Brainstorm, Flash, Gush, Scroll, and Ponder Restricted

[oneofchaos]

I'm waiting for the april fool's

[meadbert]

That is a great point HQ!  Sui Black handles Combo just fine and wrecks Ichorid.

Stax is not terrible either.

[vroman]

[xycsoscyx]

Another sad thing is that even decks like Fish would suffer from these restrictions. 

[Juice]

Without Will, what good is: Gifts Ungiven, all that Pondering, Brainstorming, and Gushing for mere parity?

I'm reasonably sure I can kill you easily without Will by using Fastbond. HTH.

Sure you can, but the overall deck isn't nearly as good.   

Smennen, don't forget that the (suspected) best blue decks of the moment (that you have written about a lot those days) don't play or don't need Will to win : Tyrant Oath and Flash.
Sure the flash restriction is enough to eradicate the Flash decks but Tyrant Oath would have kept his strength.

I'm not unhappy that we will see only 1 brainstorm and 1 ponder in U decks now but Workshops would have need some restrictions too (mishra's workshop ? that would make cry a lot of owners...). For Ichorid, I don't know if brainstorms and Ponders really change the matchup. That's all about sideboard and mulligan into leyline or piting.

On a financial side, I agree with the idea of a watchlist. This would have an impact on the prices too, but in a smoother way before the official DCI restrictions.

[Toad]

With Brainstorm restricted, people will have to play more lands and really work on their mana bases instead of running jank and simply relying on Brainstorm to do the job for them. And that's clearly not a good sign for Workshops. Furthermore, with the format less tempo oriented now, games will be slower, Mana Drain will come online, and that is another bad sign for Workshops.

Honestly, all these restrictions make me want to play Blue again. Blue as in, real Blue decks with Mana Drain and actual card advantage. Blue is still alive and kicking. Blue got stronger because the best decks at abusing the recently restricted blue cards weren't them.

[oneofchaos]

I think we should have unrestricted stuff in addition to restricting stuff. A new format means old cards once threats should be allowed to see if they bite or bark.  That was the point of restricting these new 5, they bit.  Dream halls just kinda purs. 

To the DCI on the topic of B/R list management:
YOUR DOIN IT WRONG!

[Zieby]

With Brainstorm restricted, people will have to play more lands and really work on their mana bases instead of running jank and simply relying on Brainstorm to do the job for them. And that's clearly not a good sign for Workshops. Furthermore, with the format less tempo oriented now, games will be slower, Mana Drain will come online, and that is another bad sign for Workshops.

Honestly, all these restrictions make me want to play Blue again. Blue as in, real Blue decks with Mana Drain and actual card advantage. Blue is still alive and kicking. Blue got stronger because the best decks at abusing the recently restricted blue cards weren't them.

I Seccond this completely.

I'm looking forward to mi first tournament on june 29 to let people know what the real power of Blue is.

[beemer]

What the fuck?

This is the worst thing they could have done

yeah this is about where i quit magic

[xycsoscyx]

At least I don't have to worry about getting Chalice at one out ASAP, but still.  Even as a Stax player, I don't like the potential restriction of Brainstorm and Ponder, I really think it's too far.  It eliminates a host of popular decks for no apparent reason, it's honestly more of a suprise than restricting Gifts or unrestricting Gush.  I think I'll go buy an island and play Magic the way it was meant to be played, with my oppoents playing 4x Brainstorm and 4x Ponder (and me with 4x Trinisphere)! 

[Whatever Works]

Blue wont die. It will actually evolve to what blue was originally several years ago with Tog.

Around the time of gifts ungiven came this new concept of Vintage magic.

Card Quality > Quantity.

Hulk won by massively outdrawing the opponent with Inuition/AK. Same with 4cc with Skeletal Scrying.

These then went away to the more explosive/consistent/versatile system using Merchant Scroll and Gifts Ungiven, and then came along a new more combo'ish theme for blue control that lasted till right about now.

So I guess blue will evolve back 3 years I think. Wow time has went fast.

[Troy_Costisick]

On a financial side, I agree with the idea of a watchlist. This would have an impact on the prices too, but in a smoother way before the official DCI restrictions.

I like this as well.

[Xyre]

YES! YES! YES!!!!

In Richmond as Smemmen mentioned in his latest article he and I were talking about the state of vintage. My frustration with the format was that first off YOU HAVE TO PLAY THE BLUE DECK, sure blue is the best color, sure if you think you are the better player you play the blue deck to maximize your odds of winning because it has the most powerful cards, but for vintage, in my opinion its just not the same.

The first thing I hate about the blue deck: Every blue deck has the same 45 cards. You have to play 4 Gush, Brainstorm, Ponder, Merchant Scroll, Force of Will etc etc. The room for innovation is pretty slim.

The second thing I hate about the blue deck: The mirror. The mirror isn't decided by tech, or skill, or anything other than draw. Even worse none of the cards do anything, the game is honestly decided by whoever does more STUFF. Duress/Thoughtseize you, Gush, Brainstorm put 2 lands back, Scroll for Recall, Recall. Nine spells later, the board is the same and I have drawn 100 cards, guess what my hand is all Brainstorms Ponders Scrolls and Duresses! Then after I have cast all those ill get a Fastbond. Fastbond sure is a neat card, really doesn't do anything when you think about it, since when was playing extra lands a super broken effect, before Gush it really wasn't in any decks at all. Well now that I have fastbond I get to play all my crappy cantrips FASTER and then I get Yawgmoth's Willl which ill use to replay all my crappy cantrips and ill draw my win condition Tarmogoyf? no Meloku (lol) nope, some storm card. LAME!

The third thing I hate about the blue deck: Its so consistent. When your deck is all cantrips and restricted cards, as long as you draw lands and spells your hand is going to be sick.

When I complained about all these very things to Steve, he asked me what I would do to fix vintage. I didn't really have an answer except unrestrict Necro so there would be a sick black deck to fight the gush decks. He asked me if restricting Scroll would fix anything, though it would make the Gush+bond plan worse, people would just play more garbage spells that dig, like Impulse.

Without knowing it, these are exactly the changes I was asking for. The blue deck has taken a serious blow and I for one could not possibly be happier.

- Owen

But the solution I suggested was to Ban Yawg Will.  http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10071.html

Without Will, what good is: Gifts Ungiven, all that Pondering, Brainstorming, and Gushing for mere parity?  How useful really from a tempo perspective is Scroll for Ancestral if it isn't redoubled with a Yawg Will shortly afterward?  Not very.  That's why people used to dislike Scroll, even when I was advocating Scroll back in the day.  They felt that Scroll wasn't very good because it wasn't a continuous source of card advantage.  That's why people played Thirst over Scroll.   

Exactly. The solution to most balance issues related to the B/R list isn't to restrict as many potentially broken cards as possible, it's to kill the one truly broken card that made all those potentially broken cards broken in the first place. Without Will, Gush becomes just a Gro deck. Yes, it can make broken plays, but those broken plays end once the Gro player hits the four-copy mark. That's the reason why Vintage fears Regrowth - because it breaks the four-copy or one-copy rules.

[Thicketman]

this is the greatest thing ever! Things will actually be unpredictable for a short while. No reason to quit or cry about. This should be exciting. Now I can use other cards!

[Moxlotus]

Then let's restrict Force of Will first, since it's the most played card in the format.  And Leyline of the Void, since it's made it's way in to almost every deck regardless of color.  And Duress and  Thoughtseize, since they're played in EVERY SINGLE BLACK DECK EVER.  

Force and Leyline are reactive cards.  They are not threats or cards that help find threats.  There aren't too many reactive cards on the restricted list.

Strip Mine was restricted because it was format warping and caused mana screw headaches for everyone (which increases luck and decreases skill), not because it was prevalent.  Prevalence is not a criteria for restriction, but it can be an indicator that a card fulfills actual criteria for restriction (in Strip Mine's case, warping the format in an undesirable way).

Prevelance is a criteria.  It was the reason Strip Mine was originally restricted then banned in Type 2.  History ftw.  Skullclamp is another.  Every deck was finding ways to try to abuse clamp.  Tooth and Nail became Elf and Nail so it could run the card.  

forget that for a reactive deck to compete with the raw power available in Vintage, it needs to be efficient.  It is impossible for a blue deck with 22 mana sources and no hand sculpting to compete with aggro, because it will not be able to consistently draw answers and mana when it needs them

Steve making top 8 at gencon in a field of workshop aggro and fish seems to say you're wrong.  And you seem to think that BS and Ponder were the only ways to sculpt your hand.  As if Impulse doesn't exist.

A reactive deck with a ton of potentially dead cards iit can't Brainstorm back is just screwed.  The end result is that playing blue decks will be much less skill based and much more luck based, as success will be contingent on drawing the proper answers at the right times and nothing else.
 

Ever play Keeper?  Or Mono blue?  Or Forbiddean?  Or Draw-go?  No brainstorms there.  Lots of reactive cards.  They seemed to do just fine.  And they seemed to take a lot of skill to do good.  You are 100% incorrect.  The end result is that you can't be a monkey and just cantrip through your deck to find your fastbond.  You actually have to play control and play it well.

Grim Long is not dead.  Belcher is fairly consistent on the play when not facing FoW (it is indeed vulnerable to Duress on the play).

Make a Grim Long deck without Brainstorm.  I'd love to see it.  I helped build Pitch Long.  I've played storm combo for several years very proficiently.  The deck is essentially dead without Brainstorm.  Prove me wrong.

Workshop -> Sphere/Chalice/Tangle Wire is fairly consistent.

Sure, if you can draw that workshop.  Shop decks are pretty crappy when they can't find their shop.  Steve v. Chapin playing Gifts against Stax showed how good Stax is when it gets its shop and how much it loses when it doesn't.  

Vintage is the one place that allows people to play pet decks for years.

Epic fail.  

With Brainstorm restricted, people will have to play more lands and really work on their mana bases instead of running jank and simply relying on Brainstorm to do the job for them. And that's clearly not a good sign for Workshops. Furthermore, with the format less tempo oriented now, games will be slower, Mana Drain will come online, and that is another bad sign for Workshops.

Honestly, all these restrictions make me want to play Blue again. Blue as in, real Blue decks with Mana Drain and actual card advantage. Blue is still alive and kicking. Blue got stronger because the best decks at abusing the recently restricted blue cards weren't them.

I agree with all of this.

[NoYuo]

I dunno if I hate it or not. Brainstorm just allowed people to run ultra-greedy mana bases. People will need to run 59 card decks now, instead of the 56 cards that brainstorm allowed for.

[Duncan]

And while discarding cards to Bazaar could be seen as a disadvantage, it's not really, since they left Yawgmoth's Will in the format.

Hmmm, I thought about it, and I can't name a single deck that has used both bazaar and Will in the last 3 years.

Forino Sui Black used both Will and Bazaars (last Vintage champs: http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=637&highlight=3#place3).

forino's sui-black actually sounds like an awesome option if belcher, ichorid, and shop were to be top decks, particularly when he played null rods.

I think Forino Sui Black is a good starting point when exploring the new options of storm combo. It abuses Bazaar in a storm package and isn't affected at all by these restrictions. It was able to compete in a field of GAT, Ichorid, Fish and Staxx before so I believe it will be a solid choice in post-June 20th metagame. Only the sideboard needs to be modified a bit to better suit the Stax matchup.

[arctic79]

Like I said earlier I've accepted this fact of life and will soldier on in the new era of Vintage.
But if there are fingers to point they should all point at *Smmenen, DAMN his deck building and play abilities, putting are beloved cards into the limelight.  The DCI probably have a tracking device on Stephen's cards and base their descisions on what he plays.


*By no way do I really blame Smmenen .

[bronxie]

Yall, chill out... this is a good thing for the magic environment.  it will put skill back in vintage and make people think of thier own decklists...

Merchant Scroll: was an unrestricted tutor.  too good
Ponder: not really sure bout this one
Brainstorm: it was so played and so good. every deck in the world played 4 (sans like 3 or 4 decks) and it pretty much neutralized duress efects and allowed people to get into forces.  PLAY TFK
Gush: GAT was too good and gush combo was too overpowered
Flash: weve all seen this one comming for quite a while

Dont flame me for this, but i like that the format is changing.  this is going to bring in a new crew of people who are deck builders, not people who like to net deck like everybody else.  yeah, it rapes the format and changes up everything, but i think it is for the greater good.

[Smmenen]

Yeah, tell me about it

[Eandori]

Do they have monkeys making these choices?  This seems stupid.  I want to see some SERIOUS DATA on their part that shows good reason for this.  Just because a card is used a lot does not make it broken or overly powerful.  I would say that Brainstorm's biggest jobs were evening out bad draws and surviving duress.  I absolutely 100% disagree that brainstorm needed to be restricted.

Gush?  Sure.  Take it.  Why the hell did they ever unrestrict it?  Do they listen to us?

[Thicketman]

  Do they listen to us?

No

[bronxie]

does anybody but me see this as a good thing??? come on now

[Matt]

Remember in 2004/early 2005 when you guys were like, "Quit bitching and deal with the changes, Legacy players!" and we were all like, "But they took our format away!" and you were all like, "Too bad, you should have bought power, and then you wouldn't have cared!"

Yeah, I remember it too.  Shoe's on the other foot now.  But hey, I'm actually excited for you guys.  Once we actually did stop bitching and got to innovating, some pretty interesting stuff turned up.  I'm sure you guys will find the same.

Lol, have you read this thread? Vintage players ARE "dealing with it" with all the grace that 1.5 players did not display in 2004. There's like 3-4 people who flew off the handle this time, none of whom are "big names of Vintage," and at least that many whose response has been, "Sweet! This might get me to play Vintage again!"

Take your misplaced shadenfreude elsewhere.

[bronxie]

Remember in 2004/early 2005 when you guys were like, "Quit bitching and deal with the changes, Legacy players!" and we were all like, "But they took our format away!" and you were all like, "Too bad, you should have bought power, and then you wouldn't have cared!"

Yeah, I remember it too.  Shoe's on the other foot now.  But hey, I'm actually excited for you guys.  Once we actually did stop bitching and got to innovating, some pretty interesting stuff turned up.  I'm sure you guys will find the same.

Lol, have you read this thread? Vintage players ARE "dealing with it" with all the grace that 1.5 players did not display in 2004. There's like 3-4 people who flew off the handle this time, none of whom are "big names of Vintage," and at least that many whose response has been, "Sweet! This might get me to play Vintage again!"

Take your misplaced shadenfreude elsewhere.

thank you! i agree --> more people gonna play vint again cause a lot of the overpowered decks are down and out.  also more room for new deck ideas!

[prosbloom225]

Remember in 2004/early 2005 when you guys were like, "Quit bitching and deal with the changes, Legacy players!" and we were all like, "But they took our format away!" and you were all like, "Too bad, you should have bought power, and then you wouldn't have cared!"

Yeah, I remember it too.  Shoe's on the other foot now.  But hey, I'm actually excited for you guys.  Once we actually did stop bitching and got to innovating, some pretty interesting stuff turned up.  I'm sure you guys will find the same.

Lol, have you read this thread? Vintage players ARE "dealing with it" with all the grace that 1.5 players did not display in 2004. There's like 3-4 people who flew off the handle this time, none of whom are "big names of Vintage," and at least that many whose response has been, "Sweet! This might get me to play Vintage again!"

Take your misplaced shadenfreude elsewhere.

thank you! i agree --> more people gonna play vint again cause a lot of the overpowered decks are down and out.  also more room for new deck ideas!

Not necessarily, there will be a brief period of people trying new decks, but it will turn into a format with 2-3 top tier decks and 3-5 decent decks like it always has been.  This change does nothing but limit your choices.

[Shock Wave]

Remember in 2004/early 2005 when you guys were like, "Quit bitching and deal with the changes, Legacy players!" and we were all like, "But they took our format away!" and you were all like, "Too bad, you should have bought power, and then you wouldn't have cared!"

Yeah, I remember it too.  Shoe's on the other foot now.  But hey, I'm actually excited for you guys.  Once we actually did stop bitching and got to innovating, some pretty interesting stuff turned up.  I'm sure you guys will find the same.

Lol, have you read this thread? Vintage players ARE "dealing with it" with all the grace that 1.5 players did not display in 2004. There's like 3-4 people who flew off the handle this time, none of whom are "big names of Vintage," and at least that many whose response has been, "Sweet! This might get me to play Vintage again!"

Take your misplaced shadenfreude elsewhere.

thank you! i agree --> more people gonna play vint again cause a lot of the overpowered decks are down and out.  also more room for new deck ideas!

Not necessarily, there will be a brief period of people trying new decks, but it will turn into a format with 2-3 top tier decks and 3-5 decent decks like it always has been.  This change does nothing but limit your choices.

How does an essential rotation of the format "limit your choices" ? The metagame hasn't even developed yet. Right now, there is the most choice possible. Yes, top tier decks will be developed and eventually the metagame will adapt, but until then, people are free to innovate and try new things.

What limits innovation is a format with cards like Flash and the Gushbond engine which were clearly superior to every other strategy.

[prosbloom225]

Remember in 2004/early 2005 when you guys were like, "Quit bitching and deal with the changes, Legacy players!" and we were all like, "But they took our format away!" and you were all like, "Too bad, you should have bought power, and then you wouldn't have cared!"

Yeah, I remember it too.  Shoe's on the other foot now.  But hey, I'm actually excited for you guys.  Once we actually did stop bitching and got to innovating, some pretty interesting stuff turned up.  I'm sure you guys will find the same.

Lol, have you read this thread? Vintage players ARE "dealing with it" with all the grace that 1.5 players did not display in 2004. There's like 3-4 people who flew off the handle this time, none of whom are "big names of Vintage," and at least that many whose response has been, "Sweet! This might get me to play Vintage again!"

Take your misplaced shadenfreude elsewhere.

thank you! i agree --> more people gonna play vint again cause a lot of the overpowered decks are down and out.  also more room for new deck ideas!

Not necessarily, there will be a brief period of people trying new decks, but it will turn into a format with 2-3 top tier decks and 3-5 decent decks like it always has been.  This change does nothing but limit your choices.

How does an essential rotation of the format "limit your choices" ? The metagame hasn't even developed yet. Right now, there is the most choice possible. Yes, top tier decks will be developed and eventually the metagame will adapt, but until then, people are free to innovate and try new things.

What limits innovation is a format with cards like Flash and the Gushbond engine which were clearly superior to every other strategy.

What limits innovation is the fact that your cardpool is going to be limited.  Also, decks like ichorid and stax, which were already top-tier, are losing nothing with this "rotation", what makes anyone think that anything new will come out of this seeing as those two standards are still around?

[Moxlotus]

Also, decks like ichorid and stax, which were already top-tier, are losing nothing with this "rotation", what makes anyone think that anything new will come out of this seeing as those two standards are still around?

Don't look at what decks didn't get hit.  Look at what decks were being kept down by the decks that were hit.

[Gexzilla10]

You see. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. It started with the innocuous banning of Shahrazad. And since no one (aside from myself) made too much of a fuss about that banning, it would seem they've moved on to larger prey. I must say I agree with Flash being restricted but to restrict the most popular card drawing spells, that just seem ludicrous. I makes me think that they're just trying to stir the pot, and since they hardly sponsor Type 1, they can get away with it.

Perhaps now you'll see the forest for the trees and start calling Wizards out on these kinds of mistakes. Or, of course you could just lie down and take it. It's your choice.