Unrestriction of Cards and their Theoretical Impact

[Hi-Val]

I was thinking last night about what would happen if certain cards were unrestricted. What changes would happen to the environment? How would Vintage look different? Granted, I'm not asking for any of these to be unrestricted, but it would give greater understanding of the Restricted List and why everything is good. Let's take a look at some of the examples I was thinking of:

Unrestricted Black Vise: This, I feel, would really amp up aggro-control. It basically kills off regular control, but decks like Grow and Fish can operate on 4 cards in hand because they're applying a lot of pressure in the meantime. Black Vise would force decks to run more tutors, more Cunning Wishes and less generic card draw to avoid being Vised out. Does this seek like an adequate analysis? What do you think would happen?

Unrestricted Yawgmoth's Will: Obviously storm combo would be rampant. However, what would it look like? I feel that it would most likely appear in a form like Meandeck Tendrils, using lots of cantrips to find Will and then win. All other combo would fade out.

Unrestricted Fastbond: This doesn't look as dangerous as some of the others, and it really got me thinking. Bringing this back lets decks run 4, but how many actually want it? I can think of Draw-7 and Turboland, and that's it. How big of an impact would Fastbond have? Would it push Turboland into tier-1?

I was thinking of other cards too. What if LED was unrestricted but Burning Wish was not? What if it were vice-versa? What would it do to combo? How many copies of Mind Twist would decks run if it were unrestricted? What about Crop Rotation? Is Academy strong enough to come back with it? What about Library of Alexandria?

Obviously I'd like to limit this discussion to cards that are legitimately restricted, not stuff like Voltaic Key and Mind over Matter, both of which could arguably come off the list. Please post any cards you'd like to discuss, I think this is a very interesting theoretical question.

[Hi-Val]

Null Rob asked me to post this:

I thought of this a while back but didn't really put too much into it because it wasn't anywhere near a reality with Trinispheres everywhere. What if WotC were to unrestrict Library of Alexandria AND Strip Mine, and restrict Crucible of Worlds. It seems that no deck could afford to run 4x Libraries or 8 colorless sources for land destruction (strip & waste) so I wonder what type of impact it would have...I would assume that we would see a few attempts at a control deck that would try to tutor up a Crucible ASAP to combo it with strip mine, but what would it do type 1 in general?

In response to his question, I think that a deck like Stax would go insane with 8 Strip effects and Sphere of Resistance, etc. With the tutors in the format right now and the ones coming in, you can still run effectively at least 10 tutors(demonic +vampiric + Tinker + Seal + Enlightened + Consult + 4 Transmute) for Crucible if needed. I have a feeling some deck would be created or modified to take on 4 Libraries and Duress and other discard effects would work their way into the maindeck.

[Bram]

Obviously I'd like to limit this discussion to cards that are legitimately restricted, not stuff like Voltaic Key and Mind over Matter, both of which could arguably come off the list.

So you want us to discuss stuff that will absolutely 100% for sure never ever happen? What knowledge do you hope to distill from this discussion, pray tell?

I think this is a very interesting theoretical question.

While you're ofcourse free to feel that way (and it may be clear at this point that I don't), I am forced to wonder why this is in the Vintage forum. It hardly falls under any of the established categories since it isn't a discussion about a particular archetype, a discussion of an article, a primer, or a single card discussion. I guess you could call it 'a discussion about a general concept' but that's stretching the definition, since this is of the intellection equivalent of starting a thread on what would happen if Dark Ritual made 4 black or something.

[Rico Suave]

I'll take a stab.

Black Vise:
This has some really interesting synergy.  If I were to play a first turn Black Vise, you could theoretically dump your hand next turn and be underneath it.  This doesn't stop me from casting a draw7 effect, filling my hand up with threats and putting you back into range of Vise again.  It also doesn't stop me from playing mana denial, so that you can't cast your spells.

Decks like Gro can operate on 4 cards in hand in a goldfish, but the decks that use Vise are probably going to be Workshop decks that dump aggro and prison parts at you.  Imagine being on the end of a first turn Workshop, Black Vise, Sphere of Resistance while playing Gro, or any control deck for that matter.  Keep in mind there might be a Juggernaut and Crucible-Waste on the table soon after.  

Summary: It is a cheap damage source that, in the right deck, makes the game unfair.  I'm not sure how many people remember playing against 4 Vises, but I'm pretty sure a modern day version would be just as ugly.  

Yawgmoth's Will:
I'll ignore this one.  

Fastbond:
I think we'd see some Fastbond combo decks, since it would have to be catered to abusing Fastbond.  Nevertheless, such a powerful ability as breaking the land drop is both explosive and deadly.  Imagine a first turn Land, Fastbond.  Do you Force?  If not, you could very well be on the receiving end of land, Duress, land, land, land, Crucible of Worlds, recur some fetchlands cast Horn of Greed, draw a ton, cast Zuran Orb, combo out, gg.  

Summary: It's not necessarily the most potent combo around, but Fastbond's explosive acceleration is deadly nonetheless.  

LED:
Death Wish can still abuse this at 1 mana more than Burning Wish could.  I don't like that.  

Burning Wish:
A cheap tutor.  It's other tutor siblings, Cunning Wish and Death Wish, all cost more mana and have appropriate drawbacks.  That one mana may not seem like much, but there's a big difference between five mana to Burning Wish for Will instead of the six needed to Death Wish for it, not to mention the BBB.

Summary: LED and Burning Wish are victims of Will being so good.

Mind Twist:
I don't play a single copy in any of my decks.  In this format Duress is arguably a lot better because it only costs one mana.  Of course, if Mind Twist were unrestricted I would be scared of anything that can generate mana.  Mind Twist control decks would be scary, since Mana Drain - Twist usually ends the game.  If Mind Twist truly became powerful more people would play Misdirection, but they would probably be the ones playing Mind Twist too.  

Summary: Not as powerful as it once was.  Very quickly ends the game with enough mana.

Crop Rotation:
While cards like Bazaar of Baghdad and Strip Mine are nice to Rotate out (making Crucible-STRIP a common occurrence) I think Academy is the card to abuse.  It breaks Skullclamp combos in half right off the bat, and I wouldn't even be concerned about those because there'd be scarier decks.

Summary: One mana Tutors are powerful, even if they only find land.

Library of Alexandria:
It's no Academy, but it still wins games unmolested.  Library is like a Bazaar of Baghdad with 2 Squees built in.  Some people may say that Library loses to fast starts from other decks, but it still is one of the most powerful cards to play against a control deck.  Control vs. control would boil down to "yea, I could waste his first Library but not the 2nd."  Aggro decks could drop first turn Library and just ride it to a victory.  Combo could use it as an uncounterable way to beat control.  I don't like the sound of that last line.

Summary: A powerful and difficult to stop control hoser.  

This is all just assuming each individual card was unrestricted.  I didn't take into account interactions between these cards, or the effects of multiple unrestrictions.  Certainly some cards on this list are better than others.

[CF]

I'd rather want Wasteland to be restricted rather than Strip Mine being unrestricted. Monoblue or monowhite shouldn't be able to destroy single lands easily. Horribly out of flavour.

--
Chris

[jpmeyer]

LED also gets Belcher 3 of the 7 mana they need to go off with.

[Hi-Val]

Bram: It leads to better understanding about why cards are restricted for what they do, I suppose. I like the "what-if" idea of it; the restricted list is an essential part of T1, and looking at what would happen if there were 4 Fastbonds allowed is fruitful discussion, I feel. It helps us understand why running 1 isn't viable in decks, but why a lot of decks would pack 4. Same with Black Vise or Dream Halls. What is it about the cards that would change the format if they were unrestricted? If you don't think this is fruitful discussion, that's a bummer, because I'm interested in your opinion on the topic of those "fringe cards" like Vise and Fastbond and what would happen.

The catalyst for this discussion was someone proposing the unbanning of Dream Halls and Necro in Legacy. I thought that was ludicrous and so I threw together some decks to test around with it, to see if it was the cards themselves or the surrounding cardpool that made them broken. In the case of Halls and Necro, it was the cards themselves, but I was intrigued by the idea of what makes a card good, and whether it would be distorting.

[Smmenen]

As I said in an unfinished article published here:
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21847

What Would Happen If?

In this part of the article, I was going to actually speculate what might happen if any given card was unrestricted. I didn't get too far, as you can see.

Ancestral Recall
This card’s importance to the format has dropped dramatically in the last two years. At one point this was the most important card in the most important deck in the middle ages of type one from 1997-2000.

[Snip]

What would happen if this card were to be unrestricted? I realize the question seems absurd to even ask, but it’s worth speculating if only to get further insight into the cards power level and reinforce our understanding of the format.

It seems to me that the most probable effect of unleashing four Ancestral Recalls would be this outcome: A vastly dominant MiracleGro deck with only weak counter strategies.
Let me walk you through it. If Ancestral was unrestricted almost every deck in Type One would run 4. Keeper, Dragon, each Combo deck, and every aggro-control deck would run 4. The fear of 4 Ancestral Recall immediately suggests that Combo could really break it. The problem with that is that 4 Ancestral Recall in Aggro-Control like MiracleGro would be very very likely to have turn 1 Force of Will and find more Force of Wills more quickly. So each Combo deck would have to contend with what would not doubt be a sea of decks that can find Force of Will almost immediately. Second, the proliferation of Ancestrals would make 4 Misdirections a staple of the format again. Once again, Gro best is able to abuse 4 Misdirections. The free spell grows the Dryad and Gro could probably even run a couple of Foils because of the gross card advantage gained from Ancestrals. Combo would not be able to deal with so much pitch countermagic at every turn in a deck that is so quick. Gro would then basically have a third or fourth turn Yawgmoth’s Will that is beyond broken after having cast multiple Ancestrals before the combo decks can recoup. TPS is already a turn three storm deck. Draw7 tries to win on turn 1 or 2 and Dragon is turn 2-3. Belcher is the fastest combo deck at a turn 1. The dileimma that will happen is whether they can abuse the Ancestrals. These decks can’t not run Ancestral, but they will have to contend with Gro’s superior numbers of pitchmagic and 4 Misdirections. Combo itself will then be forced to use Misdirections and the format would become extremely distorted. Control decks like Keeper would want 4 Ancestrals but would have to contend, once again, with 4 Misdirections in every deck.

The best anti-Gro strategy might be Workshop Trinisphere – but that, once again, is a risky strategy in that Gro will nearly always have Force of Will or a pitch counterspell. It would be even worse than last June where GroAtog was pretty pervasive. And this isn’t even taking into account the limited number of Ancestrals to go around.

As i said in my analysis - we can't talk about unrestricted the 8 core cards of the format: Lotus, the  Moxen, or Mana Crypt/Sol Ring becuase it is absurd.

I think the hardest card to analyze its impact is Balance.  Balance is a card which hasn't existed in so long we almost have no frame of reference.  It could be quite sane or absolutely ridiculous.  [/quote]

[BigMac]

Black vise was restricted because like Trini it is a dumb bomb and lucky to play with a obvious result when playing first. And a turn 1 land black vise is even more common than a first turn MWS trini. Next to that the synergy between black vise and draw 7 (of which there are a tun nowadays) is very good. Drawing into another black vise while opponent has 7 cards just is that good.

With 4 fastbond the getting infi life combo would become a lot easier to come by as all you pieces can be played in multitudes. Combining that with some white (for tutors and rectors) and your deck will become very hard to beat.

LED is just to good with to many cards. As most mana excellerants it has proven to be very reliable as a manasource in combo decks with all the wished around making good use of it. Also madness would benefit greatly from this card.

Burning wish makes yawgmoths will even more powerfull as you virtually run 4 wills, which makes this card very powerfull. This could mean for many sorcerys that 4 are run in a deck with 4 burning wishes, but mainly the will makes it to powerfull.

Mind twist is the only one that actually will not see that much play due to the graveyard usage nowadays. It still is a powerfull card but running more than 2 makes the chance to big that you draw a dead or less usable card midgame. Nevertheless is the probability of mindtwisting out of a drain or a turn 1 mindtwist of 4 or more cards devastating giving an almost deadly advantage.

Library of alexandria in multitudes makes control mirrors even more boring than now. It just becomes: who gets the Library first wins. So no skill, just pure luck.

In the end most restrictions are made so the game is more balanced. The result of a balanced game is that skill prevales over luck more and more. That is why cards like mana drain and FOW will probably never see restriction. They make the lucky turn 1 ancestral a little harder to be sure of, or the lucky topdeck not so lucky when countermagic is possible.

[Machinus]

At one point a while ago I posed this exact question, but just about LoA. I actually figured out some surprising results, some of which have been touched on already.

First, running four is NOT an automatic inclusion. I made a list of all the control/X decks in the metagame, and LESS THAN HALF maindecked library. This is due partly because having drain mana up on turn 2 is so essential, and also because of the predominance of crucible and trinisphere [it was a valid point until yesterday]. With four off color moxes, sol ring, crypt, and a lot of decks running mana vault and getting mana off drains, colored mana is at a premium at this point in the development of control decks.

I don't agree that control mirrors would degenerate. Control decks with that many maindeck sources of colorless mana would be unable to compete with the rest of the metagame, or even just average combo and prison decks. FoW and mana ramping destroys the benefit of LoA, and when you can't even make blue mana, you won't make it very far (who cares about the control mirrors at the lower tables anyway?).

As smmenen mentioned recently in one of the articles about meandeck tendrils, his team briefly considered choosing to draw with the deck, and then quickly regained their senses and realized how sucidial that is. It would be no different with LoA.dec. Your opponent could play for three turns without having to break a sweat about drain. If you FoW, you lose library.

So while of course LoA isn't coming off the list ever because it is superbroken, the speed and power of the current format really invalidates a lot of the long-term card advantage offered by it.

[Matt]

Affinity would totally give you a reacharound for unrestricting Black Vise while it's busy violating you with them.

[Jacob Orlove]

I think the hardest card to analyze its impact is Balance. Balance is a card which hasn't existed in so long we almost have no frame of reference. It could be quite sane or absolutely ridiculous.

Stax with 4 Balance would be absurd even without Trinisphere, especially since mulling into land mox balance just makes that play better.

[Smmenen]

Oh def. but that isn't the relevant question in my mind.  The quesiton is: would it be the BEST Balance deck?

[MuzzonoAmi]

That sounds like one of them. Or possibly some variant on Rack/Balance that  takes advantage of the bajillion cards that have mad synergy with Balance that have been printed since it got restricted, like Mox Diamond, which, IMO, is a prime unrestriction candidate.

[Jacob Orlove]

Oh def. but that isn't the relevant question in my mind.  The quesiton is: would it be the BEST Balance deck?

I think so, because it also offers the best comeback move from a devastating opposing balance: Workshop Crucible.

[PucktheCat]

I am also very curious about what a good Balance deck would look like today.

Balance is a funny card.  I know for most of the history of the game it has been a control staple, and I have certainly played it in that capacity, but the deck I had the most success with it in was a Zoo/4c Sligh deck.  This was during the period between just before the Urza's combo madness, when 4 Mystical Tutor were legal.  I expected to use the Mysticals to get Ancestral, Wheel of Fortune, Timetwister, etc, but I continually found Balance to be a better target.

The deck's strategy became: beat you down to 10, eating your moxen with Gorilla Shaman, then, when you started to get ahead on cards and lands and started killing my creatures, Balance everything back to topdeck mode (throwing a few Bolts at their head as well).  Then finish the game with a topdeck or Mishra's Factory.

I think Smmenen is right: we have no real idea what a Balance deck would look like.  Probably there would be more than one deck abusing the card.  One thing that is particularly hard to account for is what role the loss of the interrupt window would have on Balance decks.  I used to abuse the hell out of the timing rules with that deck: Wasteland my own lands, Bolt my own creatures, all after they chose not to counter.

Leo