Oversoul
The Tentacled One
I'm thinking that you're convinced my "view" is more complicated than it might really be. That you've mentioned how up-to-date I am or asked about it so much seem to indicate that maybe I'm basing what I've said on the way things used to be. Is that right? As far as I can remember, things have never been quite this way before and it doesn't seem likely that past Vintage metagames are clouding my view of this. Now, not knowing all of the relevant tournament data or missing certain trends, that I'll certainly admit to. And I'll grant that the DCI has spent more time analyzing the situation before making this decision than I've spent on it. As I think you realize, the part about Brainstorm being the worst restriction ever, my comments about Trinsiphere, general policy, etc. has mostly been ranting. And yes, ranting from someone (me) who I wouldn't pay much heed to if I were in the DCI. Part of it's inspired by the fact that so many cards were restricted at once. Maybe some of it's left over from the Shahrazad ban. And the explanations this time around struck me as poor. It's not that I think the DCI doesn't care about Vintage (I agree with you that they do now, if not earlier). It's that even if the restrictions were well thought out, the explanations were not. It would have been easy to put something together that said more. Showing some statistics, citing how one deck would dominate if they'd only restricted one of the cards, so they had to restrict that more in order to fully balance things, explaining the direction they want to take the format, or anything really. There was so little substance in those explanations.Spiderman said:<sigh> This is really getting nowhere. Obviously neither of us is making each other see the other's view, it appears.
The one thing that's different is that central argument. The explanations rubbed me the wrong way because with each case except Ponder, the explanation relied on the premise that these cards were too dominant (with Ponder, it was more of a preemptive strike argument). And knowing that it's completely different archetypes relying on these cards (Flash relies on Flash and GAT relies on Gush, although many other decks use Gush) is enough to know that the explanations are, at least, not entirely truthful.
Yeah, I was going to expand this part, but it got lost in my massive post. I'm aware that the vast majority of decks were using Strip Mine (and I'm not too surprised about Factory either, although I'm guessing that had that statistic only taken into account the decks using Strip Mine, rather than the decks using both cards, it would have been close to 100%). I was nitpicking that you gave vast majority as your definition of popularity when in something having a vast majority is more exclusive than just being popular. And I was also trying to point out that a card being popular or even being used in a vast majority of decks doesn't necessarily mean it will be restricted or banned.I already said that at the time, a good 90-95% of the top 8 decks in the tournaments at the time (as listed by the Duelist) were using Strip Mine and the Factory. Not 50%. Not 60%. 90-95%. No matter what theme or color the deck was. So yes, that makes it the vast majority.
Oh, and I just realized I should probably never have gotten on this topic in the first place. I mean, we were talking about Brainstorm, right? And it's used in almost every deck. But it's not comparable to Strip Mine, because if The Duelist was really bringing popularity into the explanation back then with Strip Mine, they certainly didn't do it this time with Brainstorm. There's one mention of "while Brainstorm is popular in many decks" and that's really just to note that even though it's used in control decks too, it's strongest in combo (which is like any other card really, but whatever). So there you go. Prevalence supposedly isn't the issue in this case, regardless of whether it was in the past or whether it should ever be.
Ah. Not sure where that misunderstanding came from. Well, it might be because I write as though I think I know everything, but that's not (consciously) intentional and I certainly don't.Which is probably the root of our discussion here, as I guess I *did* take you as sort of an expert on the scene, when you DID play (I guess when you first came here?). If that understanding was totally false, then again I apologize for making that missumption (a new word!) and I guess that makes my concerns and assumptions I was making in this discussion totally off-base and false.
Man, I suspected that for a split second, but only because it seemed uncharacteristic of you. Like I said, if you'd been a new person I'd have instantly assumed you were trolling. And then for some reason I went back and still assumed you were taking me out of context. Well, sorry for ever doubting you, then.I was trying to make my post short but it appears that I shouldn't have. What I was trying to say there was that the quote I posted "out of context" was actually in context, and I was agreeing with you in that I don't vote for the same reason as you stated. It had nothing to do with the DCI or restrictions.
Back to my ranting again because I'd forgotten about something...
It also occurs to me that the two powerhouse cards in this aside (Flash and Gush), we really have three cards restricted that might not have needed to be, even if one of them was going to be a problem. The explanations don't explicitly state that storm combo is the archetype these cards are making overpowered, but that seems to be the only candidate. Now what is necessary really depends on whether we restrict Flash and Gush. But if we do restrict Flash and Gush (which I would probably have been alright with), we take away some of the strongest opposition storm combo decks have, but we also weaken many of them substantially because they rely on Gush too. Now all the decks that weren't hurt by these restrictions are gunning for first tier.
For one thing, no one can completely predict what would happen. My guess would be that the decks facing the most problems from GAT would start to do a lot better, but I'm not even sure which decks had the weakest matchups against GAT anyway. But if we assumed, in advance, that storm combo would be dominant, why not just restrict Merchant Scroll along with those other two cards. Leave Brainstorm, the card that most decks use, and Ponder (the card that most decks don't use because it's crappier than Brainstorm and they don't need it) alone and restrict the one card storm combo decks use a lot, but other decks use very little.
And down the road, I highly doubt we'd be seeing storm combo dominate the rest of the metagame. If we did, well we could restrict Brainstorm then, but it would seem pretty unlikely.