Today, in wide anticipation of the event, I'm sure, Magic the Gathering Online finally received its Oracle revision to the Mirage card Flash (note that the card's text actually won't be updated, but it will function as it should - yes that's odd). Now, if you are not an avid reader of our forums, or other Vintage forums, or the Ask Wizards on Magic's own website, or their coverage of GP Columbus, or Aaron Forsythe's article devoted to the subject, and possibly any publication - online, written or orally communicated (by now, this includes your local 6 o'clock news), you stand a chance of not having heard about Flash.

Hence the title. There have already been so many damned articles written about Flash using some form of play on the word "flash" as the title that I figure you, the reader, are now free to utilize any one of them as the title for this article. It simply saves me the time of looking like a journalistic hack at this point. (Shhhh... yes I know I'm a hack, anyway. But pretend I'm not, ok?)

However, what none of these articles cover is how this card is expected to shake up - possibly more than any other format - the format we so love here at the CQ. And that format is, of course, Lega... no Vint... I mean Classic.

To this point, the Eternal Struggle series has been long dominated by Extended ports like BDW, Affinity, Rock, G/W Haterade, Goblins, Scepter Control, and other likewise decks working their magic. And there's nothing wrong with that, from the standpoint that the best decks should be winning. However, it has always left Classic looking like that child who lives in the shadow of his older, much more popular brother. You know, he gets all the girls and all the guys want to be him, meanwhile the poor younger brother is actually a talented rock guitarist and if he'd just comb his hair and wear cooler clothes, he'd be every bit as dreamy? That's Classic in nutshell.

Well, Classic finally got its cool clothes. Now, there are going to be people who'll tell you that having a deck like Flash automatically invalidates a lot of strategies. For instance, there are essentially no red cards in Classic that can help you deal with Flash. The absence of Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast simply means that if you are running goblins, you are out of luck. Even with your most broken nut-draw, goblins can't hope to race the speed of Flash. Even if it plopped 4x Leyline of the Void in from the sideboard, which it can't possibly protect (or even hard cast in most games), all that mulliganing to get the Leylines are going to cost you just as many turns as it will cost the tutor-laden Flash. Similarly, while Affinity can likewise try Leyline of the Void (or Tormod's Crypt, as long as the opponent isn't running the Disciple version), it can't protect them either. There are all sorts of Extended ports that simply can't reach back any further into the pool they have to help deal with a turn 2 Flash. The people who are unwilling to adapt will probably tell you that Flash is going to make a whole lot of decks unviable.

Those people are right.

And honestly…good riddance. Those decks are like the bullies the older brother keeps around to prop him up and keep him feeling like the big fish in town. Personally, I've gotten so sick of seeing Affinity, Goblins and Boros Deck in the ES, I'd welcome nearly any change to the status-quo. But mostly, what Flash will accomplish by flushing those decks out of the system will be to actually bring a healthy meta-game to Classic.

That's right - a healthy metagame. Because while it is possible Affinity and BDW and company can't hope to beat Flash, there are other decks that can. I'm sure that we'll see a lot of Flash at ES 2.04. I'm also sure we'll see some decks designed to beat Flash. Then, the next tournament (and I'm starting to prognosticate and use my imagination here), someone will show up with a Charbelcher deck that is almost as fast as Flash with Negation Pact backup, but nobody bothered to sideboard for. People will then bring decks designed to beat both those two decks, something possibly like Deadguy Ale, with enough discard to make you want to puke, which will beat the Flash decks and have a good game against Fish, but unfortunately by that time, 10th Edition will be released with man-lands, and Landstill will show a good matchup versus that deck... and so on.

Am I sure that will happen? No. But that is an example of what a healthy metagame looks like. It requires the participants to think of ways to beat the field in their match-ups. Right now, the metagame doesn't require you to do that. It simply requires you to luck into getting the matchups you like running whatever current powerhouse deck you like, and hope you don't get mana-screwed. And while that is true of most tournaments, a proper meta means there is room to grow the decks available and also a constant shifting - even within the same card pool. That shifting hasn't happened for a long time in ES. We see the same decks, week in, week out. Affinity hasn't changed. Boros Deck Wins uses the EXACT same cards. Goblins still runs the same goblins. The two-mana instants in Scepter Control are still Fire/ice, Counterspell, etc... and that, my friends, is not a healthy meta game.

Now, a deck like Flash obviously has the ability to tilt the metagame, but the question on a lot of people's minds is, “How far?” I think the Classic community, so far, should be lauded for their avoidance of the "Chicken Little" attitude that was (or still is) present in some of the Legacy community. Most likely, months upon months of combo decks sitting idly by in the ES series have deadened the expectations of any combo deck to do well. Whatever the reason, it was certainly refreshing after all the initial reactions to Classic more than a year ago from the Chicken Littles expecting first-turn wins aided by Dark Ritual would be everywhere.

However, in a hypothetical situation, let's say that Flash becomes so good as to break the meta down into Flash vs Anti-Flash. What could the community do about that? To help, let's look at a prototypical Flash list:

Let's assume we were going to restrict something. It doesn't necessarily have to be just one card. I'll offer up some options and what I feel the outcome of that restriction would be.

• Restrict Flash. This seems like an obvious choice, but let's look at the decklist again. 4 Brainstorms, 8 tutors and 1 Flash. I've said this many times before - as soon as we enter the area of restricting, we almost immediately have to start hitting on the tutors, since they, in most cases would act as versions two through five (and in this case two through nine) of that card.
• Restrict Protean Hulk. This is the same problem. Vampiric Tutor and Summoner's pact act as Hulk two through nine in the deck. And since Mystical Tutor can go get Summoner's Pact, it actually tutors two through thirteen.
• Restrict Vampiric and Mystical Tutor. There is no doubt in my mind this would put Flash back enough to bring it down to reality, and possibly back further than it needs to go. It fits with the idea that eventually cards will be restricted and the Mirage tutors will probably have to go, but it's also a HUGE damper on the ability for any new combo to rise. I think this would be too much
• Restrict Vampiric Tutor. Not a bad choice at all. This brings the total number of tutors in the deck down by three. It also sets a nice president in that the community learns that restriction means restricting tutors, but only cuts back on the best (and most expensive) one of all. Still, the splash effect on combo would be felt. It slows down Flash probably a turn, but then it also slows down a lot of combos by a turn. Which is probably still not a good thing.
• Restrict Disciple of the Vault. This, I think, would be the out-of-the-box method that might work - for now. The reason removing Disciple from the mix might work is this: It means that the Hulk player now has to run one of the other, much more hate-able versions of Hulk. And unlike Legacy, there are no free counters as powerful as Daze and Force of Will to simply fill the gap. For example, the Kiki-Jiki combo is not only hate-able by Leyline and Stifle, but also things like Sudden Shock and Extirpate and Swords to Plowshares. It's possible that by opening up the combo to more hate, the meta is opened up to other types of deck that regularly carry that kind of hate anyway. It also happens to take some of the oomph out of Affinity, but I think at this point, very few people would be sad to see that deck hosed anyway.

Personally, I'm really quite sure the Classic community is up to the task of finding a way to make the metagame healthy without any restrictions. In fact, I don't expect anything less from the Classic community, who have, if nothing else, shown an unerring ability to put a muzzle on Chicken Littles everywhere and just play what's best.

It's time for classic to put on it's cool clothes and show the world what it's made of.