Brainstorm, Flash, Gush, Scroll, and Ponder Restricted

[Xman]

Love it!  That's great!  But yea, it hurts.  Oh well.

You 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.

May I point out that Control Slaver (in 2004 & 2005) used to run 25 mana sources or so.  Without Merchant Scroll.  Without 4 Gush.  Without Ponder.  & Aggro still wasn't running over it all the time.  As I recall, so did Hulk Smash.  & 4cc.

I have thought more about it, and no matter what I personally feel, I know I am not going to get Brainstorm back for 3 months.  And that is highly unlikely at that time.  Most of the teams have already worked up new decks.  I am working on one as well.  Should be cool for the format, and bitching isn't actually going to change anything.  So go for it, and see what happens.  I may not like losing Brainstorm & Ponder, but I have already accepted it.  It will be extremely interesting to see what come from the ashes & how it works with the newest cards out there.

[StarOrc]

It took a while to read this whole thread and I didn't want to post right after I read the announcement because I knew I was being a little irrational. Over the last month when people began talking about the health of the format and the upcoming B/R anouncement and I was asked I said that I didn't think the format was healthy as is and that I thought something needed to be done about Flash. On top of that I didn't think hitting Scroll would hurt Flash significantly enough and Scroll should also be restricted based on the principle that it is a Tutor and Tutors in general need to be restricted. The final thing that came up was what I thought about Gush and in my opinion it should have never been unrestricted. However in the end I truely didn't beleive that the DCI would hit all three cards at once.

When I saw the announcement I was shocked.

The only logic I can see in restricting Brainstorm and Ponder are that the DCI realized that by restricting Flash, Gush and Merchant Scroll would create a situation where Mana Drain decks would be the best in the format again. So they decided to restrict cards that enable the Mana Drain decks. If this is how this happened I don't understand why they didn't just restrict Mana Drain.

I've basically been playing Mana Drain decks exclusively for the better part of my Magic career and I realize that a big problem with innovation is Drain.

In my opinion restricting Brainstorm+Ponder will result in games more dependant on luck and based almost exclusively on your opening hand because without the fixing Brainstorm and to a lesser extent Ponder provide you aren't able to recover or find answers early enough. Restricting Mana Drain would actually be something that would cause creativity and inovation, replacing Drain with Counterspell just doesn't work. Restricting Brainstorm+Ponder basically does this to exsisting Drain decks -3 Brainstorm +1 Ponder +1 Scroll +1 Mana Source. Not much creativity or inovation there.

I honestly believe this is a mistake on the DCI's part and that Drain is really the card that needs to go.

I also I'm not very happy with the other changes Wizard's has made to the sets coming out in the future, but thats a completely different conversation.

In the end it just feels like the people who make these decisions really have no idea how the game works or how these changes will affect the game.

Corey

[prosbloom225]

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.

I'm sure that some decks were being kept down by the cloud of blue decks, but stax and ichorid are on opposite ends of the spectrum, if we were left with like decks I'm sure a ton of innovation would occur, but theres decks that could work without the blue decks except they get beat by one or the other (stax or ichorid).  Don't get me wrong, innovation will occur, its just, in my opinion, not as much as people are hoping for.

[Shock Wave]

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.

I'm sure that some decks were being kept down by the cloud of blue decks, but stax and ichorid are on opposite ends of the spectrum, if we were left with like decks I'm sure a ton of innovation would occur, but theres decks that could work without the blue decks except they get beat by one or the other (stax or ichorid).  Don't get me wrong, innovation will occur, its just, in my opinion, not as much as people are hoping for.

Any innovation that results from the new changes will be more innovation than has happened in Vintage for a very long time. The limitations imposed on the card pool are insignificant in comparison to their effect on the environment. The format has changed in one day more than it has in 10 years. Even if very little innovation happens, which is highly unlikely, it is more than we could have ever hoped for by making less changes. Several top tier archetypes have died and new ones will be created to take their place. When was the last time this happened in Vintage?

[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.

I'm sure that some decks were being kept down by the cloud of blue decks, but stax and ichorid are on opposite ends of the spectrum, if we were left with like decks I'm sure a ton of innovation would occur, but theres decks that could work without the blue decks except they get beat by one or the other (stax or ichorid).  Don't get me wrong, innovation will occur, its just, in my opinion, not as much as people are hoping for.

Then people aren't looking very hard.  Ichorid and Stax.  No fast gush decks or storm decks around.  The answers aren't too hard to find.  Ichorid has always had the same weaknesses, it was just that gushbond and flash let people try to race it in one way.  There are other ways to race it.  There are other ways to deal with it too.  Shop decks have always had the same weaknesses.  Big mana spells, needing to play lots of mana to support those spells, not being able to be reactive, and an inherent inconsistency by relying on workshop.

[mutedequilibrium]

Seriously guys, don't you think we can't beat Ichorid and Stax with one deck?

Yeah, it's called Bomberman. With Leaks/Snares.

Man I am so pissed off!!  They just made my CotV@1 a weaker play.

Precisely my 1st thought! Though we can still hit all those Duress/Thoughtseize/Serum Visions that are going to be running around, at least..

In regards to Shop/Ichorid being in the same 'skill-less' boat:
This is an absolutely gross misunderstanding of the two. Both decks win by playing $200 lands 1st turn, and can't respond on your turn. But the similarities end there. Shop decks take much more thought than Ichorid decks. Ichorids goals are pretty straight forward: Get dredgers in grave, activate Bazaar, and overwhelm your opponent. Shop decks take decision making, and counter baiting. It's difficult to just goldfish Shop decks, as there are lock pieces for different occasions. The decision between throwing your Trinisphere down 1st turn instead of opening with Crucible can decide the game for you right there if it's the wrong one. There's no 100% correct play all the time, which is what makes them fun: figuring out the avenues that give your opponent the most hope of getting out of the lock, and cutting them off from that before they can get there. People were pissed about Trinisphere because any bad player could blindly open up with Shop > Trinisphere and most of the time ride it to victory. What people did not bring up when everyone was hating on Trinisphere, was that a following turn of "Wasteland your Shop, go." would lose that skill-less Shop player the game when Oath was plopped down 3 turns later. And while I didn't agree with the restriction of Trinisphere at the time, in the end if was good for the format as it allowed for more diversity. This is a restriction in that same light, though quite brighter.

There is an enormous difference between following an incorrect cookie-cutter 'orthodox' 1st turn play with a 4-of, and an entire deck who turns Magic into a completely different game like Ichorid [and Flash]. While Ichorid feels even less like playing Magic than Flash did, Flash was the greater of the two evils. The last tournament at our shop came down between Fish and Ichorid, 1st place going to the Fish player. That could not have happened had it been Fish vs Flash. I surmise Bomberman, Fish, and Goblins will be proper contenders to beat Bazaars and Shops in the upcoming months.

This morning I was shocked, furious, and generally concerned for the future of Type One. But after some thinking, I welcome this change with open arms. Things had become comfortable. The majority of top 8 lists were blue based. While I agree with Gush/Scroll/Flash being degenerate, the truly important changes lie within the other two. The cornerstone of blue control decks [in Brainstorm] has been ripped out, and the entire community is now forced to adapt or die. I have my own internal list of cards that will be increasing in price as a result of all this.

In this next evolution of Vintage, which players will be 'the fittest' and which will instead cry and end up the way of the dodo?

[mistervader]

I like it. Deck construction is relevant again. 

There has never been a time in Vintage when deck construction wasn't relevant.

Decks won't start with 4 BS, 4 Ponder, 4 Merchant Scroll, 4 Gush, 4 FoW anymore (plus Moxen, Lotus, recall, lands, that's already half a deck).

Cool. Can't wait to see your new tournament deck making it all the way to the finals, o brilliant master!

[Lemnear]

I always read that those restrictions would slow the meta down so drain etc. can be playable again but I think that you miss that control got the hardest hit. Without the ability to brainstorm/Ponder for force/bounce/etc. or simply scroll it up, moreover being forced to fill the now open slots with "garbage", combo will become insanely strong. What will keep decks like belcher and Long in charge? EtW will pop out of many decks more if the access to bounce is reduced that much.

[Troy_Costisick]

The format has changed in one day more than it has in 10 years.

Let's not get too carried away.  But indeed, it has changed a great deal.

[Shock Wave]

The format has changed in one day more than it has in 10 years.

Let's not get too carried away.  But indeed, it has changed a great deal.

There is nothing exaggerated about that statement. The last time there was a B&R announcement of this magnitude was in 1999.

[beder]

Hi all,

I have to say that I am quite lukewarm when it comes to this evolution (or revolution) :

On one side, i like it. 3 main reasons
- it causes a huge change that will I think make room for new ideas, new tries, lots of deck building opportunities

- you now have many more possibilities when it comes to choose your engine. Before restrictions, if you were playing a blue deck, then your engine had to be gush one. Even if another engine had perhaps more synergy with your overall deck, the gush one had such a huge raw power that it was a better choice. If you weren't playing a blue deck, then your engine was surely less effective that the gush one (except bazaar in ichorid of course, but i really think manaless ichorid is a different game:) ).

- lastly and it is strange, I am also happy cause I now have more space in decks to develop ideas. Let's explain myself : usually, when I wanted to try a new idea that included blue, I was really restrained cause the blue MVP's take a lot of space. Those cards were really great and were required in order the deck to be able to compete with other decks containing blue (and so containing those cards creating an extraordinary agility and consistency). As a consequence, as soon as I tried an idea including blue cards, i was quickly blocked cause I had to add brainstormx4  + merchant and/or ponder... not always all of them at the same time but frequently at least 6 or 8 cards (that had of course to be added to the 4 fow, the ancestral, the timewalk). Those were often not really part of the idea I wanted to develop, they were just so necessary to try be competitive in the field that I had to add them.
As a consequence, many ideas I thought about were not even possible to implement in a deck, cause not enough space or not consistent enough (meaning the resulted deck was consistent, with different interesting mechanisms, but not nearly as consistent as other war machines using the "consistency" blue package).
To sum up, the blue package, even just using brainstorm and ponder, defined a "competitive consistency level" that was nearly impossible to reach with other ideas (except stax and ichorid that according to me are more focussed on synergy).

On the other hand, I am now very sad not being able to play brainstorm anymore. I truly think it is a card that is part of vintage in its very pure essence. It helps decks with blue - not only blue decks - to deploy efficiently there tactic, reducing the "draw" luck factor and the "first hand" luck factor (like deck with black helps you finding a specific card and often disrupt your opponent with 1 black mana).

If the DCI had asked my opinion (I don’t know why they would but let’s assume they did ) I would have answered :
+ restrict gush (the card itself is too powerfull),
+ restrict flash (the card itself is either useless or not funny),
+ restrict merchant (too powerfull tutor) and
+ restrict ponder.
I know I don't have any official arguments when it comes to ponder, except that added to the brainstorms, it allows blue based decks to be really too consistant and to really cheat on mana base. With only 4 brainstorm, I think it would have reduce the extra consistency phenomenon to an acceptable level (for me at least ) while keeping an acceptable part of subtility.

Remark : and with the same logic, I would restrict "duress or thoughseize", "sphere or thorn". It has to be fair afterall

Then, in order to really balance the power of the different color, I would prefer Wizard to create powerfull white/green/red cards in the next extensions, instead of reducing really dratically the blue power.

Nicolas "from France" (precision to excuse my english mistakes)

[fury]

I always read that those restrictions would slow the meta down so drain etc. can be playable again but I think that you miss that control got the hardest hit. Without the ability to brainstorm/Ponder for force/bounce/etc. or simply scroll it up, moreover being forced to fill the now open slots with "garbage", combo will become insanely strong. What will keep decks like belcher and Long in charge? EtW will pop out of many decks more if the access to bounce is reduced that much.

I also want to have some explanations about the idea that the restrictions will slow down the format, so that mana drain will be played more. Ichorid is unaffected, and is very quick, with sometimes a "turn 2" goldfish. In the same way, Belcher will create himself a space where it will win. I doubt that Long may return heavily, in so far as the restriction of brainstorm affects it.

[wiley]

AS far as how this will affect the format and deck innovation I say it couldn't really be better (though I am still sad that it has come about).  Many people are complaining that they have to find a way to beat ichorid and shops, well I have played both for some time now (far more the 'boggieman' ichorid) and I can tell you that they are both beatable, and beatable by many non-exclusive strategies.  If you have yet to realize this then I would suggest playing the deck you are trying to 'target' for a month or so and figure when/why it dies.  I believe there will be a multitude of old archetypes resufacing as well as new ones that were simply not powerfull enough to overcome fast blue decks.

I also believe that deckbuilding skills are seriously lacking by the majority of the vintage community, and many people should go back to those 'ancient' articles and threads on constructing "the deck" and BBS to relearn how to build control, and masknought/ninja mask to learn control/combo.  Brainstorm spoiled many people without them ever knowing it, and now they will be forced to relearn or net deck.  In this period of transition I feel very sorry for you if you are forced into netdecking since you will miss out on a period of revolution.

/my 2 cents

[Troy_Costisick]

The format has changed in one day more than it has in 10 years.

Let's not get too carried away.  But indeed, it has changed a great deal.

There is nothing exaggerated about that statement. The last time there was a B&R announcement of this magnitude was in 1999.

Yeah, but in the last 10 years how many sets have been printed?  How many archetypes have we seen rise and fall?  There's been a lot more go on in the last 10 years than went on yesterday.  However, there is no doubt that yesterday was significant.

[Razvan]

People were pissed about Trinisphere because any bad player could blindly open up with Shop > Trinisphere and most of the time ride it to victory. What people did not bring up when everyone was hating on Trinisphere, was that a following turn of "Wasteland your Shop, go." would lose that skill-less Shop player the game when Oath was plopped down 3 turns later.

because a skilled stax player has wasteland-immune workshops? i am seriously not understanding what you are trying to say here. i agree that the avenue above lost a lot of stax players the game if they couldn't get out of trinisphere, which happens quite often, especially since the oath player is oh-so-skilled in plopping down orchard, other mana, oath (which is nothing to say about orchard, mox, oath on the play).

so please drop this "skill-less" attributes for things like this unless there's a good reason for it. no "bad" player has ever won anything just because of trinisphere, other than the occasional game, which happens with any deck, especially oath, and also, more recently, flash.

[Dxfiler]

Eh... 3 out of 5 ain't bad :p

I got a call telling me about the changes (haven't kept up with the format lately) and I thought my friend was joking.

WOTC definitely shook the format up, that's for sure.  This is how I feel about each restriction:

1) Merchant Scroll- HAD TO GO.  Some people have been saying this for over a year.  :p  You're living in a dreamworld if you think this was fine being unrestricted.  Every time a new blue instant came along, scroll augmented its power times 4.  It was simply the best unrestricted tutor and has been for years.  An obvious restriction that should've come MUCH earlier.

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.

3) Flash- The weakest of the three that I agree with being restricted, but if you're getting rid of scroll and gush then you can make a case for this to go as well.  It takes interactivity directly out of the game and in a much quicker fashion than shops or ichorid does.  It's the ultimate must counter card and having to do it more than once is probably a big factor in why it went.  I'm ok with it being restricted but it probably wasn't necessary.

Now onto the two that shouldn't have gone...

4) Brainstorm- No.  No no no.  It's a staple in the format that fueled all sorts of decks in all different tiers.  If you're going after this then why stop here?  Might as well go after workshop and FOW... those are in close to as many decks as Brainstorm in (fow is in probably more).  I understand how powerful brainstorm is but it requires a good amount of skill and does not singlehandedly change games, which the above three cards did. 

5) Ponder- Lol.  This one was just absurd.  You took away the sorcery brainstorm because... it's blue?  I guess Sensei's top is going to quadruple in value :p

I agree with diceman and others in that these last two restrictions appear to be part of a greater full scale attack on blue.  Blue has been the most dominant color in vintage since its inception.  Hands down.  I think WOTC wanted to give the other colors more parity but the problem is that type one isn't about parity.  The format is about powerful cards and blue still has the most of them.  If you just gank scroll/flash/gush then you have a little more balance.  When you go after ponder and brainstorm then you're just trying to make up for a decade of dominance... and going about it the wrong way.  If you want to make other colors more on par with blue then make some powerful cards in other colors (white and green pls :p). 

Don't attack powerful cards simply because they're blue.  Brainstorm and ponder just weren't restriction worthy and I think those two are going to cause more harm than good.  You keep bazzaar and workshop around when they're clearly more powerful and it sends the wrong message.  I mean what are we supposed to take away from that?  If Brainstorm was worth $150+ would it have been kept around?  My guess is yes.

So yeah, I think they majorly screwed up with ponder and brainstorm, but I'm impressed they got the other three.  It took them long enough but it will shake up the format a great deal and I'm all for shakeups.

Hopefully the lesson learned from all this is that people should be careful what they wish for when asking for erratas and unrestrictions because sometimes you get them when they aren't needed.  Flash never should've been errata'd and gush never should've left the list.  Scroll was waiting in the wings to make both utterly stupid.  Good riddance to all of them.

I'll have to wait on how the format shakes out but maybe, just maybe, we truly will enter a golden age now.

- Dave Feinstein

[silvernail]

As far as I can see the DCI is strictly attempting to get vintage to stop being so blue dominated with these restrictions, but they will ultimately fail because blue has so many possibilities to make use of.

Brainstorm being restricted doesn't cripple current deck lists, just find 3 sub par replacement cards and shuffle up. Yes it will be less powerful and less consistent.

The real weakness that has been exposed is the duress vs brainstorm scenario, aside from that use of brainstorm blue decks can recover the loss of card filtering. There are plenty of potential replacements to handle hand sculpting.

All of this hoopla about no one playing blue decks now is ridiculous. Good players will just find 3 new cards to run, and replace the gush / scroll engine with something else.

[SimonCopp]

Wow.

Flash, Gush, and Scroll i can understand. Brainstorm, whilst you'd lean towards keeping it , isn't necessarily a bad restriction but Ponder? That's just strange. Guess it's down to....

Intuition/AK
Impulse
TFK
Night's Whisper
etc

Which i personally find to be very interesting.

[CodeRedrum]

WOW! Ok first off let me say that I did not read every post in this thread, I stopped somewhere around a moderator asking for content in the posts, page 4 of 9 at the time.  I am pretty new to the vintage scene, and am quite shocked.  When I think of card restrictions I just don't think of Brainstorm and Ponder.  My biggest concern is that Dredge is going to dominate the field, a smart dredge player just has to find a way to mainboard their Emerald Charms for the maindeck LEylines that will need to be in the "New innovative" decks that are surely on the horizon.  Although I am shocked, and pissed, I think we all need to wait until friday and listen to Wizard's reasoning before we abandon our favorite format.  I admit, it hurts, but in the long run I think the innovation that arises from this attrocity will provide us with some new deck ideas that the format has been hungry for. Lets be patient and see what comes with the post on friday as well as what, if any, new decks can over come the 'Shop and Dredge heavy metagame that is sure to come.

[mutedequilibrium]

People were pissed about Trinisphere because any bad player could blindly open up with Shop > Trinisphere and most of the time ride it to victory. What people did not bring up when everyone was hating on Trinisphere, was that a following turn of "Wasteland your Shop, go." would lose that skill-less Shop player the game when Oath was plopped down 3 turns later.

because a skilled stax player has wasteland-immune workshops? i am seriously not understanding what you are trying to say here. i agree that the avenue above lost a lot of stax players the game if they couldn't get out of trinisphere, which happens quite often, especially since the oath player is oh-so-skilled in plopping down orchard, other mana, oath (which is nothing to say about orchard, mox, oath on the play).

so please drop this "skill-less" attributes for things like this unless there's a good reason for it. no "bad" player has ever won anything just because of trinisphere, other than the occasional game, which happens with any deck, especially oath, and also, more recently, flash.

Raz, the point I was trying to make was that people think Shop decks take no interaction or skill because of the stigma some people still have from those 4 x Trinisphere days. When I said "any bad player" that meant all the kids that were wowed by Workshop and Trinispheres broken nature together, and naively thought that was the right 1st turn play every time. My entire point is that Shops are waste-able. My entire point is that Stax is not a straightforward deck of 'throw down lock pieces and just win' like a lot of people think it is. Ichorid is very straightforward, Stax takes thinking. By restricting Trinisphere, they took that crutch away and the real Stax players stuck around and adapted, while the others moved onto the next big deck after their 1 trick pony got taken away. Stax evolved greatly after Trinisphere was restricted. And btw: Oath, for the most part, is aslo very straightforward. At least in recent years. It hasn't been a very skill intensive deck since Orchard was printed. It will never be like it was with Dr Ped Bun or Bob Maher again. Or probably at all, now with only 1 Brainstorm to put back Oath creatures.

The problem with decks like Ichorid, Oath, and Flash lie in that they basically pilot themselves. That doesn't take skill. That's not interactive. Bottom line: Saying a Shop deck isn't interactive and takes no skill to play is like saying Blue based decks aren't interactive and take no skill to play.

[prosbloom225]

  My biggest concern is that Dredge is going to dominate the field, a smart dredge player just has to find a way to mainboard their Emerald Charms for the maindeck LEylines that will need to be in the "New innovative" decks that are surely on the horizon. 

/agree

[AngryPheldagrif]

Raz, the point I was trying to make was that people think Shop decks take no interaction or skill because of the stigma some people still have from those 4 x Trinisphere days. When I said "any bad player" that meant all the kids that were wowed by Workshop and Trinispheres broken nature together, and naively thought that was the right 1st turn play every time. My entire point is that Shops are waste-able. My entire point is that Stax is not a straightforward deck of 'throw down lock pieces and just win' like a lot of people think it is. Ichorid is very straightforward, Stax takes thinking. By restricting Trinisphere, they took that crutch away and the real Stax players stuck around and adapted, while the others moved onto the next big deck after their 1 trick pony got taken away. Stax evolved greatly after Trinisphere was restricted. And btw: Oath, for the most part, is aslo very straightforward. At least in recent years. It hasn't been a very skill intensive deck since Orchard was printed. It will never be like it was with Dr Ped Bun or Bob Maher again. Or probably at all, now with only 1 Brainstorm to put back Oath creatures.

The problem with decks like Ichorid, Oath, and Flash lie in that they basically pilot themselves. That doesn't take skill. That's not interactive. Bottom line: Saying a Shop deck isn't interactive and takes no skill to play is like saying Blue based decks aren't interactive and take no skill to play.

Putting Oath in the same class as Ichorid and Flash illustrates a horribly fundamental misunderstanding of what Oath is and does. I'm a guy who played 4 Trinispheres for the duration of its legality. I also played Oath for more years than likely any other Vintage player aside from my brother. I'd like to think that qualifies me to judge the comparison, and I can assure you that Shops do indeed take a good amount of skill, however that skill is more centered on deckbuilding and mulliganing than in the gameplay itself. Ichorid and Flash are indeed lighter in that department, but for the love of G-d leave Oath out of that category. Oath has exponentially more interaction than either of those and at least in gameplay a lot more than your average Prison build.

But hey, I wish they'd left the 5 unrestricted and given us back 4 Trinispheres so I might just be insane.

[mutedequilibrium]

Putting Oath in the same class as Ichorid and Flash illustrates a horribly fundamental misunderstanding of what Oath is and does. I'm a guy who played 4 Trinispheres for the duration of its legality. I also played Oath for more years than likely any other Vintage player aside from my brother. I'd like to think that qualifies me to judge the comparison, and I can assure you that Shops do indeed take a good amount of skill, however that skill is more centered on deckbuilding and mulliganing than in the gameplay itself. Ichorid and Flash are indeed lighter in that department, but for the love of G-d leave Oath out of that category. Oath has exponentially more interaction than either of those and at least in gameplay a lot more than your average Prison build.

Oath is more interactive than either Ichorid or Flash, yes, I will give you that. The frustrating part playing vs Oath as a Shop player [and not JUST as a Shop player] was that if they got Oath out turn 1 or 2, that was probably game. It forced other decks in the meta out [aggro in general, sans Fish] and forced players to play with removal and counters: essentially play blue, or play combo and outrace them. Flash was that problem on crack.

Perhaps our definitions of 'interactivity' might differ. While Oath's main goal is to resolve a 2cc Enchantment and make sure your opponent has a creature, Stax doesn't have any single 1 card that will end the game on it's own and has to piece together many lock components over the course of the game. That requires more decision making, in my eyes. More decision making suggests a need for a higher skill level. Perhaps there's more interactivity with Oath decks [Duress/Counters/etc], and more skill/decision making with Shop decks? That might be a more accurate way of putting it. You may disagree, and I welcome the discussion.

But hey, I wish they'd left the 5 unrestricted and given us back 4 Trinispheres so I might just be insane.

I think the DCI already learned their lesson with unrestricting Gush. Like I said, Stax evolved and became a better deck without 4 Trinispheres [I personally used 3 back in those days]. As long as TnT can come back and be strong, I'll be happy. But then maybe I'm the insane one, then..

[Akuma]

What limits innovation is a format with cards XXX which were clearly superior to every other strategy.

What happens when the new XXX is identified? Should that be nerfed too? This format includes all of the cards ever printed, nothing rotates out. There will always be a superior engine, card, strategy. We usually know what it is and the only thing that changes that is the release of NEW cards.

The format has always shifted to adapt to the new top dog / flavor of the week. Now, we don't get to adjust, we just have them removed once they are identified.

[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. 

[Moxlotus]

What happens when the new XXX is identified?

If XXX is far and away better than every other option available, yes.

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.

The format has always shifted to adapt to the new top dog / flavor of the week. Now, we don't get to adjust, we just have them removed once they are identified.

Because, you know, the instant Brainstorm and Merchant Scroll became really good they were restricted.  They weren't actually played as 4 ofs in as many blue based decks as possible for the last few years.  No, there was no time to adjust.  They were immediately restricted upon the demonstration of their awesomeness.

[Zherbus]

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.

I was with you, man. I thought they both needed to go. I was wrong too!

[mulder]

Wow. Brainstorm, I will miss you
Wizard restricted a card that everyone loved playing and nobody thought of as being overpowered. Shows how much they know.

Will this imply that Sensei's Divining Top will become a t1 staple?

[Midknight]

I agree with what they restricted other than Ponder, if they would have restricted something from Irchrid, I would have totally agree with this change. Blue had to much power. But at the same time, they really needed to restricted something from Ichrid. How is this a heathy format when just about every deck needs to either maindeck or sb four Leylines, mainly for one deck. This change is only going to force people to hate on Ichrid even more. As for Stax and Grim long, I feel Long was better than Stax before this change. Long was just alot more skill intenstive. But now with BS restricted it evens these decks out.

[bronxie]

Wow. Brainstorm, I will miss you
Wizard restricted a card that everyone loved playing and nobody thought of as being overpowered. Shows how much they know.

Will this imply that Sensei's Divining Top will become a t1 staple?

Playing a card because its good and loving a card are completely different.  i dont know one person who would say that brainstorm was thier favorite card ever.