Vintage, balanced? Lol, here's a little anecdote from personal experience of just how fair that format is:
My opponent's first turn: Bazaar of Baghdad (Land, Tap: Draw 2, Discard 3 - makes no mana.)
My first turn: Play Library of Alexandria, tap to draw a card, play mox jet, tap for sol ring, play mox sapphire, tap mox and sol ring for Time Walk to take another turn.
My second turn: Tap mox sapphire to play ancestral recall and draw 3 cards, play wasteland and sacrifice it to target my opponent's land. My opponent responds by using his land to draw 2 and discard 3, leaving him with 5 cards in hand and no permanents. I then play black lotus, sacrifice black lotus, tap sol ring, and tap mox jet to play mind twist for 5, making him discard his entire hand. At this point he has put his entire hand plus a few more cards into his discard pile, and has no permanents. I have 5 mana in play and I'm holding force of will and a blue spell. (Force of will can be played for free by discarding a blue spell and paying 1 life. It is a counter spell.)
Think that's not broken? I sure thought it was, but get this. ON MY OPPONENT'S NEXT TURN HE KILLED ME!! My opponent was playing the dredge mechanic, and dredged into the perfect cards, including one cabal therapy to take my Force of Will away, which he named because it was the only card that could stop him. By the end of things I was staring at no counterspell in hand, and he was attacking me for 21 with hasted zombies.
(This was the day I quit Type 1, after all of these things happened in about a 30 min period.)
Let's cover a few other scenarios:
First turn, swamp + dark ritual + entomb (b, instant, put a card from your deck into your discard pile) - put worldgorger dragon there (when he comes into play, removal all you control but him from the game; when he leaves play, get that stuff back). With the two remaining black, play animate dead (1b, enchantment: when this comes into play, put a creature card from the graveyard into play with 1 less power; when this leaves play, put the creature back). So, Animate Dead puts Dragon into play, who then removes your land and Animate Dead from the game, so then he dies, so then your land and Animate Dead come back, so then you have 1 untapped swamp and animate dead which come into play. Tap your swamp for B. Animate dead puts dragon into play, repeat, repeat, repeat - infinite black mana on first turn without using any moxes or lotus or anything, just swamp + dark ritual + two cards. Win with spell of choice.
First turn again. You play mishra's workshop, tap it for 3 colorless which can only be used on artifacts, and play Trinisphere. Trinisphere says all spells that would cost less than 3, now cost 3. Opponent's first turn: land, done. Literally, they can do nothing else because everything costs 3 and normal people's land only makes 1. Your 2nd turn: tap workshop for crucible of worlds (this says you may play lands in your graveyard), then put down a strip mine (a land; it taps for 1, and sacrifices to destroy target land), and you destroy their land and say done. At this point, if the opponent has land they can play it... but trinisphere says they can't cast anything. However, should they play land, you will return strip mine and kill it on your turn, so it's impossible for them to ever get the 3 mana to play anything. Game over, first turn kill again, no moxes/lotus involved, again.
It goes on and on.
This format used to be my favorite format, but now Turn 1 is early game, Turn 2 is midgame, Turn 3 is lategame, and so the format is dead to me; you might as well play a game called, "Flip a Coin" in which we use a quarter to determine who goes first, then skip the entire game and simply award that person the win in whatever combo they have fashioned.
The only thing that's really got me excited about using the old cards again is a format called, "100 card singleton". This format has games that play out in a highly interesting, interactive fashion, much like the Vintage of old, but minus the crazy mana acceleration. Here's the link to the banned/restricted list, if you are interested:
100 Card Singleton The nice thing is that this is supported on the official online version for magic, so you can build a deck and then find opponents. All cards aren't yet released online, but they are working on it, and in the meantime you still get to use things like dual lands, mana drain, berserk, necropotence, thawing glaciers, chain lightning, and other old and cool cards.
Anyway, it's fun listening to people discussing something they may not totally grasp, but with the earlier assertions getting strong and possibly becoming an argument, I thought I'd step in and add some actual information. Chao. :)
