I remember the first time I saw Skullclamp. I had just shown up to the Darksteel prerelease. I was too late for the first flight, but since I had driven down from Montreal that morning that's no surprise. As I entered the hall I saw John Beresford, one of my regular drafting buddies, and walked over to his table. He had Skullclamp in play and I had to read the card three times before I could believe what I was reading.

Of course, I was thinking in Limited terms (as I tend to do), so what really freaked me out was that something so obviously broken in Limited was an uncommon. It was a bit later before I had any serious inkling as to what was going to happen to Constructed environments.

Now we have another one-mana artifact warping Constructed environments. This time it didn't even make me blink when I first read it, and I think most people missed its power until it had been played enough to show itself. Aether Vial is no Skullclamp, but it is still fundamentally broken and is probably hurting Magic, especially Extended. It should go.

First, the defense. Aether Vial provides neither explosive mana nor card advantage, the normal candidates for banning. If you're casting creatures "honestly," a Vial on turn 1 catches you up on turn 2, only your one-drop wasn't able to attack or block during the first turn. You only get ahead on turn 3, when the Vial lets you play an extra two-drop. Even if it gets gross after that, is that really a big deal? In Extended?

Aether Vial is a useful artifact that gives creature decks some nice tricks and mid-game mana advantage, but can hardly be considered unfair enough to merit banning in Standard, let alone in Extended. The charges should be dismissed.

The Defense Rests. Now for the Prosecution.

Aether Vial does provide excessive mana acceleration.
Obviously the Vial is broken in Affinity, where the turn you "catch up" you are in fact comfortably ahead because the Vial itself radiates a point of mana for Affinity spells. But it isn't just Affinity.

At GP: Boston I was routinely using Aether Vial to cast three and four-mana Goblins every turn. That means that for the drawback of having to use its "mana" for creature spells, Aether Vial has the power of Thran Dynamo, which costs four mana. Match after match came down to Vial superiority - if you have one and your opponent doesn't, they often simply can't keep up with you. Goblins with a Vial can throw out a Matron that fetches a Warchief that gets cast with one mana left that is spent on a Piledriver. White Weenie with a Vial can search out a bear and play one every turn - without a Vial, they are seriously underpowered.

If this was all that Aether Vial did, there would be no problem. Beatdown decks need a boost to compete with combo decks, and it's good to have a spell that encourages players to build aggro decks that use interesting creatures like Goblin Ringleader. But this isn't all Aether Vial does. In creature-based combo decks, it lets players cast rather expensive tutors like Living Wish and Eladamri's Call almost without cost. And that's just the beginning.

Aether Vial breaks creature limitations
Creatures are good because they stay on the board - they keep hitting, or doing whatever they do. They are bad because they are fragile and because they (with a few exceptions) can only be cast at sorcery speed. Aether Vial throws that out the window.

This is a problem especially in the current Extended. Suppose you're playing against Life. They lead with Aether Vial. Then they cast a creature with the Vial set to two, tapping all but one Plains to do so. What do you do?

In many situations, there is simply nothing you can do other than hope that they're bluffing. If you try to remove their creature, they can Vial its counterpart into play and combo you in response with Worthy Cause. (If you're playing Mountains, they don't even have to have the Worthy Cause yet.) Meanwhile, if you hold open removal mana you aren't playing your own game, putting you in a terrible position. This fact almost invalidates a class of control decks, since they can be made utterly helpless by a turn 1 Vial.

This problem is even more evident in Cephalid Breakfast, especially the new Breakfast/Life hybrid showcased by YMG at GP: Boston. The original Breakfast deck had a tough time against Red Deck Wins because its en-Kor partner is quite fragile. Where Life can put out a Task Force that laughs at Red spells or even a Spiritualist that can only be killed by Volcanic Hammer, Cephalid Breakfast has no good creature to lead with...unless, of course, it has an Aether Vial. Then unless the Red deck can kill a Cephalid twice (at least once at instant speed), the Breakfast deck just wins.

Aether Vial breaks color limitations
Canali won a Pro Tour using Meddling Mages in a deck that has no business casting them. With only seven lands that produced U and five that produced W (with three lands shared between the two colors) and four Chromatic Spheres, he could not count on having the right colors when he needed them. But roughly half the time he wouldn't need either one - he would simply Vial the Mage into play.

Colors play an important role in Magic. They force players to make difficult tradeoffs between the spells they'd like to run and mana consistency. Decks like Counter-Sliver or GAT go to great lengths to have access to three, four or five colors of mana, while other decks accept some limitations on their card pool in order to have consistent mana and all business spells.

Mike Flores recently posted a version of WW that splashed Blue. That's been done before, but when has the cost been so low at just a single Island?

Aether Vial invalidates permission
Although I played against thirteen different deck archetypes in my first thirteen rounds over the weekend (nine GP and the first four of the PTQ) and probably fifteen different archetypes overall, I faced almost no permission - and small wonder. A permission deck can't reliably stop a turn 1 Vial even when it's on the play, and once the Vial hits, permission can become completely irrelevant. Life and Breakfast can both complete their combo by resolving a single spell on turn 1 - what's the point of playing permission in such an environment?

Aether Vial breaks too many rules of Magic to go free. This one-mana spell breaks colors, mana, timing, permission and removal. It enables combo decks to win without doing the work and invalidates three entire categories of control: permission, removal and mana supression. It should be dealt with.

Hugs 'til next time,
Chad