Brainstorm, Flash, Gush, Scroll, and Ponder Restricted

[Dxfiler]

2) Gush- Should've never been unrestricted.  It's a little too powerful unrestricted.  Truthfully I would've been ok with it being left alone but it clearly would've been the best 4 of left free to roam after scroll so I'm fine with it getting the axe... again.

Truthfully, with Scroll and Brainstorm restricted, Gush was pretty much dead.  It makes very little sense aside from the symbolism. 

Eh... I'm not sure I'd go that far. 4 Gush/Fastbond is still pretty good even with scroll/brainstorm getting the axe.  Yes, it's not even in the same stratosphere of 4 gush/4 scroll but it's still quite powerful and most decks that played 4 gush probably would've continued to use them without skipping a beat.  They'd chain off less frequently due to less merchant scrolls but still they'd have access to 4 gush and that probably would be fine.

They definitely restricted Gush for more than just symbolism.

- Dave

[Akuma]

We've done this dance before.  I was crying chicken little about dark ritual when trinisphere was restricted.  I was wrong.  I wish people could look at history and learn from mistakes.

There is really no "chicken little" here...

The problem here is that cards like Brainstorm and Ponder do not fit with the restricted list which is mostly fast mana / severely undercosted / tutor cards. They are cards that are the current best at what they do, by removing them, they will be replaced by what is next in line (Impulse, Serum Visions, Top???). Their restriction serves no purpose, just to relegate them to one ofs. This could possibly lead to a "what will be next in line scenario", given the circumstances.

If this is the case, the "sky will not fall", all that is being said is that I think this is a horrible precedent. Vintage decks were finally starting to look like decks from other formats (4 ofs), now we are back to looking more like Highlander, great...

This is definitely reminiscent of the Necro restrictions in extended, they kept axing everything but the engine. Merchant Scroll was the only thing that did not make sense (Personal Tutor <<<<< Merchant Scroll).

[reaperbong]

I've been soaking this up and tinkering with my decks since Monday's announcement. Overall I like it and it has a positive impact on my local meta. Just about everyone was playing the same Gushbond shell with full proxies, it was getting annoying.

I totally called it though, last Friday we had Vintage play and I lost to a Tropical Storm deck and a Painter's combo deck in the gushbond shell. They were both running 4x Brainstorm, 4x Ponder, 4x Gush and 4x Merchant scroll. I pointed out that the Monday decision is likely to kill their deck and opponents would just laugh like "yea Merchant Scroll is a big problem" or "unrestricting Gush was pretty dumb" No lie, I even said that Brainstorm is likely to go. Funny thing was that nobody really took it seriously. Now their decks are dead and I'll be laughing all the way to the bank next week with my new Dreadnoughts build. 

anyway, I'm trying something out running 4x the old Ice Age card Diabolic Vision. Haven't heard a mention of this card in place of Brainstorm/Ponder yet. surely I'll get shot down but does anyone else think it might be viable? it only costs one more mana but digs two cards deeper. Also pitchable to FOW or Misdirection.

[samurai_socks]

After the poorly decided un-restriction of Gush and the disappointing restriction of gifts, how can we be surprised?

Do I like the changes? No, not particularly. But there is nothing that we can do about them (other than send an email on Friday). In saying that I do have a few things that I feel Wizards needs to keep in mind when thinking about the B/R list.

1.   The B/R should be for fast mana, tutors, and un-fun cards. This has always been Wizards policy, if they have changed their policy fine. But how about you let the players in on that fact.
2.   In the old days of B/R there was a watch-list. Why don’t we still have this? I am sure Shops and Bazaars are permanently on this list just awaiting the day that someone doesn’t stick up for them when they have their meeting about which cards to put on/off the B/R list.
3.   Put someone in charge of the B/R list for vintage. I am unaware of how the B/R is calculated every 3 months, whether by majority votes or by some big grey ogre in the Wizards complex. Whichever way it is, some transparency would be appreciated by the community (though I know that we will get some at least on Friday).
4.   Who would I put in charge of the B/R list? Hard question but obviously the pillars of the community would be the most apt individuals. Not that this would perhaps be the best idea, but it would at least be interesting if the Winner of Vintage Worlds was given some control over influencing the B/R list. This could morph the metagame year by year, if Wizards is so worried about a lack of change.
5.   If these were the 5 cards that were pinpointed by Wizards, they should have chosen a couple of the cards to restrict and put the others on the to-watch list, this would have been less of a shock to the collective vintage ‘conscious.’
6.   The five cards that Wizards have pinpointed as problem cards need to be looked at in a vacuum as well as in the decks they were housed in. All five of the cards that were restricted were being played in the same decks. With the obvious exception of Flash. In this case, Wizards should have looked at how to ‘Nerf’ these decks by restricting the fewest number of cards.
a.   Merchant Scroll – ‘So many insane plays’ says it all really. Best unrestricted tutor. It HAD to be restricted according to old B/R reasons.
b.   Gush – I don’t think it’s anywhere near as playable without merchant scroll. Restricting merchant scroll I feel solves the Gro-Atog Problem.
c.   Flash – I feel that Wizards should have used the same analysis for Flash as for Gush; it is much weaker without merchant scroll.
d.   Brainstorm – I own 350+ brainstorms, it is my single favorite card that I have collected since I started playing (Ice age was the first set I bought alot of). In saying that, the utility of brainstorm + fetch lands is too good. As much as it is a skill testing card, it is also potentially brutally unfair and could be seen as unfun (making discard a less viable strategy) or as a potentially strong tutor (even though it is obviously not a tutor). Brainstorm had to be restricted.
e.   Ponder – I feel like with the restricting of merchant scroll and brainstorm, ponder is obviously a must play but it also slows down the format (by being a sorcery) and prevents the level of plays that you had with both brainstorm and ponder. I feel that they should not have restricted ponder. Wizards could have put it on the B/R watch list, and watched to see how much prevalence it gained and whether it was restriction worthy.

- All-in-all, I Feel like Wizards could have achieved most of their goals by restricting brainstorm and merchant scroll, and waiting to see if that was enough to castrate the shells of the decks that remained.

As an additional afterthought to the B/R list, I always think about what cards Wizards are going to be printing in the future. Is there some ‘fair’ brainstorm card in the near future (that perhaps does that same thing but for only 2 cards, for example).

As a community, I feel that the majority of people would agree that ponder should be taken off the Restricted list. I would ask anyone that is emailing Wizards to specify that they would like this individual card taken off the list. Maybe my conjecture is wrong but if the whole vintage community is in unanimity then perhaps they will roll back this specific change they have made.

-Cheers-

PS- Steve you have to stop talking about how good certain cards are someone from Wizards is obviously reading your articles.

[Nehptis]

I echo the sentiments of some of the folks above.  Should the DCI make the B/R decision process more transparent?  Instead of being huddled in a closed room making decisions based on what; tourney reports? Steve's articles, TMD posts?…who knows?  And how long is the decision process, truly?  Do they have semi-active dialogue about Restriction / Ban-worthy cards between each announcement?  Or is it a single 4:30 PM meeting the day before the announcement comes out?

Decision making process transparency is something I would like to see happen and with that a re-publishing of the B/R Watch list, assuming they still maintain one.  If they don't still maintain one then they should.

To anyone who has an "in" with the DCI (I'm assuming Judges and folks like Steve M) please try and lobby on our behalf for this change.  I think some level of transparency is healthy for the players, the DCI and Magic in general.

[wraith985]

A few days removed from the initial shock, I'm in agreement that the sky isn't falling and Vintage isn't dead, but I still take severe issues with the fact that they went and restricted five cards at the same time after feeding us the line time and time again that they wanted Vintage to change gradually, that they'd deal with problem cards and archetypes as they arose and make small changes and wait to see how they affected the format before proceeding further. I think we're all in agreement that this was not a small change. It's probably true that Flash should have been restricted (if Trinisphere deserves its place, so does Flash), that Scroll probably had to go, and that Gush never should have been unrestricted (I certainly was crying about the sky falling when that card was unrestricted, and all in all I'm glad it's back on the list). I also think it's not really much of an argument that Brainstorm was probably too powerful for its cost and that there was at least a very good argument for its restriction, even if I don't like the decision to restrict it. Ponder still really gets my goat, but let's leave that aside for now. But all that considered, I still firmly believe that all five at the same time was not the right way to go about it. In fact, I think that including Ponder on that list is almost proof positive of what others have been speculating about - a sort of 'up yours' to blue as a color in Vintage. I have a hard time believing that Ponder is anywhere near the power level of the other four and deserves to be on the restricted list. Which is not to say that it isn't replaceable - it probably is - but it reminds me of the DCI banning Ancient Den in Standard along with the other artifact lands - just to make a point, more than anything, and I still don't think that's a valid reason to ban or restrict a card.

On a more general level, I'm opposed to using the B&R list to merely 'shake formats up'. In fact, I think that's exactly the kind of policy that Eternal players should be unanimous in opposing. Unpredictable and arbitrary changes to the list destroy player expectations about what is and isn't too powerful and what should be allowed to run amok in any given format. It's long been my belief that change, while not necessarily a bad thing, isn't necessarily a good thing either. Today it's Brainstorm and Ponder. Tomorrow it may be Workshop/Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, or Bazaar and Dread Return, or Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual, or Sphere of Resistance and Thorn of Amethyst, or any of a number of excellent cards that are widely considered to be extremely powerful and are widespread in use. Using the B&R list to 'shake things up' for no reason destroys player expectations about what will be allowed to live and what won't. You could argue that none of the above will happen, but after Brainstorm and PONDER? Really? Do you know that? Do you know anyone prior to Monday who would have said that Ponder was too good to allow as a 4-of, or that they saw that one coming?

All in all, I think that they majorly screwed up when they unrestricted Gush (Psychatog? Really?), and then way overcompensated in the other direction on Monday by restriction-hammering the five cards they did. It may all turn out for the best, and I'm hoping it will, but I'm also hoping that they'll return to their minimalist approach to the Vintage B&R list after this massacre. True, that probably means I'll never get Brainstorm or Ponder back, but at least I'll be able to develop expectations about the power level of cards allowed to run free in the format again.

[Smmenen]

2) Gush- Should've never been unrestricted.  It's a little too powerful unrestricted.  Truthfully I would've been ok with it being left alone but it clearly would've been the best 4 of left free to roam after scroll so I'm fine with it getting the axe... again.

Truthfully, with Scroll and Brainstorm restricted, Gush was pretty much dead.  It makes very little sense aside from the symbolism. 

Eh... I'm not sure I'd go that far. 4 Gush/Fastbond is still pretty good even with scroll/brainstorm getting the axe.  Yes, it's not even in the same stratosphere of 4 gush/4 scroll but it's still quite powerful and most decks that played 4 gush probably would've continued to use them without skipping a beat.  They'd chain off less frequently due to less merchant scrolls but still they'd have access to 4 gush and that probably would be fine.

They definitely restricted Gush for more than just symbolism.

- Dave

I’m sorry to say but you are 100% mistaken!   You haven’t been playing the format for the last 6 months.   I have – quite intently.   

First of all, sure, in principle Gush + Fastbond is still a great combo.   So is Dark Ritual and Necropotence.   But the question isn’t whether two cards interact well, it’s whether they can support a deck anymore in an actual metagame.

The simple answer is that they cannot.    The Gush-Bond Engine was this engine:

4 Merchant Scroll
4 Gush
4 Brainstorm
1 Fastbond

And:
4 Ponder
1 Yawg Willl

That engine served to fuel:

Groatog
The Tropical Storm
Doomsday
Tyrant Oath
Probasco’s Painter’s Servant
And more

That engine would have been very damaged even with just the restriction of Scroll, killing both The Tropical Storm and Doomsday, which both relied heavily on being able to combo out in one giant turn with Gushbond.   Without Scroll, you could not reliably combo out in a single turn.  The remaining engine parts could have remained in Servant, Oath, and definitely GAT.   

The idea of the Gushbond engine was to function like Yawg Bargain.  That’s why these decks ran it.   From Fastbond you could very, very consistently just combo out trading two life for two cards. 

However, killing Brainstorm, frankly, *completely* murdered that engine.   It’s not that Gush + Fastbond would not have still functioned, it’s that the GUSH BOND engine, of being able to combo out – i.e. win that turn or create insurmountable card advantage, or really fuel a deck, was over.

I probably would have tried to continue to play GAT with 1 Imperial Seal, 4 Ponder, and 3 Opt if just Brainstorm and Scroll got the axe, but the deck would have been much., much, much weaker.   

But then… you kill Ponder??? 

With Ponder dead, there is *nothing* in Vintage that could support Gush.  Not even GAT can exist.   With Scroll and Brainstorm restricted, restricting Gush was completely unnecessary.  With Ponder restricted, it’s like restricting Tarpan.

I'm sorry man, but your statement that "still they'd have access to 4 gush and that probably would be fine" is really frustrating because it's so patently untrue.   An assertion does not make something true.   But it's so easy for someone to come in here, with ostensible credibility, and say things that are untrue and give plausibility to false statements. 

[dicemanx]

On a more general level, I'm opposed to using the B&R list to merely 'shake formats up'. In fact, I think that's exactly the kind of policy that Eternal players should be unanimous in opposing.

Really? I play this format because it is constantly changing, both via new sets that are released and via the B/R list. In any case, the restrictions weren't done to merely "shake things up"; they addressed a real problem in vintage that might have been masked by the claims that we were in some sort of "golden age". The format had diversity, but the decks and strategies were very brutal, fast, and unforgiving. I felt more like a spectator than a participant when playing Magic of late.

It's long been my belief that change, while not necessarily a bad thing, isn't necessarily a good thing either. Today it's Brainstorm and Ponder. Tomorrow it may be Workshop/Ancient Tomb/City of Traitors, or Bazaar and Dread Return, or Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual, or Sphere of Resistance and Thorn of Amethyst, or any of a number of excellent cards that are widely considered to be extremely powerful and are widespread in use.

To date, there hasn't been a slippery slope argument that has worked. You expect that it will work now?

If that is the best argument that you can put forth against change, your argument is quite weak.

Using the B&R list to 'shake things up' for no reason destroys player expectations about what will be allowed to live and what won't.

"For no reason" is dishonest; players should have every expectation of seeing "staples" fall to restriction if they are grossly unfair or fuel unfair archetypes. As I said before, Brainstorm and Ponder were not broken per se; to look at their restriction in a vacuum is to miss the reason for their restriction.

You could argue that none of the above will happen, but after Brainstorm and PONDER? Really? Do you know that? Do you know anyone prior to Monday who would have said that Ponder was too good to allow as a 4-of, or that they saw that one coming?

Of what significance is it whether they "saw it coming"?

All in all, I think that they majorly screwed up when they unrestricted Gush (Psychatog? Really?), and then way overcompensated in the other direction on Monday by restriction-hammering the five cards they did.

Unrestricting Gush wasn't a screw-up. Unrestricted Gush spawned some very exiting deck development, but the problem was that it was a little too easy to generate near optimal ways of breaking the card (it turned out that it was the premier draw engine in the strongest color in vintage, shutting out all others) and thus Gush only lasted 1 year. You can't just look at the end result and say it wasn't worth it - the journey was exciting, but once the end of the journey was reached, it was time for a change. Simple as that.

[Ulthrion]

Hello,

I am a rather new player to the vintage scene (no tournaments under my belt yet, still building up my collection of staples etc.), and I have some comments about the restrictions.

- Flash: This card is objectively powerful as it is a way to get around casting costs (in this case, that of Hulk). 2 mana, in a strong color as an instant is too much. We now ended up with a card that wasn't played before the power level changes, then returned to it's own wording, and will now not be player again. The net result: People who liked the card casually can only play 1, but at least there is no confusion about what the card does and doesn't do anymore. In all I am in favour of this because it's easier to understand and the less oracle we have, the better.

- Merchant Scroll: Most people (including me) agree that as a powerful tutor that could find some of the most important spells in the game it was too easy to play, and is therefor restriction worthy.

- Gush: With Scroll gone, you could ask whether it Gush would still be dominant. I disagree with the statements that Gush should never have been unrestricted. I think it created a whole lot of fun for the format (along with the other influences at that time, like future sight and power level errata's), and up and until morningtide (putting Flash over the top), I think most people were happy with the state of Vintage. That said, objectively, it is still a 0-mana draw 2 instant with some anti-wasteland and fastbond tricks added, and in a vaccuum, that seems to me as restriction worthy. What I am trying to say here is that I think unrestricted Gush is good, but you can't really complain about it being restricted purely from a power perspective.

- Brainstorm: I don't think that people can really complain about this. Brainstorm is pretty much always mentioned as the best unrestricted card in vintage, and when something gets axed, it seems logical that the best unrestricted card is the first in line.

- Ponder: After thinking about it, I really like the restriction of ponder, because it forces people to think outside of the box. Many would probably have replaced 3 brainstorms with 3 ponders otherwise and tested that deck before starting to redesign. In addition, it's also logical if you see this as a ban on U-dig3 cards (costing U, digging 3 deep). None of the unrestricted alternatives brings a card from 3 deep into your hand immediately. This was most likely restricted for a combination of restricting the U-dig3 ability and forcing people to take a less obvious route and innovate their decks.

However much I agree with the restrictions on a card by card basis, and I love to see where new innovations are going to take thge format, I also have some objections. The most important one is that I find it harder to fully commit to vintage at the moment. I've managed to get a playset of forces just 2 months ago, and suddenly speculations go that they will become less important. New cards will probably emerge, and then leave again. In general, the upcomming months will prove very turbulent for vintage, and getting started ona format that is still trying to staballize is very hard to do. While I'm sure that my forces will be very playable, and will retain their financial value, having highly shifting needs to play a format is difficult for new players to enter into.
Being new to the format means that I have less of a collection of cards that are potentially useful, and while thios innovation can be great for those with extensive collections/resources, it pretty much puts my own development on hold until the format becomes a little more transparent again.
I know that it may seem that I'm contradicting myself here by claiming that I liked Gush unrestricted because it gave an open playing field, and now claiming that such a thing is bad for me. However, when Gush was unrestricted there was a very obvious core of cards that were worthy to get (Force, Brainstorm, Gush, Merchant Scroll, Fastbond). They were cheap (apart from force), there were useful in most decks you would want to play. Having a solid core to most decks made Vintage easier to get into. In this thread there are people saying that Force's importance or power has diminished. If someone is considering getting into vintage reads something like that, what will they think? What cards would you suggest them getting in their collection first? At the moment, there will be too much change in the format for anyone to give a perfect answer to this.

As a side note, Brainstorm's power comes mainly from the combination with Fetches. From a purely power perspective, wouldn't it be more logical to restrict the fetches? They seem to be doing a whole lot for just a single life. Apart from putting Brainstorm over the top, they also grant wasteland protection. In addition, a fetch is any color of mana with the duals. Even the original duals can't claim that!
Not that I'm advocating the restriction of the fetches though, I was just wondering whether people thought that the fetches were actually the bigger evil in brainstorm's power, and are objectively overpowered. I understand that they allow for much more diverse mana bases, and combined with the wasteland protection allows for more colors to be played, and thus more decks to be playable. Nevertheless, it might be a nice theoretical question, whether brainstorm would be restriction worthy of the fetches got the axe instead.

[simo66]

There will always be a best unrestricted card, unless of course you restrict everything. The question WotC should be asking is not whether something is good, but whether it is too good. I don't think brainstorm (and certainly not ponder) filled that criteria.

[elegua]

First of all, sure, in principle Gush + Fastbond is still a great combo.   So is Dark Ritual and Necropotence.   But the question isn’t whether two cards interact well, it’s whether they can support a deck anymore in an actual metagame.

...

However, killing Brainstorm, frankly, *completely* murdered that engine.

...

I probably would have tried to continue to play GAT with 1 Imperial Seal, 4 Ponder, and 3 Opt if just Brainstorm and Scroll got the axe, but the deck would have been much., much, much weaker.   

...

With Ponder dead, there is *nothing* in Vintage that could support Gush.  Not even GAT can exist.   With Scroll and Brainstorm restricted, restricting Gush was completely unnecessary.  With Ponder restricted, it’s like restricting Tarpan.

I have been thinking on these changes for the past few days and this statement really just pulls it all together for me. My problem with what they did isn't that they targeted some format central decks as being too important, it is that they decided to completely gut them into unplayability. Wouldn't it have been more tolerable if the goal was to simply cripple overwhelming strategies to put them back into the pack of tier 2?

For example, Flash is a great card that can compete on the Vintage stage, but cards like Hulk are not. Kill Hulk and Flash suddenly becomes a lot less scary. Flash/Hulk loses consistency and becomes less of a viable option, but you leave Flash to try and find its way into other strategies and Vintage loses access to an otherwise unused tutor.

Scroll has been high on people's lists for a while and restricting it I think was the only good choice for restricting. It cripples a variety of broken blue combo strategies and creates some breathing room for new decks to enter the format.

Really, though, the restrictions of Gifts, Brainstorm, and Ponder seem to indicate that the folks restricting Vintage aren't happy with complex decision trees. They slow down games and make it hard to play top-tier decks. The barrier for entry ends up being pretty high and I have seen players break down at the task of choosing FoF stacks.

[Zherbus]

Locked. There's like 400 topics talking about pretty much the exact same thing. This one served it's purpose (to complain, initially theorize, and to speculate why).