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Unlocking the Vault #51: The Future of Classic
Posted on November 19, 2013 by enderfall
can I vote ban oath?
*tumbleweed*
Mishra’s Workshop is a bit strong
I agree that Workshop itself might actually be the biggest culprit and I would probably restrict it. However, Tangle Wire is an interesting experiment. It would be interesting to see how they do with one copy.
Oath is certainly a powerful card, but there is a great answer than will basically shut them down on turn zero: Leyline of Sanctity. If we only have a Leyline against artifacts. Leyline of the Flux would be great! There are tools to fight through an Oath and since you can usually cast your spells against them, it’s not something I believe is a problem for the format.
Restricting or banning Misha’s Workshop itself is also a little drastic. You basically completely neuter 2 decks in the process and turn Classic into Legacy + Tinker + Oath + Full Vintage Dredge. I don’t think that is any better of a situation than what we are currently in. I’m advocating dialing down the power of Workshop by restricting Wire, thought many people on CQ forums are trying to make their case for Lodestone.
I’m going to leave the poll up for a couple more days before I analyze the results.
Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn’t it just be better to have Vintage come through, as Wizards is trying to do? I don’t play either, so I may be missing something here, but it seems that Classic is like Extended used to be; caught in the middle of more popular formats, and though it has it’s own merits (of course), it seems to really only be drawing players away from the other old formats without bringing new players in. Wouldn’t it be more prudent for Wizards to just cut it, and supply for Legacy and Vintage? And it seems like the same reasoning would apply to the players, as well, since the old formats all struggle from a lack of new blood and stagnancy. Like I said, though, I don’t know anything past Modern well enough for these to be more than questions, and I really am curious as to why Wizards and the players should support multiple old formats. Also, the deck is pretty sweet. I love the Lumberjack, he’s done work for me in casual games in the past, and who doesn’t love toolboxes?
@Don Thiebaut – Up until MTGOmageddon, I might have shared your opinion, but now there is serious doubt that we get Vintage in June 2014 due to the issues the MTGO client is experiencing. There is no scenario where VM is prioritized over fixing the client. It’s possible that no resource that was allocated to VM would be assigned to fixing the client, but I bet there is some cross-over. I still believe we will get VM in June 2014, but it’s not as much of a certainty as when the announcement was first made.
The other difference is that Classic is not like Extended. Extended was a format people were forced to play simply because it was a PTQ or MOCS season format. Almost universally, Extended was reviled by the community. Classic on the other hand has players that actually want to play the format, albeit a small group. The reason for making changes now is to open the format up and try and fix some stagnation that has existed for nearly 3 years.
It is also the last chance that we have to make changes to Classic, and while I’m not advocating change for the sake of change, it’s clear that there is one oppressive deck that if it was in any other format would have likely seen some sort of change by WotC a while back. WotC has basically ignored Classic since ME4 was released. We can’t get an 8-man queue despite it probably taking 5 minutes (or less) for someone to code into the system. WotC has been generous enough to provide prize support for some of our events, but overall, they don’t pay attention to us. I don’t blame them, we don’t get enough events to fire, but by the same token, they haven’t done much to help fix that problem either. This is the only problem (dialing down the power of the deck which is universally understood as the best) that we the players have any say in. We can petition for more prize support, or to increase card availability (which we have for both, largely to deaf ears), but those are long term solutions. Changing the B&R list is a short term solution, which might be the only option we have left at our disposal with the impending migration to Vintage.
Thanks, enderfall! I get that it must be frustrating feeling ignored, and think it’s pretty cool of you to be understanding of Wizards’ having bigger issues right now. I hope you’re petitioning works!