June 19th B+R Announcement!

[Caron]

..well...  suspecting the restricion of thirst, i've tryied my tezz deck with:

-3 tfk
+2 deep analysis
+1 intuition

..and it was absolutely not bad...

it also works with tall the 2 intuitions 4 AK drawing engines or with the remora engines so... i don't think Tezz will suffer too much for TFK restriction...

i like very much the 4 unrestrictions, it will be very funny to see what will happen

CARONDIMONIO

[kuberr]

And Tez decks that run D. Confidant or Remora typically run Thirst as well.  Take a look at the Philly top 8.  Paul M ran Confidant and 3 Thirst and the guy in the bottom half of the top 8 ran Remora and Thrist.  

that's factually untrue.

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37929.0

[PETER FLUGZEUG]

Well. I think those changes are really cool.
First: even if every blue and black draw spell was restricted, you could still get a broken set of draw cards, such as:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Sensei
Ancestral
dark confidant
thirst for knowledge
gush
mystic remora
fact or fiction
gifts ungiven
nights whisper
sceletal scrying
etc. (from deep analysis to frantic search or meditate, timetwister, and some more.)
I really wouldn't mind being forced to play such a draw engine (with so many different hilarious cards...)

Further: crop rotation: Cool. hurts drains more than fish: Drains usually had many basics while fish is often forced to run a lot of duals (with wastes...)so this is good: Drain mana bases are now hosed more efficiently. Also, if ichorid is going to run this, you can handle more spells with common answers such as countermagic or chalice at 1, daze and so on. (also, this is card-disadvantage.)
Also, the white tutor enables perhaps some intuition-key deck, which will depend on the grave, ads some speed and broken things but is card-disadvantage, too. Some tutors for shops, ichorid and reanimator seem cool.

On a last note: Team The Bishop's Switzerland is currently working on a deck that plays Drains and 4 goblin welders...  Broken things.  

[Eastman]

Obviously these changes were made because of the one universal thing that is on everyone's minds. This format needs more impulse! Seriously though I don't understand why people are trying to find a reasonable answer to the question "why was Thirst restricted?". I thought we were all on the same page that R&D doesn't test vintage. They approach the B&R changes with a guess and check sort of approach.

I disagree.  I think this is consistent with nerfing brainstorm, etc.  They are using the restricted list to nerf efficient blue draw/filter cards that make it easy to run piles of restricted cards and difficult to fit anything other than the good draw and the restricted list into decks.   It helps delay or prevent the development of vintage into a 1-deck format. 

[Ufactor]

So, I'd like to make a few meta-game predictions:

1. Mana Drain decks will start to play Mystic Remoras and Dark Confidants. A few will dabble in AK/Intuition but find it inferior.
2. 5-color Stax with Enlightened Tutors for Trinisphere and Crop Rotations for Strip Mine will see more play. It will become over-hyped. Even though two of the restricted cards most hated in Vintage get better, Stax is still fairly easy to disrupt with enough sideboard hate.
3. Ichorid decks will experiment with crop rotation but discover it is too easiy to disrupt.
4. Worldgorger Dragon will get a lot of attention but not perform well in tournaments as people increase graveyard hate maindeck to disrupt 5-color Stax and Ichorid.
5. Parfait will quietly produce results and be a contender shortly after Silence gets printed in M10

My guess is that Parfait will be the big winner after July 1. It has as much access to Trinisphere as Stax and it's disruption package will be harder to stop with one card (like Hurkyl's Recall).

Most of these are good.  I would like to add:

6) This means that Tez decks, which were previously both slow and light on permission, are going to have tough times.

7) Meditog (or I believe that most of the community is calling it Shaymora), with a maximum number of pitch counters, will be better equiped to handle the turn 2 shennanigans that will be everywhere.

8) Lands under a Strip lock are the new Lotus Petal.  Since lands *might* only be good for the turn that they're played, combo has an off chance of being good.  But this is only by default since everything else will be awful.  Belcher? GrimLong? ANT? D4R60N? Neo Academy?

9) Leyline of the Void will go up ten dollars.

10) Blood Moon/Magus will be the spoiler card.

11) What about 4x Cunning Wish with Gifts, FoF and Gush in the Side?

[Beralt]

I like the restriction of TFK, I think it slows down Tez slightly - although some Tez builds are going to Mystic Remora/Confidant builds.  More and more we are seeing Vintage turning into a singleton environment.  I do like that G/W and R/G beatings will not fuel the Mystic Remora draw engine as much and may start to be more viable as Tez foils. Tez may be adding Enlightened Tutor to help find it's goodies faster -time will tell.  Restricting TFK does hurt other decks like Bomberman and Slaver (but Strategic Planning is/might be a substitute of sorts).

The unrestriction of Crop Rotation is troubling, but does open up Green as a more playable color in Vintage - of course Crucible/Stripmine/Rotation becomes more intense.

Thought that we might see the unrestriction of Burning Wish, butI think we will need to see the M10 rules in place for that.

Entomb - means more Dragon, which is one of my favorite archetypes - course more people will play the graveyard hate sideboard game - either 8 slots to kill Dragon/Ichorid or not enough to stop it reliably.

[Adan]

Awesome.  So Tez will still be the best deck, but will be even more random and uncontrollable.  Clearly any sort of consistancy is a bad thing, so now I guess I'll just have to find more random restricted 1-ofs to play.  Thanks.

Also, those other cards are likely trash.  Crop Rotation is probably playable but the best the others can hope for is Entomb spawning a really annoying dragon deck.  Oh boy.

I could also see Crop Rotation giving birth to an even better version of Mana Ichorid. Crop Rotation for Bazaar, Strip, or something like Dyrad Arbor seems possible. Wizards seems to have chosen helping decks that beat Drains, rather than restricting Drains themselves. Seems like a viable approach, I just wish there was a little more combo love.

Seems unlikely that Crop Rotation gets included into (good) Ichorid builds as a Bazaar that can be countered is really not the thing you want. Mana Ichorid is already more vulnerable to Chalice, Thorn, Sphere, Sphere and Combodecks (due to the lack of disruption in compairison to Manaless- or Powder Dredge). Adding Crop Rotation would change nothing but the mulligan rates.
But a opening Hand with Land, Rotation, black card and Unmasks seems utopic to me (in the strange Ichorid builds blue card and FoW instead of Unmask and black card).

And the unrestriction of Entomb should not have an impact either, I think Dragon would just suffer splash damage from all the Ichorid hate evryone has got in their SBs anyway. But maybe I am wrong. I could also imagine something like a Mono Black Dragon with Lotus, Mox Jet and Chrome Moxen to be superfast. Like:

Bazaar, Mox (imprint black card), Ritual, Entomb -> Dragon, Animate Dead. But that's as utopic as the Ichorid issue stated above I guess...

But it's funny that TfK got restricted as well, I'm curious to what draw-engines it may lead to. Intu-AK, Intu-Squee-Bazaar, a comeback of Confidants? Maybe Nights Whispers will see play again.

I think the metagame will shift towards more Shoppers, more Ichorids and slightly more Aggrodecks against which Remora and Meditate just BLOW (which disqualifies them as "drawengines of the future"). So I would guess that they killed Remora Blue indirectly as well.

[Greistal]

I disagree.  I think this is consistent with nerfing brainstorm, etc.  They are using the restricted list to nerf efficient blue draw/filter cards that make it easy to run piles of restricted cards and difficult to fit anything other than the good draw and the restricted list into decks.   It helps delay or prevent the development of vintage into a 1-deck format. 

To me Vintage is one card closer to its "Highlander" doom: another blue draw spell joins the restricted list...

...Enter "Restricted Blue", the (near) future of control decks:

// Lands...
// Mana artifacts...
// Usual protection suite: FoW, Drain (if available) and maybe some discard...
...
// "Standard" draw engine:
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Sensei's Divining Top // it's only matter of time...
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Intuition // soon to be restricted, I'm putting myself ahead with the list!
4 Accumulated Knowledge // I hope this is beyond restriction!
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Gush
...
// Assorted broken cards...
// Some bounce...
...
// A random win condition

Once upon a time there were multiple options to play control decks:
- Hulk Smash and its kind who abused INTUITION-AK who was synergic with tog;
- Control Slaver with THIRST FOR KNOWKLEDGE  who was synergic with Welder and the big artifacts;
- Gifts with Merchant and GIFTS UNGIVEN who was better suited to win by Storm or Tinker-Colossus;
- Grow decks with GUSH who was synergic with Dryads and tog and less dependent on Drain;
plus some tier-2 decks like Bomberman who mixed draw engine and win condition in unusual ways.

Now, it's a pity that DCI cannot bring those 4 engines (Intuition-AK/Thirst/Gifts/Gush) on equal foot by well thought out restrictions/unrestrictions.
Without Ponder, Brainstorm and Merchant in 4x, I think that it's possible to simply have Intuition, Thirst, Gifts and Gush happily in 4x and see what happens.

I may be wrong but I frown at the idea that a single draw engine composed entirely by restricted cards would be the best one!

AS you may see, I don't think other colors would be helped by those unrestrictions... Wizards tries very hard to have more decks avalailable beyond control-combo, but I think they are only reducing the options among control-combo without strenghtening the other colors.
Let's face it: blue is beyond control in vintage, so let people have some choice *at least* among blue-based decks!

Greistal

[yespuhyren]

I think the four unrestrictions are awesome.  As far as thirst being restricted, my only guess is that first of all, like many have said, it is and has been EVERYWHERE since Mirrodin came out.  While maybe it wasn't broken, my best guess is that Wizards decision to remove mana burn and making Mana Drain better had something to do with this possibly? 

I'm definitey looking forward to see some 5c stax lists along the lines of

4x cropper
4x entomb
4x e-tutor
9x spheres
4x crucible
4x smokestack
4x waste
1x strip

[Troy_Costisick]

I think the four unrestrictions are awesome.  As far as thirst being restricted, my only guess is that first of all, like many have said, it is and has been EVERYWHERE since Mirrodin came out.  While maybe it wasn't broken, my best guess is that Wizards decision to remove mana burn and making Mana Drain better had something to do with this possibly? 

I'm definitey looking forward to see some 5c stax lists along the lines of

4x cropper
4x entomb
4x e-tutor
9x spheres
4x crucible
4x smokestack
4x waste
1x strip

If that deck really becomes good, then Pithing Needle is the new old sideboard tech.  Each SB that can support it will start with 4 LotV and 4 Needles.  I don't believe that to necessarily be a bad thing.  Those cards offer a lot of flexibility and are good against a wide range of decks.  GenCon will shed a lot of light on the new meta.

Peace,

-Troy

[Phele]

If Strip Mine locks become common I would go so far to say that Needles become maindeck material as they are already pretty good against a wide range of strategies.

[M.Solymossy]

The thing that is most annoying is Darksteel Colossus is just completely useless, as TFK is garbage now.  I will NOT be running 1x TFK, when I could run an intuition-AK pile.  To be honest, I'm quite happy about AK mirrors.  Now if only Time Vault would go away, we could play Drain Tendrils again!

[oneofchaos]

If Strip Mine locks become common I would go so far to say that Needles become maindeck material as they are already pretty good against a wide range of strategies.

Infinite mana screw or infinite turns taken by your opponent.  Pick your poison. 

DSC is definitely not worth playing anymore aside combo for the most part.  I have a funny feeling this metagame is going to be a lot of vengeful shop players looking to to get some revenge for nine months of hell...

[Smmenen]

And Tez decks that run D. Confidant or Remora typically run Thirst as well.  Take a look at the Philly top 8.  Paul M ran Confidant and 3 Thirst and the guy in the bottom half of the top 8 ran Remora and Thrist.  

that's factually untrue.

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37929.0

Notice I said 'typically'.    Also, I was referring to the claim that 'half tez lists don't run thirst ' when I said that was 'factually untrue.'.  Nice misrepresentation.  Finally, look at paula list from most recent Philly.  Guess what?  Thirst

[Tha Gunslinga]

DSC is definitely not worth playing anymore aside combo for the most part.  I have a funny feeling this metagame is going to be a lot of vengeful shop players looking to to get some revenge for nine months of hell...

Shops were already Tier 1; now they're going to wreck house even more.

[oneofchaos]

DSC is definitely not worth playing anymore aside combo for the most part.  I have a funny feeling this metagame is going to be a lot of vengeful shop players looking to to get some revenge for nine months of hell...

Shops were already Tier 1; now they're going to wreck house even more.

I know some people made the change from shops to drains, I am just assuming those people will go running back to shops to mana screw us drain players left and right.  I already knew they were tier 1, they keep popping up left and right.  Only shop deck I have not seen in a long time is MUD.

[elgrillo]

Infinite mana screw or infinite turns taken by your opponent.  Pick your poison. 

LOL.. That looks like a posibility now..
I hope it doesn't happen though.

[Phoenix888]

The restriction of Thirst for Knowledge is just proof that the people who decide the banned and restricted list know nothing about vintage.

Agreed.]  That, and proof that they don't care about Vintage.

[Troy_Costisick]

The restriction of Thirst for Knowledge is just proof that the people who decide the banned and restricted list know nothing about vintage.

Agreed.]  That, and proof that they don't care about Vintage.

If they didn't care, they wouldn't bother to ever make any changes at all.  They care.  They just can't make everyone happy.  Such is the way of these things.  But the fact they tinker with the B/R list to any extent means they are interested in the format's health.

Peace,

-Troy

[credmond]

With crop rotation, enlightened tutor, and entomb unrestricted, Turboland might have what it needs to become a truly viable deck. Being able to switch strategies with those tutors from assembling lock or combo could be really resilient. Turboland also has great answers to Stax and Ichorid. It can also be built to work around Leyline of the Void.

[v4ino]

One idea I would love to explore is the possibility of demonstrating the difference between completely busted cards (A. Recall) and cards that are slightly too good to run 4-of. A list of a few cards that you would be able to run 2-of. Cards like Thirst, Gush and maybe even Frantic search would be good candidates for this program. Steve, perhaps this makes for an interesting article?

And if you ask me why not a 3-of list, I don't know - this is not my day job.

Also, I do not want to hi-jack the thread so please no reply on this thread to my idea; this is only meant to get people thinking - start a new a thread (or PM me) if you feel the idea has merit. I only mention it hear as I feel it is relevant to some of the sentiments expressed on the thread.

I think Grim Monolith and Entomb are going to do wonders for non-proxy/underpowered Meta's IMO.

[jaeppel]

so i guess we are all required to say something in this thread.  one day and we are at three pages.  omfg, the sky is falling (again).

I like to play devils advocate, and i have to say that my real expectation was to see drain finally go down.  Drain is the heart of the blue engine.  one by one we see draw that involve spending U with some colorless to gain card advantage go down.  Its a bit obvious, but what was the true engine behind fact, gifts, and tfk?  Most every deck running four of one of these was also running four drains.  None of these three cards are unfair in the non-vintage environment.  Sure they were solid playables in their respective standard/block/extended environments, but also really fair cards.

It is the presence of drain that makes these fair spells busted.  Drain is really busted.  its a very unfair spell that is directly better than any other non-pitch counter.  especially with counterspell leaving the current cannon wotc has aknowledged that the alpha costing of the 'counter target spell effect' was too cheap.  Drain is huge.  it dominates everything.  Not all drain decks run tfk... there are more drains being played than tfks, and this has been true since 1994.  Drain has become a sacred cow.. its enjoyed so much time unrestricted that most of the community just cringes at the thought of it changing.  Much easier is to restrict another blue draw spell from a fairly recent set that has 1000000000's of uncommon copies all over the world.

It seems wotc also tends to attack cards that are cheap and easy to aquire quite often, but has a real hands off policy to the expensive 4offs.  It would create a small riot with the many players who have invested in the $400+ playsets of the game to actually restrict one of them.  suddenly the value plummets and the owners of x-card want to storm off and never play the game.  they always come back...  Keeping cheap staples in the game would also make the format much cheaper and accessable to play, but god forbid vintage actually become a popular format.  If you dont own 4 strategic planning i recommend running to ebay right now, because wotc just turned your $5 card into a $200 card.  That should really be a spell in an Un-set.  <instant: choose target card in any zone.  Its value becomes $200.  If it is a card you own, taget opponent must trade you something for it after this game>

Unrestricted Enlightened Tutor is the way of the future.  The other unrestrictions are nice as well.  All of these new tutors are not blue, so maybe something will arrive in the metagame that will finally push drain down the ladder.  We get a new restricted list every three months.. wotc has unleashed these dangerous weapons from the vault.  Rotation, Entomb, and Etutor all at the same time is simply amazing.  It sort of boggles the mind trying to think of what sick twisted (and completely new) decks lie on the horizon.  But now is the time to beat drain once and for all.  If losing tfk and gaining fierce competitors doesnt knock down drain, im pretty sure we will see drain on the list next.

vault-key parfait.  thats all i have to say.

[Stormanimagus]

Hey Everyone! So I know someone will be shortly posting a list similar to this in the appropriate thread, but I want to see what people might think about a Shop list somewhere along these lines:

Crops Of Shops!

Land (17):
4 Mishra’s Workshop
4 City Of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Bazaar Of Baghdad
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland

Creatures (5):
4 Goblin Welder
1 Gorilla Shaman

Artifact Creatures (1):
1 Platinum Angel

Artifacts (25):
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
3 SR/MC/MV
3 Crucible Of Worlds
4 Sphere Of Resistance
4 Thorn Of Amethyst
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Memory Jar
1 Trinisphere
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key

Instants (9):
4 Crop Rotation
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sorceries (3):
1 Tinker
1 Balance
1 Demonic Tutor

SB
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Leyline Of The Void
4 Seal Of Primordium
3 Triskelion

Seems like it makes pretty good use of Enlightened Tutor AND Crop Rotation. Thoughts? Is the basic shell of 9-sphere the best home for the new unrestricted gems?

[Diakonov]

Shops were already Tier 1; now they're going to wreck house even more.

At least you can board heavily against Shops if you have to.  When control was on top, there wasn't much you could do about it.

[oneofchaos]

One idea I would love to explore is the possibility of demonstrating the difference between completely busted cards (A. Recall) and cards that are slightly too good to run 4-of. A list of a few cards that you would be able to run 2-of. Cards like Thirst, Gush and maybe even Frantic search would be good candidates for this program. Steve, perhaps this makes for an interesting article?

And if you ask me why not a 3-of list, I don't know - this is not my day job.

Also, I do not want to hi-jack the thread so please no reply on this thread to my idea; this is only meant to get people thinking - start a new a thread (or PM me) if you feel the idea has merit. I only mention it hear as I feel it is relevant to some of the sentiments expressed on the thread.

I think Grim Monolith and Entomb are going to do wonders for non-proxy/underpowered Meta's IMO.

First I am proud to say that the new B/R list fits on a single page in microsoft word.  Congrats (we are down from 49 to 46 cards)!

Are you proposing a semi restricted list?  Like 2 of something?  Vintage has always been an all or nothing format.  It is either restricted or unrestricted.  Seeing as how people have tried to advocate for b/r changes and they are almost never satisfied, I would doubt we could get WOTC to change the way they restrict cards.  I mean it would be a nice change from our current situation, and I would support it.  Most blue shells are going to start with a chain of 30 or so singletons, followed by 4 mana drain, 4 force of will, 15-16 lands, and a handful of of other things.  The average shell already contains:

(Guessing on a post b/r update, where most are still playing a thirst)
1.   Ancestral Recall
2.   Black Lotus
3.   Brainstorm
4.   Demonic Tutor
5.   Fact or Fiction
6.   Gifts Ungiven
7.   Imperial Seal (some)
8.   Library of Alexandria
9.   Mana Crypt
10.   Mana Vault
11.   Merchant Scroll
12.   Mox Emerald
13.   Mox Jet
14.   Mox Pearl
15.   Mox Ruby
16.   Mox Sapphire
17.   Mystical Tutor
18.   Ponder
19.   Regrowth (some)
20.   Sol Ring
21.   Thirst for knowledge
22.   Time Vault
23.   Time Walk
24.   Tinker
25.   Tolarian Academy
26.   Vampiric Tutor
27.   Yawgmoth’s Will

27/46 ~= 58.7%  

More than half of the restricted list is being used to fuel the format's most powerful deck.  Then you should include the token singleton top, a variation of some combination of 1-2 bounce spells (hurkyl's recall, rebuild, echoing truth, repeal, etc), a single voltaic key, possibly a gorilla shaman, a single tezzeret, etc.  

Since 2005 where Control Slaver was popular, there were about 20 singletons in the average deck.  We are now up to 30.  In 4 years we have increased the amount of singletons in our decks by a whopping 50%.  That's only speaking for a drain based control deck, I didn't look into any other archtypes.  

If you say, haven't played since 2005 and you needed a deck for tomorrow it would be quite easy to build one.  Copy the above 25-27 cards.  Your lands are going to be about 13-14 more cards, 5-7 fetches/1-3 basics/5-7 duals (not including tolarian/library which are included above).

That is about 40 cards.  You now should include 4 mana drains, 4 force of will.  12 Cards left.  Customization is at an all time low with the general trend of how things are going.  The proof is right here.  The more restricted cards that see play, the closer our decks get to each other card for card.  

edit: reference of slaver lists:
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10479.html Brian Demars
http://www.maroox.com/magic/decks/deck.php?id=3795 Mark Biller

Food for thought-
I have heard recently about improper deck registrations and I think with the continuing rise in singletons it will only increase.  I can't plot any statistics on it as it's not exactly something that is recorded, it just seems to be a general trend. 
Compare your average tezz list with sanity grindings from a few weeks ago.

// Lands
    4  Shelldock Isle
    20  Island

// Creatures
    4  Jace Beleren
    4  Plumeveil

// Spells
    4  Howling Mine
    4  Cryptic Command
    4  Boomerang
    4  Evacuation
    4  Broken Ambitions
    4  Twincast
    4  Sanity Grinding

// Sideboard
SB: 3  Glen Elendra Archmage
SB: 1  Oona, Queen of the Fae
SB: 3  Negate
SB: 4  Flashfreeze
SB: 4  Bottle Gnomes

There is a total of 11 Unique cards maindeck!!!!
Your average tezzeret deck contains about 35-40 unique cards.

[M.Solymossy]

so i guess we are all required to say something in this thread.  one day and we are at three pages.  omfg, the sky is falling (again).

I like to play devils advocate, and i have to say that my real expectation was to see drain finally go down.  Drain is the heart of the blue engine.  one by one we see draw that involve spending U with some colorless to gain card advantage go down.  Its a bit obvious, but what was the true engine behind fact, gifts, and tfk?  Most every deck running four of one of these was also running four drains.  None of these three cards are unfair in the non-vintage environment.  Sure they were solid playables in their respective standard/block/extended environments, but also really fair cards.

It is the presence of drain that makes these fair spells busted.  Drain is really busted

I don't even want to read the rest of your post.   This is ABSURD.  Mr. RandoCommando, there is this card called Yawmgoth's Will.  Say it with me.   Why,  Aye, Double-u, gee.....

[Bongo]

@Soly: Without a good explanation, your post is useless. You could say the same about Black Lotus or Tinker. Say it with me. Bee, el, aye, ... this is leading nowhere.

Jaeppel has a solid point, Mana Drain is the heart that fuels the blue-based control engine. One can make a pretty convincing case that Thirst and Fact could come off the list with restricted Drain.

[Mr. Type 4]

I support these moves.  I expected TFK to be restricted and Grim Mono to be unrestricted.  The other 3 unrestrictions were a bit of a surprise, which I think is nice.  

A lot of people have talked about Bob/Remora lists - I've played them lots of times, and they are prob still good.

I was more worried they would restrict Drain, which I think more people would be upset about.  This move address the problem (although probably doesnt really solve it) without barring us from playing with one of the spells that has been fundamental to Vintage even before there even existed Type 1 and Type 2 (and is something that really seperates Vintage from Legacy).  All in all, I dont think restricting Drain or TFK (or both) would stop people from abusing Time Vault - it's just as ubiquitous as Yawg Will now.  The best chance of fighting Time Vault and adding diversity is to unrestrict cards, so I think getting alot of this junk off the list is moving in a positive direction.  

I feel like the people in charge knew they needed to do something to fight the Tez decks.  Unrestricting cards to help fight Tez is somewhat counter-intuitive for people that dont play a lot of Vinatge, so I'm proud of them for unrestricting so many cards.  Then they decided to restrict something, and they picked a strong card that wasn't really as sacred as Mana Drain.  

As anyone can see: There aren't a hundred forum replies here about how people are quitting because their Drains are now worthless.  There aren't a bunch of replies about how Vintage has become Legacy with Moxes.  There isn't a bunch of people saying "I guess I need to play Workshop now, except I'm afraid of spending the money just to have Shop get the ax next time." NO - the backlash here is minimal.  We would all like to see the DCI do more to help diversify the format, but doing too much always seems to fail.  So this is a good step.  Let's let it play out and if the tez decks are still the most dominant archtype in a few months, maybe we can get some more risky unrestrictions to help out.  

[kkoie]

I disagree.  I think this is consistent with nerfing brainstorm, etc.  They are using the restricted list to nerf efficient blue draw/filter cards that make it easy to run piles of restricted cards and difficult to fit anything other than the good draw and the restricted list into decks.   It helps delay or prevent the development of vintage into a 1-deck format. 

To me Vintage is one card closer to its "Highlander" doom: another blue draw spell joins the restricted list...

...Enter "Restricted Blue", the (near) future of control decks:

// Lands...
// Mana artifacts...
// Usual protection suite: FoW, Drain (if available) and maybe some discard...
...
// "Standard" draw engine:
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Sensei's Divining Top // it's only matter of time...
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Intuition // soon to be restricted, I'm putting myself ahead with the list!
4 Accumulated Knowledge // I hope this is beyond restriction!
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Gush
...
// Assorted broken cards...
// Some bounce...
...
// A random win condition

Once upon a time there were multiple options to play control decks:
- Hulk Smash and its kind who abused INTUITION-AK who was synergic with tog;
- Control Slaver with THIRST FOR KNOWKLEDGE  who was synergic with Welder and the big artifacts;
- Gifts with Merchant and GIFTS UNGIVEN who was better suited to win by Storm or Tinker-Colossus;
- Grow decks with GUSH who was synergic with Dryads and tog and less dependent on Drain;
plus some tier-2 decks like Bomberman who mixed draw engine and win condition in unusual ways.

Now, it's a pity that DCI cannot bring those 4 engines (Intuition-AK/Thirst/Gifts/Gush) on equal foot by well thought out restrictions/unrestrictions.
Without Ponder, Brainstorm and Merchant in 4x, I think that it's possible to simply have Intuition, Thirst, Gifts and Gush happily in 4x and see what happens.

I may be wrong but I frown at the idea that a single draw engine composed entirely by restricted cards would be the best one!

AS you may see, I don't think other colors would be helped by those unrestrictions... Wizards tries very hard to have more decks avalailable beyond control-combo, but I think they are only reducing the options among control-combo without strenghtening the other colors.
Let's face it: blue is beyond control in vintage, so let people have some choice *at least* among blue-based decks!

Greistal

I lol'd while reading your post, I don't know if you made it funny on purpose, but it was freaken hilarious.

Anyway, my thoughts regarding highlander vintage, as I have a couple of friends who've made similar complaints.  I don't see this as a future problem, I think the more they analyze the field, and try to restrict / unrestrict various cards, the healthier the enviroment will be.  I think that the current changes will do some good for the field, without completely breaking it to pieces.  There are alternatives out their for thirst for knowledge (granted some are expensive, like that particular 1U spell that people are running that costs $100, the name escapes me).

[oneofchaos]

Anyway, my thoughts regarding highlander vintage, as I have a couple of friends who've made similar complaints.  I don't see this as a future problem, I think the more they analyze the field, and try to restrict / unrestrict various cards, the healthier the enviroment will be.  I think that the current changes will do some good for the field, without completely breaking it to pieces.  There are alternatives out their for thirst for knowledge (granted some are expensive, like that particular 1U spell that people are running that costs $100, the name escapes me).

Strategic Planning?  It did not do much except for a couple of tournaments once brainstorm was restricted.  All I know for certain is that we are certainly moving into a highlander stage, and that hopefully these unrestrictions shake things up enough where decks start to run back to consistent shells.

Just remember how Accumulated Knowledge works.  ALL AK's in ALL graveyards.  You could potentially late game be drawing 5+ cards off your AK's if it becomes the draw engine of the future.  I do not think intuition would need to be restricted, otherwise that would only prove WOTC is destroying blue as hard as it can.  If we keep jumping draw engine to draw engine, eventually we are going to be playing a restricted list + something horrible like mulldrifters? 

And no, AK won't be restricted.  Why would they restrict a card that works best in multiples?  It's hardly even played.  I mean if AK were ever restricted, think twice would be far superior (and that is saying a lot..)