Magic Origins is nearly upon us, and as spoilers pour in the Magic community is buzzing about how they’ll impact various formats. While there are a few cards that are generating some interest from the players of Magic’s oldest format, most of the discussion in the Vintage community is based around something else being released alongside Magic Origins: the Banned and Restricted List update. There’s a good reason for all of this talk too. Even with the release of Monastery Mentor, the restriction of Treasure Cruise, and the unrestricting of Gifts Ungiven, the format hasn’t changed all that much when you compare it to Eternal Weekend last year. While there are plenty of decks being played, the best decks in the format are still Martello Shops, URx Delver, and Oath of Druids. Now personally, I believe that since there’s not just one deck constantly dominating events, Wizards should let things play out, and if something absolutely needs to change I tend to favor unrestricting cards before restricting them. Still, there are a lot of smart people saying that something needs to be done so it’s worth examining the cards that are on the proverbial chopping block.
Why it should be restricted
By and large Mishra’s Workshop decks are the decks to beat in most people’s minds and arguably have been for several years. This is not a good thing for the format. Ultimately, the reason I am so passionate about Vintage is because of how much fun I have when I actually get to play it. Yes, the games can be short, but there are more decision points in those games than in long games of other formats. I say “actually get to play” because the entire point of Shops is to prevent the opponent from actually playing Magic. With a good opening seven, a Workshop deck on the play can make it so the opponent literally does nothing but make a few land drops before conceding. This is compounded by the fact that even if you could reasonably sideboard eight plus pieces of hate (thank you Dredge for making the rest of us have seven card sideboards) the Shops deck just prevents you from ever actually ever casting your sideboard cards. It’s the Thoughtseize problem, but instead of one card you have an entire deck. Despite all of this, I do believe that there should be some sort of Workshop based prison deck in the format to serve as a foil to any potential combo dominated metagame. This means you can’t hit Lodestone Golem (the card that elevated the deck to Tier 1 status) or Mishra’s Workshop (the backbone of the deck). At the same time, you can’t hit things like Sphere of Resistance, Thorn of Amethyst, or Tangle Wire because they won’t have enough of an impact (too redundant and some Shops builds don’t play some of them). Chalice hits the perfect niche of being not too important but not too redundant. It also reduces the “nut draw” of Chalice into a Sphere effect which prevents opposing decks from using moxen to pay the extra costs placed on spells.
Why it shouldn’t be restricted
The one potential saving grace for Chalice of the Void is that it sees play in other decks besides Mishra’s Workshop. Merfolk, Junk Hatebears, and new decks like The Solution all have Chalice to disrupt their opponent. All of those decks are less “prison decks” and more interactive decks with prison elements. Still, they are a small portion of the metagame and may have to be martyred for the greater health of the format.
Why it should be restricted
Initially outshined by Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time has pushed its way to the forefront of the format. In a way I knew this conversation was going to happen at some point. After Eternal Weekend last year, Ari Lax posted in our team’s private forum: “Dig Through Time is on another level as a Magic card. Since Masques Block I think I’ve seen under 10 cards printed that are on the same level as it, and basically all of them but Gitaxian Probe have been banned somewhere.” The thing I didn’t expect was that Dig Through Time would be in this spotlight because it’s serving as a replacement for Treasure Cruise in Young Pyromancer/Monastery Mentor decks. So if the card isn’t being used to its full degenerate capabilities (like finding Time Vault and Voltaic Key) then why is it on this list? The answer is to help create diversity among blue decks. UR Delver is so efficient at what it does that it makes every fair blue deck that doesn’t have either Monastery Mentor or Oath of Druids unplayable. The only reason those two decks are exceptions is because Mentor decks have the same shell (even though I believe they are still worse), and Oath is both favored against UR Delver and decent against Shops because both decks win with creatures. Although not as good at this as Treasure Cruise was in this role, Dig Through Time elevates Delver from “a playable deck” to “the best blue deck in the format” because it allows the deck to trade one-for-one and then pull ahead better than any other unrestricted card in the format. By restricting Dig you stop players from crafting their entire deck around being able to consistently refuel multiple times throughout the game. This would bring Delver to around the level it was at in 2013: strong enough to be in the finals of the Vintage Championship but not strong enough to obsolete most other fair blue decks.
Why it shouldn’t be restricted
At this point the only real argument I can make for not restricting Dig Through Time is its newness. The fact that the card hasn’t even been in existence in printed form for a full calendar year means that there is still probably a lot of unexplored territory with it. Presumably none of the things that would be found with it would be remotely fair or reasonable and it would probably end up needing to be restricted anyway. Still, my distaste for bans and/or restrictions means that I want the card to be able to run its course in the format until it’s painfully obvious that it needs dealing with.
Why it should be restricted
The other half of Delver’s draw engine, Gush has actually been restricted in Vintage twice before, the reason being that it is one of the single most powerful spells ever printed. It turns out that a free spell that lets you draw cards can be abused in a lot of ways. Even without Fastbond, the ability to float two mana and then use it to cast the two new cards you just drew is still extremely good. It also allows you to cheat on your land count because the ability to float mana and replay a land for the turn acts almost as a pseudo-ritual. This then makes the cards you’re Gushing into even better since they are less likely to be lands. Also, unlike Dig Through Time, which can be played in any blue deck, Gush’s playability is limited to just Delver style decks and any deck with Fastbond. This means that removing Gush would have the desired effect of nerfing decks based around this shell without inhibiting other decks in the format.
Why it shouldn’t be restricted
As I alluded to earlier, the reason why I don’t think Gush should be restricted is because I don’t believe it is the real culprit behind Delver’s dominance. Gush has been unrestricted since 2010, and other than the initial outcry when that happened, this is the first time I can remember people talking about wanting Gush back on the Restricted List. Taking the point I made in the previous paragraph and reversing it, the fact that Gush only goes into very specific decks means that keeping it unrestricted won’t result in have a card of that power level popping up in a slew of different decks around the format. Just like with Shops, you don’t want to completely take Delver out of the format, you just want to bring it back down to reasonable levels. The deck played multiple Gushes back in 2013, and in order for it to still be competitive going forward it either needs to be able to play multiple Gushes or multiple Dig Through Times. Between the two, Gush is the one that I believe is safer to exist in multiples.
Why it should be restricted
Part of the secret to UR Delver’s success is its consistency. The key to this consistency is the slew of cantrips that not only smooth out the deck’s draws but fuel the Delve spells that allow it to pull ahead. Preordain is the best cantrip that’s still unrestricted, so it’s the one that is most commonly seen in these decks. In fact, I would go so far as to say that any blue deck not playing four copies of Preordain is built incorrectly. This was the same logic that got Ponder restricted back in 2008, so applying it to Preordain in 2015 would not be out of the question.
Why it shouldn’t be restricted
Every format has an acceptable level of cheap manipulation. Standard (as of this writing) has Anticipate, Modern has Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand, Legacy has Brainstorm and Ponder, and Vintage has Preordain. Some of these cards are way more powerful than others, but powerful formats should have the ability to play with powerful cards. Yes, Preordain was probably too good for Standard and is too good to be legal in Modern. Compared to some of the haymakers like Oath of Druids or Bazaar of Baghdad that are unrestricted in Vintage however, Preordain hardly seems like the biggest offender. I don’t want to live in a world where Serum Visions sees regular play in Vintage, and if we are forced to live in that world I believe the people who want to see Preordain restricted will feel the same way.
So those are the four cards that should be under the microscope this July. There are some other cards like Mental Misstep that people are talking about, but realistically those cards aren’t going to get touched so they aren’t worth examining. Out of the four cards listed, I believe that if there is going to be a restriction it should be Chalice of the Void and Dig Through Time. Hitting one without hitting the other would just create more of an imbalance and ultimately leave the format in a worse place than it is in right now. It will be interesting to see what Wizards thinks come July as this will probably be the biggest thing besides unrestricting something that can be done to change the format before Eternal Weekend this year. I know I’ll be watching, and I hope you all will watch along with me. Until next time.
Danny Batterman
Batterskull's Brews 
3 thoughts on “A Call for Restriction”