I just forgot everything I knew about Vintage and I encourage you to do the same. Chalice of the Void's restriction is a tectonic shift in the format. Since Mirrodin came off the press in 2003, Chalice has ranked in the top tier of format staples. Since the modern era of Workshop printings with Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged, and New Phyrexia, Chalice has been as important to Vintage as Force of Will or artifact acceleration.

As a lock piece in a deck with no draw engine, Chalice had the unique flexibility to punish both decks attempting to ramp into expensive spells with moxen and those reliant on one mana spells to implement a strategy of efficiency and consistency. When set to zero, Chalice attacked the moxen decks. When set to one, it made life miserable for Gush pilots. Storm decks using both full moxen and Gush were almost pushed out of the format. The versatility to attack both types of blue decks for their very deck construction freed Workshops from the need to tactically answer either. That big brown could manage this with little to no draw engine nor card selection was impressive. This enabled the Workshop sideboard to be filled with tactical answers to Oath, Dredge, and the mirror.

Furthermore, Chalice gave Workshops a cheap form of virtual card advantage and a virtual sphere effect. The threat of Chalice at one invalidated maximally efficient sideboard cards from opponents. One would think that in 2015, a year so dominated by MUD, cards like Steel Sabotage and Nature's Claim would see considerable play. Chalice punished overreliance on those cards. The sphere effects in Workshops require opponents to have answers in hand and on time. The machinery of any blue draw engine grinds to a halt when casting Preordain sometimes means forgoing Force of Will and anything more expensive than Preordain is beyond reach. Any card players bring in against Workshops needs to be maximally castable. Relying on one mana spells only have them entirely locked out by Chalice was a recipe for a loss that players learned to avoid. The result was almost as bad. Avoiding one mana spells to dodge Chalice was a self-inflicted sphere that was relevant in every sideboard game, even those where Chalice never hit the table. A given Workshop deck could entirely forgo Chalice and still reap the benefits of the card's power. The only one-mana answer that could reliably resolve was Ingot Chewer, the ubiquity of which strengthened Tangle Wire significantly in the past year as it could punish Sorcery speed removal.

All of this changes.

Although we do not know what MUD will look like in the format to come, we can say with certainty that it will be weaker. Chalice of the Void provided a unique effect that simply cannot be replaced. The entire structure of MUD will have to change, and the metagame will be changing dramatically along with it. The fact is no matter what Workshops looks like going forward, Nature's Claim will be good against it. Furthermore, the increased playability of one mana counterspells, Steel Sabotage, Spell Pierce, and potentially Annul, strike a blow to the tempo power of Thorn, Sphere, Tangle Wire, and Lodestone. Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile threaten to remove any threat MUD lands, without Chalice's Mother of Runes impersonation to protect them. Lodestone Golem itself gets a lot weaker in a format where moxen are rarely kept off the table. I have dreamt of someday using Repeal against a Hangarback Walker. Before I was sure Repeal was not good enough, lest it be shut off by Chalice at one. Now I am not sure Hangarback will stick around as a target.

MUD's best bet to replace the function of Chalice (if not the role) is Ratchet Bomb. It can hurt the cheap creature decks and the moxen decks. The problem is that besides being a lot worse than Chalice, Ratchet Bomb is reactive rather than proactive, fundamentally changing MUD's role. Without Chalice, role reassignment is unavoidable for Workshops. Alcatraz is only Alcatraz if no one ever escapes.

Perhaps unsurprising, the blue deck most resilient to Chalice, Oath, is likely the most hurt by the card's restriction. That it may be possible to simply run four Nature's Claim in the sideboard is a huge question to which Oath will need an answer.

And more generally, any deck that attacked the format along an unusual axis gets potentially weaker. Restricting Chalice opens up more sideboard space regardless of how much Workshops recedes in the metagame. And if MUD declines as much as one might expect, anywhere from two to four to five sideboard slots are now free for less dedicated and more versatile options. Imagine if all your Ingot Chewers become Nature's Claims and all your Grafdigger's Cages become harder Dredge hate. It's probably not a great time to be a Dredge or Oath pilot.

Just as Nature's Claim is freed up to answer any artifact or enchantment, Swords to Plowshares is now a universally valid form of creature removal. One can imagine some archetypes simply answering MUD with the same creature removal they use against Gush decks. Without Chalice, moxen-heavy decks can get on top of Spheres pretty easily. Maybe only the robots that move are problematic for these decks, and maybe this means, at least for those pilots, creature removal can largely replace artifact destruction.

Chalice, of course, was only one third of the announcement. Dig Through Time's restriction will have little effect on the metagame just as losing Treasure Cruise had little effect before it. Dig Through Time is replaceable. For example, the drop-off from 3 Dig to 1 Dig and 2 Snapcaster is really quite minor. However, Dig Through Time earned its restriction because it was always pretty good and placed few constraints on deck construction. It crowded out similar value cards like Yawgmoth's Will, Snapcaster Mage, Gifts Ungiven, and even Thirst, without creating any of the deck building considerations that each of those cards encourage.

The return of Thirst for Knowledge to a format that simultaneously lost Chalice of the Void is certainly a frightening thought to anyone bias against combo-control. The last time we saw unrestricted Thirst, it was the dominant deck in the format. And since then, Blightsteel Colossus, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Mox Opal have been printed. The draw engines available in the format have never been greater. Gush, Gifts, and Thirst have each at one time been the best thing going on in the format. Today they all coexist. When Gifts and Gush first had their day in the sun, Thirst was legal but saw little play. At that time, however, Time Vault had yet to have its power level restored. Gifts Ungiven has actually seen some success in smaller tournaments this year, even as it competed with Dig Through Time, a less powerful but more efficient draw spell.

With so many engines available, we can't say anything definitive about where the metagame will land. This poses additional problems for Workshops, which just lost their most adaptable piece of hate. The restriction of Chalice will create enthusiasm for hyper-efficient Gush decks, whether Storm or just aggro-control, as well as aggressive ramp, non-linear Thirst or Gifts big blue engines. It's perhaps obviously self-fulfilling, but in Chalice's absence, the strategies that Chalice was best against will be tested and played even more than they might otherwise. In other words, no matter what Vintage looks like in the next several months, the single best card at fighting it will likely be Chalice of the Void.

The second and third order consequences of Chalice's restriction are not as of today clear, but both moxen and one mana spells just got a lot better. Those two classes of cards have inherent clashes with each other which should make for an interesting format. Together with the wealth of blue draw spells, blue-on-blue crime is poised to become a lot more sophisticated. Finally, having a real sideboard is an amazing thing that will reveal just how oppressively good Workshops had become.

All in all, with Chalice on the restricted list, permanently set to one, many one mana spells just became Vintage playable. A larger number of two, three, four, and even five mana spells did as well. In short, Chalice's restriction represents the single largest influx of Vintage playable cards the format has ever seen.

Good luck in the new world.