::takes a swig of water::
::clears throat::
“You guys don’t try nearly hard enough. All Sun’s Dawn should be broken in your format.”
Thank you, thank you. I also do bar mitzvahs. Anyway, almost two years ago, I wrote an article for Misetings (you know, back when it sometimes had a funny article) called”Type 1 Players Get What They Want; Freak Out at Their Own Stupidity.” Back then, Type 1 was first starting to get off the ground after the introduction of proxy tournaments and Wizards decided to throw us a bone and toss a few innocuous cards off the restricted list: Berserk, Hurkyl’s Recall, and Recall. This was because Aaron Forsythe had asked for the Type 1 community’s response to the current restricted list. Since an overwhelming portion thought that those three cards were safe, they were unrestricted.
And almost immediately, a torrent of Chicken Little thinking occurred. The death of the format at the hands of new Berserk decks was declared. But hey, Wizards didn’t know anything about the format, so they had to make due with what they did know: that the community wanted some kind of recognition that their format wasn’t totally ignored. At the time, Type 1 needed it, too. Steve Menendian and myself were only writing very sporadically, Phil Stanton didn’t even know what Type 1 was, and the only regular Type 1 writer at this time was Oscar Tan, who was in a bit of a slump as most of his articles at the time just consisted of Battletech fan fiction and logs of Apprentice games where he would cast turn 1 Mind Twist against someone playing ProsBloom. Today though, there are regular references to articles like Phil Stanton’s top 8 card counts in official magicthegathering.com articles.
There’s only one thing that I know at all about Type 1.5: that people have wanted a banned list separate from Type 1 in it for years in order to bring it out of the shadow of Type 1. Personally, I don’t know anything about any of the decks. I have no idea where any scenes are. I don’t know who the big shot players are. If I had to tell you what decks were good, I’d just have to make a totally unfounded guess. Ravager Affinity, probably. That deck can go turn 1 Metalworker off Mishra’s Workshop, and then if they’ve got a Ravager and Skullclamp in hand they could draw and play probably 10 cards per turn. Oath of Druids seems like it might work, since the only draw around seems to either be Standstill or really expensive stuff like Skeletal Scrying and Deep Analysis. I’d assume that Food Chain Goblins is strong.
Do you know why? It’s because I have no idea when the last time was that I saw an article on a major Magic website about Type 1.5. I understand that Type 1.5 has The Source, but a message board is very different from a website that puts out articles. For starters, I have no idea what the URL is to The Source. If someone says”Magic: The Gathering dot com” or”The Mana Drain,” you can guess what the URL is. When I typed in www.thesource.com, I got well, The Source. Unless there are actually top decks in 1.5 called”Mobb Deep” or”Nas,” I’m pretty sure that I didn’t go to the right place. When I tried to Google”The Source,” I got thousands of results that had nothing to do with Magic.
Furthermore, as many people as you like to think that you have, it’s really not that many. I believe that someone in the B/R thread here on StarCityGames.com said that The Source has around 900 members. The Mana Drain has about two and a half times that (about 2350 members.) Star City’s forums then have about three and a half times as many members as The Mana Drain (over 8000 members.) And when I look at the occasional polls at the articles at mtg.com, they usually have over 10,000 votes. I’m not pointing this out to be like”Yeah, so nobody plays your format dead format so die.” It’s just that message boards are insular.
But without articles, nobody outside of the most competitive members of the format are able to know about it. This is bad for exposure, it fosters (usually unfounded) stereotypes about the format, and it limits the number of new players. Quite frankly, a format doesn’t seem very accessible when it requires $100 cards to compete and is only discussed in a shadowy corner somewhere in the bowels of the Internet. Hell, I’d say that I get more emails or instant messages from people that read my one of my articles and wants to talk about say, where to find region-free versions of Asian movies than from people that are asking for tech. They might’ve read the article randomly and they aren’t too interested in the Type 1 content, but you’ve at least hooked a viewer who might eventually read enough of your writing that they will care about your format.
Lastly, there’s the most important reader of all: Wizards. Since there are so few sanctioned 1.5 tourneys, Wizards needs to rely heavily on articles to know what’s going on in the format. Here’s another secret: random forum babble usually isn’t valued at all. [Not entirely true, but still a valid point. – Knut] I laugh every time that I hear someone respond to a B/R list speculation thread with a post like”Shut up shut up shut up Wizards reads this! You’ll get Bazaar of Baghdad restricted!” And since they don’t have any articles, here’s why I would assume that the following changes were made in 1.5:
The following cards that were on the Type 1 Restricted List are unbanned in”Type 1.5″:
Braingeyser
Burning Wish
Chrome Mox
Crop Rotation
Doomsday
Enlightened Tutor
Fact or Fiction
Fork
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Lotus Petal
Mox Diamond
Mystical Tutor
Regrowth
Stroke of Genius
Voltaic Key
First, with the exception of Lotus Petal and possibly Regrowth, all of the cards taken off the banned list are (or were prior to their rotation) legal in Extended. Now yes, I understand that there are some interactions here that didn’t exist in Extended, such as Burning Wish/Lion’s Eye Diamond. You also need to remember that with this combo for instance, the real reason that it was good was because of Yawgmoth’s Will and Mind’s Desire, not Burning Wish.
random Land
random Mox
Dark Ritual
Chromatic Sphere
Burning Wish
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Tendrils of Agony or one of your seven remaining tutors
When you can Wish for Will, that’s a self-contained turn 1 kill. Also, if that Mox were something that produced more mana (like Mana Crypt or Black Lotus,) and you didn’t have the Tendrils or a tutor (since you therefore couldn’t kill just with Will,) you could cast Mind’s Desire for six and probably win the game on that. Without those two, what are you going to Burning Wish for, anyway? Infernal Contract? Diminishing Returns costs more than three mana, which makes the combo much harder to assemble. If we take the same hand and replace the random Mox with a Lotus Petal, the best that you can do is Burning Wish for Diminishing Returns and hope to draw Petal, Petal, Ritual, Tendrils – and that’s after giving your opponent another shot at Force of Will.
The following cards that were not on the Type 1 Restricted List are banned in”Type 1.5″:
Bazaar of Baghdad
Goblin Recruiter
Hermit Druid
Illusionary Mask
Land Tax
Mana Drain
Metalworker
Mishra’s Workshop
Oath of Druids
Replenish
Skullclamp
Worldgorger Dragon
While the other list contained cards that were fine in Extended, this list almost entirely contains cards with a proven track record of being big problems in Extended. The exceptions (Mishra’s Workshop, Mana Drain, and Illusionary Mask,) are all powerful enough that they are potentially restriction-worthy cards in Type 1, and quite frankly, most people believe that the only reason that they aren’t is because a restriction would cause the owners to lose hundreds of dollars.
Wizards probably killed a lot of the top decks in 1.5 with these bannings. They also probably turned 1.5 into Extended with these bannings. But in order to separate the banned lists, they needed some sort of power level baseline. Since all they know is Extended, that’s all they could base their decision on – and it’s because you weren’t around to tell them. While it’s angered the 1.5 faithful, this separation will open up 1.5 to new players. Every non-1.5 player (read: every Magic player) that I’ve talked to in the last few days about this is psyched to try out a new format with a low barrier of entry. Type 1’s growing pains alienated a lot of the old school Type 1 faithful, too. They suddenly couldn’t play their old decks any more. In the end though, it turned out okay. Also, the 6th Edition rule changes killed Magic, as did the new card face.
Oh, and those Mana Drains you saved up so hard to get and now are angry that you can’t play with? They’re still worth $100. Go sell them to some Type 1 player for more than you bought them for.
–JP Meyer
jpmeyer at gmail dot com