An idea, unrestrict "everything"

[Nantuko Rice]

I was recently reading a SCG forum thread about Gifts Ungiven and some people were calling for the restriction of the card, or the unrestriction of weaker cards compared to Gifts (such as Fof).

We've seen a trend of unrestrictions occuring in Vintage and it will definately continue because there are certain decks or cards that are just not viable anymore, but I feel that it is safe to unrestrict every card as long as it doesn't break some of the cardinal game restrictions of magic. The main limitation I'm talking about is fast mana (and ante cards), I agree that mana accelerators should remain restricted such as the moxes, lotuses, fastbond, channel, etc. Other cards could safely be unrestricted simultaenously.

===

The Following is the Restricted List with all Fast Mana Removed.

Tutor:
Mirage Tutors
Portal Tutors
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Entomb

Draw:
Frantic Search
Fact of Fiction
Gush
Necropotence
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Memory Jar
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall

Other:
Black Vise
Dream Halls
Mind Twist
Balance
Mind's Desire
Regrowth
Time Spiral
Trinisphere
Yawgmoth's Will
Time Walk
Timetwister

===

This is controversial, but what is the point of restricting tutors. If someone is playing blue/black he already has access to 4-6 tutors. Why not unrestrict all of them? Do you think someone willl play 12 tutors in a deck? Are there any tutors that are better than the rest? Honestly, they're quite balanced as far as broken tutors go. Diabolic Intent may be the best balanced tutor overall, but if we were to only compare the restricted tutors, are they not fair?

Demonic: 1B Sorcery
Entomb: B Instant - card goes to graveyard
Consultation: B Instant - risky
Vampiric: B Instant - 2 life and card disadvantage

===

As for draw spells, the only draw spells I would keep on the restricted list are Gush (because it "cheats" the mana system) and Ancestral Recall. Brainstorm is already too good, but Recall is alot better (sometimes. brainstorm happens to be really good against duress). Ancestral Recall also happens to be one of our "nine planets." They recently discovered that Pluto isn't actually a planet, but for our sake we're going to keep considering it our ninth planet because that's what we've been learning for centuries. For that reason Time Walk and Timetwister should remain unrestricted as well. They're also undercosted when compared to more "balanced" versions. Taking additional turns and having a huge reset button are also "breaking" the key rules of the game itself.

Frantic Search isn't up to it's prime anymore. Is there a deck you would play four FoF's in? Even Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain running around unrestricted isn't as terrifying as people think. There have always been ways to deal with combo decks. The last group of draw cards are the draw 7's. I don't see anything taking advantage of Memory Jar, Wheel of Fortune, or Windfall.

===

Now, taking a look at the other category... these are some of the most powerfullest cards ever printed and they deserve to have a spot on the restricted list, but not all of them. It would be crazy to unrestrict cards such as Balance and Yawgmoth's Will, but the others I will argue for. Black Vise needs to come back to give aggro a chance. Black vise may kill a control player in 7 turns, but guess what? The control player will probably have set up a gifts or slaver lock by turn 3. Dream Halls (and the recently unrestricted Mind over Matter) are jokes that let a player "cheat" the mana system but with such high casting costs, they won't get abused. Mind Twist is as weak as ever these days. Earlier I advocated the unrestricting of combo cards, why not take it further? Would any deck play more than one Mind's Desire? Possibly, since we had people contemplating the idea of desiring into more desires. This card I'm actually unsure of because for a high initial cost, it will potentially let you cheat the rest of your deck into play for free. With Time Walk on the restricted list, Time Spiral can come off because it's simply not as strong. Trinisphere needs to stay restricted for it's impact on the mana system. Regrowth won't get back anything good because I anticipate more graveyard hate in vintage. The graveyard is such an integral part of vintage that I'm shocked when I don't see more graveyard hate.

===

With the unrestriction of so many cards at once, you can call it careless, but I can't predict any topdeck taking advantage, or any old deck resurging. One of the things that annoys me most about the vintage community is that we're not use to change. Standard and extended rotate and they MUST change but we're always afraid to let old decks go and have new decks come. It's ironic that human nature fears change because as homo sapien sapiens, we're the forerunner for evolution, adaptation, and change. We need to reflect and rebuild; people have forgotten about evolution.

There are also people who cry for innovation, but also cry that their beloved decks remain the same. We need to shake things up and unrestriction is better than restriction. Some people say we're at the point of "critical mass" and that we can't contain it. Well here's some out of the box thinking: if we can't contain it, why don't we open pandora's box and let it explode. As I said earlier, things will definately get shaken up but we have the ability to adapt to our new changes. We can't keep restricting "broken" cards forever. I say it is important to only restrict the ABSOLUTE broken cards and the ones that impact the key components of vintage such as the limitation of mana, taking turns, and having a global reset button (unless those cards are well costed).

Thanks for your time. This is Jason Zheng.

PS: I realized I left out Tinker. That's probably one of the only tutors I'd keep restricted because again, it breaks the whole mana concept. With that in consideration, should we look at Goblin Welder and Oath of Druids who also break the idea of mana costs? Welder can be dealt with, and so can oath's creatures. I'm actually content with those.

[Draven]

This is controversial, but what is the point of restricting tutors. If someone is playing blue/black he already has access to 4-6 tutors. Why not unrestrict all of them? Do you think someone willl play 12 tutors in a deck? Are there any tutors that are better than the rest? Honestly, they're quite balanced as far as broken tutors go. Diabolic Intent may be the best balanced tutor overall, but if we were to only compare the restricted tutors, are they not fair?

Demonic: 1B Sorcery
Entomb: B Instant - card goes to graveyard
Consultation: B Instant - risky
Vampiric: B Instant - 2 life and card disadvantage

No, people are not going to play 12 tutors, however, they will play 4 Demonic Tutors, which would be nutz. Despite, your comparison, Demonic Tutor is more powerful than the others. If you don't believe me, take a gifts deck and replace the Mystical and a couple Merchant Scrolls and replace them with Demonic Tutors and see what happens. It is called "stupid."

As for draw spells, the only draw spells I would keep on the restricted list are Gush (because it "cheats" the mana system) and Ancestral Recall. Brainstorm is already too good, but Recall is alot better (sometimes. brainstorm happens to be really good against duress). Ancestral Recall also happens to be one of our "nine planets." They recently discovered that Pluto isn't actually a planet, but for our sake we're going to keep considering it our ninth planet because that's what we've been learning for centuries. For that reason Time Walk and Timetwister should remain unrestricted as well. They're also undercosted when compared to more "balanced" versions. Taking additional turns and having a huge reset button are also "breaking" the key rules of the game itself.

Frantic Search isn't up to it's prime anymore. Is there a deck you would play four FoF's in? Even Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain running around unrestricted isn't as terrifying as people think. There have always been ways to deal with combo decks. The last group of draw cards are the draw 7's. I don't see anything taking advantage of Memory Jar, Wheel of Fortune, or Windfall.

Unrestricting Necropotence??? Again, another example, look back a few years ago to the black summer. Four Dark Rituals and four Necropotence =GG. Plain as that. The Draw 7's still need to remain restricted due to the ability of 7 new cards to say, I win.

Now, taking a look at the other category... these are some of the most powerfullest cards ever printed and they deserve to have a spot on the restricted list, but not all of them. It would be crazy to unrestrict cards such as Balance and Yawgmoth's Will, but the others I will argue for. Black Vise needs to come back to give aggro a chance. Black vise may kill a control player in 7 turns, but guess what? The control player will probably have set up a gifts or slaver lock by turn 3. Dream Halls (and the recently unrestricted Mind over Matter) are jokes that let a player "cheat" the mana system but with such high casting costs, they won't get abused. Mind Twist is as weak as ever these days. Earlier I advocated the unrestricting of combo cards, why not take it further? Would any deck play more than one Mind's Desire? Possibly, since we had people contemplating the idea of desiring into more desires. This card I'm actually unsure of because for a high initial cost, it will potentially let you cheat the rest of your deck into play for free. With Time Walk on the restricted list, Time Spiral can come off because it's simply not as strong. Trinisphere needs to stay restricted for it's impact on the mana system. Regrowth won't get back anything good because I anticipate more graveyard hate in vintage. The graveyard is such an integral part of vintage that I'm shocked when I don't see more graveyard hate.

Black Vise unrestricted can get pretty crazy. Turn one on the play , playing even 2 Black Vises before your opponants turn is pretty unloseable. They are going to take 6! damage before they start their turn.

Time Spiral will stay restricted due the untapping of lands (Tolarian Acedemy) ability.  Same with Frantic Search. As for Regrowth, I kinda agree, I am not too sure Regrowth is too broken. Yawgmoth's Will is just better.

You have some interesting ideas, and I am all about slowly unrestricting cards that don't need to be restricted (see Mind Over Matter and Fork), however, a mass unrestriction is not the answer. If you are worried about a Critical Mass explosion, I think a mass unrestriction would lead to a devastating implosion.

 

[PucktheCat]

Combo.

That's all I should have to say.  We already have decks that are pushing the edge of broken with cards like Grim Tutor and Imperial Seal.  Vampiric and Demonic would sure be a boost to them.  The first Demonic Tutor is a BB3 Yawgmoth's Will.  The second gets Lotus to make the Will cost 6 less.  You won't need three.

[forests failed you]

All I have to say is NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nantuko Rice]

Perhaps another thing I should have looked at was the amount of "answers per problem."

Right now we have several answers to a single problem. IE: We have lots of options to stop a "graveyard deck." A factor I should've considered when making my original statement was the amount of answers we'll have to problems by unrestricting things. With that in mind, I realize that the reason we have alot of the current restrictions is because our we want to keep a high answers:problems ratio and most of the restricted cards are problem cards. A mass unrestriction would cause our ratio to severely lower.

With that said, I still believe however that there are definately cards that should still come off the restricted list, following the recent pattern of unrestricting cards like MoM and Fork.

But the reason I posted my original proposal was because I wanted to gather insight on the effects of the unrestriction of several cards at once. Does it really scream combo?

[Harlequin]

They essentially did Unrestrict tutors with the inclussion of portal.  It means you can include almost any number of tutors in your deck ... but you have to choose from a large menu of restricted, plus a fair deal of "lesser" unrestricted tutors such as grim tutor, diabolic tutor, merchant scroll, gifts ungiven and even something like tainted pact.  I have to agree with you in that there is no real logic as to why gifts is unrestricted while entomb is restricted.  Mana cost?  In a format almost defined by mana accellerants is that even a major factor?  you get 4 cards for 4 mana vrs 1 card for 1 mana ... is it really that different?  Or haveing merchant scroll re-range and demonic restricted.  Clearly demonic is all around better, but if you think about its almost like saying "blue decks (generally precieved as the strongest color) can run 4 demonic tutors, and we'll make them blue for you so they are on color ... but everyone else can only run one" why not level the field and un-restrict demonic?

There are alot of restricted cards that I agree would never be played as a 4-of, but clearly running two would be vastly more powerful than 1.  FoF, Desire, and yawg's will all come to mind as good examples of a great 2-of.  

Again how is Double black vise worse than comboing out first turn, alot worse things than 6 dmg can occur before you play a card.  Also with decks that are built around the yard (dragon, dredge) and decks that dont have a hand (uba stax) ... I think vise doesnt have the power it once did.

Yawg's Bargin is a funny animal, unrestricting it would bring rise to mono-black tendrils with a very high first turn kill rate, not as a 4-of but a 2 or 3 of with rits, cabals (and maybe even culling the weak) comeing out your ears.  Then just draw your deck, duress, tutor, will, win.  Unrestricting necro would make combo way too strong.

Balance, lets face it is definately not worth the White now a-days.  The primary control decks in the meta (gifts, oath, and CS) dont even run it.  un-restrict it and let 3c or 4c control make a come back. Balance getting unrestricted would only diversy the meta.  Although it may supercharge 5c stax.

Regrowth again is not that broken anymore.  How is it any better than say merchant scroll.  Let the boy go, its not going to overpower any decks on the market right now.   maybe it would give kobal/glimps a fighting chance.

I would say un-restrict fastbond for the same reason ... but stax would benefit WAY too much.  Maybe if you banned stripmine and restricted wasteland then unrestriced fastbond it would be cool.  Lets see Zuran-crucible-fastbond emerge as the deck that was so feared the day they annouced crucible's creation.

[jpmeyer]

I covered this a while back, although I also didn't take into account many unrestrictions at the same time.

[freakish777]

Its not the "graveyard" decks I'm concerned about running the format with all that stuff unrestricted.

It's Belcher.

Belcher would absolutely love to have 4 Consultations and 4 Demonics to find its namesake and shoot the opponent in the face on turn 1.  The rest of the deck could be mana, land grants, Unmasks and Duresses and there would be little another deck could do other than win the coin flip and win first.


Black Vise and Time Spiral aren't that crazy.  But Desire?  Will?  You are joking, right?

It's not being able to Desire's for something stupid like 10 cards on turn 1 that's that's why the card's restricted.  It's being able to do that and then flip over another one out of your 10 cards you flip.  If that it's good game on the spot, I don't know what is.

[Scott_Limoges]

The format is already saturated with a high density of fast mana producers - critical mass also relates to mana producers.  To unrestricted your suggested list, unrestricted mana producers would need to be restricted, such as Dark Ritual and perhaps Cabal Ritual, to prevent what your trying to limit by keeping fast mana restricted.  At this point, control would dominate by exploiting tutors such as Gifts that ignore the restricted rule.  Slower mana producers then become borderline broken like Mana Drain.

[Whatever Works]

Decks would be so redicules broken that playing more then 1 necropotence wouldnt even be worth it, because you would just be lowering your 99% turn 1 kill percentages...

[PacmanXSA]

Pac

Balance, lets face it is definately not worth the White now a-days.  The primary control decks in the meta (gifts, oath, and CS) dont even run it.  un-restrict it and let 3c or 4c control make a come back. Balance getting unrestricted would only diversy the meta.  Although it may supercharge 5c stax.

Gimme 4 balances and a deck that abuses them ANY day. 

Pac

[Hydra]

I think the argument "well more graveyard hate will solve problem cards" is stupid.  No format is healthy when you're forced to run specific cards at all times just to counter a massive threat offered by broken cards.  It's like Type 2 in 2004 when everyone HAD to run artifact hate in large numbers because Affinity would just tear you a new one if you didn't.  One could argue that combo makes the format unhealthy by this definition as it is forces you to run cards like Force of Will, but things like Force of Will would almost certainly be in decks regardless of how fast combo is.

One thing I'd like to address is Regrowth, since that doesn't seem to be bothering people, but the interactions an unrestricted Regrowth could cause (Intuition for Regrowth, Regrowth, broken stupid card that wins me the game) concern me quite a bit personally.  Unrestricted Regrowth would definitely help the Gro style decks, as suddenly they now have 5 Ancestral Recalls (9 if you count Brainstorm as a pseudo Recall), 5 Gushes, 5 Demonic Tutors, not to mention that getting the broken card drawing spell is relatively easy with Merchant Scroll being unrestricted...  Recoup, while it does similiar things, limits you to only abusing restricted Sorceries, while Regrowth allows you to fully abuse any card you saw fit.  Personally, I don't want to have most spells cast against me once during a game, let alone 6-9 times (counting Will as well).

Another thing I'm curious about is why people want Gifts Ungiven restricted.  While the card is a staple of one of the better decks in the format, it hardly causes the distortion of the format that people seem to think that it does.  Sure it does well in tournaments, but no more so than Oath and Control Slaver, and less so than things like Stax, and we're not calling for the restriction of cards from those decks.

Gifts does allow you to set up brutal plays, but so does cards like Intuition, which hasn't had people screaming for its restriction.  When Gifts starts completely dominating the format, appearing in every deck and games start boiling down to who can make the more broken Gifts pile first, then let's start talking about restriction.

[Draven]

One thing I'd like to address is Regrowth, since that doesn't seem to be bothering people, but the interactions an unrestricted Regrowth could cause (Intuition for Regrowth, Regrowth, broken stupid card that wins me the game) concern me quite a bit personally. 

The format already has that play:

Intuition->Regrowth, Reclaim, Stupid Broken Card (*cough, Will, cough)

or

Gifts->Will, Recoup, Black Lotus, (other stupid thing like Tinker, Buring Wish, etc)

Notice the Gifts version is cheaper than the Intuition verson (although, the Intuition and Regrowth is spread out in 2 turns.) However, the differenc is, green kinda suxors, so running green to do silly stuff with Regrowth isn't all that scary when UBR does all the same things with much more stupid (broken) cards.


[edit]: I just realized this was my 100th post... Hmm, seems like a milestone, or something 

[Harlequin]

I think you may have miss-understood my point.  All I was askings is how can you draw the line thats
Gifts - ok
Intuition - ok
Merchant scroll - ok
-------------------------
Demonic tutor - Restricted
Entomb - Restricted
Consultation - restricted

I'm not saying that gifts should be auto-restricted, I was actually arguing the opposite.  Why not give black splashed decks the same oppertunity that blue decks have.

[Khahan]

Unrestricting everything (except ante and currently restricted mana accels) may not be a bad idea. If nothing else, it could give the format a much needed shake up as well as act as reset button.

What was uber-powerful and all broken 3 years ago isn't necessarily all that great anymore. What better way to figure out which cards are truly broken than to open them all up again?

It would be a long process to truly figure things out. But then again, T1 should be around for quite some time.

[Moxlotus]

Unrestricting everything (except ante and currently restricted mana accels) may not be a bad idea. If nothing else, it could give the format a much needed shake up as well as act as reset button.

What was uber-powerful and all broken 3 years ago isn't necessarily all that great anymore. What better way to figure out which cards are truly broken than to open them all up again?

It would be a long process to truly figure things out. But then again, T1 should be around for quite some time.

Not sure why everybody always thinks that Type 1 needs to be constantly shaken up.  I guess if a brand new deck doesn't come out every 2 weeks people freak out that the format is stagnant.

No-somet things wouldn't be uber broken even though they were a few years ago.  But 4 Balance or 4 DT or 4 Will would be retarded.  It wouldn't be a long process to figure out the basic gist of everything.  Anything that doesn't kill on turn 1 a big chunk of the time ceases to exist.  What a fun time.

[meadbert]

T
I would say un-restrict fastbond for the same reason ... but stax would benefit WAY too much.  Maybe if you banned stripmine and restricted wasteland then unrestriced fastbond it would be cool.  Lets see Zuran-crucible-fastbond emerge as the deck that was so feared the day they annouced crucible's creation.

Hardly anyone plays fastbond in STAX right now anyway so I don't think STAX would abuse it ... at least not at first.  Turboland would be ridiculous though.

[Hydra]

The format already has that play:

Intuition->Regrowth, Reclaim, Stupid Broken Card (*cough, Will, cough)

or

Gifts->Will, Recoup, Black Lotus, (other stupid thing like Tinker, Buring Wish, etc)

Notice the Gifts version is cheaper than the Intuition verson (although, the Intuition and Regrowth is spread out in 2 turns.) However, the differenc is, green kinda suxors, so running green to do silly stuff with Regrowth isn't all that scary when UBR does all the same things with much more stupid (broken) cards.


[edit]: I just realized this was my 100th post... Hmm, seems like a milestone, or something�

With Recoup it's not nearly as overpowering, as you need to flashback the spell, so if it gets countered your plan there fell apart, where as with double Regrowth if the spell gets countered it's still in your graveyard to try for it again.  Reclaim is just icky, as you need another card to put the spell into your hand if you're doing it all on one turn.

[Machinus]

Restricting cards makes decks unviable. Unrestricting them would resurrect monsters that no one wants to return (and probably create new ones).

[Draven]

Reclaim is just icky, as you need another card to put the spell into your hand if you're doing it all on one turn.

If you cast end of turn Intuition for Regrowth, Reclaim, and Will/Tinker/Timewalk (whatever wins the game) and you have a G open, then the Reclaim is most likely better than the Regrowth because you will be able to cast the Reclaim at the end of turn still and draw it next turn and do what ever you need to do.

I am not convinced that the ability to counter the Recouped spell is a disadvantage, because the correct play would be to counter the Gifts. Letting the Gifts resolve and planning on countering the Recouped spell is a bad play.

[pyr0ma5ta]

All I can say is:

Combo.
Winter.

Please think before you post.

[Akuma]

I think there is some merit to this idea. I would not "unrestrict everything" per se, but WotC could unrestrict ONE card every cycle. Obviously there are cards on this list that should not be touched for several reasons (ie. retarded as singletons or in multiples). From the list presented, I agree that mana accelerants should never be unrestricted. Tutors should also remain restricted; unrestricting them unrestricts the 'retarded' cards. So, we can work with the following:

Chaos Orb
Falling Star

These two are just personal preference (I have fond memories of the Chaos Orb days). Errata these two and we are set. Chaos Orb: 1, tap, destroy target permanent. Falling Star: divide creatures into 2 groups, this deals 3 damage to one of the groups. Tap all creatures dealt damage by this. Falling Star is worthless, so it should just be unbanned. Chaos Orb, on the other hand, worded like this, is pretty damn useful in Vintage. So, we could unban ---> restrict it.

Black Vise
Dream Halls
Enlightened Tutor
Entomb
Fact or Fiction
Frantic Search
Gush
Library of Alexandria
Mind Twist
Regrowth
Strip Mine
Time Spiral
Trinisphere
Voltaic Key

The rest of these could possibly be unrestricted ONE at a time just to see what happens. If they prove to be stupid, then re-restrict, no big deal. This can be sort of like a Vintage rotation of sorts. Some thoughts:

Black Vise - try it out, does it help aggro, does it just perform better in some stupid combo? I definitely don't think it would destroy the format, but it would be nice to see what kind of impact this has. It may just reduce games to dumb luck, in which case, back to the restricted list it goes.

Dream Halls + Voltaic Key - I think these cards are just weaker than what it takes to compete in Vintage. Then again, I would like to be proven wrong...

Frantic Search - This card seems weak by today's standards. Perhaps it's interaction with more powerful cards would be too much, who knows?

Gush - I know OMG, GAT will pwns everything!!!! This card would resurrect a different viable archetype. It was never that bad while it existed in our environment. I just think that there were a lot of #$%*ies around when this was unrestricted. Is 4 Gush GAT really worse than current Gifts, Oath or Prison decks?

Although I would hate to see Mind Twist and Library of Alexandria unrestricting, I only own one bb copy of each 

[Guli]

channel in belcher?

[Komatteru]

channel in belcher?

You'd never lose with 4 Channel Belcher.

Also, anyone who thinks that 4 Fastbond.dec wouldn't be the most outrageous thing ever hasn't done enough thinking.  Draw7 becomes a really really ridic deck with 4 Fastbonds.

[Hydra]

If you cast end of turn Intuition for Regrowth, Reclaim, and Will/Tinker/Timewalk (whatever wins the game) and you have a G open, then the Reclaim is most likely better than the Regrowth because you will be able to cast the Reclaim at the end of turn still and draw it next turn and do what ever you need to do.

I am not convinced that the ability to counter the Recouped spell is a disadvantage, because the correct play would be to counter the Gifts. Letting the Gifts resolve and planning on countering the Recouped spell is a bad play.

You're absolutely right, it is a bad play to wait, but if you could capitalize on their bad play (via double Regrowth) instead of letting them somehow make up for it (by countering the flashed back bomb), why wouldn't you?  Of course, that argument is more for Intuition, as I don't think Regrowth interacts all that well with Gifts compared to Recoup.

[Jacob Orlove]

channel in belcher?

You'd never lose with 4 Channel Belcher.

Also, anyone who thinks that 4 Fastbond.dec wouldn't be the most outrageous thing ever hasn't done enough thinking.  Draw7 becomes a really really ridic deck with 4 Fastbonds.

Whatever. 4 Demonic, 4 Consult spells "flawless victory". This whole idea is nonsensical. I'm going to move it to basic community.

[Manpriest]

With Time Walk on the restricted list, Time Spiral can come off because it's simply not as strong.

I guess I just don't understand this statement, could you please elaborate?

It would be a long process to truly figure things out. But then again, T1 should be around for quite some time.

Isn't that what the last 10 years have been?

[pyr0ma5ta]

Pretty sure that Time Spiral is retarded as a 1-of, and with unrestricted Tolarian Academy...Welcome to the Urza's Saga release, 1998.  Oh, and Memory Jar is also unrestricted?  My my, that sounds familiar.

[Tha Gunslinga]

This would just destroy Type 1.  The format is doing damn well right now, we definitely don't need to screw it up like this.

[jpmeyer]

I think that topics like these have merit when you consider unrestrictions that do not have obvious decks that would result.  Even though they are less powerful than say, Balance or Yawgmoth's Bargain, thinking about unrestricted Demonic Consultation or Channel, for instance isn't worth the time since the answer is something like "instant 4-ofs in Belcher".  Unrestricted Ancestral Recall or Time Walk or Library of Alexandria, I think is a more interesting discussion since you can't just boil down the probable results to simple upgrades to existing decks.  What deck would run multiple Time Walks?  How would it use them?  How many additional copies of LoA could a deck run?  What's the best Fastbond deck?  Would people try to build a deck that is capable of casting say, Bargain or Jar if they were unrestricted?