StarCityGames.com - So Many Insane Plays

So Many Insane Plays - Unrestriction Proposals

Stephen Menendian

2/20

#Vintage

My friend Paul Mastriano once accidentally left a small satchel of CDs in my car. The first CD in the case was labeled "Fired Up." Curious I popped it in. The CD was an awesome mix of classic tracks like Toto’s Africa Billie Jean and hip new stuff including a track I’d never heard before Jamiroquai’s "Virtual Insanity." The songs were up-beat and energizing. It wasn’t long before I was feeling fired up!

After I was sure that I got my fill of the CD I told him I had his CDs. I told him I was particularly fond of the tracks on the "Fired Up" CD. Imagine my surprise when Paul told me what that label really meant. Paul made the CD after he was fired from his job!

In late December I went to the Columbus Convention Center (in fact the exact same room as Grand Prix Columbus) to hear Barack Obama speak. Barack told the story of a small campaign stop in a rustic rural community – a favor to a congressman who promised to endorse him if he traveled to his district. After a miserable night and only a few hours of sleep Barack arrived feeling tired and grumpy. As he launched into his stump speech an eccentric old woman began to chant a peculiar phrase asking if he was "fired up." Barack continued his monologue and the lady interrupted him again this time asking if he was "fired up and ready to go." Evidently this woman had been repeating this line for decades now. She was known in the community as the "fired up lady." But the odd thing was that her chant actually began to pick up the sleepy crowd. The energy and enthusiasm reached a crescendo. Pretty soon Barack was feeling fired up too.

The moral of the story is that one person can change a room. That room can change a city which (at the right time and place) can change the course of a nation which can change the world.

So too you can make a difference.

Difference in what you say? Well in case you had forgotten the next Banned and Restricted List update is about to occur. The DCI – basically R&D and other key players at Wizards – will be meeting soon if not already to set the course for the next three months. The DCI listens to the public. Your voice matters.

In the past I’ve always been leery about public involvement on these matters but I think the Vintage community is now sufficiently educated and in tune with policy to make good recommendations and provide sound advice. I urge you to make your opinion known. The more of you that speak up the more likely that they’ll see a common theme and the more likely that crank opinions will be drowned out.

This article is about what I think.

Pretty much everyone agrees that Vintage is in a golden age. The format is strategically fascinating incredibly diverse broad in terms of strategies and colors and much slower than it’s been in years. Creatures are amazing right now. In fact that's part of the problem. Our "golden age" of Vintage makes it virtually impossible to persuasively and completely argue for further changes. A diverse healthy and by all accounts fun format is not the place to tinker with the restricted list… right?

That's probably true. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is clichd wisdom… but not for the reason that phrase suggests. This aphorism suggests that there is no "fix" for something that is not broken. The problem isn't that something is broken. Even functional things can be improved upon. The problem is that human beings are generally not capable of accurately forecasting in a complex system. A simple decision rule is as likely produce better results than following an erroneous but more accurately mapped-out complex decision rule. It's basically the law of unintended consequences. Anyone who has seen the film Charlie Wilson's War can see how this plays out. I doubt that anyone in R&D correctly anticipated the cascade of events that followed the unrestriction of Gush. When I asked Forsythe about it I got a grumbling non-answer.

Although my article archive is littered with probably over a dozen articles analyzing the restricted list proposing policy frameworks and all sorts of other prescriptions probably the most insightful pithy and careful analysis came this time last year. At that vantage point I could little have imagined the tremendous changes that were about to be unleashed. The metagame seemed pretty well set as the Gifts and Pitch Long combo decks fought for metagame superiority. After a year of unprecedented tumult that metagame is long gone. It wasn't just restrictions and unrestrictions that transformed Vintage although they certainly played a part. Erratum on Flash and Phyrexian Dreadnaught and a huge influx of new playables have shaped the format just as much.

But the essential call of my article: to let the "markets" work themselves out the libertarian ethos that underpins Vintage and explains it makes just as much sense today as it did then. I could never have imagined that GroAtog would not be the dominant deck today nearly nine months after the unrestriction of Gush but if I were to go to a tournament tomorrow I would be playing with 4 Thorn of Amethyst MUD instead. Printings can be just as powerful as restrictions.

Unrestrictions as a policy have been hugely successful.

Here was what the restricted list looked like in 2001:

Ancestral Recall
Balance
Berserk
Black Lotus
Black Vise
Braingeyser
Channel
Crop Rotation
Demonic Consultation
Demonic Tutor
Doomsday
Dream Halls
Enlightened Tutor
Fact or Fiction
Fastbond
Fork
Frantic Search
Grim Monolith
Hurkyl's Recall
Library of Alexandria
Lotus Petal
Mana Crypt
Mana Vault
Memory Jar
Mind over Matter
Mind Twist
Mox Diamond
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Mystical Tutor
Necropotence
Recall
Regrowth
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Stroke of Genius
Time Spiral
Time Walk
Timetwister
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Vampiric Tutor
Voltaic Key
Wheel of Fortune
Windfall
Yawgmoth's Bargain
Yawgmoth's Will

Take a look at what has been unrestricted in the last 5 years:

Berserk
Black Vise
Braingeyser
Doomsday
Fork
Gush
Hurkyl's Recall
Mind over Matter
Mind Twist
Recall
Stroke of Genius
Voltaic Key

(Note that Gush was restricted in 2003 and unrestricted in 2007.)

When you cross reference the two lists many things become evident. First of all the DCI really didn't understand Vintage in 2001. There were a ton of cards on that list that had no business being on there. There are at least a handful of cards that remain on there today mostly as a consequence of historical inertia than good reasoning. I pushed to get some of those cards off the list for years. Recall was perhaps the most obvious card to pull from the list but the resistance to unrestricting Fork was enormous. When I originally proposed to unrestrict Mind Twist people thought I was crazy. I never advocated the unrestriction of Doomsday or Gush both cards I felt were too dangerous. It turns out that I was even wrong about that. Doomsday made possible a cool combo deck that won me some power at a SCG tournament but basically has seen very little play since and Gush although broken has proven to be a good deck for the format because it slows the format down.

Here is the bottom line: no card that has been unrestricted in the last 5 years has proven to be a problem. It was the right decision every single time.

Unfortunately more chaff remains on the restricted list. I will focus on four cards that are probably most worthy of unrestriction.

Dream Halls

Dream Halls is worse than terrible. It’s useless. At least terrible cards have a role in the game. They add flavor and they make things interesting. Dream Halls does neither.

Let’s actually consider what it would take to make Dream Halls good.

First of all you need a way to cast Dream Halls consistently.
Second you need ways to resolve Dream Halls consistently.
Third you need a way to combo out quickly once it is in play.

With these three requirements in mind I set out building a Dream Halls deck.

First of all in order to play it we’d need a critical mass of Blue mana sources. I think the manabase should be at least 24 if not 25 mana.

Vintage Dream Halls v. 1.0

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
5 Island
4 Dream Halls
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Time Spiral
1 Timetwister
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Mind’s Desire
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
2 Misdirection
3 Temporal Cascade
4 Meditate
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild

This was my first list. I debated whether to run Mana Drain to fuel Dream Halls but ultimately decided against it. I learned a number of things from a few test games. First of all it was very difficult to resolve Dream Halls. It needs more mana at least one more land and probably more. Second the core spells like Temporal Cascade and Meditate are completely reliant upon Dream Halls resolving. Dream Halls is very symmetrical. Your opponent can now play all of their spells for free as well. Fourth this deck is basically inferior to every single combo deck in Vintage. Its engine is more expensive than Grim Tutor into Will or Flash and does nothing on its own.

Vintage Dream Halls v. 2.0

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
4 Island
4 Dream Halls
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Time Spiral
1 Timetwister
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mind’s Desire
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
4 Force of Will
4 Duress
2 Misdirection
3 Future Sight
3 Meditate
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Rebuild

Future Sight wasn’t that good. I didn’t have enough shuffle effects to justify it and I had a lot of lands. I put the Cascades back in.

The land was better but getting Dream Halls into play was still quite a chore.

Nonetheless there were hands where I could go broken. One time I had turn 2 Dream Halls. I pitched Future Sight to play Meditate. I drew into Yawgmoth’s Will. I pitched Tendrils to play it. I replayed Meditate and was able to play Tendrils of Agony for almost lethal damage on turn 2.

There were other times where I wasn’t able to really use Dream Halls. For instance I would Time Spiral into a hand with Force and Twister and enough mana to cast both but not enough Blue spells to play them via Dream Halls. The Temporal Cascades were amazing once Dream Halls was in play.

But even still this deck is far inferior to basically any standing combo deck in Vintage. Why not just play Super Long or Flash or any existing Tendrils variant... even Doomsday would be better.

Here is another approach: what if we went a more controlish route and played Mana Drains? That is one possibility but then I wouldn’t really see the key advantage of Dream Halls. You could go the route of this deck...

The problem then is figuring out how to make Dream Halls function as an actual engine.

So after all of this testing and analysis I came to a critical conclusion:

Dream Hall is 100% outmoded for Vintage. The printing of the storm mechanic specifically Tendrils of Agony abolished the need for all such engines. Before storm combo decks needed awful cards like Mind Over Matter and Dream Halls to generate enough mana to assemble their expensive often infinite mana kill conditions. We can laugh about that today. Infinite mana is infinitely unnecessary.

The bottom line is that Dream Halls has no advantages over anything else that already exists. As a card it’s terrible. It’s highly symmetrical a double edged sword and it’s easy to disrupt or stop. Dream Halls does nothing by itself. It doesn’t draw you cards. It just gives you mana. And the mana it gives you is not commensurate with the costs of playing the cards itself both in the sense of casting it and in the sense of designing around it.

Dream Halls would be a fun deck to play in casual Vintage but it is unplayable in competitive Vintage.

Even in the worst case scenario that someone somehow manages to prove me 100% wrong the card is still completely fair. To cast Dream Halls on turn 1 is extremely difficult.

You would need:

1) Time Walk plus 3 more mana accelerants.
2) Black Lotus and at least one other mana accelerant.
3) Mox Sapphire + and at least 3 other sources of mana.
4) Tolarian Academy + at least two artifacts and one more mana source.
5) Lotus Petal + 3 other mana sources .

To get it on turn 2 is a bit more realistic but then you are no better than Grim Long or Dragon or any other upper tier combo deck. Plus all the control decks can pitch Mana Drain and Brainstorms to find more countermagic. After you’ve spent all your resources protecting Dream Halls and cards to cast it you’ve got little left to actually combo out with.

But the bottom line is that Dream Halls is about as useful as Mind Over Matter: it’s just not. It is a completely outmoded card and therefore 100% useless. The storm mechanic has made these old clunky engines obsolete.

Fact or Fiction

Last September I wrote an article talking about what you could do with Fact or Fiction if it was unrestricted.

Here’s what I said about how Fact functions.

How exactly did Fact work?

First of all even beyond its raw power Fact or Fiction punished opponents for making a bad split. From the deck above [see the article for details – Craig] you could imagine Fact revealing Volcanic Island Impulse Force of Will Mind Twist and Mox Sapphire. Correctly splitting piles is a genuine skill challenge. In a format with so many key restricted cards splitting Fact piles is often a difficult challenge. It’s not a trick challenge like Gifts Ungiven where no matter what pile you hand your opponent you are still screwed. Fact piles aren’t so heavily concentrated with bombs and in some ways that makes splitting them even more difficult.

Second Fact or Fiction gave the player that resolved it a nice lead. It wasn’t game over like Yawgmoth’s Bargain or a decently-sized Mind’s Desire but it’s reminiscent of resolving Ancestral Recall but for four mana. It’s not game over but it’s correlated with winning.

Third Fact or Fiction was a card that required a good sense of timing. In general you wanted to play Fact on your opponent’s end step. However Fact or Fiction was also a card that rewarded you for playing Mana Drain. If you were patient and waited to play your Fact or Fiction you might be able to get into a small counterwar untap with some Mana Drain mana in your main phase and play your Fact or Fiction for virtually nothing.

But the most important difference between Fact or Fiction restricted and Fact or Fiction unrestricted is the engine aspect of Fact. In modern Vintage Fact or Fiction is infrequently played as a random draw spell (though it has seen less and less play in the past two years).

Unrestricted Fact or Fiction is a highly synergistic engine. While I loathe to draw a comparison to Mind’s Desire it is perhaps the best example to explain this point: one of the advantages of Mind’s Desire is that there is a chance you’ll Desire into another Desire. Fact or Fiction digs so deeply that there is a very good chance you’ll see another Fact soon if not immediately.

In this way playing with unrestricted Fact or Fiction actually resembles the slow roll use of Necropotence to Necro for 6 and then 5 and then a few more before managing to win the game.

In "Keeper" Fact or Fiction dug you closer and closer to Yawgmoth’s Will. Fact or Fiction dumped lots of desirable cards into your graveyard so that Yawgmoth's Will was more than a replay of the game it was Fact and Fiction - the cards that you drew via Fact and the cards that got shipped to the graveyard.

Here were some decklists I posted as possible contenders if Fact were Unrestricted:

BBS 2007.

3 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
3 Magus of the Moon
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Mana Leak
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Misdirection
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Powder Keg
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
4 Volcanic Island
5 Fetchlands
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
6 Island

Or you could just go back to old school Morphling!

Legend Blue

4 Morphling
4 Back to Basics
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
2 Misdirection
1 Time Walk
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Powder Keg
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
19 Island

Sideboard
2 Misdirection
2 Powder Keg
2 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Hydroblast
4 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Island

Despite being old this deck still tests well amazingly enough. Back to Basics is potent against Workshop decks. The Keg quotient would probably need to be ratcheted up but this deck is fast and brutal.

But what about a totally updated decklist?

Let’s take a look at how Fact might fare… in Tog!

Psychatog 2008 (with unrestricted Fact)

3 Psychatog
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Cunning Wish
4 Gush
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Fastbond

1 Swamp
4 Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus

Sideboard:
1 Trickbind
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Oxidize
1 Firestorm
1 Extirpate
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Berserk
2 Yixlid Jailer
2 Pithing Needle
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Echoing Truth

This deck is sort of awkward in testing but I think Fact would probably have a good home in some Tog shell.

It might be even better in Codi Vinci’s Drain Tendrils:

Drain Tendrils (with 4 Fact)

3 Flooded Strand
4 Island
2 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Underground Sea
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring

1 Ancestral Recall
4 Brainstorm
4 Fact or Fiction
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Thirst For Knowledge
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Intuition
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Chain of Vapor
2 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Amazing! This is probably as close as Fact or Fiction gets to "fueling" combo.

I’m of the view that the unrestriction of Fact or Fiction would transform Vintage for the better. It would:

1 – Broaden Vintage even more.

If we break down the metagame as it is currently constituted at least from Top 8 data from June through December 2007 here is what we saw out of 360 slots:

86 (23.8%) Gush Based decks
62 GAT
23 Gush Storm
1 Gush Oath
65 (18.05%) Mishra's Workshop based decks (Stax MUD Aggro Shop)
30 (8.03%) Non-Gush Storm Combo
23 (6.38%) Flash
22 (6.11%) Fish
17 (4.72%) Bomberman
16 (4.44%) Goblins
16 (4.44%) Oath
15 (4.16%) Ichorid
11 (3.05%) Control Slaver
10 (2.77%) MaskNaught

That is fairly diverse metagame with two major archetypes accounting for about 40% of the metagame. But the other 60% breaks down amount nine different strategies. But more than simply being diverse the distinguishing feature of this metagame is that it's vibrant and alive. The metagame was very diverse prior to the restriction of Trinisphere but it was a starkly drawn metagame with basically Storm Combo Mana Drain Control-Combo Fish-type decks and Workshop decks. In this metagame the spectrum is of viable decks is much broader. You have aggro aggro control and combo as basically the big decks of Vintage. Blue has never seem so diminished. White Green and Red are hugely relevant colors.

Most conspicuously absent from this metagame is Control. Control Slaver is the closest you get and it barely registers. Bomberman uses Mana Drains but it's really an aggro-control (or more accurately a Control-Aggro) deck with lots of critters like Trinket Mage and Aven Mindcensor. The Oath decks are control decks but they are closer to Aggro-Control tempo decks than real control decks.

2 – Improval of Mana Drain.

The second reason to unrestrict Fact is that it would make Mana Drain good again. In fact I could see several Mana Drain decks abusing Fact. As for the other reasons...

3 - Bring Card Advantage back to Vintage not just tempo.
4 - Make Fact splitting becomes a critical skill once again.
5 - It would bring a lot of needed interaction to Vintage.

Mox Diamond

Mox Diamond sounds scary. But the experience in Legacy I think shows how weak this card really is.

Deck Parfait!

11 Plains
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
4 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
4 Land Tax
4 Scroll Rack
2 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Isochron Scepter

1 Zuran Orb
1 Humility
4 Aura of Silence
1 Seal of Cleansing

1 Balance
4 Abeyance
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Argivian Find
4 Orim's Chant
4 Swords to Plowshares

Sideboard:
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Pithing Needle
4 Mana Tithe
1 Moat
1 Goblin Charbelcher
1 Sacred Mesa

Other Parfait decks run Blood Moons and more Moat.

Here is a potential combo use of Mox Diamond.

"Draw7"

4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
2 Glimmervoid
2 Underground Sea
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Mox Diamond
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Lotus Petal
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Chain of Vapor
4 Diminishing Returns
1 Tinker
1 Memory Jar
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Mind's Desire
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Burning Wish

Sideboard:
4 Xantid Swarm
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Regrowth
1 Hull Breach
2 Oxidize
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Balance

Neither one of those decks is probably very good. The most dangerous use of Mox Diamond comes from the potential to combo out more efficiently. The problem is that combo decks have inherently low land counts making Mox Diamond weak. I think my Draw7 list featuring 4 Diminishing Returns shows you how to abuse Mox Diamond but more importantly why it isn’t really that scary.

One other deck that could potentially use Mox Diamond would be Flash.

Hulk Flash

Patrick Chapin

0th Place at Test deck on 8/26/2007

Vintage

Creatures (10)

Lands (11)

Spells (39)

Sideboard

First of all this deck only has 11 lands. With four Mox Diamonds you’d have many hands where you might have a Mox Diamond but no land. Second even if you have a land and a Mox Diamond what would you do about the second Mox Diamond? This deck wouldn’t run four Mox Diamonds even if it could. I could see it running two at most. One other problem with Mox Diamond that is highlighted by this deck is that it is terrible when you mulligan. If this deck were to mulligan to 6 or 5 not an uncommon occurrence Mox Diamond punishes you badly. Imagine a hand like this:

Mox Diamond
Virulent Sliver
Brainstorm
Pact of Negation
Summoner’s Pact
Merchant Scroll

Mox Diamond is not a good card. There is a reason it sees almost no play in Legacy and would see very little play in Vintage.

On the upside I think that unrestricted Mox Diamond could make a cheap budget-friendly control deck using Land Tax and Scroll Rack. That deck could be viable in Europe where players aren’t permitted to play proxies in many cases. In Europe that is called "unspoilered." Mox Diamond could make unspoilered decks more competitive at least against each other if not against powered decks.

Grim Monolith

Unrestricted Grim Monolith sounds awfully scary. You can combo Grim Monolith with Voltaic Key! Woohoo!

Actually it's fairly bad. Here's the deal. Workshop decks already use about 50% of their deck space on mana. They get recurring Black Lotus mana off Mishra's Workshop. Metalworker can easily untap to generate about 12 mana on turn 2. With Voltaic Key you can double that right off the bat. The problem is that no one wants to do that. Voltaic Key is garbage wasted space. There is nothing you can do with 18 mana that you can't do with 10 plus the lands you have in play or that needs to be done right now.

It could aide some sort of attempt at artifact Combo but again you face the same problem. What purpose does Grim Monolith serve? Trinisphere is restricted. Anything good costs basically 2 or 3 mana. Sure Workshop Grim Monolith can help you accelerate into Smokestack but that's a pretty worthless.

Where would you put Grim Monolith in this deck?

Supreme Stax

Steve Conway

8th Place at Worlds on 8/19/2007

Vintage

Creatures (8)

Lands (19)

Spells (33)

Sideboard

Or this deck?

Stax

Jerret Rocha

1st Place at Miscellaneous on 11/11/2007

Vintage

Creatures (11)

Lands (17)

Spells (32)

Sideboard

True you could fit it in but you'd be cutting real spells not just mana. That's why Grim Monolith doesn't make much sense here.

Grim Monolith is equally unimpressive in Storm Combo. Tendrils decks fuel their kill condition with disposable Rituals that fill the graveyard before Yawgmoth's Will hits.

Take a look at this list one of the most recent Storm combo decks to place in a major tournament:

Super Long

Paul Mastiano

5th Place at Miscellaneous on 11/11/2007

Vintage

Lands (13)

Spells (47)

Sideboard

What would Grim Monolith actually do here? What function would it serve? It trades precious colored mana for colorless. Grim Monolith is almost strictly inferior to a Cabal Ritual. It's only real advantage is that you can use it on a different turn than you would play it. In short you could go:

Turn 1:
Mox Land Grim Monolith

Turn 2:
Wheel of Fortune/Timetwister/Tinker

If you look at these decklists you'll see how terrible that is. First of all they don't want to waste their first turn playing a clunky awkward mana source. They'd much prefer to play Ponder or Duress or Thoughtseize. Second they don't really need a Grim Monolith for anything. This deck doesn't even have all of the Moxen why would it run Grim Monolith? Cabal Ritual is superior in almost every respect. Cards like Grim Tutor require black to play. There is a premium on colored mana. Even older more conventional Storm combo decks like the one that made Top 8 at the Vintage Champs really have no room or place for this card:

GWS Pitch Long

Alex Franson

8th Place at Worlds on 8/19/2007

Vintage

Creatures (3)

3 Street Wraith

Lands (11)

Spells (46)

Sideboard

I would imagine that this deck would be more interested in running Simian Spirit Guide before it started playing with Grim Monolith. Grim Monolith nets you one mana for one card. There are many unrestricted cards that do a better job of providing that benefit than Grim Monolith.

Perhaps the best natural use of Grim Monolith is in a deck that actually uses Grim Monolith right now.

Here is Nat Moes' RG Belcher list

4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Empty the Warrens
1 Memory Jar
1 Wheel of Fortune
2 Living Wish
4 Goblin Welder
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
5 Moxen
4 Tinder Wall
4 Rite of Flame
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Land Grant
1 Black Lotus
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Grim Monolith
1 Chrome Mox
1 Channel
1 Taiga
4 Street Wraith

Sideboard:
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Seething Song
1 Mishra's Workshop
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Taiga
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Storm Entity
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Ingot Chewer

Grim Monolith probably fits into this deck as a 4-of. First of all it supports both the playing of Goblin Charbelcher and of Empty the Warrens. Second it is a weldable target with Goblin Welder.

But would it make this deck too good? No. The same fundamental constraints to this deck apply. This deck often coughs up "Force of Will or no" hands. If the deck doesn't draw the Belcher or an Empty or the right mixture of mana it's not really a keepable hand. Grim Monolith might actually hurt more than help by eating into precious colored mana sources that give the deck some resilience. Tinder Wall is superior to Grim Monolith in this deck.

I know what you old-timers are thinking. What about the classic combo of Grim Monolith and Power Artifact?

Here is an ancient Vintage Academy combo deck:

1 Black Lotus
2 Candelabra of Tawnos
1 Grim Monolith
4 Helm of Awakening
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Memory Jar
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
2 Abeyance
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Braingeyser
1 Crop Rotation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Fastbond
4 Force of Will
1 Frantic Search
4 Impulse
1 Power Artifact
3 Meditate
1 Mind Over Matter
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Regrowth
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Time Spiral
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Tinker
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Yawgmoth's Will
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Undiscovered Paradise

These sorts of combo decks proliferated in the days of Vintage past before Storm. The printing of Tendrils of Agony made obsolete these often three-card combos. Most Vintage combo decks from 2002 killed using Braingeyser or Stroke of Genius (with the exception of Kai Budde's Trix deck). They generated infinite mana through Candelabra + Capsize + Tolarian Academy or by assembling Power Artifact and Grim Monolith. The idea is that if you simply draw enough cards you'll find the combo and be able to win.

First of all even assuming we put together a modern combo list using this combo would it be good? Not really. Think about the baseline that decks have to be good in Vintage. A three-card combo where basically each of the components is terrible in its own right is not a recipe for a good deck. Flash wins because it is a two-card combo. You only need 1 Protean Hulk and there are plenty of tutors to help out. Merchant Scroll finds Flash and Summoner's Pact finds the Hulk. And it only costs two mana. Power Artifact costs no less than four mana two of which is UU and requires a third card to support it. There are no good specific tutors to find either component either. You have the makings of a terrible deck. Consider Vintage Dragon combo. Although it’s a three-card combo each of the components is good in its own right. Bazaar of Baghdad by itself is fine. You can start drawing cards and digging for combo parts. Although Worldgorger Dragon doesn't really do much by itself you can certainly use Animate Dead on your opponent's dead creatures. Cards like Read the Runes lubricate the gears and smooth things out.

Grim Monolith is a safe card to unrestrict. It will see play but only a marginal amount. Its potential impact much like Mox Diamond will be felt in unpowered metagames where unpowered players may have been given a tool to compete with powered players without actually enhancing the options of powered players.

Summary

As I explained at the outset unrestricting cards has been a hugely successful policy. But more work remains to be done. When thinking about unrestrictions and the potential impact I think we can draw parallels to previously unrestricted cards. I will list the cards I've proposed for unrestriction measure their degree of impact from: Very Significant Significant Modest Marginal to None. Then I will suggest whether the card's impact will be positive or negative that is whether the card would make Vintage as a format better worse or neutral. Finally I will compare the proposed unrestriction to a previous unrestrictions.

Card	Degree of Impact	Influence on the Metagame	Closest Comparison
Dream Halls	None	Neutral	Fork/Mind Over Matter
Fact or Fiction	Significant/Modest	Positive	Hurkyl's Recall
Grim Monolith	Marginal	Positive	Black Vise
Mox Diamond	Marginal/None	Positive	Black Vise

I chose Fork for Dream Halls because Fork is not a bad card in theory but it has seen no play and will see no play. Likewise Dream Halls will see no play if unrestricted. I think the closest comparison for Fact or Fiction will be somewhere between Hurkyl's Recall and Mind Twist. It won't be a niche card like Hurkyl's Recall but it will see a decent amount of unrestricted play. Its presence will be largely positive because players will enjoy making Fact piles playing with and against Mana Drain decks and drawing cards without just playing combo decks.

Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?

Email Mike Turian and Wizards and let him know what you think. Every email counts.

Speak.

Until next time

Stephen Menendian

#Vintage

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About Stephen Menendian

Steve was the 2007 Vintage World Champion and has long been one of the premier innovators in Vintage. As a result of his efforts, he was invited to participate in the 2007 Magic Invitational, as the pick of the R&D team.