Would any restriction other than Force and Ritual really change things?

[Purple Hat]

Enlightened tutor - Well, it CAN  find black lotus, and other then that it can get both painter and grindstone, but i really don't think it deserves to be on the list.

The reason for its continued restriction isn't any of those cards; it's Fastbond.  The question of whether Turboland would be problematic is really the key to that discussion.  Personally, I do think that it would be acceptable.

Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen.  The new administration over at the DCI seems to have moved away from "restrict cards until the format is fun, then leave it alone until it isn't" and moved toward "leave the broken stuff restricted and then restrict anything that makes it easy to get."  Easy access to restricted cards, and not plain deck consistency, was the rationale offered for Brainstorm and Ponder.  Under this system, Enlightened Tutor doesn't have a prayer.

turn 2 Necro would also be an issue.

Yeah, I think that as long as Necro+Bargain.dec is a possibility, ixnay on the Lightenedenay Utortay

Well i've been through all that on other forums, and really, E. tutor is not scary.
Lets have an honest look at what it can get:
Necropotence - Yeah, but turn 2 necro is easily answered - And not nearly as lethal as turn 1 necro, i don't see this as a problem.
Yawgmoth's bargain - Still costs SIX mana, sure it's insane, but ramping up to 6 mana is often a "little" difficult, and again it gives your opponent some time to do something relevant.
Black lotus - I think this would be the most obvious use for E. Tutor if we asume that anyone would use it, getting lotus is as always really good in combo.
Fastbond - Without gush? Seems alright to me, screw turboland, this is type1!
Painter/Grindstone - Dosn't seem all that scary, it's still a two card combo which would likely allow the opponent to interfere.
Oath of druids - Well, i highly doubt they'd go as far as including E. Tutor, but it's a possibility.
Goblin charbelcher - Waiting for turn 2 with belcher seems like a bad plan.
Artifact creatures - None are worth tutoring after, except in rare cases.
Lock-components - Really needs to be drawn straight from the top, not tutored for - And even if you want a little tutoring power, wouldn't you rather run vamp/imp/demonic so that you can also fetch stripmine?

That's just about every viable card i can think of....well ofcourse there's things like counterbalance/top but that's hardly "unfair" in T1.

/Zeus

I think I would look into the possibility of an E Tutor deck that used two of these strategies together, like necro and painter in the same deck so that i could always find something useful with my tutor.

Turn 2 necro can be answered....I guess....but it's still horribly broken.  Virtually every broken card can be answered.  even will can be answered.  the problem isn't whether you can answer it, but whether you MUST answer it and how easy it is to do so.  I don't think consistent turn 2 necro is signifcantly easier to answer than random turn 1 necro, and I think it's just as necessary.

[zeus-online]

It's merely a question of this:
Is a 4-E. Tutor combo deck better then current decks?

If it's merely AS GOOD....Then i would say it could be unrestricted.

And i feel that it's probably not better then "as good".

/Zeus

Edit: I think Fact or fiction might be worth unrestricting aswell. Although there's a good chance that it will be very good again.

[Oath of Happy]

I don't understand why so many people are gung ho on unrestrictions.  Sure there are cards like dream halls and grim monolith that suck, but the argument that 4 enlightened tutors might make a deck thats fast, but not as good as tps doesnt mean it should be unrestricted.  Slowing the format down a bit increases playskill and interaction, whereas speeding up the format just increases luck.  Who can draw the more broken hand is like playing rock paper scissors with cool pictures.  And no, people who think the format should be slowed a little shouldnt play legacy, I like playing with the most powerful and broken cards in the format, but magic would be more fun if you could build your way to a win rather than just playing on crack mode starting turn 1.  Sure unrestircting cards like enlightened tutor might bring up some new decks, but slowing down broken decks would also give many new kinds of decks the chance to be playable, people would just have to work and come up with new ideas to discover and play them instead of being informed of a card that just got unrestricted and finding a deck to break the card in.  Restricting cards beings us closer towards a more inovative and yet more stable metagame, whereas unrestricting broken cards just throws us for another loop and is a desperate and annoying way to shake the metagame up.

What most people overlook about all the decks that are dominating the tops slots in tournaments is that they all use 5-6 fetchlands.  Lets look at Polluted delta.  The card enables players to grab A) a basic swamp or island B) any color they want as long as it has a swamp or an island in it  C) is a free and easy shuffle effect...yea we only run 1 brainstorm and 1 ponder now but fetches are what broke brainstorm over the top, and D) thin decks of lands, so if you start with a turn 1 fetch it has the same effect as starting with a 59 card deck, further fetches only add to this.  Fetchlands one huge reason why blue decks have turned into turbo decks.  Control has been gone for years, it has turned into combo decks with drains and forces.  People refer to them as control decks, but they are in no way control.  And as far as the new restictions hopping us into a time machine to 2006? Gee i didn;t realize that people used strategic planning on slaver back then nor did I realize that grim tutor and imperial seal were unbanned, and wow, I didnt realize that we had about a thousand new cards or so printed in 2007 and 2008 that are available to use in our decks.

If I could change the B & R list  I wold restirict polluted delta, flooded strand, bloodstained mire, crucible of worlds (it would be almsot as powerful as trinisphere), and grim tutor, seeing that all the other good tutors are restricted.  Id also restrict something from ichorid like bridge, yea on a sclae of 1-10 it might bring the deck from a 7 to a 6.5 but we take what we can get to make decks more fair even if its just a little bit.
As far as unrestriction go, I would unrestirict dream halls so that everyone would stop bitching about it, yea unresticting dream halls is crucial because it will go from no one playing it...to no one playing it.  But yea it can be unrestiricting along with Grim Monoloith

[nineisnoone]

If I could change the B & R list  I wold restirict polluted delta, flooded strand, bloodstained mire, crucible of worlds (it would be almsot as powerful as trinisphere), and grim tutor, seeing that all the other good tutors are restricted.

You will never see fetch lands restricted in Vintage and Grim Tutor is not even that good of a tutor.  And Crucible of Worlds?!

[diopter]

If I could change the B & R list  I wold restirict polluted delta, flooded strand, bloodstained mire, crucible of worlds (it would be almsot as powerful as trinisphere), and grim tutor, seeing that all the other good tutors are restricted.  Id also restrict something from ichorid like bridge, yea on a sclae of 1-10 it might bring the deck from a 7 to a 6.5 but we take what we can get to make decks more fair even if its just a little bit.

Restricting fetchlands is a terrible idea for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:
- Mana denial would become too strong, and very few people like playing in such a format.
- To combat the above, one would have to restrict more cards, and such a cascade of restrictions would only cause undue instability in the format and reinforce the notion that WotC doesn't know what they are doing with Vintage.
- WotC's twin policies regarding in the past few years have been to reduce the strength of mana denial and to increase player access to multiple color mana bases - this is evidenced by the non-reprinting of Armageddon in core sets and the printing of plentiful good duals in Ravnica onward. Restricting fetchlands is very contradictory to these policies.
- It's just plain bad PR. Players would bitch like they did for Brainstorm, and WotC couldn't even justify it like they did for Brainstorm by saying "it tutors for restricted cards" because, well, fetchlands don't do anything close to that.

[Oath of Happy]

- WotC's twin policies regarding in the past few years have been to reduce the strength of mana denial and to increase player access to multiple color mana bases - this is evidenced by the non-reprinting of Armageddon in core sets and the printing of plentiful good duals in Ravnica onward. Restricting fetchlands is very contradictory to these policies.
- It's just plain bad PR. Players would bitch like they did for Brainstorm, and WotC couldn't even justify it like they did for Brainstorm by saying "it tutors for restricted cards" because, well, fetchlands don't do anything close to that.
[/quote]

Well wouldn't restricting fetchlands force us to use these "plentiful good duals in Ravnica onward," or city of brass etc. rather than make us play single colored decks? And just because duals and basics aren't restricted doesnt mean that fetchlands are not too powerful.  Besides brainstorm tutors for restircted cards is the most BS excuse I'v ever heard, since when is brainstorm a tutor? by that standard, restrict impulse thirst for knowledge and sleight of hand whle your at it.  I also dont think restricting fetches would lead to a cascade of restrictions except for crucible of worlds and mabey wasteland or one of thorn/sphere, but even if it did, who cares?

[nineisnoone]

I also dont think restricting fetches would lead to a cascade of restrictions except for crucible of worlds and mabey wasteland or one of thorn/sphere, but even if it did, who cares?

Namely, everybody.

Fetches are not broken.  Period.  It's a land that functionally generates one mana.  Sure they are in a lot of decks, sure we could live without them, but there is no reason for them to be restricted.  I'd rather the old duals be restricted than the fetches.

[zeus-online]

Fetches are not broken.  Period.

...But they are really good, i value them higher then the original dual lands.

That said, i think restricting them might be a tad too much. Although i'd love to play with back to basics again.

/Zeus

[nineisnoone]

Fetches are not broken.  Period.

... But they are really good, i value them higher then the original dual lands.

That said, i think restricting them might be a tad too much. Although i'd love to play with back to basics again.

/Zeus

Yeah, that's why I would rather have duals restricted. 
I just don't see the point. The effect doesn't really power any one deck over another, as any deck that doesn't run duals+fetches probably does so because they have to.  So all decks uniformly take the hit, and there are no gains and no loses.  The question would be different if Brainstorm was around, but it's not. 

Isn't Back to Basics still played sometimes in Mono-U Control decks? 
::shudder:: Back to Basic sounds like an unrestricted Trinisphere in a Mono-U deck in a world without fetch lands.

[diopter]

- WotC's twin policies regarding in the past few years have been to reduce the strength of mana denial and to increase player access to multiple color mana bases - this is evidenced by the non-reprinting of Armageddon in core sets and the printing of plentiful good duals in Ravnica onward. Restricting fetchlands is very contradictory to these policies.
- It's just plain bad PR. Players would bitch like they did for Brainstorm, and WotC couldn't even justify it like they did for Brainstorm by saying "it tutors for restricted cards" because, well, fetchlands don't do anything close to that.

Well wouldn't restricting fetchlands force us to use these "plentiful good duals in Ravnica onward," or city of brass etc. rather than make us play single colored decks? And just because duals and basics aren't restricted doesnt mean that fetchlands are not too powerful.  Besides brainstorm tutors for restircted cards is the most BS excuse I'v ever heard, since when is brainstorm a tutor? by that standard, restrict impulse thirst for knowledge and sleight of hand whle your at it.  I also dont think restricting fetches would lead to a cascade of restrictions except for crucible of worlds and mabey wasteland or one of thorn/sphere, but even if it did, who cares?

1.) No, restricting fetchlands will not force us to use those Standard duals. Those duals are not good enough. The Alpha/Beta duals are not even good enough to run full playsets of when they are in grave danger from Wastelands.

2.) Yeah exactly Brainstorm is not a tutor obviously - thus I am saying the justification for restricting Brainstorm was weak. It therefore follows that any justification in restricting Fetchlands, whcih don't provide anywhere near the power of Brainstorm, is even weaker.

3.) The restriction of Crucible, Wasteland and one of Thorn/Sphere would be a cascade.

4.) I care about key restrictions in the format I play. That's why I am posting.

...But they are really good, i value them higher then the original dual lands.

That said, i think restricting them might be a tad too much. Although i'd love to play with back to basics again.

/Zeus

Restricting fetchlands is not just "a tad too much". It is just plain too much.

[Naurion]

Sure unrestircting cards like enlightened tutor might bring up some new decks, but slowing down broken decks would also give many new kinds of decks the chance to be playable, people would just have to work and come up with new ideas to discover and play them instead of being informed of a card that just got unrestricted and finding a deck to break the card in.

The reason we speak of unrestricting cards is so that Vintage can be (or at least approach) a format where you can play any card in the game.

People are constantly working to create innovative decks and new ideas, and they don't even need the "broken decks" to be restricted to do it. You say you like to play with"the most powerful and broken cards in the format", yet building decks to "break" a card in is a bad thing?

Restricting cards beings us closer towards a more inovative and yet more stable metagame, whereas unrestricting broken cards just throws us for another loop and is a desperate and annoying way to shake the metagame up.

I would argue that unrestricting cards that do not need to be restricted also can lead to an innovative and stable metagame. And I think it sounds logical to say " [restricting] broken cards just throws us for another loop and is a desperate and annoying way to shake the metagame up." So I think those are poor arguments for restriction and against un-restriction.

If I could change the B & R list  I wold restirict polluted delta, flooded strand, bloodstained mire, ...

So you are telling me that you think Polluted Delta is as format warping as unrestricted Tolarian Academy, Library of Alexandria or Strip Mine? Fetchlands are NOWHERE near that power level, and those are the only two lands on the restricted list. Even if they were restricted, it wouldn't change much (mana bases would be less stable as everyone else is mentioning), so why? So you can "stop bitching about it" as you claim everyone is doing about Dream Halls?

people who think the format should be slowed a little shouldnt play legacy, I like playing with the most powerful and broken cards in the format, but magic would be more fun if you could build your way to a win rather than just playing on crack mode starting turn 1. 

This sentence makes me question how much Vintage you've actually played. I believe that most experienced Vintage players would agree with me in saying that you do have to build your way up to a win, and that the format is not all about "playing on crack mode starting turn 1"


Maybe in a few years when you know how more about the format and you learn to put an argument together we'll talk about restrictions again.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Please stop talking about enlightened tutor or the restricted list.  I'm going to use one Smennen to refute (evidently) another Smennen:

The format is not the same...not even close.  Some matchups look similar, this shouldn't be surprising, given that the card pool dates back to 1995.  Really, it's not the same.

There are a lot of changes, and I believe that much of the 'ho hum' of people playing lots of slaver and TPS is what Steve would call 'historical contingency'.  The simple fact is that T1 is a small format led by a small group of good players who have limited time.  There are a number of strategies which may yield fruit, but we'll probably never see them.  This is distinctly different than during the trinisphere and/or gush days where the best decks were obvious.  Hopefully people will diversify ranges of card testing.  Hopefully larger forces (sometimes TMD) won't crimp this.  The existing fountainhead is not robust.

[Akuma]

This is distinctly different than during the trinisphere and/or gush days where the best decks were obvious.

Trinisphere decks being the "best deck" was not obvious, in fact, it was not the best deck of its time. Gush was the best engine of its time, but at least there was a good amount of variety. The reason it was the best engine was because every half decent card gets restricted in this format. I would have loved for Gifts Ungiven to have been legal during this latest Gush era. Restricting things in Vintage is not the answer IMO, the answer is to allow MORE powerful strategies to co-exist (unrestrictions).

How is what we have now any better than what we had when Gush/Flash/Brainstorm/Ponder/Merchant Scroll were around? Now the "best deck" is built using the same 30 restricted cards + 15 lands +  15 other  "I'm a big innovator" cards.

Before June 20th, I looked forward to more unrestrictions and new cards entering the format. Now, with WotC apparent change in policy, I have nothing to look forward to, 30-45 cards have already been chosen for me and I can't even play the variations that were available in the past...

[Grand Inquisitor]

the "best deck" is built using the same 30 restricted cards + 15 lands +  15 other  "I'm a big innovator" cards.

This is an interesting way to put it.  I'd say this is a significant improvement from Gushbond where the 5 win conditions may have switched around, but the "big innovator" residual was only 5 cards.  A three-fold increase in range of diversity is improvement from where I stand.

Also, I stick by my point that the format is still relatively underexplored at the moment.

[Ufactor]

This is slightly off topic, but I think I finally have an answer to the question, "Why the F*** did they restrict Brainstorm?".

Wizards has a very limited number of ways to affect Vintage.  Wizards can't force the Vintage community to play new cards, they can't do set rotations like in other formats, they can't always find cards to do power erratas (Flash) on, and they can't legalize Portal sets every year.  These are methods that Wizards can/has used to affect formats on a regular basis, but again all of them have limitations when it comes to Vintage.  What else can they do?

In a recent (pre-June 20th) interview on Star City Games, Pat Chapin was asked what could be done to "fix" Type One.  His answer was something to the effect of restricting three cards or unrestricting three cards would help the situation.  I'm going to hypothesize that this is where the clues are.  That barring some other event (like the ones listed above), Wizards will attempt to "rotate" Vintage and assert power over the most slow-moving format through seemingly random changes in the B&R list.

This can be what we'll see in the future.  That a new criteria for restrictions will be not tutors, or combo engines or format distortion or dominant cards, but simply which absence (or magnification) of cards will "rotate" the format the most.  I expect that we're going to see three cards restricte/unrestricted annually, every June, until Magic collapses.

...wow, this is starting to sound like a conspiracy theory, so I'm just going to stop here.

[Akuma]

A three-fold increase in range of diversity is improvement from where I stand.

You would think that, but I don't think that is the case. The "engine" usually cuts into the "30 restricted cards" because it has better synergy than some of the cards in this group. You still get your 15 "innovation" slots...

[LordHomerCat]

A three-fold increase in range of diversity is improvement from where I stand.

You would think that, but I don't think that is the case. The "engine" usually cuts into the "30 restricted cards" because it has better synergy than some of the cards in this group. You still get your 15 "innovation" slots...

But those 30 cards are in every deck because they are the best 30 cards in the game.  The fact that TPS and Slaver share a large portion of the restricted list is based on the fact that those cards are all insane.  There will not be a good blue deck that does not have SIGNIFIGANT overlap with Slaver and TPS because that's just Vintage.  You can't expect there to be some blue deck that doesn't run Force, Ancestral, Walk, all the best blue (and black) restricted cards which is as good or better than Slaver or TPS because those decks already run all the best cards available.  This format's blue decks are much more diverse than the last, where Oath - GAT - TTS were like 8 cards different, with the same engine just powering mildly different win conditions.  There is also no clear best engine (Thirst vs. Rits vs. Intuition AK vs. who knows what else) compared to Gush or nothing.  I don't know what you expect from Vintage, as far as diversity within general categories (blue combo-control) goes.  Those kinds of decks will always share a ton of slots because those are just the best cards.

[zeus-online]

That's why unrestricting fact could be interesting....
Then it would be thirst vs. intuAK vs. Fact vs. Rits vs. Shops vs. Bazaars.

Basicly adding another option

In a perfect world we could choose from a wider range of things, say Skeletal scrying//Gifts ungiven//Gush, "unfortunetly" some cards are just better/worse then others.

/Zeus

Edit: If fact turns out to be just plain superior, it should ofcourse be re-restricted.

[Akuma]

I don't know what you expect from Vintage, as far as diversity within general categories (blue combo-control) goes.  Those kinds of decks will always share a ton of slots because those are just the best cards.

That's the point, the decks in Vintage will always share the best cards. That is why I am opposed to unnecessary restrictions. You say it was Gush or nothing, but that wasn't exactly the case, all of the same decks that were playable back then are the ones that are playable now (actually there are less playable decks now). The only thing that has changed is that instead of Gush being the engine of choice, now we have Thirst for Knowledge. All top 8s since June 20th have the same content, around 4-6 blue decks running the same engine, maybe a combo deck (has the same 50 cards as any other combo deck), and a couple of stragglers.

So, what was the point of restricting all of those cards, same shit in the end. The people that want restrictions have this illusion that it will create diversity. Yeah, maybe if WotC erased the first 8 years of existence of this game 

Frankly, I was hoping that on June 20th other viable engines got off the list to compete, increasing the format's options.

[Implacable]

For the last year, the Gush engine was the definitive engine of the format.  But it didn't only define the format; it was better than any other engine.  It was more resilient; it was more consistent; it was more rawly powerful.  Storm decks were Gush decks; Control decks were Gush decks; Aggro-Control decks were Gush decks; not playing Gush was, frankly, almost always a mistake.  Innovation is impossible when the 'best deck' always began:

4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Gush
3-4 Merchant Scroll
1 Fastbond
+ the 10 or so restricted bombs.

At that point, you have 10 cards to play around with before you add mana sources.  In other words, only 1/6 of your deck could be modded.  That 1/6 was what made you 'combo' or 'control' or what have you, but it was meaningless.

Now, on the other hand, the format has become incredibly diversified.  Have we seen this meta before?  Yes, basically.  Sure, Gifts was in the mix, but a Slaver/Long/Stax meta is awfully familiar.  However: is it awful?  It seems to me that the triumvirate has fostered an incredible Tier 2: Fish, Oath, Drain Tendrils, Bomberman, and random jank ad infinitum are all legitimate choices for this meta.  Furthermore, by having a clear top Tier established, rogue decks can more easily be constructed, and the tension created by trying to out-guess the rest of the field about the meta is a critical part of any format.  I remember vaguely a Type 2 Worlds where everybody played Burst to beat the Tier 1 deck, and the guys who won played a deck that beat Burst.  That's what can happen now!  This format is great, and the change in the format need not come from unrestriction, but rather by the natural player responses to what is successful. 

Fundamentally: engines are always the premier candidates for restriction.  Should Fact and Gifts (in that order) be considered for unrestriction?  Perhaps.  But what will happen when they are?  Would Long be able to compete with a fast blue deck with 16ish counters and the ability to reload over and over with 4x Facts?  Can Stax compete with the 4x Gifts engine?  I'm not sure.  Let's give the format time to evolve.  I'm confident that the change will surprise some of the doubters here.

[ellomdian]

By the way.  I am in favor of Restricting Dark Ritual, Mana Drain, Mishra's Workshop, and Bazaar of Baghdad.  Those cards are all nuts, and if they were gone we would have much more room to play with when designing new decks.  The problem with these cards is that they are so much more powerful than all of the other unrestricted cards in the format that not building around at least one of them automatically makes one's deck flawed.  For instance, why isn't goblins good?  Because it doesn't play one of those four cards.  Also that it doesn't play Yawgmoth's Will.  If the Vintage crux--meaning, I start my deck with 4x busted unrestricted card, didn't exist we would see more decks that would be able to compete.

Ahem...

"Restrict stuff till Goblins is good again, then restrict Goblins!"