The Counterintuitive Impact of Restricting Good Blue Cards

[meadbert]

8.  B/R Threads.  The fact is, we do not have a direct line to Wizards or the DCI.  While people may feel very strongly that changes need to be made to the Type 1 Banned and Restricted list, arguing endlessly about those views on TMD will do very little to make anything happen.  In fact, the most reliable result of a B/R debate on this site has been flamewars.  While some leeway is given to threads on this subject in the wake of a significant B/R change, the general rule is these discussions aren't allowed because they invariably lead to behavior that is below this site's standards.

This thread is very close to being against the rules.  With the above rule in mind, I would like to keep this thread on the topic, which is what will the impact of Thirst's restriction be in the context of Crop Rotation's unrestriction and Gifts Ungiven, Brainstorm, Ponder, Scroll and Gush's restriction.  Please do not offer opinions on whether you agree with any of these restrictions.

Before I get into the specifics of Thirst's restriction I want to use a far simpler example of the counter intuitive consequences of a rules change.

Suppose there are only two decks in magic.  One is blue and the other is dredge.  You can play either.

We will ignore your opponent's deck type and just consider what they hate out.  They can either hate out dredge or hate out blue.  This is a very simple example.

Let say that an unhated out Dredge deck has a probability of winning that is proportional to 10 while a hated out dredge deck has a probability of winning in proportion to 2.
Lets then say that Blue wins in proportion to 7 if unhated out or in proportion to 3 if hated out.

What should your strategy be?  What should your opponent's strategies be?

It turns out that your optimal strategy is to play blue about 2/3s of the time.  If you play blue any more than your opponent will start ignoring dredge and just hate out blue.  If you play any less than your opponents should start hating out dredge.
Meanwhile your opponent's optimal strategy is to hate out dredge about 7/12s of the time.

To someone watching this, they may decide that the metagame looks unbalanced.  Here we have one deck being played twice as much as the other.  Blue must be too good since it sees play 2/3s of the time.  It therefore makes sense to weaken blue through either restrictions or the printing of new cards.  Lets say this is done and now blue wins in proportion to 6 and 2 depending on whether it is hated out.  How will the metagame adjust?
It turns out that optimal strategy is to still play blue 2/3s of the time.  All that has changed is that opponents should not hate out dredge 2/3s of the time.

Seeing that blue is still too powerful, blue is weakened further such that it wins in proportion to 4 when unhated out and in proportion to 0 when hated out.
How does the new metagame look?
It turns out that the optimal strategy remains playing blue 2/3s of the time.  All that changed is that now dredge should be hated out 5/6s of the time!

How can all of this be?  The answer is that a decks power level is less important than its resiliency to hate when it comes to dominating a metagame.  A deck's power level is very important in terms of its playability at all, but when a deck attempts to dominate a metagame it is the resiliency to hate that matters more.

My contention is that blue control decks are resilient to hate and it is that and not their relative power that allow them to dominate metagames.  Left unhated out Dredge, Dragon, Long and even Stax are possbily more powerful than blue based control decks.
The proof is in the quantity of hate that shows up for each.  There is a tremendous amount of Dredge hate out there and both basic lands and mass bounce (Hurkyl's Recall, Rebuild) show up in main decks all of the time to hate out Stax.  Even Energy Flux sees a decent amount of play.  Now consider blue hate.  Here we have been living in a metagame dominated by blue decks running Mana Drain and Thirst for Knowledge.  How often is Xantid Swarm played?  How often is Choke played.  How often is In the Eye of Chaos played?  Despite that fact that there are probably 3-5 times as many Drain decks as Shop decks you will find far more Rebuilds and Energy Fluxes than you will Chokes and In the Eye of Chaos's?

The only explanation I can come up with is that Energy Flux, Choke and Xantid Swarm are just not that good at hating out Drain decks.  At least they are not as good as Hurkyl's Recall is at hating out Stax.

What impact does the restriction of Thirst have on any of this?  Certainly the restriction of Thirst weakens blues power level, but that is not relevant in blue's ability to dominate a metagame.  According to game theory the reaction of restricting Thirst should be for the number of Drain decks to remain about constant while other decks decrease the amount of Drain hate to add more Shops and Dredge hate.

The more relevant question is how does the restriction of Thirst effect the resiliency of blue to play through hate.  Thirst itself was quite vulnerable to both Choke and In the Eye of Chaos.  The biggest effect would seem to be that Thirst weakens blue's ability to play through Null Rod or Chalice@0.  Also, Thirst's restriction somewhat neuters Tinker since now decks must either run multiple fatties or risk drawing Tinker with fattie in hand and no way to get rid of it.  This risk is mitigated by Key/Vault since Tinker can always complete the combo.

One question is how is Thirst replaced.  In hindsight it is obvious that the restriction of Gush would result in blue being more heavily played.  Basically Gush is easier to hate out with Ressitor/Thorn/Root Maze and Thirst is tougher to hate out.  Replacing Gush with Thirst created a weaker deck, but a deck that is more difficult to hate out.
There are two likely candidates for Thirsts replacement.  The first is Intuition along with possibily AKs or Deep Analysis.  The second is Dark Confidant.

If Thirst is replaced with Intuitions then you end up with a deck that is easier to hate out since both AKs and Deep Analysis are more reliant on the yard.  The hatability should not be exaggerated. Blue decks are not that reliant on the yard in general and trading Tormod's Crypt for Intuition is far from broken.  Intuition can always grab Drain or Force or Mystical/Vamp/Demonic to get Tinker.
The second likely option is Dark Confidant.  Dark Confidant has certain liabilities, but it does not make blue easier to hate out.  It is not vulnerable to Choke or In the Eye of Chaos.  Bob does not care about Xantid swarm and is not even countered by Red Blast.  Bob even provides extra win conditions to dodge Jester's Cap or Extirpate.  He can win through Chalice and Null Rod easily.  He keeps "drawing" through Resistor and completely dodges Thorn.  Bob even dodges cards like Chains of Mephistopheles and Uba Mask.  The primary way that Bob makes blue easier to hate out is that he makes blue want to fetch Underground Sea on turn 1.  This is less important that it once was, since blue decks regularly already fetch Seas to cast Duress and Thoughtseize.  Also, the deck where fetching Sea is worst is against Stax, but turn 1 Bob remains a powerful play against Stax even if Sea was fetched to play him.  Bob may be weaker than Thirst (especially with DSC in the deck), but he does not make blue any easier to hate out.

For this reason my suspicion is that the restriction of Thirst will either have no impact or even increase the number of blue decks in the metagame.

The other relevant change is the unrestriction of Crop Rotation.  Crop Rotation provides Shops with more power in several ways.  The most important may be the ability to reliably find Strip/Waste to fight Dredge pre board and then the ability to find Tabernacle to fight dredge post board.  Although Crop Rotation shows up in a lot of Shop decks it also does not show up in plenty of shop decks as well.  Ben Carp recently top 8ed with a 5 color Stax deck with no Crop Rotation.  Obviously he did not think it was that broken.  Also you have Mud, Mono Black Blax and then Mono Red Uba Stax and Shop Aggro.  These lists could have green added for Crop Rotation, but if the card was great to begin with, why not already do this?  Although Crop Rotation seems like a good way to fight Mana Drain, it is possibly most vulnerable to Force of Will.  For these reasons I do not expect Crop Rotation to hurt Drains much at all.  In fact, it is quite possible that by giving Shops a new tool against Dredge we will see that number of Dredge decks decrease and the number of Shop decks increase which should favor Drains.

My expectation is that the recent changes to the B&R list will not decrease the number of Drain decks in the metagame.

[Smmenen]

My expectation is that the recent changes to the B&R list will not decrease the number of Drain decks in the metagame.

That's not the relevant question.

The question is whether it will diminish, even marginally, the *degree* of dominance.   That is not measured by the quantity of Drain decks in the _metagame_, but the proportion of Drain decks in Top 8s.

[SiegeX]

You're asking the same question.  After the metagame has time to settle to a steady state, the number of drain decks played will be directly correlated to the number of drain decks in the T8.

[Smmenen]

You're asking the same question.  After the metagame has time to settle to a steady state, the number of drain decks played will be directly correlated to the number of drain decks in the T8.

Steady state?  Metagames aren't supposed to settle, they are supposed to churn.   If decks only performed according to their proportion in the field, then we wouldn't have over and under performers.   

[Troy_Costisick]

Yeah, the problem we've had recently, IMHO, is that the meta has been too steady.

Anyway, Meadbert, this is a very interesting post.  I find I can't comment on it too intelegently right now because there's just no data from the new meta yet.  You probably have some very valid points, but we'll just have to wait and see how things shake out over the next three months.  And we'll see if any printings from M10 make a difference.

Peace,

-Troy

[SiegeX]

Steady state?  Metagames aren't supposed to settle, they are supposed to churn.   If decks only performed according to their proportion in the field, then we wouldn't have over and under performers.  

I didn't say proportional, I said correlated as that does not imply linearity.  Also, a system in steady-state does not mean the state of the system cannot change, and in fact it does due to various reasons: changes in B&R list, errata and new (or newly discovered) interactions between cards being the top three reasons.  As Troy mentioned, the meta has been too steady as we have gone through a few B&R seasons with no impact to Vintage.  

In fact one can say the Magic metagame is analogous to the impulse response of a signal with the three reasons listed above being new impulses into the system.  When one such impulse happens, you're going to get over and undershoots as the metagame settles on a steady state.  Examples could be an overestimate on the impact of an newly unrestricted card, say crop rotation*, or the under estimate on the impact of a newly printed card; goyf being a good example of this.  Also, personal preferences are going to factor in as well.  Some people are always going to play their pet deck or refuse to play some archetype; this is the noise in your system.

The DCI has purposely chosen changes to the B&R every quarter as it's generally enough time to allow the meta to settle to a steady state in order to evaluate the impact of their changes; to make further decisions on B&R or errata policy while the meta was still in flux would be foolish and irresponsible.

*Note that I'm not saying crop rotation being unrestricted is over-hyped, in fact it could turn out to be just the opposite. This was meant as an example using current pertinent cards.

[meadbert]

You're asking the same question.  After the metagame has time to settle to a steady state, the number of drain decks played will be directly correlated to the number of drain decks in the T8.

Steady state?  Metagames aren't supposed to settle, they are supposed to churn.   If decks only performed according to their proportion in the field, then we wouldn't have over and under performers.   

Generally Wizards is good about keeping vintage a dynamic format, so we rarely have time to reach a steady state.  That is a good thing.  That said, there is an argument that in theory, if everyone has equal abilities and all play to win then each deck should have an equal winning percentage.  If a deck were able to reliably win more than half its rounds then everyone would want to play it (since we are assuming they only care about winning) and everyone would play the same deck, thus by definition it would have a 50% winning percentage.  The reason the preceding statement is not true is that the conditions are not met.  If you have players of varying ability and some decks are more difficult to play than others then players strategies diverge.  In general, decks that are difficult to play are going to be underplayed.  This is because people do not play perfectly and mistakes will make those decks play out worse than they could in theory be played by a perfect player.  Because they are underplayed they will also be under hated.  This means that if you are a very good player who does not make mistakes you will actually be rewarded by played this difficult to play deck.  Meanwhile if you play poorly you will steer clear of a deck that is too difficult for you and instead play a deck where your mistakes are less likely to cost you games.  For this reason, it is not uncommon to see a deck regularly win over half of its matches.

A second, related issue is a deck that does not do well in general, but suddenly in the top 8 seems to shine.  Such a deck can be a deck that "rewards skill."  Basically if skilled players do much better with a certain deck than unskilled players then one would expect that those who make the top eight are much more likely to be skilled.  Meanwhile if another deck is more luck based and less skilled base, then one might expect a player of lower skill to be more likely to slip in.  I do not believe that blue decks are harder to play than dredge, but others do such lets pretend that is true.  If it were true you would expect to see experts reguarly show up in the top 8 playing blue decks while whoever top 8ed with dredge might just be the guy who got lucky this week.  The finals turns into a much better player playing blue against a more average player playing dredge.  It would then be unsurprising that the good player does better.

A third example is fun factor.  If a deck has a higher than expected winning percentage then it may just be that it is considered "unfun" and folks are bypassing a higher probability of winning a tournament in favor of playing a deck that is more fun.

The final example is cost.  If a deck is expensive then it will presumably be underplayed and thus under hated and those with the cards to play the deck will be rewarded if they choose to do so.  This has little impact on major tournament in America because of proxies, but it is probably more significant internationally.

For the above four reasons it is not true that each archetype should trend towards winning 50% of its rounds.

[Diakonov]

Awesome thread, meadbert.  Very interesting.

Part of the problem that we're always going to run into is the fact that each of the pillars except for FoW has inherent weaknesses to how the game is designed at its core.  Workshop relies on the player to run an absurdly high concentration of artifacts.  Since in virtually every other format artifacts are used sparingly, some cards have been printed that have dramatically powerful effects against them, with the design intent that it would only be dealing with a small part of the opponents' game plan.  I find it doubtful that R&D would have ever intended Energy Flux to be an enchantment that consistently wipes the opponents' board.

The same goes for Bazaar.  Bazaar decks intuitively lead to a reliance on the graveyard, which again, is not something that R&D would have anticipated when making cards like Tormod's Crypt.  Back when The Dark was in print, the concept of a deck abusing the yard may not have been unheard of, but basing its entire strategy around it 100% would have blown their minds at the time.  They had no idea they were creating such a hateful card.

Then we have Ritual.  Back in the day, Ritual would do things like power out an early Hypnotic Specter, or just give you a little boost when you needed it.  Now, in order for Ritual-based decks to be competitive, they need to justify and take advantage of spending a whole card for a temporary three mana by winning as fast as possible, generally by chaining lots of small spells together for a quick win.  Again, this is an abnormal scenario that was in no way planned for.  By default, as with the other two, cards were printed with the intention to stop a little bit of this; not to shut an entire deck down (Null Rod, Chalice, Sphere, Arcane Lab, etc).

The only archetype that escapes is blue control, for the following reason: its game plan relies for the most part on very traditional, Alpha-MtG strategies.  It abuses mechanics that are integral to the game itself.

The first of those is card advantage.  Printing a card that *efficiently* hates a deck for gaining card advantage would effect every format immediately, and therefore makes it nearly impossible to design without being devastatingly strong.  Note that I don't say "draw," because apparently between tutors and cards like Confidant, that's no longer enough of a qualification to contain card advantage.  Second: the ability to efficiently counter.  Even if you could bring in efficient hate, I have the ability to say "no."  Therefore, you need twice as much hate if you plan on stopping me, and need to make it doubly efficient to make up for the tempo loss.

Blue's only other weakness is that fact that it is blue.  Again, we have the same logistical problems.  While they have printed cards that hate out blue, they have never been overly efficient like Tormod's Crypt or Hurkyll's Recall, because it would create radical issues among other formats.  Color is too integral to the game to hate out efficiently.

However, they could print something that really, really hates on blue, and then just ban it in the other formats.  I don't think Wizards is willing to take that risk, though.  Plus, as much as we like to complain about it, a LOT of people would be really upset if blue lost its top spot.

I think that your prediction is fair, meadbert.  Until the above happens, or until certain cards are unrestricted/printed that will allow the non-blue pillars to rise to meet their respective unfairly designed hate cards, I don't expect to see much of a change.

[2nd_lawl]

Although this thought experiment is kind of abstract it raises a key point about drain decks, and about decks that play alot of restricted cards in general: they are harder to hate.  Consider Chains of Mephistopheles, when every blue decks draw engine started with 4x brainstorm you knew you could rely on a card like chains to affect your opponents game plan because it was very likely that they would see a brainstorm during the game. Simply being unrestricted is a vunerability

If your draw engine is 1 ancestral, 1 brainstorm, 1 ponder, 1 gifts and 4 TFK. Chains of Mephistopheles is going to be an effective SB card against you, because it affects all your draw spells except gifts.

Consider the post restriction draw suite that is likely to replace it: 1 Ancestral, 1 Brainstorm, 1 Ponder 1, Tfk, 1 Gifts, 3 Dark Confidant. Now if you drop a chains, It COULD be good, but it might not do anything at all.  Same with REB.  Sure you could side in darkblast to deal with confidant, but then you simply have the opposite problem where you draw darkblast and its dead in your hand while your opponent plays his 1-of's.

While in the abstract TFK might be better than Bob in a drain deck, in the context of the metagame, it makes the deck more difficult to deal with.  If you look at the most powerful sideboard cards right now they either do one of two things: The force a game state where if the card is not dealt with the opponent cannot win, or they are powerful against many different strategies. The first category would be cards like leyline of the void or Yixlid Jailer, a dredge deck simply cannot win with it out. The second category might be a card like pithing needle or null rod or REB, which can make winning more difficult but not impossible for many different types of decks.  There is no card of the first category to deal with drain decks, and cards in the second category get weaker the more diversified the drain deck becomes.

[Smmenen]

Steady state?  Metagames aren't supposed to settle, they are supposed to churn.   If decks only performed according to their proportion in the field, then we wouldn't have over and under performers.  

I didn't say proportional, I said correlated as that does not imply linearity.  

If by correllated you didn't mean proportional, then the Meadbert's "% of the metagame" is not the same thing as my "% of top 8s."  

See:

My expectation is that the recent changes to the B&R list will not decrease the number of Drain decks in the metagame.

That's not the relevant question.

The question is whether it will diminish, even marginally, the *degree* of dominance.   That is not measured by the quantity of Drain decks in the _metagame_, but the proportion of Drain decks in Top 8s.

Your response was: those two things are the same.   They clearly are not, and you just explained why.

The DCI's actions were designed to weaken Drain archetypes vis-a-vis other pillars.    The question of whether Drains remain the same proportion of the metagame is completely irrelevant to that.    The only thing that matters is whether the degree of Drain dominance subsides a bit or persists, which is measured only by Top 8 and tournament victories. 

[Diakonov]

I think his point was that the two are interdependent, so while you're right that dominance is more clearly measured from top 8's, you should ultimately be able to determine its dominance by examining the metagame over time and factoring out the noise.  It's an inferior form of measurement, but technically a valid one, as long as we are assuming that the general public does want to win and does in fact pay attention to top 8 data.

[bluemage55]

Blue's only other weakness is that fact that it is blue.  Again, we have the same logistical problems.  While they have printed cards that hate out blue, they have never been overly efficient like Tormod's Crypt or Hurkyll's Recall, because it would create radical issues among other formats.  Color is too integral to the game to hate out efficiently.

However, they could print something that really, really hates on blue, and then just ban it in the other formats.  I don't think Wizards is willing to take that risk, though.  Plus, as much as we like to complain about it, a LOT of people would be really upset if blue lost its top spot.

I think you're overlooking that other solutions are possible.  Blue decks aren't good because they are blue.  They're good because they abuse certain aspects of the game that have traditionally belonged to the blue slice of the color pie.

Rather than hating blue the color, new cards can hate out aspects of the game considered "blue" such as card drawing (e.g. Chains of Mephistopheles, Pyrostatic Pillar), tutoring (e.g. Aven Mindcensor, Mindlock Orb), and countermagic (e.g. Vexing Shusher).   If more cards like them (or more efficient versions of them) are simply printed in greater quantities (and more colors), then more effective means to hate Vintage blue decks will be available.

[thejinhong]

A third example is fun factor.  If a deck has a higher than expected winning percentage then it may just be that it is considered "unfun" and folks are bypassing a higher probability of winning a tournament in favor of playing a deck that is more fun.

I also agree that Dredge is that good. 

Sorry to go off topic, but this really needs to be said.  I find Dredge, not blue, to be the major problem for Vintage player retention.  I played during time of 4xTrinisphere.  I am playing now in the time of Dredge.  I have seen more new players and old players lose interest in Vintage because of Dredge than even 4xTrinisphere. 

[Smmenen]

I think his point was that the two are interdependent, so while you're right that dominance is more clearly measured from top 8's, you should ultimately be able to determine its dominance by examining the metagame over time and factoring out the noise.  It's an inferior form of measurement, but technically a valid one, as long as we are assuming that the general public does want to win and does in fact pay attention to top 8 data.

Meadbert's essential point is that restricting Thirst won't actually impact blue's ability to *dominate the metagame* because metagame dominance is a function of resilience to hate.    Since the perception is that blue is getting neutered, sideboards will see an increase in hate for Shop, Ritual, and Bazaar strategies.   As a result, blue decks will either remain at the same degree of dominance or become even more powerful.

That sounds plausible, when looking at a general level of abstraction.

The problem is the actual reality of it.    When a Drain player sits down to face a Ritual, Bazar, or Shop player, will they be better off or less well off as a result of the restriction of Thirst?   Meadbert's analysis are better off now.  But that's just silly.  

The loss of the restriction of Thirst will necessarily make them less well off.  Blue decks ran Thirst because it was the best draw engine.  It's loss makes them less well off.  They have a less efficient draw engines to cycle through their decks and find answers.

This is not hypothetical.   Testing between me and Rich Shay in person at Origins showed that the loss of Thirst has been very significant.  

[meadbert]

Presumably a Drain player would have been better off with Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll, but their restriction did not hold back Drains.

In your opinion Steve, which cards will replace Thirst for Knowledge?

Also, would you mind elaborating more on your testing with Rich Shay?

[zeus-online]

I honestly think that one of the reasons for blue being so good is that blue drain decks are pretty much the only ones with a good mid-late game....What other viable decks can really say that?
Shops really need to do most of the work turn 1 and 2 or they loose since the opponent has had enough time to build up mana to simply ignore most of the cards.
Rituals need to win before the opponent has enough time to play cards that nerf the strategi (lock components, mana for counterspells etc.)
Bazaars just need to race, but after board they have to play around hate while still retaining roughly the same speed.
Aggro/Control or null rod decks in general may have a decent mid or even late game since some of the cards are just so efficient at locking the opponent down (cannonist, mindcensor, null rod, waste effects or even creatures that draw cards)

And now consider that the mid game is probably turn 3 in type one and late is probably turn 5. Some may even say that the mid game is as early as turn 2.

[Grand Inquisitor]

each of the pillars except for FoW has inherent weaknesses

They're good because they abuse certain aspects of the game that have traditionally belonged to the blue slice of the color pie.

I do not believe that blue decks are hard[er] to play

Add in player bias and I think this sums it up.

[2nd_lawl]

The loss of the restriction of Thirst will necessarily make them less well off.  Blue decks ran Thirst because it was the best draw engine.  It's loss makes them less well off.  They have a less efficient draw engines to cycle through their decks and find answers.

This is not hypothetical.   Testing between me and Rich Shay in person at Origins showed that the loss of Thirst has been very significant.  

Most games are sideboarded games. I don't think you can make the claim that having a slightly stronger maindeck (meaning 4 thirsts, vs 1 thirst and 3 confidant) is more important to your match win % then being less vulnerable to sideboard cards.  At least without extensive testing of every matchup post sideboard in both the pre and post restriction configurations.

To me the definition of a healthy metagame is one in which if you really want to win against a certain deck, you can do so without playing the deck itself (or a modified version of the deck).  And while everyone and their brother claims that their decks have a good matchup against tez, the tournament results don't reflect that.  Even if now the deck is slightly weaker, its undeniably harder to hate out, as it is less vulnerable to Eye of Chaos, Chains of Mephistopheles, and Red Blasts.

[Smmenen]

The loss of the restriction of Thirst will necessarily make them less well off.  Blue decks ran Thirst because it was the best draw engine.  It's loss makes them less well off.  They have a less efficient draw engines to cycle through their decks and find answers.

This is not hypothetical.   Testing between me and Rich Shay in person at Origins showed that the loss of Thirst has been very significant.  

Most games are sideboarded games. I don't think you can make the claim that having a slightly stronger maindeck (meaning 4 thirsts, vs 1 thirst and 3 confidant) is more important to your match win % then being less vulnerable to sideboard cards. 

It's not a question of whether it's more important or less important; it's still important.   If it weren't, then Tez decks wouldn't have been playing with 4 Thrists in the first place. 

[Grand Inquisitor]

It's not a question of whether it's more important or less important; it's still important.   If it weren't, then Tez decks wouldn't have been playing with 4 Thrists in the first place. 

Exactly.

Also, simply because more games are sideboarded doesn't necessarily mean those games are more important.

if you really want to win against a certain deck, you can do so without playing the deck itself

I don't know if it's explicit in Meadbert's comments, but I think he's saying that blue decks and T1 do not gel with your idea of a healthy metagame.

[Troy_Costisick]

I think that Meadbert's idea is provably true about the June 2008 restrictions.  5 Blue cards were restricted and as a result the meta has been dominated by blue decks ever since.  But I think the jury is out on TFK until we get some actual play data in.

[Smmenen]

Presumably a Drain player would have been better off with Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll, but their restriction did not hold back Drains.

That's correct, but that doesn't mean Drains wouldn't be stronger with Scroll or Brainstorm: I think they certainly would be.  

The effect of the restrictions last year was predictable.

Barely a few days after the announced restrictions, I said that Drain decks would be dominant, and that Control Slaver would be the deck to beat. (Source: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/15991_So_Many_Insane_Plays_The_Vintage_Apocalypse_The_New_Metagame_Uncovered.html )   Specifically, I thought that two Drain decks and one non-Drain deck would make up the tier one (consistent with patterns in earlier years.    I thought that those decks would likely  be Control Slaver, Drain Tendrils, and a Workshop variant.  It turned out that the non-Shop deck was TPS, and that it wasn't Drain Tendrils in the top tier, but rather Painter as the other Drain deck.  

I also said:

If the goal is diversity, that goal has not been achieved by these restrictions. Fewer targeted restrictions and more unrestrictions would have served that goal better.

Turns out that the goal *was* to create diversity among the four pillars, as they defined them: Force, Bazaar, Shop, and Ritual.   I think it was obvious to anyone who understood Vintage that there was a serious goal-implementation gap last year.  

I don't think that's the case this time.

 It was predictable last time that killing Gush would bring back Drains in a bigger way, and both moves would not help Shops, since Drain decks have bigger mana bases and lose Gush as prey.   It seemed clear to me that Control Slaver would be the best deck.   Fixing Time Vault and printing Tezzeret in that time frame had the incredibly predictable effect of making Tez decks the new Gifts-like deck, meaning dominant drain deck.  

In some ways, even if restricting Scroll 'hurt' Drains, and I certainly think it did -- especially against Storm combo, which showed at the Vintage champs last year -- that was overshadowed by the return of Time Vault, which once again gave Drains the edge.  

[2nd_lawl]

The loss of the restriction of Thirst will necessarily make them less well off.  Blue decks ran Thirst because it was the best draw engine.  It's loss makes them less well off.  They have a less efficient draw engines to cycle through their decks and find answers.

This is not hypothetical.   Testing between me and Rich Shay in person at Origins showed that the loss of Thirst has been very significant.  

Most games are sideboarded games. I don't think you can make the claim that having a slightly stronger maindeck (meaning 4 thirsts, vs 1 thirst and 3 confidant) is more important to your match win % then being less vulnerable to sideboard cards. 

It's not a question of whether it's more important or less important; it's still important.   If it weren't, then Tez decks wouldn't have been playing with 4 Thrists in the first place. 

Perhaps They should have been.  I don't think that the pre restriction tez lists were "optimal" (if such a thing exists) nor were the sideboards people were running to combat drains. Given sufficient time and effort on the part of players, tez lists may have moved away from TFK anyway. Vintage remains as always a very underdeveloped format.

[Mr. Type 4]

I have to disagree with a lot of what is said here.  I would contend that the logic actually flows the other way.  I believe that Drain decks are harder to "hate out" because of the inherant power of the cards, not the other way around.  A Drain deck has the advantage of being a deck engine that doubles as disruption.  It would be compareable if Dark Ritual gave you mana and then Duressed your opponent.  

[Smmenen]

The loss of the restriction of Thirst will necessarily make them less well off.  Blue decks ran Thirst because it was the best draw engine.  It's loss makes them less well off.  They have a less efficient draw engines to cycle through their decks and find answers.

This is not hypothetical.   Testing between me and Rich Shay in person at Origins showed that the loss of Thirst has been very significant.  

Most games are sideboarded games. I don't think you can make the claim that having a slightly stronger maindeck (meaning 4 thirsts, vs 1 thirst and 3 confidant) is more important to your match win % then being less vulnerable to sideboard cards. 

It's not a question of whether it's more important or less important; it's still important.   If it weren't, then Tez decks wouldn't have been playing with 4 Thrists in the first place. 

Perhaps They should have been. 

Yes.  Perhaps most Tez lists shouldn't have played 4 Thirsts.  And perhaps TPS shouldn't run 4 Dark Ritual.   And perhaps GroAtog shouldn't have run 4 Gushes, too.

 I don't think that the pre restriction tez lists were "optimal" (if such a thing exists)

Optimal is always contextual, so no, I don't think such a thing exists in the abstract.

nor were the sideboards people were running to combat drains.

That's sooo Untrue.   People were trying *very hard* to fight Drains.   Take a look at any tournament result, and see what people were running.   Jester's Caps, Duresses, Red Blasts, Chokes, Seal of Primoridum, Viashino Heretics, and on and on and on.   

The reality is that there is only so much you can do when you also expect to face a field of Shops, Dredge, and other decks besides.   

And it's not even just sb choices.  People's *deck* choices have been dramatically shaped by Tez decks.  People have tried Null Rod strategies, honed Stax strategies, Dark Ritual strategies -- everything that might be good against Drains.

People have been trying for 8 months to hate out Tez decks.  They just failed to do so. 

Given sufficient time and effort on the part of players, tez lists may have moved away from TFK anyway.

How much time and effort is sufficient?   Is 8 months of global efforts by the collective results of over 4000 registered tournament players not enough?   Because that's what I count in my metagame reports spanning from November through June.

By that logic, we should never restrict anything ever, since it's really just 'underdevelopment' that makes the problem *look* like a problem, when, in fact, there is no problem, right?   

[2nd_lawl]

People have been trying for 8 months to hate out Tez decks.  They just failed to do so. 

5cstax when played correctly is very strong against tez, we know, we tested the matcuhp infinite. However many players refuse to run shops for whatever reason, especially here on the east cost, although things are changing. The last blue bell tournament had more people playing shops than drains. Given sufficient time I believe this trend would have continued.
 

By that logic, we should never restrict anything ever, since it's really just 'underdevelopment' that makes the problem *look* like a problem, when, in fact, there is no problem, right?   

Sure if you extend my logic to absurdity to make a point then it sounds stupid. But is it really unreasonable to claim that the t1 meta moves slower than other formats, and perhaps significantly slower due to cost of the cards, the size of the playerbase, and the local nature of many of the tournaments?  I think that is a reasonable claim, players are reluctant to abandon their 350 dollar set of drains to go and pick up a 750 dollar set of shops for the next tournament, even with proxies people like to play with they cards that they have already invested in.

[Troy_Costisick]

People have been trying for 8 months to hate out Tez decks.  They just failed to do so. 

5cstax when played correctly is very strong against tez, we know, we tested the matcuhp infinite. However many players refuse to run shops for whatever reason, especially here on the east cost, although things are changing. The last blue bell tournament had more people playing shops than drains. Given sufficient time I believe this trend would have continued.

So can BUG Fish.  So can Christmas Beatings.  But those decks, including 5cStax, has weaknesses against the part of the field that is non-Tez.  So, yeah, they can beat Tez, but get whipped by Dredge or Fish or TPS in the swiss rounds.  I mean in six rounds of Swiss, how many Tez decks might you play? 2 maybe 3 max?  It's not just about being able to beat Tez, but being able to beat Tez and not make yourself fatally vulnerable to the rest of field.

[Diakonov]

The loss of the restriction of Thirst will necessarily make them less well off.  Blue decks ran Thirst because it was the best draw engine.  It's loss makes them less well off.  They have a less efficient draw engines to cycle through their decks and find answers.

For reference:

If Thirst is replaced with Intuitions then you end up with a deck that is easier to hate out since both AKs and Deep Analysis are more reliant on the yard.  The hatability should not be exaggerated. Blue decks are not that reliant on the yard in general and trading Tormod's Crypt for Intuition is far from broken.  Intuition can always grab Drain or Force or Mystical/Vamp/Demonic to get Tinker.
The second likely option is Dark Confidant.  Dark Confidant has certain liabilities, but it does not make blue easier to hate out.  It is not vulnerable to Choke or In the Eye of Chaos.  Bob does not care about Xantid swarm and is not even countered by Red Blast.  Bob even provides extra win conditions to dodge Jester's Cap or Extirpate.  He can win through Chalice and Null Rod easily.  He keeps "drawing" through Resistor and completely dodges Thorn.  Bob even dodges cards like Chains of Mephistopheles and Uba Mask.  The primary way that Bob makes blue easier to hate out is that he makes blue want to fetch Underground Sea on turn 1.  This is less important that it once was, since blue decks regularly already fetch Seas to cast Duress and Thoughtseize.  Also, the deck where fetching Sea is worst is against Stax, but turn 1 Bob remains a powerful play against Stax even if Sea was fetched to play him.  Bob may be weaker than Thirst (especially with DSC in the deck), but he does not make blue any easier to hate out.

I think something important to note here is the "unrestricting LoA" logic.  If we are assuming that Thirst was in fact the best draw engine for Tezz in the format, we must remember that the format did include Tezz itself, which lends decisions to be made on that basis.  Thirst was the best draw engine for Tezz to use universally, incorporating the fact that you are planning to play the Tezz mirror multiple times in a tournament.  To say that every other draw engine was strictly less efficient or not as good is somewhat biased based on your matchups.  As meadbert mentions, cards like Confidant, or possibly also Night's Whisper, can be better in certain other matchups, but are likely not as good as Thirst in the mirror.  Therefore by restricting Thirst, you could be potentially only weakening the mirror match & one or two other matches, meanwhile strengthening its remaining matches.

Presumably a Drain player would have been better off with Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll, but their restriction did not hold back Drains.

That's correct, but that doesn't mean Drains wouldn't be stronger with Scroll or Brainstorm: I think they certainly would be.  

Similar logic could be used here about Brainstorm.  Brainstorm was better abused by TPS, which historically preyed on Drains, and by restricting it you did hurt the Drain deck's inherent power, but by hurting TPS' inherent power even more you could have ultimately created a better situation for Drains.

EDIT:

I think you're overlooking that other solutions are possible.  Blue decks aren't good because they are blue.  They're good because they abuse certain aspects of the game that have traditionally belonged to the blue slice of the color pie.

Rather than hating blue the color, new cards can hate out aspects of the game considered "blue" such as card drawing (e.g. Chains of Mephistopheles, Pyrostatic Pillar), tutoring (e.g. Aven Mindcensor, Mindlock Orb), and countermagic (e.g. Vexing Shusher).   If more cards like them (or more efficient versions of them) are simply printed in greater quantities (and more colors), then more effective means to hate Vintage blue decks will be available.

I agree that there other ways to stop blue decks, however:

Printing a card that *efficiently* hates a deck for gaining card advantage would effect every format immediately, and therefore makes it nearly impossible to design without being devastatingly strong.  Note that I don't say "draw," because apparently between tutors and cards like Confidant, that's no longer enough of a qualification to contain card advantage.

The cards you mentioned have helped somewhat, but aren't really going to get us there.  If they printed something that could get us there, it would need to be very efficient, which I think would make it too powerful for other formats to handle, since card advantage (including searching) is important in all formats.

[Harlequin]

Back last July (the Brainstorm, Ponder, Scroll, Gush restriction).  Jer an I did a little experiment.

We built a 60 card "Drain" Highlander deck with the only 4-of being force of will.  The deck only ran 1 drain.  It was a glorified Tinker deck really (this was before Tezz). 

We did an unformal test of the deck online and we found that against non-drain decks, the deck did basically the same -if not better- than normal.  As a person who played Meddling Mage back in the days of Gifts, Gush, AND Tezz... I can say that every time a card is restricted it makes UWx Fish HARDER to play.  When Blue decks are hyperfocused it's easier to remove a lynchpin and then just avoid tinker.  When a deck is more scattershot across a 1-of restricted spectrum, finding a 'hate' solution is difficult.

So as I said, Drain-Highlander against the mostly non-drain MWS world was as consistant as the 4x Drain counterpart.  The only match up where Drain-Highland felt the drag of its missing cards was the Drain Mirror.   The MWS meta certainly isn't a scientific sample set, but in playing the deck, I can say that the missing cards were not really a drag on the play of the deck.  Arguably Mana Drain is pretty bad against stompy/wiennie style decks, combo, and to a degree against shops as well (unless you have a high fetch/basic count). 

To this point, blue control is good against a field; where mana drain is good against blue control.  If you buy that then it seems natural that a Blue control deck running drain would be the strongest deck you could choose.

The idea of "optimal" and "sub-optimal" generally only matter when it comes to the blue control mirror.  But even with every non-force blue card restricted, I don't think the 'other' decks can really hold up to the consistancy of drain decks (even with only 1 drain). 

Getting back to Meddling Mage, restricting blue cards only makes blue control decks more scattered - but as I said above - not weaker.  This means 'hating' on blue is harder.  I would say that Drain-Highlander is probably the hardest blue deck to 'hate' on.  But it lowers the general consistancy of the deck.  These two factors lead me to beileve that people will opt to try and Race blue control instead of hate it.  More shop-aggro, More Ichorid, More Combo.  Maybe this will increase top-8 diversity when it comes to drains and not-drains... but I think this squeezes out the playablity of Tempo Control decks like Fish.