[Article] Unrestriction

[TheFram]

From the conversation ive been having with competent people, heres the sense I'm getting:

Little to no good objections
Eathcraft
Mox Diamond
Regrowth
Fork
Braingeyser
Stroke
Voltaic Key

Some legit complaints
Entomb - DicemanX
Doomsday - Matt
LoA - Many ppl, those these comments were not as strong as the above

Probably should not be unrestricted
FoF


*Note, "some legit complaints" does not mean that they cannot
be unrestricted. Also, objections include constraints for 1.5 purposes.

[mask]

btw nice article  i didn;t get mention it before.

if 4 of stroke and brain were to be allowed i think i would try to break in prosbloom as a meta game choice over rector trix. the real problem with that combo setup was the properisty where you also give you oppent cards, but with stroke and brain you nolonger needed to net your oppent cards in fact it will take over your win condition over drain, hmm i will do some more testing later and post my findings.

[Matt]

Matt, I see your point too, but I'd rather see the deck do something before I keep Doomsday on the list.

See, I don't feel the same way, because with the heavy drawbacks to Doomsday (half life and RFG library) there's no fair way to use the card. It's always going to be broken or useless, so I have no qualms about keeping it locked up, because the best-case scenario is that it gets unrestricted and never does anything again (in which case, why did you bother unrestricting it?). This is quite unlike, say, Voltaic Key, where it's perfectly fair to use it with Icy Manipulators and such.

While Doomsday is certainly a candidate for unrestriction, I don't think it's a safe one, because any set could bring the next Dragon which could throw Doomsday right back in the slammer. Because Wizards is only barely trusting the players to decide what needs to be on the lists, I feel that it's very important that we only ask for what we're sure are safe bets, to gain both experience gauging the potential power of unrestrictions, and also to gain goodwill and trust on Wizards' part so that if and when we find something else that can be unrestricted, they don't see our claims as valid and not just ramblings with little/no thought behind them.

[Gabethebabe]

I think there is only one card worth unrestricting: Earthcraft. It will bring back an enjoyable archetype.

The other cards: I will not lose any sleep over them, whether they´re restriced or not.

[SpencerForHire]

Nice article.
I find it interesting how they do not unrestrict key for use with vault and the like when they have yet to restrict power artifact and its clear infinite mana potent.. That just strikes me as dumb.

[Cuandoman]

Power artifact is an "enchant artifact" with a  {U} casting cost. This is clearly worse than a card that untaps ANY artifact, including creatures and the like, and can be dropped premptively or with the mana generated by the artifact mana itself.

My opinion is:

Unrestrict:
Eathcraft - what harm does this do
Regrowth - there are many versions of this card and the origional one doesnt even see play

Not sure:
Fork
Entomb
Doomsday

[BrokenNut]

Regrowth does see some play. But with 4x, I think it may see a lot more play. Why GAT decks don't use it I don't know. Reusing the Timewalk or Ancestral again is really good stuff. With 4x, I think an Emerald Alice type deck could really have some fun with that. It should really just stay on the list, if it isn't being used, why take it off and try to cause problems? The originals of Regrowth all suck compared to the original and that is why they don't get used.

As for key, the main use I see it for now would be with metalworker producing even more mana on 2nd turn after workshop-metalkworker 1st turn. Do we really want that much mana available on the 2nd turn? While it does require 3 specific cards, all of which are 4x though, the amount of mana that generates is quite silly. I don't think we need to be giving slavery/mud decks another way to generate a lot of mana, it's fine where it is. Being restricted makes it too random to play the 1 of, but I feel with 4, people will start using it since the consistency of it increases.

As for FoF and LoA... They are too effecient at what they do to ever be taken off the list. Card drawing is always a problem in this format, good card drawing is a serious problem. These 2 cards are very good at what they do, and would create issues if allowed as 4x. Just think about MonoU decks being able to run all 8x. With the FoFs fueling the LoA and being monocolored so not so screwed by the colorless LoA mana.

Mox diamond should stay on the list, it does see play right now in combo decks, and would probably see more play not to mention a reworking of combo decks if allowed 4x. It is still accell, and it's decent accell with draw7's because you usually already have hit your land drop, so any other land is useless, this fixes that.

Entomb I wasn't privy to any of the horrible monoB entomb dragon decks from before this thing got nuked so I can't say how busted it was. But don't think that because the current dragon decks don't use it that it is useless. They are just different decks, built for long term and strength against disruption. But if Entomb was taken off the list, you can bet there would be new different dragon decks designed to abuse it and go off extremely fast. This would need testing to see how fast they go off, but the spoils dragon listings I've heard about are already at a good speed, do they need to be faster? This would need serious testing to show that no it won't get broken the day it gets unrestricted I feel.

The other cards I am fairly unexcited about. Take them on or off, I don't think they matter much either way. But I do have one question, what is with all the recent clamoring for removing stuff off the list? Just because it is too long so you want to clean it up? Why? Who cares? Do you stare at it all day long thinking, god this is ugly? Why make trouble when there is none? The list should be as untouched as possible. Not screwed with every chance we get.

[Toad]

As for key, the main use I see it for now would be with metalworker producing even more mana on 2nd turn after workshop-metalkworker 1st turn. Do we really want that much mana available on the 2nd turn? While it does require 3 specific cards, all of which are 4x though, the amount of mana that generates is quite silly. I don't think we need to be giving slavery/mud decks another way to generate a lot of mana, it's fine where it is. Being restricted makes it too random to play the 1 of, but I feel with 4, people will start using it since the consistency of it increases.

I'm already running 31 mana sources (counting Metalworkers) in Welder MUD. I don't want to go to 35. I also don't want to play cards (Voltaic Key) that are only useful when I have another one on the board (Metalworker) because I'm not playing a Combo deck with billions of tutors. Quite frankly, I'd never play Voltaic Key in Welder MUD. If I have a first turn Metalworker out of a Workshop and if my Metalworker survives until my next turn, I've won. No need of Voltaic Key here. 15 manas by turn 2 is enough, I don't need 30.

As for FoF and LoA... They are too effecient at what they do to ever be taken off the list. Card drawing is always a problem in this format, good card drawing is a serious problem. These 2 cards are very good at what they do, and would create issues if allowed as 4x. Just think about MonoU decks being able to run all 8x. With the FoFs fueling the LoA and being monocolored so not so screwed by the colorless LoA mana.

I love when my opponent goes "First turn: LoA, go" when I'm not playing Control because that means Mana Drain won't be online before turn 3. And Fact or Fiction is a turn 4 card, which is incredibly slow.

[jpmeyer]

Speaking of Mud, I got excited at the prospect of running lots of Strokes in that deck.  Just look at those Extended Tinker decks that were using Metalworker to draw like 10 cards EOT.

[MuzzonoAmi]

Thank you, Toad, for perfectly articulating how I feel about LoA. It also means that my Wastelands are going to be that much more powwerful when I draw them in my opening hand or as my 8th/9th card.

[jpmeyer]

I love when my opponent goes "First turn: LoA, go" when I'm not playing Control because that means Mana Drain won't be online before turn 3. And Fact or Fiction is a turn 4 card, which is incredibly slow.

I've got to agree here.  I'm becoming more and more convinced that Mana Drain really is the card that lets control work.  While Will is still more important than Drain in Keeper, I really think that Drain is the most important card in Tog.

[Purple Hat]

Toad wrote:
I love when my opponent goes "First turn: LoA, go" when I'm not playing Control because that means Mana Drain won't be online before turn 3. And Fact or Fiction is a turn 4 card, which is incredibly slow.

jpmeyer wrote:
I've got to agree here. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Mana Drain really is the card that lets control work. While Will is still more important than Drain in Keeper, I really think that Drain is the most important card in Tog.

yeah, I'd say that's why LoA has been relegated to the side in a lot of tog builds recently.  it's great in the mirror and keeper matches, but if you give combo or aggro til turn 3 before your drains come on line you're totally screwed.  if you hit the library after that you're probably in pretty good shape anyway.  better to have something else in that slot.  even fighting through drains with TNT you can get a fattie out early and make life suck for the tog player.  of course they can always make life suck pretty bad for you   god damn togs.

[Kowal]

Tog can drop the Tog as a hedge against aggro.
Keeper can cast removal off a single land.
A second turn mana drain still won't stop first turn fat.
Sometimes the digging is essential.
Against combo, if you're given the opportunity to set up UU
Then you've probably already forced key spells and won the game anyway.
Dragon will sit there and build up the perfect hand over time, so it's exempt.
You need LoA here to race Bazaar of Baghdad effectively.

This message brought to you
In the writing style of Dan Richardson, the Pernicious Dude.

I hope you all enjoyed.

[Dr. Sylvan]

Against combo, if you're given the opportunity to set up UU
Then you've probably already forced key spells and won the game anyway.

In the same vein, if you can keep a full grip against control, then you've either not Forced key spells and lost, or you have and are already crushing them majorly to still have so many cards.

[Kowal]

The funny thing is
It's not the actual drawing of cards that will win you the control mirror
It's the tempo gain from it replacing itself while their waste does its job
Got a stifle?
Suddenly your tempo is tripled.
Yes, you've won that game.

[gzeiger]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Mana Drain really is the card that lets control work.  While Will is still more important than Drain in Keeper, I really think that Drain is the most important card in Tog.

Do you remember the five+ pages of discussion we had on BD about Will vs Blessing in Keeper? Good times.

On topic, I think you missed one fairly obvious (and potentially meaningful) candidate: Enlightened Tutor. This card hasn't seen play in a long, long time, because the range of targets is so narrow. Unrestricted I could see it in a silver-bullet style of control deck, perhaps something like Maher Oath from old Extended, but such a deck would have a hard time justifying itself. I suspect a one-of Oath of Druids might be valuable against Tog decks though, and there are at least a few good enchantments that might be useful if they were easily accessible. Overall I'm fairly skeptical that this approach would be viable, and I'm sure it wouldn't be problematic, but I do think it would be one of the stronger budget engines available, which is a significant argument for unrestriction in itself.

There are really only two problem cards involved with Enlightened Tutor - Memory Jar and Necropotence. I'm having a hard time picturing Jar being played outside a Workshop deck, and I'm having a hard time picturing a Workshop deck playing white mana sources. Necro would be interesting, though. Anybody have any thoughts on that?

[Kowal]

I played workshops with white at one of Stok's tournaments.  Considering the potential for putting your whole hand on the table fairly early with the prison style decks, balance was kinda of hilarious.  Likewise, at the time welder mud mirrors were all the rage and Sacred Ground wrecked.

I'd expect to see Gamble sooner than Enlightened though, even so.  They'd rather not have to pay five for that jar.

[Dr. Sylvan]

@gzeiger: Seeing as TPS has already started using Enlightened Tutor, we can't say it's completely out of use. I don't want TPS getting any more consistent, even if it is "just" for Necropotence. If they can reliably get that first turn and cast it second, there's no way to stop them winning the third turn. I'd only be okay with ET unrestricted after Dark Ritual makes the list, which it will within the next year.

[Matt]

Fastbond is also a dangerous card to tutor up.

[Mon, Goblin Chief]

One card I wouldn't want to see unrestricted:

Doomsday
As pointed out, you don't have to run a wacky timetwister combo to use Doomsday successfully. Being able to set up just about any combo and winning with Brainstorming the turn you cast DD should be easy enough. We already have a number of very fast combo-decks and this would only add another one IF we're very lucky. I think it's much more likely that we'll get something at least as degenerate as long that sets up regular turn one wins by ritual, stacking the deck in the order posted below (for example) and finishing it up with something that draws between 3 and 5 cards (like Brainstorm, if they have 2 cards left in hand). After seeing Belcher.dec, TPS, Twister.dec and DeathLong in action we know that getting to that situation is rather simple to set up.

Ritual
Black Lotus
Spoils of the Vault
Yawgmoth's Will
Tendrils of Agony

This is just of the top of my had and there are most probably better options to finish up. And even if not, the card is probably waiting in the next sets. Doomsday will always be either broken or crap (much like LED) and therefor I can't see a good reason to unrestrict it.


Cards I'd be worried about:
FoF
LoA

I'm not sure how good these cards would be in multiples after the evolution T1 has undergone since they were restricted.

FoF has lost some of it's power recently, but I think the jps power creep argument is quite good. I might be off here, though, as there is a limit to the number of carddrawing effects you can put into a deck, if only by sheer deck-space.

LoA is IMO safer to unrestrict than FoF, but it would probably turn quite a few control-mirrors into simple "whos got the better LoA/deal with LoA starting hand". This is IMO quite a bad effect, as it further randomizes the matchup. As said, I'm not exactly sure it would happen, but I won't unrestrict cards just because the environment might be able to live through it.  

All the other cards are save enough to unrestrict, IMO. The probability anything broken would happen from them is very small, I guess.

[Ric_Flair]

I am not sure what happened to JP's comment about power creep, but it is worth repeating.  Certain cards, like Fact or Fiction (FoF) and, in my opinion, Library of Alexandria (LoA) may not represent the most broken cards on the Banned and Restricted List, but there is an issue of the whole format, slowing, inexorably creeping towards insane power levels.  

In my mind there are two reasons why a card needs to be restricted.  Note this is different than comments on how powerful a card needs to be in order to be restricted, see Steve's test, plus the unrecoverable early game swing criteria from various bannings for one formulation.  First a card that is powerful, however that is defined, must be restricted because drawing multiples creates an insane game state.  The best examples of this are something like the Moxen or a Lotus.  These cards provide fundamental resources at such a cheap cost that drawing multiples quickly makes the game degenerate.  Other cards, like Mind Twist, are so powerful that they need to be restricted so as to limit the odds of drawing such cards, thereby minimizing the "swingyness" of the format.  Two Mind Twists is really nothing more than one Mind Twist most of the time.  Only in unusual circumstances, such as the Twist getting countered, does having another one mean all that much to game.  These two reasons should not be seen as differences in kind, but as ends of a spectrum.  

Given these two reasons and the notion of power creep, I think that it is clear that both FoF and LoA, while not restricted for Mind Twist reasons, what could be call frequency of draw restricted cards, are restricted because of the problem of multiples.  In games against quick aggro or combo decks like Tog and Keeper will either win or lose in short fashion.  But in other matchups, and yes there are other matchups, the possibility of FoFing into a Library into a FoF, is simply too much.  The idea that people would advocate giving two of the format's top decks two cards have been proven broken in the past seems to defy what I see as a general impluse in the community--a desire for longer, more interactive games.  I have had quite a few games where I sat and did nothing while my opponent went crazy, some against Long, but more than a few against Keeper.  Do we really want to give these decks an even stronger arsenal?  FoF and LoA may not be hideous in the current metagame, but it daft to think that they are awful.  In matches that Keeper and Tog lose now, they will do little to help, that is true, but in other closer matches, FoF and LoA will make all the difference.

I think that for the sake of giving games more time and preserving the really diverse metagame we have right now, I would err towards caution and not unrestrict these two cards.  When there is a general consensus that Keeper and Tog are no longer top tier decks for an extended period of time, maybe the status of those two cards should be re-examined, but as it stands right now, the format seems to be in a state of near equipoise, and I for one enjoy it.  

As a side note, I think that unrestricting a card should have a sort of burden of proof.  That is, in order to make a case that card should be unrestricted, we should first defer to the DCI and assume that they are right.  Only in the rare case where it can be shown that they were almost certainly wrong should a card come off the list.  To put this into legal terms, not quite a reasonable doubt, but more than a preponderance of the evidence.  Something like a reasonable certainty or a strong consensus of informed players, like 75% chance of no problems.    I think they know a bit more about this than we think they do.  At least, in the past few quarters, their actions have indicated as much.

[tomlcsc]

Personally, I could are less about all the others ones(although they probably should be unrestricted) but both earthcraft and Entomb are prime canidates for unrestriction.  Why they restrcited in the first place, i dont know.  If anything, these cards would promote viable(!) budget play in any given metagame and thats always a good thing.  Just my two cents.

[TheFram]

I would just like to note that I did not offer LoA or FoF for unrestriction in any conclusive way. I just offered them for discussion. I grow more and more scared of unrestricted FoF the more I think about it. LoA im still reasonably OK with on power terms.