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This thread is for discussion of this week's Latest Developments, which goes live Friday morning on magicthegathering.com.

I have something of a concern for the Tribal formats. I've invested a fair bit of time and energy into them, but at the moment, even myself and other tribal stalwarts are playing less of it than we would normally do. A key factor in this is the changeling legality issue: According to this post, this is in the process of being fixed: I respectfully request this be allowed to happen before any decision is taken on the long term viability of the format. If it isn't working properly, people aren't going to play it.

In the past, we have managed some really quite impressive Tribal player run events, such as the several Natural Selection contests which each went on for several months, and were popular enough to be mentioned in main page articles. Events such as these with an in-client meeting room are much harder to run successfully in the current interface. This in turn impacts our ability to 'rally round' a given format.

Did I miss it? Or was there not one mention of Vintage. At least one line saying we think Vintage is heathly would be some sort of recognition of the existence of the format.

ascensionblade wrote:

Every deck with black in it that put up a 4-2 record or better seems to have Bitterblossom: Faeries, 5-Color Control, B/W Tokens, R/B Blightning, and G/B Rock. If that's healthy, I think someone else should be in charge of the banned/restricted lists.

I have read that at the gunslinging (or casual multiplayer) tables MR & AF "apologised" for Bitterblossom, said it should have cost more and said that there was a card in Conflux to "fix" it. I hope they have given a lot of thought to the application of their idea of "fix".

It's a very good card true but not broken or format defining. The principal problem with the card is that decks that run it have multiple other threats and having narrow solutions for an enchantment in a mostly aggro or aggro-control format reduce the ability of other decks to compete with the 'Blossom-running deck overall. It quickly becomes a game of "race it or join it" and when it comes down turn 2 to start churning turn 3, racing it becomes a much less attractive option.

Back on topic (kinda), I would like to see the Commander format supported as a Heads-up game type in the casual room on MTGO. I think the current banned list and the set availability would allow it to flourish (though the B&R list may need to be revisited if/when certain sets become available online)

mturian wrote:

We do recognize and look at Vintage. The way we say a format is healthy is "No changes"Mike

Understood. But, perhaps just a few lines that would say something like:

"No changes to the B&R Vintage list were required at this time. The format appears to be healthy and diverse. In addition, we don't feel that anything on the Restriction List is a candidate for unrestriction at this time."

A little recognition goes a long way.