After the poorly decided un-restriction of Gush and the disappointing restriction of gifts, how can we be surprised?
Do I like the changes? No, not particularly. But there is nothing that we can do about them (other than send an email on Friday). In saying that I do have a few things that I feel Wizards needs to keep in mind when thinking about the B/R list.
1. The B/R should be for fast mana, tutors, and un-fun cards. This has always been Wizards policy, if they have changed their policy fine. But how about you let the players in on that fact.
2. In the old days of B/R there was a watch-list. Why don’t we still have this? I am sure Shops and Bazaars are permanently on this list just awaiting the day that someone doesn’t stick up for them when they have their meeting about which cards to put on/off the B/R list.
3. Put someone in charge of the B/R list for vintage. I am unaware of how the B/R is calculated every 3 months, whether by majority votes or by some big grey ogre in the Wizards complex. Whichever way it is, some transparency would be appreciated by the community (though I know that we will get some at least on Friday).
4. Who would I put in charge of the B/R list? Hard question but obviously the pillars of the community would be the most apt individuals. Not that this would perhaps be the best idea, but it would at least be interesting if the Winner of Vintage Worlds was given some control over influencing the B/R list. This could morph the metagame year by year, if Wizards is so worried about a lack of change.
5. If these were the 5 cards that were pinpointed by Wizards, they should have chosen a couple of the cards to restrict and put the others on the to-watch list, this would have been less of a shock to the collective vintage ‘conscious.’
6. The five cards that Wizards have pinpointed as problem cards need to be looked at in a vacuum as well as in the decks they were housed in. All five of the cards that were restricted were being played in the same decks. With the obvious exception of Flash. In this case, Wizards should have looked at how to ‘Nerf’ these decks by restricting the fewest number of cards.
a. Merchant Scroll – ‘So many insane plays’ says it all really. Best unrestricted tutor. It HAD to be restricted according to old B/R reasons.
b. Gush – I don’t think it’s anywhere near as playable without merchant scroll. Restricting merchant scroll I feel solves the Gro-Atog Problem.
c. Flash – I feel that Wizards should have used the same analysis for Flash as for Gush; it is much weaker without merchant scroll.
d. Brainstorm – I own 350+ brainstorms, it is my single favorite card that I have collected since I started playing (Ice age was the first set I bought alot of). In saying that, the utility of brainstorm + fetch lands is too good. As much as it is a skill testing card, it is also potentially brutally unfair and could be seen as unfun (making discard a less viable strategy) or as a potentially strong tutor (even though it is obviously not a tutor). Brainstorm had to be restricted.
e. Ponder – I feel like with the restricting of merchant scroll and brainstorm, ponder is obviously a must play but it also slows down the format (by being a sorcery) and prevents the level of plays that you had with both brainstorm and ponder. I feel that they should not have restricted ponder. Wizards could have put it on the B/R watch list, and watched to see how much prevalence it gained and whether it was restriction worthy.
- All-in-all, I Feel like Wizards could have achieved most of their goals by restricting brainstorm and merchant scroll, and waiting to see if that was enough to castrate the shells of the decks that remained.
As an additional afterthought to the B/R list, I always think about what cards Wizards are going to be printing in the future. Is there some ‘fair’ brainstorm card in the near future (that perhaps does that same thing but for only 2 cards, for example).
As a community, I feel that the majority of people would agree that ponder should be taken off the Restricted list. I would ask anyone that is emailing Wizards to specify that they would like this individual card taken off the list. Maybe my conjecture is wrong but if the whole vintage community is in unanimity then perhaps they will roll back this specific change they have made.
-Cheers-
PS- Steve you have to stop talking about how good certain cards are
someone from Wizards is obviously reading your articles.
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