probably make the intuitive assumption that the semicolon suggests that you must untap it during your untap step by skipping a turn. However, there is no clear reason to assume that you cannot untap it at any time. While Basalt Monolith has text that explicitly states that it can be untapped at any time, there is no good a priori reason to think that it cannot. An effective method could be argued either way, in my mind, and this is exactly what Smmennen was arguing. He is not saying that it must be the other way, but that it could be. It seems like a good argument to me.

Second, in your situations, which appear to be the basis for ruling that the one is objectively closer, it seems that all that you have accomplished is to say that H1 is closer to what Gottlieb is saying is correct, which I freely cede, and which you have clearly argued. But, I think that this is a moot point. You have set up your argument, cast your weapons and your dice into the fray, and failed to realize that you are arguing the wrong point. Smmennen wasn't (as nearly as I interpret it) saying that his understanding of what the cards said was as close to what Gottlieb is saying now as Gottlieb's interpretation of what the the cards said. Rather, he was saying that this is an invalid question, particularly because the argument can be made. The fact that you need to try to settle this and that one argument is not soundproof and the other foolish and cartoonish suggests that there was not a simply clear interpretation and an obvious intent, which were two of the claims that Smmennen had difficulties with.

Make sense?

It isn't that Smmennen is saying, necessarily, that Gottlieb's interpretation is incorrect (although he is certainly saying that at well), but that the intent and the functionality are not unambiguous.

Harkius

HOLY CRAP! I remember this from somewhere! Not sure where from, but this is tres creepy.

Edit: If you have to ask, you are not ready to know.

Harkius

Ummm....why would you buy a box to get four copies of an uncommon? Go to your local shop. They will be 2-3 dollars.

Harkius

No. Morphling is Cardboard Jesus. That is the only acceptable nickname.

Harkius