I think there is a justified cause for these calls for allowing more cards to be restricted/banned, but I disagree that simply upping the count would solve the issue.
When cards can be banned or restricted equally, the created formats would imo feel more like legacy than vintage, as the title of this thread would otherwise suggest; besides the cards you initially elliminated, there are no banned cards in vintage at all. Maybe not having the option of a ban at all, or at least limiting the banned list to only the first round, and the rest being only restriction rounds - or alternatively voting on the bannings suggested in a separate round and the top n (n~<=5 or so) being actually banned, and the rest being only restricion rounds?
The results of this initial experiment support this idea also - allmost all choices are ban choices, which makes perfect sense; why would you not choose to ban but to restrict a card that you dont want to be available? Only as a security that it cant be banned instead, but there are so many cards one would need to protect like this if any card can be named, so its easier to 'hit' other people's cards instead. Again, in principle I find it strange that a restricted list is used not to restrict but to allow some card to be played, especially if the format is to resemble vintage...

Then slightly upping the number of restricted cards (60 max for eg?)  should be enough for a sensible format, even if a few choices turn out ridiculous (not sure if such stupidity should even be accomodated at all though).

out of 50, that by itself is quite a high number - high enough to varrant at least another try before deciding that the count really should be significantly higher..

A possible variant being that intstead of restricting a card, one might choose to declare a card unrestrictable instead? Dont quite know what that would do,probably not worth the try... I also like the life-bidding idea, whether its good and whether its too slow or fun should be tested...

Another simple and imo logical possibility being that options what can be banned or restricted is limited to some preset list - for instance legacy banned cards, vintage restricted cards, possibly adding a few cards that are often debated about....

I think it would be great if people would be interested in experimenting with the restricted list - that experimenting might give the community a better feel for the actual merits of restricting or unrestricting a card on the actual DCI list, and maybe give debates about it some actual knowledge and experience instead of just speculation. It would also give people a chance of experimenting with cards and decks not seen for years - or never seen before at all .. So, thx for a great idea, I hope this casual variant sticks and gains popularity!!!

Agreeing with your broader points, Im only a slightly confused with this one detail - when saying combo Gifts, you mean MDGifts, i suppose. I remember reading a thread here, not that horribly old thread in fact, where you yourself claimed that you owned Gifts match up, and others were qualifying your points by saying that this is true for MDGifts, but not so true for BMGifts, which is a tough, but slightly favorable matchup for the Gifts, due to having less conditional cards than CS typically has. So basicly, affirming that MDGifts has a worse control matchup, and is in general a worse control deck.
Also, why is a CS build that 'drifted' towards something 'Giftish' the worst Gifts build ever? Isnt that basicly what SSB and BMGifts builds look like? So you consider them suboptimal to MDGifts? I really hoped the space of convergence between Slaver and Gifts has a unique potential...

I dont understand how packing more countermagic in a controll deck would be going out of character of such a deck? cca 10 counterspells is not that excessive.. Maybe unnecessary, but doesnt seem like aimed only at combo deck primarly - its aimed to a point at controll decks too, right?




And I guess one could add Crucible to this list. Yes, its an interesting perspective on the deck. Sounds really akin to Keeper thinking


Well, Duress is often capable of doing things common counterspells arent, (and by the look of the new editions it seems num of cards problematic to counter will continue to increase) and is cheaper to play. Yes, the mana color issue remains, and may or may not be a good tradeoff for the effect, but then again, Nights Whisper has this same problem, and I see Kowal did great with a Nights Whisper Slaver deck recently, so maybe its not such a horrible thing...

Im not too optimistic that slaver can or even should adapt to an extremely fast metagame. I just hope it slows down a bit. It would be great to see aggro viable again.... And the battle of combos is not such a great format...

I think the discussion drifted from the topic a little - Gifts in slaver - yes or no? - seems a hotly disputed issue, as is FoF vs Gifts, and Im sure this has been dragged through the forums many times. if this were the topic , maybe a sumarry of arguments stated thusfar would help focus the discussion, but in this thread it would I think be drifting too far into a pretty narrow issue about CS than the orig post tried to adress.

While both of those issues have been extensively debated, it seems to me that a few recent CS trends have been neglected. Ive seen (some of) the discussion on night's whisper's inclusion in CS. The orig poster speaks of first starting w the testing of Lat-Nam's Legacy , but eventually concluding that "at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep" makes it unsatisfactory. Some even suggested Impulse. Ive tried digging through spoiler generators for otr options, but cant say I saw something new and original. I know many choices in any deck, especially something as configurabile as CS are a matter of personal prefference and playstyle, and some are dictated by metagame. So have any of you tried any of the mentioned or unmentioned alternatives to Nights whisper or has NW been accepted, by obvious deduction or simply by orig posters authority as the correct choice if such kind of a card is played?

Ive allso not seen much talk of the inclusion of the Jar, i gather over FoF in CS builds lately, and hesitance of some players to use Crucible. Im just beggining to explore this deck after having not played a few years , so I certanly have no relevant opinions, but Crucible didnt quite seem as being a logical extension of CS gameplan, i must admit.

Im also not quite sure that CS early game issues are the most important thing to adress in configuring it, as was suggested a few times in the FoF/Gifts etc arguments. Nor can CS's superiority lategame be automatically assumed - due to mirrors and otr controll decks that have or can also have superb lategame. These are metagame issues, and can vary greatly, so arent generally applicalbe arguments. Id hate to loose to fats decks often certanly, but i absolutelly preffer playing that slightly more controllish deck than most of the controll metagame, in mirrors and vs otr controll.

I hope the code is made public domain by this postng :lol:

I'll try doing something like this (not sure Id use C over Python or Haskell though) in a day or so the latest. This posted code can imo be allmost directly translated to any imperative language, but making it less stax specific could be an interesting exercise ..

btw, anyone know what other kinds of software tools might be needed in the magic community? What other kinds of statistical analyses  could be interesting to magic community? Im also toying with the idea of a free software apprentice clone...
Ive seen a few related projects, will do some research into their status and options...