Discussion: The Limit of Interactivity & Restriction Pol

[Smmenen]

This is basically an article for the mana drain, so bear with me:


My team has been having an excellent discussion on a a recent article by Mike Flores on Interactivity from the week before last.  It brings to bear all the issues that people have been discussing.

The three major complaints that people have about the format are:

1) The format isn't sufficiently interactive

2) the format is too fast

3) The format isn't sufficiently skill intensive

Before I begin to deal with these objections, I need to discuss Flores article.

Flores article says that there are basically two types of decks:
Interactive and non-interactive.  Here are his definitions:

In general, "non-interactive" is going to refer to decks only, whereas "interactive" or "interaction" will apply to both decks and cards. For our purposes, a non-interactive deck will seek to win the game irrespective of the opponent's plan while an interactive deck will try to generate an advantage specifically by trumping the opponent's cards. A player using a non-interactive deck employs cards and decision-making processes that tend to affect only one player (himself), at least in the short term, whereas an interactive deck uses cards that affect both players.

For frame of reference, the best example of an interactive card that I can think of is Cabal Therapy.

Now, I will amend his terminology slightly.  First, I think that there can be non-interactive cards as well as non-interactive decks.  Second, I want to distinguish (props to Kevin Cron) between tactical interaction and strategic interaction (and non interaction).  

What Flores calls an "interactive deck" is really a deck with an interactive strategy.  What he calls a non-interactive deck is a deck with a non-interactive strategy.    Non-interacive decks USE Interactive cards.  In Flores' article, Aluren usees Cabal Therapy to force non-interaction, strategicaly.

Flores makes two coclusions:
1) Non-interactive decks whither when forced to interact
2) The ulimate deck is the deck that forces the most interaction in the most matchups.  Now, he doesn't say this, but a logical corallary is that the ultimate deck might also be the deck that forces the least interaction in the least matchups.

Rather than paraphrase Kevin, here is what he said on our team's forums (forgive me for posting this Kevin).

Without being in quotes, here is what Kevin said:

The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.

Steve mentioned this point, but it's not in bold:

Mike Flores said: both kinds of decks seek to get card advantage by making opponents’ card irrelevant.

One thing that's important to note about T1 is that you can win the game in the window that is provided by this notion.  That is, if you can make your opponent's card irrelevant for just one turn, you can win.  It's an important distinction between T1 and every other format, due to speed.

Applied to T1, I would reword this point as:

"All decks seek to win the game by making opponents' cards irrelevant."


The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.

Only one archetype uses interaction strategically and that is pure control, and the closest thing we have to that is mono-U  (yes, I am supporting the notion that getting all of your spells countered is STRATEGIC interaction, in this case ).  Any other variations on control are introducing strategic non-interactivity in an effort to (as a brilliant man once put) "transcend the board state".  We also refer to this as strategic superiority at a tactical level, but it also happens to be strategic superiority at the Flores level as well.  If you can profit from every interactive exchange with your opponent, you will usually win, but speed modifies this equation in T1: again, as Steve pointed out and, again, not in bold, "forcing interaction is only trump when combined with sufficient speed."

Examples:
- Aggro Control:
Seeks to introduce a threat, usually to one's life total, and nullify any answers to that threat.  They introduce a strategic threat which they protect with tactical interaction, in an effort to prevent you from interacting with said threat.  They are interactive, but only under the guise of "making their opponents' cards irrelevant."

The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.

- Combo, clearly:
The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.

- Prison, clearly:
The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.

- Tog/Slaver/Oath:
The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.


-Fish:
*sigh, Fish.  The problem with analyzing Fish is getting past the tactical HOMO... geneity of the deck (heh, you thought I was gonna say...).  The deck looks like it's using interaction as its primary strategy, given so many interactive cards.  It's not.  Fish's strategy is to beat you down.  It is aggo control.  The goal of all decks in T1 right now is to force strategic non-interation through varying degrees of tactical interaction.  It's just that Fish has the highest degree of tactical interaction in the field.  When push comes to shove, all of those Null Rods and Spiketails, Wastelands and Stifles are just an effort to make it so that you cannot deal with wussy 1/1's and ManLands.  In this sense, it is only different from GAT in that its threats are represented by a handful of creatures, rather than 1 big one.


On how these issues effect restriction talk:

Mana Drain is increasingly being used in Combo Control, where it represents the transition from Control to Combo... Interaction to non-Interaction, both tactically AND strategically.  That is the direction of the whole format, and why Aggro is not viable.

Speed is the one factor that warps and sharpens these issues in T1.  Speed has the capacity to circumvent all aspects of interactivity.  This is why all disruption in T1 is designed (see: necessity) to come online on or before turn 1.  This is what people are reacting to when they call for restrictions: they are not happy with the amount of tactical interaction that occurs in many games of T1.  People only respond to issues of strategic superiority in cases where individual decks dominate over time (BBS, GAT, etc.).

/Kevin's quote

Basically, Kevin is saying that ALL the decks in the format are Strategically NON-interactive.  With the exception of Fish, I agree.  Mono Blue isn't viable, so I don't count it.  4cc was the last other strategically interactive deck.  Ok, so maybe we would be better off to say 95% or so.  I don't consider Tog or Oath interactve.  Tog uses Mana Drain to fuel its draw and FOW to force its spells through.  It CAN be control, but that is becuase that is its proper role, per who's the beatdown.  Most of hte time, tog is just focusing on itself, draw, draw, draw, Tog, Berserk.  

Why?  Various reasons.  I think the key reason is this:

The development of Vintage has been the development of decks that can compete with Mana Drain.  We've seen it with Mask, to Gro, to Long, to Dragon, etc, etc, etc.  Mana Drain decks have adjusted and gotten better.  The mana Drain decks that have survived this competitive struggle are best equipped to deal with the decks that threaten their archetype.  Why?  One reason is that they have combo finishes.  They are hybridized.  Tog Berserks, Oath wins on two turns, and Slaver combo's you out with Slaver.  Winning now is better than winning later and risking getting your soft lock broken.

Now, if the development of Vintage has been the development of decks that compete with Mana Drain, what else does that tell us?   It tells us this:  MANA DRAIN is the cause of Vintage having a fundamental turn one.  Let me explain why.   If you look at Stanton's data from Jan to June of 2004, the ONLY decks to put up 10% or more in the data were Drain decks with two exceptions: a) madness in jan and b) rector in Feb.  It has been like this in Vintage for some time now.  Mana Drain has been dominant and not always for good reasons.  As type one has become a real format, other decks have been developed to compete.  

This trend hasn't really shown up though, in any thing other than a marginal way, until July of last year.  While it was true that Mask and Workshop decks and other decks existed (and Dragon in fall of 2003), they did not have that much of an impact at disturbing Drain's dominance.   The development of the format has meant that people like my team have taken a serious look at trying to BREAK the format.  

Now, what does that mean?  Why is mana drain the cause of a fundamental turn one?  Here is why:  

Now that Mana Drain decks are hybridized, Mana Drain becomes a card that facilitates a combo.  Take the following playsL:

Turn One:
mana drain player: Turn one land go

You do nothing

Eot drain player Brainstorms.

Turn two:
Drain player plays mox and land

You play 2-3 cc threat - Mana Drained.

Turn Three;
Mana Drain player untaps, plays land, Intutions, Ak3, AK 4. OR, Thirst for Knolwedge.  Etc.  

Since you did nothing on turn one, they very likley have FOW.

This is your only turn to do anything and it will very very liekly be stopped becuase you did nothing on turn one.  

They untap and are so far ahead that they will combo out shortly with Will and you have no chance.  Your only window was on turn three but since you did nothing on turn one, they likely can stop you even tapped out.  

See the problem?

Basically in order to beat mana drain you have to do one of the following:

1) Win on turn one
2) play a huge bomb on turn one that must be fowed
3) play a threat that makes drain less good on turn two.

The best options is the third.  Here is what that can look like:

Turn ONe:
Drain player plays land go

You play land Duress: now you can take that Intuition or Thirst or even that FOW.  Now their drain won't automatically lead them to win.  

OR:

Land, Welder.

The welder negates the mana drain that comes online the following turn.  

The point is that both plays make Mana Drain not the win on turn two so that the fundamental turn is reallly turn one.  

Again, its because of Drain decks being hybridized.  

I'm not talking out of my ass - I have played probably more different Drain decks over the course of my t1 existance than probably anyone here except Zherbus.  I played Tog most of this year, helped refine Goth Slaver, design Oath, redesign mono blue, and played Keeper back in the day (as well as a tiny bit of 4cc).  

The only way I lost with Tog to combo is if Combo had a turn one threat.  Often I'd be forced to pitch an Intuiton or other key spell.  Then the turn two threat being Drained does not equal me winning.  I have to rebuild my hand a bit and I am truly vulnerable on turn three.  This is when most games are interesting because both players are in topdeck mode struggling to get their plans in order.  

What does this mean?  It means that slowing down the format inevitably makes Drain dominant.  The decks that can compete do so becuase they race drain or at least play a spell that makes Drain not the win.  Alternatively, they plays spells that are so bad that Drain doesn't do much (Fish).  But if Fish gets its cloud of faeries drained, that's very bad for Fish.  That's why it gernerallly tries to avoiid that in various ways.  

The point is that a call to slow down the format MUST make Drain dominant.  Additionally a call to make the format more interactive must do the same as well.  Why?  Becuase tactical interaction as it stands can only increase by increasing the length of the game.  Therefore, that occurs only by slowing down the game.

For this reason, I take such claims to be covers for mana drain.  

Think about this: The claims being made by a few people are that they just want Trinisphere gone and possibly Ritual because they want a chance to play something - i.e. that Trinisphere and turn one wins completely take away all interaction.  Trinisphere, I admit, is the card that most limits tactical interaction.  The only response is FOW, Annul, Shaols.  The only other way to get around it is Wasteland and basic lands.  

So what are people complaining about?  Are they complaining that a) there isn't enough tactical interaction - i.e they don't want anything that ends the game on turn one OR b) they actually want strategically interactive decks to return?

You all are not monolithic.  But I suspect the majority of you want the latter.  Why?  Because most of you are used to the days (i.e. EVERYTHING before July of last yeare) where Mana Drain was dominant.  You want truly reactive decks in the format again.  Well, like Kevin said.  All t1 decks (except Fish really) are strategically NON-interacive and use interactive cards to force that strategic non-interaction as Aluren in Flores' article uses Cabal Therapy to do the same.  I think people are acting as if what they want is really tactical interaction but pining for strategic interaction.  Not all of you, but most of you.  

I also want to come out and jsut dispute the notion that there isn't much tactical interaction.  I think the reason Meandeck Tendrils failed is because almost every deck in the format can force it to interact.  And what does Flores say happens then?  It whithers.  Meandeck Tendrils has no disruption, so its only weapon against interaction is leverging its speed to overwhelm you or sbing in interactive cards.  

Two months ago I thought we had fundamentally broken T1.  I was dissapointed to learn that the format could handle it.  And the reason is because there is PLENTY OF tactical interaction.  FoW, Duress, Chalice is just the tip of hte iceberg.  

In addition, if you think there isn't enough tactical intearction, you need to realize taht in every match, per "Who's the Beatdown?" there is a beatdown deck and a control deck.  For instance, in the TPS v. Meandeck Tendrils match, TPS Is the control deck.  IT MUST force interaction from the Meandeck Tendrils deck or it will lose.  As a result, it actually ADAPTS an intearctive strategy (if it is smart).  In every match, there is a control player - that shows you how much tactical interaction there really is.  The reason I use this example is becuase I watched Aaron Lekarz and Jacob Orlove play this match and it was a) Long (almost went to time) b) Skill intensive, and c) lots of tactical interaction to be had.  

I think that if you really dislike the format as it is, and you aren't putting up these arguments as a cover for mana drain, then you willl want mana drain restricted as well.  

Here is the problem with that as I see it.  Having been an innovator of Drain decks as well as Combo, I beleive that restricting Drain would permanently kill control in this format.   Extended right now is basically a format of plenty of tactical interaction, but almost NO strategic intearction.   Most of the decks are turn 3-4 combo decks.  This is widely considered a great format.  

I think T1 would be like that but a turn faster if the format was nuked: Workshop, Ritual, and Drain restricted.  Here is why:  The format as it stands is constantly being developed.  I beleive that what would emerge would be the development of tier two combo decks that no one has wasted their time on as of yet that would win on  turn 2-3 and be USING Force of Will.  Control decks unable to use Drain woudl be relegated to Counterspell and Leak.  The control decks would then lose to Aggro-Control using FOW.  

I think the format would become: turn 2-4 Combo decks and Aggro_Control.  Aggro Control and Combo woudl beat Control and beatdown (let's face it, what beatdown deck would beat GroAtog?).  For those of you who think Control would be good - perhaps Oath might be playable for a bit, but I don't think so.  Combo would be so prevalent (as it is in Extended right now) that it would be not that great.  There would be 6-8 turn 2-3 combo decks, in my view.

I find that an untenable position.  I want control around.  The choice is basically to have mana drain dominate, leave things as they are, or kill control almost entirely.

What is good about what we have now?

Some interesting things have emerged.  I observed after looking through Stanton's data, that from Jan-Jun of last year, and presumably before, only control decks, with two blip excpetions) put up 10% or more in the field.  Since August with one month exception, four decks have put up 10% of the field.  What this means is that although Vintage is more condentrated as a whole, the top is LESS concentrated.  This trend has continued into the Dec-Jan data.  That is a VERY Healthy thing objectively speaking.  Storm Combo, Oath, STax, and Tog all had 10%+ in his data.  Control Slaver had 7.5%.  

That variety is also the source of anger.  People want mana drain to be dominant, in my view.  People don't want to play against combo or workshops, I think.  But the variety has made this format, on paper, look much better than it did a year ago where only Hulk and 4cc put up over 10%.  The way the format is now - so balanced, is why Diceman and I are so pleased.  Although there is an argument to be made that Welder is distorting, nothing is dominating and the variety has never been greater.  And in my view, the Skill has never been greater to play the format.

Could the amount of tactical interaction be more?  Sure.  Look, I know that Workshop Trininsphere isn't particularly interactive.  But I think it is impossible to unwind the clock.  What I mean by that is that the line of developoment of anti-drain decks to decks that can compete with anti-drain decks means that if you restrict the anti-drain deck, then you leave the remaining drain decks in a more powerful position then before the anti-drain decks first emerged.  You can't unwind the clock.

I also know that not everyone who wants Drain decks to be dominant wants that becasue they want to play their reactive control decks.  Triple S wants to play his Venguer Mask.  I imagine that Marc Perez has a store of great Aggro-COntrol decks that would do well if Drain were to dominate again.  The problem is that Drain would dominate.  The solution then is either to let it dominate or to restrict it.  I find the solution of letting it dominate dispicable because there is enough tactical interaction to make this format worth playing and to outplay opponents.  Permissively letting Drain dominate would mean the end of this format.  Any development that competes with it would then have to be restricted (i.e I develop another broken combo deck besides Meandeath or Meandeck Tendrils).  

The important thing is that I want us to be honest with ourselves.  Arguments for speed and interaction are covers for mana drain.  Only if you also want Mana Drain restricted is it not.  

I don't want Mana Drain restricted.  I think the format is balanced and fair.  It isn't random as evidenced by consistent names in top8s.  It isn't broken as my failure with Meandeck Tendrils demonstrates.  

One final note: Trinisphere.  Dr. Sylvan and I both agree that Workshop decks only really emerged with the printing of this card.  Before they barely had any top 8 appearances since GAT - even with Chalice.   The only decks to make top 8s with Workshops before Trinisphere in 2004 were Workshop Slaver and Belcher.  In other words, Trinisphere is what I beleive has made Workshops viable.  Workshops are fundamentally flawed in many respects and that is why I predict what we are beginning to see: a long term drop in Workshops in top8s.  Why?  Workshops can't affect anything you do on turn one unless they have gone first.  TPS running Hurkyl's and Rebuild actually has a good matchup agianst Workshops and they can't do anything about Rebuild.  The best they can hope for is to 3sphere you and then resolve Smokestack immediately.   The numbers on Workshop are falling and will continue to fall.  Rack and Ruin is too solid of answer.  Chalice for 0 gives Shops a really rough time.  Dragon doesn't have that much of a problem with it and Combo is beginning to beat Workshops.  Without 3 Sphere, the archetype would whither.  As a combo player, I can attest, Chalice of the Void and Sphere of Resistence are laughably bad compared to 3Sphere.  A sphere of resistence simply means I get to play all my spells a turn later.  I can Ancestral and Brainstorm, etc.  Chalice just means I have to Death Wish for Hurkyl's.  If you play it for 0, I get to use Ritual.  If you play it for one, I can go, land, mox, land.  Chalice is so easy to get around becuase you get to use most of your weapons.  Sphere of resistence is extremely weak as well.  Hell, Chains of Mephistopohles is scarier for MeanDeath than either Chalice or Sphere.  Workshops simply don't have enough tools to force COmbo to interact anymore.  Smokestack and Crucible are laughable.  I don't see anything getting printed to make Workshops better and everything else is getting better around it.  3Sphere is the weapon that will keep the archetype viable and force Combo to deal with it keeping the format more balanced as a result.

In conclusion:
My wang is yello: if you dislike the format, you must either admit that you have a manadrain bias, or ask for the restriction of manadrain
My wang is yello: so is a manadrain bias so wrong?
Smmenen: even if it isn't, we need to be honest about it.  which people aren't.  they are using the guises of skill or speed or interaction to cover for it.

I want to close with a quote from aaron Forsythe:

Vintage, in my mind, plays out like this. Each player has a deck that is trying to do some really unfair thing. Maybe that thing is a turn-One Oath off an Orchard. Maybe it's a turn-one Trinisphere with Wasteland and Crucible of Worlds or plain old Juggernaut. Maybe it's some hideous combination of Tangle Wires, Smokestacks, and Goblin Welders. Maybe it's a first turn Tendrils for 28. Maybe it's a good old-fashioned Mana Drain into Mind Twist. Regardless, it's something. When one of the two players manages to pull his “thing” off, the games aren't that interesting. When the interesting stuff happens is when both decks are a card short of doing their nastiness; then the players are jockeying for position, testing for counterspells, and all that nifty stuff. The format is known and defined by that first class of games, but it's worth playing for the second half. I was pleased to see that the interactive games came up more than you might guess from looking at the card pool.

[Vegeta2711]

No offense, but I honestly can't make heads of tails of the entire first half of your post. It's horribly confusing to read and basically just a real pain in the ass to understand. Flores could write and 90% of everyone who read it could get something out of it. Paraphrasing Flores does something to the equivalent of jack and shit when you aren't as articulate as him.

[Smmenen]

Well, I wrote this at 2 in the morning to get it down.  I don't think its that confusing, but my heads been in it for a while.  Sorry - maybe I'll try to edit it later.

[Vegeta2711]

Well I got your point by just reading the 2nd part.

It's just that the first half is all technical terms and at this early in the morning, my brain isn't exactly having super happy fun time trying to understand it.

[jpmeyer]

Well, I wrote this at 2 in the morning to get it down.  I don't think its that confusing, but my heads been in it for a while.  Sorry - maybe I'll try to edit it later.

You also should quote the parts where someone else is talking.

[jingles]

Thats quite an article, I must say how i do love the depth of your writing and for the most part I usually come away thinking about things that I never thought I think about after reading your articles.  Dont know weather its a good or bad thing but thanks for helping me kill some time and find something new to read on the Drain!

[Triple_S]

So, why don't we put a great emphasis on the 2nd part of the game as detailed in Forsythe's quote, and less so on the first part he details.  That would revitalize interest in the format.

[Dr. Sylvan]

So, why don't we put a great emphasis on the 2nd part of the game as detailed in Forsythe's quote, and less so on the first part he details.  That would revitalize interest in the format.

Steve's point is that you can't bring strategic interaction back to Vintage because he can tune any number of turn three combo decks easily with the cardpool provided by the restricted list. So if you take the logical step and restrict Drain along with the other ridiculous cards in an attempt to move the fundamental turn back from turn one, then he will be able to beat control easily.

It's the last bit there that I'm not sure I fully accept. I don't think control would be dead. If it ends up that it is, I'll write another article about banning cards and then we can have a huge flame war about that. But I think that Steve's argument has made it apparent that as long as Mana Drain is there unrestricted, it's either Drain dominance or first-turn decks---permanently.

My "helplessness" theory from the Community forum leads me to choose option C: nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[Komatteru]

Well done, Steve.  I believe I've addressed this issue in some of my recent posts as well, and pretty much said the same thing you did.

From the Open Vintage Forum (Smmenen's Look at the Restricted List),

See, this raises another issue. It's ok to prefer Mana Drain, but it is important to recognize that it is really, really broken. I've owned a set of Mana Drains since 1998, and I have never once thought the card was fair. The place we've gotten to right now is that people seem to think there's a right to play with Mana Drain, and that Mana Drain should win. Neither one of those are true. Mana Drain might always be around, but that doesn't always mean it will be the best thing around, and when something challenges it, that doesn't mean that that challenger is anymore unfair or stupid than Mana Drain is. For years, people complained about Counterspell in T2, and how good blue was. In Extended right now, all the cards people complained about are there, and no one plays them. Why? Because those decks are no longer good. I'm not saying that Mana Drain is no longer good, but that there are cards that exist that can challenge the crown-wearing champ of the past 10 years of Type 1. In the formats where people play land that doesn't tap for blue mana, no one seems to complain about the lack of blue, and often, the diversity is praised (note: this doesn't really apply to T2 right now, and don't turn this thread into a format war comparison).

A while ago, Smmenen posed the question: What would be so terrible about a format without so much control? No one seemed to have an answer for that. Would it be better, worse, or just different? Remember that different does not imply betterness or worseness.

I'm not advocating that anything be done to Mana Drain in the slightest, but asking you to think about the card a little more. In more ways than one, Mana Drain is the card that helps to define the format, for what that's worth. Perhaps a different definition wouldn't be terrible. Think about it. What would that definition look like if, for example, Weissman had never created The Deck and Mana Drain didn't reign at the top from 1995 until...well, now (and we can argue that it's still at the top, and I think it is)? Think of the ways Mana Drain has forced deck construction and the way it has molded the enviornment. Clearly, most people think that this is ok, but when another card comes along that forces Mana Drain to readjust itself, that doesn't seem to be ok.

Ben and I have discussed the matter of how a solid amount of people just want pure reactive decks (i.e., Weissman-style control) to come back and want everything else that beats that type of deck eliminated.  I think that's the heart of the matter, and no one wants to admit it, as you say.  Control Slaver is tolerated because it has Mana Drain in it, so it almost remotely on another planet looks like the Weissman-style decks did.  Never mind that it plays completely different and has nothing in common with Weissman decks except that it plays FoW and Mana Drain...oh, and lands that tap for blue mana.  It is well-accepted because it plays Mana Drain, and that's ok, because Mana Drain is an interactive card that helps build nice, interactive decks.

Now, I said a while ago that Control Slaver, which people claim to be an interactive deck (because it has Mana Drain in it), is not.  In the Open Forum (same thread), I said that:

Control Slaver is a highly interactive deck that seeks to keep the game in that highly interactive state by either 1) playing a 4/4 flyer that makes everything the opponent does completely irrelevant unless the said 4/4 flyer is removed (only to be Welded back in); or 2) taking all of its opponent's turns for him.

And it is true that every deck seeks to force non-interaction.  Let's look at the ways this happens:
-Slaver - above

-Psychatog - When you played a spell when Tog had UU open, the question wasn't "what are you playing?", it was "how much does that cost?"  Tog really just wanted to Mana Drain spells with sizable cost, not caring what they really were (anything the opponent plays more than likely has some benefit to him, and countering it is a good tempo change), just so that it could draw cards.  This is why it dominated in control mirrors.  It doesn't care what the opponent does, it just wants to draw cards (and not lose).  Wanting to not lose is very different from caring about precisely what your opponent does.

-Stax: This one is obvious.

-Workshop Aggro: Riding on the back of the strength of Trinisphere, this deck seeks to just beat you down before you can find an answer. If it gets Trinisphere, then it follows with a man and reduces your life total to 0 before you can do anything.  It uses Wasteland to buy turns and seeks to not allow you to deal with whatever it's got on the table.

-TPS, DeathLong, Belcher: Again, winning on turn 1-2 is obviously not seeking interaction.

-Dragon: Dragon, in my opinion, is the least interactive combo deck in the format.  I'm sure you're saying, "But it's important that the Dragon player pay attention, cause it's easy to get wrecked!"  Yeah, it is, but you're not interacting with an opponent in this way: you don't care what he's doing so long as it doesn't wreck you.  I recall people saying that Fish had a good matchup against Dragon, because it had Stifle, Wasteland, Blue Blast, and a few other obnoxious cards.  In practice, this turned out to be completely false, as Dragon was not scared of any of Fish's threats and simply waited around long enough to combo out.  In addition, Dragon is the only deck in the format capable of drawing a game and starting over fresh -- that's really non-interactive there.

-Fish: Steve addressed this quite well, but look at Fish like this: it was designed to Mana screw the opponent.  Somewhere over the summer, Brian Demars mentioned that the only way he thought that Fish could beat 4CC was when 4CC got mana screwed.  That was the concept of the deck: use Wasteland and Null Rod to crunch an opponent's mana, and then use stuff that says "Haha! You have to pay 1 more to play that! And you don't have it!" to annoy the opponent.  In the meantime, use a bunch of shitty 1/1s to apply constant pressure while the opponent figures out how to get some more mana on the table.

-Oath, Monoblue: These are the interactive decks, if we so define them.  Realistically, monoblue wants nothing more than to screw over an opponent with Wasteland, Back to Basics, and Chalices and counter everything.  50 turns later, it finally wins the game.  Oath takes a similar approach, but it doesn't care so much about screwing over the opponent as much as it cares about making sure he does nothing relevant.  While these two decks are more interactive than anything else out there, most people outside of T1 would laugh at calling them interactive.  Counterspells decks from back in the day were always called cheap because they just didn't want the opponent to do anything.

I also advocate that nothing be done to Mana Drain, but I just want people to look at the card for what it is.  Admit that the card is utterly insane, and that it's ridiculous to say that all these other cards, which, coincidentally, happen to beat Mana Drain, are unfair.

Now, if Mana Drain did go, control as we know it would be dead.  Decks like Control Slaver and Psychatog, which are very proactive decks with Mana Drain in them, would be dead.  Compare the usage of Mana Drain in Oath and Monoblue vs. the usage in 'Tog and Slaver.  Monoblue could get along much better without Mana Drain than Slaver and 'Tog can, which is part of the reason Monoblue has never had trouble beating Fish (it doesn't need Mana Drain to be effective, which it's not against Fish), while 'Tog just didn't ever beat Fish, and Slaver had some trouble with it (kill the Welders, and then Fish doesn't provide enough of a target to Mana Drain into actually casting a Mindslaver or Platz).  We would see slower, more reactive decks with the loss of Mana Drain, like Monoblue.  Now, just because they would be slower doesn't mean that they would necessarily lose to combo.  Monoblue has enough cards that screw over combo like DeathLong and Belcher to go around without Mana Drain.

[Smmenen]

Mono blue and fish are strategically interactive, but Oath is not.   Why?  Becuase orchard makes it unnecessary to have an opponent and it wins in 2 turns.

So, why don't we put a great emphasis on the 2nd part of the game as detailed in Forsythe's quote, and less so on the first part he details.  That would revitalize interest in the format.

Steve's point is that you can't bring strategic interaction back to Vintage because he can tune any number of turn three combo decks easily with the cardpool provided by the restricted list. So if you take the logical step and restrict Drain along with the other ridiculous cards in an attempt to move the fundamental turn back from turn one, then he will be able to beat control easily.

It's the last bit there that I'm not sure I fully accept. I don't think control would be dead. If it ends up that it is, I'll write another article about banning cards and then we can have a huge flame war about that. But I think that Steve's argument has made it apparent that as long as Mana Drain is there unrestricted, it's either Drain dominance or first-turn decks---permanently.

My "helplessness" theory from the Community forum leads me to choose option C: nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

You summarized my entire post.  I hope that people carefully my original post carefully even though it is dense, becuase its important that people UNDERSTAND the argument - not just know what it is.  But again, I think I am right that control would utterly dissapear if Drain was restricted based upon the reasons cited in the article/post.

[Machinus]

Steve -

You say more than once in your post that the strength of Mana Drain defines the format and has shaped deck strategies towards non-interactivity, and that it is going to keep doing that. You also say more than once that hitting it would kill control, and since you don't want control gone, you don't want it restricted.

These arguments are very solid. However, you fail to apply them to the status of the format at the moment. What do you propose, if anything, for 3/1?

In addition, you mention that trinisphere is the only thing keeping shop decks alive, and that their success is going to diminish in the future.

I might be reaching, but since you don't mention ritual, does this mean you advocate metagame adjustment instead of DCI action?

[Raph Caron]

Steve-

Thanks for explaining in proper English what I've been claiming for YEARS! Restricting Mana Drain won't "kill" control however : as long as you have FOW and Cunning Wishes, anything is manageable.