How fair is Mishra's Workshop?

[Smmenen]

The next question then is, should we take away their fun if it doesn't harm anyone? Keep in mind that a guiding principle behind T1 restriction policy is the lassez-faire, we get-to-use-every-card-ever-printed and we don't ban cards for powere level.

If such a guiding principle exists, why is the B/R list filled with cards like:

Braingeyser
Gush
Fork
Dream Halls
Doomsday
Crop Rotation
Earthcraft
Entomb
Fact or Fiction
Frantic Search
Mind Over Matter
Voltaic Key
Time Spiral
Necropotence

If Belcher sets the benchmark as a "fair" consistent turn 1 kill deck (and by "fair" I mean easily disruptable), then surely combo decks that revolve around cards like Doomsday, Mind Over Matter, Time Spiral, Voltaic Key or Dream Halls cannot be any worse. Gush probably shouldn't be restricted anymore because I cannot envision GAT dominating in today's environment, and Ritual-Necro is about as random and game winning as Workshop-Sphere. And what about Fact or Fiction - the format is a mix of fast combo/prison decks and slow control, so FoF might not be too dominating. FoF is probably weaker than Skeletal Scrying anyways, while its arguably on par with something like Thirst for Knowledge.

After all, we should use every-card-ever-printed and don't ban cards for power level. Let's unrestrict some of this stuff, and see what happens in the current T1. Why limit the randomness to just Trinisphere or decks like Belcher?

How right you are!!

Why do you think I argued a year and a half ago that Berserk, Fork and Hurkyl's Recall should be unrestricted?  

After all this time, I think that Spiral, Gyser, Stroke, and Mind Over Matter can be unrestricted as well.  (and obviously Earthcraft).

Gush, I completely and utterly disagree with.  Gush is inherently broken and unrestricting it would lead to Psychatog domination.  Gush + Pschatog would run over all the little fishies like it would have in the past and would be a nearly unbeatable deck.   Unrestricting Gush would be a tremendous mistake.  

As for the other cards, Fact or Fiction should not be unrestricted either.  When we ran our battle of the banned decks a few months ago, BBS was quite insane.  I think that a 4 Fact or Fiction Tog deck would do as well as GAT.  

Necropotence.  Now you are just crazy.  This card should never, ever, ever, be unrestricted.  It is totally sick and broken.  For two more mana it multiplies the effect of Ancestral by nearly 7.  I would unrestrict MIND'S DESIRE before I'd unrestrict Necro.  Crop Rotation is too good to unrestrict as well.  Dream Halls is potentially unrestrictable - but the danger is very real with that card and no one has built a good dream halls deck in ages so we wouldn't be able to see the fall out.   Same with Doomsday.

Much of the restricted list is archaic and it is in need of a radical update.

[Whatever Works]

How big of a coin flip can it really be??? As long as the top players in type 1 are making top 8's without workshop it cant be that big a coinflip. If the metagames balanced, and it still requires SKILL to actually WIN then I believe the metagame is still healthy. ANY player with no skill could Top 8 with 4 gush groatog, and long.dec took a little skill (being able to count) to top 8.

Im really tired of seeing this reference to 22 workshops (or around that #) in gencon top 8... I mean seriously... a few of those workshops were in a 2land belcher sideboard... and it was just 1 tournement where fish (and not workshop) was the deck to beat...

Also note there could of easily been 3 dragon decks in the top 8, and nobody is clammoring to restrict Bazaar of Baghdad, but maybe thats because its underplayed and you havent lost to first turn swarm, 2 turn combo out... 1st turn swarm in most cases is almost if not worse the 1st turn trinisphere for alot of decks, and all you can do is hope u have fire/ice or STP somewhere with counterbackup to try and maybe get dragon.

Type 1 is all about power, and in my mind i dont see mishra's workshop as THAT broken. Most of the decks in the format have 50/50 matchups against workshop, but MOST of the decks in the format do NOT have as good of matchup against an early trinisphere/crucible. Why should workshop get the fall for the failures of future cards??? especially when champ. of Kamigawa probably wont deliver another artifact bomb.

It seems to me that everyone has agreed to an extent that workshop in itself isnt to broken, but it becomes to powerful when combined with a first turn trinisphere, or a first turn crucible. If these cards were restricted, and lessoned the random "i win" factor would we even be having this conversation???

Kyle

[Moxlotus]

That point has been brought up before, and it is readily apparent that it is not the whole of Europe suffering from a Stax/Workshop infestation, but rather just Sweden.

Exactly.  Just because a deck is doing well in one part of the world doesn't mean anything.  Maybe they are just the best players who could probably break into the top 8 playing any top deck?  Maybe people don't know how to sideboard correctly or which sideboard cards to play in the first place?  Maybe people don't realize the intricases of playing against the deck because some innocuous spells could be key.  When a particular deck is doing extremely well in one place, but not dominating anywhere else there are a lot of variables.

Also, I was just mentioning things like "why don't we restrict X because Y deck was doing so well" because in that post there was no other argument or point presented.

[dexter]

That point has been brought up before, and it is readily apparent that it is not the whole of Europe suffering from a Stax/Workshop infestation, but rather just Sweden.

well check morphlings decklists and you will find that it isnt just sweden that is staxx infected.

@Moxlotus

Well, how u figure that we cant board correctly against staxx? Since the deck has been around for quite some while now people has adapted to it existing and tried pretty much every sideboard option avaible against that deck and it still dominates?

[dicemanx]

Gush, I completely and utterly disagree with. Gush is inherently broken and unrestricting it would lead to Psychatog domination. Gush + Pschatog would run over all the little fishies like it would have in the past and would be a nearly unbeatable deck. Unrestricting Gush would be a tremendous mistake.

As for the other cards, Fact or Fiction should not be unrestricted either. When we ran our battle of the banned decks a few months ago, BBS was quite insane. I think that a 4 Fact or Fiction Tog deck would do as well as GAT.

Necropotence. Now you are just crazy. This card should never, ever, ever, be unrestricted. It is totally sick and broken. For two more mana it multiplies the effect of Ancestral by nearly 7. I would unrestrict MIND'S DESIRE before I'd unrestrict Necro. Crop Rotation is too good to unrestrict as well. Dream Halls is potentially unrestrictable - but the danger is very real with that card and no one has built a good dream halls deck in ages so we wouldn't be able to see the fall out. Same with Doomsday.

I was being serious with Gush and FoF, but was trying to push the boundary with Necropotence. Actually, if they somehow were to unrestrict Necro, I wonder just how good it would be if they restricted Dark Ritual (which might not be such a bad idea in the first place to curb some of the combo decks).

The FoF mono-U might have done well in the battle of the banned decks, but those were battles between those decks, and not against some of the top T1 decks in the format right now. What I would propose would be a mass unrestriction, and see what happens to the environment. If it goes to hell because FoF mono-U or 4 Gush GAT wrecks everything, then restrict those components again. The idea would be to run a little experiment between October and December just to reassess the power levels of cards.

[Moxlotus]

That point has been brought up before, and it is readily apparent that it is not the whole of Europe suffering from a Stax/Workshop infestation, but rather just Sweden.

well check morphlings decklists and you will find that it isnt just sweden that is staxx infected.

Essen: 1 Staxx 3rd
Karlshrue-1 and 2.  However also 2 TPS decks
Stavenger-7th
Basel-1st
Barcelone-2 and 5

So a few with 2 Staxx decks.  Hardcore dominance I see...Also it is possible that some were played by the same people, although I will admit I haven't bothered to look.

I don't know how you sideboard for which decks and nobody else does either.  Maybe you are taking out too many cards and trying to force too many in.  Maybe you are sideboarding perfectly-I don't know and nobody else does because nobody knows how you are siding against Stax.  Remember when Tog was type 2 and it took people forever to realize not to counter its card draw?  Maybe people are focusing on the wrong part of the deck, I don't know but the rest of the world, especially in the US and Canada don't seem to have a Staxx problem.

[VGB]

with respect to #3, frankly, with proxy tournaments becoming the norm, I really couldn't care less about budget players, nor do many players.  If I wanted to play a format where people threw out a bunch of creatures and attacked each other, I'd play another format.  I want to face players playing what they feel is the best deck, not what they feel is the best deck they can make with the cards they have.  If every tournament was a 10-proxy tournament and we never had a sanctioned Type 1 event again, that would be fine with me - then people can proxy a playset of drains/shops/bazaars and 6 of the power cards.

You're missing the forest for the trees, here.

I am not one of those people who think that cards should be restricted until multiple budget decks become tier 1 - on the contrary, I feel absolutely no sympathy towards people who whine about the T1 cost entry barrier.

"Legend stated that when sligh is not competitive something is wrong with the format" (PTW).  I'm not necessarily agreeing, but a lot of formerly viable decks (Suicide, Ankh Sligh) are obsolete due to the existence of Chalice and Trinisphere, which are made playable by Workshop.  One thing that usually kept powered players on their toes was the prospect of facing PoP or 5/5 beaters on turn 1, and now direct damage is such a non-issue that cards such as Mana Crypt and Ancient Tomb are seeing widespread play.

[Moxlotus]

with respect to #3, frankly, with proxy tournaments becoming the norm, I really couldn't care less about budget players, nor do many players.  If I wanted to play a format where people threw out a bunch of creatures and attacked each other, I'd play another format.  I want to face players playing what they feel is the best deck, not what they feel is the best deck they can make with the cards they have.  If every tournament was a 10-proxy tournament and we never had a sanctioned Type 1 event again, that would be fine with me - then people can proxy a playset of drains/shops/bazaars and 6 of the power cards.

You're missing the forest for the trees, here.

I am not one of those people who think that cards should be restricted until multiple budget decks become tier 1 - on the contrary, I feel absolutely no sympathy towards people who whine about the T1 cost entry barrier.

"Legend stated that when sligh is not competitive something is wrong with the format" (PTW).  I'm not necessarily agreeing, but a lot of formerly viable decks (Suicide, Ankh Sligh) are obsolete due to the existence of Chalice and Trinisphere, which are made playable by by Workshop.  One thing that usually kept powered players on their toes was the prospect of facing PoP or 5/5 beaters on turn 1, and now direct damage is such a non-issue that cards such as Mana Crypt and Ancient Tomb are seeing widespread play.

Sligh was dead before Chalice and 3sphere.  TNT and GAT did that.  The new thing to keep powered players on their toes is a Null Rod turn 1 or 2.

[Shock Wave]

There weren't any problems before the advent of Trinisphere and most recently, Crucible of Worlds. That clearly indicates that Workshop is *not* the problem. The real issues started when decks started going "Shop, 3Sphere, go." If you can't see the problem with that opening, then you should really stop and rethink the implications of that scenario. Arguing that Wasteland is the answer to that opening doesn't work either because MWS isn't the only land that helps you accelerate out of the 3Sphere lock. Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are commonly run in decks that run 3Sphere and thus a Wasteland on MWS in the early game is only a slight setback. You'll almost always accelerate out of the lock well before your opponent. Furthermore, with the advent of Crucible, you now have 2 turns to permanently lock your opponent should you have Crucible and Wasteland/Strip Mine. Basically, the crux of the argument is that Shop + 3Sphere is a 2 card, nigh game-winning combo that provides an almost unrecoverable board position for almost every deck in the format. If that's not indicative of a problematic card in the format, I don't know what is.

I think DicemanX's argument is a good one. If you give Trinisphere and Belcher the axe (I'd love to see Crucible go too, but it doesn't seem absolutely necessary if 3Sphere goes), then essentially we'll be back to the metagame of pre-3sphere, where MWS decks were strong but not retarded, as they are now. Combo will still be good and there will still be tools to fight it (Chalice, Sphere of Resistance, etc.). Why is this not a plausible solution?

Oh yeah, somewhere in this thread somebody stated that Sphere of Resistance is comparable to Trinisphere which is absolutely ridiculous. A turn 1 Trinisphere locks the game for 3 turns. Sphere of Resistance is but a minor inconvenience.

[Smmenen]

Gush, I completely and utterly disagree with. Gush is inherently broken and unrestricting it would lead to Psychatog domination. Gush + Pschatog would run over all the little fishies like it would have in the past and would be a nearly unbeatable deck. Unrestricting Gush would be a tremendous mistake.

As for the other cards, Fact or Fiction should not be unrestricted either. When we ran our battle of the banned decks a few months ago, BBS was quite insane. I think that a 4 Fact or Fiction Tog deck would do as well as GAT.

Necropotence. Now you are just crazy. This card should never, ever, ever, be unrestricted. It is totally sick and broken. For two more mana it multiplies the effect of Ancestral by nearly 7. I would unrestrict MIND'S DESIRE before I'd unrestrict Necro. Crop Rotation is too good to unrestrict as well. Dream Halls is potentially unrestrictable - but the danger is very real with that card and no one has built a good dream halls deck in ages so we wouldn't be able to see the fall out. Same with Doomsday.

I was being serious with Gush and FoF, but was trying to push the boundary with Necropotence. Actually, if they somehow were to unrestrict Necro, I wonder just how good it would be if they restricted Dark Ritual (which might not be such a bad idea in the first place to curb some of the combo decks).

The FoF mono-U might have done well in the battle of the banned decks, but those were battles between those decks, and not against some of the top T1 decks in the format right now. What I would propose would be a mass unrestriction, and see what happens to the environment. If it goes to hell because FoF mono-U or 4 Gush GAT wrecks everything, then restrict those components again. The idea would be to run a little experiment between October and December just to reassess the power levels of cards.

Do you think I wan unable to carry over my experience with the battle of the banned decks into normal Type One just becuase I only pitted those decks against each other?  I saw the dynamic and how decks played out.  I hadn't played with a 4 Fact or Fiction deck in nearly two years and when we saw how good it still was (I was playing Long and played against it), I'm telling you that it was incredibly powerful.  I have no doubt that Tog would run 4.  

Your experiment is laudable, but impractical.  They would never do that.  I'm surprised you didn't put Balance on your list, btw.  

The cards I feel should definately be unrestricted:

Braingyser (inferior to Scrying)
Earthcraft
Fork
Mind Over Matter
Mind Twist
Stroke of Genius
Time Spiral (mostly inferior to Returns)

Cards I'm not sure about, either way, but don't seem restriction worthy:
Doomsday
Dream Halls
Entomb
Frantic Search
Voltaic Key

Cards I once thought could be unrestricted again but was sooo wrong:

Balance - used so defensively.  Kevin's use of it in Stax corrected my ways.
Gush - Battle of the Banned Decks reminded me of the problem
Fact or Fiction " "
Library of Alexandria - this card decides control matches.

(JP thought Channel and Regrowth could be unrestricted, lol)

[VGB]

Sligh was dead before Chalice and 3sphere.  TNT and GAT did that.  The new thing to keep powered players on their toes is a Null Rod turn 1 or 2.

Why don't you browse around here for a while, and take notice when Sui and Sligh no longer appear in T8's.

[SpikeyMikey]

No one has yet suggested that Workshop based decks are unbeatable, just that they are stronger than they should be.  For those of you arguing that the metagame is healthy, I want you to sit back and take a look at what you're asserting.  Fish is tier 1.  That in and of itself should be all the proof that you need.  I think Fish is only slightly ahead of ICT in terms of worst T1 deck ever.  Take a look at a listing sometime.  Spiketails?  Daze?  Voidmage?  Cloud of Faeries?  None of those cards are truly T1 worthy.  It's sad that outside of combo, a deck either has to be running Workshops or maining hate for them in order to win.  The fact that Null Rod is a standard main deck card in more than 1 deck is telling.  The fact that even a deck like Fish that's designed specifically to combat Stax still loses the matchup is pretty sad.  If I were to have thrown that much hate against a deck like say Dragon, it'd have no chance of competing.  Rerestricting Workshop would slow the deck's lock down by at least a turn on average, which is probably enough to allow other decks a little breathing room.  It wouldn't remove Stax from the meta, just make it a little more reasonable.

Yeah, this is T1, and broken stuff happens, but I honestly think a lot of you aren't seeing how dominating Stax is, or the kind of strain it puts on the unpowered player.  It used to be that you could get away with playing Sligh, Suicide, WW, Parfait, or mono-U.  Now, if you don't own Workshops, Bazaars, or Moxen, your choice is restricted to playing a deck that's weak even by T2 standards simply because it runs enough hate to beat the top deck.  Semi-powered doesn't cut it any more, unpowered doesn't cut it any more.  That's bad for a format like T1.  I sold off my collection over a year ago, and I've watched prices triple on everything over that last year.  Mishra's Workshop is facilitating a barrier that prevents new blood from entering the T1 scene.

[jpmeyer]

I thought Channel could be unrestricted before Belcher came out, but yeah, I still think that Regrowth could be unrestricted.

Doomsday I'm wary of simply because there is probably a better combo here than the Timetwister one, although I'm too lazy to find it.  And Dream Halls scares me because that deck had a very solid turn 2 goldifsh--in Standard.  5 years ago.

[Triple_S]

After reading more of this thread, I definitely agree with Shockwave on this.  3Sphere is definitely the issue here, not MWS.  The addition of 3Sphere over Chalice is one of the major innovations which helped 7/10 make a huge jump in performance.

[Vegeta2711]

I love how this thread is like 4 diff. conversations going at once and at least 3 of them are just pissing on each other. So.Good.

Anywho, chalk me up with the guys who dislike 3sphere a whole bunch. Randomly winning games on turn 1 w/o elaborate combos 4L. In all seriousness though, 3Sphere and now Crucible basically make any random Workshop deck a half viable choice about now.

BTW, I love the unrestrict everything idea, just because I'm always intrested in those kinds of experiments. Besides w00t at 4x 3/1Sphere Pillar and Ankh vs. Gush decks.

[dicemanx]

Do you think I wan unable to carry over my experience with the battle of the banned decks into normal Type One just becuase I only pitted those decks against each other? I saw the dynamic and how decks played out. I hadn't played with a 4 Fact or Fiction deck in nearly two years and when we saw how good it still was (I was playing Long and played against it), I'm telling you that it was incredibly powerful. I have no doubt that Tog would run 4.

Here's the thing though. Bringing back Gush and FoF would allow many decks to run those cards, including K-eeper, Mono-U, GAT, Hulk, Control Slaver etc. That leaves MWS decks, Fish, and combo (Dragon, Belcher, Deathlong, TPS etc) - whether they could compete or not is up for debate, since combo and WS vs FoF/Gush packing decks would be mostly decided in the early game where the expensive draw spells (mana wise with FoF or tempo-wise with Gush) wouldn't factor in too heavily. Plus, I could envision Dragon playing FoF too . Then we could throw Necro into the mix but give Dark Ritual the axe (and get rid of the last few mana accelerants, including ESG). Necro decks would be forced to be either mono-B or at least have a very heavy black component, which I would count as a serious disadvantage to offset the advantage that Necro itself would bring. Add to that all of these combo cards (Dream Halls, Doomsday, Voltaic Key, Earthcraft, Entomb, etc), and finish things off by unrestricting Balance too - I missed that one initially.

Then we can see if the sheer amount of brokenness results in a weirdly "balanced" format, or if one dominant deck type would emerge from all the chaos.

Your experiment is laudable, but impractical. They would never do that.

Who knows, maybe the DCI surfs TMD the night before the updates are announced prior to returning to their night of heavy drinking and getting the dartboard ready to establish the next round of restrictions...

And Dream Halls scares me because that deck had a very solid turn 2 goldifsh--in Standard. 5 years ago.

Isn't that when Mana Vault was still unrestricted? I doubt you can get something that costs 3UU into play that easily and go off within a span of two turns with any consistency.

[SliverKing]

As much as I hate being 3sphere locked as the next person (which is really a function of wasteland/crucible, not 3sphere) I think axeing the sphere is the wrong way to go.  Trinisphere is the only thing holding this format together. You read that right, its not Force of Will.  Its trinisphere.  YOu take away MWS-> Trinisphere and combo is going to run rampant all over the format.  
Maybe I'm still a little burned from my experience at GENCON, but I feel that combo in its current form is far far far far too strong.  Maybe we're talking about 2 seperate issues here, but until ritual and ESG go, I dont think we can afford to lose 3sphere.  
3sphere was jsut fine until crucible came out.  It was a really really good card that put the opponent in a big hole, but it was NOT unrecoverable.  
I've been one of the big proponents of restrictions the past year or 2, but unless we're going to take a serious swing at the format (meaning a major shift, not just 1 card) I would have to vote AGAINST restricting MWS or 3sphere.
 
For what its worth my ideal "big hammer" on the format would be
Restrict:
MWS
Bazaar of Baghdad
Wasteland
Dark Ritual
Elvish Spirit Guide
Mana Drain (with the other cards on this list gone, mana drain would drastically limit the format)

Watch :
Survival of the Fittest
Intuition
Cunning Wish
Death Wish
Merchant Scroll

And a rules change limiting restricted cards to 15 per deck.


Having said all that, I think we have some really good variety of viable decks in our format. I think the overall power level is not healthy and the coinflip is drastically too important, but you cant argue with the variety we saw at GENCON.

[JACO]

There weren't any problems before the advent of Trinisphere and most recently, Crucible of Worlds. That clearly indicates that Workshop is *not* the problem. The real issues started when decks started going "Shop, 3Sphere, go." If you can't see the problem with that opening, then you should really stop and rethink the implications of that scenario. Arguing that Wasteland is the answer to that opening doesn't work either because MWS isn't the only land that helps you accelerate out of the 3Sphere lock. Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors are commonly run in decks that run 3Sphere and thus a Wasteland on MWS in the early game is only a slight setback. You'll almost always accelerate out of the lock well before your opponent. Furthermore, with the advent of Crucible, you now have 2 turns to permanently lock your opponent should you have Crucible and Wasteland/Strip Mine. Basically, the crux of the argument is that Shop + 3Sphere is a 2 card, nigh game-winning combo that provides an almost unrecoverable board position for almost every deck in the format. If that's not indicative of a problematic card in the format, I don't know what is.

Rich, as much as I respect your opinions, I don't think this argument holds much water. First turn Trinisphere is very good sure, but it isn't quite retarded. You know what a control player's play is? Force of Will, just like when an opposing TnT deck drops a first turn Survival of the Fittest.

I really think everybody is overreacting to Trinisphere and it's role in decks. Sure it creates a tempo boost most of the time, and will put you in a favorable board spot most of the time, but if you're constructing a deck the right way, that's what most of your cards should do anyway.

Check out the Top 8 decklists from GenCon again. This was one of, if not the best and highest quality tournaments of the year. Did Trinisphere dominate the tournament, and the Top 8? No fucking way. 2nd place 5/3 deck by David Allen had 3 Trinispheres. The 3rd place Chains-Stacker deck by Gio had 4 Trinispheres, T8 Stax deck by Kevin Cron had 4 Trinispheres, and T8 TnT deck (which I designed) played by Nick Trudeau also had 4 Trinispheres (and the only reason I built the deck with those instead of Thirst for Knowledge is because I expected a decent amount of combo and Fish). 15 Trinispheres in the Top 8 is not indicative of domination to me.

Without a doubt, a card's strength is partly a product of of the metagame. For example, Root Maze was particularly effective for a short time, while the metagame warranted it. It is still a decent card, but is much less stronger now than 6 or 12 months ago. Trinisphere is also a good card, but it very potent right now because it is especially strong vs. Fish, GroATog, Belcher, and Draw7.dec. It is decent against a lot of other decks, but isn't the absolute bomb that everyone is making it out to be.

All of that being said, I think the game is fine right now, and there is no need for any additional restrictions (Workshop, artifact, or otherwise).

[Zherbus]

15 Trinispheres in the Top 8 is not indicative of domination to me.

Small detail... but there were actually 16.

[Vegeta2711]

Trinisphere is also a good card, but it very potent right now because it is especially strong vs. Fish, GroATog, Belcher, and Draw7.dec.

Actually it's very potent vs. everything as long as your going first. Going 2nd I agree it's useful against less, heh. Trinisphere is far more like Vise than Crucible ever was.

[Smmenen]

Your experiment is laudable, but impractical. They would never do that.

Who knows, maybe the DCI surfs TMD the night before the updates are announced prior to returning to their night of heavy drinking and getting the dartboard ready to establish the next round of restrictions...

There is one other thing in connection with your idea that I thought you might find interesting.  A few months ago I began writing a systematic analysis of the restricted list.  I hadn't settled on a title, but revealingly, one title name I came up with was "54 age lines in need of a face lift."

The idea is to systematically analyze each and every card on the list and describe why it is there, what would happen if you unrestricted it (including Time Walk, Ancestral, etc), and what the risks are.

The first thing I discovered is that it is absurd to speak about unrestricting a Mox or a Black Lotus in a way that isn't the case for Ancestral or Timetwister.  Why?  Let me describe.  I hit upon 8 cards on the list which I call "rules" cards.  They are on the list not becuase of their power level, but becuase they actually make a "rule of the format".  Without those restrictions, the format is completely unrecognizable.  Deck construction with 20 Moxen and 4 Black Lotus is simply not something you can consider in terms of how the metagame would shape out.  For this reason alone, your experiment is not practicable.

If you were serious about it, then I say, leave the 8 rule cards I identified restricted, and unrestrict everything else.  Incidentally, those rule cards are: Black Lotus, the five Moxen, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt.  Additionally, when I did this analysis, then it truly struck me how powerful Null Rod is.  Null Rod is a rule breaker of the first order in Type One.

[dicemanx]

If you were serious about it, then I say, leave the 8 rule cards I identified restricted, and unrestrict everything else. Incidentally, those rule cards are: Black Lotus, the five Moxen, Sol Ring, and Mana Crypt. Additionally, when I did this analysis, then it truly struck me how powerful Null Rod is. Null Rod is a rule breaker of the first order in Type One.

It would be interesting to try this - even if the DCI would never consider it, perhaps we could organize some casual events and test this idea out. I would prefer to keep the fast mana on the restricted list though, especially Mana Vault and to some extent Grim Monolith. The other Moxes (Chrome and Diamond) might not be as problematic, and Lotus Petal might turn out OK, but it's a tough call.

[wizmentor]

"Force of Will" is the glue that holds Type 1 together" is a common phase,
but it is outdated.  Null Rod is another.  As a general rule, you either run
Null Rod or run moxen.  Look at any recent top8.

Now, with MWS/Trinisphere/Crucible, we have another piece of glue -
wasteland.

JP wonders aloud whether Crucible will become metagame distorting.
It probably will be just enough for the ubiquitous wasteland to become
omnipresent.

So, now Type 1 has 3 pieces of "glue":  FOW, Null Rod, and Wasteland.

The question I have is "do we want to be continually adding
essential elements (glue) to the format?"


p.s. I say restrict both MWS and Bazaar, but that's because I only own
1 of each :lol:

[MuzzonoAmi]

I'd really like to see that article, Steve. It sounds interesting.

But back on topic, I don't think that Trinisphere's effect is sufficently game breaking or more importantly, format distorting to warrant its restriction. Every time restriction is brought up, especially when a tempo/mana related card is on the chopping block, people seem to forget that Mana Drain is a hard cap on the casting cost of spells in the format. All spells in your deck had better be able to come down before Mana Drain (which for practical purposes sets the cap at 3 for aggro and control decks and 5 for a Workshop deck. Combo tends to ignore CC as long as the combo can be pulled off in the first 3 or 4 turns.) or be able to deal with the threat of having a larger spell Drained into something game-swinging. While cards like Goblin Welder and Tinker and mechanics like Affinity and Madness certianly help many decks get around this problem, the cap still exists. But no one is clamoring for Mana Drain's restriction. This is a good thing. Because the way Mana Drain distorts the format is not a harmful distortion. The same thing is the case with Trinisphere and Workshop. Trinisphere is a very powerful effect that lets Workshop players gain tremendos tempo by playing it first turn. But this often requires aggressive mulliganing in an already inconsistent deck. When Shop builds become more consistent, we may need to look at restricting a part of the deck. But at this point the decks are not even a sufficent force in the metagame to warrant such action.

Moxlotus wrote:
Sligh was dead before Chalice and 3sphere. TNT and GAT did that. The new thing to keep powered players on their toes is a Null Rod turn 1 or 2.


Why don't you browse around here for a while, and take notice when Sui and Sligh no longer appear in T8's.

That was at the beginning of the time period when people were starting to take the format seriously enough to test. Those of us who had already taken it seriously knew that Sui and Sligh were dead long before they stopped T8'ing. They became obsolete with the advent of TnT and were vastly outclassed by Gro-A-Tog. Now, with aggro decks like BroodstarRunner, The Man Show, JayPee Survival, and Madness these decks have lost any hope of coming back. Take note also that there is only 1 pure Workshop deck in this list. That alone should tell you something about what's killing traditional aggro.

@dicemanx -

I'd love to try a similar experiment with different cards. Here are my lists:

UNRESTRICT and forget
Stroke of Genius
Braingeyser
Mind over Matter
Regrowth
Fork
Earthcraft
Time Spiral
Voltaic Key

UNRESTRICT and watch
Doomsday
Dream Halls
Frantic Search
Gush
Fact or Fiction
Library of Alexandria

RESTRICT
nothing


While Steve may balk at my sugestion to unrestrict Gush and FoF, I feel that while both were overpowered at the time, the metagame has evolved so much since that time that recent advancements should be able to contain the power these cards could have. Especially in the case of Fact or Fiction, where it is likely to slow down an already slow MonoU deck to the point where it may not be able to compete. In 4CC, it may provide an alternative to Scrying, but  I even doubt that because of Scrying's synergy with Angel and ability to create huge sings in control mirrors lategame where Fact or Fiction cannot. 4 Gush GAT may indeed prove format distorting and dominant, but GAT has been alright at best since the restriction, leaving me to wonder if even 4 Gush could pull the deck up to a teir 1 position, much less a dominant position.

[Zherbus]

Ok, now this is just getting out of hand.

[Zherbus]

Enough complained about it that I will unlock this for your repeating off-topic pleasure.

[Sagath]

Bah Why, in less then 4 hours we'll have the official ruling. Leave it closed untill then and let WOTC end this madness.

[Ric_Flair]

What madness?  A fair and balanced metagame...oh the madness.  

NOTE: Sarcasm does not come across well on forum boards.

Does anyone really think that Workshop is going to get the axe?  Let's take odds.  I think there is a FAR BETTER chance that certain cards will be unrestricted.  Wouldn't it be nice wake up to world where Entomb is not restricted?  Or how able Braingeyser?  That would be the best thing they could do.

[Machinus]

We all know that there are too many restricted cards. WITH CONFIDENCE, we can say these should come off the list:

Earthcraft
Fork
Voltaic Key
Entomb


There are some other tentative entries, but if we want the DCI to pay attention, we have to choose the ones which are most definitely unworthy of their spot. These four are most undeserving.

[By the way, right now there aren't any cards that need to go in the opposite direction. Just saying.]

[Vegeta2711]

SO back to unrestricting Gush, LOA and other theoretical bullcrap that'll never happen! w00t.

So back to Trinisphere being like Vise. I mean, it wins on turn 1... just like Vise. It's legal as a 4-of, just like Vise used to be. It's power isn't anywhere near as great going 2nd, just like Vise. Etc etc. ad infinum, random crap.

This whole thread has parts that are intresting, but the majority is just horrible. Even the good points are considerably worthless.

Enough complained about it that I will unlock this for your repeating off-topic pleasure.

So good.