Unlocking the Vault #52: Survey Says!

Growing up, one of my favorite things to do was watch afternoon reruns of the Family Feud after I got home from school. There was always some sort of quirky response to at least one of the survey questions in each episode that made you scratch your head and wonder, “Who thought of that?” Sure, trying to guess all the right answers, especially during the Fast Money round, was entertaining, but I always looked forward to the answer that nobody expected and watching the look on the contestants’ faces.

It was with great anticipation that I was able to relive some of those fond memories of my childhood when I went to analyze the results of the survey I posted in my last article. While I didn’t expect to find any head-scratching answers (mostly because I controlled the options on most of the questions), the results themselves did pique my interest.

Before I get to the results, I do want to point out the dialog that occurred in the Classic Quarter forums after I posted the survey on the message boards. I will admit that the survey was not the most scientifically sound survey ever created, but I feel it did a good job in capturing the options that are present to us in the Classic community. The discussion on the boards revolved around a particular axis: Pro-Workshop vs. Anti-Workshop. It was clear that those who have been known to play Workshop quite often (and in most circumstances, exclusively) were decidedly against any changes to the Classic Banned and Restricted (B&R) List. Those who have not been known to play much (if any) Workshop were decidedly for changes, though divided on which change was best (see the results of survey question #2 below).

In my previous article, I pointed out that there will never be change without action on our part. I still believe this to be the case. In fact, I posit that more often than not, public opinion pushed Wizards to make changes to the B&R list much more so than just looking at the results of the latest tournaments. For a format like Classic, where there simply isn’t a huge volume of tournament data available (trust me, Wizards does not follow the results of PREs like the Classic League), this point is exaggerated.

Ignoring the incremental changes to Modern as Wizards was feeling out a new format and trying to balance their ideal power-level, think back to some of the more recent B&R changes: Jace, the Mind Sculptor/Stoneforge Mystic, Second Sunrise, and the unrestricting of Gush in Vintage. Public opinion greatly influenced Wizards’ decision to make changes to the B&R list. Jace and Stoneforge were dominating Standard, but in my opinion, the financial cost of both of these cards played an equal role in their banning. Banning cards in Standard is not something that Wizards takes lightly. If you go back and read the announcement of the banning, you’ll notice this statement from Aaron Forsythe:

We don’t take banning lightly in any format, and we loathe doing it in Standard. Not only is such an act tantamount to the admission of grievous mistakes on our part, it hurts consumer confidence in our product. People spend a lot of time and money acquiring cards for their tournament decks, and it stings to have them taken away. Fortunately, this time the sting should be somewhat mitigated by the fact that the cards in question have significant uses in other Constructed formats.

Pro players loved playing Stoneforge/Jace decks since they were the most powerful things that people had been able to do in Standard in a very long time. Unfortunately, the Standard format (and the prices of the Jace decks) led to a dividing line where on one side included the players who could afford to acquire the deck and the other side being the players who could not afford to acquire the deck. The players that couldn’t afford Jace and Stoneforge simply stopped attending tournaments.

Public outcry was also a significant factor in the banning of Second Sunrise in Modern. Few decks in any format were less fun to play against than Eggs. Beyond the fact that Modern tournament rounds were going over time consistently, the matches devolved into one player watching the Eggs player play a game of solitaire for 20-30 minutes shuffling through their entire deck. Making matters worse, there was a possibility of the Eggs player fizzling out, requiring players to sit there and watch every single movement of their opponent while they hit the virtual “F6” button. Cards have been banned before when they make each round last longer than designed (see Sensei’s Divining Top), but in this case, there was a distinct difference: Everyone wanted to play Top, while no one wanted to play against Eggs.

Unrestricting Gush was one of the more omnipresent examples of the power of persuasion from the players. When people like Stephen Menendian, a well-respected and vocal leader for Vintage, make rational and thought-out arguments in favor of making changes to a format, Wizards tends to listen. Stephen was also at the forefront of the errata changes to Time Vault. I’d also posit that Stephen’s “least restrictable” card discussions contributed to the unrestriction of Regrowth as well, or at least got Wizards thinking about unrestricting a card in Vintage.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the players have some say in how the formats that we play in are shaped. I’m not saying that Wizards will ask “How High?” when we say “Jump,” but they certainly seem to listen. When it comes to formats such as Classic, I think this is even more true, which brings me to the survey included in my last article. I wanted to hear from the community to get a feel for what players think about the health of the format, even in spite of its impending expiration date. Forty-three people took the time to answer the 4 questions I posed in the survey. I would like to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to help me learn about the collective state of the Classic players.

The first question on the survey was:

Do you feel that the Classic B&R list should be updated before Vintage hits online?

A plurality (20) of respondents indicated that they felt a change to the Classic B&R list was necessary before Vintage Masters is released. Another 15 respondents felt that no changes should be made, while 8 were unsure. While not an overwhelming majority, it was nonetheless notable that a relative majority of people thought a change was warranted.

The next question in the survey was a follow-up to the first question, though people’s response to the first did not direct them to a different set of questions (my survey was not that dynamic):

If you could restrict one card in Classic (that is not already restricted), which would you choose?

In an effort to reduce the number of choices while also trying to narrow down the options to those that have the most effect across a few major archetypes, I provided the following 6 options:

Brainstorm
Golgari Grave-Troll
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lodestone Golem
Tangle Wire
Other (fill in your response)

In hindsight, the survey probably should have denoted that the people that responded “No” to the first question did not have to answer this question. That said, it was my original intention to force players to make a choice, regardless of their response to question #1. I wanted to do this as a way to have players think about which card they would choose if they had to actually restrict one card. Despite this, I still think that the answers provided have some value.

The following chart shows how people responded:

Three cards were the clear standouts from all the choices: Brainstorm, Lodestone Golem, and Tangle Wire. This kind of resembles the axis that Standard players were subject to back in 2011 pre-Jace/Stoneforge bannings. It’s clear that Lodestone and Wire are public enemy #1, and they probably cannibalized votes from each other. No matter how you slice it, most players believe that if there is a change that it should come from one of the 2 format-warping cards found in Workshop decks.

The fact that Brainstorm received so many votes kind of surprised me. Had this been a survey on the Legacy B&R list, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow to learn that Brainstorm was at the top of the list of responses, but it’s a bit strange to see in Classic. I suppose it’s likely due to the fact that people who don’t believe that Workshop decks are a problem had to choose something, so they opted for the most common blue card in the format.

One response in the forums really got me thinking about this question. FishyFellow had this to say regarding Golgari Grave-Troll: “One thought about grave-troll: Very few people play dredge (and I personally feel it is even less fun to play against than tangle wire). One could argue for nerfing dredge to free up 7 sideboard slots in every deck to keep the meta in balance. I assume a lot of the space would get allocated to whichever deck has been performing well, which would be more artifact hate in the current meta.”

There is quite a bit of merit to this rationale. Dredge decks are kind of like the 5th-wheel of the Classic format. They don’t have a lot of support in terms of numbers, but you have to respect them enough to provide yourself with measures to prevent them from outright beating you. Unfortunately, that means spending a good chunk of your sideboard on cards that don’t do anything else against a large portion of the decks in the format. Grafdigger’s Cage certainly helped level the playing field a bit as it hit more decks than just Dredge, but there is no denying that shifting Dredge hate to something else could help bring some balance to the format and make playing certain non-Dredge decks a little more of a risk.

For those curious, here are the generated responses from those who chose “Other”:

5 None
3 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 Oath of Druids

Unsurprisingly, the majority of these responses entered “none”. The rest of the answers are worth discussing briefly. Mystical doesn’t see much play in the format currently, so I don’t believe that is much of a problem (though it could be if other changes were made). Kataki is a card that fights off the format’s most dominant decks, which would probably make them slightly more difficult to deal with (I suspect this was thrown out there by a pro-Workshop player). Chalice is one of the more benign cards in Workshop decks, and it is more difficult to break its “symmetry” when there are no Moxen to prevent from being played when set to zero counters. As for Workshop itself, I think going down the route of nerfing an entire archetype is probably not what Wizards would want to do. They have been much more inclined to use a scalpel than a sledgehammer when making changes to B&R lists. It would also further push Classic into Legacy, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from the standpoint of format diversity.

The one card I think should have been in the original question was Oath of Druids. Prior to Master’s Edition IV, when Mishra’s Workshop and a host of other cards were printed online, Oath decks had decent fatties to cheat into play, but those pale in comparison to the goodies that Wizards has printed in the last 3 years. Griselbrand, Blightsteel Colossus, and to a lesser extent due to the fact that it was released a few months prior to ME 4, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Each of these 3 creatures trump every single option that was available to Oath before Classic turned into the format we see today. A compelling argument could be made that a format where Workshop is brought down to earth could be dominated by Oath decks preying on other creature decks. I still think Storm would be omnipresent enough to mitigate this, but it is a clear concern.

The third question in the survey took into consideration the current B&R list for Classic by asking:

Do you think there is any card on the current Restricted list that could be safely unrestricted?

In the spirit of some of the discussion that Stephen Menendian, et al, have had in Vintage, I was curious which cards people thought were safe to unrestrict. Going in, I hadn’t really thought too much about this myself, so I didn’t have any expectations. This question allowed people to enter in multiple responses, so the results are slightly more varied.

Eleven players thought the current list of Restricted cards was perfect. Several people in the Classic Quarter forums pointed out that their preference was to unrestrict cards, rather than to restrict cards. This is understandable since it’s never fun to tell someone that they can no longer use a certain card anymore. The flip side is that these cards were restricted in the first place for a good reason. Opening Pandora’s Box by unrestricting one or more cards could very easily push the format in a direction no one wanted in the first place. It goes without saying that unrestricting a card should have equal consideration as restricting a card.

In terms of actual card choices, the clear leader in this question was Wheel of Fortune. I find this a bit interesting because Wheel is a card that had been restricted in Vintage since the first revision to the original B&R list. Would Wheel give Storm decks the power needed to jump back into a hostile metagame? Would decks like Belcher become less of the glass cannon that they currently are? Draw 7′s have been dangerous in the past, I wonder if Wizards would consider Wheel safe…The second highest vote getter was Balance. It’s been a long time since Balance has been unrestricted. I actually remember playing with decks that contained more than one Balance, and let me just say, the card is anything but “balanced”. Having said that, it is an interesting consideration for unrestriction. Perhaps only 1 deck could truly afford to plug in 3 additional Balances, that being the UW Standstill decks that crop up from time to time. UR is the more common Standstill variant, but UW has a lot of tools at its disposal too (especially out of the sideboard). I think giving the UW Standstill deck four 2-mana Wrath of Gods might be too good. Other decks that could use Balance include Oath and other Control decks. I have to agree with those voting in favor of Balance, it’s the one card that could bring back an archetype that is severely underpowered in Classic without the Power 9: Control.

Other interesting notes about the responses to question 3:

• Unrestricting things like Yawgmoth’s Will, Demonic Consultation, and Necropotence is a recipe for disaster. I could see Necro as more than a 1-of, but anything more than 2 in a deck is probably too good. Too bad there isn’t something between restricted and unrestricted.
• Flash received 9 votes which was surprising to me. We’ve all seen what unrestricted Flash can do to a format like Legacy. I would be surprised if Classic had the tools to fight off that kind of brokenness. As a side note, an interesting creature to Flash into play that doesn’t immediately allow the player to combo out for a victory: Worldspine Wurm.
• I actually think Imperial Seal might be safe to unrestrict. As a sorcery that puts a card on top of your library, it’s not easy to break. Decks with Library of Alexandria or Sensei’s Divining Top could benefit from a cheap tutor like Seal, but the loss of life is not insignificant when you consider fetch lands and whatnot. Assembling Time Vault-Voltaic Key would be easier, but it can be disrupted with Mental Misstep, among other things. It would be interesting to see how the format would evolve with unrestricted Seal.

The final question was geared around PREs and whether players would be willing to play in a PRE (such as the Classic Quarter League) with a separate B&R list from that of what Wizards sets. This was theoretically just a roundabout way to see if players were willing to make changes to the Classic B&R list in the event that Wizards doesn’t do anything in the upcoming Dec 20 B&R list changes (note I made the survey before it appeared that Daily/Premier Events would return in 2013 instead of sometime in 2014, or worse).

The overwhelming winner was to not have a separate B&R list. I expected such a response, so it’s not worth getting into much detail. I understand the desire to have consistency even if Wizards is unwilling to make changes.

Wrap-up

With only 43 survey participants, it’s difficult to ascertain any sort of statistically powerful trends in such a survey. That said, the results have some merit.

Here is one of the interesting trends that I noticed in doing some additional research since my last article: Of the 15 decks that went 4-0 in a Daily Event in 2013, 10 of those decks were Workshop decks. I find this particularly significant because DEs are much more geared to winning than are the Classic Quarter Leagues. In the league, players may have already qualified in previous qualifiers which may lessen their desire to play the deck they feel gives them the best chance at winning. Players are also much more inclined to bring pet decks and/or experiment, knowing that they would have to play the deck for upwards of 2 months. Many other players don’t ante anything up for the League (remember, donations are optional). Des, on the other hand, are finished in an a couple hours and require the player to ante up actual money (in the form of tix). The goal is to win a DE, and more often than not, it’s been done with Workshop decks.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that only 17 of the 57 decks that went 3-1 in 2013 DEs were Workshop-based. That figure fails to recognize how many Workshop decks entered the tournament and did not finish 3-1 or better, which is unknown. The real impact is that if you want to win a DE, your best chance is to do it with a Workshop deck, and that hasn’t changed since January.

In the end, I don’t believe that Wizards will make any changes to the Classic B&R list. It is my opinion that change is needed, but the community has spoken and there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that there is significant support in favor of making changes. I’ll be linking this article to the powers that be for MTGO. Perhaps they can come to their own conclusions as what is best for Classic in the limited time that this format has left.

enderfall
Clan Magic Eternal
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