A few days ago, the old school community (or at least the European branch) got shook up : Emergenza ! said a Facebook post in the 93/94 group -Emergency : 5 “The Deck” in the top 8.

I’ll have to explain and expand on those quotes. But for now, let’s say that The Deck was overwhelmingly dominant in a tournament. That didn’t come as a surprise to me. I’m far from the only one to think that the deck is dominant, the format unbalanced, and has been solved for way too long -though really I don’t know that it is in the American variations, so in the context of this article consider old school to be the Swedish, original format or any European variant. What followed was a lot of animated discussions. It was suggested to unrestrict Strip Mine, remove The Deck players from any right to any prize and a poll was installed.

Now while I’m quite sympathetic to the Strip Mine unrestriction suggestion, I think we have to take a minute and realize : it was actually suggested to create a second class citizen : the control player and the odd monster who will play to win. Now I don’t think people really want to ostracize control players, but we need to realize how far this unbalance in the format can lead us. At the last B&R announcement, Magnus admitted that not doing something about Mishra’s Factory might be a mistake. I have no intention to expand on the sadness of the situation. I’m more interested into how we got there and how we can get out of it.

So let’s backtrack a bit. Not that long ago I read on the Old School blog that someone had suggested Mishra’s factory for restriction. What a fool I thought, this must not be easy to deal with the b/r list when people have such strange demands ! Later my vanity decided to take a nap and I got intrigued : what on earth could have brought someone to feel like Mishra’s Factory was a problem ? So I played, tested, and while I had so far usually played the role of the control player, I played the role of the aggro player for a change. And what a change that was !

But to adress the Mishra’s Factory case one has first to actually understand The Deck that I’d rather call “The Book”, since it is not actually The Deck that’s dominating the format, or even a variant but a real evolution. It would be a big mistake to consider The Book as just an adjustment, a mordernization of The Deck. One can see the book plays at least 3 Jayemdae Tome to The Deck 1 or 2. Maybe that’s what happens when black vise gets restricted. But that’s not enough. There’s a much subtler and more format-warping aspect to the (book) deck, one that its creators have to be commended for.

Mishra’s Factory never was designed to tap itself AND deal damage.

We use the modern rules and it has in this case quite dramatic consequences. Dramatic, yet in a way, subtle. It’s quite easy, at least it was for me, to fly over that detail and just think : well Mishra is and always has been a great card, it can defend a bit, be a finisher, provide mana and if I want to protect it all I have to do is nothing -with Strip Mine restricted, lands become quite sturdy- and while Moat+Serra Angel is great, Mishra F+The Abyss is about as good.

Look at the weenies ! Pretty much all of them. Almost no cheap (mana cost < 3) creature can deal 3 damage (or has deathtouch or one of a million helpful abilities that modern times have given to Magic Creatures and would let them deal with a 3/3 one way or another). In modern formats we regularly have some weenies that can trade with a 3/3 Mishra. But in Old School ? Well it’s quite simple, look at Electric Eel aggro deck lists and you’ll find them all. That is -Electric Eel itself and Dandan- and they do it quite conditionally. Oh and additionally you sometimes see some Flying Men in those lists ! Nothing against those guys personally, but I find that alarming. What can lead someone to play a 1/1 flyer ? Mishra’s Factory with modern rules, that’s what.

According to what I see in the results and in my own relatively extensive playtesting they did it ! Electric Eel aggro actually manage to give The Book a run for its money and although it is a bit of an Aggro-Control deck with often hate in the form of Energy Flux and Blood Moon, it still means we have a somewhat competitive aggressive deck despite the fact that Mishra’s Factory can be a 3/3 defender at basically no cost and every one and their mother, control decks included, play 4 of them. So really, congrats ! Praise to have gone so far as to go dig Electric Eel from absolute oblivion (I didn’t even remember the card !) and to make it work -sort of (let’s not get out of ourselves, the various UR aggro/control/burn lists only can try to resist The Book, and really I won’t spoil things, but it’s quite easy for control to smash those decks). I think that’s enough. Those very harsh conditions have fostered creativity and people have found a way. Let’s not pretend that there will be (m)any others. More importantly : since so many people play the card, most weeny strategies are born dead, hopeless. Some people do and will play aggro, because they like it, or because that’s all they can afford, but that’s not the concern : a balanced format needs aggro to be somewhat competitive, especially when it is governed by control (the balance being that aggro is supposed to beat control which beats midrange, which beats aggro).

I probably have to debunk an illusion (well half an illusion, more like) : that feeble as it is Mishra F. can’t be much of a problem. Sure when activated it then dies to almost every removal. In fact once activated, it’s almost as feeble as a Juggernaut -the card that where I’m from we called “the creature that dies to everything”. By the way, does it seem fair to you that the Jugg’ in addition to all its traditional weaknesses now can’t even do better than trade with a 0 costed card ? Oh and on a similar line : does it seems healthy to you that in a format where blue is already so overpowered, the best creature package might very well be an all-blue team ? (We can’t do anything about Serendib Efreet being good, and that’s how it’s supposed to be, but the rest of the pack ?)

It takes some practice. Sure you can, like in the somewhat successful Sehl’s next level WW deck play 5 maindeck artifact removal, plus 3 crusade to boost your weenies, plus 7 flyers, plus some burn (and with all that focused fire, in my testing you still come short of getting 50% chance of beating The Book). That’s not really enough and that’s almost pushing you into playing white (or Electric Eel). Anyway you slice it, it comes down to the results : sure many times you’ll dispose of the 3/3 artifact creature but all too often you’ll find yourself without a way to destroy the Mishra or boost your weeny (and in this case you’ll find it hard to try and bluff into many such attacks, since the opportunity cost of “eating” your Kird Ape at no cost is so high, and the price of losing the Mishra to a Removal is just the price of a one for one, aka zero). Additionally in the context of a control deck, you’ll also find the control deck has some good reason to counter the removal / disenchant the crusade at the last moment, which two-for-one you and maintain the terror that Mishra’s Factory can be to weenies. So actually Mishra often doesn’t even have to be activated to scare an entire army into staying home. When two agressive decks face one another, the one that has a Mishra almost always become the de-facto control deck. In this format, with modern rules, Mishra F. becomes a defensive tool that may attack. What used to be a great tool for aggressive deck (a creature that doesn’t fear sorcery speed creature control, nor The Abyss), is now one of the best defensive tool in the format.

Although it does it maybe only half the time (and if it doesn’t it comes at no cost) it will all too often act as a mini-moat to the opponents’ weenies. For a land that almost everyone plays in a 1 Strip Mine format this is all too constraining for aggro strategies and cheaply costed creatures in general (oh by the way I’m a control player at heart, I’m not preaching for my church, save for the fact that I find that Mishra F. makes things way too easy for me).

By extension while I didn’t originally intended to talk about that card : you can see why Serendib Efreet is found so often in top 8 lists. At casting cost 3 it is still in the upper and acceptable range for an aggressive creature plan : it doesn’t have the inherent weaknesses that Electric Eel, Dandan and Flying Men have, yet it is somewhat cheap, packs an acceptable punch for its mana cost, AND it flies over Mishras (other decent creature of casting cost 3 can’t say the same, Hyppies are great but not because of their damage per mana return, and i’m not ignoring Sedge Troll, in fact I like the card a lot, but for most intent and purposes its casting cost is to be considered 4). Serendib Efreet isn’t a problem, isn’t broken in any way.

So what do we do ? What do I suggest ?

Do not restrict the card.

That door has been opened. I’ll put a foot into it :

Mishra’s Factory

Land

Mishra’s Factory doesn’t assign damage if tapped as a blocker.

{T}: Add {C} to your mana pool.

{1}: Mishra’s Factory becomes a 2/2 Assembly-Worker artifact creature until end of turn. It’s still a land.

{T}: Target Assembly-Worker creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.

Which, you know, is how it was played in 93/94.

Why it is not a problem to do some more errata : not only because it already has been done, but also, the format is using the oracle text, yet is asking people to use the old cards. What it means is that players “have to” read *one* errata for every card they play anyway (and they’ll probably have to read those of other cards too). There’s basically no overhead in putting some more errata, people already know to go to the old school rule first, if they find an errata there, they’ll know they won’t have to look for it elsewhere.

On the other hand, just adding the rule : Tapped blockers don’t assign damage isn’t taking any more time than reading that errata (additionally it would give a bit of its flak back to Icy Manipulator, Relic Barrier and Twiddle : they could use it). This is my favorite solution, but if it is preferred not to modify the rules as a matter of principles, the above errata -I’m not just convinced, and please challenge me to online games if you think otherwise, because I’ve done a lot of playstesting with that errata so all this is by no means just the product of my imagination- would suffice to make the format much more balanced and would open the gates to many strategies. At the risk of repeating myself, Mishras in their present state are a real problem because Mishras are played almost universally. While I’m about to suggest much more radical alteration to the format, and this one doesn’t look like much at first sight, this might be the one I’m the most enthusiastic about. Next old school suggestion : UNRESTRICT BALANCE ! (I must be dikking, right ?)