Jumping from the DCI's B&R nest

[Methuselahn]

What defines Vintage?

Ben askes this question repeatedly in his latest article at SCG.  What do we want Vintage to be is the focus of his article.  Thinking this out, I had to ask myself:  "Why do we follow the Banned and Restricted list set forth by Wizards of the Coast??  

The purpose of the B&R list is to prevent any one deck from being degenerate, right?  It is obvious that the DCI aims to please the Vintage community, an evolved community that believes in proxies.  It doesn't make sense to me how WotC can be against proxies yet base their restriction decisions on proxy tournaments.

If the Banned and Restricted list is a reflection of sanctioned tournaments only, would we see the same list that we have today?  I don't think so.  Imagine this scenario:  Meandeck Doomsday becomes insanely popular because it can be built under 5 proxies relatively cheap.  Said deck dominates everywhere and is seen as degenerate and 'soils' the format. (ala 4 Gush GAT)  The DCI deems that Doomsday is once again too powerful and re-restricts it.   Now, would this scenario be possible without 5 proxies everywhere?  No, because of the absolute need for Ancestral Recall and Black Lotus.  Hence, we have the DCI making decisions based on non-sanctioned events.

So anyway, my proposition is this:  Screw the DCI, set forth a Proxy-Players 'Union' and create our own Banned and Restricted list.  When I try and follow my own logic, this inevitability is what I come up with.  Is it possible to agree and organize such a thing?  What would this require?  Am I really that crazy?

Edit:  I realize this is a post that discusses banned and restricted issues, and such things are a touchy subject.  I deeply hope any individual card choices will not be debated here.  It should be obvious that this is NOT intended.

[BigChuck]

A similar topic was posted back on the old Beyond Dominia(either that, or the early days of the drain, but I'm pretty sure it was BD.)  I believe the consensus ended up being that it would be too difficult to implement.  There are plenty of type one run events that are never posted on TMD, and it would bring confusion to a lot of people.

It also brings up this problem: Who decides?

[The Atog Lord]

The DCI, as one central body, sets forth a set of unified rules for everyone to obey (with the exception of the 5 proxy rule of course). This is important, as it means that whenever someone goes to a tournament, that person knows just what to expect from a rules perspective.

To give you an example of why this is so important, a little while ago, I went to a tournament where this was not the case. The tournament was not marked as different when it was advertised here on TMD. However, there, the store owner forbid intentional draws and the even forbid concessions. This was very frustrating, as the store owner was deviating from the official rules of the game in a manner not published in his advertisement. Although it did lead to a very fun match against Jacob Orlove that we had to play out, even though he and I were both guaranteed to make top eight.

I can see the matter of proxies being important in that it opens up the game to more players. Beyond proxies, however, I think that a single, unified set of rules is important. Now, the next question one would ask is, why should we not make up the rules?

First, it would make no sense at all if each store made up their own rules, as in the case above. Imagine being able to play one deck in one location, not in another, and having intentional draws not work in a third. This would be a nightmare. The DCI prevents this.

Now, one could suggest having we players decide the B+R list. I am convinced that this would be disasterous. First of all, WotC has no agenda in crafting the restricted list beyond containing broken things. There may be a temptation for people on this board to let personal preference dictate what should and should not be restricted. I have seen some discussion of the B+R list here -- calls both for restriction and unrestriction -- that has made me shake my head.

In conclusion, I trust Wizards to handle the Banned and Restricted list, as they have for so many years. I believe we would fail to come up with a better list, and may well end up with a worse list. Beyond that, the centralization of the rules under one entity makes tournaments much, much cleaner.

[Komatteru]

While Wizards recognizes the value of proxy tournaments, and as much as they might want to believe in them, they cannot support them officially for a couple reasons.  First of all, proxies in one format could lead to pressure to support them in other formats.  Sure, Vintage cards costs hundreds of dollars, which is out of the budget of many players. Morphlings cost $20-30, which might be out of the budget of some extended players.  They can only dream of being able to play with Morphling just as much some players dream of playing with Moxes.  If I can proxy the most expensive cards in Vintage, why shouldn't someone else be able expensive cards in Extended?  Clearly, proxies in other formats cause more problems than in Vintage because of the publicity (assuming the outcry were significant enough to force the DCI to allow them in other formats).  You can't allow proxies in pro tours or the world championship because of the TV coverage (they don't even allow sleeves because of the cameras).  Then you have the problem of some DCI tournies allowing proxies and not others. You could say "no proxies in any event higher than 16k," but that requires players to know the k value.  It just creates a big mess.  Allowing proxies in one format just opens up a big can of worms for the others.  Second, it sends a message Wizards cannot really send.  Allowing proxies officially basically sends a message that not everything needs to be official in an official tournament.  Counterfeit cards are illegal and Wizards is entitled to collect damages from counterfeiters to protect their IP.  What kind of message does it send to allow fake cards in some tournaments?  You just can't do that.  It just creates too much of a grey-area and general haziness.

The global nature of DCI rules is similar to baseball having certain rules that everyone follows.  You see some leagues going with a 3-2 count to speed up games, but that even causes some confusion.  When I was in high school, our league used 3-2, so whenever we played a non-Catholic league team, we had to ask whether we were playing 3-2 or 4-3.  The 3-2 rule made pitchers pitch very differently and forced hitters to go after early pitches that they would watch if the count were 4-3.  Imagine the confusion and general problems if several other rules were changed other than the count.  Try some places playing baseball with 4 outs, 10 players on the field, 11 innings, etc.  It would just be a mess.

As for maintaining our own B & R list, the problem is what Rich said.  Not all tournaments are posted on TMD, and not everyone even knows that this site exists.  There are 3000 members or so here--the majority of which don't post ever, so cut the number of active members down to a few hundred or so--but there's a lot more "Vintage" (including casual decks with Sol Ring and Chrome Mox) that is played than is reported here.  Imagine going to some small tournament with your deck following the TMD list only to find out that no one there knows what TMD is and that there is another B & R list (and that your deck isn't so legal).  If we [ihad to maintain our own, like if the DCI suddenly stopped supporting Vintage alltogether, I think we could do it and do a decent job.  It would be a mess though.  There'd be a lot of arguing, just like there always is whenever anyone mentions a possible un/restriction.  We'd have to take a vote of all the full members here or something.  However, the DCI would probably still do a better job than we could ever do (since they're not all biased toward wanting certain decks to do well), and while they're still doing it for us, we should be happy, since they have demonstrated a willingness to listen to us and please us.

[Machinus]

The centralization and standardization of the format is the obvious and only answer you need to that question.

However, it is very important to note that, as a community, we are absolutely unable to come to a consensus regarding the "prime directive" of the B&R, namely to contain brokenness. It would be a ridiculous endeavour to attempt it, and then that committee would have to assert its authority over the community, maintain regular annoucememts...it is a task I think no one would like to do.

[dandan]

If it isn't broken don't fix it.

The DCI are doing a better job of managing the B&R list than ever before and have a far better track record of restricting/unrestricting than the majority of TMD pundits (see old discussions on Berserk for example). Even now, most people would agree that even the dodgy cards on the B&R list could be abused, the question is merely if they are more abusable that any number of unrestricted cards. The DCI also have a good track record of resisting knee-jerk reactions to new cards aprt from Mind's Desire which I think everyone agrees needed restricting ASAP.

I fully expect December's announcement to improve the quality of the B&R list further and aside from the problems already mentioned, frankly I would be surprised if anyone else (than means us!) would do a better job.

Having said all of that, TMD can and does play an important role. Serious discussion and study of tournament results/decks allow the DCI to monitor qualified opinion before making their decisions. From restricting Mind's Desire, Burning wish, LED, to keeping Mana Drain, Workshop and CotV (and even looking at allowing Portal), our opinions do matter but may not necessarily force the DCI to act. (Sorry I couldn't help it, you all knew I would mention it anyway)