Unlocking Legacy - The Banned Facts

[Machinus]

Let me know what you guys think of this one!

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/14528.html

[Sanguine Voyeur]

I liked it, but I think that the draw engine would be used later in the game, as opposed to a deck's opening play. Not that I'm saying that it would be any good late game either.

I also like the use of belcher over High Tide.

[Cait_Sith]

You are engaging in a theory war and are running a HUGE number of assumptions. Remember that they thought Flash was safe to unerrata. Oops. At this point the only way to be sure would be to unban it.

[AnwarA101]

You are engaging in a theory war and are running a HUGE number of assumptions. Remember that they thought Flash was safe to unerrata. Oops. At this point the only way to be sure would be to unban it.

I don't believe that "safe" was the reason for removing errata from Flash. Mark Gottlieb has a made point to remove "power level" errata whenever he feels like it. No one seriously argued that Flash was "safe" and I suspect Wizards knew as much once they saw the combo.

As for Land Tax, it doesn't seem particularly strong at all. I'm not sure what the real reason for not having it in the format, but it seems like it would be a fine addition to Legacy. I don't think its going to break it and even if someone could use it well, what's wrong with that? I hope Wizards tries removing more cards from the B/R list. It will be more interesting that way.

[Machinus]

You are engaging in a theory war and are running a HUGE number of assumptions.

I'm only making very realistic guesses about the deck's behavior. It doesn't limit the significance of the analysis at all if I look at best case scenarios.

I suggest you go back and read what Forsythe wrote. He claims that Land Tax would warp the format so much that the right play is not to play your first land. That is absurd and the quality and rigor of my analysis is far higher.

The only condition that I left out (due to it's obvious nature) is that not all Land Tax decks would seek to use the engine in the early game. You can investigate for yourself how poor of a strategy this is since 1) there are much better draw engines for the late game, and 2) these decks are inherently at a disadvantage compared to currently competitive control decks, since they are heavy in white, yet can't run an acceptable manabase or have versatile answers. The engine might take up 8-12 slots, but the restrictions it places on the deck are huge and basically doom the deck just from the design stage.

If you have more specific objections I would be happy to answer them.

[Di]

So...why did this article not have a title more appropriate, such as, "Unlocking Legacy - Unlocking Land Tax?" That's what the article was. It was not an article about the banned list (as the title states), but rather just an article pointing out how shitty Land Tax is. At least you did a good job with that. :) I guess I was just looking for a lot more out of this article (assuming you were actually going to be discussing the B/r list) considering how much you've publicly spoken about it. Unless of course, you plan on making your entire series of articles being one card at a time. Which would be lame.

Fine job nonetheless. I can only assume the DCI will take note that we are not idiots, and Land Tax is not overpowered.

[Machinus]

My intention was to do a comprehensive reevaluation of the entire list, but then "Gone in a Flash" was published and I suddenly had a much bigger question to address.

It started just talking about Land Tax, but there is a lot in the article that is about general DCI B/R policy and the character of Legacy. I see those things as being about the B/R list as a whole because they address how things get banned or unbanned in the first place, as well as how that process needs to change to support Legacy.

I didn't anticipate that the title would be misleading given the amount of general content in the article. I happened to think it was quite clever considering the actual focus of the article...

I am definitely going to cover the rest of the list sometime in the near future, so don't worry about that discussion not occuring.

[Bovinious]

I thought it was good, gave good reasoning as to why Land Tax is awful, as if anyone (who isnt WOTC) with a pulse didnt know already. Still I think it was good to actually show and layout how Land Tax doesnt actually win the game or do much of anything against anything, a concept WOTC and apparently some other people have yet to grasp. Good job I say.

[Samshire]

I thought it was good, gave good reasoning as to why Land Tax is awful, as if anyone (who isnt WOTC) with a pulse didnt know already. Still I think it was good to actually show and layout how Land Tax doesnt actually win the game or do much of anything against anything, a concept WOTC and apparently some other people have yet to grasp. Good job I say.

So you are saying that everyone already knows that Land Tax is awful (because everyone has a pulse) except for Wizards of the Coast, yet you continue to say that the article has value because it repeats what nearly everyone already knows?

I don't know, it was a well written article but I kind of feel cheated. If the card was unbanned apparently it wouldn't have much of a impact on the format, so why should it even be unbanned if it doesn't make much of a difference? How likely would it be that something would be printed anyways that would absolutely 'oh my God' break Land Tax in half anyways? I would have rather seen another primer on a different Legacy deck (any one) instead of 'why this card should be unbanned', but that's just my personal preference I still enjoyed reading the article.

[Machinus]

I don't know, it was a well written article but I kind of feel cheated. If the card was unbanned apparently it wouldn't have much of a impact on the format, so why should it even be unbanned if it doesn't make much of a difference? How likely would it be that something would be printed anyways that would absolutely 'oh my God' break Land Tax in half anyways?

I understand this sentiment, and I do think it's natural to ask that kind of question. Let me try to make it a little clearer.

One reason why I want the list to shrink is because it would be better for the B/R be a supportive and consistent representative of what the format is not. The cards on the list should deserve their place there, to serve both as an indicator of format power level, and a legitimate safety for cards that have a negative effect on the format.

Another is the desire to have fair cards in the pool so that deckbuilders can try to make them good, and have fun with them. I am not saying Land Tax is a useless card. Far from it - I think it might be fun to play in some decks, and even potentially relevant to tournament Legacy at some point in the future. But it is not too good, and as I have argued in my article, does not deserve to be on the list. For that reason, I think it makes sense that we should be allowed to develop the card and play it in tournaments.

[Bovinious]

So you are saying that everyone already knows that Land Tax is awful (because everyone has a pulse) except for Wizards of the Coast, yet you continue to say that the article has value because it repeats what nearly everyone already knows?

I don't know, it was a well written article but I kind of feel cheated. If the card was unbanned apparently it wouldn't have much of a impact on the format, so why should it even be unbanned if it doesn't make much of a difference? How likely would it be that something would be printed anyways that would absolutely 'oh my God' break Land Tax in half anyways? I would have rather seen another primer on a different Legacy deck (any one) instead of 'why this card should be unbanned', but that's just my personal preference I still enjoyed reading the article.

Well apparently something is wrong with WOTC if they think Land Tax is good, plain and simple.

The problem with a tame, and dare I say, awful, card being banned is that if WOTC is willing to ban and leave banned a horrible card, maybe theyll ban other tame cards, which would be bad for the format. If WOTC made the mistake of banning Land Tax before, and STILL havnt cleaned up their mistake, that makes me afraid theyll ban fair cards in the future. Maybe if GP Flash hadnt happened WOTC would have ended up banning a fair card like Lackey, Vial, or Ringleader, since theyre willing to leave a terrible card banned whats to stop them from banning a powerful but not broken one?

[Samshire]

I understand this sentiment, and I do think it's natural to ask that kind of question. Let me try to make it a little clearer.

One reason why I want the list to shrink is because it would be better for the B/R be a supportive and consistent representative of what the format is not. The cards on the list should deserve their place there, to serve both as an indicator of format power level, and a legitimate safety for cards that have a negative effect on the format.

Another is the desire to have fair cards in the pool so that deckbuilders can try to make them good, and have fun with them. I am not saying Land Tax is a useless card. Far from it - I think it might be fun to play in some decks, and even potentially relevant to tournament Legacy at some point in the future. But it is not too good, and as I have argued in my article, does not deserve to be on the list. For that reason, I think it makes sense that we should be allowed to develop the card and play it in tournaments.

Ok, thanks that makes a lot of sense. I agree with you, but I think that the legacy community's energy could be better spent somewhere else (like attracting people to our format) than begging for Wizards to take a bad card off of the banned and restricted list. Maybe it would be easier to attract people if we have a banned and restricted list that made sense though.

[Illissius]

I think this was an interesting change of pace, but disagree with a lot of your assumptions and conclusions.

- You assume that a Land Tax deck has to be dominantly white. Why? Both Land Tax and Mox Diamond make splashing very easy. A blue splash for Brainstorm, Daze, and Force of Will (Foil?) is one good option; red for things like Firestorm is another.

- Much of your analysis boils down to "it is now turn 3, and the Land Tax deck has done nothing but play with itself, has yet to affect the board in any way, and only has three mana with which to do so". This is certainly a valid point, but I don't think you can rigorously conclude from it that "Land Tax therefore loses and is quite an awful deck". Free countermagic (and, like, Swords), for one, could help it to actually do things in the early turns, and there are plenty of things you can do with three mana and your engine in place. Pyroclasm, Firestorm, Vengeful Dreams, Solitary Confinement, Counterbalance, and so on.

- After the Land Tax deck has activated Scroll Rack against Goblins, you observe that it has seven cards in its hand, where a normal deck would have six, and conclude that it has accomplished little. This is akin to saying that Brainstorm and Reach Through Mists are the same card. The raw card advantage (but not quality) is initially offset by having to play Land Tax, Scroll Rack, and Moxen, this is true, but afterwards, the deck is going to be doing something like drawing three cards per turn (if it doesn't play further Taxes).

I do agree that Land Tax would be safe to take off (and the Life from the Loam comparison is as excellent as it is obvious), given that there are many other issues where you gave it the benefit of the doubt in this analysis, such as actually drawing the engine pieces and not getting them countered, but trying to prove that it wouldn't be powerful even when firing on all cylinders is something I'm not certain it succeeds at.

Another issue I want to note is that people always assume, when discussing whether to unban a card, that its theoretical performance in the current metagame is the only thing which matters. What if this metagame turns out to be unhealthy itself and has to be reined in, its power level significantly reduced, or evolves in other ways? The card you just unbanned could turn out to be a serious problem in the new metagame. (Granted, you could just reban it in this case, but the DCI seems to treat unnecessary fluctuations of the banned list as something to be avoided at all costs). This is currently more applicable to Vintage, where they just unrestricted things like Mind Twist and Gush, but it's important to keep in mind in general, I think.

[Machinus]

- You assume that a Land Tax deck has to be dominantly white. Why? Both Land Tax and Mox Diamond make splashing very easy. A blue splash for Brainstorm, Daze, and Force of Will (Foil?) is one good option; red for things like Firestorm is another.

Consistency. If you start including a heavy non-white component, the ability to actually play your cards as well as support the nonland mana sources needed to make Land Tax work decreases dramatically. You have to incorporate a large amount of basics, but at the same time always have white mana to cast your disruption and engine cards. As a deckbuilder I would want to minimize the chance that the deck would lose to itself, hence the dominant white commitment.


- Much of your analysis boils down to "it is now turn 3, and the Land Tax deck has done nothing but play with itself, has yet to affect the board in any way, and only has three mana with which to do so". This is certainly a valid point, but I don't think you can rigorously conclude from it that "Land Tax therefore loses and is quite an awful deck". Free countermagic (and, like, Swords), for one, could help it to actually do things in the early turns, and there are plenty of things you can do with three mana and your engine in place. Pyroclasm, Firestorm, Vengeful Dreams, Solitary Confinement, Counterbalance, and so on.

- After the Land Tax deck has activated Scroll Rack against Goblins, you observe that it has seven cards in its hand, where a normal deck would have six, and conclude that it has accomplished little. This is akin to saying that Brainstorm and Reach Through Mists are the same card. The raw card advantage (but not quality) is initially offset by having to play Land Tax, Scroll Rack, and Moxen, this is true, but afterwards, the deck is going to be doing something like drawing three cards per turn (if it doesn't play further Taxes).

Think about what you are saying. Even with a perfect draw and no disruption from the opponent, Land Tax has to invest in the engine for the first two turns, and wait until turn four to start reaping the rewards of it. We would surely dismiss this as unplayable if it were a card without such a succesful past.

The fact that it will reap rewards later doesn't matter. I can cite countless of examples of slow, clunky draw engines that generate card advantage later in the game. Combo and sometimes even Goblins will end the game on turn three. If Goblins doesn't, it will certainly prevent you from developing your manabase. Threshold isn't going to let you resolve your engine in the first place, etc. Theoretically Land Tax is good, but that is not an appropriate criterion on which to ban cards.


Another issue I want to note is that people always assume, when discussing whether to unban a card, that its theoretical performance in the current metagame is the only thing which matters. What if this metagame turns out to be unhealthy itself and has to be reined in, its power level significantly reduced, or evolves in other ways? The card you just unbanned could turn out to be a serious problem in the new metagame.

This question is irrelevant to the issue of the banned list. What kind of metagame do you think is going to exist in the future? One without mana denial, permission, and fast combo? Do you think it's going to get weaker and slower? The metagame right now is the only relevant criterion for what cards should or should not be banned. Considering formats that are not Legacy is again an inappropriate way of making these decisions.

[Fred Bear]

I have to say, these are my least favorite type of articles. Opinion pieces are weak because they rest on the assumptions of the writer. Let's evaluate your assumptions...

First 8 moxen, 4 Chrome and 4 Diamond, so you have assumed that you want to play Land Tax on turn 1 to full advantage. A safe assumption, but... You have made it the purpose and focus of the deck. A Land Tax deck is likely to run 22-24 Lands many of which it can go get when activated. You have added another 8 other mana sources - 4 of which will cost you another spell - bringing the total up to 30-32 mana sources. Add in the 4 Land Tax and you have 34-36 cards dedicated to getting you land or mana to play the other 26-24 spells (this is probably even lower because of the 'cost' associated with Chrome Mox). The question remains, does a deck utilizing Land Tax have to play it turn 1 to win? Why can't a deck 'splash' Land Tax to be able to use it for effect when it is drawn?

Your second assumption - the deck must be base white. Wow! Many of the adepts on this site have rated white as one of the weakest colors in Legacy, so I would view this as a major disadvantage. A deck like B/W Confidant is clearly base black, but they could cast a turn 1 Swords to Plowshares, right? Threshold is most often base blue, but they can and do cast turn 1 Mongoose, right? Land Tax has the ability to get ANY color basic land. You have (seemingly) made several other unstated assumptions here - the land base must be nearly all basics and Chrome Mox is the best choice and you must play Land Tax turn 1. So the questions naturally follow... Why wouldn't a deck utilizing Land Tax be able to use Fetches or Duals? Is Chrome Mox the best choice for an additional accelerant or are additional 0-cc non-land mana sources even needed?

Your third assumption - cards that turn those basics into advantage. This seems like a sound assumption. Your deck really should have a reason to run Land Tax. You, like many others, seem tilted towards Scroll Rack as the most effective way to do this (and that may be). But I can't help but feel that this choice is clouded because you have made the deck base-to-mono white and it is the 'most obvious' choice since every board troller suggests it. Now, as we've already seen with your decklist, when we toss these in, you are looking at 20-22 'business' spells - only 1/3 of your deck!

And then you test versus Goblins, Threshold, and Belcher - decks that run 60+% as 'business' spells. It is not surprising that in that type of a metagame, turn 1 Land Tax isn't a broken play. But does that test prove Land Tax is 'underpowered' enough to release from the banned list? I would disagree on the grounds that the testing isn't nearly valid enough.

All-in-all you made reasonable assumptions, but your assumptions led directly to your conclusions, i.e. the testing bias is the cause of your result and it has nothing to do with the quality of Land Tax.

And that leads me to my next question - If Land Tax isn't powerful and it stinks in the decks that could/would use it, why does anyone care if it's banned or not? Aren't you really arguing to unban it so that no one will play it? Doesn't that seem like a waste of a nearly 5,000 word column and some pretty decent exposure for 'our' format?

Fred Bear...

[AnwarA101]

And that leads me to my next question - If Land Tax isn't powerful and it stinks in the decks that could/would use it, why does anyone care if it's banned or not? Aren't you really arguing to unban it so that no one will play it? Doesn't that seem like a waste of a nearly 5,000 word column and some pretty decent exposure for 'our' format?


Land Tax could be potentially powerful in the right deck, but it is unlikely to be broken. It is in this context that not having Land Tax in the format is a loss. Players may be able to develop competitive (or even casual) decks that could utilize this card. This development is stunted for no apparent reason.

[Machinus]

Let's evaluate your assumptions...

I would answer these questions, except they are kind of obvious from a competitive deckbuilding standpoint. There are two points here:

1) To make the deck consistent and competitive. If you think you can make a more competitive Land Tax deck feel free to defend your alternate choices.

2) To showcase the power of Land Tax. Talking about the theoretical power of Land Tax as a late game draw engine has no effect on this discussion, and is even easier to recognize as futile due to other superior draw engines. If you don't see this right away, just remember that Forsythe said the card was so "oppressive" that it makes not playing your turn 1 land the right play - clearly indicating they believe this card to be broken on turn 1.


I challenge you or anyone else to come up with a Land Tax deck that is better in any way than the hypothetical one I used in my article, whether by list or a better set of assumptions. If that happens, we can see if it has any effect on the conclusions I draw in my article. I don't think it's possible to come up with a better deck through either of these methods, and I don't think it would change any of the conclusions made because the design and tempo restrictions are quite significant.

I appreciate the criticism, but this is an honest exercise in deckbuilding; if you change the assumptions I make about the deck, it becomes either obviously terrible, or irrelevant to the question of banning. Competitive Legacy is the only important comparison for these cards and under that restriction these assumptions are completely logical.

[Finn]

Chris, I don't really know where to begin.

The fact is that I really want Land Tax unbanned. And yet, I think it is a really strong card. I want to play with it again, you see.

1. Your sample game against goblins is, well, a fantasy. Why wouldn't the Land Tax player just remove the threat instead of foolishly tapping out to play Scroll Rack? STP, Lightning Bolt? - or my favorite: Lava Dart.
2. Your sample against Threshold suffers similar problems. But this is not as simple as just thinking it through. You have never played with Land Tax, I am certain. If you did, you would already have been forced to come up with solutions for low-land opponents. Lava Dart is one. But there are others. Rith's Cavern(?) is another. But then there is Wasteland in a pinch. And you already have Mox Diamond. The Land Tax player can (and must) take a proactive approach to reducing his own lands on the table. Your opponent is never safe by just equaling your land count.
3. The deck can effectively run on two or even one mana source. It has enough of these kinds of tricks to rarely be stuck staying below the opponent.
4. One final point of contention: Life from the Loam is not as close a comparison as it appears on the surface. The difference is in the free nature of Land Tax. It comes down earlier and is online immediately. From then, it can't be countered, Stifled, Needled, Meddling Maged, Chaliced, Crypted, Extirpated, etc. You have Vindicate, Deed, and Grip. That's about it. And they are all slow. It works over and over, just as long as your deck is built right. Devastating Dreams is awesome with Life from the Loam. It is way, way better with Land Tax. You can safely go down to zero lands in hand and in play, mox or no. If your opponent topdecks one first and plays it, he has fallen right back in. That's oppressive.

What I would call your miscalculation, I am assuming, came from you beginning your mental research (there's no way you actually tested this) with the assumption that the card sucked. When your (flawed) mental tests confirmed that assumption, the card did not seem oppressive. What card has ever been oppressive when it isn't doing anything useful? And furthermore, even if the card is not strong today, should it ever be strong, it would make for the kinds of games Mr. Forsythe is afraid of. Illisius is right.

BUT: You are on to a very important concept here. The more this format congeals, the more it resembles nothing. It is not really comparable to any Extended or Vintage format that has ever been. I am slowly realizing that myself. That could be your next piece. It could stir up a lot of fuss.

[Anusien]

A Land Tax deck is also likely to run things like Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors (OMG how synergistic).

Land Tax goes a long way towards allowing you to keep up with the drawbacks of Razormane Masticore and Masticore while still making land drops.

Cadaverous Bloom and Squandered Resources, while kind of kludgy and requiring weird colors of mana for a deck that needs basics, give you powerful ways to use the engine.

[Machinus]

Chris, I don't really know where to begin.

The fact is that I really want Land Tax unbanned. And yet, I think it is a really strong card. I want to play with it again, you see.

1. Your sample game against goblins is, well, a fantasy. Why wouldn't the Land Tax player just remove the threat instead of foolishly tapping out to play Scroll Rack? STP, Lightning Bolt? - or my favorite: Lava Dart.
2. Your sample against Threshold suffers similar problems. But this is not as simple as just thinking it through. You have never played with Land Tax, I am certain. If you did, you would already have been forced to come up with solutions for low-land opponents. Lava Dart is one. But there are others. Rith's Cavern(?) is another. But then there is Wasteland in a pinch. And you already have Mox Diamond. The Land Tax player can (and must) take a proactive approach to reducing his own lands on the table. Your opponent is never safe by just equaling your land count.
3. The deck can effectively run on two or even one mana source. It has enough of these kinds of tricks to rarely be stuck staying below the opponent.
4. One final point of contention: Life from the Loam is not as close a comparison as it appears on the surface. The difference is in the free nature of Land Tax. It comes down earlier and is online immediately. From then, it can't be countered, Stifled, Needled, Meddling Maged, Chaliced, Crypted, Extirpated, etc. You have Vindicate, Deed, and Grip. That's about it. And they are all slow. It works over and over, just as long as your deck is built right. Devastating Dreams is awesome with Life from the Loam. It is way, way better with Land Tax. You can safely go down to zero lands in hand and in play, mox or no. If your opponent topdecks one first and plays it, he has fallen right back in. That's oppressive.

What I would call your miscalculation, I am assuming, came from you beginning your mental research (there's no way you actually tested this) with the assumption that the card sucked. When your (flawed) mental tests confirmed that assumption, the card did not seem oppressive. What card has ever been oppressive when it isn't doing anything useful? And furthermore, even if the card is not strong today, should it ever be strong, it would make for the kinds of games Mr. Forsythe is afraid of. Illisius is right.

BUT: You are on to a very important concept here. The more this format congeals, the more it resembles nothing. It is not really comparable to any Extended or Vintage format that has ever been. I am slowly realizing that myself. That could be your next piece. It could stir up a lot of fuss.

I've never played with Land Tax in Legacy, as it has never been legal in this format.

I make no claims about the tech level or synergy of the deck outline I wrote about. I am sure with the addition of testing and experimentation that nicer tactical plays could be devised so that Land Tax would not be as bad. But that's my point - the card requires specific environmental answers to be good at all. It's not overpowered, and it doesn't deserve it's spot on the B/R.

I am sure if you have worked on this deck that it can perform marginally better in the scenarios I described, but ask yourself some questions:

1) Would the deck be Tier 1? "Better" in those scenarios makes no guarantee that it would be good enough to actually risk a tournament fee on.

2) Is it broken??

I think we both know the answers to these; all other questions about the possibilites of deck design and the tactical options the deck has in the current metagame I have no problem being educated on.

[Finn]

I think that you misrepresented (I mean that in the actual, non-political way) the circumstances surrounding the card's interaction with the decks it was pitted up against. Why have you bothered to write about scenarios that are meaningless? That was the bulk of the article.

Land Tax would be a strong card right now - probably tier 1 at least in power. I don't know that the card would be dominating, and from that standpoint, it may be a safe card to unban. But you have to give it to Wizards for seeing the card's ability to stalemate the game. It DOES.

[Machinus]

probably tier 1 at least in power.

I am skeptical about this. I am willing to analyze design innovations, but there is not a lot of room to improve the overall performance against all of the disruption and pressure present in the format. I think you should contribute your deck design to my thread on the card, so you can talk more about this.

I am interested in the design possibilites of the deck just because I like building decks. But the design isn't directly pertinent to the question of it being banned or unbanned.

Think about my article in a different way. I'm not saying "Land Tax is a crap rare and it is unplayable." Instead, my article is a test of brokenness. If the card really was too good for the format, there would be no way that given a reasonable set of assumptions, it could perform that poorly in typical scenarios.

I am sure the list isn't optimal since I haven't spent months testing and tuning it - but we are not testing for optimal matchup percentages here. This is about a card being so fundamentally powerful that it has to be banned from the format. If that is the summary of my argument, there is no need to debate the finer details of the deck design, even though I think they are incidentally worth discussing because they are interesting.

[Finn]

I appreciate your desire to see this topic through, but I am not willing to work with a banned card any more than I have to. But I did it last year. I will look for the thread.

[Fred Bear]

Land Tax could be potentially powerful in the right deck, but it is unlikely to be broken. It is in this context that not having Land Tax in the format is a loss. Players may be able to develop competitive (or even casual) decks that could utilize this card. This development is stunted for no apparent reason.

This is a valid argument. This also brings to light what I believe to be the real argument about the Banned list - what is the criteria for a card to be banned? Does the effect generated by the card have to be broken? What does it mean to be 'broken'? How many cards are truly 'broken'?

I would never argue that Land Tax would be 'broken' in the current format. I just disagree with the sentiment that it would be necessarily 'bad' or underpowered.


I would answer these questions, except they are kind of obvious from a competitive deckbuilding standpoint. There are two points here:

1) To make the deck consistent and competitive. If you think you can make a more competitive Land Tax deck feel free to defend your alternate choices.

2) To showcase the power of Land Tax. Talking about the theoretical power of Land Tax as a late game draw engine has no effect on this discussion, and is even easier to recognize as futile due to other superior draw engines. If you don't see this right away, just remember that Forsythe said the card was so "oppressive" that it makes not playing your turn 1 land the right play - clearly indicating they believe this card to be broken on turn 1.


I challenge you or anyone else to come up with a Land Tax deck that is better in any way than the hypothetical one I used in my article, whether by list or a better set of assumptions. If that happens, we can see if it has any effect on the conclusions I draw in my article. I don't think it's possible to come up with a better deck through either of these methods, and I don't think it would change any of the conclusions made because the design and tempo restrictions are quite significant.

I appreciate the criticism, but this is an honest exercise in deckbuilding; if you change the assumptions I make about the deck, it becomes either obviously terrible, or irrelevant to the question of banning. Competitive Legacy is the only important comparison for these cards and under that restriction these assumptions are completely logical.

I refuse to get into pissing matches on forum boards. You wrote an article and I challenged your assumptions and conclusions. If you choose not to address my concerns and just leave your assumptions as 'obvious', that is your right.

To address your points, though - (1) I think it would be extremely narrow-minded and hypocritical for you to claim that your list (which was not published mind you) is the most consistent and competitive build possible (when that's essentially what you're criticizing Forsythe of). I don't have a specific list in mind since I have not actively worked on the subject, but I have a few ideas. (2) I believe the 'power' of Land Tax is hidden in the fact that it isn't 'broken'. I feel like you have mistaken disagreement with your article as agreement with Forsythe. I believe that Land Tax could be a very strong tool in the current environment, but it is most likely not broken.

Like I said, I don't have a specific list in mind, but think about these plays...

Turn 1 - Tundra, Land Tax, Go
Opponent - Mountain, Lackey,
Response - Daze returning Tundra
Turn 2 - Land Tax Trigger, play...

Turn 1 - Forest, Exploration, Plains, Land Tax, Go
Opponent - Mountain, Lackey
Turn 2 - Mountain, Crop Rotation, Lotus Vale, Seismic Assault, Go
Opponent - Rishadan Port, Attack, Lackey out Ringleader, Go
Turn 3 - Port Vale, Trigger Land Tax, kill Lackey, kill Ringleader, Go...

Neither are broken and maybe neither are truly competitive, but as far as I know, neither approach has ever been taken with Land Tax previously. How many other ways could there be to take advantage of a Land Tax engine?

Your conclusion

Land Tax is weak enough...
is a direct result of the way you looked for it, that's all I ever said. If you lift your assumptions, you can make a competitive deck that utilizes Land Tax but may not depend on it.

Fred Bear...

[Aside - I don't think it's fair to request decklists at this point because if I or anyone else did find a way to utilize Land Tax and it did get unbanned, I or that person should be able to take full advantage of it prior to that list's release. It seems like that is the status quo of the boards and the community at large (i.e. secret tech).]

[Machinus]

This is a valid argument. This also brings to light what I believe to be the real argument about the Banned list - what is the criteria for a card to be banned? Does the effect generated by the card have to be broken? What does it mean to be 'broken'? How many cards are truly 'broken'?

I would never argue that Land Tax would be 'broken' in the current format. I just disagree with the sentiment that it would be necessarily 'bad' or underpowered.



I refuse to get into pissing matches on forum boards. You wrote an article and I challenged your assumptions and conclusions. If you choose not to address my concerns and just leave your assumptions as 'obvious', that is your right.

To address your points, though - (1) I think it would be extremely narrow-minded and hypocritical for you to claim that your list (which was not published mind you) is the most consistent and competitive build possible (when that's essentially what you're criticizing Forsythe of). I don't have a specific list in mind since I have not actively worked on the subject, but I have a few ideas. (2) I believe the 'power' of Land Tax is hidden in the fact that it isn't 'broken'. I feel like you have mistaken disagreement with your article as agreement with Forsythe. I believe that Land Tax could be a very strong tool in the current environment, but it is most likely not broken.

Like I said, I don't have a specific list in mind, but think about these plays...

Turn 1 - Tundra, Land Tax, Go
Opponent - Mountain, Lackey,
Response - Daze returning Tundra
Turn 2 - Land Tax Trigger, play...

Turn 1 - Forest, Exploration, Plains, Land Tax, Go
Opponent - Mountain, Lackey
Turn 2 - Mountain, Crop Rotation, Lotus Vale, Seismic Assault, Go
Opponent - Rishadan Port, Attack, Lackey out Ringleader, Go
Turn 3 - Port Vale, Trigger Land Tax, kill Lackey, kill Ringleader, Go...

Neither are broken and maybe neither are truly competitive, but as far as I know, neither approach has ever been taken with Land Tax previously. How many other ways could there be to take advantage of a Land Tax engine?

Your conclusion

is a direct result of the way you looked for it, that's all I ever said. If you lift your assumptions, you can make a competitive deck that utilizes Land Tax but may not depend on it.

Fred Bear...

[Aside - I don't think it's fair to request decklists at this point because if I or anyone else did find a way to utilize Land Tax and it did get unbanned, I or that person should be able to take full advantage of it prior to that list's release. It seems like that is the status quo of the boards and the community at large (i.e. secret tech).]

I'm not challenging you specifically to prove your counterpoints. However, it would take some effort to go in-depth to answer your questions, and as I think they are at best tangential to the relevant question (should Land Tax be banned?) I am comfortable leaving them open-ended at this point.

The two design possibilities you just posted are fine examples of alternate methods of generating faster advantage from the card. What I wish to suggest is that we look, seriously, at how consistent that deck would be when it was done. I think it is a big task to demonstrate without tournament results that it could be consistent enough to beat Vial + Wasteland, Tarmogoyf + Force of Will, and Belcher + Warrens. Those are really tough benchmarks.

Even if it was that consistent, you then have to consider how adaptable Legacy decks are, and the large amount of room for response and counterstrategy that is available. Again, the usefulness of such a discussion diminishes rapidly as there are an infinite number of hypothetical scenarios, and why I tried to make my article as general as possible in this sense.

That is a good point about me not proving a decklist, and being similar to Forsythe in that respect. But I am merely disproving a very serious claim he made, rather tham making any serious ones of my own. The claim that a card deserves to be banned with no tournament results is significant. In fact, his statement was so tough to support that little analysis is required to refute it. If you recall:


the correct play involves not putting out your first land

I have refuted this claim, and that was one of the bigger points of the article.

[Aggro_zombies]

I love how the Land Tax deck still gets ass raped even when you make all kinds of huge concessions in your theoretical testing. Combo has a good game against white control as it is, but trying to abuse Land Tax would make it that much more of a bye. And besides, no one plays Tithe in this format, which is the next closest card. Making Tithe recurring doesn't make it better.

[Zilla]

The article was well written, but I feel the entire premise was rather flimsy. You're pitting a theoretical deck which only actually contains 16 defined cards (8 artifact mana sources, Land Tax, draw engine) against completed, highly tuned decks. The theoreticals completely favor Land Tax's ability to resolve and activate, but fail to take into account anything else the Land Tax player might be doing to further accomodate the deck's strategy.

For example, the assertion is made that Threshold's position just gets stronger as the game progresses, because it can operate efficiently on one mana, thus Land Tax never really generates advantage. What happens if the Land Tax player is playing Chalice? Sphere of Resistance? Trinisphere? Tangle Wire? Winter Orb? Smokestack? Glowrider? Suddenly this standalone engine is supported by a strategy which forces the opponent to play into the Land Tax player's hands, which is the only possible way the card could be utilized with any degree of effectiveness to begin with.

I also dislike the assumption that the Land Tax player will always be racing to get the engine set up as early as possible. Control decks, by definition, tend to use the early game to control the opponent's development, and once a level of equilibrium has been achieved, then goes about generating overwhelming card or board advantage until it can win the game. The provided examples all appear to be approaching the control strategy in an ass-backwards way, which doesn't lend to accurate analysis at all.

Don't get me wrong - I agree that Land Tax isn't likely to be a broken or unfair strategy and that it should come off the list. I simply think your methodology in proving your thesis is flawed to the point of uselessness.

[Machinus]

I also dislike the assumption that the Land Tax player will always be racing to get the engine set up as early as possible. Control decks, by definition, tend to use the early game to control the opponent's development, and once a level of equilibrium has been achieved, then goes about generating overwhelming card or board advantage until it can win the game. The provided examples all appear to be approaching the control strategy in an ass-backwards way, which doesn't lend to accurate analysis at all.

Am I the only person that read Forsythe's article where he explicitly stated that the danger of Land Tax was on turn 1?

Anyway, that's not even the important point. Land Tax is not good in the late game just because if you can actually get there with a control deck, there are better ways of generating card advantage. Land Tax is not something you play just for some card advantage - it takes up tons of slots and screws up your manabase. It is the centerpeice of a deck and you can't just throw it in a Control deck based on other cards.

I mentioned several times that the disruption that the Land Tax deck plays can make a big difference - but then why are you playing Land Tax ? Why don't you just play all relevant cards in your deck in the first place instead of having to go to such effort to draw them?

The scenarios I posed are theoretical, and limited, and not intended to comprehensively answer all possible questions about Land Tax in Legacy. They are a test of brokenness. Land Tax does not qualify at all.

[Zilla]

I mentioned several times that the disruption that the Land Tax deck plays can make a big difference - but then why are you playing Land Tax ? Why don't you just play all relevant cards in your deck in the first place instead of having to go to such effort to draw them?
Although this question appears to be rhetorical, I would argue that the reason you'd put it in a deck like Stax is because it has basically no other means of drawing cards. It runs Grafted Skullcap sometimes, and that's about it. Given the inherent synergy between Land Tax and resource denial, I'm not really sure why this combination couldn't be considered as viable or competitive as other pure control strategies, at least in theory.

[Machinus]

Well I would never run it in Stax, but that's not the point you are making.

However, the reasons why are related, since they are the same reasons other control decks would not incorporate them.

To begin with, here are the incidentals of Land Tax: you have to run a more vulnerable, less consistent manabase in order to make use of the card, and you have to run more cards which are likely suboptimal unless used with an active Land Tax. Already these are the worst kinds of cards that control decks want to be playing, since anything that is situational must be exactly suited for the metagame. You can't afford to draw narrow cards if you are seriously trying to make a deck successful at answering Goblins, Belcher, and Threshold. There is no room for it, especially if you are attempting to wait until the late game to activate your draw engine.

Further, there are the general constraints on building a control deck. You are always going to have more land than your opponent (unless you're playing the Control mirror, in which case Land Tax might be a great sideboard card. When a control mirror gets played in Legacy I will analyze this situation more). Land Tax therefore has to be pushed as an early play anyway, on the back of the inconsistent manabase I already mentioned.

But even as a late game card advantage engine, there is little reason to use it. You have already invested cards into your manabase (moxen), Land Tax itself, the engine cards, and other support cards you are using like Englightened Tutor or whatever else. Right off the bat you have seriously restricted your decks options and have to set up Land Tax and compensate for the dead cards it will inevitably give you. Instead of giving up all these cards and reducing the versatility of your deck, you are better off running cards like Fact or Fiction which require no setup, no investment, and aren't vulnerable to the removal in the format. They are certainly cheaper than paying for all those other cards, and most importantly they don't constrain the design of the entire deck. You can add 3 Fact or Fictions to whatever blue control deck you are planning on using to counter your meta, but you can't add the Land Tax engine.

Control decks have a very tough job, and even with the best engines they are not able to reach the late game to use them. I don't see how the Land Tax engine could fix these problems when it adds even more of them.

[FoolofaTook]

On Land Tax:

Turn 1: Lotus Petal, Land Tax, Go...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

On Land Tax:

Turn 1: Lotus Petal, Land Tax, Go...

Yeah, extra lands are great when you've already denied yourself mana development.


Which is the problem with Land Tax all around. The effect would be insane if you could actually play mana, but even with Moxen and Lotus Petal you're barely able to scrape together enough mana to play Scroll Rack, much less compete with relevant decks using Stax or MWC elements. The only decks that could conceivably use it are going to be aggro-based ones that don't need more than one or two mana, but I think Empyrial Armor's best days are long since past.

[Tacosnape]

The point everyone seems to ignore is that just because nobody can come up with a spur of the moment deck built around a banned card to prove its power in no way is indicative that said deck can't and won't be made.

Land Tax is oppressive, in my opinion. I played with it for about nine and a half years. There are at least ten cards I would personally remove from the banned list before Land Tax. Therefore, while you can argue this point with me all you want, the point you can't argue is that this isn't a unanimous feeling among the magic community. And I'm never a big fan of articles which serve no purpose beyond being Magic political campaigns rather than educating people about the format.

[Ninj4]

isn't the argument whether or not Land Tax is too powerful for legacy rather than whether the card sucks or not? It seems like the mob mentality is either the card is broken and needs to be banned or that it sucks.

I personally am in the camp that it's powerful enough to build a tier 1.5 or tier 2 deck around. Isn't the combination between Land tax, jotun grunt, and seismic assault worth considering? It'd be like running an aggro-loam deck without the loams o-o.

isn't going t1 diamond, plateau, land tax, t2 assault really good? its 6 dmg a turn for free almost. follow it up with a grunt and some burn and it seems like there's a good engine going on. Throw in Confinement and the deck doesn't seem as bad anymore, right?

Id think it'd be a good addition to the pool, and at worst, Wizards can just re-ban it. its not against policy to admit they were wrong right?

[Machinus]

The point everyone seems to ignore is that just because nobody can come up with a spur of the moment deck built around a banned card to prove its power in no way is indicative that said deck can't and won't be made.

That's because you don't have to come up with one. I have shown in my article that at it's best, any Land Tax has a poor early game against the format in general. All the alternate scenarios involve weaker interactions.

There is no way to escape from this and continue to suppose a broken deck exists hidden in the card pool. Even with the best acceleration, cheapest engine, and perfect draws, the deck is not as good as the top tier of the format. Therefore it should absolutely be unbanned.

[Finn]

I have shown in my article that at it's best, any Land Tax has a poor early game against the format in general. All the alternate scenarios involve weaker interactions.Umm, no you didn't. You showed that a dumb player using a poorly conceived deck/gameplan has a crappy early game. That's precisely what zilla and I both told you, and you dodged it both times.

[Fred Bear]

That's because you don't have to come up with one. I have shown in my article that at it's best, any Land Tax has a poor early game against the format in general. All the alternate scenarios involve weaker interactions.

There is no way to escape from this and continue to suppose a broken deck exists hidden in the card pool. Even with the best acceleration, cheapest engine, and perfect draws, the deck is not as good as the top tier of the format. Therefore it should absolutely be unbanned.

I would again disagree that you proved any Land Tax opening is poor, since that again assumes that your hypothetical deck is the best Land Tax deck which may or may not be true based on the assumptions. As has been pointed out previously, you assume that the Land Tax/Scroll Rack interaction is the goal of the deck which is only true assuming Land Tax is broken. If Land Tax is not broken (but merely strong if built around properly), then you have to assume that in all of your scenarios, the deck will have 'other' answers for the top decks.

You proved that Land Tax is not broken in a mono/heavy white deck that tries to abuse it. You did show that it may not be as 'oppressive' as Forsythe implied by showing several openings that would be common for any Land Tax deck and how other top decks could still play through it.

To me, the question remains - should any card that is not 'broken' come off (or never be put on) the banned list? I tend to disagree. I think the banned list needs to have the enough room to maintain the format in general. I'm still not convinced that Land Tax 'obviously' comes off the list. I believe there are a lot of card interactions where there is a lot of synergy.

Fred Bear...

[FoolofaTook]

Yeah, extra lands are great when you've already denied yourself mana development.


Which is the problem with Land Tax all around. The effect would be insane if you could actually play mana, but even with Moxen and Lotus Petal you're barely able to scrape together enough mana to play Scroll Rack, much less compete with relevant decks using Stax or MWC elements. The only decks that could conceivably use it are going to be aggro-based ones that don't need more than one or two mana, but I think Empyrial Armor's best days are long since past.

It could just as easily be Chrome Mox, Land Tax, Go...

I just used the two card combo that somebody would be most likely to have in their hand without mulliganing at the start. And it's only the simplest opening, there are obviously a bunch of very broken openings that are far less likely to occur.

As an example: Chrome Mox, Land Tax, Go... Turn 2: Lotus Petal, Abandon Hope, Go...

[FoolofaTook]

Double post.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

The point everyone seems to ignore is that just because nobody can come up with a spur of the moment deck built around a banned card to prove its power in no way is indicative that said deck can't and won't be made.

Mysticism:
3 a : vague speculation : a belief without sound basis b : a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power

"There might be deck X that is way too powerful, even though all the decks people can come up with for the card clearly suck." is not an argument.


Land Tax is oppressive, in my opinion.

So are Force of Will and Swords to Plowshares. Fuck, you think Land Tax is opressive, have you people even heard of Stasis or Counterbalance or Chalice?


Therefore, while you can argue this point with me all you want, the point you can't argue is that this isn't a unanimous feeling among the magic community.

That's fine. There doesn't need to be. I'm not sure who suggested that there did.

[FoolofaTook]

Fuck, you think Land Tax is opressive, have you people even heard of Stasis or Counterbalance or Chalice?

If you could get Counterbalance or Stasis up and running on turn 1 for a two or three card cost they'd be banned also.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

If you could get Counterbalance or Stasis up and running on turn 1 for a two or three card cost they'd be banned also.Chrome Mox, Forsaken City, Stasis. Do you think Stasis should be banned now?

[FoolofaTook]

Chrome Mox, Forsaken City, Stasis. Do you think Stasis should be banned now?

Only if you can demonstrate a clear advantage that the playing player has gained by the play. There's no lockdown based on that combo that can't be easily avoided, and the tempo is equally restricted for both players since the "free" mana that maintains the Stasis costs a card each turn to play.

An effective Stasis needs to burden the opposing player more than the player who played it.

With Land Tax there are situations in which 90% of the decks are going to be operating under a huge burden if the deck that played it is well constructed.

Edit: of course if you could figure out how to get Stasis and Land Tax in play by turn 2 with only a Forsaken City as land you'd probably have a totally degenerate deck in the offing.

[Cait_Sith]

As an example: Chrome Mox, Land Tax, Go... Turn 2: Lotus Petal, Abandon Hope, Go...

And you just set x to 0. Good job at generating massive amounts of card disadvantage for a non-cantripping Peek. I think we can do better than that.

Land Tax is strong, no doubt. In MWA it can raise threat density to massive amounts simply by being triggered once or twice. Having 6 non-threat cards taken out of your library is never something to sneeze at.

However, is it TOO strong? I don't really see it warping the format without serious help. SERIOUS. Help. The kind of help that probably has not been printed yet. At best it can be an Ancestral Recall a turn. That is broken; however the engine can be shut off by Pithing Needle, a readily available card to all colors. At worst it just means that slower decks need to run Needle SB, just like some decks use Crypt SB vs Thresh.

[FoolofaTook]

And you just set x to 0. Good job at generating massive amounts of card disadvantage for a non-cantripping Peek. I think we can do better than that.

Land Tax is strong, no doubt. In MWA it can raise threat density to massive amounts simply by being triggered once or twice. Having 6 non-threat cards taken out of your library is never something to sneeze at.

However, is it TOO strong? I don't really see it warping the format without serious help. SERIOUS. Help. The kind of help that probably has not been printed yet. At best it can be an Ancestral Recall a turn. That is broken; however the engine can be shut off by Pithing Needle, a readily available card to all colors. At worst it just means that slower decks need to run Needle SB, just like some decks use Crypt SB vs Thresh.

What that play just did was take 3 basic lands and exchange them for whatever the best 3 cards left in the opponent's hand on turn 2 were. Then turn 3 you get to pull 3 more basic lands out of your deck. Assuming you had a second land in hand turn 1 then you've twisted your opponent for his 4 best cards on turn 2. All of this under potential Force of Will protection.

Edit: Turn 1 you drop Land Tax and no land. Turn 2 you go get 3 basic lands to fuel your Abandon Hope. That's the premise.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

How do you plan to pay for Abandon Hope? As Cait_Sith stated, there's an X in its casting cost.

[MattH]

Mysticism:
3 a : vague speculation : a belief without sound basis b : a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power

"There might be deck X that is way too powerful, even though all the decks people can come up with for the card clearly suck." is not an argument.
"I can't break card X"
"Therefore card X cannot be broken"

...is not exactly the pinnacle of logic and reason either.


How do you plan to pay for Abandon Hope? As Cait_Sith stated, there's an X in its casting cost.

Let's assume he meant Last Rites and move on from there.

[FoolofaTook]

And you just set x to 0. Good job at generating massive amounts of card disadvantage for a non-cantripping Peek. I think we can do better than that.

Land Tax is strong, no doubt. In MWA it can raise threat density to massive amounts simply by being triggered once or twice. Having 6 non-threat cards taken out of your library is never something to sneeze at.

However, is it TOO strong? I don't really see it warping the format without serious help. SERIOUS. Help. The kind of help that probably has not been printed yet. At best it can be an Ancestral Recall a turn. That is broken; however the engine can be shut off by Pithing Needle, a readily available card to all colors. At worst it just means that slower decks need to run Needle SB, just like some decks use Crypt SB vs Thresh.

My apologies. Good point, I missed the X in the casting cost and just saw the X discard.

Use Last Rites instead and the possibility of a broken opening is still there. It does have a 3CC so it becomes less probable on turn 2.

Any card that has a significant discard cost to balance off its effect becomes much cheaper to play with Land Tax in play.

[Zilla]

"I can't break card X"
"Therefore card X cannot be broken"

...is not exactly the pinnacle of logic and reason either.
QFT. An even worse approach is "I don't want to break card x because it would defeat my thesis that the card is bad, so I'll create skewed hypothetical scenarios which appear to support my hypothesis rather than make the effort to examine the matter objectively.

That's really the problem I have with the article. It feels more like a propoganda machine than a competent analysis. You know what would have made for a far more interesting read? If you approached the subject by actually trying to break Land Tax - using some creativity to come up with different lists which may be able to use it to its fullest potential, and then analyzing a few scenarios against specific matchups. Then if Land Tax proved ineffective, you would have a far more compelling illustration as to why that's the case.

[Machinus]

A lot of people have tried to come up with competitive Land Tax lists. No one has ever seen a Legacy list that's good. I'm surprised such hollow and emotionally motivated arguments are being used to attempt to refute my points. It's obvious to everyone I never appealed to my deck design abilities to find this card fair. It's especially immature to accuse me of this when none of you have designed or even discovered any viable ideas for making the deck work.

Accusing me of propaganda is insane. I have no interest in misleading the community. My article is a rational analysis of the card's power level. You would have to have a severe aversion to logical reasoning to come to such a stupid conclusion about my intentions.

Let me go over this carefully for you:

1) If Land Tax is good, it's either good in the early game or the late game. We can split up these scenarios and look at them indepedently. The late game scenario is more trivial since control decks already utilize those kinds of cards, and we can compare them. The late game scenario is also tangential since the DCI claims it's the early game that is the problem.

2) There are only a few good ways to get Land Tax active in the early game. They all involve using artifact mana to cast it, and using the opponent's first land drop to get it going. I have looked at that situation comprehensively, and tested it's implications against the standards of the format.

3) I make many optimal assumptions about the Land Tax deck:

- The inconsistent manabase gives them exactly what they need. The manabase necessary for such a deck is inconsistent regardless of how you design it, since the more artifact mana you add the crappier your draws are, but the less you use, the less likely it is you will activate an early Land Tax.
- The consistency of the deck is magically secured. All of the designs for this deck require the use of many narrow and otherwise weak cards in order to support the engine and make it work. Some of the best archetypes in magic ever have found it impossible to achieve this result against the diversity of Legacy; it is very presumptous to say it's even possible for Land Tax to do this. In the interest of this question I assume that somehow the bad cards and weak manabase come together to form a good deck.
- They draw all the cards they need without having to topdeck them. There are a lot of problems with adding draw/tutoring. They will require even more tempo investment and make it harder to find the right color mana.
- The opponent does not counter any spells, destroy mana, or combo off. This increases even more the distance from the upper bound that real situations would resemble.
- They have the right kind of disruption against all decks. Any control player in this format will tell you this is impossible, but it's useful for testing the limits of the deck's strengths.

In these scenarios, the Land Tax deck does not overpower the other decks, and it is not degenerate. In realistic scenarios where interaction and the huge problems with inconsistency in the deck arise, it is unlikely that some magical technology exists in card pool that can fix such fundamental problems. If it did exist, other decks would be using it since it would be able to compensate for the manabase and number of dead cards in this deck.


This is not a difficult chain of reasoning and I'm surprised it is giving many of you trouble. I have conducted an objective investigation and there is no evidence to the contrary. Accusing me of it is inappropriate here and irrelevant to whether or not the card is ban worthy.

[Zilla]

A lot of people have tried to come up with competitive Land Tax lists. No one has ever seen a Legacy list that's good. I'm surprised such hollow and emotionally motivated arguments are being used to attempt to refute my points. It's obvious to everyone I never appealed to my deck design abilities to find this card fair. It's especially immature to accuse me of this when none of you have designed or even discovered any viable ideas for making the deck work.
None of us have bothered to write an article about it either. If we were going to, I imagine we would show due diligence by basing our writings upon relevant data as opposed to rhetoric and hyberbole. Again, my problem with your article is not the assertion that Land Tax isn't ban-worthy; it's the lazy presumptuousness of the way in which you qualify your argument.


Let me go over this carefully for you...
Thanks for taking the time to do that here, since you failed to do so in your actual article.

[Machinus]

Thanks for taking the time to do that here, since you failed to do so in your actual article.

That was a summary of what my article is about. I have no problem explaining it again, but it is all in the article. I suppose if you approach what I say from the wrong angle it might be frustrating, but I can't control what assumptions you make about this question before you read my investigation of it. If I'm being presumptous, it's about the open-mindedness of my readers and their logical discipline.


None of us have bothered to write an article about it either. If we were going to, I imagine we would show due diligence by basing our writings upon relevant data as opposed to rhetoric and hyberbole. Again, my problem with your article is not the assertion that Land Tax isn't ban-worthy; it's the lazy presumptuousness of the way in which you qualify your argument.

You accuse me of being egotistical, deceptive, and dishonest in my attempt to argue for the return of this card to the format. There are plenty of ways to address the problems by article has, but you don't have to attack me.

[Zilla]

That was a summary of what my article is about. I have no problem explaining it again, but it is all in the article. I suppose if you approach what I say from the wrong angle it might be frustrating, but I can't control what assumptions you make about this question before you read my investigation of it. If I'm being presumptous, it's about the open-mindedness of my readers and their logical discipline.
No, your recurring presumptuousness is about the idea that your reader will take your personal opinions as irrefutable fact, which is misrepresentative and harmful to their understanding of the format.


You accuse me of being egotistical, deceptive, and dishonest in my attempt to argue for the return of this card to the format. There are plenty of ways to address the problems by article has, but you don't have to attack me.I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking the way in which you present your arguments. I have not once said that I think you're a bad person, or made any other attacks upon your character. I have provided criticism of your writing, because, as far as I'm aware, that's is this thread's primary purpose.

[frogboy]

Machinus:

You personally are not being attacked. Your ideas are. I happen to agree with you that Land Tax isn't particularly good. I believe Zilla does as well. Our issue lies in how you presented your arguments.

Incidentally,


You would have to have a severe aversion to logical reasoning to come to such a stupid conclusion about my intentions.

This is pretty borderline.

[Machinus]

If there are problems, then I'd like to understand them and do something about them so I can be more effective as a writer. I would like to know what they are, specifically.

However, I'm not willing to consider anything people want to throw at me. My skepticism about this comes from the objections people have, and what they say. It's ludicrous to suggest I'm getting some benefit out of this other than informing the community. I am aware that I have more interest and concern about B/R issues than many other players, but this is because I enjoy playing this format and I want the best for it.

I am not trying to force my opinions on anyone. I did some work with this card, and went to the trouble of writing about what I found. It's out there for people to analyze for themselves. I have started the empirical investigation of this card's appropriateness in the format and I want to read more of it.

I have been thinking about Legacy's B/R since the format was created so I definitely have suspicions about which cards do and don't belong, but I based my conclusions here on the considerations I listed in the article. My position on this card for some time was that it should come off, but I didn't say much about that until Forsythe made serious and untenable claims about this card that were necessary to refute. That is a narrow objective but I think I have done that, as well as provide a much more comprehensive basis for making the decision about it.

[frogboy]

Wouldn't empirical investigation involve creating lists and testing them?

[Finn]

Machinus, at Salvation that article would not have been printed in that state. To be frank, it was barely a rough draft. Note that I'm not trying to make a comparison about the quality of one site or another, or even your skills. I just know that my work is not going to be weak simply because I get the benefit of all of the current writers chiming in with opinions for atleast a week before any of you guys get to see it. We all go through a lot of drafts. It's not a perfect system, but it is a strong safety net.

I know you guys get paid for your work, and I suspect that you only get an editor. So maybe the four of you could bounce your stuff off each other before it's inked.

BTW, Barnello, I freakin' hate you for jumping ship. Your style is really top notch, and it sux ass to lose you after one measly piece. You better advise me when I get something to write again.

[Machinus]

Machinus, at Salvation that article would not have been printed in that state.

Why, because I exclude the possibility that your decklist is broken? I still haven't seen it.


Wouldn't empirical investigation involve creating lists and testing them?

No. If my intention was to prepare the Land Tax deck for a tournament, then that would be a lot more useful. The goal here is to examine the early game strength of all decks based on early Land Tax activation. By dividing up the possibilities of the deck's strategy and examining only the relevant ones, this restriciton provides enough information about the tempo development of the deck to see clearly how it performs.

Using a list would actually have been worse, since closing off any design possibilities only weakens the hypothetical deck. By making only the necessary assumptions the deck retains the maximum amount of strength (even an unrealistic amount), and this serves to demonstrate just how un-degenerate and un-oppressive the deck really would be, since even in those scenarios it is not problematic.

[Bardo]

I thought it was solid work. Well done.

Land Tax's inclusion on the Banned List looks so damn out of place. It's embarrasing that it's even there.

[Finn]

By dividing up the possibilities of the deck's strategy and examining only the relevant ones, this restriciton provides enough information about the tempo development of the deck to see clearly how it performs.I see, so there is no chance that a player would do this...

Tap Plains (or Mox)
STP at Goblin Lackey

...among those possibilties. Because, ya know, I heard that STP is a pretty good card, and just might make it into a deck like that.

Your examination was ridiculous, man. Just admit it, learn from this, and adapt.

[Machinus]

I see, so there is no chance that a player would do this...

Tap Plains (or Mox)
STP at Goblin Lackey

...among those possibilties. Because, ya know, I heard that STP is a pretty good card, and just might make it into a deck like that.
It is pretty easy to see for yourself how that fits into my examination. I leave room for disruption but show how that affects the execution of the Land Tax strategy.


Your examination was ridiculous, man. Just admit it, learn from this, and adapt.

I don't think the article was at all "ridiculous." I think you are just offended because I don't believe your build is so amazing. At this point you need to actually show the design of the deck.

[Mad Zur]

If a card is overpowered in even one deck, any number of decks that the card is not overpowered in are irrelevant to the card's brokenness. Therefore, no amount of decks that are not broken are evidence that the card itself should come off the banned list. An overpowered Land Tax deck is evidence that Land Tax should be banned. An underpowered Land Tax deck is evidence of nothing.

This means that an analysis such as the one in this article is the best way to show that a card should come off the banned list. It obviously isn't any sort of conclusive proof, but I think it's a decent examination. A good counterargument to the article would be to present a Land Tax deck that was too good. However, if the article was just Chris making bad Land Tax decks and attempting to use the fact that they were bad to justify unbanning, it would have been poor.

[Fred Bear]

If a card is overpowered in even one deck, any number of decks that the card is not overpowered in are irrelevant to the card's brokenness. Therefore, no amount of decks that are not broken are evidence that the card itself should come off the banned list. An overpowered Land Tax deck is evidence that Land Tax should be banned. An underpowered Land Tax deck is evidence of nothing.

This means that an analysis such as the one in this article is the best way to show that a card should come off the banned list. It obviously isn't any sort of conclusive proof, but I think it's a decent examination. A good counterargument to the article would be to present a Land Tax deck that was too good. However, if the article was just Chris making bad Land Tax decks and attempting to use the fact that they were bad to justify unbanning, it would have been poor.

This has been my point all along. The article's assumptions force a deck to be built a certain way. If you do not follow those assumptions, you can still build a very strong deck. The game has evolved past the deck being forced to play all basics and activate every turn. 1-3 activations may be all a deck needs to overpower an opponent.

If you look at the most powerful situations where Land Tax is played, it may give you a different perspective. The strongest opening I have come up with...

On the play -
Turn 1 - Mox Diamond, discard land, Land Tax, Crystal Vein, Sacrifice Vein, Sphere of Resistance.

[Note: The following is a very basic analysis - I'm not going to assume what the opponent is playing, possible counters, etc. etc.]

Your opponent now has 2 options. (A) Play a land. or (B) Not to play a land and discard during the cleanup phase.

In situation (A), your opponent plays land and now has very limited options. He can play a 0cc spell or play a spell with an alternate casting cost or pass the turn and play an instant with an alternate casting cost. Of course, the deck could also use Spirit Guides to be able to cast 1cc spells. Whichever he chooses, when he passes the turn, you will get 3 basic land cards which replace the Mox discard, the Vein sacrifice, and net you 1 Land. It will also thin your deck and increase your chances of not drawing an additional land by 3+% which unlike most Fetch activations is significant.

In situation (B), your opponent does nothing and discards. You can draw for the turn and pass it back until they give you a Land Tax activation (you are down 4 cards from your opening). Since the Sphere protects you from them ever developing until they reach 2 mana, you can play a very oppressive game. I am not assuming anything about the rest of this deck, but there are a number of strategies (depending on exact builds and hands) where you could forfeit the initial Land Tax activation and continue to develop just to lock down an opponent further when they try to play (i.e. 2-mana land, Chalice for 1).

I'm not saying it's unanswerable. I'm not saying it's broken. I do think the play demonstrates clear power (maybe no more than Standstill, though). Is it likely to overwhelm our format? I don't know. I believe analyzing more plays like this, though, is what leads to being able to say that Land Tax is unbannable.

Fred Bear...

[blacklotus3636]

I don't know if someone already mentioned any of this but here's what I learned
Some of the things I've heard in this thread really changed my mind about land tax. The idea that you could use something on the order of firestorm/sickening dreams to keep up with an aggressive creature onslaught really makes its goblins and to a lesser extent thresh matchup look better. Then someone else said daze/force/orim's chant could also be added for a better combo matchup which makes land tax look light years better than it has appeared to me and how it appeared in this article. I think it would be strong, stronger than some people think or realize but not broken as already stated. The only way to know for sure though is to unban it and see what happens.

[Cabal-kun]

It will also thin your deck and increase your chances of not drawing an additional land by 3+% which unlike most Fetch activations is significant.

I am curious as to where that percentage is coming from.

[Fred Bear]

I am curious as to where that percentage is coming from.

If you assume the land pitched to the Mox and the Vein were the only 2 lands in your opener, if you play 25 lands your chance of drawing land next turn in 23/53 (43.4%) which reduces to 20/50 (40%) after Land Tax activation - a 3.4% improvement. If you drop to 23 lands, your chances are 21/53 (39.6%) which drops to 18/50 (36%) - a 3.6% improvement.

That's where the percentage comes from.

Fred Bear...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

"I can't break card X"
"Therefore card X cannot be broken"

...is not exactly the pinnacle of logic and reason either.

You intentionally misunderstand. The argument goes:

"I can't break card X or think of a way to do so. Can anyone?"
"Well, I can't. And it did suck in the old format and saw no play."
"Well, then we can conclude that it's not broken until someone actually proves that it is."
"But wait! There might be a mysterious secret deck no one can conceive of! Therefore it's still broken!"

The burden of proof has to be on whomever's trying to prove that Land Tax is powerful, because it's impossible to demonstrate by throwing out instances and decks in which Land Tax sucks that it's bad, as you yourself indicate. Do you have any such proof?


That's really the problem I have with the article. It feels more like a propoganda machine than a competent analysis. You know what would have made for a far more interesting read? If you approached the subject by actually trying to break Land Tax - using some creativity to come up with different lists which may be able to use it to its fullest potential, and then analyzing a few scenarios against specific matchups. Then if Land Tax proved ineffective, you would have a far more compelling illustration as to why that's the case.

Here's the thing. The Land Tax engine takes time and mana to set up. Chris's article demonstrates clearly why going for Land Tax straight off is going to be a mistake. Can we agree on that? Aggro-LandTax-Scrollrack is a bad strategy.

This reduces people to the argument that they can build a deck with good control elements that will stop the opponent's strategy and then start playing Land Tax. But the thing is, you have to be able to do so while skipping several land drops along the way, reducing the mana you have access to, and you'll still be short on mana for several turns after you get Land Tax up and running- if you do at all.

At this point, why is Land Tax any better than Fact or Fiction, or, Hell, Sensei's Divining Top + Scrying Sheets, the latter of which lets MWC draw extra lands without missing the crucial land drops you need to get to Wrath/Wing Shards mana in order to not die, and which puts far less constraints on the deck?

[URABAHN]

And I'm never a big fan of articles which serve no purpose beyond being Magic political campaigns rather than educating people about the format.

I didn't like the article, either. Is it really too much to ask for the SCG writers to actually write something relevant?


I know you guys get paid for your work, and I suspect that you only get an editor. So maybe the four of you could bounce your stuff off each other before it's inked.

Yup! I've said it before and I'll say it again, the SCG Legacy Writers should at the very least email each other and say "I'm writing about 'X', what do you think?"

[Machinus]

This has been my point all along. The article's assumptions force a deck to be built a certain way.

You are misunderstanding what he is saying, and why there is no deficiency in the assumptions I have made. I look at the early game execution of every possible build of Land Tax by leaving the design options open.


If you do not follow those assumptions, you can still build a very strong deck.

I think you need to read the article again. I have assumed only the most necessary and basic things about the build of the deck. If you don't follow my assumptions, you're not playing a Land Tax deck.

You know, I can answer all of your hypothetical scenarios with other hypothetical scenarios. I can come up some crazy busted plays that involve terrible cards, and it doesn't mean that decks with those cards in them are worth anything. Your examples are again fine design possibilties, but the consistency of such a deck would be awful, and it would be completely wrecked by disruption, bad draws, or simply being full of reactive cards. That's not enough to be competitive, and certainly doesn't warrant banning.

[Fred Bear]

You are misunderstanding what he is saying, and why there is no deficiency in the assumptions I have made. I look at the early game execution of every possible build of Land Tax by leaving the design options open.

I think you need to read the article again. I have assumed only the most necessary and basic things about the build of the deck. If you don't follow my assumptions, you're not playing a Land Tax deck.

You know, I can answer all of your hypothetical scenarios with other hypothetical scenarios. I can come up some crazy busted plays that involve terrible cards, and it doesn't mean that decks with those cards in them are worth anything. Your examples are again fine design possibilties, but the consistency of such a deck would be awful, and it would be completely wrecked by disruption, bad draws, or simply being full of reactive cards. That's not enough to be competitive, and certainly doesn't warrant banning.

You are absolutely right! But you seem to have missed the forest for the trees. My point is that you are right, Land Tax is not broken. But that's not your conclusion in your article. Your conclusion, as outlined in section 5 of the article (which I have read several times), says "Land Tax is weak enough..." and "...there has been no reason to suspect that one (a good deck using Land Tax) exists, and many to suspect that it doesn’t, such as the comparisons I have outlined above." This is simply not true based on what you presented.

You inherently don't look at the opening of every possible build as I have given three different openings over the course of this thread, none of which would necessarily follow any of your assumptions. None of my hypothetical openings use more than 2-3 colors which is common practice in many Legacy (and even extended with less color-fixing) decks - none of which are criticized for inconsistency. I think the point you seem to be missing is that it doesn't have to be used in a Land Tax deck. If Land Tax isn't broken, then why build solely around it and/or the Scroll Rack engine? It should be an 'obvious' continuation of the deck building exercise that if the 'broken' interaction doesn't exist, why not look for powerful synergies that can be exploited? And the question then becomes - Are these synergies too powerful for the format? If the answer to that question is yes, then the card should remain banned. You have not addressed this at all in my opinion.

Your last paragraph seems like a clear troll, but I really don't see how what I presented was any different than what you published. I don't believe I suggested any 'crazy busted' plays utilizing 'terrible' cards (short of suggesting using Lotus Vale in what would most likely be a Loam deck). Daze is played in several decks now and Sphere of Resistance is an underplayed foil for combo and an entirely reasonable (in my opinion) inclusion for a deck that generates a land advantage. Each of the openings presented were best case scenarios, but that's exactly what you claimed to be testing in the article!

I believe to declare Land Tax completely safe for the format, you have to look at scenarios where it is oppressive (the criticism against it). If the decks that can do that can't do it consistently (which I never said they could), then it's probably not a problem. But to simply declare that a deck that plays Land (including Crystal Vein and basics), Land Tax, Mox Diamond, and Sphere of Resistance or a deck that plays Land (including Tundra and basics), Land Tax, and Daze are inconsistent and non-competitive seems a little short sighted to me.

Fred Bear...

[Machinus]

You are absolutely right! But you seem to have missed the forest for the trees. My point is that you are right, Land Tax is not broken. But that's not your conclusion in your article. Your conclusion, as outlined in section 5 of the article (which I have read several times), says "Land Tax is weak enough..." and "...there has been no reason to suspect that one (a good deck using Land Tax) exists, and many to suspect that it doesn’t, such as the comparisons I have outlined above." This is simply not true based on what you presented.

You inherently don't look at the opening of every possible build as I have given three different openings over the course of this thread, none of which would necessarily follow any of your assumptions. None of my hypothetical openings use more than 2-3 colors which is common practice in many Legacy (and even extended with less color-fixing) decks - none of which are criticized for inconsistency. I think the point you seem to be missing is that it doesn't have to be used in a Land Tax deck. If Land Tax isn't broken, then why build solely around it and/or the Scroll Rack engine? It should be an 'obvious' continuation of the deck building exercise that if the 'broken' interaction doesn't exist, why not look for powerful synergies that can be exploited? And the question then becomes - Are these synergies too powerful for the format? If the answer to that question is yes, then the card should remain banned. You have not addressed this at all in my opinion.

Your last paragraph seems like a clear troll, but I really don't see how what I presented was any different than what you published. I don't believe I suggested any 'crazy busted' plays utilizing 'terrible' cards (short of suggesting using Lotus Vale in what would most likely be a Loam deck). Daze is played in several decks now and Sphere of Resistance is an underplayed foil for combo and an entirely reasonable (in my opinion) inclusion for a deck that generates a land advantage. Each of the openings presented were best case scenarios, but that's exactly what you claimed to be testing in the article!

I believe to declare Land Tax completely safe for the format, you have to look at scenarios where it is oppressive (the criticism against it). If the decks that can do that can't do it consistently (which I never said they could), then it's probably not a problem. But to simply declare that a deck that plays Land (including Crystal Vein and basics), Land Tax, Mox Diamond, and Sphere of Resistance or a deck that plays Land (including Tundra and basics), Land Tax, and Daze are inconsistent and non-competitive seems a little short sighted to me.

Fred Bear...

Of course those decks aren't criticized for playing 3 colors - they rely heavily on fetchlands, draw spells, and high quality mana fixing cards. The Land Tax manabase is necessarily inconsistent and weak because it relies on card disadvantage artifacs that are conditionally useful and without which Land Tax is unplayable. Land Tax makes your manabase worse by forcing you not to use lands.

All of the situations you presented are extremely narrow, reactive plays that are very bad when you are on the draw, and which are necessarily very inconsistent. Like I said, I can come up with tons of scenarios with mediocre cards that seem broken, but what do you do when you aren't on the play, and have the perfect draw, and they have no disruption? Cards like Crop Rotation and Sphere of Resistance turn to garbage. They are not good cards in most situations and it isn't very significant that we can find times when they are relevant

[FoolofaTook]

Here's the thing. The Land Tax engine takes time and mana to set up. Chris's article demonstrates clearly why going for Land Tax straight off is going to be a mistake.

Tundra, drop Land Tax, Daze opponent's first spell in the following turn picking up the Tundra, use Land Tax. That would be a fairly common opening.
Instantly effective plus the opponent loses his first spell.

Not going to get into what would constitute an effective followup to that but the opening itself is pretty powerful in any control scenario.

[FoolofaTook]

The Land Tax manabase is necessarily inconsistent and weak because it relies on card disadvantage artifacs that are conditionally useful and without which Land Tax is unplayable. Land Tax makes your manabase worse by forcing you not to use lands.

There's no reason the Land Tax manabase in a U/W deck couldn't look like this:

4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
6 Island
5 Plains
4 specialty lands depending on deck theme

It doesn't have to be artifact mana that brings Land Tax into play, just an amount of land that the Land Tax deck can play off of that it's hard for the opponent to match and play effectively.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Tundra, drop Land Tax, Daze opponent's first spell in the following turn picking up the Tundra, use Land Tax. That would be a fairly common opening.
Instantly effective plus the opponent loses his first spell.

To what point and purpose, Took? In all things one must consider the end. What are we achieving here? We have three lands extra in the hand, but none on the board. How are we going to capitalize on this? What advantage does it bring us? +2 CA, but no palpable advantage towards actually winning.

[FoolofaTook]

To what point and purpose, Took? In all things one must consider the end. What are we achieving here? We have three lands extra in the hand, but none on the board. How are we going to capitalize on this? What advantage does it bring us? +2 CA, but no palpable advantage towards actually winning.

Well, let's look at what we actually have as a result of the play:

1. Zero lands on the board.

2. Land Tax active, meaning whatever effect we are trying to create is now partially active headed into turn 2.

3. Our opponent's first spell countered, almost always a good thing in terms of tempo.

4. Enough mana to power our effect likely in hand after we tax on turn 2, albeit it will take a couple of turns to put it down. We'll still be in fend mode till that point but fend mode is where most control decks live for a few turns. Swords to Plowshares and Force of Will don't need any more mana than what we'll have available.

5. Brainstorm is now Ancestral Recall or close to it.

I don't see this as a negative scenario in a well constructed deck. Legacy decks are supposed to be able to cope for a turn or two on zero or one mana, in this situation we're there with enough mana in hand to move forward.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

So your argument basically seems to boil down to:

Step 1: Get Land Tax active
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!


Most control decks fend things off turn 3-4 with something like Wrath of God, Damnation, or Pernicious Deed. You don't have that luxury. And need I mention that you're also having to discard down to 7 each turn, which means that activating Land Tax repeatedly to no end becomes especially pointless.

[FoolofaTook]

So your argument basically seems to boil down to:

Step 1: Get Land Tax active
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!


Most control decks fend things off turn 3-4 with something like Wrath of God, Damnation, or Pernicious Deed. You don't have that luxury. And need I mention that you're also having to discard down to 7 each turn, which means that activating Land Tax repeatedly to no end becomes especially pointless.

You do not have to pull 3 lands out of your deck every time you use Land Tax. You can pull 0, 1, 2 or 3. That makes an active Land Tax a permanent reshuffling mechanism.

The turn 4 fend here would be Stasis with Forsaken City or Tabernacle at Pendrall Vale. You might well have 2 Tabernacles in the sideboard for use against aggro. That would certainly take all of the teeth out of Empty the Warrens.

[Fred Bear]

Of course those decks aren't criticized for playing 3 colors - they rely heavily on fetchlands, draw spells, and high quality mana fixing cards. The Land Tax manabase is necessarily inconsistent and weak because it relies on card disadvantage artifacs that are conditionally useful and without which Land Tax is unplayable. Land Tax makes your manabase worse by forcing you not to use lands.

Are you serious?

Read what I've been writing. You still assume that Land Tax must be broken and that you must build around it. Don't! I can easily construct a mana base using even 9-12 basics that can still take advantage of Land Tax and/or fetches and/or duals and/or 2-mana lands. Land Tax can get more than basic Plains, so it's a pretty good color fixer on it's own. Not to mention the fact that Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds both exist now (they didn't when Land Tax was last legal) to get discarded lands back into play or hand where they could be of use. It does not take more than a couple Land Tax activations to create a significant advantage. Building a deck that utilizes this advantage may not be broken, but that does not make it automatically weak or unplayable.


All of the situations you presented are extremely narrow, reactive plays that are very bad when you are on the draw, and which are necessarily very inconsistent. Like I said, I can come up with tons of scenarios with mediocre cards that seem broken, but what do you do when you aren't on the play, and have the perfect draw, and they have no disruption? Cards like Crop Rotation and Sphere of Resistance turn to garbage. They are not good cards in most situations and it isn't very significant that we can find times when they are relevant

Again, how is this different than what you present in your published article? Each of the scenarios you presented led with Turn 1 Land Tax off a Mox Diamond - a 40-44% proposition of having just Land Tax (24-30% chance of Land Tax + Artifact Mana assuming 8 sources including Chrome Mox). Is this your definition of consistent? Why are my scenarios held to a different standard? I fully understand what you were testing, but you chose not to test situations where it could be exploited.

The excercise as I see it would be to examine the situations where Land Tax is oppressive (as I have previously stated) and determine from those situations if Land Tax or the decks using it would be too powerful for Legacy (which, as I have previously stated, it may not be). I showed a clear instance of Land Tax being oppressive (Diamond, Tax, Sphere), using cards that could be in a deck that could see play (is it really hard to believe that a powerful card could make previously mediocre-to-bad cards playable?). Yes, it's a low percentage play, but that does not make the deck inconsistent, just the play (Vintage Stax builds still play the 1 allowed Trinisphere, right?). I would further like to assume the deck isn't a 'one-trick pony' unless it is built solely around Land Tax which I would not do since I believe Land Tax is not broken. So I would further assume that without this opening - the deck would have other plays available to it.

That Land Tax is only very good in narrow unachievable situations is actually the most important information to gather in my opinion. By coming up with situations where it is the nuts, you can then build decklists that attempt to utilize those situations and optimize those lists to determine the actual power level of the card/deck. Looking at scenarios where Land Tax is ineffective, cumbersome, and useless does nothing for me (which was my biggest problem with the article). I can come up with numerous situations where other powerful cards are ineffective (probably as many situations where you can show crap cards to be broken), but it doesn't reduce their power level because you would never use them like that. The goal of the deckbuilding exercise should be to come up with the decklist that best utilizes the card.

If all you wanted to do was prove that turn 1 Land Tax isn't as bad as Forsythe made it out to be, you probably accomplished that goal (as I've said before), but that was not were you left your published conclusion (which is what I take exception to). In my opinion, you need to look more closely at the situations where it is good to be able to make those claims.

Fred Bear...

[Machinus]

Are you serious?

Read what I've been writing. You still assume that Land Tax must be broken and that you must build around it. Don't! I can easily construct a mana base using even 9-12 basics that can still take advantage of Land Tax and/or fetches and/or duals and/or 2-mana lands. Land Tax can get more than basic Plains, so it's a pretty good color fixer on it's own. Not to mention the fact that Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds both exist now (they didn't when Land Tax was last legal) to get discarded lands back into play or hand where they could be of use. It does not take more than a couple Land Tax activations to create a significant advantage. Building a deck that utilizes this advantage may not be broken, but that does not make it automatically weak or unplayable.



Again, how is this different than what you present in your published article? Each of the scenarios you presented led with Turn 1 Land Tax off a Mox Diamond - a 40-44% proposition of having just Land Tax (24-30% chance of Land Tax + Artifact Mana assuming 8 sources including Chrome Mox). Is this your definition of consistent? Why are my scenarios held to a different standard? I fully understand what you were testing, but you chose not to test situations where it could be exploited.

The excercise as I see it would be to examine the situations where Land Tax is oppressive (as I have previously stated) and determine from those situations if Land Tax or the decks using it would be too powerful for Legacy (which, as I have previously stated, it may not be). I showed a clear instance of Land Tax being oppressive (Diamond, Tax, Sphere), using cards that could be in a deck that could see play (is it really hard to believe that a powerful card could make previously mediocre-to-bad cards playable?). Yes, it's a low percentage play, but that does not make the deck inconsistent, just the play (Vintage Stax builds still play the 1 allowed Trinisphere, right?). I would further like to assume the deck isn't a 'one-trick pony' unless it is built solely around Land Tax which I would not do since I believe Land Tax is not broken. So I would further assume that without this opening - the deck would have other plays available to it.

That Land Tax is only very good in narrow unachievable situations is actually the most important information to gather in my opinion. By coming up with situations where it is the nuts, you can then build decklists that attempt to utilize those situations and optimize those lists to determine the actual power level of the card/deck. Looking at scenarios where Land Tax is ineffective, cumbersome, and useless does nothing for me (which was my biggest problem with the article). I can come up with numerous situations where other powerful cards are ineffective (probably as many situations where you can show crap cards to be broken), but it doesn't reduce their power level because you would never use them like that. The goal of the deckbuilding exercise should be to come up with the decklist that best utilizes the card.

If all you wanted to do was prove that turn 1 Land Tax isn't as bad as Forsythe made it out to be, you probably accomplished that goal (as I've said before), but that was not were you left your published conclusion (which is what I take exception to). In my opinion, you need to look more closely at the situations where it is good to be able to make those claims.

Fred Bear...

At this point my explanation becomes "it's just how you build good decks." You raise good points about design possibilities and I see you have the talent to find them, but I haven't seen or heard anything that would actually be good in Legacy. The reasons I argue that Land Tax isn't good are fundamental rules of deck design such as drawing the same amount of mana every game, deploying the same disruption and threats when you need them, and being able to handle a diversity of other strategies. Every situation presented about Land Tax has been narrow, situational, and grossly insufficient for a legitimate tournament Legacy deck.

Activating Land Tax by making fewer land drops than your opponent is not a good strategy, and I'm not going to address that in this thread. There are plenty of White Control discussions on this website for everyone to see and realize why this is unviable. I alraedy discussed this anyway as the late-game scenario where you compete with cards like Fact or Fiction, which is really difficult.

I accept logical reasoning as an argument, but there are only two ways to refute the points I made in my article:

1) Provide an actual Land Tax list that is good in the format. This would void my design assumptions.

2) Show how it's possible that a Land Tax deck could solve ALL of the problems I pointed out:

- Weak manabase (inconsistent amount of early mana, lots of dead cards in the mid and late game,1-for-2ing yourself)
- Slow draw engine (pay for Land Tax, wait for activation, pay for engine card, pay/wait for activation, then enjoy card advantage)
- Little room for disruption, restricting the decks ability to handle different strategies (more mana to support basics and artifacts, 4 land tax, ~8 engine cards, perhaps tutors/draw spells, plus you need actual win conditions)
- Vulnerable to the disruption and threats which are very common in the format: Force of Will, Daze, Pithing Needle, Tin-Street Hooligan, Duress, Cabal Therapy (These cards don't just stop the engine, they shut down the deck since it is dependent on the engine combo to work. You can't just stick 4 Land Tax in your deck and expect it to do anything).
- Irrelevant against Combo, which is now a large part of the format.

Doing either of these things is not impossible, but you can see how difficult it is, and I have just explained in detail in my article why it is very unlikely.

[outsideangel]

I didn't like the article, either. Is it really too much to ask for the SCG writers to actually write something relevant?


Seconded. Mucking about with Land Tax may or may not be an interesting thought excercise, but it seems to me like an ultimately pointless one. It seems fairly obvious that the DCI is going to unban things when they feel like it, and making arguments about some theoretical future format is probably a lot less useful than actually discussing the real Legacy that we all play in.

I feel like, for a player at any level, whether wide-eyed beginner or seasoned Legacy veteran, sitting down and playing a game of, say, Thresh vs. Belcher would have been a much better use of the time it takes to read such an article.

The best, most constructive criticism I feel I can give would go something like: "Start writing about things that matter."

[Zilla]

Here's the thing. The Land Tax engine takes time and mana to set up. Chris's article demonstrates clearly why going for Land Tax straight off is going to be a mistake. Can we agree on that?
We can agree on it in theory but I don't think it was irrefutably demonstrated in Chris' article at all. You can make any early game draw strategy look bad when the deck you're examining has 44 blank cards in it. Of course an early Land Tax looks like shit in a total vacuum, where there isn't an actual deck to exploit the cards being drawn. That's my problem with the analysis; it doesn't definitively prove anything except that Land Tax is really fucking bad when you play it without a strategy to take advantage of it.

And let me make this clear: I'm not saying such a strategy exists. I'm simply saying I didn't know whether it did before reading Chris' article, and I still don't after. In short, the content is wholly rhetorical and therefore not compelling to me as a reader.

[Machinus]

And let me make this clear: I'm not saying such a strategy exists. I'm simply saying I didn't know whether it did before reading Chris' article, and I still don't after. In short, the content is wholly rhetorical and therefore not compelling to me as a reader.

I would have liked to address this but I don't think I can explain more than I have already.

However, the most important point of my article wasn't to show that Land Tax is not tier 1. I think that is a consequence of the analysis that I performed, and generally fits in with deckbuidling standards in this format, but it is an additional point. The main point is that Land Tax does not deserve to be banned, and if nothing else the scenarios I wrote about show that there just isn't any way for the Land Tax strategy to go broken early in the game.

I really expected players to be a lot more concerned about the DCI making arbitrary statements about the banned list to justify their decisions.

[Fred Bear]

At this point my explanation becomes "it's just how you build good decks." You raise good points about design possibilities and I see you have the talent to find them, but I haven't seen or heard anything that would actually be good in Legacy. The reasons I argue that Land Tax isn't good are fundamental rules of deck design such as drawing the same amount of mana every game, deploying the same disruption and threats when you need them, and being able to handle a diversity of other strategies. Every situation presented about Land Tax has been narrow, situational, and grossly insufficient for a legitimate tournament Legacy deck.

This is the biggest load of bull I've seen in a long time. What you built and tested and draw conclusions from in your article would not 'actually be good in Legacy.' What I've said all along is that makes the exercise a waste of time because it proves nothing (except that a deck with 4 Chrome Mox, 4 Mox Diamonds, 4 Land Tax, and 4 Scroll Rack is probably not the way to build a deck). You write off clear examples of places where Land Tax would be good as violating 'fundamental rules of deck design' and that's the weakest argument ever. A deck with Tundra, Land Tax, and Daze is fundamentaly bad?!?!? Explain to me how Belcher deals with turn 1 facing Mox Diamond, Land Tax, Sphere of Resistance - You might never activate Land Tax, but Belcher might never play a spell. But that's somehow inherently bad? I don't buy it.


I accept logical reasoning as an argument, but there are only two ways to refute the points I made in my article:

1) Provide an actual Land Tax list that is good in the format. This would void my design assumptions.

This is a moot point. Wait until they unban it like I said before. That's how you get the most eyes on it. Forsythe has said they don't care if a pro-level event is dominated by a single card, though I'm neither convinced that they would unban it and if they did I doubt it would dominate an event. And, I still agree, it's not broken and could more than likely easily exist in this format (strong but not broken).


2) Show how it's possible that a Land Tax deck could solve ALL of the problems I pointed out:

- Weak manabase (inconsistent amount of early mana, lots of dead cards in the mid and late game,1-for-2ing yourself).

First, let me point out that I would never call what I'm looking at a 'Land Tax deck' since, as I have said before - the effect is not broken and does not warrant building around. I would look only at decks which include Land Tax in them for good effect.

With that said, I must be misunderstanding what you mean by a 'weak manabase'. You should need 8-10 White Sources to be able to consistently (~2/3 of the time) have a white mana available to play Turn 1 Land Tax. I think in terms of being able to activate Land Tax effectively, you want at least 3+ basics depending on a specific build. 2-mana lands would also have very good synergy with this strategy. With many Stax builds, it is not unusual to have 4-mana in play with only 2 lands on the board. Land Tax is perfect to take advantage of this since it will thin out 'extra' lands and naturally increase the threat density that you draw during the mid and late game. The number of actual 'dead cards' that you see is the deck building challenge. And I would not view using the full 8 available Moxen as a design requirement. You're right 1-for-2ing yourself with them will kill the deck's ability to do anything outside of the first few turns. As I have pointed out previously, if it's not 'broken', why build around it? All-in-all, I would find it easy to build a consistent mana base with ~12 basics, 8-10 white sources, and either Mox which I would believe should be the 'real' requirements for a deck using Land Tax.


- Slow draw engine (pay for Land Tax, wait for activation, pay for engine card, pay/wait for activation, then enjoy card advantage).

I eliminate this requirement since I would not build a 'Land Tax deck'. The draw engine falls right into 'danger of cool things' territory for me. You will waste slots in the current enviroment to no effect. This is primarily what you have shown (and many of the decklists in the other thread will suffer from this). You are using 8-10 slots for a mini-combo that doesn't win the game. I think everyone on this site will agree that's bad deck design. Throw the restriction out and build a good deck that uses Land Tax to draw land, fix mana, and improve your draws. Again, it's not a 'broken' effect, so you will gain very little building solely around it.


- Little room for disruption, restricting the decks ability to handle different strategies (more mana to support basics and artifacts, 4 land tax, ~8 engine cards, perhaps tutors/draw spells, plus you need actual win conditions).

Again, throw out the engine requirement and you free up slots to do this.


- Vulnerable to the disruption and threats which are very common in the format: Force of Will, Daze, Pithing Needle, Tin-Street Hooligan, Duress, Cabal Therapy (These cards don't just stop the engine, they shut down the deck since it is dependent on the engine combo to work. You can't just stick 4 Land Tax in your deck and expect it to do anything)..

This is simply a ridiculous requirement. All decks will have some vulnerability to Force of Will and Duress. Trying to build a deck that is resilient to all forms of disruption is a futile exercise. Your deck should be able to 'bounce' back from that disruption, but you will never eliminate vulnerability to a Turn 1 Duress on the draw. And again, why look at a non-broken combo engine - look at decks that are built to specifically take advantage of what Land Tax does naturally.


- Irrelevant against Combo, which is now a large part of the format.

Doing either of these things is not impossible, but you can see how difficult it is, and I have just explained in detail in my article why it is very unlikely.

There are many answers to combo in white and artifact alone that I think you could effectively build something that isn't 'irrelevant' or have something available post sideboard.

I think the biggest stumbling block is that you seem to be of the opinion that Land Tax must be built around or else it is bad. And I believe this is simply not true. Land Tax could be used in several decks to good effect. It may prove to be too ineffecient for inclusion, but I could see trying to use it in a Stax build, a Standstill deck, and even a Stasis deck (all oppressive decks it seems) none of which would necessarily need to use the 'draw engine'. You have done an outstanding job (as I've stated before) of showing how poor and cumbersome the Land Tax engine is. Why continue to make it a deck building requirement? By making it a requirement, you will continue to measure the engine's power level and not Land Tax's.

Fred Bear...

[Bovinious]

Fred Bear, you say that Land Tax cant be built around, which is true because the card is terrible. It wouldnt even serve a support role in any of those decks you stated because it sucks, but the fact that you cant build a deck around it that can even win a match proves its not banworthy, hell its not even playable, its white first of all, and second of all does nothing.

I dont know why people are jumping on Machinus for writing this, Forsythe EXPLICITLY stated Land Tax is broken on turn 1, which is obviously untrue, and which was refuted pretty well by the article. Everyone with a brain already knew Land Tax wasnt broken on turn 1 or any turn, but it was good to have it shown and published so that maybe WOTC will see it and take their thumbs out of their asses.

[Machinus]

This is the biggest load of bull I've seen in a long time...Explain to me how Belcher deals with turn 1 facing Mox Diamond, Land Tax, Sphere of Resistance - You might never activate Land Tax, but Belcher might never play a spell. But that's somehow inherently bad? I don't buy it.

It's not "bull." Unless your metagame is "on the play vs. Belcher" then Sphere of Resistance is garbage. Try it sometime.

You conveniently overlook realistic estimates of tournament play because you have found one scenario where the card is good. As I said twice already, I can do that with any card. Pick the worst card you can think of and I can dream up a scenario where that card does something relevant for one turn.

What are those Orim's Chants and Sphere of Resistance's going to do against Goblins? How is that Crop Rotation against Threshold? What are you going to do when you are on the draw vs. any deck? How about not drawing your combo in the first place? All of these situations would happen constantly with the deck and put it in a very bad position. That is bad deck design.


This is a moot point.

It's not a point, so it can't be moot. It's one possibility of refuting my arguments. This whole discussion involves logical reasoning so it would help if you adopted that.



First, let me point out that I would never call what I'm looking at a 'Land Tax deck' since, as I have said before - the effect is not broken and does not warrant building around. I would look only at decks which include Land Tax in them for good effect.

You can't use Land Tax and not build around it. If you build a deck with good cards and make good plays with them, Land Tax sucks. You have to make bad plays to make Land Tax good. If you dedicate your design to Land Tax then it's possible that all the bad plays will add up to something else, such as card advantage, but that requires a focused deck.

Making land drops and interacting with the opponent prevents you from using Land Tax in the first place. I suggest you read the development of White Control as it is chronicled on this website to get better evidence of why this is the case.



With that said, I must be misunderstanding what you mean by a 'weak manabase'. You should need 8-10 White Sources to be able to consistently (~2/3 of the time) have a white mana available to play Turn 1 Land Tax. I think in terms of being able to activate Land Tax effectively, you want at least 3+ basics depending on a specific build. 2-mana lands would also have very good synergy with this strategy. With many Stax builds, it is not unusual to have 4-mana in play with only 2 lands on the board. Land Tax is perfect to take advantage of this since it will thin out 'extra' lands and naturally increase the threat density that you draw during the mid and late game. The number of actual 'dead cards' that you see is the deck building challenge. And I would not view using the full 8 available Moxen as a design requirement. You're right 1-for-2ing yourself with them will kill the deck's ability to do anything outside of the first few turns. As I have pointed out previously, if it's not 'broken', why build around it? All-in-all, I would find it easy to build a consistent mana base with ~12 basics, 8-10 white sources, and either Mox which I would believe should be the 'real' requirements for a deck using Land Tax.

The weak manabase includes artifacts which are vulnerable to removal and which costs extra cards to use, as well as tension between basics and having the right kinds of mana to case whatever spells you are splashing for. This is a significant strain on the deck. Playing with 4 Chrome Mox 4 Mox Diamond eats up so many cards and at the same time reduces the amount of room you have to run off-color cards. But if you only run one of these accelerants, you are not going to get Land Tax going frequently enough and as I have already shown, a Land Tax deck that doesn't get to activate the card is just a deck full of bad cards.

Again, see White Control decks in this format to get an idea of what kind of requirements we are talking about.



I eliminate this requirement since I would not build a 'Land Tax deck'. The draw engine falls right into 'danger of cool things' territory for me. You will waste slots in the current enviroment to no effect. This is primarily what you have shown (and many of the decklists in the other thread will suffer from this). You are using 8-10 slots for a mini-combo that doesn't win the game. I think everyone on this site will agree that's bad deck design. Throw the restriction out and build a good deck that uses Land Tax to draw land, fix mana, and improve your draws. Again, it's not a 'broken' effect, so you will gain very little building solely around it.

See White Control.


Again, throw out the engine requirement and you free up slots to do this.


See White Control.


This is simply a ridiculous requirement. All decks will have some vulnerability to Force of Will and Duress. Trying to build a deck that is resilient to all forms of disruption is a futile exercise. Your deck should be able to 'bounce' back from that disruption, but you will never eliminate vulnerability to a Turn 1 Duress on the draw. And again, why look at a non-broken combo engine - look at decks that are built to specifically take advantage of what Land Tax does naturally.

This is the same problem as before with the manabase, except with your spells. If your Land Tax gets duressed, then what does the deck do exactly? It becomes a White Control deck with inferior cards. See White Control.


I think the biggest stumbling block is that you seem to be of the opinion that Land Tax must be built around or else it is bad. And I believe this is simply not true. Land Tax could be used in several decks to good effect. It may prove to be too ineffecient for inclusion, but I could see trying to use it in a Stax build, a Standstill deck, and even a Stasis deck (all oppressive decks it seems) none of which would necessarily need to use the 'draw engine'.

Then you haven't played Control in this format.

I can tell you from my experience that it is not playable in Stax. There are a lot of discussions on this site and others about different W/x control decks, and the difficulties they face. Land Tax only adds more restrictions and weakens the card quality of these decks.


Why continue to make it a deck building requirement? By making it a requirement, you will continue to measure the engine's power level and not Land Tax's.

Land Tax is an engine that requires you to convert tempo and resources into something useful. By itself, it doesn't do anything. In fact, it makes your position worse in a Control deck. If you just play normally, it doesn't do anything. If you invest mana and cards into it, it may yield some basic lands later in the game. That is the model of what an engine card is. In this case, even in the optimal scenarios where you draw resolve and active the combo, you get some basic lands in the mid-game. How is this good, and why do you think such a weak effect justifies these serious tempo investments when many other decks eschew clearly stronger investments because of the severe limitations on tempo development in this format? Are you really trying to tell me that Land Tax is better than Fact or Fiction (which gets close to zero play)?

There are a lot of players that have been working on W/x Control decks since the beginning of the format. These decks still suffer from serious problems, but there has been quite a lot of experimentation and testing in that time, and it is reasonable to think that all of that work has made these decks better, not worse. The defining characteristics of competent control decks in this format are versatility and tempo generation. Land Tax fails painfully at both of these and in doing so goes against all of the design trends that have ever caused success with these decks.

Land Tax is a conditional card that is useless in some situations, and weak in many others. Additionally, it is a large drain on resources to convert the benefits into something relevant. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to start talking about just "throwing it in" another deck with White, since the very thing that would allow that deck to succeed is the versatility of it's cards and the absolute minimum of tempo investment it has to make to get to the late game.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Maybe you're not familiar with Stax, Fred. I've tried to tinker with a list as you suggest. The problem is that Stax already has to devote a huge number of cards to setting up a lock that doesn't affect board position. When you add eight cards that do nothing except draw more Trinisphers and mana sources and Land Taxes. Everytime I played with this build I wished like Hell that those Land Taxes were just Armageddon/Ravages of War. To give you an idea of how bad LandStax is, I lost to Oppression.deck on MWS. That is to say, I got Trinisphere and jazz down, I got Land Tax activate, I thinned out all my lands, and I lost very rapidly to a single Phyrexian Negator, his first threat of the game, which he was happy to pay 4 for to attack each time. Let me repeat; Oppression.dec with a turn 7 Negator beats the deck you're talking about.

[to1701]

I think the article makes sense in regards to showing that a turn one land tax is not broken, when compared to the current decks to beat, regardless of the build.

I agree that land tax could be unbanned and see what happens. I for some reason doubt that people will remove thier sinkholes from decks for something else to play around land tax. But I digress, sinkhole is a fair card at best.

I just want to say, when it comes to the banned list, at least this article got people talking about why it sits on the banned list and why there should be some consideration to remove it, and the same reasoning goes for other cards.

[Fred Bear]

Look, I've never claimed to be God's gift to deck design - there are probably millions better than I (I'm sure IBA's LandStax deck is the most optimum list that could be built - sarcasm intended). But one thing I've learned through years of experience is that you can and should question anything and everything when faced with a problem, especially the 'givens'. When the answer comes back - "That's the way it's done." or "That's the only way to do it." - you usually know that the problem is not being fully investigated.

That's the problem here. I suggest a scenario and you refute it because it's bad deck design, even though there's no deck to evaluate. You say it utilizes narrow cards and can't win - period, even though the scenario would be rough for any deck it would hypothetically face. You claim that I ignore tournament play, yet I never suggested the deck I was playing against in the original scenario. My entire argument was based upon thinking outside of the current meta and looking explicitly at what Land Tax could do (which is why I left is truly open-ended), but you seem to refuse to try this analysis because it's 'bad deck design' and doesn't utilize 'good' cards within the accepted Legacy meta.

All of your claims rest solely on building and playing with Land Tax within the current 'rules' for deck building and play. Why? I'm not making any claim that those 'rules' are invalid in a meta with Land Tax legal, but why must they be? There are a lot of cards that would/could have synergy with Land Tax, but you are right - you might have to modify the way you play to take advantage of it (i.e. missing a land drop may actually be the right play). I fail to see why this is inherently bad, unless you are constrained by the current 'rules' which may or may not be valid if someone does create a deck that changes those rules. And that could be the outcome if someone came up with a solid deck utilizing Land Tax synergies. Aren't those the powerful interactions we look to exploit as deckbuilders?

My problem with your article from the beginning has been the way you tested. I problem solve for a living (an engineering geek - that's me) and when you test a hypothesis versus your null hypothesis, there are typically three causes for variation - random variation, testing bias, or actual variation. From what you tested and presented in your article (Null Hypothesis = Land Tax is powerful and oppressive, Hypothesis = Land Tax is weak-to-unplayable), your conclusions are clearly the result of testing bias as your intial assumptions lead necessarily to your conclusions. You very elegantly showed, though, that if you try to efficiently utilize the traditional Land Tax/Scroll Rack engine while maxing out your artifact mana slots in today's meta, you are probably wasting your time. This definitely makes what Forsythe has presented counterintuitive and it would require him to show more data or present better argument. As far as I can tell, that's all you did.

I commend you for writing an article and putting yourself out there. I do not mean to criticize you as a person, but I feel that's the way the argument is coming back to me. Again, I'm no Flores or Chapin (or even an Elgin or Coppola - just joking), I just fail to see why 'bad' cards can't be good if the right interaction is found to use them.

Fred Bear...

[Machinus]

Some of what you are saying is true of deck design. But these possibilities have been limited and reduced continuously since competitive tournaments have been held, and the format isn't completely wide open anymore. In fact, deckbuilding in this format is really challenging. If it was possible to win with cards that have as many problems as Land Tax does, people would have done it already.

And I'm not even talking about the people on this site, I mean pros, who play magic for a living and came up against the same tempo wall. Of course I can't prove Land Tax is bad. You can't prove that any unplayed card is bad. If you want to get better as a magic player you have to differentiate between hope and winning tournaments, and this doesn't come about because someone wrote a formula that absolutely proves something. It's based on the assumption that everyone wants to win the tournament and that they will use their best ideas towards that end. After a long time of accumulated development we can clearly see what this format is like, and no amount of speculation or pipe dreaming is suddenly going to open up the possibility that conditional, expensive cards can become good. It that was at all likely it would have already happened with different cards, so there's no good reason to take it seriously.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

(or even an Elgin or Coppola - just joking)

In intelligent society, throwing out random snipes and appending that you're "just kidding" or "no offense meant" doesn't actually enable you to say whatever you want without repercussions.

Fred, in your effort to be open-minded, you neglect to consider how fundamentally asinine your argument is. Here's the fundamental problem:

Chris' position is falsifiable. He put forward a reasonable hypothesis (Land Tax is bad, or at best irrelevant for the early to midgame) based on testing.

Your position isn't. You assert that through magic, voodoo, willpower and the allignment of the stars a super secret Land Tax list that doesn't suck might exist somewhere and that it could be relevant. When asked to present any evidence for your claim, you balk, because you have no such list.

Chris' position could be disproven at any time if anyone actually came up with an even competitive- not broken, just competitive- Land Tax list. No one has. Instead, a few people such as yourself have resorted to appeals to mystic or divine intervention. Your argument is useless and can be discounted out of hand. Until you have an actual counter-argument, you would do better to drop the issue.

[Fred Bear]

In intelligent society, throwing out random snipes and appending that you're "just kidding" or "no offense meant" doesn't actually enable you to say whatever you want without repercussions.

Fred, in your effort to be open-minded, you neglect to consider how fundamentally asinine your argument is. Here's the fundamental problem:

Chris' position is falsifiable. He put forward a reasonable hypothesis (Land Tax is bad, or at best irrelevant for the early to midgame) based on testing.

Your position isn't. You assert that through magic, voodoo, willpower and the allignment of the stars a super secret Land Tax list that doesn't suck might exist somewhere and that it could be relevant. When asked to present any evidence for your claim, you balk, because you have no such list.

Chris' position could be disproven at any time if anyone actually came up with an even competitive- not broken, just competitive- Land Tax list. No one has. Instead, a few people such as yourself have resorted to appeals to mystic or divine intervention. Your argument is useless and can be discounted out of hand. Until you have an actual counter-argument, you would do better to drop the issue.

Actually, my only claim is that the issue deserves further testing. I don't understand why that's so hard to see. I've clearly stated why I don't think his conclusion is necessarily true. And the answer, as far as I understand it, is that basically, 'all other Land Tax decks do or will suck because Land Tax sucks.' Not exactly the type of explanation that 'intelligent society' can really use.

I've openly said that I have no list so you can criticize me for that all you want, I won't feel bad (and I hope it makes you feel better). I've stated clearly (and it follows from good problem solving technique) that the way to prove the Null Hypothesis, which is "Land Tax is powerful enough to remain banned", is wrong would be to clearly demonstrate that all decks utilizing 'powerful' Land Tax interactions are irrelevant to the format. That's not at all what's been done.

If you want to cut on me and others for not getting in line immediately, have at it. You want to say I'm wishing and hoping and praying, go ahead. I, as I have said before, agree that Land Tax is not broken and is probably not powerful enough to deserve banning. I just don't think it's been proven sufficiently yet.

But you are right, it's not worth trying to discuss it if you're only intention is to throw stones.

Fred Bear...

[MattH]

You intentionally misunderstand.
Point of order: I did not intentionally misunderstand you, I intentionally did not waste much time thinking about your post (thereby increasing the chances of misunderstanding). A subtle difference, easily overlooked by the untrained eye!

Land Tax is probably fine.

Random side note: appealing to a format that's been dead for almost 3 years and doesn't really resemble Legacy is about as useless as comparing Legacy to, say, Extended or Vintage. I am shocked - SHOCKED! - that Land Tax wasn't good in a format with Mana Drain and Skullclamp and so on!

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

That's not how things work, Matt. We can posture as if gravity is real and the Earth is round because all the scientific evidence supports these theories, and the counterproofs that would disprove them have been known and undiscovered for quite a long time. There is sufficient reason to believe that Land Tax sucks, and such a complete lack of counterproofs, that it's reasonable to assume that it does suck until proven otherwise.

And most cards that are clearly dominant in Legacy now were at least marginally played in 1.5, with the exception of storm cards due to all the fast mana being banned. While it not seeing any play then isn't necessarily proof of a card being bad, I think it's a fair proof that it's not broken.


I've stated clearly (and it follows from good problem solving technique) that the way to prove the Null Hypothesis, which is "Land Tax is powerful enough to remain banned", is wrong would be to clearly demonstrate that all decks utilizing 'powerful' Land Tax interactions are irrelevant to the format. That's not at all what's been done.

That's because it's functionally impossible. It would take far too much time and effort to thoroughly test every possible build of every possible strategy that might attempt to use Land Tax, and even if it was done you wouldn't be able to clearly state that "no remaining viable Land Tax strategies exist", because people like you would come out of the woodwork to say that some strategies that obviously suck might really be good or that some strategies not yet discovered may exist. Chris' claim, on the other hand, is fairly easy to debunk if false; all you have to do is make or find one Land Tax list that doesn't suck.


But you are right, it's not worth trying to discuss it if you're only intention is to throw stones.

Translation: "What? You're not allowed to call me out on my transparently hostile asides. That hurts my feelings."

[Zilla]

Chris' position is falsifiable. He put forward a reasonable hypothesis (Land Tax is bad, or at best irrelevant for the early to midgame) based on testing.
What the fuck? It wasn't based at all on testing. It was purely theoretical. That's the biggest issue people are having with the article.

[frogboy]

asdfaksldjfalksdjflksadjf

Machinus: Land Tax is probably pretty bad.

People: Yeah, but you might want to at least create lists and stuff instead of just theorize about it.

Machinus: No, you do it.

People: uhh...

Other people: Daze ftw! Prison components! Other things!

Machinus: Those are all pretty bad.

frogboy: if they're bad, why didn't you just put those lists into your article and test them to show the DCI that Land Tax is in fact pretty tame as opposed to just waving your hand and saying the card is bad?

[Bovinious]

Because the card IS bad, you dont need lists and testing to see that a white (LOL) enchantment that gets 3 blanks from your deck into your hand (SOMETIMES) is just God-awful. The type of people who actually think Land Tax is broken (or even powerful) probably wouldnt listen to testing results anyways...

[Fred Bear]

That's because it's functionally impossible. It would take far too much time and effort to thoroughly test every possible build of every possible strategy that might attempt to use Land Tax, and even if it was done you wouldn't be able to clearly state that "no remaining viable Land Tax strategies exist", because people like you would come out of the woodwork to say that some strategies that obviously suck might really be good or that some strategies not yet discovered may exist. Chris' claim, on the other hand, is fairly easy to debunk if false; all you have to do is make or find one Land Tax list that doesn't suck.

If this is your stance, then the argument is pure rhetoric. In this problem, the Null Hypothesis has to be set as "Land Tax is powerful enough to remain banned" or something similar. The goal is to nullify or disprove that Hypothesis with testing, data, and statistics. The burden falls squarely on the shoulders of the group requesting the change to show that the change is warranted. This is the level of responsibility that is expected in most real world applications, why should this be any different?

You do make an excellent point, however, it would take time and much effort to do a thorough job of this. But that doesn't mean that this isn't what needs to be done. The job isn't quite as unlimited as you make it sound either. We can start by setting clear criteria for testing - define what the powerful/good interactions are, choose a percentage of possibility below which we feel is irrelevant, examine situations where not playing land is 'good', etc. If someone raises a question or another scenario, test it if it meets the criteria for testing (relevant occurance level, oppressive nature, good if you don't play land, whatever criteria is set), it will only make the case stronger if we consider more possibilities and the more eyes looking for test cases, the better.

I would really expect that if this procedure was followed and results were presented - Forsythe and the DCI would listen. If not, then further discussion of Land Tax and the banned list in general is reduced to mental masturbation.

Fred Bear...

[frogboy]

The burden falls squarely on the shoulders of the group requesting the change to show that the change is warranted. This is the level of responsibility that is expected in most real world applications, why should this be any different?

Some might argue that the burden of proof lies on the folks who banned it to begin with. Machinus has begun to demonstrate that Forsythe's point of "miss my land drop go" is a fallacious arguement, but I want to see him go farther.

And before you ask, the reason I'm not doing it myself is that I'm lazy and apathetic.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

You do make an excellent point, however, it would take time and much effort to do a thorough job of this. But that doesn't mean that this isn't what needs to be done.

Yes. Yes, it does.

The burden of proof should always fall on the party that would have the easiest time proving it's case. Arguing that when that party is the currently accepted argument, that it doesn't need to prove anything because the other side is advocating change is basically an appeal to tradition. It's ironic that claim a desire for objectivity when what you really want is to grossly tilt the scales and set the bar of proof for demonstrating Land Tax's suckiness ludicrously high (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(logical_fallacy)); there are quite a number of reasons to believe Land Tax is a weak card, but so far the only reason presented why it might be good is that it's banned, a fact which has been true of quite a number of cards, ranging from Juggernaut to Lin Sivvi to Recall to Doomsday.

To reiterate:

Side 1 of a question needs to expend hundreds or thousands of man hours to come up with a body of evidence that side 2 might, might consider as a reasonable bit of evidence for an argument.

Side 2 of a question needs to spend half an hour cobbling together something resembling a vaguely tenable Legacy deck to prove it's point.

You can see at once, with even a fraction of common sense, which side ought to be expected to prove it's case.

[frogboy]

Arguing that when that party is the currently accepted argument, that it doesn't need to prove anything because the other side is advocating change is basically an appeal to tradition.

nitpick: it's usually because things tend to be the way they are for a reason, and changing them would require a better reason.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

But the only way to test that hypothesis, frogboy, is to treat the tradition as if it weren't so and to see if there is a reason. It's a recurring theme in history that things become tradition without any good reason other than people choose to repeat the mistakes of their parents.

[Zilla]

You can see at once, with even a fraction of common sense, which side ought to be expected to prove it's case.
So because to properly prove his case (with actual testing, results, and statistics) is too difficult, the DCI should unban a card because Machinus says so? Good luck with that.

There are two problems with Machinus' article:

1. Very few people care about politically motived appeals to the DCI in article form. They want to read about things which have some relevance to their experience with the game, in other words, metagame analysis, fundamental game theory, and deck technology.

2. If you're going to ignore your audience's preferences as far as subject matter is concerned, you should at least do it in a way that might actually achieve your personal agenda. The DCI is simply never going to make policy decisions based on one person's theoretical assumptions, however accurate they are likely to be.

I'm really sorry that providing actual evidence that Land Tax (or any other card on the banned list) doesn't belong there is really really hard, but at some point you're going to have to accept the reality that it's going to be necessary for any change to occur. And that personal theory based entirely upon assumption isn't actually very fun to read about.

[Machinus]

what I think people are saying

That characterization of the debate is not accurate.


if they're bad, why didn't you just put those lists into your article and test them to show the DCI that Land Tax is in fact pretty tame as opposed to just waving your hand and saying the card is bad?

I didn't put them in my article because there are an infinite number of lists to test, besides the whole point that it's impossible to demonstrate that a card is fair even with an arbitrary amount of lists because of existential arguments.

It's a bit better than having waving, at its worst. I dissected every possible opening for any respectably competitive Land Tax deck. There is no way to opt out of those scenarios.

Everyone who thinks Land Tax is broken (including the DCI) will imagine the cards they are afraid of in the scenarios I posted, and then see how those cards fail. Then when those cards are debunked, they will pick new ones and think about them in the same way. Eventually one of two things will happen:

1) Someone will break Land Tax

2) Everyone will realize that they have tested so many cards that there is nothing left that could fix the problems inherent in the deck and agree that it needs to come off of the list.

[Machinus]

What the fuck? It wasn't based at all on testing. It was purely theoretical. That's the biggest issue people are having with the article.

Technically this is true, but that has no bearing on it's truthfulness. All Land Tax openings must fall into the ones I described, and I even tried them directly against three popular and competitive decks. So it's just as real as anything written about Legacy.

Had I sat down at a tournament and played all of those games, the descripion would have been exactly the same, but technically I could say it was not theoretical at all.

It's quite arbitrary to detract from the article because you think it took place in my head. There are clearly real scenarios being described that would match up perfectly with reality were Land Tax legal.

Unless, of course, you think I have made a mistake in my analysis. I haven't heard any discussion of the actual technical content of the article so I don't think this is the case.

[Mad Zur]

So because to properly prove his case (with actual testing, results, and statistics) is too difficultCould you please explain how it's possible?

[Zilla]

Could you please explain how it's possible?
I don't think it's possible to do so definitively. Obviously that would be absurd. But I think a good start would be to construct two to three lists which exploit the ostensible advantage created by Land Tax, test them against a few of the well established decks, and write about your experiences.

And primarily, I suggest this because it would actually be interesting to read about. I care very little for articles which are written for the DCI's benefit as opposed to my own as a player. I can perfom this kind of mental masturbation on my own. I don't need someone else to do so and write an article about it.

I simply feel that a person evincing some creativity and actively trying to abuse a card would be much much more compelling to read about than a person trying to show why a card can't be abused. Who cares?

[Mad Zur]

I don't think it's possible to do so definitively. Obviously that would be absurd. But I think a good start would be to construct two to three lists which exploit the ostensible advantage created by Land Tax, test them against a few of the well established decks, and write about your experiences.
This might be interesting, but I don't think it would be relevant to the question of whether or not Land Tax is broken (unless one of the lists is broken, of course). I can work on fair, interesting, or bad Flash decks all I want to, but it doesn't even suggest that Flash should be unbanned.

And primarily, I suggest this because it would actually be interesting to read about. I care very little for articles which are written for the DCI's benefit as opposed to my own as a player. I can perfom this kind of mental masturbation on my own. I don't need someone else to do so and write an article about it.

I simply feel that a person evincing some creativity and actively trying to abuse a card would be much much more compelling to read about than a person trying to show why a card can't be abused. Who cares?
I'm not going to argue this point. Personally, I don't find Land Tax very interesting.

[AnwarA101]

I don't think it's possible to do so definitively. Obviously that would be absurd. But I think a good start would be to construct two to three lists which exploit the ostensible advantage created by Land Tax, test them against a few of the well established decks, and write about your experiences.

And primarily, I suggest this because it would actually be interesting to read about. I care very little for articles which are written for the DCI's benefit as opposed to my own as a player. I can perfom this kind of mental masturbation on my own. I don't need someone else to do so and write an article about it.

I simply feel that a person evincing some creativity and actively trying to abuse a card would be much much more compelling to read about than a person trying to show why a card can't be abused. Who cares?

I think your complaint would have been almost the same. You would have said his lists were poor or that he wasn't trying hard enough. You can always claim this regardless of whatever list he presented. As far as I can tell, is that everyone who suspects that Land Tax is too powerful keeps pointing to some mythical deck that may or may not exist. You can say this for every card that is legal as well that doesn't make it anymore true than it is for Land Tax.

Compare Land Tax to the other cards on the B/R and you know its not hard to come up with a busted deck with most of those cards. Do we really need to work that hard to find out why 4 Yawgmoth's Will or 4 Yawgmoth's Bargain is too good? Do we really have to try so hard to figure out a deck that would be completely ridiculous with these cards? Doesn't make you wonder why we are straining to find such a deck with Land Tax in it ?

[JohnnyCage]

I don't believe that "safe" was the reason for removing errata from Flash. Mark Gottlieb has a made point to remove "power level" errata whenever he feels like it. No one seriously argued that Flash was "safe" and I suspect Wizards knew as much once they saw the combo.

As for Land Tax, it doesn't seem particularly strong at all. I'm not sure what the real reason for not having it in the format, but it seems like it would be a fine addition to Legacy. I don't think its going to break it and even if someone could use it well, what's wrong with that? I hope Wizards tries removing more cards from the B/R list. It will be more interesting that way.

Land Tax was an amazing card with the control deck parfait, and it would still be amazing to this day, some cards are just better left where they are. Look up the old parfait list, that deck was amazing at using land tax, zuran orb and scroll rack to just abuse card advantage, it still would be to this day.

[AnwarA101]

Land Tax was an amazing card with the control deck parfait, and it would still be amazing to this day, some cards are just better left where they are. Look up the old parfait list, that deck was amazing at using land tax, zuran orb and scroll rack to just abuse card advantage, it still would be to this day.

Where do I look them up? It would be helpful if you could post them. Would these lists be good in Legacy? There is nothing wrong with a good Land Tax deck only a broken one. I'm not sure you make much of an argument by saying it was pretty good a long time ago. Zuran Orb was restricted in Type 2 in 1995 that doesn't make it too good for Legacy in 2007.

[Bovinious]

Land Tax was an amazing card with the control deck parfait, and it would still be amazing to this day, some cards are just better left where they are. Look up the old parfait list, that deck was amazing at using land tax, zuran orb and scroll rack to just abuse card advantage, it still would be to this day.

Parfait would suck now, even wth Land Tax. Theres this archetype called Combo now, and it wins before your fragile disruptionless "card advantage" engine gets online. Like Anwar said, maybe it was good in 1995 but times have changed.

[nitewolf9]

When you look at land tax you need to get to the fundamental reason as to why they banned it. If your opponent has more land than you, this :w: enchantment will be activated, and you will be able to find 3 basic lands and put those into your hand. Now I don't know about you, but this is one tax I don't plan on paying :wink:.

[JohnnyCage]

Where do I look them up? It would be helpful if you could post them. Would these lists be good in Legacy? There is nothing wrong with a good Land Tax deck only a broken one. I'm not sure you make much of an argument by saying it was pretty good a long time ago. Zuran Orb was restricted in Type 2 in 1995 that doesn't make it too good for Legacy in 2007.

I dont know where i could easily look these list up anymore, that was about five years ago that parfait was amazing. Land tax was banned because of how good it was in that deck, it abused humility with zuran orb and land tax, i just think legacy is a very healthy format right now and dont want to see another repeat of flash, where there was three decks, flash, decks that beat flash, and decks that beat decks that beat hulk flash.

[Zilla]

I think your complaint would have been almost the same.
Then you misunderstand my complaint. My complaint right now is that the article, while well written, is both functionally useless and not entertaining to read. If actual decklists had been used, the former might or might not be improved, but the latter most certainly would be.

[JohnnyCage]

Parfait would suck now, even wth Land Tax. Theres this archetype called Combo now, and it wins before your fragile disruptionless "card advantage" engine gets online. Like Anwar said, maybe it was good in 1995 but times have changed.

There is ways to deal with combo, you have needle, rule of law, chalice ofr zero if need be, perhaps a black splash nowadays, parfait would make a comeback with land tax.

[AnwarA101]

Then you misunderstand my complaint. My complaint right now is that the article, while well written, is both functionally useless and not entertaining to read. If actual decklists had been used, the former might or might not be improved, but the latter most certainly would be.

The fact that you say "it might or might not be improved" seems to imply that you doubt it would have been improved. If this is the right implication there isn't much he could have done to convince you outside of perhaps entertaining you during the process. It just seems better to admit you wouldn't have been convinced either way.

[Zilla]

The fact that you say "it might or might not be improved" seems to imply that you doubt it would have been improved. If this is the right implication there isn't much he could have done to convince you outside of perhaps entertaining you during the process. It just seems better to admit you wouldn't have been convinced either way.
I was implying nothing. I used the words "might or might not" for a very specific reason: because that might or might not be the case. I don't know, because it didn't happen.

Listen carefully: I am not going to admit I wouldn't be convinced either way because I already am convinced. I was convinced before Chris ever wrote his article. My being convinced isn't even an issue here. I care about reading interesting articles which actually teach me something about the game or the format. This article did not accomplish this, and that is the basis of my criticism. I'm not really sure I can be much clearer.

[AnwarA101]

I was implying nothing. I used the words "might or might not" for a very specific reason: because that might or might not be the case. I don't know, because it didn't happen.

Listen carefully: I am not going to admit I wouldn't be convinced either way because I already am convinced. I was convinced before Chris ever wrote his article. My being convinced isn't even an issue here. I care about reading interesting articles which actually teach me something about the game or the format. This article did not accomplish this, and that is the basis of my criticism. I'm not really sure I can be much clearer.

I'm a little confused. What exactly are you convinced of? That Land Tax is too powerful or that it isn't? I just couldn't tell from your response.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I dont know where i could easily look these list up anymore, that was about five years ago that parfait was amazing. Land tax was banned because of how good it was in that deck, it abused humility with zuran orb and land tax, i just think legacy is a very healthy format right now and dont want to see another repeat of flash, where there was three decks, flash, decks that beat flash, and decks that beat decks that beat hulk flash.

Try ten years ago. And the only time that deck was even remotely playable was when it had real Moxen and the format was at least three turns slower than current Legacy.

If you think an old Parfait list would work, by all means break it out and we'll test it. I don't want to venture my own such list or pick my favorite amongst old lists, because as Anwar notes, certain people are just going to say, "Well if Jack Elgin's deck isn't awesome, it must suck snickersnickersarcasm", or, "Well obviously that list sucks. But can you imagine one that the pros might develop?"

This is what it keeps coming back to. People are going to wave their hands and reference magical secret decks built by leprechauns that make Land Tax good in Legacy, but unfortunately no human being has ever seen them. Chris' attempt to demonstrate that Land Tax, in any deck, is going to be weak on the first few turns was a very reasonable and noble attempt to meet people halfway that met with complete rejection based on the same reasoning of Leprechaun-built Land Tax decks.

[Zilla]

I'm a little confused. What exactly are you convinced of? That Land Tax is too powerful or that it isn't? I just couldn't tell from your response.
That it isn't. I've been for taking it off the banned list ever since it was put on. I don't need convincing on this matter. But for somebody who does need convincing, I don't think the circumstantial evidence presented in Chris' article is enough to make a compelling argument. And, as I said, it's simply not that interesting to read, because there aren't any new ideas in it. The suggestion that he ought to have tested two or three actual Land Tax lists and written about that would, in my opinion, improve both points.

[Sanguine Voyeur]

Maybe you don't find it interesting because you're not the target of the article. It's trying to convince people that Land Tax isn't broken and you already know that.

[Zilla]

Maybe you don't find it interesting because you're not the target of the article. It's trying to convince people that Land Tax isn't broken and you already know that.
Yes, that's why I don't find it interesting. As I've said, however, purely theoretical evidence is not substantive enough to prove Chris' point to those that don't already agree with him. And it especially isn't enough to bring about action on the part of the DCI, who never ever make poilicy decisions based solely on theoretical argument.

[FoolofaTook]

Potential Land Tax single partner combos:

Brainstorm - Use Land Tax to pull 2 land out of the deck, Brainstorm and replace the 2 land with the 2 likely spells in the 3 card draw.

Sensei's Divining Top - Use top to look at top 3 cards at end of opponent's turn, shuffle during next upkeep using Land Tax if you don't like what you see. Land Tax's function in this combo: permanent reshuffle device.

Stasis - Use Land Tax to draw enough blue mana to sustain an early Stasis and stabilize. Land Tax's function in this combo: free mana generator of necessary color.

Forsaken City - Use Land Tax to draw the cards that you remove from game to untap Forsaken City. Land Tax's function in this combo: card generator to fulfill card sacrifice cost.

Library of Leng - Use Land Tax to draw quickly up to whatever number of cards your effect needs. Obviously we're past the days of Maro as a killer, unless we're not. Land Tax function in the combo: card generator to maintain hand size.

Last Rites - Use Land Tax to fuel Last Rites. Land Tax function in the combo: card generator to fulfill discard cost.

There are probably many more broken things to do with Land Tax than the short list above, but the variety of purposes Land tax can be put to even in that short list should be a warning note on what other possibilities lurk out there.

[Tinefol]

Explain to me how Belcher deals with turn 1 facing Mox Diamond, Land Tax, Sphere of Resistance - You might never activate Land Tax, but Belcher might never play a spell. But that's somehow inherently bad? I don't buy it.

I'm amazed no one pointed this out, but I just would. Hows the above scenario would be any different for Belcher than Ancient Tomb -> Sphere of Resistance? And you still might (just might) have the other 5 business cards. In the above scenario you just wasted 4 cards [mox (because its one mana compared to 2 that tomb would produce) + land + crystal veins + tax] to lay the same damn sphere of resistance just to have the possibility to replace these cards that were clearly not business with basic lands (which are not business too). Wow, I'm rather playing tomb/sphere. The same argument mostly applies to the above post as well. What exactly are you going to do even in the best case scenario, if you just literally wasted most of your hand to generate some kind of "advantage" which you can't use in a few following turns. Hell, you might not even have these advantage engine cards at all. Thats the problem the article arises and rather does it well.