All B/R update speculation.

[troopatroop]

Even on the draw, Workshop -> Trinisphere is especially potent against the wide array of decks in Legacy, and they've printed new artifacts in the meantime that are super scary. I'm thinking of stuff like Lodestone Golem...Steel Hellkite... Grim Monolith and Metalworker are back!! Mishra's Workshop is the scariest card I could ever imagine coming back into Legacy. I think it's safe to say that Mana Drain/Bazaar of Baghdad/Workshop ARE too powerful, because they would create a new tier 1. That IS a bad thing, because all these cards are ludicrously expensive, and it would kill the format in its current state. You really think wizards likes Smokestack? I don't think it does. Even Workshop->Crucible into Wasteland can be scary...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think Earthcraft is pretty safe, a couple of cards like Mind's Desire,Mind Twist, and Yawmoth's Bargain are limited by casting cost, and even Library of Alexandria is safer than workshop. At two cards per year, that's a a couple of years of buffer.


FWIW, Mental Misstep is arguably fair since every deck can play it, but it should probably stay on the list. A much more salient question is, will 'card x' warp the format in a bad way if it comes off the list?
There is some combination of reliability, resilience, and speed that is unacceptable (most recently seen with the Flash power level changes.)

See, I would say that Library is one of those "played in every deck" cards and thus, while it wouldn't create a dominant archetype, like Skullclamp, Mental Misstep, etc.. it would be a problem and have to be rebanned.

For my money the banned list breaks down this way:

Obviously unsafe:

Ancestral Recall
Balance
Black Lotus
Channel
Demonic Consultation
Flash (as long as Protean Hulk is unbanned)
Gush
Hermit Druid
Library of Alexandria
Mana Crypt
Moxes
Skullclamp
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Time Vault
Time Walk

Obviously safe:

Black Vise
Earthcraft
Goblin Recruiter
Mana Drain
Mind Twist
Mind's Desire
Shahrazad
Worldgorger Dragon

Slightly Dangerous:

Mana Vault
Mental Misstep
Mishra's Workshop
Mystical Tutor
Necropotence
Survival of the Fittest (assuming Vengevine is banned)
Tolarian Academy

Kinda Dangerous:

Demonic Tutor
Imperial Seal
Memory Jar
Timetwister
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Yawgmoth's Will

Very Dangerous, but worth talking about:

Bazaar of Baghdad
Fastbond
Oath of Druids
Tinker
Yawgmoth's Bargain

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Even on the draw, Workshop -> Trinisphere is especially potent against the wide array of decks in Legacy, and they've printed new artifacts in the meantime that are super scary. I'm thinking of stuff like Lodestone Golem...Steel Hellkite... Grim Monolith and Metalworker are back!! Mishra's Workshop is the scariest card I could ever imagine coming back into Legacy. I think it's safe to say that Mana Drain/Bazaar of Baghdad/Workshop ARE too powerful, because they would create a new tier 1. That IS a bad thing, because all these cards are ludicrously expensive, and it would kill the format in its current state. You really think wizards likes Smokestack? I don't think it does. Even Workshop->Crucible into Wasteland can be scary...

It's especially potent on the draw against the unfair decks (that haven't already cast EtW.) It's not thrillingly efficient against the fair decks.

I mean to the extent that Stax punishes people for relying on "unfair" interactions, I think it'd likely be good for the format. A strategy that's cold to turn 1 Noble Hierarch does not sound intrinsically unbalanced in the format to me.

[bruizar]

Power 9 is not a pillar, but null rod/stony silence is.
The pillars in vintage are:
Bazaar based strategies
Dark ritual based strategies
Workshop based strategies
Null/rod based strategies

These pillars all have 1 thing in common. They all have very focused goals and therefore also have specific weaknesses. Control lists generally have more options (card selection, draw, more lines of play/win conditions) than the other decks. Even though mana drain is heavily identified with control, it is not a pillar. here is a history lesson for you on vintage. There have been mana drains found in control, storm, bazaar and workshop decks in the past (yes, it's true).

The bazaar drain list was enter the dragon, a control deck using bazaar to set up a lethal replenish. Mana drain powers out replenish like a boss.

The workshop deck was an UR esperzoa list with Turn 1 elsewhere flask to turn on a turn 2 mana drain. Elsewhere flask would be bounced by esperzoa for extra card advantage, something workshop decks normally lack. Elsewhere flask also prevents you from strips.

Drain tendrils also used mana drain to power out its combo.

Then there were many other vintage control decks that utilized mana drain, but those are obvious.

This illustrates that mana drain is in fact so powerful, that every pillar tries to run it. The same would be true for legacy. If you don't play mana drain, you are doing it wrong (unless you're on phantasmagorian dredge I guess).

Legacy is a creature format, but vintage players know deep inside that the only creatures that can ever be viable in a highly competitive meta with such a big card pool, are the ones that provide utility. Goblin welder, gorilla shaman, dark confidant and snap caster Mage is what I'm talking about. You already see this happening in legacy too. Maverick =utility creature.dec. utility creatures often come attached with x/1 human bodies, making it quiet easy to hate them out. Once power creep continues, creatures take a back seat and the game brill be about who controls the stack, rather than who controls the board. The main strategies that can deviate from this are dredge (ignore the stack) and 9-balls / mud (make it impossible to cast anything on the stack through 3spheres/lodestone golem/tangle wire/wasteland/crucible of worlds/smokestack/sphere of resistance).

This is why mana drain nor workshop nor bazaar should be allowed in legacy.

Leviat / enter the dragon 2004

Combo - 7
2 Form of the Dragon
1 Solitary Confinement
4 Replenish

Search / Tutor - 11
4 Intuiton
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
3 Careful Study

Draw - 6
4 Deep Analysis
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction

Control - 8
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Utility - 4
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Time Walk

Mana - 24
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Plains
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Library of Alexandria

Sideboard
3 Seal of Cleansing
3 Aura of Silence
3 Exalted Angel
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Zurs Weirding
1 Future Sight
1 Disenchant

Edit: can't find the other lists now on the iosdevice, but maybe I can add them later

[bruizar]

It's especially potent on the draw against the unfair decks (that haven't already cast EtW.) It's not thrillingly efficient against the fair decks.

I mean to the extent that Stax punishes people for relying on "unfair" interactions, I think it'd likely be good for the format. A strategy that's cold to turn 1 Noble Hierarch does not sound intrinsically unbalanced in the format to me.

If stax was cold to turn 1 noble hierarch, birds of paradise would have been played years ago. Exalted isn't making or breaking mishra's workshop, iba.

The only mana dude that has (one tournament) made a brief splash, was lotus cobra, and that's because you can power it out turn 1 with moxen before they deploy spheres, and they make fetch extremely potent at dodging spheres so you can dig for h.recall or rebuild.

[troopatroop]

It's especially potent on the draw against the unfair decks (that haven't already cast EtW.) It's not thrillingly efficient against the fair decks.

I mean to the extent that Stax punishes people for relying on "unfair" interactions, I think it'd likely be good for the format. A strategy that's cold to turn 1 Noble Hierarch does not sound intrinsically unbalanced in the format to me.

But that's the one example where Maverick even gets a chance at keeping up with a workshop. If staxx is on the play in that situation it can play Chalice at 1 OR Trinisphere. Or it could play Metalworker. If you let me use workshops, I'd gladly show you how much they wreck G/w Maverick in its' current state...

[Kanti]

A judge told me that as long as there is another possible target for Animate Dead, someone can't draw the game with Worldgorger Dragon because the player will be required to at some point choose a different target so it doesn't draw. Granted, it'll still draw if there's no other target, but if there's something else for Animate Dead to animate in either graveyard, then it's not a draw.On the other hand, it can't be Stifled.

But even ignoring that, Mind's Desire requires you to set up Storm for it to be worth anything, when it's supposed to be the thing that sets up the Storm for you. It's kind of like, instead of paying money to buy something, you instead pay money so that you can pay money to buy something. It also costs more mana than Ad Nauseam and is off color. So I don't really think it'd be that dangerous.

Are you kidding me? Mind's Desire not so strong? Um, how about the fact that a it has Storm and so bypasses Force of Will and Pierce? Or the fact that it can be Wished for? Or the fact that TES decks run 4 Petal, 4 LED, 3-4 Mox so will have 0 trouble getting UU? If you Desire for like 4-5 you could win, as a deck like TES runs 8 freaking 2cc tutors, so you will hit some form of mana and a tutor and just win.

Also, WHAT? Mana Drain and Mind Twist? Are you freaking kidding me? This coming from the guy that wanted Workshop unabnned (Again, what the fuck are you smoking? Workshop unbanned in a format with 4 four quattro fufufufuufu FOUR TRINISPHERES LEGAL AND OH MY GODS NOOO PLEASE NOOOOOOO

Turn 1 Hierach kills Stax. Please.

edit: cold to hierach? What the fuck?

edit2: seriously, Hierach was mentioned many a times at beating MUD decks. First of all, you wont always have Hierach. If you do you better be on the play (So that is a 50% chance of actually being able to casting a spell that you have a 40%ish of drawing). Then you have Hierach, and your opponent lands a Lodestone Golem? You lay a land down, and maybe they didnt even drop Trinisphere but just dropped a Sphere. You cast KotR (t1 Hierach on the play, t2 KotR. It doesnt get any better vs Stax). Your opponent lands Wurmcoil. GG.

[Lemnear]

Legacy has no Gush, fastbond, Ancestral recall or Beta moxen to make scroll Broken4 again the topic of different metas.

Dark Ritual in vintage? Check numbers of it. It's still considered a pillar but lotus Cobra took it's spot

[(nameless one)]

Leviat / enter the dragon 2004

Combo - 7
2 Form of the Dragon
1 Solitary Confinement
4 Replenish

Search / Tutor - 11
4 Intuiton
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
3 Careful Study

Draw - 6
4 Deep Analysis
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction

Control - 8
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Utility - 4
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Time Walk

Mana - 24
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Plains
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Library of Alexandria

Sideboard
3 Seal of Cleansing
3 Aura of Silence
3 Exalted Angel
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Zurs Weirding
1 Future Sight
1 Disenchant

This list looks awesome to be ported to Legacy or Modern.

[Dark Ritual]

Legacy has no Gush, fastbond, Ancestral recall or Beta moxen to make scroll Broken4 again the topic of different metas.

Dark Ritual in vintage? Check numbers of it. It's still considered a pillar but lotus Cobra took it's spot

Dark rit in vintage fell out in favor because misstep was printed and workshops gained lodestone golem. What has dark ritual based combo gained over the past few years in terms of playable cards in vintage? Almost nothing in comparison to mental misstep and lodestone golem for control decks and workshop decks as lodestone golem is a clock as well as a lock piece against dark ritual combo in vintage. Mental misstep countering most of your key spells hurt dark ritual based combo a lot. Hence the reason for gush based storm combo decks in vintage being the most popular form of storm combo in vintage. Gush storm doesn't just die because the opponent has misstep, in fact the only card that misstep affects in gush based combo is fastbond along with some other 1 drops here and there (recall, brainstorm, ponder/preordain, vamp tutor if they run it, mystical tutor if they run it.)

Stax is cold to turn 1 hierarch? Not really. When you respond to turn 1 hierarch with turn 1 lodestone golem or trinisphere into lodestone golem, you're going to have some serious problems. Stax decks can also easily play cursed totem as it's an artifact that costs 2 that fucks maverick up in a big way.

Also, necropotence is only slightly dangerous? Are you fucking kidding me? I'd play the shit out of that card if it was unbanned in legacy. Turn 1 necropotence for life into turn 2 kill. Don't even argue about force of will 'keeping necropotence in check' because you can get a turn 1 duress into a necro rather easily with the current card pool and who says you even have to turn 1 necro? You can go turn 1 duress, turn 2 necro and literally say GG to your opponent as you have just won that game most likely. There is nothing remotely safe about necropotence. Unbanning necro would be the death knell of legacy, as people would leave in droves because legacy would warp itself around necropotence mirror matches as whoever wasn't slinging 4 necropotence would be playing some crappy anti necro deck that wouldn't actually beat necro decks and everyone who was smart enough would become well versed in the mirror match as that is what you would be playing at a tournament if you wanted to win said tournament. Also love how you think bargain is infinitely more dangerous than necro, I mean really? The argument that you have to pass the turn and untap to win is ridiculous. If you resolve necro or bargain, you're going to win said game very fast or lose said game very fast.

On mana vault. Turn 1 I go dark rit, mana vault, ad nauseam. I win. Cool story, I now have 8 dark rit's in my deck to power out a turn 1 ad nauseam. Turn 1 ad nauseam wins the game almost every single time barring fringe cases. Ad nauseam is pretty close to bargain in terms of power level and when ad nauseam resolves I almost always smile knowing I'm about to win the game.

Overall don't really agree with your list IBA. Demonic tutor is only kinda dangerous? That card is busted in half. Every single deck wants demonic tutor in legacy because tutoring for any card for 1B is quite powerful. It would be in control decks, combo decks, and probably even aggro decks although those would likely disappear completely what with combo beating the shit out of aggro. Also, yawg's win under slightly dangerous? Are you kidding me? That card should be under obviously unsafe for legacy, as the card is busted in half. Also doesn't help that we have 4 BURNING WISH AND 4 LION'S EYE DIAMOND in the current card pool, along with 4 psuedo demonic tutor's. Making yawg's will a powerhouse. We could port burning long almost directly into legacy with a few changes. And that deck wasn't remotely fair, in fact it was ridiculously unfair. You can argue that without power 9 yawg's will is substantially less broken but we still have 4 LED's/lotus in this format for all intents and purposes with yawg's will. The card will never get unbanned in legacy, if it does everyone will be sleeving up yawg's win en masse.

[Malchar]

I think it's important to note here that Stax and Stompy decks are not able to compete "pretty well" except in the limited sense by which Burn and Affinity also compete "pretty well."

I mean, those are both well established archetypes, and no one would blink and eye if you showed up to a tournament with them. To me, that's the best that anyone can ask for. You can't really have everyone's pet deck be a "deck to beat".

Besides, most of the fringe archetypes lose out to other fringe archetypes due to their lack of versatility, not lack of power. Giving them a raw power card like workshop will let them take matches from top decks, but it's not necessarily going to make it into a top deck. This could just lead to a more rock-paper-scissors style format where control always beats combo, combo always beats aggro, and aggro always beats control.

The first part is begging the question, the second part is a sketchy argument; non-stax decks using extra mana effectively doesn't say anything about the utility of an extra mana card that only makes sense in Stax (I don't think you would even want Workshop in a deck like Dragon Stompy since you can't cast Moons or fatties with it, unless maybe the threatbase got significantly altered.)

Even if you discount the use of ancient tomb in show and tell, and all stompy decks, stax is still a well-established archetype.

This is nonsensical because Counterspell has a better performance record than Ancient Tomb in Stax decks.

I mean I think both should get an experimental run off the banned list but I don't think there's a clearcut case that Workshop would end up being better than Drain, since Drain is immensely more flexible. Workshop can basically go in one deck.

It doesn't matter that counterspell was good a long time ago. Even still, I think that ancient tomb is at least equally important to a stax deck as counterspell is to a control deck.

I'm not sure that I like experimental unbannings. I was on the ground floor during the hulk-flash debacle, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. If the cards are considered to be reasonably fair, then they can be unbanned, but I don't want them to unban it first and then see if it's fair after the fact.

How the fuck do you prove a card is fair? I mean I could use Black Lotus to cast 3x Wall of Wood, does that prove how fair Black Lotus is?

This is an interesting question to which I don't know the answer. However, as I said before, there are certain hints, such as counterspell not being played being necessary to show that mana drain would be fair.



We can also ask the question: what is the difference between legacy and vintage? Unlike modern, both formats utilize cards that are very expensive and will not be reprinted. With modern, Wizards can control the supply of the cards however they want. There's really no difference between legacy and vintage except for a ban list which is, at some level, arbitrary. It was decided that if you ban certain cards from the vintage card pool, you can create a sufficiently different and interesting format called legacy.

The five pillars of vintage serve as a basic guide to the separation between legacy and vintage. If you unban one of the five pillars and allow it in legacy, it will become too powerful. The namesake cards, mana drain, dark ritual, null rod, workshop, and bazaar, aren't necessarily the broken ones. For example, the dark ritual storm decks use the powerful black tutors, yawgmoth's will, and necropotence. These are clearly the strongest cards, although you could make a reasonable argument that dark ritual is fundamentally more broken. (Would yawgmoth's will even be that broken without rituals?) Anyway, workshop is one of the only cards unique to vintage stax which is banned in legacy. (We can discount the moxen and lotus because they are used in every vintage deck anyway, so they aren't unique to vintage stax.) In essence, giving workshop to legacy stax would make it equal to vintage stax minus moxen, lotus, and a few other cards. By comparison, it would have the same effect as unbanning yawgmoth's will, since it would be powering legacy storm up to vintage levels (again, minus moxen and lotus), and storm isn't even a "deck to beat" in legacy, so clearly that isn't the right way to measure fairness.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

If stax was cold to turn 1 noble hierarch, birds of paradise would have been played years ago. Exalted isn't making or breaking mishra's workshop, iba.

I'm wondering if you're being deliberately obtuse in a bold gamble to confuse me out of the argument. Stax strategies have problems with mana ramping and creatures and fair decks generally. Turn one mana acceleration isn't the only problem, GSZ also poses difficulties. So do planeswalkers for that matter. Prison strategies generally have problems dealing with fairness. Exalted doesn't make this much worse, it just makes Birds a lot better so a deck is more likely to run it in the first place.

The only mana dude that has (one tournament) made a brief splash, was lotus cobra, and that's because you can power it out turn 1 with moxen before they deploy spheres, and they make fetch extremely potent at dodging spheres so you can dig for h.recall or rebuild.

Which would be great if we were talking about Vintage, which is a completely different format.

Someday perhaps people will realize that.

Speaking of;

Then there were many other vintage control decks that utilized mana drain, but those are obvious.

This illustrates that mana drain is in fact so powerful, that every pillar tries to run it. The same would be true for legacy. If you don't play mana drain, you are doing it wrong (unless you're on phantasmagorian dredge I guess).

This is dumb because even when the format had a much smaller card pool people didn't run Mana Drain and were completely correct to do so. Even in a lot of blue non-combo decks.

Vintage isn't Legacy.

Legacy is a creature format, but vintage players know deep inside that the only creatures that can ever be viable in a highly competitive meta with such a big card pool, are the ones that provide utility. Goblin welder, gorilla shaman, dark confidant and snap caster Mage is what I'm talking about. You already see this happening in legacy too. Maverick =utility creature.dec. utility creatures often come attached with x/1 human bodies, making it quiet easy to hate them out. Once power creep continues, creatures take a back seat and the game brill be about who controls the stack, rather than who controls the board. The main strategies that can deviate from this are dredge (ignore the stack) and 9-balls / mud (make it impossible to cast anything on the stack through 3spheres/lodestone golem/tangle wire/wasteland/crucible of worlds/smokestack/sphere of resistance).

I swear to God, everytime someone tries to make a generalized statement about how Vintage is what Legacy will look like once a few more sets get printed, Jesus murders a baby seal.

People have been insisting for seven years that right around the corner Legacy will be a format where you have to play blue and black to compete because that's the "natural" evolution of an eternal format.

Maybe people should stop assuming that the tendencies of a format where Moxen, Lotus, Recall, YawgWill, Strip Mine, Tinker, and Vamp and Demonic Tutor and Imperial Seal are all legal simultaneously tell us anything other than how a format with those cards will look.

Legacy is not Vintage. Legacy is not Vintage. Jesus Christ how many times do we have to repeat this.

But that's the one example where Maverick even gets a chance at keeping up with a workshop. If staxx is on the play in that situation it can play Chalice at 1 OR Trinisphere. Or it could play Metalworker. If you let me use workshops, I'd gladly show you how much they wreck G/w Maverick in its' current state...

Then show me. Give me a list that you think would be broken with Workshop.

I mean, those are both well established archetypes, and no one would blink and eye if you showed up to a tournament with them. To me, that's the best that anyone can ask for. You can't really have everyone's pet deck be a "deck to beat".

I think the best that anyone can ask for is that a deck be good. The very fact that you're describing it as a pet deck tells us that we're far away from breaking the format with Stax effects.

Besides, most of the fringe archetypes lose out to other fringe archetypes due to their lack of versatility, not lack of power. Giving them a raw power card like workshop will let them take matches from top decks, but it's not necessarily going to make it into a top deck. This could just lead to a more rock-paper-scissors style format where control always beats combo, combo always beats aggro, and aggro always beats control.

First of all, even invoking the idea of an RPS metagame undermines my ability to listen seriously to your criticism. I assume you're not trying to be literal but it's still infuriating that anyone in the year of our lord two thousand fucking twelve actually thinks that's how metagames work.

Also I don't even know what you're saying here, the deck would be powerful but fold to hate? So what? We have lots of those. Also this deck would lose to a lot more than Shattering Sprees I think.

It doesn't matter that counterspell was good a long time ago.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...nd12/welcome#1

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...nt12/welcome#1

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...tl12/welcome#0

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=48021

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=48610

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=47816

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=47490

I'm not sure that I like experimental unbannings. I was on the ground floor during the hulk-flash debacle, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. If the cards are considered to be reasonably fair, then they can be unbanned, but I don't want them to unban it first and then see if it's fair after the fact.

It required very little testing or experimentation to discover that Flash was busted. And that was a deck that came out of nowhere, with a combo that wasn't even possible until then; we're now mostly talking about cards that are fairly well understood. It should not be so hard to demonstrate if a card is monstrously unfair that it is so with an experimental list.

We can also ask the question: what is the difference between legacy and vintage? Unlike modern, both formats utilize cards that are very expensive and will not be reprinted. With modern, Wizards can control the supply of the cards however they want. There's really no difference between legacy and vintage except for a ban list which is, at some level, arbitrary. It was decided that if you ban certain cards from the vintage card pool, you can create a sufficiently different and interesting format called legacy.

The five pillars of vintage serve as a basic guide to the separation between legacy and vintage. If you unban one of the five pillars and allow it in legacy, it will become too powerful. The namesake cards, mana drain, dark ritual, null rod, workshop, and bazaar, aren't necessarily the broken ones. For example, the dark ritual storm decks use the powerful black tutors, yawgmoth's will, and necropotence. These are clearly the strongest cards, although you could make a reasonable argument that dark ritual is fundamentally more broken. (Would yawgmoth's will even be that broken without rituals?) Anyway, workshop is one of the only cards unique to vintage stax which is banned in legacy. (We can discount the moxen and lotus because they are used in every vintage deck anyway, so they aren't unique to vintage stax.) In essence, giving workshop to legacy stax would make it equal to vintage stax minus moxen, lotus, and a few other cards. By comparison, it would have the same effect as unbanning yawgmoth's will, since it would be powering legacy storm up to vintage levels (again, minus moxen and lotus), and storm isn't even a "deck to beat" in legacy, so clearly that isn't the right way to measure fairness.

There is nothing in here that could be read as anything other than a tortured justification for saying that Workshop must be too good because look at this narrowly drawn and absurdly arbitrary process I have decided on to declare it so. I mean, really, "We can discount the Moxen and Lotus?" No. No we fucking can't. I'm pretty sure that those cards play a big role in defining Vintage Stax, little as I know or care to know about the format.

[lordofthepit]

It's especially potent on the draw against the unfair decks (that haven't already cast EtW.) It's not thrillingly efficient against the fair decks.

I mean to the extent that Stax punishes people for relying on "unfair" interactions, I think it'd likely be good for the format. A strategy that's cold to turn 1 Noble Hierarch does not sound intrinsically unbalanced in the format to me.

Workshop Stax's "strategy" is to shut down your opponent's ability to function while continuing to do broken stuff on Turns 2, 3, 4, etc. Turn 1 Noble Hierarch merely allows your opponent to play Magic, it doesn't stop the Stax deck cold. In fact, NobleHierarch.dec will be playing fair Magic while you're continuing to do broken crap like drop Turn 2 Lodestone Golem into Wurmcoil Engine and/or Sundering Titan.

[bruizar]

IBA, just admit that you're totally wrong on this. I won't bother to digress into the details of all your comments except for 2 of them. Legacy is not Vintage, but your classification of what is safe to unban would make it a lot more like vintage than it is right now. I seriously doubt that you have much experience with either vintage as a competitive format, or the workshop archetype.

You asked for a deck list, well I quickly threw together this list and I'm sure I'll beat your noble hierarch with it.

4 Mishra's Workshop
4 City of Traitors
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
2 Ghost Quarter / Buried Ruin

3 Mana accelerants (Mox Diamond, Grim Monolith, or even Lotus petal, because we want to increase our chances of turn 1 trinisphere or tangle wire. Thran Dynamo would still be good even though it doesn't enable the turn 1 plays)
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Tangle Wire
4 Trinisphere
4 Metalworker
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Wurmcoil Engine
3 Steel Hellkite
2 Batterskull
3 Smokestack

Sideboard:
Cursed Totem or Triskelion, to chain-gun your noble hierarchs, thalia, and the rest of your maverick deck. Good luck protecting them with Mom! Trike also deals with Jace which is never going to resolve. Even in the off chance that this would be a problem, Myr Battlesphere would zerg Jace hard.
Phyrexian Metamorph or Duplicant - I don't even need this, but I might as well copy Griselbrand or Emrakul once in a while.
Thorn of Amethyst - To ensure that storm is really dead. Helps reduce the $ price of Lion's Eye Diamond so I can quickly buy them before they ban workshop again.
Grafdigger's Cage / Tormod's Crypt - For dredge, with love


So we have 12 lands that can cast a chalice for 1, and we have 3 lotus petals that can cast a chalice for 1 on the first turn. This means, 1/4th of the deck helps accelerate your first turn chalice for 1. Now, noble hierarch will not resolve, and I will follow up with a trinisphere or a tangle wire. I can get Crucible online, spam lodestone golems, just bash with batterskull or wurmcoil engine (Hey! STP is countered by chalice!) and fly over with Steel Hellkites to ensure you don't develop a board.

What would happen in the meta? Every deck would play Hurkyll's Recall / Rebuild and Steel Sabotage. Shattering Spree and Ancient Grudge will be in every sideboard that can support it too. While everyone is busy hating on Workshop.dec, I sleeve up dredge and steam roll you. That to me sounds exactly like vintage. Vintage isn't defined by the power9, it's defined by the lack of available sideboard slots due to Dredge and Workshop,

[Pippin]

To revisit old ghosts from the past - Show & Tell Griselbrand won both latest Magic Online MOCS (350+ people), and Gencon Legacy Champs.

I understand that topic went into other direction, but this is for those people (who like to use words like "retarded") that kept posting results from smaller tournaments where the deck wasn't played.

[Telperion]

To revisit old ghosts from the past - Show & Tell Griselbrand won both latest Magic Online MOCS (350+ people), and Gencon Legacy Champs.

I understand that topic went into other direction, but this is for those people (who like to use words like "retarded") that kept posting results from smaller tournaments where the deck wasn't played.

Context is everything:

Gencon Top 8 decklists posted: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...n12/welcome#13

1. Sneak Attack
2. Zoo
3. Hive Mind
4. Goblins
5. Esper Stoneblade
6. Maverick
7. Maverick
8. Lands

MOCS top 8: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital.../tourn/4213076

1. Omniscience
2. Miracles
3. Ad Nauseum
4. Esper Stoneblade
5. Enchantress
6. Goblins
7. RUG delver
8. Zombardment

<sigh> They really need to address this Goblin Lackey dominance

[death]

I don't see anything wrong those are diverse top 8s.

[Zombie]

Still doesn't make SnT => ohloliwin not retarded, sadly : /

[Lord Seth]

Are you kidding me? Mind's Desire not so strong?

I don't see it as so strong it needs to be banned.

Um, how about the fact that a it has Storm and so bypasses Force of Will and Pierce?

How about the fact that it falls to Stifle in a way that other cards don't? And how about Flusterstorm?

Or the fact that it can be Wished for?

Like every sorcery, including Ad Nauseam?

Or the fact that TES decks run 4 Petal, 4 LED, 3-4 Mox so will have 0 trouble getting UU?

It's still harder than BB and 1 more mana than Ad Nauseam.

If you Desire for like 4-5 you could win, as a deck like TES runs 8 freaking 2cc tutors, so you will hit some form of mana and a tutor and just win.

You mean just like Ad Nauseam?

Also note that you said you could win. Or, alternatively, you could just hit a bunch of useless cards (e.g. a few mana producers and/or discard) whereas with Ad Nauseam you could've kept going until you found something useful.

Mind's Desire costs more mana total than Ad Nauseam, is less in color (yes, it can be cast, but it's a easier to get that two Black than two Blue), and can very often go farther than Mind's Desire with cards. And Ad Nauseam clearly isn't breaking the game.

[Viridia]

Let me start with saying Ad Nauseam isn't a sorcery but and instant.

Furthermore, with Mind's Desire in your deck as the engine rather then Ad Nauseam it becomes so much easier to run FoW/Misdirect instead of discard. You'd probably run 2-3 copies of Mind's Desire along with 8-12 cantrips, 4 FoW, 1-3 Misdirects and 2-4 discard spells, making the deck even more resilient against hate and counters.
You don't just swap out Ad Nauseam for Mind's Desire, you built a different deck.