Four more questionable B/R entries

[Machinus]

What I want here is the opposite of what Steve has done with his article. I want to know why people think these deserve theirs spots on the list:

Crop Rotation
Enlightened Tutor
Frantic Search

And for fun, Black Vise.

I am not positive that the first three deserve to be restricted. Clearly vise has the best case of the four [TO STAY ON THE LIST], but I still want to hear why. FoW and moxen take your hand size down pretty quickly.

[Matt]

Tutor is too good. Necro, Fastbond are the main targets.

I think Vise could come off. Nothing cares at all about it. 4 Vise Affinity would be sweet though.

[Komatteru]

Crop Rotation could get too abusive.  While this was part of the massive reaction to the Urza block, which gave us Tinker, Jar, and Welder in the same set, Rector and Bargain in the same set, Rotation and Academy one set apart, Voltaic Key and Grim Monolith a set apart, and Will. While Crop Rotation sees play in combo to go fetch out that blasted evil blue-producing land that we all love so much, it can get other horribly broken lands too.  Library of Alexandria, mayhaps?  Strip Mine anyone?  When there's a Crucible on the table?  It could even be abused in conjunction with Mishra's Workshop.  I don't know. While it wouldn't fit into existing decks, a 4 Crop Rotation deck just doesn't seem like something we want floating around.

Enlightened Tutor: Sure.  Tinker is the artifact tutor.  Enlightened Tutor isn't so good.  Hardly any one even runs 1 of these.  What are you going to tutor for?  A Mox?  Crucible or Trinisphere?  It's not worth a draw for those things since you can already run 4 of them, and there's all of like 3 good cards in white (and one of them flashes back for green).  It's doubtful that an Enchantress-type deck could be good.  Even if it were good, no one would play it.  Enchantress is such a chick deck.

Frantic Search: No.  This card would be insane as a 4 of in TPS.  "Filter two cards, raise the storm count."  Do it again.  And again.  Then Will, rinse, and repeat.  It reminds me a bit of GAT back in the day with its Gush, Gush, Gush, Fastbond, Will, Gush, Gush, Gush brokenness.  We don't ever need to see anything like that ever again.

Black Vise...it would be bad.  Terrible, horrible, awful.  I played in the last days of the 4 Vise era, and it was horrible then.  I don't think it's gotten any better.  If you ever want control to be playable, you don't want 4 Vise running around.

EDIT:
As for fetching Fastbond or Necro with Enlightened Tutor, I can't see who's going to include Tutor for that.  Draw7 ran them both and there was no Enlightened Tutor to be found.  Brainstorm, Vampy, and that tutor from Beta generally are more than enough to find what you need and have much more flexibility than Enlightened Tutor.

[Machinus]

4 Vise Affinity is exactly what I had in mind when I considered taking it off the list. That would be a really powerful deck. It would be really fun to play but I'm not sure it is fair.

[EDIT: Frantic Search: Most combo decks won't have three lands to untap. If you do have 3 land, you are probably using up gemstone counters or taking damage from CoB. On top of that, this is the same as playing a mystical in terms of card advantage, because you lose a card when you play this - except this only digs two deep, whereas mystical can get anything out of the library. Brainstorm is way better than this card.]

[walkingdude]

Vise is crazy. Its fast, cheap, and out of control. It comes down early, and if you don’t have a moxen heavy hand the things you have to do to yourself to reduce damage wind up being so crippling that you lose anyway. Really, vise might as well be a 1 mana mindslaver a decent amount of the time since it  forces the other player to wreck their own hand.

[Dante]

Turn 1 - Mox, Vise, workshop trinisphere.  Turn 2 Vise - have a nice day.  Even with 1 vise, it's like 8-10 damage to get out....

[TheFram]

I'm actually somewhat worried about Crop Rotation with Gaea's Cradle, since it seems running 4 Cradles leads to consistency problems, but a
2-3 Cradle
2-3 Rotation
1 Academy
configuration in an Affinity deck is a little scary (only a little). Most of the bullets that hurt affinity are artifacts, so Oxidize + Crop + Cradle main seems like it could solve alot of problems.

Enlightened has already been mentioned as too good. I concur on this point.

Vise I think would only lead to a larger mass of prisony artifacts in the format. I'm not convinced that this is a good thing, given what Trinisphere and Crucible have done. Not too mention how sweet it would be in affinity.

Search doesn't scare me at all.

[Vegeta2711]

Black Vise is clearly the fairest card on the list and needs to be let off ASAP.

...what? Don't look at me like that, just because I'm collecting the pieces to Funker and old stacker, ignore me. *cough* I already had the Affinity cards.  :lol:



Quick edit before idiots pm me random-ass-ly. The above was sarcasm.

[jpmeyer]

Enlightened Tutor=5 Necros

[rvs]

Enlightened Tutor=5 Necros

Indeed. JDizzle clearly wasn't around when Trix was good.

I don't see why any of the cards listed here should even be up for debate...

[Dr. Sylvan]

Frantic Search was banned in Extended for a reason.

None of these should be unrestricted.

[Komatteru]

Indeed. JDizzle clearly wasn't around when Trix was good.

You are quite correct.  I was taking a break from the game around that time.  

Ok, keep the Tuor on there.

[Smmenen]

Actually, the E. Tutor would just mean 5 Lotuses, 5 LEds and 5 Necros.

I would rebuild Long with 4 Chromatic Spheres to make it work.  At least I would try.

I think tha having access to that much lotus is too good.  

Frantic Search has too much synergy with the storm mechanic - that's why its banned in extended.  It really is a free spell.

Crop Rotation - Dear Bob.  Try my Meandeath with four of these and see if you ever lose.  Better yet, play Draw7 with this and make sure to play 4 ESG too.

[Jacob Orlove]

Closed.