[Free Article] Smmenen's Look at the Restricted list

[ctthespian]

I don't see how it isn't good logic. What its saying is that the better the tournament, the more likely welder is to perform. If there is a nearly direct correllation than that is a perfect sign of format distortion.

You don't restrict based upon a 20 person tournament. But since we don't have a pro tour, we have to look at the larger more telling events.

 The number of welders that show up at the tournament should shrink in proportion to the number of the rest of the cards that appear.  

SHOULD.  That's precisely why I consider Welder a problem.  As the tournaments become HARDER and of higher calibre with strongest competition, Welder performs better.  In scrubtastic fields, Welder may not have more than 4 copies in top 8s.  But we ignore the scrub results because it isn't helpful at telling us if there is a problem.  That's why Sylvan has a cut off 50 players per tournament, and I would use an ever higher cut off - say 100.

Can't it also be assumed that larger tournaments allow for more proxies allowing people to proxy the other expensive cards in welder decks.  ie. drains in CS, workshops in Stax variants, and bazaars in CA.

Still agreeing that welder in a very powerful card, you breezed over trinisphere.  Trinisphere if followed up by anything worthy on turn 1 is a win for the shpere player.  It's almost as bad as coin flip combo you just take a lot longer to die.

-Keith

[ChaosTheory]

Steve, great article.
Though I can't attend the large scale tourneys, I too believe there's something horribly wrong with welder.
With the numbers I have seen it making top 8 recently, it's starting to get distorted.
Do I believe he need restriction though? Not yet. I say wait another 3 months and look at the numbers then.

Sure he's the most powerful creature in type 1, he can bring out huge artifacts like Pentabus, Mindslaver, Titan, and other artifacts you would never want to hardcast, but welder himself is easy to deal with due to the creature removal in the type 1 card pool.

I believe it's Intuition that needs the axe, as it is the best engine that Slaver has, IMO. Some decks don't use Intuition at all though, so that may not actually be the key to hurting welder. Maybe restrict TFK as well, the best draw engine it has.

If we restrict welder, it won't slow slaver down, it will completly neuter it and make it obsolete. Granted, slaver is one of the best decks in type 1, but should we completly kill it?

I vote no. Get rid of it's draw engine or, better yet, we could restrict Intuition as well and slow slaver down a notch.

If we want to completly neuter it, why not neuter combo, and prison as well?

If welder gets restricted, I would also like to see Dark Ritual as well as trinispere go with it. That would slow all the best decks down.

[fyodorovich]

If welder gets restricted, I would also like to see Dark Ritual as well as trinispere go with it. That would slow all the best decks down.

And allow Control to completely destroy everything.

[CMass]

If Trinisphere, Dark Ritual and Goblin Welder all get restricted, you'd better add Mana Drain to that list.  We're headed back to the days of Tog and the Fish that prey on him.  From ten or fifteen viable decks back to two:  now that's progress.

[Smmenen]

Steve, great article.
Though I can't attend the large scale tourneys, I too believe there's something horribly wrong with welder.
With the numbers I have seen it making top 8 recently, it's starting to get distorted.
Do I believe he need restriction though? Not yet. I say wait another 3 months and look at the numbers then.

Fair enough - but it raises the question: what will we be looking for in three months?  Will we be looking for the same number, a slight increase, or what?  What will tell us when Welder is a problem or not?

Here is my criteria that I have written about, at length:

My Criteria for Restriction (revised to reflect the 1.5 list separation)
1) Excessive Domination

The first test for whether a card should be restricted is whether it is the essential component of a deck that is excessively tournament dominant in diverse geographical areas for a period of at least one month.

This is the most important criteria. Usually, this card will be a mana accelerant or a card drawer.

2) Excessive Distortion

The second test is whether a card is the critical component of a deck or number of decks that are excessively metagame distorting or whether the card itself is excessively metagame distorting in diverse geographical areas for a period of at least one month.

Addressing what is meant by this criteria will become a major task of this article. The phrasing of the second criteria is broad enough to encompass cards like Strip Mine and Black Vise, whose unrestriction may not lead to a single degenerate deck, but would be sufficiently metagame-distorting to warrant restriction. Crucible of the Worlds is the card to be tested by it.

3) Sufficiently Objectively Overpowered

The third criterion asks whether the card is sufficiently objectively over-powered without reference to specific card interaction or metagame considerations. This criterion should be given much less weight than the first two, and there is a heavy burden on the part of the card to show that it is sufficiently objectively broken. This criterion excludes the question of whether a card is objectively over powered in combination with some other card, but asks if it is objectively overpowered in light of known principles and general knowledge.

"Sufficiently" in this context means something that is so clear that the card would create a dominant, broken deck, that there is almost no room for reasonable disagreement. The poster child for this type of card is Mind's Desire. The storm mechanic is particularly abusive in a format with zero-casting-cost mana accelerants. This criterion is generally in place so that a card may be restricted before it enters the environment and makes things unpleasant for the next three months.

Some people think there is a need for other criteria such as a test for whether a card is too powerful in multiples, or whether a card produces an irrecoverable early game swing. The criteria I chose are sufficiently inclusive that any other criteria that may be imagined fit within this framework. Taking the irreconcilable swing test, if this covered a deck which won too much, it would be reflected in the other criteria, and would therefore be duplicative.

What Is Meant by "Excessively Distorting"?
It's very easy to see when a card should be restricted under the first criteria. It's obvious to see a dominant deck with a card like Gush or Fact or Fiction fueling it. It's also not too difficult to see the power of a card like Mind's Desire under the third criteria. The difficulty is figuring out when a card meets the second criteria.

If a card meets the second criteria, that means it's going to pop up in lots of different decks without producing a dominant deck (otherwise it would meet the first criteria). In Type One, there is very unlikely to be a card like Skullclamp because a) there are many, many different archetypes with significantly differing strategies such that even if Strip Mine were unrestricted, Tendrils combo, Belcher and many other decks wouldn't dream of running any in the maindeck. The same goes for Black Vise.

So when does a card meet the distortion criteria? That's one of the primary questions I want to address in this article. It requires a close analysis and a careful look. The critical inquiry is whether a card is "excessively" distorting. What does that mean?

That entire discussion is on point here.  It boils down to: what is meant by excessively distorting.  

We can all agree that dominance is probably when a deck consistently performs 4-5 copies, or more, per top 8 accross geographic boundaries for a while.  I.E. GAT.

But What do we mean by excessive distortion?   As I said, it is very difficult for there to be a card like Skullclamp becuase of the many different strategies.   I assumed that distortion would have to have a lower threshold than dominance.   But how can we measure distortion?

Look at what some poeple in this thread have said:

I enjoyed the article and it had a number of good observations. But I agree with JACO that 18 Welders/Top8 bracket over 6 touraments isn't enough to establish clear distortion to the point that it needs to be restricted.

Not only is that not anywhere close to Skullclamp-level dominance (if I'm not mistaken, it was showing up in 28+ copies per Top 8), but we've seen time and time again that Vintage is a more robust and adaptable format than we give it credit for. Therefore, the same standards for Skullclamp in T2 shouldn't be directly applicable to Vintage either. I think the thing to do is give it a few more months (heck, why not just wait until after Gencon) and make absolutely sure there's a problem before taking such drastic action.

Diceman objected to the use of distortion:

I also agree that T1 Welder is not remotely on the same level as T2 Skullclamp. As Hyperion pointed out, T1 is more adaptable and can deal with problem cards like this more readily. However, players are slower to adapt in T1 because of two reasons: they tend to be more content in netdecking/following what the strong players play/advise, and because they have the means to do so (10 proxy events) so they often take the "easy way out". It of course doesn't help that NE players love their control decks so something like Control Slaver appears in massive numbers.


Some other points: I totally don't buy the distortion issue. At all. If you stop and think for a minute, then all the powerful cards in the environment have massively distorted it. Drains and fast combo ensure that you cannot base your deck on high cc spells. Fast combo forces you to either play FoW to survive or have some powerful disruption like Trinisphere/CotV/Spehere of Resistance in the main deck. CoW and Trini have also forced out decks that run more than two colors. What Jdizzle calls making the environment "more healthy" by pushing it towards more basics/fetches I call severely distorting to the point where there are only two good control decks. No wonder Control Slaver is showing up in such high numbers - perhaps its the direct fall out from Trini and CoW, exactly what certain Canadians wanted to eliminate from the format 3-4 months ago? Let's see, what else. Ah yes, Oath along with ridiculously fast combo has pushed out aggro, including Fish, from the environment. Again, small wonder that Control Slaver shows up in high numbers.

In my opinion, you have such a hideously skewed environment because of Trinisphere, CoW, and Ritual (or whatever component of turn 1 combo we wish to focus on). Because of the "adaptations" to deal with those cards or deck types, you have created new problems for yourselves. You want to now do a complete 180 and hastily restrict Welder all of a sudden, without first asking yourself what happened in the past 6 months. Because as I recall, people were telling US that they were so happy with the environment and they didn't want to touch anything (Trini and CoW and fast combo components specifically). So what the heck happened? Why the dissatisfaction all of a sudden?

I think the problem is that I haven't been entirely consistent in what I think distortion means.  In my article on Crucible I suggested that it meant a warping of matches.  Upon further reflection, I think this is an effect of distortion, but not distortion itself.  

I think Diceman raises a good point: Trinisphere does distort matches in that it requires you to run a certain threshold of basic lands.  Mana Drain requires you to have a turn one threat or at least a turn one threat that makes mana drain l ess good when it resolves (i.e. Goblin Welder or Duress).  

But here is the difference Peter: While I agree with you that those cards are distorting - they simply don't have the numbers that Welder does.  In my six tournaments Welder had 18 per top 8 compared to Drains 13.3 and Workshops 10. 3 (and Trinisphere presumably less).  In other words, while it is true that Mana Drain and Trinisphere "distort," we don't consider them worthy of restriction (or at least I don't) becuase they don't have sufficient tournament success to warrant it.  

So, to a certain extent, distortion has to be a matter of threshold - it has to be dependent upon the numbers that are being exhibited.  We don't have total deck  breakdowns and will likely never get that.  That would help us see distortion relative to success, I agree - but it is impractical.  We have to derive conclusions from the data we have.  

So the question is: if 18 is not enough, what is?   You said that 50%+ is not - well then what is?  

Let me put it this way: looking at the restricted list, peter (and anyone else), is there anything that is restricted not because it could make a single dominant deck, but becuase it would appear in enough decks that it would be distorting?    

Before the rise of Workshops, I might have said Strip Mine or Black Vise.  As with either card - lots of decks could use them.  Aggro-Contro, Prison, Aggro, and Control could use either 4 Strip Mines or 4 Vises.  But there would be plenty of decks that would not.  Most Combo decks would not use 4 Strip Mines or 4 Vises or even care about them.  

Yet, it is also possible, that there is no card on the restricted list anymore that would be a t1 "skullclamp." I say that not to mean that there is no card that would be used by multiple decks in sufficient numbers to be what I would consider format distorting - I think that Welder possibly goes as far as a card CAN go in Vintage.  I say that to mean that perhaps there is no card on the restricted list worthy of being there that can be unrestricted without creating a single dominant archetype.  The archetypal distorting card, Strip Mine, would clearly be ridiciulous with Crucible and I'm not sure that it wouldn't lead to a single dominant WOrkshop decks (or maybe 2-3).  

That brings into question the utility of the whole "distortion" criteria to begin with.  But not for the reasons you cited Peter.

But here is the real problem: I think that if there was a single deck that was represented by all those welders instead of 5-6, we could agree that there is a dominant deck.  But since there isn't, some of you dispute the notion that there needs to be a restriction.  What that is saying, in effect, is that distortion has a HIGHER threshold than dominance, not a lower one.  So what if a non Brainstorm/FoW, non-Wasteland, non "answer" (like Rack and Ruin), non key building component (like Island), starting showing up as a four of in 6-7 decks per top 8 consistently?  Would that be distorting?[/quote]

[JACO]

But Vintage isn't german nationals.  It is a Huge, huge, huge format and not played by the pros.  Given those circumstances, isn't 20 really about equivalent to 28 in that instance?

My concern is only when a card starts to show up in numbers greater than 12 per top 8, at which point it should be watched. When a card starts consistently putting up 4 decks per top 8 or more, then I think distortion/dominance criteria I have written about at length begin to kick in.

Steve, this is a fundamental difference of opinion you and I have regarding this issue (not that it's bad thing at all, because it sparks healthy conversation). I don't think 20 is nearly close to 28-32, considering the statement you made. Type 1 is at a point where it is developing towards becoming a 'Pro' style format; not with regards to the tournament prize payout, but with regards to the deck development, metagame changing weekly/monthly/quarterly, etc.

I don't ever think you'll see a large Type 1 tournament with 28-32 Goblin Welders in the Top 8. It's not that it's a great cards; it's just that with Type 1 having so many available random cards to choose from, some people will find and play other cards that roll a meta full of Goblin Welders. People are too smart to let one card totally distort their tournaments, I think.

I don't see how it isn't good logic. What its saying is that the better the tournament, the more likely welder is to perform. If there is a nearly direct correllation than that is a perfect sign of format distortion.

You don't restrict based upon a 20 person tournament. But since we don't have a pro tour, we have to look at the larger more telling events.

And your sampling size isn't large enough. I don't think we should be including 20 person tournaments in our data either, but as I said in my previous post, I consider the Italian PTQ ciruit (103.29 players per tournament) to be at least as telling as the SCG PTQ circuit (96.00 players per tournament). I'm sure my post was so long that most people ignored it, but look at the results in Italy once they went through their initial Goblin Welder is dominant phase. Look at the numbers over the last 6 months there:
Total Copies in All Major Tournaments (15 tournaments) in Italy in the Last 6 Months:
176 Goblin Welder (11.73 per Top 8)
282 Brainstorm (18.8 per Top 8)
308 Force of Will (20.53 per Top 8)
99 Dark Ritual (6.60 per Top 8)
207 Duress (13.80 per Top 8)
148 Mana Drain (9.87 per Top 8)

That's less Goblin Welders per Top 8 than Duresses. They have QUITE a balanced metagame if you analyze what decks are being played there, and there are less than 12 Welders per Top 8. And this is in a format (unproxied) where Welders will always be better (if you go on the assumption that Workshop + Trinisphere will be better in an unproxied metagame). So I would argue that the 18-20 Goblin Welder number that you are basing your argument on to begin with is not even realistic, except in a certain region.

Please let the Eastern American metagame adjust before restricting cards.

[Smmenen]

Good post but it still doesn't answer the two primary questions I posed:

1) At what point DOES distortion trigger?  Given, as I've said, that Vintage card pool is so wide that it is much harder to see distortion - that was my point about German nationals v. T1.  The vintage card pool is so large and the strategies are so fast that even unrestricted STRIP MINE and BLACK VISE are unlikely to put up more top 8 appearances than 6 decks per top 8 assuming that no single deck abusees it best and they are used in as many decks as Welder currently is.  Is that point higher or lower than dominance?  

I think that 20 occurences per top 8 definately has to meet the threshold test if 28 does in Standard, given the differences between the formats.  Now it may be that Welder doesn't actually meet 20 becuase I selected tournaments that don't fully reflect the need for metagame differences.   But to answer your question about proxies - I think that while proxies may make Welder worse to a certain degree, Proxies also tighten up the metagame such that a Welder top 8 means more.  Less proxies means more variance.  So on that point, I think you are wrong.  If the Italian metagame, like the T1 metagame of 2000, will always have a critical mass of budget hate decks, then it becomes much  more difficult to metagame to beat the "best decks" becuase said metagame decks are limited to decks that can beat the budget field as well.  That's just one reason to give the Italian metagame less weight.  Although that is not to say it should not be accorded no weight.

Try this Jaco: show me the numbersr on FoW (as a barameter), Drain, Workshop, and Welder taking all tournament data since Gencon with 80 players or more.  

2) If we raise the bar high enough for distortion, then does that test even have any utility?  Is it worth keeping distortion around as a criteria - i.e. does it just collapse into a dominance test if no one cares if they are going to play against "50%+ welder decks," as Diceman put it.

[bedafile]

I think Thirst for Knowledge is being overlooked in the finger pointing. Try playing CS with 1 copy or with 3-4 Cunning Wish to grab it. It would balance out the deck and make Welder a resonably fair creature.

However I think nothing needs restriction. People just need to pack more hate for Welder. I have almost never feared the card except when I took 19 points of damage from one in a grueling match from Waterbury.

[cssamerican]

Let me put it this way: looking at the restricted list, peter (and anyone else), is there anything that is restricted not because it could make a single dominant deck, but becuase it would appear in enough decks that it would be distorting?

Ancestral Recall...All decks that run blue would run it; all other decks would be unable to top 8 barring a miracle.

At what point DOES distortion trigger? Given, as I've said, that Vintage card pool is so wide that it is much harder to see distortion - that was my point about German nationals v. T1. The vintage card pool is so large and the strategies are so fast that even unrestricted STRIP MINE and BLACK VISE are unlikely to put up more top 8 appearances than 6 decks per top 8 assuming that no single deck abusees it best and they are used in as many decks as Welder currently is. Is that point higher or lower than dominance?

If the distortion is constant worldwide over an extended amount of time then you have restriction worthy distortion, but even then you have to determine if the so-called offender is a pillar (I believe that there are more pillars of the format than you put forth in the article) of the format. If it is a pillar of the format restricting it might do more damage to the format than leaving in unrestricted. In these cases maybe we should be looking at recent developments that caused the distortion and restrict the card or cards that indirectly triggered the distortion.

If we raise the bar high enough for distortion, then does that test even have any utility? Is it worth keeping distortion around as a criteria - i.e. does it just collapse into a dominance test if no one cares if they are going to play against "50%+ welder decks," as Diceman put it.

In this situation many people whether they are willing to admit it or not feel that Goblin Welder is a pillar of Vintage. Not to mention, no matter how broken Goblin Welder becomes it won’t be responsible for a ridiculous amount of turn 1 wins. It is the turn 1 win whether instant or metaphorically that people have real issues with, and if does begin to interact with a single artifact that gives it this type of power, look for the artifact to be viewed as the offender rather that the Welder. People will only began to view a distortion in this sense if the distorting card is needed for a deck to be viable in the format (Such as if Ancestral Recall was unrestricted, the only viable decks would be decks that ran 4 Ancestral Recalls). Since there are many viable non-welder decks in the format right now I wouldn’t call it distorting. I do find it strange that the good players have all decided to play Welder decks; however, I see no reason to reprimand the format because people refuse to play the good non-welder decks. It isn't the format's fault that people in the Northeast part of the country have a love affair with Goblin Welder decks. (Sounds a lot like the Swedish metagame a few months back just instead of Stax it is Control Slaver) The fact that people need to be able remove a vulnerable permanent from play with regularity isn’t distorting it is metagaming.

[Smmenen]

Let me put it this way: looking at the restricted list, peter (and anyone else), is there anything that is restricted not because it could make a single dominant deck, but becuase it would appear in enough decks that it would be distorting?

Ancestral Recall...All decks that run blue would run it; all other decks would be unable to top 8 barring a miracle.

Actually, and I this is off-topic, but I think that Ancestral Recall unrestricted WOULD cause a dominant deck.  I've put some thought into this.  Consider what would happen?  First of all, Misdirection would be insane.  It would basically mean that the best deck would have to run 4 Misdirection not only to steal other ancestrals, but to make sure theirs resolve.  It would also need Red then to REB.   I think GAT would come back and dominate.  The chance of seeing a turn one FOW against any non Ancestral deck would simply be too high to justify playing anything else.  And since not everything else could play 4 Misdirection, I think GAT would subsume everything else.  Running REd would give you artifact mutation for Workshop decks.  

At what point DOES distortion trigger? Given, as I've said, that Vintage card pool is so wide that it is much harder to see distortion - that was my point about German nationals v. T1. The vintage card pool is so large and the strategies are so fast that even unrestricted STRIP MINE and BLACK VISE are unlikely to put up more top 8 appearances than 6 decks per top 8 assuming that no single deck abusees it best and they are used in as many decks as Welder currently is. Is that point higher or lower than dominance?

If the distortion is constant worldwide over an extended amount of time then you have restriction worthy distortion, but even then you have to determine if the so-called offender is a pillar (I believe that there are more pillars of the format than you put forth in the article) of the format. If it is a pillar of the format restricting it might do more damage to the format than leaving in unrestricted. In these cases maybe we should be looking at recent developments that caused the distortion and restrict the card or cards that indirectly triggered the distortion.

Ok, but you didn't answre the question: how many?  Becuase what I am driving at is what distortion is.  You are assuming distortion in your answer.  Is it 16? 20? 24?  18? 22?

Why do we have to determine whether it is a pillar?  Why not just exclude a) cards that are common deck buildling components like Land, b) cards that make the format more consistent without creating a dominant deck: Brainstorm, FOW and c) cards that are answers or hosers: Chalice/Rack and Ruin/REB?  That leaves the vast majority of the card pool open.  

Looking at the list from Dr. Sylvan's article, which cards do you think are pillars:

233 Force of Will
198 Brainstorm
136 Duress
126 Wasteland
117 Mana Drain
84 Accumulated Knowledge
83 Intuition
83 Rack and Ruin
75 Cunning Wish
74 Goblin Welder
72 Chalice of the Void
71 Dark Ritual
71 Mishra's Workshop
69 Tormod's Crypt
66 Trinisphere
61 Red Elemental Blast
58 Stifle
56 Crucible of Worlds
55 Blue Elemental Blast
54 Misdirection
53 Thirst for Knowledge
52 Smokestack
49 Hurkyl's Recall
46 Energy Flux
44 Engineered Explosives
42 Deep Analysis
42 Forbidden Orchard
42 Tangle Wire
40 Oath of Druids
40 Swords to Plowshares
36 Fire / Ice
36 Tendrils of Agony
35 Triskelion
34 Mana Leak
30 Rebuild
28 City of Brass
28 Sundering Titan
27 Gemstone Mine
27 Null Rod
26 Pyrostatic Pillar
25 Chain of Vapor
24 Bazaar of Baghdad
24 Memory Jar
24 Metalworker
24 Rushing River
24 Squee, Goblin Nabob
23 Duplicant
23 Karn, Silver Golem
22 Arcane Laboratory
21 Impulse
20 Darksteel Colossus
20 Echoing Truth
20 Worldgorger Dragon

If we raise the bar high enough for distortion, then does that test even have any utility? Is it worth keeping distortion around as a criteria - i.e. does it just collapse into a dominance test if no one cares if they are going to play against "50%+ welder decks," as Diceman put it.

In this situation many people whether they are willing to admit it or not feel that Goblin Welder is a pillar of Vintage. Not to mention, no matter how broken Goblin Welder becomes it won’t be responsible for a ridiculous amount of turn 1 wins. It is the turn 1 win whether instant or metaphorically that people have real issues with, and if does begin to interact with a single artifact that gives it this type of power, look for the artifact to be viewed as the offender rather that the Welder. People will only began to view a distortion in this sense if the distorting card is needed for a deck to be viable in the format (Such as if Ancestral Recall was unrestricted, the only viable decks would be decks that ran 4 Ancestral Recalls). Since there are many viable non-welder decks in the format right now I wouldn’t call it distorting. I do find it strange that the good players have all decided to play Welder decks; however, I see no reason to reprimand the format because people refuse to play the good non-welder decks. It isn't the format's fault that people in the Northeast part of the country have a love affair with Goblin Welder decks. (Sounds a lot like the Swedish metagame a few months back just instead of Stax it is Control Slaver) The fact that people need to be able remove a vulnerable permanent from play with regularity isn’t distorting it is metagaming.

I think your definition of distortion is bleeding into dominance, or at the least, suggests that distortion has a HIGHER threshold than dominance.  That is, a dominant deck can be found at 5 or more copies per top 8 Consistesntly over a wide geographic area for a long time.  BUT, your definition of distortion basically says that almost NO top 8 decks can't have the card in question in them.  Otherwise, non-card in question would be viable.  

There are two problems with that: 1) first it basically drains the utility out of the distortion question becuase it provides an impossible threshold.  2) we still haven't established that a card could actualy create distortion, but not dominance, under those conditions.  Let's take a look at Force of Will.  Force of Will is consistently the most played card in the format.  Is it distorting?  Hell yes.  But, without it, this format would be shit.  Even if you nuked the format, without FOW, the format would be shit.  Look at highlander.  In the most recent article, Dr. Sylvan had FOW putting up 23.3 copies per top 8.  If no card even comes close to FOW in terms of numbers, and FOW is 23.3, that suggests that distortion is not only a useless criteria, but it is a joke.  

Here is some data from Dr. Sylvan's ultimate table:

20.7, 14.4, 20.8, 18.2, 20.4, 22.7, 17.7, 20.0, 19.2, 23.0 Force of Will
13.9, _8.6, 14.2, 12.2, 15.4, 17.3, 17.4, 13.8, 14.8, 18.0 Brainstorm
_5.9, _5.0, _6.0, _8.2, _6.2, _8.0, _4.6, _6.2, _7.2, _7.6 Flooded Strand
13.8, _9.4, 12.2, _9.8, 13.2, 13.0, 15.4, 14.1, 15.0, 18.3 Polluted Delta

Here you go - each of these cards is omnipresent - yet most of us would never talk about restricting them.  Maybe Brainstorm is a candidate becuase it is so powerful, but I think it helps Vintage, not hurts it.  It isn't a weapon restricted to one deck - everyone can take advantage of its goodness.  

Now look at that data.  That's per top 8 data.  Given that, how can we say that 20 is too low for distortion?  Honestly?!?  It seems to me that those cards, which are so omnipresent that they can't even put up more than 5 decks per top 8, MUST suggest that it is really, really hard in Vintage to put up more than 5 copies per top 8.  

I wish I had included this data in my article, becuase it would make my data about Welder all the more poignant.

[Machinus]

233 Force of Will
198 Brainstorm
136 Duress
126 Wasteland
117 Mana Drain
75 Cunning Wish
74 Goblin Welder
71 Dark Ritual
71 Mishra's Workshop
56 Crucible of Worlds
53 Thirst for Knowledge
42 Deep Analysis
40 Oath of Druids
36 Tendrils of Agony
30 Rebuild
28 City of Brass
27 Null Rod

These cards are pretty important to the format (I have excluded sideboard/support cards). I think that the mana acceleration from shop and ritual is more powerful than that from drain, but the power level of those three cards is above the rest on the list. Note that there are some powerful cards not on this list, like Intuition, which I don't believe are as important, but may be comparable in power to the three accelerants.

Welder is the fourth accelerant, and probably the most broken in terms of mana generation. The other three cards place strict limitations on deck design, win conditions, and strategy, whereas welder can be used in many different decks, with varying degrees of brokenness. We have seen shop (stax or workshop aggro decks), ritual (belcher), and drain (slaver and all variants) ALL work in tandem with welder to produce considerably greater brokenness than the three would have alone. If there IS a problem with the format, welder is certainly the cause of it, and I still think it is too dangerous at the moment, and possibly unneccesary, to make changes to much more fundamental interactions between more established power cards.

To add to all of this, there may in fact be additional problems with the format besides welder. Trinisphere might be something that needs to be dealt with independently of the mana acceleration issues, and the distrubution of power to the different archetypes. In addition, combo is NOT running rampant in the US (and again we have no idea what kind of effect one or two restrictions of this kind would have), so the kind of balance issues we are looking at are almost certainly two-quarter problems. What I mean by that is there should be a cautious first announcement, followed by some adjustment, and then likely another change in the following announcement. Hopefully, the issues that exist can be resolved with a minimum amount of addition to the B/R.

[Komatteru]

If you stop and think for a minute, then all the powerful cards in the environment have massively distorted it.

This is a real issue of our format that cannot be denied.  I've been playing a lot of extended lately and it is only because of that that I have been able to see just how distorted Vintage really is in comparison to all other forms of Magic.  This is not necessarily the worst thing ever (it is part of our format after all), but it is something to keep in mind: we're not ever going to be able to avoid a tremendous amount of distortion.

CoW and Trini have also forced out decks that run more than two colors. What Jdizzle calls making the environment "more healthy" by pushing it towards more basics/fetches I call severely distorting to the point where there are only two good control decks.

Well, to be honest, exactly when have there been more than two good control decks?  Over the summer, we had 4CC and Hulk all over the place.  Before that, there was Keeper and...well, yeah, Keeper.  Control Slaver may have been really good (as evidenced by Mark B's win at Gencon), but no one played it.  A deck can be the most amazing thing ever created, but it doesn't matter if no one ever takes it to a tournament.  The deck was still vastly underestimated a bit after Gencon (it was called "a solid meta choice" I believe) and it wasn't until after Rich won at Waterbury that everyone figured out how good it really is.

How good really is it?  Currently, it's so good that there aren't other control decks worth playing.  Monoblue and Oath still exist, as does Psychatog, but no one wants to play any of those.  I don't think Control Slaver's dominance in the control deck catagory can be attributed to the strengths of the other decks in the field--it's all due to Control Slaver just being vastly superior to anything that plays Mana Drain.  In fact, I think there are a few more control decks that are still playable now then there ever have been--you have proactive control in terms of tog and Slaver, and now you can play a true control deck in the form of Monoblue (which is good if there's no oath around), or a true control deck with a combo finish.

In fact, the reason I do disagree with his restriction is because he is in so many different decks. If it were just one deck, then sure. Again, I say, the other 56 cards in Slaver make the deck insane, and Welder makes it work. Before MD5, Welder was doing his job in Stax and TnT and people were okay with him. That was what he was supposed to do - help with countermagic and play tricks with Tangle Wires. I don't think he was intended to take your opponents' turns or anything that busted.

In the end, I don't see how Welder can go and leave the format healthy, since you ruin a lot of decks.

Well, let's level here: there is one Welder deck in the format.  The other decks include Welder because its "pretty good" and it helps to circumvent permission (as you have mentioned there), as well as recycle old lock components that have "Wire" in their name.  Welder, however, is not essential to Workshop decks or to Belcher nearly as much as it is to Slaver.  Stax can go entire games without seeing a Welder and still win, while Slaver is not going to like that very much at all.  It's similiar to how Skullclamp in T2 like this (in addition to being everywhere): Elf and Nail's whole point was to play a bunch of shitty 1/1s, clamp them to draw lots of cards, and then play Tooth and Nail.  Meanwhile, Affinity used Skullclamp as a win more card to fuel even more ridiculousness by sacrificing creatures for cards and damage.  When Skullclamp was banned, Elf and Nail ceased to exist, and Affinity was still around, and mostly still as good as ever (now better because the environment was severely weakened).  So what happened?  The deck that had Skullclamp in it because it was synergistic (and happened to be there) didn't really lose a lot of its thunder because it didn't need Skullclamp to function properly.  This is the situation we have in Vintage: we have one deck making Welder part of its core, and a bunch of other decks playing Welder because it works pretty well in the deck (it seems good with a bunch of expensive artifacts).  I really think that Welder is akin to Skullclamp in more than just numbers.  The question really is is this something we're ok with?  If it is, why is that?  Is it because we're talking about a 1/1 that can be easily destroyed (in theory), and can't fathom restricting the first creature since Ali from Cairo?  Or are we just ok with everyone getting to play Welder, like we're ok with everybody playing Brainstorm?

Keep in mind that Goblin Welder doesn't just make Control Slaver and Workshop decks strong, it makes them PLAYABLE. Even in your 5-axis metagame, you realize the catastrophe of removing one of the vertices, don't you? Removing both the Prison and half the Control vertices will not just create a cascade of events, it will break the damn format in half. It's not a broken arm or so, it's a broken spine.

I think we can all agree that the loss of Welder will render Control Slaver mostly unplayable.  However, what I do not understand is how Control has become one in the same with Control Slaver.  I mean, yeah it's the best control deck right now, but it seems that we've forgotten that control can still be good without playing 1/1 Joblins--I hear Psychatog is a pretty good creature too.  The loss of Welder might render one specific control deck unplayable, but it doesn't destroy the archetype.  In fact, other control decks have better games against combo, and let's not forget how monoblue beats Stax into the ground.  Despite this, everyone wants to play Control Slaver, because it 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.

So what happens to the other decks that run Welder?  I think the Workshop decks are like Affinity without Skullclamp in this regard: still really solid.  The loss of Welder makes Shop decks a little more susceptible to permission, but the biggest loss comes in that it doesn't get to waste like 10 turns by welding in a new Tangle Wire every turn.  This forces the deck to win a little faster, instead of waiting until the opponent is completely screwed over and then dropping a 7/10 and attacking like twice.  The loss of Welder forces Shop decks to rebuild a little bit, but I don't think it hurts the overall strategy.  Like Skullclamp was in Affinity, if a Shop deck gets its Welder, it makes life nicer, but it has enough sheer strength to win without it.

I'm not worried about what happens to Belcher.  I'm sure Zherbus wouldn't be too broken up to see Belcher be more unstable.  If it makes Z happy and lets me keep my Rituals, that's always good.

Now, as for a card being a "pillar of the format," that's nonesence.  Just because something has been around forever doesn't mean that it's still balanced or not causing huge problems.  Slavery had been legal in America for 100 years, but people finally reached an understanding that made them realize that was wrong.  What I'm saying here is that we shouldn't be labeling cards as sacred pillars of the format (therefore making them untouchable) because they've been around since T1 was the only format in existence.

[YAMP]

The DCI has a much larger datapool to decide which tournaments in the world represent the global metagame (and to get the decklists of the winning decks).
I am pretty sure most of the tournaments Smmenen picked will not be on the radar just because they are not DCI-sanctioned due to being proxy-tournaments.

Thus - since the DCI is the one to decide on restricting certain cards they should have quit looking into this discussion ( if they ever did ) because the fundamental data of the article is not relevant for them - or us?

[Masticor]

I can not understand the Problem u have with Welder, it is a 1/1 Creature that is vulnerable to nearly every Creature Removal in the T1 cardpool.  So even if it comes first turn, it is possible to remove him as fast as he entered the game.

I think the Problem (the welder Dominance),  in the States is a result of Proxie Tournaments. Nobody wants to play Aggro there (normaly with about 8 or more welder killing Cards), everybody wan`s to play all the proxies available, so they netdeck and find DrainsSlaver. There they can also play their favourite Cards like mana drain.  The philosophy seems to be jump on the train and play slaver yourself, rather then do something against it. Fish should have a reasonable Matchup against Slaver so why don`t try it again with the deck? Or be innovative, don`t try to build a new ultra combo Decks, but a decent Aggro Deck to rule in this Metagame.

P.S. Just for fun i created an anti Slaver Sui, it could also been Sligh or whatever. Null Rod stops the combo, creature removal for welder or Threads and Graveyard removal (less attention is been payed on this to stop welder or the accu/thirst draw engine and even Crucible) and chains of mephistopheles for the draw engine.
And sorry for my bad english.

[cssamerican]

Why do we have to determine whether it is a pillar?  Why not just exclude a) cards that are common deck buildling components like Land, b) cards that make the format more consistent without creating a dominant deck: Brainstorm, FOW and c) cards that are answers or hosers: Chalice/Rack and Ruin/REB?  That leaves the vast majority of the card pool open.

That is the category I am saying Goblin Welder falls into. You yourself have said that those welder totals from the top 8s aren’t just from one deck type, but many. And many people here have agreed that welder's main function in most decks is to create more consistency versus deck with counter magic. This means by your definition the only deck that has supposedly broke (Caused a distortion) Goblin Welder is Control Slaver, but for some reason you didn't say that you wanted Goblin Welder restricted because Control Slaver is dominating Vintage. (I suspect that would be harder to prove since it is only putting up those kinds of numbers in the Northeast)

I think your definition of distortion is bleeding into dominance, or at the least, suggests that distortion has a HIGHER threshold than dominance.  That is, a dominant deck can be found at 5 or more copies per top 8 Consistesntly over a wide geographic area for a long time.  BUT, your definition of distortion basically says that almost NO top 8 decks can't have the card in question in them.  Otherwise, non-card in question would be viable.

No I am saying that if a card is good in many decks, but no deck with it is dominant AND you don't need to play a deck that uses it to do well in a tournament AND it doesn't kill entire deck Archetypes. Then you have to ask yourself what is the problem? So I guess you could say that I am arguing distortion is a much harder criteria to prove than dominance. The cards that are already on the list that fall into this category in my opinion are Balance and Black Vise because each one distorts the environment to the point it kills Archetypes. Welder has yet to even come close to doing that in my opinion.

[o]

Smmenen, you're discussion about interactivity was a very very good read.  It made some very accurate points.  In it you describe one perticular situation that I think is important to consider:

OR:

Land, Welder.

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

Here even you admit that welder really is an answer on some levels.  Welder can do very unfair stuff, but Mana Drain can as well.  Welder really adds interactivity into the metagame, because it means that lots of decks now can overcome cards like Mana Drain.  Like you said, without powerful turn 1 plays, decks cannot hope to compete against drain.

Why then, should we restrict a card that simply allows more diversity in decks and more interactivity in game play?  Is this little goblin sooooo much more broken than all of the other devastating turn one plays that it absolutely has to go?  I don't really think so.

Anyways, thanks for writing all of this.  It was wonderfully enlightening.

[onelovemachine]

I also agree that T1 Welder is not remotely on the same level as T2 Skullclamp. As Hyperion pointed out, T1 is more adaptable and can deal with problem cards like this more readily. However, players are slower to adapt in T1 because of two reasons: they tend to be more content in netdecking/following what the strong players play/advise, and because they have the means to do so (10 proxy events) so they often take the "easy way out". It of course doesn't help that NE players love their control decks so something like Control Slaver appears in massive numbers.

Skullclamp effect..... skullclamp effect...... skullclamp effect......

I'm no expert in type two, but I have an idea that we as type one players misread the DCI's interpretation of what the skullclamp effect is.  If we flashback to Gencon this last summer you'll see what I mean:

Playing in a sanctioned match in one of the tournaments preliminary to worlds, I had a random rules question.  I hold my hand up and yell out "judge!" only to be confronted by some random guy not in a judge's uniform that I had been observing as he walked around the tables.  This gentlemen told me he was more than qualified to answer my question as he worked for the DCI.  After answering the question (correctly, a judge confirmed) and allowing me to finish the round, he and I had a conversation about what the DCI was up to in those days.  It naturally moved to the skullclamp topic.  His input on why skullclamp was banned:  it wasn't necessarily that skullclamp was putting up ridiculous numbers; although, that is an indicator of a busted card.  It was that skullclamp, despite the massive amount of artifact kill in type two, could not be stopped.  Decks running a begillion oxidizes and such still couldn't stop the stupid clamp decks because the card itself was so poweful.  

We were discussing this card in relation to yawgmoth's will (this is slightly off topic but still relevant).  Apparently, according to him anyway, will isn't getting banned any time soon.  The reason?  Yawgmoth's will can be stopped, at least card for card it can be.  Graveyard hate, countermagic, hand disruption all mean that it is vulnerable in and of itself.  The arguments that come up here are not the point.  The point is that perhaps the DCI is not looking at the numbers of welders that top 8 as its sole qualification for restriction.  Welder itself can be stopped.  If not, than how come the other decks running welder aren't putting up those kinds of results?  Mana drain can be stopped.  If not, than why aren't the other drain decks ruining top 8's?  We have already seen that decks like tog, metagamed properly to include even one maindeck copy of lava dart, can walk through a field of slavery.  In type 2, skullclamp did not have bad matchups.  Slaver's bad matchups are few and far between and the decks that beat it are bad metagame choices for a varied field, but welder isn't unstoppable.

[That0neguy]

I personally don't think that goblin welder should be restricted at all.  Restricting welder would kill off at least 1 archtype (control slaver) and weaken several other archtypes.  Restricting welder also has the problem that steves interactivity artical brought up that there are less strong first turn plays thus haing mana drain be even stronger.  I think that the solution is to retrict the draw engines that mana drain fuels.  It has worked in the past with mono u.  My vote is to restrict either thirst for knowlage or intuition or both.  This way the deck is still viable but probably considerably weaker.

Also if anything needs to go from workshop it should be trinisphere since it was at least playable before the card was printed.  I think that workshop isn't doing that good right now anywyas though so nthing needs to be done about it now at least.

[Dr. Sylvan]

The distortion and dominance standards that Steve is talking about are very important. First, let's consider why Welder is not going to get a special free pass like FoW and Brainstorm. Those two cards are (a) very defensive, (b) very necessary to keep first-turn winning/locking in check. Let's look at what they do not do that Welder does do: mana acceleration, nearly unlimited graveyard recursion/reanimation, and counterspell nullification. Think about how Intuition+Welder = Tinker. There is no way it is protected in the same way as Force of Will.

So now that we know it is not an exception, why does it pass the Skullclamp test? In my data, Welder looks like this:

2003, Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr, May, Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep, O-N, D-J
_4.9, _6.4, _5.6, _4.8, _7.8, _6.0, _7.7, _6.9, 12.0, _7.0, 12.3, _7.4 Goblin Welder

In the global metagame, it does not pass the Skullclamp test. Steve disagrees with my data pool. If you only do events greater than 100 people, this is what happens:

April: Dulmen - 12 Welder
May***: Waterbury* - 4 Welder
June: no eligible events
July: Barcelona - 4 Welder**, Dulmen - 12 Welder, SCG Richmond - 6 Welder, Massa Carrera - 12 Welder
August: Dulmen - 12 Welder, GenCon - 24 Welder
September: Turin - 20 Welder, Waterbury - 8 Welder, Dulmen - 8 Welder, Piacenza - 8 Welder
Oct-Nov***: SCG P9 III Chicago - 20 Welder, Nov. Iserlohn - 19 Welder, Turin - 20 Welder
Dec-Jan: Massa Carrera - 8 Welder, Waterbury - 16 Welder

* : Waterbury was on April 24, but included in May data.
** : Two completely unknown decklists from this T8 mean the maximum Welders is 12, but it would be presumptive to count it as more than 8.
*** : In May's data, Gothenburg had 99 players and 16 Welders. In October, Iserlohn had 99 players with 16 Welders. Take your cutoff and like it!

Apr, May, Jun., Jul., Aug., Sep., O-N., D-J (100 person cutoff)
12.0, _4.0, ___, _8.5, 18.0, 11.0, 19.7, 12.0 Goblin Welder

Now in my view, the cutoff for Dominance by an archetype is about 40% of Top 8 slots. So far in my data, it has been a rare and freakish moment for a deck to be more than 15% of T8 spots, so anything that was more than twice that would be a transparently, globally broken deck. Distortion is a separate test, which is driven by individual cards more than deck archetypes, and I agree with Steve that it starts around 16 copies per Top 8. In my 50+ person data it does not, but in Steve's suggested 100-person cutoff it sometimes does.

The difference is that while my data probably do have enough events to accurately represent what we would project to be the average results of many many more 50-person events*, there are so few 100+ events that we can't say which months' numbers show what we should expect from additional 100+ person events. July and September come closest with four eligible events each, but already they are somewhat stale from a prediction standpoint.

* : "as n approaches infinity" if you like it said that way.

Incidentally, the Welder counts are consistently about 50% higher for larger events across the last six months. This "proves" the correlation between tournament size and increased Welders as much as we really can without genuine (and impossible) laboratory conditions, but it breaks down completely in earlier months with one or zero events eligible per month and thus no real comparability.

[Smmenen]

Why do we have to determine whether it is a pillar?  Why not just exclude a) cards that are common deck buildling components like Land, b) cards that make the format more consistent without creating a dominant deck: Brainstorm, FOW and c) cards that are answers or hosers: Chalice/Rack and Ruin/REB?  That leaves the vast majority of the card pool open.

That is the category I am saying Goblin Welder falls into. You yourself have said that those welder totals from the top 8s aren’t just from one deck type, but many. And many people here have agreed that welder's main function in most decks is to create more consistency versus deck with counter magic. This means by your definition the only deck that has supposedly broke (Caused a distortion) Goblin Welder is Control Slaver, but for some reason you didn't say that you wanted Goblin Welder restricted because Control Slaver is dominating Vintage. (I suspect that would be harder to prove since it is only putting up those kinds of numbers in the Northeast)

No in fact I argued that Control slaver is NOT dominating.  I think it is not like Brainstorm but highly distorting becuase it makes counterspells dead.  Also, Welder in a format with Moxen is ridiculous.  

I think your definition of distortion is bleeding into dominance, or at the least, suggests that distortion has a HIGHER threshold than dominance.  That is, a dominant deck can be found at 5 or more copies per top 8 Consistesntly over a wide geographic area for a long time.  BUT, your definition of distortion basically says that almost NO top 8 decks can't have the card in question in them.  Otherwise, non-card in question would be viable.

No I am saying that if a card is good in many decks, but no deck with it is dominant AND you don't need to play a deck that uses it to do well in a tournament AND it doesn't kill entire deck Archetypes. Then you have to ask yourself what is the problem? So I guess you could say that I am arguing distortion is a much harder criteria to prove than dominance. The cards that are already on the list that fall into this category in my opinion are Balance and Black Vise because each one distorts the environment to the point it kills Archetypes. Welder has yet to even come close to doing that in my opinion.

It is also hard to argue that Balance and Black Vise would not create a single or a few dominant decks.  I think Workshop Aggro could easily play 4 Vises and make the most of it.  As for Balance, I think Stax would break Balance.

[Elric]

So, if the best players are winning with Welder, then the problem could be that Welder enables the top players to win too easily based on their skill.

What would you say are good estimates for the percent of players at top tournaments who are "ringers" and are all using Welder to win.  Additionally, what would you say is the match win percentage for a Welder deck played by one of these "ringers" against a normal player?

Do ringers win an average of 60% of their matches against ordinary players?  70%?

Lastly, your estimate for "ringers" using Welder to win should be consistent with Total % of Welder decks= % of ringers * 1 (all assumed to be using Welder) + (1-% of ringers)* Percent of these players who play Welder.

[Smmenen]

I also agree that T1 Welder is not remotely on the same level as T2 Skullclamp. As Hyperion pointed out, T1 is more adaptable and can deal with problem cards like this more readily. However, players are slower to adapt in T1 because of two reasons: they tend to be more content in netdecking/following what the strong players play/advise, and because they have the means to do so (10 proxy events) so they often take the "easy way out". It of course doesn't help that NE players love their control decks so something like Control Slaver appears in massive numbers.

Skullclamp effect..... skullclamp effect...... skullclamp effect......

I'm no expert in type two, but I have an idea that we as type one players misread the DCI's interpretation of what the skullclamp effect is.  If we flashback to Gencon this last summer you'll see what I mean:

Playing in a sanctioned match in one of the tournaments preliminary to worlds, I had a random rules question.  I hold my hand up and yell out "judge!" only to be confronted by some random guy not in a judge's uniform that I had been observing as he walked around the tables.  This gentlemen told me he was more than qualified to answer my question as he worked for the DCI.  After answering the question (correctly, a judge confirmed) and allowing me to finish the round, he and I had a conversation about what the DCI was up to in those days.  It naturally moved to the skullclamp topic.  His input on why skullclamp was banned:  it wasn't necessarily that skullclamp was putting up ridiculous numbers; although, that is an indicator of a busted card.  It was that skullclamp, despite the massive amount of artifact kill in type two, could not be stopped.  Decks running a begillion oxidizes and such still couldn't stop the stupid clamp decks because the card itself was so poweful.  

We were discussing this card in relation to yawgmoth's will (this is slightly off topic but still relevant).  Apparently, according to him anyway, will isn't getting banned any time soon.  The reason?  Yawgmoth's will can be stopped, at least card for card it can be.  Graveyard hate, countermagic, hand disruption all mean that it is vulnerable in and of itself.  The arguments that come up here are not the point.  The point is that perhaps the DCI is not looking at the numbers of welders that top 8 as its sole qualification for restriction.  Welder itself can be stopped.  If not, than how come the other decks running welder aren't putting up those kinds of results?  Mana drain can be stopped.  If not, than why aren't the other drain decks ruining top 8's?  We have already seen that decks like tog, metagamed properly to include even one maindeck copy of lava dart, can walk through a field of slavery.  In type 2, skullclamp did not have bad matchups.  Slaver's bad matchups are few and far between and the decks that beat it are bad metagame choices for a varied field, but welder isn't unstoppable.

Heh.  you were probably talking to Aaron Forsythe.  Was it Friday?

Incidentally, the Welder counts are consistently about 50% higher for larger events across the last six months. This "proves" the correlation between tournament size and increased Welders as much as we really can without genuine (and impossible) laboratory conditions, but it breaks down completely in earlier months with one or zero events eligible per month and thus no real comparability.

Spectacular Post.  take note everyone.

[Nazdakka]

The difference is that while my data probably do have enough events to accurately represent what we would project to be the average results of many many more 50-person events, there are so few 100+ events that we can't say which months' numbers show what we should expect from additional 100+ person events. July and September come closest with four eligible events each, but already they are somewhat stale from a prediction standpoint.

You've got to counterbalance the effects of big tournaments = good and big sample size = good. That's the problem with Smemmen's approach here: he's got a far too-small sample of relatively good data, and that throws his error bars through the roof, despite the good quality source data (big tournaments). He's also got a huuuge timespan in his data... I am really not convinced that Gencon is a reasonable datapoint to quote when talking about today's meta, despite the fact it bumps up the Welder/top8 average by a full 1.2 .

I still strongly dislike the fact that Smemmen has ignored a whole load of other data because he didn't trust the source, without (in my opinion) a good reason. Wierd decks show up in American top 8s too, and in the proxy area it could be argued the allowed number of proxies has a big effect on the metagame too (10 proxies obviously means more decks show up which can be built on duals and proxied power/Drains/Shops, while 5 means you can't play a complete build of Drain/Shop.dec without owning big money cards). That means that 10 proxy and 5 proxy events are liable to have very different metas, just as European 0 proxy events do. I'm really saying even if you don't like the way events are run in Europe, it's still unreasonable to ignore them. Europeans should have just as much of a voice in restriction debates as Americans, and leaving them out of your data denies them that.

Re: Actual cards. Welder certainly does not deserve a free pass into the format, Dr. S made that clear. If we go by the story above, the question is 'Can Welder be beaten?' . Italy isn't seeing the plague of C.Slaver that NE does, although it's seeing a lot of decks like Stax/MUD where Welder is a support card as opposed to a core card. Indeed, Italy seems to have a 3-axis metagame consisting largely of 'Tog, Stax and TPS.

[BigMac]

It has taken me a long time to read all this and i may have overlooked something or forgot something on the way. But here are my thoughts on the subject.

Lets say up front welder is a good card, probably the best critter in magic to date. I would like to say i liked the article but have some disagreements.

The first i problem have has been pointed out by several others. Although i understand the choices of the events being used, and i also agree that there are enough tournies there to warrant a discussion, i still think it is to regional, and with that i mean to much United States oriented. The reason i say this is because i have been reading up and monitoring top 8 throughout the last couple of years, comming to the conclusion that the States have a kindness towards controlish decks. Other metas tend to be less controlish.

This brings me to my second point. How is it that big tournaments should represent the whole metagame, rendering the smaller tournies less viable as a metagame and as a source to determine whether or not a card is to good and needs restriction. I think it is pretty presumptuous to say the bigger the tourny the better the meta and thus the better you can see if a card is to good or not. I understand there has to be a line somewhere but i think 100 people is to high of a number.

Thirdly i think that atm the diversity of decks able to win a tourny is very nice. Taking out welder will produce new decks i am sure, but it also would kill, or at least weaken 4 if not more viable decks. (slaver, 5/3, the.tinker, stax come to mind).

My next point i am unsure how to put that. In magic interaction is a greatly protected good WotC will try and keep. Although many will say that welder decks have a great interaction, as well as control decks, as you try to outmanouver eachother, the end is still the same. The one gaining the welder lock advantage wins the game, wether it be with a slaver lock (no interaction left here) or a trike lock (having the upper hand against opponents welders if need be) or a recurring titan lock (rendering your opponent without mana, and so not having interaction anymore). This could very well be considered a reason to restrict welder.

However, i think instead of restricting welder some people should stand up, innovate and start playing with decks with more removal again to kill of the welder as soon as it hits the table. This could mean the revival of fish, null rod decks, or unveil whole new archetypes. The bottomline this article to me is that in vintage people tend to netdeck more than innovate. Restricting welder could very well have two results. New decks through innovation, or the same decks slightly altered to find welder rather sooner than later. (wild idea, 4 living wish and welder in sideboard with crucible main and stripmine sideboard as an extra wincondition)

So i think restricting welder could be the starting point for a whole list of restrictions, or not restricting welder could be the starting point for people when building decks think about how to win against a welder based deck. And isnt that what we all do allready when building a deck?

One last thing. Somewhere along the line you stated that euro tournies sometimes have random decks in a top 8. Such a random deck could be a very viable choice, but condemning a random deck upfront could be considered short sighted. Many people playing roughly the same deck in a tourny only means that the chances of one of those decks getting through to the top 8 is heightened. For a random deck to enter a top 8, it means one of three things. The deck is good, the player is good, or it was very well metagamed. Blaming it all on luck again is short sighted, specially when the same persons keep popping up with those random decks.

[unknown.root]

alright i agree that welder is nasty but would the format be better off without them. as someone wrote earlier how bad would it mess up the format, from my viewpoint and metagame (18-26) our metagame top8's results look just like yours. we've all grown used to welders be part of the type 1 lifestyle so maybe it'll just work it self out after awhile.

[Purple Hat]

I honestly have to say that i just don't have the time to read a 6 page thread right now.  so i don't know if this has come up, but if anything should be restricted it's probably Thirst for Knowledge.

TFK pretty clearly passes the gush test (draws cards is mana positive and is part of an extremely powerful archetype).  Think about how TFK is generally used.  CS player: land, welder, land, mox, drain/tfk, weld/tfk->weld.  This is the PRIMARY strategy of CS and is featured in all welder decks.   Use thirst to draw some cards and negate the casting costs on some huge artifact which will be welded back is certainly the same type of broken that Gush is with fast bond.  Yes you don't get the utterly insane yawg will interaction, but notice that both fastbond and yawg will are restricted...welder and some high casting cost artifact are not.   Hell, tfk is so powerful that people were using it in GAT for a while with success.  GaT doesn't even play a full set of moxen.  But you could use it to pitch DA and get your draw on.

Welder isn't a problem card.  It is TFK that causes problems with Welders.  Restrict TFK and you solve the CS problem, if it exists, as well as wekening all other welder archetypes.


Hale

[Jacob Orlove]

Thirst is ONLY strong because welder is broken. Without welder, Thirst is merely a decent (but not even great) card drawing spell. The key is that Welder is broken with or without Thirst (eg: welder in Belcher), but Thirst is only really good when combined with Welder.

Thirst is not the problem here.

[That0neguy]

But getting rid of thirst you are cutting one of the main draw engines of CS to weaken but not kill the deck completly kinda like what cutting fact or fiction did to mono u.

I think that most people don't want to kill control slaver just weaken it so its not dominating as much.  I personally think that intuition should be hit as well because it is a strong tutor/draw engine that would also weaken CS without killing it.

[Purple Hat]

Jacob Orlove wrote:

Thirst is ONLY strong because welder is broken. Without welder, Thirst is merely a decent (but not even great) card drawing spell.

This is perhaps true but the interaction between welder and thirst certainly passes the gush test for restriction.  Now we have to ask ourselves if we're prepared to nuke the metagame or if we just want to realign it a bit.  I think a slight realignment is in order, but restricting welder is like pulling out a shotgun if your dog shits on the rug.  It's a bit extreme given the actual problem we're facing here.  look at the meta effect of restricting welder.  You take out CS, CA, 5/3, Stax and possibly belcher.  Look at the meta effect of restricting thirst.  CS, CA and 5/3 are forced to look for new draw engines, CS probably goes with intuition AK and possibly compulsion or some other discard outlet, it survives the transition but is weakened considerably, CA replaces the lost thirsts with an intuition and another portal or something else and keeps going, 5/3 doesn't really have an obvious answer but workshop aggro will survive in some form, Stax simply goes back to the FAR riskier meditate engine.  So the question is really do we want to remove 4 of the top decks from the meta or do we want to *slightly* realign the power balance such that the welder decks aren't insane?

hale

[Jacob Orlove]

Obviously we should restrict Illusions, not Necro--why cripple the "fair" mono-b necro decks and trix, when we can just deal with the "real" problem: Donating the Illusions.

Obviously we should restrict Thirst, not Welder--why cripple the "fair" workshop/bazaar decks and CS, when we can just deal with the "real" problem: Thirst netting you a card.

THis thread has run its course. If anyone wants to continue arguments via PM, I'd be happy to.