Reviewing Oscar Tan's opinion piece immediately following the restriction of Necropotence, I'm seeing some points of interest. I'm glad we have these old archives, as I think they provide key insights. It's a kind of time capsule. So while I don't usually do that, this card is important to me, was important to Rakso, and I'm going to go over all of the point in his piece, looking at them from my perspective, over 17 years later. Yes, it really has been that long. Feel old?
But first, some context, as not everyone would be clear on this. Oscar Tan was probably the foremost popularizer of Type 1 in the late 1990's and early 2000's. He wrote extensively about the format and his primers and analyses gave players who hadn't touched competitive Type 1 and didn't own Power cards (myself included) some grasp on what the format was like and on how to play in an environment many of us hadn't really experienced, one with Moxen, Ancestral Recall, etc. Before he left the Vintage scene, he became somewhat polarizing because he was vocal about Vintage restricted list policy and his views diverged sharply from some of the format's other luminaries.
Oscar Tan also posted content right here at the CPA under his preferred online nickname, "rakso." And in the CPA articles section, he archived some of the content from the now-defunct Type 1 site "Beyond Dominia." Sadly, those are some of the only records leftover from that long-dead site.
This was called "A Requiem for the Casual's Skull."
I am a casual player, and always have been. I have allowed my cards to pile up in my bedroom over the last five years, and just play Type I in my school cafeteria while gracing the Philippine tourney scene once every sixth months, at best (and lacking the energy to find four Rishadan Ports, never for Standard).
I have been happy all these years, simply playing the range of decks from Masques block innovations to Ice Age-era dinosaurs. No rankings, no sideboards, no big concerns aside from having occasional fun.
Great changes, questionable solutions
In the last year or so, a number of changes have shaken up the oldest Magic format. Sixth Edition killed the Mirror Universe kill. Tolarian Academy, even restricted, evolved the old Hurkyl's Recall decks into consistent first-turn killers. The addition of Memory Jar and Yawgmoth's Bargain removed any remaining veneer of player interaction in Type I.
The mention of Mirror Universe is interesting to think about. When it comes to cards like Mirror Universe and Infernal Contract, we don't often note that when those cards were new, you didn't lose the game for having 0 life until the end of the current phase. And there were competitive tournament decks that were built to be able to deliberately go to 0 life and then win, or to recover and get back to a positive life total before the game rules would make one lose. The relevance to Necropotence specifically is relegated to corner cases, but it probably does mean that Sixth Edition rules changes made Necropotence a bit weaker in this one respect. I mean, if the rules hadn't changed, I could have cast Blessed Wind and, while it was on the stack, paid all of my life to Necropotence, then let Blessed Wind reset my life to 20. But that doesn't really matter.
I've got to do one of these threads for Tolarian Academy at some point. Looking back at Magic's history, especially with regard to combo decks, the impact of the card was amazing. If I'm right about the cascade of indirect effects that happened in the fallout of what Tolarian Academy did to Magic, the card probably made a bigger impact than any card in the entire history of the game since Force of Will. That gets overlooked these days because the card isn't used in most formats, but I could all-but-guarantee that there are cards being designed right now, over 19 years later, that are being designed the way they are and not the way they aren't all because Tolarian Academy existed.
Errata was soon issued, especially after the Academy deck's potency in the Duelist Invitational. On Beyond Dominia (
www.bdominia.com), which I believe is the only Type I forum on the Net, I opined that Academy, Memory Jar and Bargain should simply have been banned.
Although it's uncommon, there are still instances of Vintage players advocating for outright bans on cards. Most of the community seem to be of the mindset that restriction vs. banning for power level are what separate Vintage and Legacy, that this line is absolute. And while it seems sensible on the surface, the fact is that there are already cards banned explicitly for non-power reasons. Sensei's Divining Top is allegedly banned in Legacy for the
combined effect of its power in Miracles decks and time-related logistical tournament concerns. Second Sunrise is banned in Modern
entirely for logistical reasons. Shahrazad is ostensibly banned for logistical reasons. Mind Twist remains banned in Legacy despite not being overpowered there just because it is not fun to play against (this wasn't in an official DCI announcement, but either Aaron Forsythe or Mark Rosewater stated as much when directly asked about why the card was still banned). Mental Misstep is banned in Legacy because it makes gameplay crap.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Yawgmoth's Bargain is now unrestricted in Vintage and is not a problem. This is no criticism of Rakso's position in 2000. In 2000, I also believed that Yawgmoth's Bargain was one of the most overpowered cards in Type 1. And I was in good company: so did
everyone else at the time, as far as I knew. We might have been right. Bargain might really have been too much for the format back then. Times have changed.
Granted, some rares such as Doomsday, Mind Over Matter and Dream Halls had combo potential, and these were reasonable preventive measures. What I could not understand, however, was the restriction of even COMMON cards with non-combo uses.
This is an example of where the article shows its age rather painfully. No one today seems to hold the stance that commons should be safe from restriction by virtue of their commonality. Restricted list policy and player commentary on ideal or perceived restricted list policy do not include any consideration for whether a card is common, uncommon, or rare. Some players do make the argument, however, that Mishra's Workshop should not be restricted
on the basis that players have sigificant financial investments in the card. This, as far as I know, is an argument being made in 2018 that was unheard of in 2000. So yeah, without commenting on whether either argument is or was legitimate, there's a contrast between then and now.
Frantic Search could untap Academy, but it also made for a different reanimation card. Crop Rotation could fetch Academy, but was also quite enjoyable with the new man lands and Gaea's Cradle. Tinker could fetch Memory Jar, but it also allowed experimentation with the Type II tricks. Mox Diamond for my Senor Stompy or Land Tax? Mana Vault for my Erhnam Djinn? The list goes on.
Like virtually everyone in 2000, Rakso probably underestimated the potential of Mana Vault in a fast combo deck. While the unrestriction of the card would give Storm decks (which didn't exist in 2000, just to be clear) a boost and might make me happy, it's not really a course of action I advocate. Grim Monolith turned out to be safe. Mana Vault is a borderline case but more dangerous. The other cards he bemoans losing, though, have all been unrestricted over the years. Frantic Search was unrestricted in 2010, Crop Rotation was unrestricted in 2009, and Mox Diamond was unrestricted in 2008. So yeah, I'd say his stance on some of this was vindicated.
Oops, got ahead of myself there. He also mentioned Tinker! OK, obviously Tinker is still restricted. But I've talked about this one in other threads. Back then, The most broken thing to be doing with Tinker was usually fetching Memory Jar. These days it can do
far more. Memory Jar was (wrongly) perceived to be the broken card in the the Tinker + Jar interaction, and it was restricted in Vintage and banned everywhere else. But this was largely due to the Standard "Broken Jar" deck that terrorized the format for a couple of weeks before WotC took action with their "emergency ban." With the benefit of hindsight, I don't really see how anyone could think that Memory Jar, rather than Tinker, was the right target there. Rakso's mention of Tinker/Jar is very much in line with the rhetoric of that time, but that position hasn't aged well. It took new set releases to really highlight this point. Tinker for Phyrexian Colossus wasn't bad, but it also wasn't really enough to show players how stupidly strong Tinker can be.
The idea that a number of Type II or Extended tricks are illegal in Type I is appalling. Moreover, with the restrictions, hardly any deck plays the allowed single Jar or Bargain, and Academy is there mainly when one has Moxen. Again, would Type I (and especially casual players) have been devastated without three newly-printed rares hardly used outside combo decks?
This line of argument is uncommon these days, but not extinct. I used to hold this position, but at some point I guess I stopped. By the time Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time were banned in Vintage but legal in Standard, I was completely comfortable with it.
