How to save Vintage and bring about world peace

[thorme]

Ok, so Vintage doesn't really need saving (depending on with whom you speak), but I thought I'd throw down some thoughts I had around a proposal for the Vintage format - deals with the restricted list, but in quite a different way (still thought I'd put it here in Adept so as not to stir the pot).  Taking a big risk, since nobody loves the format like us Adepts and this would turn it on it's head.  Anyway:

There are several issues I see with today's Restricted list.  Among them:

1.  Homogeneity of decks:  How many Top 8 decks begin with a lotus, sol ring, and 5 moxen.  Then you have a host of decks that go ancestral, demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, brainstorm, time walk, etc...leaving you a couple cards at the end to decide which combo finish you want (storm based, tez/vault, tinker/colossus).  There is the occasional rebel deck such as Ichorid which breaks the mold, but they're few and far between (and typically heralded by the community as a great choice for players who don't have the thousands of dollars wrapped up in 1 each of all the power cards).

2.  Deck consistency:  Ponder.  Sweet, innocent, little Ponder which doesn't even get played in all Standard blue-based decks, is restricted in Vintage.  Why?  Because in a format where most decks are filled with 1-of's, we're forced to run cards like this and Brainstorm to try our best to make decks consistent.

3.  Cost of the format.  Related to point 1 above, the cost of building a winning competitive vinatge deck (again, outside the occasional Ichorid) is a barrier which prevents plenty of folks from participating.  The issue isn't necessarily solved by allowing proxies as Ben Bleiweiss has compellingly argued (with the additional impacts of devaluing the original cards) - and the proxy issue itself is heated and would be well-served by the below proposal.


My proposal would address the issues above, but I daresay that most folks who read on will immediately dislike the idea.  All I ask is that you reserve judgement until you have time to think it through, and don't be driven by knee-jerk reactions around how this would destroy the current format and cause an incredible upheaval.

Essentially, the proposal boils down to doing away with a restricted list for Vintage.  No more being forced to make decks with singletons unless you want to.  In it's place, we create a Vintage Capped List.  Vintage deckbuilding rules would allow for no more than 4 copies of any cards on the Capped list to be played in a deck.

The Capped List would include cards like Ancestral Recall, all the Moxen, Lotus, etc, etc.  You could build a deck with 4 Ancestral or a deck with 4 Mox Sapphire, but not a deck with 4 Ancestral and 4 Mox Sapphire.  You could do a 2 Ancestral, 2 Mox Sapphire split if you chose.  

The specific cards to be put on the Capped List would no doubt be a matter of much debate.  I've included a sample list at the bottom of this post by way of example, but the essence of the idea is that a wide array of decks would be available and any card you owned could be played as a 4-of.

Who is to say whether the 4 Ancestral mono-u deck beats the 4-Yawg Will sui deck?  Maybe the 4 Mox Emerald stompy deck sneaks into the metagame.  In any case, the overall power level of the format should decrease with a well-managed Capped List, the consistency of decks should increase, the cost of decks should decrease substantially, and I believe a wider array of decks would be viable.  It also allows for troublesome combos to be easily handled.  Put Flash and Protean Hulk both on the list if you're worried about that combo...they can each still be played as 4-ofs, just not in the same deck.  A 2/2 split would really give the deckbuilder some challenges to overcome.

The downsides?  Well, to start, most all current decks would immediately be obsoleted.  Secondly, there would be a big impact to folks' collections with so many out of print cards, although this should have little impact at a macro level, and after the market adjusts.  Another point to consider is that it becomes quite easy to standardize on 4-proxy events...no small consideration given the heated debate about proxies these days.

Anyway, I'll end with a straw man of what the Capped List might start out looking like:


Ancestral Recall
Balance
Bazaar of Baghdad
Black Lotus  
Channel
Crop Rotation
Dark Ritual
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor  
Entomb
Fastbond
Flash  
Gifts Ungiven
Gush
Imperial Seal
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Lotus Petal
Mana Crypt
Mana Drain
Mana Vault
Memory Jar
Mind’s Desire
Mishra's Workshop
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Mystical Tutor
Necropotence
Regrowth
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Time Walk
Timetwister
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Trinisphere
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Yawgmoth’s Bargain
Yawgmoth’s Will


Given the outpouring of emotion over the format changes with Brainstorm restricted, I can only imagine the feedback on this proposal, but I do think it would be for the long-term good, so there you have it.  Also, I believe this idea or flavors of it in similar form have come up from time to time, I'm certainly not saying I'm the only person to ever conceive of the notion.

[hitman]

Your proposed restricted list looks horrible.  If you restrict Bazaar and Workshop, blue-based decks will have free run of the format with absolutely no resistance.  Who cares if you restrict Dark Ritual and Mana Drain? 

The restricted list isn't what's been killing Vintage.  Samite Healer has been saying for a while now that he thinks the overabundance of proxies has killed the format and I agree with him.  I basically quit Vintage because I don't actually need to own any Vintage cards to continue to play and playing a casual format with fake cards stopped appealing to me.  Few people care about this format because we play with fake cards.  I've heard it said that it encourages new players to try the format without making the monetary investment to start playing but I think this is bunk.  When you essentially strip the integrity of the format away by playing with fake cards you lose part of the appeal of the game itself.  The game revolves around an actual magic card, its flavor and effect.  If you strip half of the allure of the magic card, I think you eventually lose half the appeal of the format that stripped that half of the game away from you. 

Another problem I see with Vintage is that there is so little change.  Change happens so infrequently and uneventfully that a person can get bored easily.  This also happened to me.  All the Drain decks that I used to love to play all started looking the same to me and it seemed like I was just playing the same matchups over and over again.  When I lost interest in the format, I stopped testing.  When I stopped testing, I started doing worse.  When I started doing worse, I saw little reason to play Vintage over Limited and/or Legacy.  Everything's playable in Legacy and Limited is always different.  I started playing more exciting formats to me. 

I think these and probably personal responsibilities and activities have resulted in the lack of interest in the format.  I don't think it has to do with lack of tournaments, a poor restricted list or the other reasons people have expressed on this issue.  Just my opinion.

[Godder]

Your proposed restricted list looks horrible.  If you restrict Bazaar and Workshop, blue-based decks will have free run of the format with absolutely no resistance.  Who cares if you restrict Dark Ritual and Mana Drain? 

He doesn't propose restriction, he proposes "capping" i.e. you can play up to 4 of any card as normal, but no more than 4 cards in your deck may be from the "cap" list. His list wasn't a "restricted list", it was a "capped list" so you could still play 4 MWS against 4 Drain decks, and decks with 4 Drains wouldn't be able to play any of the power 9.

As a personal feeling, I think 4 is a bit small, and 8 or 10 might be a bit more user friendly, but as a budget-friendly format, Cap-4 would be very interesting.

[thorme]

Hitman - As Godder mentions, the list I propose is not a version of the restricted list, so you may want to look it over again with the capping concept in mind which I laid out in the initial post.

Godder - Yes, the 4-of limit to the Capped List is an easy variable to tweak.  I like 4 because the game already has the 4-of card rule, and once you get up to 8+, I think the power level really starts to skyrocket (4 Lotus + 4 Yawg Will alone kinda scares me).  But yeah, the list itself and the Cap limit are certainly adjustable.

[hitman]

Oh, I see.  I apologize over the confusion.  Honestly, I like the idea of a four-card cap.  Vintage might resemble the rest of the Magic formats in some way if that became the case.  The problem is you'd alienate the base group of players that like Vintage the way it is.  I respect that Vintage players like doing broken things and want a format to do them in.  Instead of rant on the forums, I just started playing other formats. 

I think if this idea was incorporated, it would look a lot like Legacy and at what point would there be no point in separating the eternal formats? 

[LotusHead]

Ok, so Vintage doesn't really need saving (depending on with whom you speak), but I thought I'd throw down some thoughts I had around a proposal for the Vintage format - deals with the restricted list, but in quite a different way (still thought I'd put it here in Adept so as not to stir the pot).  Taking a big risk, since nobody loves the format like us Adepts and this would turn it on it's head.  Anyway:

There are several issues I see with today's Restricted list.  Among them:

1.  Homogeneity of decks:  How many Top 8 decks begin with a lotus, sol ring, and 5 moxen.  Then you have a host of decks that go ancestral, demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, brainstorm, time walk, etc...leaving you a couple cards at the end to decide which combo finish you want (storm based, tez/vault, tinker/colossus).  There is the occasional rebel deck such as Ichorid which breaks the mold, but they're few and far between (and typically heralded by the community as a great choice for players who don't have the thousands of dollars wrapped up in 1 each of all the power cards).

I don't have an issue with the Power 9 Homogeniety of decks. Just like I don't have a problem with most vehicles haveing 4 wheels, 1 engine, a battery, a stereo, and a chasis.

But the overall concept of "Unristrict 1 card of your choice/mix and match" sounds interesting.


Maybe I'm just sensitive that Shops are on that list, but I'm pretty sure Mind's Desire is pretty bad-ass as a 4 of.

[thorme]

I don't have an issue with the Power 9 Homogeniety of decks. Just like I don't have a problem with most vehicles haveing 4 wheels, 1 engine, a battery, a stereo, and a chasis.

Well had vehicle designers always been constrained in such a way, the world would have never seen the Harley Davidson, twin engins, etc, etc.  I see promoting variety as a worthwhile goal.

I think if this idea was incorporated, it would look a lot like Legacy and at what point would there be no point in separating the eternal formats?

I'm not a fan of splitting up the Eternal formats to begin with - and would think that this change to Vintage would ideally eliminate the need for Legacy.  But that's probably just a bonus from the discussion of whether this would be in the best interests of Vintage.

[Matt]

One major barrier to this would be the need to restructure players' collections of massively expensive cards. Now all of a sudden I need to get 3 more Ancestral Recalls - and while that does mean I can trade away my now-useless Moxen, it's a huge hassle to hunt all this stuff down.

And this is to say nothing of people who will want the ability to play any deck at any time, and will try to collect playsets of all the $power$ cards.

[M.Solymossy]

This idea sounds awful, and instead of helping vintage, you will kill it.  We play vintage BECAUSE of how broken decks are.  I don't care how similar most decks are, they still play vastly different, depending on the pilot, and the Kill Condition.

For example, TK and I both played Tendrils at Vintage Champs.

Our decks both had:
1 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoths Will
9 Artifact Mana
Tolarian Academy
X amount of underground Sea
X amount of  Polluted Delta
X amount of Flooded STrand
X amount of Basic Islands

But our decks were VERY different:  I had Drains,  Thirst for Knowledge, Intuition-AK, and he had Dark Ritual, Necro, Bargain.

If you don't like the fluid nature of this format, QYB and go somewhere else!

[Katzby]

This is an interesting idea, but it is still just a variation on the age-old suggestion to limit the number of restricted cards per deck in Vintage, which has been proposed since the beginning of the restricted list.  As a result of this, it is subject to some of the problems that have always existed with this idea.  For example, would you really expect anybody to ever use Lotus Petal in an optimal Vintage deck when people could just fill up their card cap allowance with Black Lotuses?  Budget decks aside, this idea still essentially bans Lotus Petal from the format and many people would find this unacceptable.

A problem more specific to this proposal is that given that card availability (cost of the format, as you have described it) is one of the issues that you'd like to address, a card cap would certainly worsen things on this front.  Suddenly requiring that optimal Vintage deck players own 4 Black Lotuses or 4 Ancestral Recalls seems like it would cause more problems for Vintage than it would solve.  In this respect, it might just make more sense to set an overall limit on the number of restricted cards per deck rather than to have a capped list, though I don't think that either option is very good.

Most importantly, however, playing with a big pile of broken singletons is the "heart and soul" of vintage.  I can honestly say that the prospect of doing this is what keeps the format so interesting to me.  Any type of reform that would change this could result in a brand new format- just not one that should be called Vintage.  In keeping with this, I would suggest that it would be a much better idea to propose the creation of a new format rather than to attempt to roll out these changes onto Vintage.  Call it 1.c or "Vintage capped" or whatnot, but not "Vintage."


Katzby

[thorme]

If you don't like the fluid nature of this format, QYB and go somewhere else!

I believe that my proposed changes would increase the fluidity of the format as I understand it.  Not sure how you see it otherwise.  Also, I'm sure if you work at it, you too can learn to be civil.

For example, would you really expect anybody to ever use Lotus Petal in an optimal Vintage deck when people could just fill up their card cap allowance with Black Lotuses?  Budget decks aside, this idea still essentially bans Lotus Petal from the format and many people would find this unacceptable.

I don't find this argument compelling.  There will always be suboptimal cards in any flavor of the Vintage format.  One could just as easily say that Bird Maiden is essentially banned from the format due to the printing of a million better creatures, and I don't see that as a major cause for complaint today.

Most importantly, however, playing with a big pile of broken singletons is the "heart and soul" of vintage

You may have that opinion, but I don't see how you can state that as fact.  In my mind, the "heart and soul" of vintage has much more to do with the ability to play most any card printed (and my proposal allows 4 of each card printed - sans banned cards - to be legal).  You're a long-time Keeper player from back in the day, and I get that you like that style of deck - but that's a far cry from being able to declare that Vintage should be highlander.


As expected, many objections boil down to "but I've built my decks around the current format" or "that changes Vintage from what I'm used to".  I get that...in fact, many said the same when Brainstorm was restricted and I fully understand how much more of a drastic change this would be.  Despite this, I remain convinced the proposal is a solid one on the merits.

[LotusHead]

Vintage deckbuilding rules would allow for no more than 4 copies of any cards on the Capped list to be played in a deck.

Now that I read this a little closer, it seems to say that no one could run a full set of jewelry (5 moxen, 1 lotus) because that's more than 4 cards from capped list.

If so, that Idea is crap.
/thread sorry

[thorme]

Vintage deckbuilding rules would allow for no more than 4 copies of any cards on the Capped list to be played in a deck.

Now that I read this a little closer, it seems to say that no one could run a full set of jewelry (5 moxen, 1 lotus) because that's more than 4 cards from capped list.

If so, that Idea is crap.

Correct, your deck would not be able to contain more than 4 total cards from the Capped List, so you could play 4 of any individual piece of jewelry, but not 5 individual moxen and a lotus since that would be 6 cards from the Capped List.

Needless to say, your rebuttal is less-than-persuasive.  The fact that some can't seem to give any rational argument as to why this would hurt the format health just adds credence to the proposal in my mind.

[Demonic Attorney]

The next person who flames thorme gets a Full Warning.  If you disagree with his proposal, say so with some measure of civility and provide supporting argument, or don't post.

[Anusien]

No more being forced to make decks with singletons unless you want to

I don't see why requiring decks to run multiple Moxen or Lotii or Ancestrals or whatever in place of the cheaper staples like Demonic, Sol Ring and such makes the format more accessible.  I'm also not sure why a deck of singletons is bad on its own.

I think the list is a problem; you really should only have some of the more expensive cards on the list.  Limiting player access to things like Sol Ring, Desire or whatnot seem problematic.  There's no way decks could look anything at all like Vintage even for the past 4 years.  In other words, requiring players to choose between, say, Black Lotus/Dark Ritual and the draw spells will only make things worse.

Even if the idea became prevalent, I don't think players would like it.  For one thing it would take about a hundred dollars or so off the value of the lesser power.  But I think fundamentally it won't be fun; fewer pieces of jewelry, less Tinker and Desire.  All the things about Vintage that are fun now to most people would be gone.

Plus, I think this makes things more swingy, not less.  Nowadays players have, say, 10 cards that lead to an early blowout; you'd be limiting them to 4.

[Matt]

Please note that I wasn't deriding the idea; this sounds like a fun format, one I would like a lot better than current vintage. I ws just pointing out one major hurdle you'd have to overcome.

[Oath of Happy]

This sounds really fun, but I think it would have to be an entirely new format rather than an alteration to vintage.  If the capped list were raised to 8 I think it would be a lot of fun to play, as everyone would pick different card choices rather than the 40 auto includes.  There would be no "right" choice: would you run 4 Ancestral 4 Time walk? 4 Lotus 4 Sapphire? 3 Ancestral, 2 Time Walk, 2 Lotus, 1 Yawgs Will? The list goes on infinitly.  Even at 4 capped cards it would still be really interesting to have to make a choice on which busted card(s) to run at each tournament.  There would probably be a lot less of these dumb cookie cutter decks that everyone runs at every tourney

[thorme]

I think the list is a problem; you really should only have some of the more expensive cards on the list.  Limiting player access to things like Sol Ring, Desire or whatnot seem problematic.  There's no way decks could look anything at all like Vintage even for the past 4 years.  In other words, requiring players to choose between, say, Black Lotus/Dark Ritual and the draw spells will only make things worse.

I see where you're coming from.  At some point, the goal of making decks have more variety and the goal of making the format more accessible start to be at odds.  Minimizing the list to just expensive cards makes the format cheaper, but also gets back to a place where every deck starts using 4x Sol Ring and the other really good but not so expensive cards.  Really the list I put up there (which admittedly I didn't spend more than 10 minutes on) was more geared towards keeping the format from unacceptable brokeness with the expense being a side benefit. 

Even if the idea became prevalent, I don't think players would like it.  For one thing it would take about a hundred dollars or so off the value of the lesser power.  But I think fundamentally it won't be fun; fewer pieces of jewelry, less Tinker and Desire.  All the things about Vintage that are fun now to most people would be gone.

I think if you compare the popularity and player base of formats without a restricted list, you'll find that "fewer pieces of jewelry, less Tinker and Desire" can indeed be fun.  No system is going to be perfect - there are always tradeoffs to make.  What I like about the Capped List idea is it addresses many of the variety and power issues in a way that doesn't impact people's ability to still play all the cards they know and love. 

Yes, the format will lose something for those who love current Vintage and can't stand Extended for example...those who thrive on optimizing those last 4-5 cards choices that is the realm of Vintage deck design today, those who love the randomness of drawing more brokenness than the opponent, and those who have pimped out beta-everything decks.  I submit though that those folks are a minority of magic players and that to the majority out there (most of whom don't play Vintage) this makes the format much more accessible and increases the emphasis on great deck design and tight play.

Please note that I wasn't deriding the idea; this sounds like a fun format, one I would like a lot better than current vintage. I ws just pointing out one major hurdle you'd have to overcome.

No worries man...the point is a valid one (and probably one of the more concerning to folks on this board).  I'm realistic to know that I'll probably hit the lotto before such a change would come about - but again, purely on the merits of what would make the format most healthy, I think it's solid.

[Vegeta2711]

I think the main problem with such a cap is you're effectively just playing Legacy with a set of whatever broken cards you want (or highlander a set of combo pieces, whatever), but for some reason you get 4 AR, Lotus or Balance over *insert less-insane card here*, which makes 0 sense to me. If I wanted to play Legacy, I'd play Legacy. I mean this could be a fun variant for sure, but it kills a lot of the appeal of 'classic' Vintage that some people seem to want.

[Akuma]

I think the point Matt mentioned is the greatest hurdle an idea like this would face. Many long-time Vintage players will have their "set" of cards, but many of them never bothered to get the extra 3 Black Lotuses or 3 Ancestral Recalls, and revamping the format to require some of these cards would not be something most people would be able to do.

I frankly don't know what needs to be done to "fix" Vintage. All I know is that interest in the format has dropped like a rock, and people like myself don't even advocate it ever since the June 20th slap to the face.

[Oath of Happy]

I think the point Matt mentioned is the greatest hurdle an idea like this would face. Many long-time Vintage players will have their "set" of cards, but many of them never bothered to get the extra 3 Black Lotuses or 3 Ancestral Recalls, and revamping the format to require some of these cards would not be something most people would be able to do.

I frankly don't know what needs to be done to "fix" Vintage. All I know is that interest in the format has dropped like a rock, and people like myself don't even advocate it ever since the June 20th slap to the face.

         Vintage doesn't need fixing.  A lot of the newbies have found a home in legacy, a lot of the old champs have new priorities that involve familiys and jobs, and a lot of players have just moved on because they don't care anymore.  Shit happens, our country is in a huge depression, and a lot of people got attracted by the huge explosion of the format that occurred when websites like this one started promoting vintage.  What goes up must come down, look at lets say....beenie baby's.  I think my mom paid like....70 bucks for that stupid purple Princess Diana bear? how much do you think its worth now? 5-10 bucks, if not a 1 dollar tag sale item.  Sure, more people were excited about vintage durring its upcliming and peak, but I played in 2002 and I'll say that the format has a lot more motivated players  competing than it did back then.

       As far as June 20th being a slap to the face, yes, Brainstorm and Ponder were absolutly stupid.  Restricting cantrips makes dumb broken decks more broken, as rather than giving up speed for consistency, they just become more aggressive.  Gush, Scroll, and possibly Flash were good calls tho, they made decks extremely proactive and comboish.  The 4 gush 4 scroll decks were just games of who can go apeshit first and took little to no playskill.

[thorme]

I think the point Matt mentioned is the greatest hurdle an idea like this would face. Many long-time Vintage players will have their "set" of cards, but many of them never bothered to get the extra 3 Black Lotuses or 3 Ancestral Recalls, and revamping the format to require some of these cards would not be something most people would be able to do.

So you believe that the DCI should take the structure of players' current collections into account when creating Restricted List policy?

[Matt]

I think the point Matt mentioned is the greatest hurdle an idea like this would face. Many long-time Vintage players will have their "set" of cards, but many of them never bothered to get the extra 3 Black Lotuses or 3 Ancestral Recalls, and revamping the format to require some of these cards would not be something most people would be able to do.

So you believe that the DCI should take the structure of players' current collections into account when creating Restricted List policy?

Who said anything about 'should', or for that matter, the DCI? It's a comment not on what the DCI should do, but what the players will do (oppose your proposed format on those grounds).

[LotusHead]

The next person who flames thorme gets a Full Warning.  If you disagree with his proposal, say so with some measure of civility and provide supporting argument, or don't post.

Apologies if my response two posts up from this was seen as flaming.  It certainly wasn't intended to be.

However, the proposed idea seems to me to be about 4 cards away from Legacy, which is utterly not Vintage to me.  Hence my curt dismissal.

[thorme]

I think the point Matt mentioned is the greatest hurdle an idea like this would face. Many long-time Vintage players will have their "set" of cards, but many of them never bothered to get the extra 3 Black Lotuses or 3 Ancestral Recalls, and revamping the format to require some of these cards would not be something most people would be able to do.

So you believe that the DCI should take the structure of players' current collections into account when creating Restricted List policy?

Who said anything about 'should', or for that matter, the DCI? It's a comment not on what the DCI should do, but what the players will do (oppose your proposed format on those grounds).

I made no claim about his comment.  I understood the point.  I'm the one who mentioned the DCI - my question is whether they should make policy based on some players opposing the change because of their collections.

[Akuma]

So you believe that the DCI should take the structure of players' current collections into account when creating Restricted List policy?

No, not at all. I just think that it would present a problem for getting people into this theoretical format.

I think LotusHead makes a good point, wouldn't this theoretical format be a little too close to Legacy, the way I see it: Legacy deck + 4 cards.

[thorme]

I agree that this format would be similar to Legacy.  The creation of Legacy was a different attempt to fix some of the brokenness/cost issues.  I'm not a huge fan of the fix, which now leaves us with 2 formats each with their own issues.  Instead, I would propose the Capped List change to Vintage and then there would be no need for Legacy, so collapsing the formats into a single format which I think solves several of the issues Legacy was trying to solve (plus a few others) more effectively.

[GrandpaBelcher]

So, really, this is removing Vintage and Legacy and saving neither.  That seems like we'd be giving up a lot and getting little in exchange.  People enjoy Vintage and Legacy, each for their own reasons.  Some of them even enjoy the "brokenness" of having several Moxen and Lotus and Ancestral etc. in their deck and playing against an opponent running the same.

Still, this is an interesting experiment and could be a format in its own right.  It would be fun to see what metagame would arise from a 4-card cap (or an 8-card cap or a 12 card cap).  Would a Black Lotus combo deck do better than a Mana Drain Deck?  Would GAT be powerful with three Gush and a Fastbond?  Would four Balance be a powerhouse?  I think a lot of work would have to go into producing a list of cappable cards, though.  For example, if Black Lotus is on there, why bother having Lotus Petal?  Ooh, and manaless Ichorid is barely touched by the cap; you'd almost have to give them a nod and put Golgari Grave-Troll on the list or every deck starts with four Leyline and four Tormod's Crypt.

[thorme]

For example, if Black Lotus is on there, why bother having Lotus Petal? 

You can't necessarily remove Petal just because Black Lotus is on the list.  You then open up decks to 4x Ritual and 4x Lotus Petal or 4x Lotus Petal and 4 x Yawg Will.  These may or may not be broken, and Petal may or may not be able to be safely removed - but you have to think thru all the impacts...you can't just remove something from the Capped List because something more powerful is already on there.


I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read through the Capped List concept.  I opted to go with trial-by-fire for the proposal by bringing it here - the last, dwindling stronghold of Vintage lovers on the web.  Glad many of you like the concept of the format, although there is the expected and understandable resistence to changing the Vintage format you all know and love. 

[Matt]

You can't necessarily remove Petal just because Black Lotus is on the list.  You then open up decks to 4x Ritual and 4x Lotus Petal or 4x Lotus Petal and 4 x Yawg Will.

You're right, but for the wrong reason. Both of those options are strictly worse than 4 ritual 4 black lotus, or 4 black lotus 4 ywill. The only thing you'd have to consider, in this specific example, is a deck which chooses 4 black lotus for its capped quota and then ALSO plays 4 petal just because.

In cases which are less obviously strictly superior, there's more to consider, of course.