Thanks for the work on the results Matt and Ryan.  I agree with Ryan's logic.

I've listened to your podcast twice now.  I enjoyed it greatly, and wanted to offer constructive feedback.  Throughout the episode, you emphasized that you were analyzing WotC's logic as detailed in their B/R post.  I feel several important things fell through the cracks or didn't get sufficient time concerning chalice, based on the method of analysis used.  I wanted to suggest what I consider to be the most important issues (and to say something about dig, but I'll do that at the end).

In the interests of disclosure, I support the restriction of chalice, for a variety of reasons that I don't believe were closely examined.  Let me go through these in turn.  The first, and most powerful characteristic of chalice is it's capacity to transform normal hands with one lock piece on turn one into hands with two lock pieces on the first turn.  With two mana, you can play chalice 0 and sphere of resistance, or chalice 0 + chalice 1, and with four mana you can play chalice 1 + sphere.  Two and four mana are not startling amounts of first-turn mana for a workshop deck and compare favorably to the double sphere plan (5 mana).

The ability to deploy multiple locks on the first turn is relevant because it tends to set an opponent back so far that, unless shops starts missing early land drops or runs out of threats, the game ends up being over in short order with no chance to react. These situations occur far more frequently than first turn tinker, or first turn vault/key, because shops used to get four chalices in addition to eight spheres and four golems, and because shops often had the mana to play all the relevant cards.

This all feeds into a discussion of force of will.  Force is often a huge tempo swing for the blue pilot when it resolves, in that it can blank an entire turn of progress for shops.  But if you forced a sphere only to see chalice 1 resolve, you can find yourself having traded two-for-one for the least valuable threat on the first turn (which, in many cases, was sphere).  This gave shops amazing resilience to first turn counters in a much larger proportion of its hands than other decks had.

Added to this was the flexibility of chalice extended beyond the first turn, enabling shops to blank some of the most potent threats its opponent could deploy.  Furthermore, and unlike the sphere effects, multiple chalices were complimentary, and could entirely shut out an opponent.  This flexibility and synergy, at a low cost, was deadly.  And it bears mention that shops, with its power to create huge amoutns of mana, was best-positioned to take advantage of this characteristic.

Finally, I believe chalice can be deployed at two casting costs that are relatively low impact for shops players -- 0 and 1.  Chalice for 0 is narrower, typically executed when on the play on turn 1.  It's only potential downside is that you draw many moxen which you cannot then deploy, because you are able to deploy all your starting moxen before chalice even goes on the stack.  Because I believe the marginal utility of moxen decreases over time (accelarents tend to matter most on the first turn or two), this isn't in practice all that bad.  At 1, it only shuts off 1 commonly played card in the shop mainboard (sol ring).

This point is even weightier, however, because there isn't much opportunity cost for shops when the plan is to play chalice at 0 and 1.  What I mean by that is there are not a lot of great cards that support the lock strategy which shops wants to play at 0 and 1 that chalice prevents them from registering with.  You could argue that goblin welder and mental misstep are in this category, but I don't buy it, in part because I doubt shops will start main decking either in the post-restriction meta. 

There is more that can be said, but my point is that the restriction of chalice is eminently defensible, and I didn't get several of the above points from your podcast.  At best, I think it will lead to the return of a previously absent archetype (Grixis big blue, and friends), without actually removing any other central archetype.  We're all waiting to see if it was the right decision, and time will tell.

Concerning Dig, I have a more neutral observation.  The way you and others have evaluated restrictions is based on their direct and immediate impact on vintage, and their likely impacts in the near future.  This results-based approach to restriction policy is surely required, but I don't believe it is the only criterion wise restriction policy should be based upon.  The reality, I think, is that there are *so many* amazing blue cards on the restricted list that every restriction going forward is just piling on.  Using just the cards on that list, with minimal supplements from unrestricted cards, most blue decks have an extremely powerful core draw/search engine.  Utilizing what I have referred to as "results-based" logic, it may be that, one day, cards of equal power to ones on the restricted list will not even be considered for restriction, because there are already enough good draw/search cards that people only want one or two of what otherwise would have been restriction worthy.  Arguably that is exactly where dig sat for close to a year.

This is relevant because the restriction of dig, along with other cards, had only minimal impact, reducing the number of digs in most decks from two or three to one, in my view because of the already large number of cards on the restricted list that achieve the draw/search goals that dig does.  This minimal impact does not imply, in my view, that the restriction was questionable or unwarranted.  Cards can be deserving of restriction even if they only show up as two or three ofs.  Now, it is a fair criticism that my position prizes consistency over results.  There may be situations where I would violate the mode of thinking I have just outlined to achieve or prevent a particular result.  However, I believe that in instances such as this one, where the downside of restriction seem so minimal, we should endeavor to keep policy decisions consistent and in line with one another.  In my view this logic counsels in favor of restricting dig.

Thanks again for another great episode; after years of listening the quality of your broadcasts still impresses me.

Great article Matt.  One constructive criticism is your language concerning Kolaghan, notably the passage "provided you’re swinging into a clear or mostly clear opponent, the math for Dragonlord is favorable," is, in my opinion, a bit misleading. 

Kolaghan is only more damage than Flame-Kin Zealot when you have fewer than three other creatures on the board after he comes into play, assuming no others enter later (Flame Kin is 3/3 after trigger resolves, and adds 1 power to three other creatures = 6 power of Kolaghan).  That is rarely the case, as most dredge pilots will attest, because you usually have more than three other creatures.  Moreover, there are a not insignificant number of situations where Kolaghan cannot end the game, and the Zealot can (say you have five 2/2s and Kolaghan = 16 damage, versus 5 3/3s and Zealot = 18 damage).  And certain non-clear opposing boards probably swing the calculations even more in Zealot's favor.  All told, I'd probably have used a word such as "comparable" over favorable.

That being said, your insight that Kolaghan's ability requires him to remain in play is something that hand't occurred to me and advanced my understanding of the card.  Thanks for that.

I was hoping, when you reviewed Robert Greene's Grixis Thieves list, that you would comment on the absence of mental misstep.  I suppose Workshop was bound to show up in droves at Vintage Champs, so it may have been motivated by a desire to reduce the number of dead cards versus shops, but I would have liked hearing analysis regardless.

Great show, as usual.  Thanks for taking the time to put together a quality episode.

I, personally, find the set reviews helpful, because they save me time by focusing my thinking on a small number of cards.  Would love to hear more podcasts from you both, but not at the cost of set reviews.

I'm in.

So it's pretty bad then?  This argument is self-defeating, because the most important lands against shops are mana producers (and fetchlands are, indirectly, mana-producing.  I'm not even sure the statement is true, because wasteland is pretty great against shops if you're playing landstill.