Why no Restricted?
General forum
Posted on Feb. 7, 2013, 11:14 p.m. by MindAblaze
Hi Everybody!
Hi Dr. Nick!
Now that that's out of the way, I've been wondering...why doesn't the DCI ever restrict cards anymore?
It seems like an outright banning squashes the card, creating new archetypes/allowing them to grow, but I think restricting a card could serve the same purpose while still allowing the card to be played.
What card would you like to see restricted rather than banned in which format?
My vote: Jace, the Mind Sculptor in Modern. The amount of effort you would have to expel to find the one copy in your deck would telegraph it enough that he could very easily be played around, especially with Ponder and Preordain banned too. Now, I've been owned by JTMS in the past but I think if you get singlehandedly beat by one card it probably wasn't going to go well anyway.
Sweet-Nightmare says... #3
Mind Sculptor needs to stay banned. Ponder , though? That would do fine restricted.
February 7, 2013 11:37 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #4
I'm a notorious devils advocate, but you'd have to agree that one Jace in a deck is a lot less threatening than three or four.
February 8, 2013 12:22 a.m.
Sweet-Nightmare says... #5
Unless they fill their decks with tutors and graveyard retrieval.
February 8, 2013 12:27 a.m.
MindAblaze says... #6
But in that case all their resources are being expended chasing that one card, instead of just using it to compliment the strategy. Spikes will be spikes, I know, but it seems like the guy who spends all day digging for JTMS would lose out. That being said a one-of Golgari Grave-Troll probably would still be broken.
I'd personally like them to address Splinter-Twin. Talk about consistent combo decks being a nuisance...
February 8, 2013 1:02 a.m.
The only format where cards are restricted is Vintage. Other formats ban cards outright because those restricted cards add up. For example, a single Ponder in a deck isn't so bad. But what happens when you run one copy of Ponder , Brainstorm , Preordain , and Ancestral Vision ? You now have effectively four Ponder -type effects. It's much easier to ban cards entirely.
What difference would it make? The difference between Legacy and Vintage. Both feel like completely different games because one uses a restricted list and the other a ban list.
February 9, 2013 2:35 a.m.
MindAblaze says... #8
Ok, it mostly comes around because I want to play with my one Jace, the Mind Sculptor and I think he'd be an awesome win-con in Robust Harvest
NobodyPicksBulbasaur says... #2
I'm fine with the current approach that Wizards has of banning cards that make formats degenerate. When 70% of an entire tournament is playing a single card, something is wrong and needs to change. Diversity is the spice of life, as they say.
Simply restricting cards seems like a cop-out to me, especially in eternal formats where many cards won't be 4-ofs anyways.
February 7, 2013 11:35 p.m.