June 1st Banned and Restricted Changes

[Midknight]

Using the Gifts ingine, Recoup, Black Lotus, Yawgmothswill, with Intution seems like another way, to build the deck. If you already drew into one of the above, getting Demonic Tutor Seems good to. If anything, the Intution version, which has been played in the past is almost as good as gifts. Its one less mana, making it faster. It works with AK where Gifts doesn't work. Plus running Merchant Scrolls to find the last Scroll, is pretty insane. When comboing off, you draw a ton of cards. 

[Kowal]

trinisphere by the end of the year

I wouldn't be surprised.  Seems like the flavor of the day is creating an environment where the player is irrelevant.

Also, what the fuck at someone suggesting MIND'S DESIRE coming off the list?  I'm with Klep on this one, even four lotuses would be less retarded than that.

[zeus-online]

Wonder if Drain Tendrils is still playable? The intu/ak engine gets splash hate from ichorid, but 4 gush provides and additional draw-engine which is far better then any other engine in T1.

Something like:
Mana: (24)
2 Underground sea
2 Tropical island
5 Fetch
3 Island
1 LoA
1 Tolarian academy
7 Solomoxen
1 Lotus petal
1 Mana crypt
1 Mana vault

Disruption: (8)
4 Force of will
4 Mana drain

Draw/Search: (18)
4 Brainstorm
4 Gush
4 Accumulated knowledge
2 Intuition
1 Ancestral recall
1 Demonic tutor
1 Mystical tutor
1 Vampiric tutor

Broken: (4)
1 Yawgmoth's will
1 Time walk
1 Fastbond - Thanks to the wonder of gush
1 Regrowth - Thanks to the wonderfull splash for fastbond..

Utility & Win: (7)
2 Rebuild
1 Chain of vapour
2 Dark ritual
2 Tendrils of agony

61 Cards...and 1 rebuild or ritual could probably be cut...Could use some merchant scrolls and probably imperial seal (For fastbond)
Another thing to consider would be if the drain count really needs to be 4 in an enviroment like the one we're all headed to.
Also, the land count might be a tad high considering 4 Gush....Oh And intu/ak might not be needed at all.

I have a very hard time getting used to 4 gush...it's unreal.

/Zeus

[BreathWeapon]

trinisphere by the end of the year

I wouldn't be surprised.  Seems like the flavor of the day is creating an environment where the player is irrelevant.

Also, what the fuck at someone suggesting MIND'S DESIRE coming off the list?  I'm with Klep on this one, even four lotuses would be less stupid than that.

Please, Mind's Desire is worse in T1 than it is in T1.5 or Classic, 6UU, let alone UU, is a ton of mana; you're averaging turn three with out a tutor for Black Lotus, Tolarian Academy, Fastbond or four Explorations, and I bet you'd still lose to Ichorid, Flash and Doomsday. Flash is way, way more retarded than Mind's Desire is, and so is Doomsday with 4 Gush from the looks of it.

[Smmenen]

If, for some reason, Gush proves to be fair,  I think that will just show that Fact or Fiction doesn't deserve to be on the list. 

And if Fact doesn't deserve its place, then doesn't that mean that Gifts the only reason for restriction?

EDIT:

I've been fitzing around with some Gush Storm decks, and they haven't been working like I thought they would.  Hrm.   Either I haven't built them right, or maybe Gro is the right way to go.   Every single game I play, it feels like I want Dryads more and more.    I'm more than a bit surprised.   

[BreathWeapon]

If, for some reason, Gush proves to be fair,  I think that will just show that Fact or Fiction doesn't deserve to be on the list. 

And if Fact doesn't deserve its place, then doesn't that mean that Gifts the only reason for restriction?

Comparing Gifts Ungiven to Fact or Fiction isn't sensible, because Gifts Ungiven + Recoup is closer to Doomsday than it is to Fact or Fiction, and Gifts Ungiven - Recoup isn't the problem, so the sensible thing to do would have been to unrestrict Fact or Fiction and not restrict Gifts Ungiven. People can still argue that it should be restricted because it's a 4xTutor, but that's bull shit, because Doomsday is a 5xTutor, so should we restrict Doomsday in three months because we restricted Gifts Ungiven? You'd have a serious argument for it, considering that Doomsday is awesome with Street Wraith AND Gush.

[Smmenen]

If, for some reason, Gush proves to be fair,  I think that will just show that Fact or Fiction doesn't deserve to be on the list. 

And if Fact doesn't deserve its place, then doesn't that mean that Gifts the only reason for restriction?

Comparing Gifts Ungiven to Fact or Fiction isn't sensible,

I agree with that conclusion.  But that's the basis on which it was restricted.  Clearly it wasn't anything metagame related.  It was "tidying up" the restricted list.

[Purple Hat]

steve, I think the problem with gush storm is that you need something like dryad that gets incrementally better every turn rather than something that requires you to do a bunch in a single turn in the early game, then something like tendrils or tog in the "late" (turn 3+) game.  that's about where I got to in my screwing around.  it's either that or you need 4 tendrils so you can be guarenteed to draw it and not have to tutor for it.  we've gotten so used to playing with 8+ tutors in every deck that we've forgotten that 1 ofs can be hard to find with only 3.

about desire....if I could DRAW MY DECK AND PLAY IT FOR FREE for 4UU I think I'd find a way to do it on turn 2 reliably.  that's just me though.

[Smmenen]

I was looking at the article where I analyzed and supported the restriction of Gush:


"That's Gush, Boys! Why Gush Needed To Be Restricted"
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/5613.html

Here's a quote from 2003:

"One thing I was absolutely certain of is that Gush was at least as good as Fact or Fiction. For fun, I piloted Gro-A-Tog against the pre-restriction Blue Bull S**t - the four-Fact or Fiction, mono-blue aggro-Morphling deck that abused the card so badly it needed restriction. I was stunned that Gro-A-Tog won over 50% of our games. It really drove home how good Gro-A-Tog was."

Also, that article has like 5 different GAT lists for those of you who are trying to figure out where to go design-wise.

[Kowal]

Please, Mind's Desire is worse in T1 than it is in T1.5 or Classic, 6UU, let alone UU, is a ton of mana; you're averaging turn three with out a tutor for Black Lotus, Tolarian Academy, Fastbond or four Explorations, and I bet you'd still lose to Ichorid, Flash and Doomsday. Flash is way, way more stupid than Mind's Desire is, and so is Doomsday with 4 Gush from the looks of it.

Have you even read the card?  It doesn't cost 6UU.  You're averaging turn 1.5 with a deck running four desires.  If you're winning slower than that you're terrible.  The lists when Desire was spoiled won on average turn two or better, and that's with two fewer years of deckbuilding experience and a smaller card pool.

There is going to be nobody else arguing Desire's unrestriction.  It's unreasonable, and stupid, and suggesting it is borderline spam.  It's also off topic.  If you have your heart set on claiming something quite so clearly wrong to those of us paying attention, it's a perfect example of why we have the Vintage Improvement Forum.  Start a thread there instead.

[JACO]

I was looking at the article where I analyzed and supported the restriction of Gush:

"That's Gush, Boys! Why Gush Needed To Be Restricted"
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/5613.html

Here's a quote from 2003:
"One thing I was absolutely certain of is that Gush was at least as good as Fact or Fiction. For fun, I piloted Gro-A-Tog against the pre-restriction Blue Bull S**t - the four-Fact or Fiction, mono-blue aggro-Morphling deck that abused the card so badly it needed restriction. I was stunned that Gro-A-Tog won over 50% of our games. It really drove home how good Gro-A-Tog was."

Also, that article has like 5 different GAT lists for those of you who are trying to figure out where to go design-wise.

Steve, the problem with that testing is that GroATog (and decks like Threshold and other aggro-control with 2-3 Misdirections main) are almost always going to beat up on slower or mono-blue decks. The role of Gush is to refill your hand after you empty it with pitch spells, be a cheap drawer, and help you fend off the opponent long enough to kill them with a Psychatog or Quirion Dryad. That's all you need to do. That is why your testing of a storm based Gush deck most likely won't merit the same successful results. Without Fastbond you aren't really dominating the early game, don't have a clock on the board, and don't have a need to refill your hand. You also won't be casting Gush like 3 times on the first 2 turns without Fastbond, and because of that you might was well just play Pitch Long or BHWC Tendrils. At the moment, the combo deck I think Gush belongs in is a Crucible deck of some sort, as well as Doomsday potentially (with Street Wraith).

One of the reasons Fact or Fiction was restricted was because it was a ridiculous card drawer at the time, and everybody was playing 4. Look back at the results from old European tournaments and you'll see (even as a precursor to the Survival card advantage engine of TNT) that people were playing Fact in Workshop decks as a source of nutty card drawing. If it were unrestricted I really do think people would abuse it and it would end up back on the Restricted list again in a year or less. I would LOVE to play Slaver with 4 Fact or Fictions.

[diopter]

If, for some reason, Gush proves to be fair,  I think that will just show that Fact or Fiction doesn't deserve to be on the list. 

And if Fact doesn't deserve its place, then doesn't that mean that Gifts the only reason for restriction?

EDIT:

I've been fitzing around with some Gush Storm decks, and they haven't been working like I thought they would.  Hrm.   Either I haven't built them right, or maybe Gro is the right way to go.   Every single game I play, it feels like I want Dryads more and more.    I'm more than a bit surprised.   

They don't give you the needed gas, eh? That's what I've been seeing with the list you posted. I am thinking about toying with a core that looks something like:

4 Night's Whisper
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gush
4 Exploration
1 Fastbond
all the topdeck tutors
Yawg Will

with a land+full moxen manabase, plus all the usual suspects (Brainstorm et al.). This might be the way for Gush Storm to go.

[twault]

@Steve

I remember you posted a decklist for Vintage High Tide not so long ago. Do you think 4 x Gush has a place in High Tide? If so, do you think it would make it good enough to be competitive in a major Vintage event? Maybe it's just me, but I think you could do some degenerate things with High Tide....

[Titanium Dragon]

But, I think they missed the boat on Flash big time.  Granted Ich is pretty powerful with FUT.  But, it is kept in check by LD and GY hate, and the fact that it isn't blue based doesn't give it access to counters.  Flash on the otherhand is a blue based deck.  So, even if you try and counter it's bounce it can win counter wars.  It's biggest weakness is COTV at 2.  But, again bounce with counter backup is very easy for Flash.

Lastly, IMO the biggest issue with Flash is that it resembles Tinker, which of course is restricted.

Flash's big weakness is why it is much weaker than Tinker. Tinker is a one-card combo; yes, you need an artifact, but that's completely incidental in Vintage. Flash requires two cards in hand; it requires a flash in the hand and a Hulk as well - and Hulk, without flash, is a completely dead card, as are the combo pieces. Moreover, the two decks can be hosed in many similar ways; Leyline of the Void hurts both significantly, and Crypt works well against both as well (assuming Flash uses the much more efficent kill, though obviously the Disciple kill can ignore that). Its considerably weaker than Tinker.

I don't think Twist is really that bad.  Many post back someone said that Land, Rit, Rit, Valut, Mindtwist could destroy an entire hand/game.  But I contest that is that any worse than Land, Rit Rit Valut Grim, will, rit, grim tendrils?  Also I would point out that it commits more than just mana to do this?  Above is 5 cards of a 7 card hand.  So I think thats at least "vintage" fair.

I don't think hands like that are all that great anyway; you have only two cards left in hand after that particular play, and while obviously devastating, I think the second turn 2 land, ring/other two mana artifact/two moxen, twist is much more devastating as you shred their hand and still have a fairly large hand. I mean, sure, "target player discards their hand" will win a lot of games but slower but less devastating to you hands are better I think.

no, it won't see any play. there's no reason to play a FOUR CASTING COST CARD THAT's A TUTOR when the two tier one decks win either on turn 3 with ZERO spells played, or turn 1 with a 1U spell played. unless you are dumb like me.

In all fairness, manaless ichorid generally casts a fair number of spells, it is just that it doesn't need to do so to win. And Flash's super dominance is, I think, rather exaggerated. I think it will be good, but amazing? It runs eight dead cards.

4 Gush GroAtog beat *both* 4 Fact or Fiction BBS and 4 Necropotence Trix as well as 4 Academy decks:

Thing is, it lost to Long, and that tournament showed that, if anything, the new decks -always- beat the old ones. Rack-balance sucks now, and especially against those. But if you unrestricted balance, there'd be decks that ran four copies that were much better. So maybe groatog will be good, but I think a lot of its choices seem rather outdated today.

I remember you posted a decklist for Vintage High Tide not so long ago. Do you think 4 x Gush has a place in High Tide? If so, do you think it would make it good enough to be competitive in a major Vintage event? Maybe it's just me, but I think you could do some degenerate things with High Tide....

Gush is rather antisynergistic with High Tide, no?

[twault]

I remember you posted a decklist for Vintage High Tide not so long ago. Do you think 4 x Gush has a place in High Tide? If so, do you think it would make it good enough to be competitive in a major Vintage event? Maybe it's just me, but I think you could do some degenerate things with High Tide....

Gush is rather antisynergistic with High Tide, no?

Well, yeah. It would need Fastbond to make it work, which makes it difficult, but it would generate an absurd amount of mana. You'd start by playing High Tide. Tap your lands before you Gush, return 2 islands, draw 2, replay lands with Fastbond, tap lands, play Cloud of Faeries, untap, play Snap, rinse & repeat.

[Imsomniac101]

also don't like Gifts being restricted.  This makes no sense at all.  It's not format distorting.  It's not too powerful.  It's certainly not dominating top eights with multiples in every deck like was implied.  And shit, at least if it were, Gifts is a player intensive deck often enough it adds legitimacy to our format.

Overall, I feel like this announcement really punches Vintage's dignity right in the balls.  We get a bunch more random brokennness at the expense of good decks that demand solid players.  I'm pretty disgusted.

I completely agree with this sentiment. I've already sent an e-mail to Forsythe noting my disgust.

Black Vise, Gush, Mind Twist, and Voltaic Key are UNRESTRICTED.

Seems like Wizards wants to move the format back to the Card-Advantage era. If so, then un-restricting FoF instead of neutering Gifts would allow true control decks back into the format. In my mind that would have been far better.

As for Gush, I think the card is damn good for sure and that Wizards is certainly pushing the limit doing this.

Mind Twist is far too dangerous to let off the list.

The following unrestrictions would have made much more sense to me:
Mox Diamond
Dream Halls
Fact or Fiction (mentioned afore)
Frantic Search
Personal Tutor
Time Spiral
Grim Monolith

If Wizards had any real intent on cleaning up the B&R list, then they would start with the cards i mentioned above, which are considered to be far safer choices than Gush or Mind Twist. I personally think Wizards fucked up big time here.

[BreathWeapon]

Please, Mind's Desire is worse in T1 than it is in T1.5 or Classic, 6UU, let alone UU, is a ton of mana; you're averaging turn three with out a tutor for Black Lotus, Tolarian Academy, Fastbond or four Explorations, and I bet you'd still lose to Ichorid, Flash and Doomsday. Flash is way, way more stupid than Mind's Desire is, and so is Doomsday with 4 Gush from the looks of it.

Have you even read the card?  It doesn't cost 6UU.  You're averaging turn 1.5 with a deck running four desires.  If you're winning slower than that you're terrible.  The lists when Desire was spoiled won on average turn two or better, and that's with two fewer years of deckbuilding experience and a smaller card pool.

There is going to be nobody else arguing Desire's unrestriction.  It's unreasonable, and stupid, and suggesting it is borderline spam.  It's also off topic.  If you have your heart set on claiming something quite so clearly wrong to those of us paying attention, it's a perfect example of why we have the Vintage Improvement Forum.  Start a thread there instead.

I meant 6 mana, two of which is UU, or 4UU. Mind's Desire is definately not averaging turn 1.5, more like turn 2.5, and furthermore, a banned and restricted dicussion thread is more than appropriate for a banned and restricted topic, and retaliating with nothing but hyperbole and flames is definitely spam. Yes, the card is good, but compared to Ichorid, Flash and Doomsday + Gush, I don't think it's as degenerate as other people are making it out to be. Just look at Classic, where Mind's Desire is unrestricted with Lion's Eye Diamond, Chrome Mox and Burning Wish, and Flash is still the superior combo deck. Mind's Desire was pre-restricted almost three years ago, and pre-restriction is the only B&R mistake Wizards every really regretted, so I don't see any problem with giving Mind's Desire a legitimate chance to break the metagame for three months. Hell, restricting Gifts Ungiven was completely arbitrary any way, you may as well take some chances and see where they get you. Look at Gush for fuck's sake.

@Steve, How are you winning with with out Fastbond in Gush Tendrils? Hurkyl's Recall and Tendrils of Agony aren't really going to end the game before your opponent ends it. You're not casting any bombs, you're just assembling a multi-piece combo engine around singletons, which is just really unstable. At least the creatures could kill on their own right. With out any pressure, I don't see how you can really count on Gush. Isn't Doomsday clearly the place to start busting Tendrils + Gush?

Are you blind?  Full warning for trolling and blatantly ignoring moderator instructions. When a mod says stop discussing a topic, you stop discussing that topic.
-Klep

[Titanium Dragon]

I remember you posted a decklist for Vintage High Tide not so long ago. Do you think 4 x Gush has a place in High Tide? If so, do you think it would make it good enough to be competitive in a major Vintage event? Maybe it's just me, but I think you could do some degenerate things with High Tide....

Gush is rather antisynergistic with High Tide, no?

Well, yeah. It would need Fastbond to make it work, which makes it difficult, but it would generate an absurd amount of mana. You'd start by playing High Tide. Tap your lands before you Gush, return 2 islands, draw 2, replay lands with Fastbond, tap lands, play Cloud of Faeries, untap, play Snap, rinse & repeat.

After I made my post I decided to screw around with that, and I wonder: is Horn of Greed good in such a deck? If you can keep on replaying your gushes, then you could potentially draw absolute scads of cards; you need to find the fastbond, but once you've found it you can pretty much go off there and then and draw your deck and use a storm card (or anything, really) to win.

[Smmenen]

@ Twault: Street Wraith should definitely be in any High Tide list.   But Gush doesn't really work that well with it.   The goal is to win on turn two with High Tide + Cloud/Snap engine and Ideas Unbound.   Since you end up wanting to Desire, Street Wraith is amazing. 

@ Breathweapon: Yeah, Gush seems incredible in Dday, as has been repeated throughout this thread.

[SiegeX]

Instead of Horn of Greed what about Trade Routes?  Floating the two mana from the islands you return with gush and discarding them to Trade Routes means you draw 4 cards, that sounds pretty nutty to me.

[Smmenen]

also don't like Gifts being restricted.  This makes no sense at all.  It's not format distorting.  It's not too powerful.  It's certainly not dominating top eights with multiples in every deck like was implied.  And shit, at least if it were, Gifts is a player intensive deck often enough it adds legitimacy to our format.

Overall, I feel like this announcement really punches Vintage's dignity right in the balls.  We get a bunch more random brokennness at the expense of good decks that demand solid players.  I'm pretty disgusted.

I completely agree with this sentiment. I've already sent an e-mail to Forsythe noting my disgust.

Black Vise, Gush, Mind Twist, and Voltaic Key are UNRESTRICTED.

Seems like Wizards wants to move the format back to the Card-Advantage era. If so, then un-restricting FoF instead of neutering Gifts would allow true control decks back into the format. In my mind that would have been far better.

As for Gush, I think the card is damn good for sure and that Wizards is certainly pushing the limit doing this.

Mind Twist is far too dangerous to let off the list.

The following unrestrictions would have made much more sense to me:
Mox Diamond
Dream Halls
Fact or Fiction (mentioned afore)
Frantic Search
Personal Tutor
Time Spiral
Grim Monolith

If Wizards had any real intent on cleaning up the B&R list, then they would start with the cards i mentioned above, which are considered to be far safer choices than Gush or Mind Twist. I personally think Wizards fucked up big time here.

I completely agree with you.   Dream Halls is actually just garbage.   You have hit on many of the core problems.   There were safer cards to unrestrict (I mean, it's not like I didn't advocate unrestricting Mind Twist - I called for it several times, but only after they unrestricted the safer cards first.   

After all of this, I'm beginning to think that a very robust pure card advantage deck like 4 Fact Blue would be healthy for Vintage.  It would provide a safe home for Drains.

In light of these changes, I think we should lobby for the unrestriction of Fact.   

[diopter]

Please, Mind's Desire is worse in T1 than it is in T1.5 or Classic, 6UU, let alone UU, is a ton of mana; you're averaging turn three with out a tutor for Black Lotus, Tolarian Academy, Fastbond or four Explorations, and I bet you'd still lose to Ichorid, Flash and Doomsday. Flash is way, way more stupid than Mind's Desire is, and so is Doomsday with 4 Gush from the looks of it.

Have you even read the card?  It doesn't cost 6UU.  You're averaging turn 1.5 with a deck running four desires.  If you're winning slower than that you're terrible.  The lists when Desire was spoiled won on average turn two or better, and that's with two fewer years of deckbuilding experience and a smaller card pool.

There is going to be nobody else arguing Desire's unrestriction.  It's unreasonable, and stupid, and suggesting it is borderline spam.  It's also off topic.  If you have your heart set on claiming something quite so clearly wrong to those of us paying attention, it's a perfect example of why we have the Vintage Improvement Forum.  Start a thread there instead.

I meant 6 mana, two of which is UU, or 4UU. Mind's Desire is definately not averaging turn 1.5, more like turn 2.5, and furthermore, a banned and restricted dicussion thread is more than appropriate for a banned and restricted topic, and retaliating with nothing but hyperbole and flames is definitely spam. Yes, the card is good, but compared to Ichorid, Flash and Doomsday + Gush, I don't think it's as degenerate as other people are making it out to be. Just look at Classic, where Mind's Desire is unrestricted with Lion's Eye Diamond, Chrome Mox and Burning Wish, and Flash is still the superior combo deck. Mind's Desire was pre-restricted almost three years ago, and pre-restriction is the only B&R mistake Wizards every really regretted, so I don't see any problem with giving Mind's Desire a legitimate chance to break the metagame for three months. Hell, restricting Gifts Ungiven was completely arbitrary any way, you may as well take some chances and see where they get you. Look at Gush for fuck's sake.

@Steve, How are you winning with with out Fastbond in Gush Tendrils? Hurkyl's Recall and Tendrils of Agony aren't really going to end the game before your opponent ends it. You're not casting any bombs, you're just assembling a multi-piece combo engine around singletons, which is just really unstable. At least the creatures could kill on their own right. With out any pressure, I don't see how you can really count on Gush. Isn't Doomsday clearly the place to start busting Tendrils + Gush?

You make a pretty convincing argument for Mind's Desire.

Anyways, Desire is not why I'm making this post. I've started testing a preliminary Gush Doomsday list that looks like this:

4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea

1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl

4 Dark Ritual
4 Exploration
1 Fastbond

4 Doomsday
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gush
3 Night's Whisper
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

4 Force of Will
4 Unmask
1 Chain of Vapor

1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind's Desire
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Research/Development

The land base is vulnerable in the sense that you really want nonbasics on the board early, although Gush + Exploration mitigates that somewhat. Jury's still out on Exploration, although it is definitely useful and not as dead as one would expect. Street Wraith wants to be in this deck but all of the low-power cards are, unfortunately, critical (Tendrils, Desire, R&D, etc.). A slot might have to be freed up for Necro as well, although what do I cut?

Overall I think it's a solid but untuned list, and all aspects of Gush are definitely being exploited.

EDIT: But it doesn't run Brainstorm. Big fail

[Moxlotus]

Does this mean, for the first time since well maybe ever, that it is nigh indisputable that there is no top deck that runs Mana Drain?  This seems to be way more important than any single card becoming restricted/unrestricted.  Could Shops be back with a vengeance?

[Scott_Limoges]

I think everyone in this thread is focussing on the wrong unresticted card.  The card I'm thinking of can end the game turn 2 inside a control deck.

[Purple Hat]

I think everyone in this thread is focussing on the wrong unresticted card.  The card I'm thinking of can end the game turn 2 within a control deck.

really?  mind twist scott?  I'm not sure I buy that really.  a) misd is getting more and more heavily played, b) it takes a lot of luck to cast a twist thats better than hymn to taurach on turn 2 and that hasn't been devistating anyone recently.

[zeus-online]

I think mind twist is pretty bad right now, why?
We've got:
A million combo decks, which are pretty fast, now i know they mostly get hit hard by discard, but still, you'd have to ramp it up turn 2 or earlier...And some of them runs misdirection...Auch.
Mind twisting ichorid is like doing them a favor.

The way i see it, we have to break gush so hard that they will restrict it again, and i think it's very possible.

I really doubt the demise of drains, although they have certainly been weakened...The thing is, drain decks always seems more fair then the rest of the decks, yet people continue to play them, why is this? Resilience, Proper use of playskill, and the ever important role of interacting....If you look at peter jahn's Ultimate Extended tourney, you will see that the most broken decks did not win the tournament, while the more disruption heavy decks finished way ahead of them.

/Zeus

[MaxxMatt]

While I consider cards like Gush or Black Vise as *format defining*, I still think about the not complete randomness of B&R, while doing heavy restricting/unrestricting decisions sch as the last ones.

Without too much thinking, I found at least 3 cards and 2 mechaincs that weren't playable ( because not created ) when Gush have been hit by restrictions.

--Split Second Cards
--Free Playabe Cards

I'm talking about Extirpate, Leyline of the Void.
On a minor issue, even Repeals and Flash and Tormod's Crypt, their large usage and the improving of deckbuilding let me think that Gush and Black Vise, while SOME OF THE STRONGER CARDS playable at now, can be considered a bit less game breaking and format ruining as in the past.

If opponents will play the right cards, maindecked or sideboarded, both Vises and Gushes could be taken in the right spot.

The same arguments could be applied to Flash, even if his *brainless use*, scare me about the brute speed of Vintage at now.




MaxxMatt has an hint for you all:
Would you break the format?
Play Asimmetrical Timetwisters

[molestake]

The following unrestrictions would have made much more sense to me:
Mox Diamond
Dream Halls
Fact or Fiction (mentioned afore)
Frantic Search
Personal Tutor
Time Spiral
Grim Monolith

Fact or Fiction is the only card on this list that would actually see play. If they had unrestricted the others it would have been 'safer' than what they did unrestrict, and helped clean up the B/R list, but wouldn't have actually changed anything. Instead they've given us a new format. Is a 4x Gush format going to be fun? I don't know, but I'm looking forward to it.

[zeus-online]

The following unrestrictions would have made much more sense to me:
Mox Diamond
Dream Halls
Fact or Fiction (mentioned afore)
Frantic Search
Personal Tutor
Time Spiral
Grim Monolith

Fact or Fiction is the only card on this list that would actually see play. If they had unrestricted the others it would have been 'safer' than what they did unrestrict, and helped clean up the B/R list, but wouldn't have actually changed anything. Instead they've given us a new format. Is a 4x Gush format going to be fun? I don't know, but I'm looking forward to it.

Frantic search is nuts, i would not want that to be unrestricted.
FoF is nuts, but i still want it unrestricted I think it would give control a shot in the current meta-game.

/Zeus

[Cunningbeaver]

I think one of the key things that alot of people seem to be forgetting in regards to gush the psuedo debate about FoF and the slight mention of mind's desire is this. How crazy or insane can you get when the first copy leads into the second copy and even on those odd occasions a third copy.

That was part of what gave FoF its insane card advantage sure up front you could take 3 cards but what if you flipped a 2nd fact and other brokeness you could always have the potential to get another one and at least one semi relevant card. I believe the same holds true for mind's desire, up front the cost of 4uu seems high and maybe inconsistent but what happens when  you  desire for 5-7 and in those cards you flip the second desire. Now you have suddenly gone from a medium storm count to one in the teens and are desiring a second time with almost 1/3 of your deck removed with TWO more desires left. The possibilites are a little ridiculous.

These instances are also what make gush so powerfu. Being able to generate mana and cards at such a slight drawback is a little to fast and strong. What other card can you think of that can do that? When you couple that with the ability to find another gush (i.e by drawing it or casting merchant scroll or other tutors) you open up alot of avenues for combo and aggression decks.

I think going forward the thought of playing gush + fact or fiction is just absolutely balls insane. At no point would I want someone to go land duress then land mox mox tap for two gush then fact. Some of this discussion is moot as alot of others have said and I am sure someone will streamline a hybrid gush.long or DD deck soon to merit its re-restriction.