[Article] Chalice OTV: The New Black Vise

[Rico Suave]

Quote (Bastian @ Oct. 08 2003,20:25)Isn't turning the decks, or having counter measures vs a single card in just about EVERY deck because of A SINGLE CARD a proof that the card's too much powerful?

Mana Drain and Force of Will do the same thing.  I don't see why we should restrict them just because other decks must keep those cards in mind when deckbuilding.

[Bastian]

Mana Drain and FoW don't shut entire decks alone and since they're colored they will fit into blue based control or decks having a large ammount of blue cards to pitch. The same cannot be said about Chalice of the Void.

[K-Run]

I'd rather compare CotV to Blood Moon : a card that can singlehandly win you a match vs some decks. However, people adapted and now, while still being an annoying and strong card, it's not the backbreaker it used to be.

[jpmeyer]

People have shown how COTV shuts down various decks.  What I want to see are examples from the people that say that it can be worked around of just how they plan to do that.  Once they do that, then we'll know just how powerful Chalice is.

It's one thing to say it can be worked around.  It's another to actually figure it out.

[Smmenen]

I somehow got backed into a corner on this one, but I want to be absolutely clear.  

Chalice should not be restricted or banned.  It isn't practical.  Cards that need to be restricted need to be more than just painful or negate entire archetypes.  They need to actively dominate/distort metagames that exist after the cards come into the format.  

I can still call the card a mistake for the reasons I have mentioned - that it punishes efficiency, while Mana Drain punishes in-efficiency and since control has super varied mana curves, and if Workshop is removed, control gets too good - which cheap aggro cannot over-come.  Ever.  

Somehow I got painted as saying that Chalice is totally negative.  I rarely say something that lacking in nuance.

Rather, Chalice is both a good and a bad thing.  It's good becuase it provides a solution to decks like long that EVERY deck can use.  But that is the surface.  It's bad becuase of the reasons I discussed.

I think the better solution would to have simply killed off Long by restricting LED and leave budget decks as they are.  Hit each over-powered combo deck, without killing it with a massive megaton bomb that has massive collateral damage - that's what Chalice does.  

Stephen Menendian\n\n

[hippie tourach]

I'm concerned with looking at the future of the format, so let's follow the logic that Chalice makes blue based control very strong. In general metagame terms, that should mean that combo decks go down (which may not be true until Chrome Mox and Spoils of the Vault are restricted), aggro decks in general go down, and the only decks that have a good shot at the control decks are hate decks.

To compare this to the situation after FoF was released, blue-based control was top and 'hate decks' like BBS (although that's blue control too), Sui-Black, and Blood Moon/PoP Sligh were the main secondaries.

Assuming the same kind of format is created, what will we be seeing? Blue-based control on top, with Workshop/Tog/black secondary?

Black could be viable because of Dark Ritual to boost the mana curve, making Chalice less of a problem, and if the metagame is highly control black is always good. I don't know if Sligh will be able to adjust its mana curve as easily, that remains to be seen.

If Workshop were to be restricted, we'd be down to even fewer viable decks, in fact we'd be about where we were a year or two ago.

As an ending note, I've been out of the game for a while and don't know the matchups too well, so please correct my predictions. After all, it's important to have these things figured out before you ask for restrictions.

[Smmenen]

This debate deserves its own thread.

One big issue that pops up again and again - in Oscar's Article, in Carl's and elsewhere is this concern for the speed of the format.

I've got some news for you all.  The fundamental turn of type one for the last 3 months has been turn two, and that is never going to slow down again.  Ever.  once you reach that point, I don't care if Workshop, LED, and bloody Dark Ritual is restricted, Type One has reached a critical mass upon which it is impossible to slow down this format.

I don't think that's a bad thing.  The problem is that people say Chalice is good becuase it slows down the format.  You see, aggro decks cannot be creative and adjust (i.e. find bigger Casting cost answers) if premise 1, that the speed of the format is turn two, and that isn't likely to change, is true.  And so you have Mana Drain to counter everything after turn two and Chalice to deal with everything before it.

This isn't all about chalice.  I am saying that I beleive that all efforts to slow down this train are impossible and not likely to succeed.  


Stephen Menendian

[Os-Vegeta]

Quote People have shown how COTV shuts down various decks.  What I want to see are examples from the people that say that it can be worked around of just how they plan to do that.  Once they do that, then we'll know just how powerful Chalice is.

It's one thing to say it can be worked around.  It's another to actually figure it out.

I'm on it, I'm on it!  This is actually the only thing right now keeping me in deckbuilding (so yes I feel like I have a purpose again   ).

[jntemp777]

Quote (Smmenen @ Oct. 08 2003,20:22)Chalice should not be restricted or banned.  It isn't practical.  Cards that need to be restricted need to be more than just painful or negate entire archetypes.  They need to actively dominate/distort metagames that exist after the cards come into the format.  

Stephen

If Workshops were 10 cents(like gush), and common(like gush), and printed in Mercadian Masque(like gush) then I can assure you that Workshop+Chalice decks would actively dominate/distort metagames.  

It's not that I dislike the Chalice/Workshop interaction because they tend to negate entire deck archetypes...

...I dislike the Chalice/Workshop interaction because they tend to negate the entire game of Magic.

[dandan]

I just can't see how Workshop and Chalice can both be unrestricted. I agree with Smmenen that any restrictions can only help blue-based control and therefore all of the talk about restrictions being needed to allow budget decks to compete are null and void (Suicide might be OK as it was the only cheap aggro to compete with BBC).

If you restrict LED, Dark Ritual, Spoils and Burning Wish you'd still have NeoAcademy faster than ever. Aggro won't worry that deck.

Does Hulk need Chalice to beat aggro? Not really (although it sure helps the Sligh matchups)

Would aggro beat the new Keeper? I think Keeper has gained a lot from Mirrodin and restricting cards matters little in a deck built to find silver bullets.

Sligh was dead before Mirrodin, Stompy was long gone, WW was never viable (Wu is another story).

The picture is complex, the solution is not obvious and uncharted terrain lies ahead. I applaud Wizards for doing this.

[brianb]

Writing in the other thread got me thinking.  

If restricting workshop makes blue-based control too good, why not restrict mana drain as well?  That card has been a plague on type 1 for way too long.  It's the reason aggro decks are boxed into the super-spiky mana curves in the first place.  If you want to keep chalice, restrict mana drain and maybe even wishes (answers shouldn't be TOO easy to come by).  Keeper will manage just fine without them, but hopefully wouldn't dominate so much.  Sligh could play ball lightning

To be honest, i'm shocked mana drain (the card, not the website which we all love) has lasted this long.  One of the criteria of the b/r list is to limit cards that create design constraints on other cards.  Mana drain basically excludes any creature from t1 that can't be played in the first turn or 2.  Now that the all-1cc dude strategy is dead, the only aggro left uses super accel or bizarre (or bazaar, you should say) tricks to play its dudes.  That completely excludes budget players.\n\n

[jpmeyer]

If you restrict Workshop and Chalice, Tog and Long.dec (and now with even more Mirrodin goodies!) become by far the best decks in the format.  Then to balance that out you need to restrict Psychatog, LED, and possibly either Spoils of the Vault and Chrome Mox.

And after all that's done, what are you left with?  Keeper, Mask, and TnT--and the most innovative 18 months in Type 1 history just has just been erased.

[hippie tourach]

Actually, after that you're left with extremely dominant Academy.

If Chalice is restricted Neo-Academy trounces anything without 4 Force of Will. And it doesn't use LED or Spoils of the Vault. It might benefit from Chrome Mox, but wins 2nd turn without it.

[Eastman]

Is it really prudent to be making such a fuss of this before it hits the format?

Lets give Chalice some time to cool down... and we'll see what we shall see. It isn't like the DCI needs to decide next week.

[David Hernandez]

Smmenen said:

Quote Rather, Chalice is both a good and a bad thing.  It's good becuase it provides a solution to decks like long that EVERY deck can use.  But that is the surface.  It's bad becuase of the reasons I discussed.

I totally agree with this assessment.  I tend to look at Chalice from the positive side because it means we have another viable type one card available. We now have to think and strategize and plan a little more than we did before.  

I believe that our decks and playskills will become stronger because cards like Chalice force us to be creative/innovative.  If it turns out that Chalice dominates the format, then it might make sense to restrict it.

J.P. said:

Quote If you restrict Workshop and Chalice, Tog and Long.dec (and now with even more Mirrodin goodies!) become by far the best decks in the format.  Then to balance that out you need to restrict Psychatog, LED, and possibly either Spoils of the Vault and Chrome Mox.

Right-on! IMO, we will end up restricting everything that makes particular strategies work.  It's cards like Chalice that bring about the creation of new deck-types.

Personally, I think that Chalice will be strong, interesting, and NOT unbeatable.  As I posted earlier, there are many playable answers to it.

--Dave.

[Bastian]

Quote Personally, I think that Chalice will be strong, interesting, and NOT unbeatable.  As I posted earlier, there are many playable answers to it.

And yet we hardly have seen them adapted into existing or new decks.

And just how does Chalice help type 1? If budget decks were less viable before, they'll certainly won't be any more right now.

Even though there are very few powered players when compared to the rest we never talk about budget metagames, but fully powered ones, because we want to talk about type 1 at its best.

In that kind of type 1, with the arrival of Chalice of the Void, powered players will get the upper hand and the format will become a game of who has chalice, who deals with it or not. This is distorting enough for me and should warrant the restriction of the card. It's a permanent effect, one that fits into nearly any deck, and one that can shut down entire strategies. The moment a card can shut down several others in a single deck and that card can fit into any existing deck without affecting it, I'd say it's a pretty broken card.

There might be positive argues to this, and I believe it might have its positive impacts but in the end it will end up dominating the format.

The impact of the card in the players:

Not to mention, as someone said, that most of the players who talk about the card not be restricted are those with access to power. I suppose it really doesn't matter to them wether the card remains unrestricted, but, guess what, it does to some others.

Without counting the impact of the Chalice in the game itself, this card sets up the entry level of type 1 to become even more difficult. This format shouldn't be just for those who have access to high value cards, or those who have been playing for more time. If it is then why should Wizards pay attention to a format that newer players cannot easily play into? Not to mention most of the attention in the type 1 community is mostly always turned to fully powered players and not the budget ones.

Just my €0.02.

[David Hernandez]

Bastian:

you bring up very good and very valid points.  Until some of the new decks actually get played after Oct. 20th, we wont really know what the field looks like.

i'm hoping that we will see a budget deck that runs in "anti-mode".  Perhaps something that uses Chalice, Null Rod, Winter Orb, and some fast sources like Dark Ritual.  Maybe there are a couple of budget decks that can be built around inexpensive/low cc strategies that actually take advantage of Chalice.

Maybe Mono-Green becomes more powerful with it's "Cannot be Countered" critters (since they get around Chalice) and with access to Naturalize/Crumble/Creeping Mold/Uktabi Urangatan.

In any case, it's going to be interesting to see how creative everyone will become...

--dave.

[Bastian]

I have very strong (and negative) feelings regarding Chalice of the Void, but even so I still want to see what happens next. I may be proven wrong, and hopefully I'll be so...

I don't want the format to stagnate thanks to a single card.

[PucktheCat]

I think a wait and see approach is probably best for a variety of reasons, but here are three I haven't seen posted here.

1.  There are only two cards on the banned/restricted list that are there for their interaction with opponents cards - Mind Twist and Balance.

There is a reason for this: cards that disrupt, even very powerful ones, tend to encourage player interaction and prolong games.  Even Balance took players years to figure out how to abuse.  Obviously Chalice is a very powerful card, and it stands to reason that it could be the third disruption card to make the cut, but it hardly seems to be a given.

2.  Predicting the consequences of the new card(s) in any concrete way is a waste of time.

Arguments about the future of the format tend to procede through a series of cascading implications as if each step in the process can be projected from existing data.  Mirrodin will have the most effect on Type 1 of any set since Urza's, most likely.  The idea that simply projecting the effect of Chalice on existing archetypes will somehow give you a picture of the coming metagame is utterly foolish.

3.  Because it is symetrical, Chalice inherently resists a collapsed metagame.

The fear of many seems to be that some deck (often supposed to be a Workshop deck) will use Chalice to utterly dominate the metagame.  However in any metagame where one expects a large number of mirrors Chalice is a poor maindeck choice.  Think about it.  If two identical wMUD decks face off, one with Chalice, one with more kill cards, the one with more kill cards has a distinct advantage.  Anything the Chalice player names will hurt him nearly as much the opposing player, and he is the one who invested the tempo and cards in the play, so he is futher behind than when he started.

Chalice is actually much more symetrical than most supposedly symetrical cards.  With cards that equalize cards in play in various ways (Wrath of God, Nevinyrral's Disk, even Balance) the moment to play it can be chosen to ensure maximum advantage.  When playing Chalice, however, a player has very little information with which to make an advantageous choice.  By not chosing an X that interferes with what you have in hand you can gain a small advantage, but after that the card's effect will be determined by the composition of your library.  Therefore if your library has a similar casting cost composition to most of the rest of the field, Chalice is a poor choice.

One final point that I wanted to make is that there is only one setting of Chalice that, in my opinion, might actually affect the way people build decks: X=1.  X=0 is basically a mox hoser.  This will slow down Long.dec, which is good, but it isn't strong enough to overcome the overwhelming goodness of the moxen and lotus.  X=2 will be played occasionally, but it is simply too expensive to break the metagame.  If Academy Rector couldn't do it then Chalice for 2 isn't likely make much of an impact.  X>2 is just a pipe dream in most circumstances.  I am sure someone will beat Hulk with X=3 once or twice, but it just isn't going to happen often.

X=1 is going to shake things up though.  Brainstorm looks a lot worse if people play a lot of Chalice.  So does Duress.  Sligh looks like a bad joke.  But remember that most control decks run an almost identical 1 cc slot, meaning Chalice is effectively a dead/perfectly symetrical card.  I suspect most decks will simply cut their 1 cc spells to what they really need (perhaps removing some deck thinning cantrips like Brainstorm and replacing them with business spells and mana, perhaps not) and let the player that is dedicating four slots to combat their seven or so slots have his way on occasion.  Afterall, most 1 cc spells are most important turn one anyway.

Leo

[K-Run]

PuckTheCat :

According to your Point #2, isn't your point #3 a total waste of time?

[PucktheCat]

#2 references concrete prediction.  I would characterize #3 as abstract.

In general I think that Chalice will have an impact that flows generally from its very basic properties: unneeded 0 and 1 cc spells will be cut and decks with atypical cc distributions will get a boost.

What I think is a waste of time is people trying to say that Chalice will wreck the game because it will interact in a predictable way with existing deck types.  My point is that there will be new deck types and the only way to find out what they will be is to go out and create them, play tournaments with them and see what's left.

I think most people can see the distinction between a logically very simple situation (the mirror match) and the complexity of the entire metagame.

Leo

[Jacob Orlove]

Quote If two identical wMUD decks face off, one with Chalice, one with more kill cards, the one with more kill cards has a distinct advantage.  Anything the Chalice player names will hurt him nearly as much the opposing player, and he is the one who invested the tempo and cards in the play, so he is futher behind than when he started.

Well, if the person with Chalice gets to go first and casts it for 0 turn one (after playing any acceleration he draws), he does get a definite advantage from the card. However, Chalice later on is generally going to just be Smokestack/Welder fodder.


X=1 is the right play versus most decks, though. And the effect this will ultimately have on the metagame is almost impossible to predict.

[Mystic Penitent]

Just like anything in the world... most notably food chains a never-ending chain of balance will happen.

Lot A : Chalice of the Void
Lot B : Low CC spells.

The more of A there will be the less B will be played thus resulting in the uselessness of A (unless another use is found). Thus again A's use will lessen, resulting in more B being more re-used. Balancing on a so forth.

Typical examples of these is Null Rod, Graveyard Removal, Misdirection etc...

[Rico Suave]

I think it's a bit more complex than that.

I would characterize it like this:

Lot A: Chalice of the Void
Lot B: Mana Drain/Sphere of Resistance/Tangle Wire/Smokestack/StP
Lot C: Low cc spells

The more of A, the less of C.  The more of B, the more of C.

So what about when there is more of A and B?  C is driven in two directions.  \n\n

[jntemp777]

It's really difficult to "just adapt" to Chalice as many people have been saying.  In order to make your deck adapt, you have to increase the cc of the spells used.  Basically in type 1 this means making your deck much slower and more cumbersome.

[PucktheCat]

Quote (Rico Suave @ Oct. 13 2003,12:45)I think it's a bit more complex than that.

I would characterize it like this:

Lot A: Chalice of the Void
Lot B: Mana Drain/Sphere of Resistance/Tangle Wire/Smokestack/StP
Lot C: Low cc spells

The more of A, the less of C.  The more of B, the more of C.

So what about when there is more of A and B?  C is driven in two directions.  

Of course it is driven in two directions.  That is what makes it a balance.  If the only thing driving choice of casting cost was Chalice then people would play arbitrarily expensive spells.  I don't see why Mana Drain, Smokestack, Tangle Wire, etc, need to be seperated from the rest of the cards that can punish high casting costs.  The entire game of magic is structured to punish high casting costs.

Leo

Edit: Diction\n\n

[Rico Suave]

Quote (PucktheCat @ Oct. 13 2003,14:19)Of course it is driven in two directions.  That is what makes it a balance.  

I was trying to illustrate that it isn't a balance, but instead it is more like a lose-lose situation.

[brianb]

Rico's right, it's not a balance--or at least not a healthy one if you want the format to be varied and allow cheaper decks to compete.  Playing any kind of a normal (involving creatures and attacking) deck now is like being caught between a rock and a hard place.  The only way to wiggle out of the tiny hole between chalices and mana drains is to get high cc stuff out fast via tricks--bazaar/madness, workshop.  These strategies aren't accessible to most players in non-proxy t1 tourneys.  Restricting mana drain and chalice (along with the bunch of other stuff that needs it now) would relieve the pressure.  Other counterspells (and the speed of the format in general) already punish players enough for playing to much fat.  Powder keg already is enough of a check on building your entire deck at 1cc.  I'm pretty confident that the DCI will do a fairly major cleanup of type 1 with the next list (to slow the fundamental turn down to the 3-3.5 range).  This should be their plan: restrict cards to slow the game down enough that keeper is good again--then restrict mana drain and maybe cunning wish to keep keeper from poisoning the environment too much.  Then we'd have some room to breathe and build.

[Rico Suave]

Quote (brianb @ Oct. 14 2003,15:56)Playing any kind of a normal (involving creatures and attacking) deck now is like being caught between a rock and a hard place.  

On the other hand, "normal" isn't exactly gonna work as a term.

To me, normal is playing a deck with lots of draw-7's and fast mana.  "Aggro" decks are the bane of my existence because they win too slowly.  They should be banned because they're no fun to play.

Take all this humorously, I might add.

To be serious, I don't see how people are still talking about restrictions with this thing.  There is no evidence it needs to be restricted.  Sure, the theory of it looks pretty bad, but in theory ICT should have won every game.

[Jacob Orlove]

Quote it's not a balance--or at least not a healthy one if you want the format to be varied and allow cheaper decks to compete.  

No other competitive magic format has a wide variety of viable decks, so why should that be true for T1? And allowing cheaper decks to compete should never be a reason for restrictions/bannings; 1.5 exists for a reason.