Brainstorm, Flash, Gush, Scroll, and Ponder Restricted

[iceage4life]

See ya Vintage, was nice playing you.

[ReAnimator]

OMG the sky is falling sell your cards now ZOMGS!!!! MAGIC IS DEAD!!!111¡¡¡¡¡!!!!!!


Seriously. You'll get over it.


I welcome these changes, they might get me back into vintage more, as i haven't really played in the last 3 months.

I'm just sad they didn't take anything off the list.

Ponder doesn't seem that unreasonable compared to something like personal tutor, which is worse. Maybe we all weren't playing enough portents and serum visions to begin with.

[bdg4life]

Im stunned. I can understand gush, merchant scroll and even flash being restricted, but brainstorm and ponder? Unreal. I guess the add banner at the top is true, Darkness falls on magic.

[pierce]

shops and ichorid, congratulations for not playing skill intesnsive colors. We would like to promote a world in which you just look at your hand, and plop the best cards out quick.
Also, our bad on flash and gush.
That is all. WIzards.

[ReAnimator]

How much worse would flash really have been with a restricted MScroll? but instead 4 x ponders as well? I'm guessing not much. I ran ponders in flash and they were ridic a lot of the time i preferred them to scrolls as it found you land, or hulks, scroll didn't do that too well.

Also to the people who were saying and control was just coming back, I dissagree, there hasn't been a non combo control deck in a long time, except landstill, and that deck was a true control deck and it did not run brainstorms.

[sean1i0]

(Explicit Content Warning Below:)

Those motherfucking cock suckers!  I can think of nothing but that they just fucked my favorite format in the ass with a cattle prod.  So, I suppose shops will be amazing now...oh, except that ichorid will eat it alive.  So, I guess we're down to playing either bad decks or ichorid or shops with leylines in them maindeck.  And possibly Faerie Fucking Macabre (or whatever that fucking card is named) as well.  What really makes me angry is that nearly everyone agreed that the format was in a golden age.  Why in the fuck would they screw with that?  Whew...it feels a little better to put some of that in writing.  So, what I'm going to do now is write an email to everyone in that fuck off company (although I will do it in a calm manner of writing...thus the need for this post) and I think begin to support the creation of a community-wide creation of a banned/restricted list made (to quote history) by the people and for the people.  That won't be that much of a difference anyway, since Wizards doesn't support us one fucking bit as it is.  They obviously couldn't give two shits about us one way or another.  Except that maybe we've been a kind of fun experiment.  (Restrict this, see how they react.  Unrestrict that...oh look at them run!)  Even fucking Control Slaver from some years back isn't playable anymore.

[pyr0ma5ta]

I'm pretty sure that of the cards that were restricted, they could have chosen any 3 and shaken up the format enough to neuter any decks they felt were overpowering (GAT, Tyrant Oath, Flash, Painter, etcetc) and not totally ruin it for everyone.

Someone was hitting the crack pipe.  It's the only logical explanation.

[Xman]

Did someone change April Fool's Day to June Fools Day?  Because I didn't get the memo.

Ok, now I can understand Scroll, Flash, & Gush.  Hell, I thought unrestriction of Gush was the single biggest mistake the DCI has ever made.  Looks like it just got trumped & we all got kicked in the nuts.  Brainstorm & Ponder?  Seriously?  What did they ever do to anyone?  2004 is back in style in a big way.  Lets just hope this trend doesn't continue and we get 4 more years of George W. Bush.

This thread will be 10 pages by tomorrow, who's up for a bet?

10 pages may be a little on the conservative side.

[arctic79]

On second thought I won't sell my vintage collection.
But talk about taking interaction out completely.  Ich and Shop are two of the most uninteractive decks and now it's even harder to find an answer.
I thought the DCI rulings were about removing the non interactive decks from the format.
I'm not upset about Gush, Flash, and MS.  It was obvious they were going.

[vartemis]

Im on the fence about this.  The more I think about it, the more I see that selling my collection is a viable option.  It had crossed my mind because I'm not playing nearly as much as I used to, and the money would be nice.  Lets see what's still playable that I have together:

Long - neutered
Flash - Ramboed
Oath - Wounded but playable
Belcher - Boring but playable
Ichorid - Boring but playable

What decks could I build?

Painter - took a hit because blue won't be as popular
Shops - Possible, but Ichorid will crush it
Slaver - dead
Gobbos - is this the future?

j

[Xman]

I do believe I have found the bright side.  Mind you, it is a VERY dim bright side.  They didn't unrestrict Trinisphere!

[Moxlotus]

The king is dead.

Long live the King!

Now people, there was a time when we didn't play with our brainstorms or merchant scrolls.  The format will survive.  Vintage Nats will be fun as hell--nobody knows the metagame!

 Lets just hope this trend doesn't continue and we get 4 more years of George W. Bush.

Keep politics out of TMD plzkthx.

[arctic79]

@ Xman

Awesome, at least I'm smiling now with that revelation.

[T00L]

Well guess I can say so long to this hobby that has dominated my life for the past 2 years. Maybe i'll PTQ more or just buy an xbox and veg.

[Zherbus]

I heard some thunder, and ran out to close my car window until I realized it was Dredge and Workshop players simultaneously busting a nut.

Seriously though, I think things won't be nearly as bad as you think. I've been doing some inner-circle testing and there's still something to be said for the Island card.

[Polynomial P]

DAWN OF THE DEAD IS NOW TIER 1.

Prediction: Bazaar will be restricted next.

[A-FLo]

This is hard....two cards had been restricted...brainstorm and ponder...vintage will change....and new decks will pop up.....are they out of their minds.....come on man....unrestricted brainstorm and ponder...please man....

[Razvan]

one thing that Lam brought up (and many others) is that the prices will fall quite heavily for a lot of cards.

and since some of these restrictions are completely random (both brainstorm and especially ponder... wtf?), this put a dangerous precedent: anything can be restricted, no matter how random or unhealthy.

case in point: polynomial p with bazaar.

so people might sell their bazaars, power and workshops before they lose thousands of dollars on a whim.

[dawgie]

Whats wrong with Brainstorm and Ponder?!
My god... were they smoking again when they did this?

Sheesh!!!

[Moxlotus]

For anybody who thinks Drains are dead

Study history, for it can be used for new decks

[Shock Wave]

In my opinion, Wizards made some poor decisions in hitting Brainstorm and Ponder. They also seemed to encourage the play of Ichorid and Shop decks, which I think is a mistake. However, they struck gold with one decision: Encouraging innovation and essentially creating a new format. I guess I am alone with the belief that this is an exciting time for our format.

Now people, there was a time when we didn't play with our brainstorms or merchant scrolls.  The format will survive.  Vintage Nats will be fun as hell--nobody knows the metagame!

I agree. I don't support all the decisions made, especially not Ponder, but I think there is a bright side to all of this, and the innovators know what I'm talking about. The field is wide open and ripe for creativity. We will have a very interesting T1 Vintage Championships this year.

[Sextiger]

For anybody who thinks Drains are dead

Study history, for it can be used for new decks

2k4 again, guess its time for Zombie Rasko to rise to power once again. 

[fury]

In my opinion, Wizards made some poor decisions in hitting Brainstorm and Ponder. They also seemed to encourage the play of Ichorid and Shop decks, which I think is a mistake. However, they struck gold with one decision: Encouraging innovation and essentially creating a new format. I guess I am alone with the belief that this is an exciting time for our format.

No, you are not alone, I totally agree with you. The deception period will pass, and this choice, even if it's criticable, will improve creativity.

[arctic79]

I agree with Shock Wave about new innovations.  A lot of homebrews are going to be out there.  But shop and Ich are still going to rule the day.

AK + Intuition is looking good again.
Dragonstorm in Vintage????

[dicemanx]

I think that there are some exciting possibilities that have been stifled under the heavy blue pall that has now been lifted. Blue is hardly powerless though - it still has BS and Ponder as one-ofs, and could easily entertain cards like TfK, Intuition-AK, and maybe even Portent or Opt, not to mention Mana Drain will likely re-appear. It will certainly be more difficult to build U-based decks, but they will still compete and they will still require a ton of skill to pilot.

so people might sell their bazaars, power and workshops before they lose thousands of dollars on a whim.

I don't think there's any chance of that happening - this was an offensive against a color that has dominated T1 for a long time; the restrictions bring it down a notch to more acceptable levels, even if it must come at the expense of a skill-intensive card like Brainstorm. I didn't think that Magic was in any "golden-age" either - the format revoved around Gush based archetypes too much, with Ichorid and Flash occasionally popping in to ruin someone's day. The variety was there, but it just didn't feel like the skill intensive vintage of old.

Somehow I get the feeling that with these changes we will enter a true golden age of T1. At the very worst, it will be exciting for innovators and deck builders for quite a while, and if a new problem emerges, we have the B/R list to continue addressing the problems.

[Paellin]

And in other news, white is still the worst colour...

[Razvan]

i am not sure that's right. sure, gush could go. people think it was a mistake to unrestrict it to begin with. merchant scroll could go either way, it's a powerful tutor, and that has precedent.

not going to comment on flash.

but ponder is utterly retarded. brainstorm is ruinous.

i always thought that the restricted list was for "problem" cards that crowd the format with an unacceptable level of brokenness or unfairness, or to quote richard, un-fun or un-interactivity (i should do a better job of quoting him, but that was the jist of it). peter, if anyone in this world can convince me how ponder or BS broke either of those rules, it can only be you... because at this point, i really need someone to convince me it's not a broken format.

[Patoon]

I think innovation is good, and hopefully we can innovate out of this situation, but the one thing that i cant get past, is the fact that both workshop and ichorid are top tier deck from the old B&R list. Both these decks have been competing against the decks we can no longer play.

If other decks out there had to capacity to beat both these strategies, wouldnt we have innovated them into the meta game?

Clearly a deck that could beat both workshop and ichorid would have been a viable option before.

So with that in mind are we going to be able to beat those decks, or are we stuck with playing a deck that doesnt let its opponent interact, and a deck that choosed not to interact on it path to victory.

[Moxlotus]

And in other news, white is still the worst colour...

And Elementals might become a tier 1 deck

/starts writing decklists

[JewLightning]

I am kind of shocked really. Did anyone else have a tournament today because I was one of the last people to play some good ol' blue spells? I am curious to see the new innovations. I will be testing whatever against Ichorid that's for damn sure.


Brennen