No Reservations II, pt. 12b: Weatherlight

{When I saw the first item on this week's list, I just couldn't stop laughing for a good 5-10 seconds.}
Goblin Bomb 204 (Honestly, is anyone really afraid of such utter jank, even with proliferate?)
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Ok, kidzes, it's Storytime! Back when I first started playing, about 19 years ago (back when the rocks still had a relatively low Young's modulus), in my second high school (that's a story for another day), I participated in an epic multiplayer game. None of us had decks that could even remotely be considered "good"; I was playing either a precon deck (the one with Angelus/Angel, or a 5-color monstrosity of way more cards than 60, with only one copy of Pulse of Llanowar as the only way to cast all my other cards; we were all playing on a pebble-topped concrete alfresco roundtable, no sleeves, no playmats (it hurts me just to think of it now). One guy had the bright idea to run Goblin Bomb, his reasoning being something along the lines of "If¹ I can get it to 5, I can kill someone in 1 shot!"

Let me tell you, he never got it to go off. In fact, he only won about 2/13 flips, neither of them consecutive. Oh, it gets worse than that. We weren't certain what happened if you lost a flip with no counters (back then, none of us could look it up either quickly or reliably enough), so we all agreed on the concept of negative counters. By the end of recess, he'd managed to have a ten counter deficit on his stupid-ass Bomb. I've seen jars full of nothing but peanut butter that were more ready to explode.

So, yeah, do I think that Goblin Bomb is safe for Standard? *In best H. Jon Benjamin questioning voice* Yes? I guess? I mean, it's the jankiest of utter jank, and by all rights, should probably be relegated to The Burn Pile, but, at least by my admittedly limited interaction with it, it's so unreactive and non-explosive, it prolly wouldn't even burn, even if exposed to Nope-Stoff. I just have the biggest soft spot for such a dopey, idiotically over-nerfed card. It's like if the dumbest golden retriever you could ever find got repeatedly bonked on the head by a Nerf sword wielded by your hyperactive, 5-year old cousin.

The Gatherer comments are, once again, beautifully, eclectically brilliant and stupid; some are brilliant, some are stupid, and some are both, and I love it. Also, has anyone else noticed the new feedback button on Gatherer? What's going on? Are they actually thinking about restoring the nonfunctional "see all" Javascript buttons?

{Glad to see them actually innovating on cumulative upkeep.}
Heart of Bogey & Bacall 145
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So, everyone talks about "do-nothing enchantments", and most of the time, they're only half-joking, but Heart of Bogardan is an actual do-nothing enchantment. It only ever does something if you stop paying its cumulative upkeep. By the time you've sunk and four turns into it (one turn to cast it, two turns of paying its c-upkeep to get the age counters up, and one turn to sac from not paying, since it keys off of last paid c-upkeep cost, and you want to get X up to at least 4 for it to seem worth it), Lavalanche still does X one higher, and this holds true across the entire graph. I can't believe I actually considered this for a supplemental reprint at first.

{An actual good card; what a concept.}
Heat Stroke 205
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Why is Heat Stroke on here again? It's not like creatures were all that good (or even adequate) back then, if you had to debase yourself so low as to need to resort to creature combat, first, what were you doing, and second, who the hell blocked?² Oh, right. It's an early history , and that's the ONLY reason!

{MaRo's "cycling from play"}
Infernal Tribute 206, downgraded from to .
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Hey MaRo? I noticed, and now my readers will, too.⁴ Infernal Tribute is yet another card that's Listed only because of its rarity, and yet another card whose initial rarity was wrong. The mana cost is actually a perfect way to ensure that it's played in either heavy-mono- decks, or it doesn't come out in other decks until the late-very late game.

{Why isn't Glacial Chasm on The Reserved List?}
Inner Sanctum 146
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The further I get into The Reserved List, the less I believe there's any rhyme or reason behind the decisions involved in its existence. Glacial Chasm isn't Listed, but Inner Sanctum is. Rishadan Port isn't Listed, but Farmstead is. Necropotence isn't, but Infernal Tribute is. None of this makes any damn sense.

{Case in point: Squirrels. Squirrels are awesome, and yet this is Listed. Why?!}
Liege of the Hollows 207, downgraded from to .
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Why is Liege of the Hollows even on here? Is it because of her damn sexy abs & second-skin clothing? Because if it is, then I can understand that; that much sexy concentrated in such a small area has been scientifically proven to cause panic, mass hysteria/arousal, and spontaneous religious conversion, and that's a known, inarguable fact!

{This does not belong here.}
Lotus Vale 208
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Lotus Vale offers amazing mana production, yes, but with one of the steepest costs I've ever seen. Nowadays, it's not so bad, but it was printed back in the era of Stone Rain's prominence. Reason #27 Why Fun Is Not Allowed was reprinted in Mirage, and would go on to be reprinted in Tempest, so what the hell was R&D so afraid of?

{Since they're pretty much the exact same card concept⁵, I figured I'd get this one out of the way, too.}
Scorched Ruins 209
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Whenever I try to remember Scorched Ruins' name, I always think of Blasted Landscape. Other than that, everything said about Lotus Vale also applies to Blasted Landscape. D'OH! I've done it again!

{This card represents double bullshit: What it does is bullshit, and it's bullshit that it's Listed.}
Mana Web 210
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I don't like Mana Web OR War's Toll, I don't like what they represent, I don't like the play styles they encourage/enforce, and I don't like the fact that you need to be fairly deep into rules knowledge to know how to use them effectively or work around them. In fact, I hate them, and all of the reasons given that they represent, for all of those reasons. However, I'm not so blind as to be unaware that War's Toll's very existence is exculpatory enough to release Mana Web.⁶

{I will not joke about gay biker culture. I will not joke about "rough trade". I will not joke about fetish masks. I will not joke about Bara Tribe. I will not mention beefcake in any way, shape, or form. I will not mention fitness magazines. I will not make reference to the "Do you even lift?" meme. I will not laugh at any of this. And I will MOST DEFINITELY not laugh so hard I get lightheaded!}
Warrior of the wasteland the Lord Humungus, the ayatollah of rock-and(/or)-rollah 66
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Shakespeare's Gay Boys in Bondage is a weird card. Casting him onto an empty board nets you a six mana 1/1 (unless and opponent is running Kismet effects, lol) that gets -1/-1 whenever it attacks, and that's just when it attacks alone. He's just a big ol' goofy card, and as much as I'd love to reprint him in Standard, as the storyline goes, and as shown in the cards themselves, he dead, and one of the rules of reprints is if the character is dead, they can't come back to Standard. Fortunately, that's what we have supplemental sets for.

{I love this flavor text. Pity it's on such a bad card.}
Mwonvuli Ooze 147
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Moving right along

{Earlier, we talked about do-nothing. Well this does nothing.}
In Rod We Trust 211
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Next!

{Inflexibly operating out of fear is no way to live, rule, or govern, but you try telling that to a republican...}
Paradigm Shift 212 ("212 area code. Looks like I'm going to New York.")
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Ok, after watching Nizzahon's History of the Banned and Restricted List videos, I start to get an understanding behind the decisions at that time. That doesn't mean that they were right, it just means that I understand their thought processes. If restricting a card causes you to jump through several additional hoops of restricting and banning lesser cards, maybe you should just admit that the original restricted card is too powerful, even as a singleton, stop half-assing it, and just ban the fucker. It's like when my elementary schools⁷ instituted a policy of voluntary uniforms, or when the government "tried" to phase out the dollar bill with the Sacagawea coin. You either go full-on mandatory, or fucking forget it!

Paradigm Shift is Wizards being pussies about their Restricted cards. MaRo has taught this very lesson countless times over Hornet Sting. "You wanna know how you show a color can't do something? You don't allow that color to do that thing, ever! You don't give it a very bad version of that thing, because that still says that that color can do that thing!" If there was ever a voice designed for always exclamation marks! All the time!, it's Rosewater's. Anyway, if you don't want players to have access to a thing, you don't give them one of that thing, you fucking take their ball away from the crying little babies and scream at them to FUCKING DEAL WITH IT! Whew, sorry, that last link kinda rubbed off on me there...The point's still valid, though.

However, with the massively increased cardpool, and the oceanic gulf now separating Standard and those problem cards, Paradigm Shift should no longer be a problem, just like most of the formerly big & scary bad decisions of the B&R and Reserved Listkeepers.

{Footnotes}