It’s been a while since we’ve had a major ballot before the Five-Color Ruling Council. As mentioned previously, every so often we seem to have a major ballot, and this month’s is no different.
This will be the first ballot for new member Dominick Riesland. StarCityGames.com readers may recognize the name from his Rule of Law series. I suspect that he’ll work out very well.
The role of the council is to create the best possible environment for Five-Color. We strive to find a balanced mix so that many deck types can thrive. With so many different player each wanting different things, it can be challenging. Remember that Five-Color is largely a casual format, and we’ve found that different playgroups have different metagames, different styles, and sometimes even different rules.
All of that makes balancing the format quite challenging. It is a task I relish. For those who are unaware, Five-Color is a format that uses all current Type One-legal sets (except for Portal and Starter), but requires a minimum of 250 cards with at least eighteen cards in each color. We have our own banned and restricted list, due to the quirkiness of the format. We also have liberal mulligan rules and allow ante.
We have a few changes in the way we used to do things. Now we vote using a Yahoo! Polling system. It also appears that we will no longer be voting on a monthly basis, but instead as needed.
The five votes on this ballot are quite interesting. Each represents a significant change to the metagame.
June Ballot:
Recoup: For Banning
Contract from Below: For Restriction, or Errata
Change minimum number of cards of each color required to twenty
Change rule on Wishes to only get removed-from-game cards
Allow all Portal cards except Ravages of War and the three best tutors
Without further ado, let’s take a look at the issues.
Recoup: For Banning
I really like Recoup. It is a very flavorful card that really seems quite appropriate for most decks. It’s not that powerful at all, when you look at it. Why is there a fuss over Recoup?
There are two major reasons behind Recoup’s power. The first revolves around the most powerful sorcery in the environment – Contract from Below. Recoup can give you one or two more Contracts in a game, and that’s pretty good. Anything that allows you to reuse Contract is going to have some power behind it.
However there is another powerful way to abuse Recoup: A variety of cards put Recoup in the graveyard. The list includes Oath of Druids, Hermit Druid, Gifts Ungiven, Intuition, and more. Even with Recoup restricted, it is still easy to pull out with any of these cards. Then you simply Recoup a key sorcery in your deck (like Replenish or Living Death), and win the game.
Some have mentioned that a banned Recoup would allow us to unban and restrict Gifts Ungiven and Intuition. I don’t buy it. You can still Intuition for Restock, All Suns’ Dawn, and Time Walk for several turns of fun. I can still Gifts Ungiven for Restock, Nostalgic Dreams, All Suns’ Dawn, and Time Walk. Or, alternatively, I can still get Contract, Contract, Contract from my Intuition cast at the end of an opponent’s turn, then calmly untap and take a Very Broken Turn.
A banned Recoup won’t bring back Intuition or Gifts Ungiven. You’d have to ban Time Walk and restrict Contract from Below, since those are the sorceries that are keeping Intuition and Gifts Ungiven on death row. There’s no reprieve from Recoup.
In fact, I like the idea of a Recoup-Oath or Recoup-Druid deck. We have restricted Recoup, Oath of Druids, and Hermit Druid. How hard does a deck have to work in order to get one restricted card in order to get another into the graveyard with goodies?
Where are the opponents during this? Shouldn’t they be casting countermagic, attacking with creatures, destroying permanents, casting discard, and otherwise being disruptive? How often can a player set this combo up while also trying to dodge their opponent?
I don’t buy the argument that Recoup is a chilling factor against the two aforementioned banned cards. I also don’t buy the argument that Recoup is uber-strong when combined with the restricted Druid cards. It just does not have the power of other banned cards, and as such, I will Vote to Remain Restricted.
Contract for Below: Restriction or Errata
Attention, everybody: The Contract vote has been scheduled.
Everybody keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times. This much-vaunted vote probably does not mean that Contract will be restricted in a month’s time. There are multiple options here: Keep things as they are, restrict Contract, or errata it to remove it from the game if you’re not playing for ante.
There are a lot of issues here. For more on my thoughts, check out my article The Contract Question. Readers of that article or people who are familiar with my positions know that I think that we need to restrict Contract, and the sooner the better.
Let me explain what the “errata” issue is about. Some may have read the errata I wrote earlier, and said to themselves, “My Contract already says that.”
Well, it does and it doesn’t.
Five-Color is being played in a lot of places, and it was originally designed with ante in mind. You ante a card with the winner keeping the card anted. We’ll call this “hard ante” for purposes of our discussion. As such, Contracts were allowed in multiples. The other ante card that saw a lot of play was Jeweled Bird.
The problem is that a lot of people do not like to play for hard ante. Therefore, we end up with ghost ante, dollar buyback ante, quarter ante, coke (or beer) ante, booster pack ante, ante Spellfire cards, whatever.
The problem is, people are still playing Contracts in those environments.
If the errata passes, then the official rules would essentially read that, if you are not playing for hard ante, then you are not playing Contract either. Obviously, people are free to ignore whatever rules they like. If they still want to play Contracts around the kitchen table, they are free to do so. However, at official events, they are no longer allowed to get away with this.
We currently have numerous Five-Color Qualifer tournaments held around the country that are not being playing for hard ante… and yet they are allowing Contract. This creates an untenable situation.
Which brings us to this ballot’s vote: Restrict Contract, leave everything as is, or errata. I suspect that the errata vote will overwhelmingly win, which will allow me to vote my conscience. However, if I spy a bunch of people voting to leave things the way they are, then I will throw my vote behind the errata, because it does make more sense than the current system. Therefore, my Vote will be to Restrict Contract.
…Probably.
Vote to Raise the Minimum number of Cards Required per Color to Twenty
If you are wondering why we are voting on this issue again, it’s simple: The last time we voted on this issue, we had an even number of people on the council because a member had gone AWOL. The vote was 4-4, and it was decided that a tie defeats a measure. In other words, we did not get a solid answer one way or the other.
There are a lot of great reasons to raise the bar to twenty cards. Eighteen feels arbitrary. Twenty cards is five groups of four cards each. When you look at competitive decklists, you’ll note that most decks cut to the minimum number of cards in one or more colors. Because that number is eighteen, the decks look odd.
Another reason is because the online Prismatic requires twenty cards, and it creates a nice synergy. Players who move from one format to the other can do so with ease.
Personally, however, I find both of these meaningless. Who cares if a number is identical to that of another format? Who cares if it seems a neater number or not (after all, isn’t the number twenty just as arbitrary as eighteen? Why is the mere divisibility by five considered to make a number neater?) All I care about is whether or not the decision is good for Five-Color.
Let’s be honest here. The real issue is with Red. Red is the great unwanted color in Five Color. More decks minimize their Red than any other color. Red’s mechanics do not translate as well to a 250 card deck as other colors do.
Green, on the other hand, translates very well. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a deck minimize its Green.
People often try to cheat the format by playing Order / Chaos, Fire / Ice, Chartooth Cougar (fetching a dual land), Squee, Goblin Nabob, and other Red cards that never need to be cast. Moving to twenty cards will not stop this strategy, but it will make things a bit harder.
People should be playing with all five colors, not trying to cheat. It seems disingenuous. Additionally, it makes all decks slightly less streamlined, which may help slow down a format a tad. Five-Color has been picking up significant steam, and this may be a method to slow things down.
In fact, I’d probably vote to increase the minimum cards per color to twenty-five or more, if it ever came on the ballot. As such, I am happy to Vote for Increased the Minimum Number of Cards per Color to Twenty.
Change the Rule on Wishes to Only get RFG Cards
Another proposal in front of the committee is to change the current Five-Color ruling on wishes so that they can only get those cards that have been removed from the game. Currently, players are required to have a stack of cards with them that they can use to Wish from. This “Wishboard” has gotten quite large for many players, and Wishing can take some time.
This proposal is designed to address the Wish issue once and for all. We already have some common-sense rulings on Wishes: You can’t get a card that makes your deck illegal. You have to get a card that is immediately by you, so no scurrying to find that one common in your basement closet. No playing the card, then while it is on the stack, getting up to purchase the card you need from the store, or trade for it from a friend.
The alternative vote on this proposal is to limit the number of cards in a Wishboard. This would help to stem wish-issues, while also allowing wishes to still function as is.
Honestly, I don’t know where all of these Wish concerns are coming from. You don’t read many on the mailing list or the forums, so it’s not like there is some hue and cry about the issue.
My problem with the proposal is that we would be changing what a card does. Living Wish, for example, states:
“Choose a creature or land card you own from outside the game, reveal that card, and put it into your hand. Remove Living Wish from the game.”
One issue I have is if we change the wording on the card, Living Wish goes from "decent" to "absolutely suckworthy." That’s not a change I want to implement.
The other issue I have is that this change completely alters what the card does. As written, I can get any card I want, but we can comfortably make some reasonable, common sense restrictions on what that means. To say you can only get cards that began the game in your deck, but were subsequently removed from the game changes the card significantly.
I don’t like issuing Five-Color rulings on cards that are completely different than how the card reads. A few people have asked that we make Contract from Below remove itself from the game as part of its resolution, or that we have it affect both players like a Wheel of Fortune. The overwhelming response has been that the Council does not want to change what a card literally does.
I still agree with that claim. Instead, I’ll Vote to Cap the Number of Cards in a Wishboard.
Allow Most Portal Cards into the Format
When discussing whether or not to allow these sets into our format, several cards have created concern. The goal here is to remove these four cards from discussion, and see if we can agree on the hundreds of other cards. If we allow Portal in, then we can talk about these four cards later.
For the record, the four cards in question are Ravages of War, Grim Tutor, Personal Tutor, and Cruel Tutor. Don’t ask me why Imperial Seal isn’t on the list; I didn’t make it.
Readers of my articles should have no doubt where I stand on this issue. If Portal cards are legal in Type One, then they should be legal in Five-Color. It’d be silly to disallow them because “we don’t like them there Portal cards.”
People have tried to make rather bad arguments against letting Portal in on grounds other than these four cards. How about:
Sorceries are confusing if they are playable as instants. (Yet we have artifacts, enchantments, and creatures playable as instants.)
Portal cards are hard to acquire (so are plenty of other cards from older sets).
Portal cards are stupid (hard to argue with that lack of logic).
Portal cards have too many rules issues (despite the fact that they’ve all been Oracleized).
Horsemanship (which is not as bad as people think).
None of these stopped DCI from making them Type One legal. Why should we care?
So, we’ll be voting on a tutor-lite version of Portal, with three tutors and the Armageddon reprint excluded. There’s still Imperial Seal in the set, but it’ll be restricted rather quickly I suspect. I’m comfortable with that, and the addition of hundreds of cards is going to be great. Vote to Allow Most Portal Cards.
The issues up for grabs this time are all sweeping changes. Each would have a significant impact upon the game. It’s a great challenge to try and guide the format into becoming more balanced. I’m sure that more great changes are on the horizon.
Until later,
Abe Sargent