Burgers, Belchings, and Bannings

Seems like this should be a bit of a catchall week, seeing as how I have a persistent, phlegm-filled head cold that won’t let me consider any one topic very long before I have to cough, sneeze, blow my nose, or try to do all three without my eyes popping out of my head.

Most importantly, there’s a tournament this weekend for a Mox Pearl:

Sunday, February 25, 2007
Registration at 12:30
Round one at 1 p.m.

The Soldiery
4256 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43214

$15 entry gets you infinite proxies!

I’m going to be there. You’re going to be there. I can already taste the Thurman’s. It’s going to be awesome.

That said, I’m not sure yet what I’ll be playing. The “safe” bet for me would be to bust out Ol’ Faithful, UB Fish. Me and that deck have been getting to know each other over the past few tournaments, and I feel confident enough with it to take it around the block again for a few more wins.

If I’m feeling particularly bold though, I think I’ll probably bring Burning Belcher:

1x Bayou
1x Taiga
4x Land Grant
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Rite of Flame
3x Seething Song
4x Dark Ritual
1x Channel
1x Lion’s Eye Diamond
5x Moxen
1x Chrome Mox
1x Mana Vault
1x Mana Crypt
1x Black Lotus
1x Sol Ring
1x Lotus Petal
3x Chromatic Star

1x Wheel of Fortune
1x Memory Jar
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Demonic Consultation
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Burning Wish
1x Yawgmoth's Will
3x Goblin Charbelcher
2x Empty the Warrens
3x Goblin Welder
3x Duress
1x Shattering Spree

There is a lot of goodness happening in that deck. Better still, it uses a high percentage of janky Type 2 cards.

The problem is that I’m not a very good combo player to begin with, because I’m especially bad at fighting through hate. I have a high tendency to just give up when faced with a Null Rod or Pithing Needle. Plus, I think a lot of people will be gunning for Empty the Warrens tokens, and I don’t want to lose to Echoing Truth nine times.

Oh well, we’ll see. It will depend mostly on the amount of testing I get done.

Banning and Restricting season is upon us again with the legalization of Planar Chaos in tournaments (Sandusky is such a trendsetter), and as in every other B&R realignment, there’s the usual clamor about getting things restricted, unrestricted, or banned. Usually it’s just unrestricted (Voltaic Key, Dream Halls, Black Vise) and banned (Yawgmoth’s Will).

Banning Yawgmoth’s Will outright seems like a cop-out. Yes, the format has become tuned to either beating or breaking Will, but is that so wrong? Personally, I don’t have any problem with the format as it stands right now. Maybe Gifts and combo are a little bit faster (not even half a turn’s worth) than they should be, but I really haven’t heard anyone complain too much about them. Plus there are lots of decks that can take home a Mox if they’re piloted right in the right metagame—Fish, Slaver, numerous Stax builds, Bomberman, etc.

Banning Will won’t necessarily increase the number of decks, it will just change the available decks to something else. Oath will probably be pretty good again, and Ichorid and Belcher (surprisingly) really don’t lose that much off their combo time.

Plus, as I’m a Vintage intentionalist who thinks that Vintage should allow all tournament-legal cards, banning Yawgmoth’s Will just makes me sad. Is Yawgmoth’s Will really so degenerate that it shouldn’t be allowed to play with the other children?

It can be countered. Its effectiveness can be hindered by Extirpate, Withered Wretch, and other targeted graveyard hate like Ebony Charm. Mass graveyard hosers like Tormod’s Crypt and Planar Void work against it. And, seriously, for the most part all of these cards have use against other decks in the format.

I think I’ve lost more games to Sundering Titan than I have to a resolved Yawgmoth’s Will. Maybe they should ban that. It’s not even restricted now!

I’m sure I’m being overly conciliatory to Will; it does show up in more than half of Vintage decks, after all. However, I also think that other people overestimate its effect on the format.

The storm ability is the real culprit, says me.

But I don’t want Tendrils or Empty the Warrens banned either.

Someday I’d like to attend one of those tournaments where they ban Yawgmoth’s Will or unrestrict a bunch of stuff or do both. Seems like it could be interesting, and playing Magic is fun.

Unrestricting cards has a lot more potential in my mind. The three I listed above—Voltaic Key, Dream Halls, and Black Vise—seem to be the most common ones mentioned for unrestriction. I can get behind those.

Except for Black Vise.

People don’t seem to understand how good that card is because they can’t envision it in any current decks. “It speeds up Fish’s clock by, like, a turn.” No, it gives Stax a way to kill you based on the fact that you’re not playing any spells. I don’t have a decklist made up for this (because, really, what would be the point?), but trust me. I’ve made Vise.dec before, and my friends will back me up on this, it’s insane.

If they unrestrict Black Vise (they won’t) I’ll run four of them, possibly in conjunction with Arcane Denial.

Voltaic Key, though, what? Why was that even put on there in the first place? Because of Grim Monolith and Mana Vault? Which are also restricted? Did it combo with Time Vault at the time?

Likewise, Dream Halls costs five. I’ve built a deck meant to abuse it as a singleton. We called it Russian Roulette, except if you found the Dream Halls bullet, you won. Unfortunately, you also had to have five mana to play the Dream Halls, so it took a while. I can’t see Dream Halls being bad in a format where red and black are the acceleration colors and where, if you want to cheat it into play, you get Yawgmoth’s Bargain instead. If Null Profusion doesn’t see play, neither will Dream Halls.

Speaking of halls, I will now check myself into the Halls of medicine. By which I mean go to sleep for many hours and try to recover.

See you this weekend in Columbus, God willing.