Balancing the format

[kirdape3]

There are many technically viable decks.  However, the number that are dominant is limited to three confirmed.  Psychatog, Burning Academy, and Welder MUD.

The format is constricted at the highest levels, and not accessible to anyone without at least the powerful OOPs (Moxen, Big Blue, Workshops, Lotus, Masks, Bazaars, Drains, full set of blue-producing duals plus random others).  That's the biggest problem on the horizon; it just costs too much so when the remaining Type One players finally give up there will not be anyone in the format to replace them.

Currently, there are some overdue restrictions to slow the format down; cards like Intuition, Dark Ritual, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mishra's Workshop, and the new stuff like Chrome Mox and Spoils of the Vault have to be nerfed.  Otherwise, the format has degenerated to 'dammit, your opening seven beats mine.  That's Game, Boys!'.  That's also doubleplusungood for Type One; all the bad things that people have been saying about it for years are finally coming true.\n\n

[Smmenen]

This is 100% true.  I have helped develop this point of view.

Steve

[Matt The Great]

It seems foolhardy to think that just because Wizards currently has a policy that they will never ban a card from Type One for power level reasons that this will always be so - indeed, roughly as foolhardy as assuming that they will do this before absolutely necessary.

[MolotDET]

Quote Molot: weakening Tog is possible without restricting the tog: restricting Cunning Wish would probably have an equal impact becuase it then becomes much weaker in individual matchups game one - giving other decks a good shot. For example, it loses access to Purge, Artifact Mutation, Hurkyl's, Fire/ice, REB, etc.

     While I completely agree that Cunning Wish may need restriction, the fact that you say Tog would become less powerful because of it's restriction is kind of funny.
     People said that GroAtog was easier to beat as long as you kept Fastbond off the board and then the players (people like yourself) removed it from the deck.  Then they unrestricted Berzerk and everyone started testing the extras in the deck and it didn't need them.  When Gush was restricted people thought the death of Tog decks was close at hand, and just made a more powerful hulk deck.  The fact that restricting cunning wish might make tog decks weaker against a few things, dosen't account for the fact that Cunning Wish doesn't make this deck broken, TOG MAKES IT BROKEN.  While the deck might be easier to beat for the top tier decks it makes it no less hard to beat, for the lower tier decks.  Think about this what does it have in it's SB to deal with something like Goblin Sligh?  A lone Fire/Ice and that is it.  That would be easily gotten with one Wish.

Quote

Quote Basically Balancing the format right now would take three restrictions:

1) Burning Wish - because Yawgwill itself is not the problem.  It is the ability to turn it or any other restricted scorcery, into a four-of, when you are not even playing it in your maindeck, or to play Yawgwill more than once.  And lets face it there are more restricted scorceries than anything else, and for good reason.

2) Mishra's Workshop - five Black lotus' in one deck is broken, there is no way to argue against this.  With the release of this new artifact set there is no dout that Workshopdecks will become stronger and stronger and cause the format to become unbalanced.

3) Psychatog - no other restriction will lower the power of this deck.  Restircting any of the draw cards will just make Hulk players use other draw cards to feed the tog.  The problem with tog is that it is just a design flaw.  In type two (for which it was designed) there are not as many cards to use this with but in type one even cards that no one thought were good last year, become great in a deck that only needs you to have drawn cards.  I am not really sure that restricting tog will really solve the problem but one truth remains.  Tog allows control decks to play no maindeck answers and still win.  One time I was talking to JPmeyer and he said, "Tog is good in a deck with CARDS in it."  It took me four months not only to completely agree but to realize hows ominous this statement really is.

Nope, these restrictions would just make Long.dec the uncontested dominant deck in the format.
NEVER EVER forget about LED when stuff like this is posted, as kicking Burning Wish does nothing against that deck (visit the thread on it, I posted numbers there).

Quote Tog allows control decks to play no maindeck answers and still win.

Nope, the Wishes do. And I don't really think that's the problem. Killing the Wishes will just remove Control from the metagame, as it would now definitly loose to combo. You have to stop the combo-decks (including Workshop-Prison, which behaves a lot like combo) first.

     First, even the restriction of LED would not put long.dec in it's place.  The absolute truth here is that the STORM mechanic was not well thought out.  Long could just as well win with brainfreeze. You use Tendrils because it takes less spells to win with but had that card not been printed you would have just used brainfreeze.  So, perhaps restricting LED would slow the deck down a turn but it would make the storm mechanic no less broken and you would replace your LEDs with artifact mana from Mirodin and what ever older pieces you overlooked.
     Restricting Burning Wish allows the deck to be easier to deal with because they are maindecking their brokeness and thusly are weaker against discard and more likely to have a situationally dead card in hand, instead of the all purpose Wish.
     So, while I may agree that restricting Burning Wish is not the catch all answer to Long.dec it will not be neutered until Storm is Errated.

     Second, do you really believe that runnung only three cunning wish makes this deck broken.  IME as the pilot of Tog, more often than not, one wish is for Berzerk, one wish goes for a SB draw spell or tutor and only the third goes to finding an answer.  I think restricting Cunning wish in this deck lessen it's flexability but make it no less strong.  As I said above I think it would only really make it harder to beat the tier one decks.

     Back on topic:

     While the idea has merit and I agree that Yawgwill is a very strong card.  If you look at all Grendal's for-instances they rely heavily on restricted cards.  Yes if Keeper has Ancestral and Timewalk in it's graveyard then Yawgwill is broken but what about when they are not there?  The card is situationally broken, ie. a empty graveyard is not good for Yawgwill, early game (say turn 2 3) is not a good time for Yawgwill.  Having Yawgwill in your opening hand, almost certainly makes it time to Mulligan.

     I am not saying that Yawgwill isn't broken but is it any more broken than the other cards in whatever deck is usinig it?

Quote Currently, there are some overdue restrictions to slow the format down; cards like Intuition, Dark Ritual, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mishra's Workshop, and the new stuff like Chrome Mox and Spoils of the Vault have to be nerfed.  Otherwise, the format has degenerated to 'dammit, your opening seven beats mine.  That's Game, Boys!'.  That's also doubleplusungood for Type One; all the bad things that people have been saying about it for years are finally coming true.

Unfortunately I think Kirdape is very very close to the mark here \n\n

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Quote Another policy that is dumb:  "We need to restrict the tutors".  Ok, then restrict the fetch-lands.  ok, maybe not.

So true!

Quote There are many technically viable decks.  However, the number that are dominant is limited to three confirmed.  Psychatog, Burning Academy, and Welder MUD.

Hmm, my english seem not to be good enough, are you saying these are the only dominant decks or these are the only ones whichs dominance is confirmed?

Quote The format is constricted at the highest levels, and not accessible to anyone without at least the powerful OOPs (Moxen, Big Blue, Workshops, Lotus, Masks, Bazaars, Drains, full set of blue-producing duals plus random others).  That's the biggest problem on the horizon; it just costs too much so when the remaining Type One players finally give up there will not be anyone in the format to replace them.

This might well be a true problem, BUT you can not really solve it without distorting what T1 is meant for - using these expensive old cards. They are powerful enough to make it hard to compete without them as soon as people realized how to effetively combine them with new cards. There is a reason we've that many new top tier decks surface during the last year, most of which where build with cards that existed for about a year (or more, in the case of Survival Mask) and most of which use as many P9 as can be reasonably stuffed into them.
Regarding the Duals: As long as Fetchlands exist, Duals will be irreplaceable.

Quote Currently, there are some overdue restrictions to slow the format down; cards like Intuition, Dark Ritual, Lion's Eye Diamond, Mishra's Workshop, and the new stuff like Chrome Mox and Spoils of the Vault have to be nerfed.  Otherwise, the format has degenerated to 'dammit, your opening seven beats mine.  That's Game, Boys!'.  That's also doubleplusungood for Type One; all the bad things that people have been saying about it for years are finally coming true.

There I have to agree, sadly. These are the cards that make the decks that turn the environment into a turn 1-3 kill/lock-fest right now, turning FoW and Duress into close to must-includes and making Null Rod appear right about everywhere. It took me some time to realize this, but we have so many ultrafast decks around, that something has to be done about the speed of the format. The decks are on a similar level to each other, making no deck dominant, but they are all so fast that no decks without turn 1 disruption can really work right now.

Of these cards I see LED, Workshop and Chrome Mox as the most evident targets, as they make the broken decks. For Dark Ritual, yes it is played in all the Storm-Combo decks. But if my (very) limited testing is correct, the remaining Tendrils-decks (Rector and Perfect Storm) are not stronger than Budde Trix was (TPS) or more susceptible to hate (Rector). That was handled for a long time and I think they could still be handled now, even though the kill-mechanism has changed (even against Budde Trix you rarely countered the kill, you stopped the draw).
And I am still not sure Hulk (->Intuition) is broken, even though the deck is really really good. Or was this meant for Dragon? I'm open to be proven wrong, though, but changing the format to much at once will hurt cards that wouldn't be necessary to restrict (and it's damn hard to get cards unrestricted again).

Quote First, even the restriction of LED would not put long.dec in it's place.  The absolute truth here is that the STORM mechanic was not well thought out.  Long could just as well win with brainfreeze. You use Tendrils because it takes less spells to win with but had that card not been printed you would have just used brainfreeze.  .

What does Tendrils vs Brainfreeze have to do with LED?

Quote So, perhaps restricting LED would slow the deck down a turn but it would make the storm mechanic no less broken and you would replace your LEDs with artifact mana from Mirodin and what ever older pieces you overlooked

Which is why I despise Chrome Mox and would like wotc to not print anything that reasonably produces more mana than it costs again EVER.
And I sure as hell hope there is no more overlooked artifact mana from older times left. LED is more than enough, thank you Mike Long.

Just slowing the deck down a turn or two by killing LED (as well as the Mox) is exactly what is needed to take Long and make it from a disturbance to a part of the metagame, though. It will go off around turn 3 and that's where any viable combo-deck has to go off, as otherwise aggro is faster and that deck has no fortunate matchups left. So as long as combo should be part of the metagame, there have to be combo-decks that go off turn 3. (And I think a perfectly healthy metagame has viable archetypes of every kind, including combo, as much as I hate playing against it)

Quote  Restricting Burning Wish allows the deck to be easier to deal with because they are maindecking their brokeness and thusly are weaker against discard and more likely to have a situationally dead card in hand, instead of the all purpose Wish.
  So, while I may agree that restricting Burning Wish is not the catch all answer to Long.dec it will not be neutered until Storm is Errated.

Which will not happen any time soon. They're not wanting to errata anything anymore. And as I said, I think there is no reason to not have any combo in a metagame, anyway, see above for Long and this point of view.

About Burning Wish and Long.dec: This does close to nothing.  There is no difference if you use discard on the Wish or the MD brokeness. Both things do the same. There is only one card less you have to deal with, the single additional MD killcondition, all the other Wishes are replaced with brokeness that will kill you if it resolves.
Yes, restricting Burning Wish will not allow them to get solutions for hate from their SB. In my experience Long almost never gets it right now, either, if true hate resolves (Sphere, Null Rod, Arcane Lab). Here killing Wish does not change much, too.

Quote  Second, do you really believe that runnung only three cunning wish makes this deck broken.  IME as the pilot of Tog, more often than not, one wish is for Berzerk, one wish goes for a SB draw spell or tutor and only the third goes to finding an answer.  I think restricting Cunning wish in this deck lessen it's flexability but make it no less strong.  As I said above I think it would only really make it harder to beat the tier one decks.

You asked what Hulk has in it's SB for Goblins as a Wish-target to proove it's not the Wishes that make Hulk strong. Here you go, you answered it yourself. BERSERK. Without regularly getting a Wish for it, Hulk will not be able to outrace aggro as easily anymore (you don't want to MD one, do you?).
I still do not believe any of the Wishes is worthy of restriction right now, my earlier post was meant to just point out that it's not Tog that allows control to not play removal any more but the Wishes. Tog is nice as a blocker but without the Wishes he often remains to slow to really stop aggro (especially if he can be chump blocked). Only Wishes AND Tog allow you to cut the removal (well, Burning Wish allows you to SB Balance instead of playing Tog, though).\n\n

[MolotDET]

Quote What does Tendrils vs Brainfreeze have to do with LED?

    The statement was...    

Quote First, even the restriction of LED would not put long.dec in it's place.  The absolute truth here is that the STORM mechanic was not well thought out.  Long could just as well win with brainfreeze. You use Tendrils because it takes less spells to win with but had that card not been printed you would have just used brainfreeze.  So, perhaps restricting LED would slow the deck down a turn but it would make the storm mechanic no less broken and you would replace your LEDs with artifact mana from Mirodin and what ever older pieces you overlooked.

STORM makes the deck broken not LED.

Quote About Burning Wish and Long.dec: This does close to nothing.  There is no difference if you use discard on the Wish or the MD brokeness. Both things do the same. There is only one card less you have to deal with, the single additional MD killcondition, all the other Wishes are replaced with brokeness that will kill you if it resolves.

   you See it does because I only need to pull Yawgwill out of your hand once not four times like the wish.  This also would make the deck more suseptible to Gay Fish or multipule Extracts.

Quote You asked what Hulk has in it's SB for Goblins as a Wish-target to proove it's not the Wishes that make Hulk strong. Here you go, you answered it yourself. BERSERK. Without regularly getting a Wish for it, Hulk will not be able to outrace aggro as easily anymore (you don't want to MD one, do you?).

    Berserk being a card that you need would be one of the cards that you had to maindeck. by adding another tutor to the maindeck (in the second wish spot) it would also be easier to find...  I am just saying that restricting cunning wish will not kill this deck.  It may slow it down but much less so than other decks using Cunning Wish (ie. Keeper)

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Quote STORM makes the deck broken not LED.

A Storm-executed turn 4 kill is just about as viable as a non-storm turn 4 kill (as long as the way there was not build by Storm cards, that is. Mind's Desire *cough*.). A Storm-Deck deck that kills turn 6 is not even broken. Its speed is what makes Long broken, LED is what makes the kill as fast, so IMO LED is what makes non-carddraw Storm broken.

Btw, they won't do anything about the Storm wording but much rather restrict cards until it's not a menace any more. As they said, no more functional errata, to confusing for new/casual players.

Quote you See it does because I only need to pull Yawgwill out of your hand once not four times like the wish.  This also would make the deck more suseptible to Gay Fish or multipule Extracts.

The deck gives a fuck about Will as long as there are Draw7s left to replace it. Will is just used as another, slightly better draw7 (as you know what you get instead of just drawing random cards and you might get some more out of it). As I said, I tested the deck with 1 Wish, and you kill likewise if the card in your hand is Wish-Will or just another MD draw7.
BTW, Twister and Diminishing Returns both reshuffle the Will you want discard.
And Extract still sucks with one wish as you have to extract Wish, Tendrils and Hunting pack or Wish and double Tendrils now. Not really better, is it? Extracting Will does as much as Extracting Wheel, which means not much.

Quote I am just saying that restricting cunning wish will not kill this deck.  It may slow it down but much less so than other decks using Cunning Wish (ie. Keeper)

Do we really have to kill every deck that is good? I'd much rather see it on level with the other top decks and all is good. Which is why I don't see a need for action against Hulk RIGHT NOW (as Hulk does not reduce the game to a shuffling contest). And as I said, i don't even want to see C.Wish go, but restricting the Tog is just like all the people gunning for Morphling when Keeper was king. The deck will function in the same way as before without him, as it is the engine that makes it work, not that shitty 17/18 for 3  .\n\n

[dandan]

This is Type I. The home of broken cards, design faults, swingy plays, i.e. good stuff. The basis of the format is that you can use all of your cards unless
1. They use ante - which most of us hate anyway
2. They involve physical dexterity - most of us understand this, although a few still want to use the Orb as a substitute for deckbuilding.
There is a third category
3. Cards that are too silly (Unglued)
and to be complete a fourth but hopefully temporary category
4. Portal and Starter cards - require an official Oracle listing, which apparently is a lot of work or the DCI despite the fact that D'angelo has had unofficial Oracle wordings up at Crystal Keep for years. One or two tutors might need restriction although this is by no means certain.

That is the line in the sand. NO BANNINGS on power level.

I agree that banning Academy would allow the DCI to remove a large chunk of the B&R list but I think banning any card would be a mistake.

I think restrictions can and do keep the format within acceptable limits. Whilst you can tutor for things, it takes time and mana. With all of the good tutors restricted, combo is viable but not out of control. I believe that a number of cards should be considered for restriction (considered does not mean I think they should be):
1. Intuition
2. Tog
3. Workshop
4. Cunning Wish
5. Burning Wish
6. Chrome Mox
7. Sceptre
8. LED

A few others (artifacts) have to be looked at if Workshop is left alone, although I doubt that.

[Eastman]

Quote There are many technically viable decks.  However, the number that are  dominant  is limited to three confirmed.  Psychatog, Burning Academy, and Welder MUD.

What is the basis for making the distinction of 'dominant confirmed' over 'technically viable' decks? I assume we're just trying to pretty up the much-maligned 'tier' system with new prettier words but I still don't know what process is used to assign a ranking (excluding  arbitrary consideration) and why these rankings aren't completely superflous to every discussion.

[SpikeyMikey]

Quote (Methuselahn @ Sep. 11 2003,13:13)

Quote (doublej20 @ Sep. 11 2003,14:42)@ Grendal and some others, I'm not going to jump on you for requesting that a card be banned or restricted, but the way to BALANCE a format is not to rely on the DCI to take action, but to take action yourself. Make decks that BEAT the cards/decks in question, or use cards that will nullify a particular strategy. That is what Magic is all about, counteracting what your opponent is trying to do. This means play cards like Tormod's Crypt, Withered Wretch, Planar Void, and others. Don't rely on the DCI to bail you out whenever a new deck or strategy comes up that you have a tough time dealing with.

This assumes that Wizards of the Coast doesn't make mistakes.  I have 2 words to respond to that: Urza's Cycle.  This brings me to what I think is the more important question:

How does WotC come up with their B&R list policy?  It's like some sort of easy solution that they have now.  It's all black and white to them.  The arguement to maintain collectability of every card possible is a lame one.  It is at the cost of having to let the players of a 'dead' format (dead to them anyway) sort out the skewed meta and try to adapt.  The result is a few number of decks that simply dominate.  The current policy is not flexible AT ALL for banning cards.   They wont print ante cards or dexterity cards anymore, that's a given.  Even Ray Charles can see that the Restricted list reflects a need to continually keep combo in check.  Sometimes even just 1 copy of a certain spell is enough to make a deck playable or even degenerate.  With an ever increasing pool of cards, wotc still refuses to see this.

 BEGIN RANT  

I am a firm believer that it is *nearly* impossible for a card to make it through R&D that creates a deck so powerful that it cannot be beat consistantly.  There have been a couple, but a lot of the restricted list is not really all that scary.  Unrestricted Berserk and Recall, did either create a monster deck?  Frankly, Gush didn't need to be restricted, Entomb didn't need to be restricted for any reason other than to keep some sadistic bastard from creating a gosu 1.5 WG dragon deck, Earthcraft didn't need to be restricted.  

What we have though, is a bunch of people who cry whenever a deck hits the top.  GaT is too powerful!!  Of course, 4 months earlier, it was TnT is too powerful!!  Jesus fucking Christ.  It seems like any time that keeper isn't the top deck out there, people want to cry.  DEAL WITH IT.  Everybody is talking about how horrible it was that gush cost no mana, and how broken it is, and started getting into a bunch of bullshit theoretics and forgetting that it sets you back 2 turns when you play it if you don't have fastbond.  Nobody bitched about how broken gush was in Turbo-Nevyn, and that's been around for fucking years.  Hell, I was playing it on apprentice when I started playing T1(props to Mark by the way, I still think it's my favorite combo deck of all time).  

Everyone started playing tog, and yeah, it was a very powerful deck.  Good people with good decks were getting beat by bad people with Tog.  I could've spent endless hours on a forum bitching about how tog is just too difficult to beat, and crying for my mommy.  Instead, I took a look at the deck, and what it would take to beat it.  Then I built it.  Guess what.  GaT with unrestricted Gush loses to Junk.  Interestingly enough, Tog without gush is harder for me to beat.  I could cry now about how broken Accumulated Knowledge is(do you know how vindicated I feel, after having argued this point for the last year and a half and having been told I'm off my rocker the whole time?), but I'm not going to.  I'm going to use that little hat rack on my shoulders, and I'm going to do something about it.  

It pisses me off to see cards get restricted, because that's tantamount to WotC telling me that I'm too stupid to find a way around it.  There are some cards the honestly deserve restriction.  Ancestral Recall needs to be restricted.  Tolarian Academy needs to be restricted.  Gush?  Gush was just a knee-jerk reaction.  It was good in gro varients and Turbo-Nevyn.  That was it.  This crap I saw after it got restricted of jackasses running it keeper was stupid.  It doesn't belong in there, it's not any good in there.  You people are far too quick to jump on a bandwagon.  "It won at Duleman, it must be good".  STFU.  One tournament does not make something good or bad.  Battle of Wits won a regionals when it came out, went something like 7-0.  Didn't make the deck any less a pile of shit, just made it a regionals winning deck.

As far as banning restricted cards go, if WotC was going to ban ANY card on the restricted list, Academy would be the first to go.  Do you have any idea how many cards are restricted JUST because of Academy?  We could start with Crop Rotation and work our way to Frantic Search, but frankly, I don't feel like citing a dozen weak cards that are restricted purely because Academy is in the format.  When a deck manages to hold the format for an entire year, without reprieve, then and only then will I be convinced that it's too good.  Until then, let us deck builders work on this shit before you give up and start crying for restrictions and bannings.

  END RANT


edit: fixed smiley

edit #2: @ Wu:  You say that C. Wish allows tog to have no bad matchups, but I have to disagree.  The strength of the draw engine and the kill condition are what allows tog to have very few bad matchups.  Keeper used to work on the same principal.  It was a bunch of hosers like Moat, Abyss, D. Blow, etc. with 8 million tutors*.  It didn't even have a decent draw engine for christs sake and it survived just fine.  2 Impulse, an A. Recall, a Fact, and a Stroke is not a draw engine, it's more like ancillary tutor engine.  With this line of thinking, C. Wish allows Keeper to have no bad matchups...  I see where you're coming from, I just think you need to re-evaluate the importance of C. Wish.  Having something in the board, out of the way, is nice, but restricting or even banning Wish wouldn't kill Tog, it'd just make some of the nice toys move to the MD, and the wishes would probably be replaced with Merchant Scroll.  Not as flexible, I'll agree, but it'll still get the job done.

*The actual number of tutors ran in the old keeper decks is actually more like 123401235890532789x10^29384123948, but I figured everyone would get the idea from 8 million.\n\n

[Rico Suave]

Quote (SpikeyMikey @ Sep. 12 2003,02:53)I am a firm believer that it is *nearly* impossible for a card to make it through R&D that creates a deck so powerful that it cannot be beat consistantly.   

Is that why Mind's Desire was restricted before it even saw tournament play?  That was only the last set too.  

*Nearly* impossible does not mean impossible.  There are always exceptions, and even if one card a set is restricted, that's a pretty fast clip.  Looking at this set, we're more than double that rate.

I think you put too much confidence in R+D.

Quote You people are far too quick to jump on a bandwagon.  "It won at Duleman, it must be good".  STFU.  One tournament does not make something good or bad.

That would make more sense if GAT only won a single tournament, but that is not the case.  It dominated tournament after tournament.  Gush needed to go, whether you are in denial or not.

[Methuselahn]

Quote (SpikeyMikey @ Sep. 12 2003,01:53)...You people are far too quick to jump on a bandwagon.  "It won at Duleman, it must be good".  STFU....

Whoa there Tex, what house landed on your sister??  

[SpikeyMikey]

I got into an accident 3 days ago, my grandma died 2 days ago, I'm up to my neck in paperwork getting out of the Navy, I've got more bills than I can count, so I'm a little testy.  

Like I said before, I don't think that cards should be restricted based on the power level of a deck unless that deck can dominate for at least a year.  Give people a chance to get around the cards.  I was originally against the restriction of Mind's Desire, now, I agree that it was definitely a good thing, but cards like Gush or Earthcraft were not in need of restriction yet.  The whole argument about free card drawing and the drawback being a benefit, that's just people designing decks.  The only decks Gush was beneficial in ran either Quirion Dryad or Horn of Greed.  Using cards in ways that they weren't intended shouldn't be a cause for restriction, unless it creates a deck with a power level that is simply too high for anything else to be competitive.

Power level, and the need for restriction, is relative.  Compare Onslaught Block to Invasions Block.  Invasions has a *much* higher power level than Onslaught Block, nothing in Onslaught can compare on a 1 to 1 basis with Pernicious Deed, Spiritmonger, Urza's Rage, Fact or Fiction, etc.  However, both create a relatively diverse T2 and Block field.  If all decks, across the board, pick up an even power level from a set, it doesn't matter if that set is the next Fallen Empires or the next Urza's Saga.  As long as there is a relative balance between combo, aggro, and control, the format is still healthy.  Control gets a stupid tool in Isochron Sceptre.  Aggro gets a stupid tool in that shuffle hoser.  Aggro gets a stupid tool in Liar's Pendulum.  Now that's not to say that Mirrodin isn't going to have cards that get restricted, however, I don't think there's anything in the set that I've seen yet that will do unrecoverable damage to T1 as a 4-of.  Given a little time, the format does a remarkable job of balancing itself.  Up until the past year or so, T1 has gotten no attention from Wizards for years, and yet the format somehow managed to survive on it's own.  There have been restrictions, obviously a lot of things in Urza's needed to be restricted, but until around the time of FoF's restriction, Wizards has paid little to no attention to us.  T1 is resiliant, it'll survive just fine, if it's given a chance.\n\n

[Rico Suave]

Quote (SpikeyMikey @ Sep. 12 2003,21:38)Like I said before, I don't think that cards should be restricted based on the power level of a deck unless that deck can dominate for at least a year.  

That's way too long.  It doesn't take an entire year to figure out that a certain deck is dominating.  The format gets boring when only one deck takes the crown home every time, and to extend that out for an entire year is totally unnecessary when it's possible to simply get it over with quickly.

[Crater Hellion]

I think 3-4 months is a realistic time goal. The time between sets should be enough time for a card from one of those sets to prove itself without any overly hasty decisions, am I right?

[Akuma (gio)]

Quote Give people a chance to get around the cards.  I was originally against the restriction of Mind's Desire, now, I agree that it was definitely a good thing, but cards like Gush or Earthcraft were not in need of restriction yet.  The whole argument about free card drawing and the drawback being a benefit, that's just people designing decks.  The only decks Gush was beneficial in ran either Quirion Dryad or Horn of Greed.  Using cards in ways that they weren't intended shouldn't be a cause for restriction, unless it creates a deck with a power level that is simply too high for anything else to be competitive.

I completely agree with SpikeyMikey. It's unbelievable how many people cried foul about the old GAT deck and are completely fine with the current trio of Welder Mud, Psychatog, and Burning Academy. Give people time to figure out things, Type 1 moves at a snails pace compared to other formats. Sometimes even a year of dominance is NOT enough to determine whether something should be restricted or not.

A year of "dominance" does not clearly indicate degeneracy. Using GAT as an example, that so called "year of dominance" was more indicative of a "year of LAZINESS". Many people, and many metagames, were just too lazy to innovate during this time. They were content with playing GAT and just metagaming against the other GAT decks rather than working on other concepts. I'm not saying this applies to EVERYONE, our LA metagame was quite healthy with a good mix of things during this time. GAT was hated out very quickly when it was the latest "tech" and later became just another competitive archetype. Remember, most of the cards used in the current "top" tier decks (except for the "Storm" cards) were available during that time.

I do think that some changes need to be made (the format needs to be monitored closely), but these threads that suggest the banning of ~insert the latest card that offended or has been offending someone here~ are pointless. NO BANNINGS, play Type 1.5 if you don't like this format.

Yawg Will does not need to be banned. Yes it can be ridiculously broken, but so can other cards, and that's why they are restricted. There are also plenty of hosers.

This whole thing just goes on and on, thus my prior comment, which was promptly erased by a moderator:

"I hate these threads..."

[kirdape3]

The thing is, we're really NOT fine with it.  If I'm sharking a tournament for a Mox, for example, I'll run one of the three big decks.  And probably win.  However, these decks aren't FUN to go out and play with.  If I'm just kicking around a friend at Magic for fun, I'll play a 'fair' deck (well-tuned, but incapable of Tier One degeneracy).

I do not want this format to die simply because we finally got good at it.

[Zherbus]

Closed. More of a bitch and whine session than anything resembling constructive. For now on, I want ALL ban/restricted list discussions in community.