Interestingly enough, Inquisition of Kozilek is covered by the new wording. Making it a redundant inclusion on the banned list.

Oh, wait, no. I forgot. EBT lands would allow it to be cast T2.

In reg vanilla anyway. Nothing could stop a t1 swamp in land vanilla. Duress is fully unplayable this week.

But doesn't the new hand reduction rule hold for the land vanilla too?

That's right. So in regular vanilla, one could play Duress in a deck incapable of actually casting it on turn 1 (like one that uses an ETBTapped land as its only source of black mana - such a deck would be unable to play Duress before Turn 2.) But because of land rule this round, any deck that has Duress in it is capable of casting it on turn 1 (because any deck could choose to play a basic Swamp on T1). And any deck that could cast Duress on turn 1 is an invalid deck. So, Duress is effectively banned (and thus unplayable) this week.

no, the rule contradicts with the last part of his statement

It's true that the text in his closing paragraph of the OP, and the text in the rules vanilla banlist, do not precisely match, and until he clarifies, we're left to guess at whether one is right and the other is an unintentionally-different paraphrase, or if each statement is to be taken as gospel (in which case the vanilla banlist passage is wholly unnecessary).

I've assumed the 'rules' are defined by the recently amended banlist, and that the statement at the end of the OP was a faulty paraphrase of the jist of the new rulechange, but that might not be the case.

That was just a "not bothering to include every detail because it makes the phrasing awkward" paraphrase. I wrote it with the assumption that the reader had already looked at the official wording in the banlist, but I guess I didn't really point people in that direction very well.

The official rule is in the banlist. Cards like Despise were a bit of an oversight on my part, but we'll continue this round with the rule as written, which means turn-1 Despise is legal.

Those types of cards do present a difficult issue for the rule, though. There were similar cases for the multiple-discard rule, but Cabal Therapy was the only one likely to be played in a normal round, so I just banned it. The turn-1 discard rule has a greater number of viable corner cases, though. (A quick search reveals Harsh Scrutiny, Ostracize, and Encroach to name a few.) I like the whole "blank opponent" thing because otherwise you have to consider all the possible decks you might play against, but that's more of an issue for the turn-1 win rule. Maybe we can ditch the "blank opponent" clause for the discard rule.

Mental Misstep, Gut Shot, Pyrokinesis, several discard cards apparently, "your opponent cannot play that card" cards, and so forth are all legal. It's also really really easy to play large amounts of 1 mana removal such as Path to Exile, Innocent Blood, Dismember, Nature's Claim, etc.

Everyone also basically gets a free storage land that can produce any color of mana they want.

I'm guessing something like Emrakul + 2x Removal is going to win the round.

One day left to submit Vanilla Land decks! Also, the format poll for next round is up!

Also also, here are the results from Round 1!

Vanilla Results
Rank|Name|Total Score|Round 1|Round 2|Round 3|Round 4
1|mark777|5.00|5.00
2|CommanderJim|4.33|4.33
3|POSValkir|4.00|4.00
4|thatmarkguy|3.33|3.33
5|Zlehtnoba|2.33|2.33
6|Edacade|1.33|1.33
7|Golgari_Spy|0.00|0.00

Consolation Prize: Golgari_Spy (banned Pyrokinesis)
Pick one nonbasic card to ban from a deck that placed 1st this round. Your deadline is the end of Round 3 submissions.

Winner: mark777
You may suggest a new alternate format to be added to next season's poll.

Vanilla Land Spreadsheet!

well, at least i improved from 0 points

Yeah, 19 points isn't bad.

Came so close to running Mind Bomb (or Putrid Imp) - Iona, Shield of Emeria - Dance of the Dead, and now have minor regret that I didn't.

Runed Halo not so good when 2 decks play annihilator and 2 play tokens (even if I do outrace one of the annihilators).

anyone want to help me figure out the match of me vs. valkir, because it is complicated

(i think the score there is correct though)

Just for fun, I made as many bad decisions on Valkir's part as I could...He beats you making even very bad decisions. Both games.

Which is very unintuitive, because just looking at the decks you'd think that as soon as the Monolith is gone it's game over for Valkir's deck.

GS, how do you have me getting 3 from you on the play? There are a lot of different lines of play, but I don't see one where I can win or even draw against you, even on the play.

i should probably work through the combat math on that one, you can get 3 3/3s (wand, 3/3 from the wand, impersonate one of them) and two turns later and every three turns after that (the land is reshuffled too, and always ends up on top) i gain 5 life and turn one of my lands into a 3/3 token (which trades)



from there you would attack me to 6 before i can repeatedly elixir to outgain 3 damage a turn (and eventually overwhelm you with a token army), so it turns out i missed the line of early elixir activations (the extra life from that matters)

New Round: Collector
Submit a 3 card deck, and mark one of those cards. You start the game with all three cards in your hand and with a countably finite number of copies of the marked card in your library. Players can lose for drawing from an empty library.
Extra bans: anything that has or gives ripple, anything that lets you search an opponent's library, Battle of Wits, Beck // Call, Glimpse of Nature, Grindstone, Manamorphose, Sphinx's Tutelage
Note: I removed the "blank opponent" part from the discard rule. So turn-1 Despise is now illegal.
Begins Friday, December 23rd
Ends Wednesday, December 28th


It's very possible that I missed some broken things, so PM me if you think I did. Still unsure if Gitaxian Probe is broken.

Alt is (deliberately) still using old discard rule?

Do we have 4 cards in hand turn 1?

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Gitaxian Probe is a kill with Sphinx's Tutelage. The question is how would one trigger this on the desired turn? It's likely your 3rd card (and the infinite one) would be some sort of mana but I can only figure out basic turn 3 kills with that.

I'm sure ThatMarkGuy knows of infinite turn 2 plays (turn 1 is illegal) that win the game so I don't think it's that good?

Edit:

Lotus Petal - infinite
Gitaxian Probe
Sphinx's Tutelage

^ Wins turn 2.

Edit: You could also just set up Sphinx's Tutelage turn 1 with Black Lotus and have some sort of disruption in hand, then let the turn 2 draw phase win.