Ben B. new article

[Vegeta2711]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/expandnews.php?Article=8465

Summary: He says he wants to see Dark Ritual and MWS restricted.

If he thinks this is controversial, he has to try harder.

We've hashed the stupid MWS debate at least 10 seperate times and hell I'd think more people would rather see 3Sphere go than MWS at this point. But whatever, the Dark Ritual thing is also pretty academic, if you wanted to hurt combo it's a fine target.

[Toad]

I hope R&D is not reading his articles. Restricting Dark Ritual and Mishra's Workshop would send T1 back in 1998. Terrible. It would also push Control and Bazaar decks on top. Restrict Mana Drain and Bazaar of Baghdad too? Let's just play Legacy.

[rvs]

All these people who are in favor of restricting MWS are clearly wrong and missing the point. The real reason why MWS is strong is Trinisphere. Restrict Trinisphere, and MWS is pretty fair compared to cards like Drain, Bazaar and Dark Ritual (although to be honest, it might have to go eventually). Trinisphere is the only true broken interaction with workshop in my, and many other german and dutch players.

[Eastman]

Let's face it - the Ritual is what has held all of these combo decks together. It helps Worldgorger Dragon...

'dar, me talk type 1 good yay!'

He's right, we didn't want to see that article - it's such ill-informed trash.

[jpmeyer]

I'd rather see both go :<

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

Well, I'd kick Ritual, too. I'd rather see Trini instead of Shop go though. Playing against Workshop-decks without Trinisphere is actually rather fun, imo. (No, that doesn't mean they're easy matchups, but the games are quite interesting to me).

[Razvan]

Holy damn hell...

I am starting to think that NOTHING that we do, or anything we prove, or anything we can possibly point out... anything that leads to the health of the format... or preventing a disaster...

Will STOP PEOPLE from being stupid like that.

His argument? TINKER in the New Orleans extended tournament... When (if memory serves), there were TWENTY-EIGHT tinkers in the top 8 (and oddly, a Japanese psychatog deck).

Yes, that is broken.

Having one or two players in the top 8 with Workshops... That is a fucking good metagame.

[Komatteru]

I think the article should have been called "Blog Fanatic: Restriction Time! The Article That Vintage Players Do Not Want To See."  All it did was make us upset at its sheer stupidity.

And I didn't know that Dragon ran Dark Ritual...

I also didn't know that Lion's Eye Diamond was restricted for its "massive power."  I always thought it was restricted because it can be abused, which is strictly different from being too powerful.  At least Ben cleared that up for me.

I can just see the next article:

Brainstorm needs to be restricted.  Let's take a look at the Power 9 tournaments plus the T1 World Champs, which are among the few Vintage events that could be considered to be at the higher-end level of Vintage play:
Gencon - 8 Brainstorm
SCG II - 20 Brainstorm
SCG III - 16 Brainstorm

Brainstorm decks are dominating fully half of the top eight slots at major tournaments! Brainstorm allows control decks to search for answers and allows them to dominate the game with other broken cards such as Force of Will and Mana Drain, both of which should probably be restricted.  It also puts broken combo decks over the edge.  Some players might claim that it allows "budget" decks to compete, but the only budget deck that would run Brainstorm is Suicide Blue, a deck which is about as good as and has gotten about as much attention as its more famous counterpart, Suicide Black.

And then we can turn to an even bigger problem: lands that produce blue mana.  The only thing worse than unrestricted Brainstorm is having so many unrestricted ways to cast it on the first turn.  Something needs to be done about this.

R&D (who design cards, hence the name "Research and Development," and have nothing to do with resticting cards), if you're reading this article, please put me out of my misery.  I clearly have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to Vintage.  I need to be restricted so I can only get blasted on TMD once a year for the horrible article I wrote.

-Ben

/end article

Combo does not dominate the meta.  Ben seems to forget that no one plays it, so nothing needs to be done about it.  By his logic, we should restrict Skullclamp because it's been way too good in every other format.  No one plays it in Vintage, but that doesn't matter.  Workshop decks do not dominate the meta.  We have a very diverse meta with tons of decks that can compete.  Nothing needs to be done at this time.  Until combo starts taking 70% of T8 spots at tournaments, Dark Ritual is fine.  Shop is fine.  First turn "broken cards" such as Juggernaut, Duplicant, Triskelion (all of which are T2 legal) don't scare anyone.  Trinisphere does, but that's it.

[Smmenen]

Not here, Stephen. -Z

[jpmeyer]

JDizzle:

WotC actually DID seriously consider restricting Brainstorm for those very reasons.

[Smmenen]

Not here, Stephen. -Z

Ok.  Ben Bleiweiss is a moron.  It's obvious when he says that Dark Ritual is good in WGD combo he has no idea what he's talking about.  

I'm savagely pissed off at him for being such a dipshit.  But I think it's more likely that he's sadistic and wants people to hate him.

[Toad]

Everything has been said already about this. Please, no more restrictions threads until at least December 1st.

Closed

From now on, every new thread about restrictions will be closed and author will be warned.