Quite often, I can’t resist making a cutting remark or at least a gentle jab at Wizards of the Coast or Magic Online in just about any diatribe I might be on. I won’t give examples of the passing shots, or even the more hefty blows, since that would go against what will be underlying theme of this article: This time, Wizards got it exactly right.

For the Sep 1st B&R announcement, Wizards of the Coast announced the first ever restricted list for classic. That in itself was wise choice for Classic, as it just as easily could have been a banned list instead, though that would have made this a MUCH different article (Trust me). To steal the quote from Aaron Forsythe

"We settled on being more like Vintage than Legacy because philosophically, Vintage and Classic perform similar roles, even if the power level of Classic's decks is more in line with Legacy."
- Source

This one sentence gave me a lot of faith in Wizards R&D to handle classic. They’ve got the right frame of mind. For those of you who might have been holding on the idea that you’d NEVER see broken cards like Flash, or later on Tolarian Academy or other cards in classic once R&D started the clean up, this is the concept broken down;

To finish the quote from Aaron:

"Classic is the last bastion of playability online—if a card were to be banned there, it wouldn't be legal in any of the traditional 4-of-limit, 60-card-deck formats, which is not something we want to happen."

This is the same reasoning they use for the restricted list in Vintage, but it holds doubly important for classic because unlike Vintage, WoTC is actively trying to sell cards that are only playable in the format. Think about how horrible it would be to crack a pack of Urza’s Saga, get a Yawgmoth’s Will and put it in your alternate account with all the rest of the unusable chaff. Be a bit like opening Skullclamp in it’s banned everywhere days – though at least it wasn’t a rare!

To the same point about being philosophically linked to Vintage, at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean the two restricted lists are in any way linked in terms of their content. Already, the lists are divergent – Flash is not on the Vintage list. Another shrewd move on WoTC part – it would have been the easy way out to restrict in classic what is on the Vintage list. You don’t even have to watch the format then – just the vintage format. And it’s easy to watch the Vintage community with respect to its restrictions because it’s practically all they talk about, other than foreign pimp and how annoying games are on MWS/Appentice. (Hey, I said no shots at WoTC – doesn’t mean I can’t poke fun at everyone else). Anybody who follows classic would think it hilarity at this point to be restricting Gifts Ungiven or Trinisphere. The formats are that vastly different.

All that being said, how about the two choices themselves?

The first inductees to the Classic Bah-roken Hall of Fame

Well, I think Flash was probably an easy decision. If it really came down to it, it wasn’t the speed of Flash that really killed it. Classic has several decks that can kill as fast as Flash – not the least of which was Protean Hulk combo itself (using Shallow Grave, Footsteps of the Goryo and Necromancy). No, what killed Flash was the resiliency and speed together. Leyline of the Void? No problem – here, have this Chain of Vapor – not like I have any non-land permanents in play anyway. Spell Snare? Pact of Negation. Stifle? Pact of Negation. A hand full of counters, Stifles and Trickbind? Let me just get Xantid Swarm from my sideboard for games 2 and 3. Duress? Brainstorm. Cabal Therapy? Go ahead and guess – you wanna pick Flash, Protean Hulk, Vampiric Tutor, Mystical Tutor, or Summoner’s Pact? It seems regardless of how prepared you are to face down Flash, it could find a way to win. And if you REALLY prepared to pound Flash? You got pounded by random aggro.dec. The only deck that consitantly made the rounds in both areas was Iceage4life’s Countertog Deck – which he himself admits is still 50/50 against Flash. In fact, Countertog would be a good argument that you can have a deck that wins vs flash and had good game vs other decks, but I think WoTC even used a little foresight on this one – it won’t stay that way. Once MED is released, just like in Legacy, Flash will have access to 8 free counters – Force of Will and Pact of Negation. To boot, it can also utilize Phyrexian Dreadnought tech to give itself an out against many popular strategies. It is probably already and certainly will be a meta warping deck and had to be taken down a peg.

Now, that begs the next question: how much exactly is a peg? At this point Flash isn’t dead. You can still play Flash. If they had restricted just Flash, the Flash players everywhere would have laughed and shown up at played with Flashes #2-9 anyway – otherwise known as Vampiric Tutor and Mystical Tutor. And I think everyone would agree that would probably not be enough to slow down Flash decks appreciably. So one area where WoTC took another swing and connected was to borrow from Vintage philosophy and restrict anything that can reasonably be used as replacements for the restricted cards, while not impeding the flow of the deck. What I mean by that is this. In Vintage, Demonic Tutor is restricted because it can get anything at the cost of just 1B. Vampiric Tutor is the same – anything on the top of your deck for B – that’s a strong tutor. Enlightened Tutor is restricted because would otherwise be Black Lotus #2-5 or Memory Jar #2-5. Mystical Tutor (which I will elaborate on - I'm getting there) is restricted because it is Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, Yawgmoth’s Will etc.. Yet Grim Tutor, Diabloic Intent and Infernal Tutor are NOT restricted, despite having similar abilities at different costs. Why? Because while Grim Tutor works well in a deck that can abuse it in vintage, it’s not so much the rest of the field can’t handle its full inclusion. It’s below the cut-off point in terms of power for cost. The same applies to Diabloic Intent and Infernal Turor. Getting a creature in play in Vintage just to sac for another card is well below the power level of the format. So is getting down to 0-cards in hand to really use Infernal Tutor. None of them are really bad plays; they just aren’t all that strong in Vintage. Or at least they are so strong that they would otherwise force all other decks to warp into playing them or against them.

That reasoning, more than any other, is why Mystical Tutor survived this round. Because while sure it get’s Flash, and it also get’s Summoner’s pact (which gets Hulk for free), it does not do some of the other things I’ve personally had to do with a Flash deck that Vampiric tutor does… like find a 2nd mana source to go off. Or get a permanent, of any type, for that matter. Also, I personally hate having to use Summoner’s Pact if I don’t have to. If you have to use Pact to get Hulk, you are putting yourself at risk. And I think that’s what the community really wants. There’s no reason to kill Flash as a deck – just put it more at risk. Essentially, the restriction of Vamp and Flash has removed 6 Flashes, 3 Hulks and 3 of anything else you wanted from the consistency of Flash decks, while leaving it possible to count on a turn three or four win, with an occasional turn two and rare turn one. Which is much better than before. Because there are a lot more answers available on turn three than there are on turn two when Flash goes first. Aven Mindcensor comes to mind.

Another consideration to make with respect to Mystical Tutor was that if they had taken it to the restricted jailhouse, it might have had repercussions. Firstly it might have killed combo’s chances across the board - not just Flash.

Here is where I pick on the Legacy folks a bit – these guys can’t stand combo for some reason. If you think of a good combo with any card ever played that can beat goblins, they’ve banned it in Legacy. The reason I think they get away with this is that it’s brother format, Vintage, is rampant with combo. If that’s what you love, you can go play Vintage. Well, we don’t have the luxury of two eternal formats online, and possibly never will, so WoTC doesn’t have the luxury of turning away combo-lovers from classic either. If you want to make a combo deck, you are going to turn to tutors first, and while Vamp is above the curve, Mystical is perhaps right near the top of it. This means if they included Mystical on the restricted list it would have foregone the chance to see if Flash was still possible to play, and might have destroyed any number of other possible, otherwise healthy combos decks. Really, look at Flash and Hulk. Together – a powerhouse. Separate – useless. Flash lives off tutors. If you took it down to 1 Flash and 1 of each tutor – well try it for your self. You can goldfish a bunch of games with it. It isn't pretty. I would certainly never go out of my away to include 4 hulks and 6+ other Hulk-related cards in my deck if I wasn’t relatively assured to see a quick way to get Flash on the top of my deck.

I really feel with everything that WoTC did with this restriction list that they have got the power-level of Flash - and by extension all of classic - down to a spot where they can ensure maximum attendance at premier events. I’ve certainly got faith that as the power level of classic rises – and it will do so, even with a restricted list – that WoTC has a good grasp of the communities wishes, and that because of it, they will achieve maximum participation the format, both in sacntioned events and in casual circles.