Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Stuart
Agreed, but in a post-Miracles world where Elves is likely tier 1, BGx is probably gonna include sweepers of its own anyway. Not saying Maverick is gonna be thrilled to face down TNN, but it won't auto scoop to one.
I guess they will now.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Machinus
Sensei's Divining Top did not meet justified critera for being banned.
Given that this statement is demonstrably false, I feel inclined to ask: what constitutes justifiable criteria for the banning of a card from the legacy format? If this isn't clarified then the entire discussion is pointless.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tescrin
CounterTop is skill intensive? Let's not go crazy. I believe Joe Lossett was one of the people who said something like "The most frustrating part of losing to miracles is you can't tell if the opponent is good or not."
Regardless, you can create blue control that isn't CTop based. We've seen BUG Walkers (usually a form of Nic Fit), we've seen RUG Lands, we've seen Tezzerator, we've seen Cloudpost, all in the last few years. The problem is that they were all worse than CTop's utter dominnace; specifically because CTop has no weaknesses. Tezz needs a strong start, BUG Walkers is weaker to combo/grave hate, Cloudpost is weaker to combo, RUG lands is weak to grave hate.
The manabase, the sweeper, the CTop CA, etc.. was all the best you could do. It ignored every viable version of a counter to it. I don't care about what argument it took to get this monkey off of legacy's back. How many decks had to die to the grind of hour-long rounds where G2's strategy was always "lol.. just stall until we draw Derp!"
Thank. God.
Bring all the salty tears! Combo will be back in force. Elves will be a top deck again. Lands will be the premier control deck again. D&T will still be an aggro/control weird thing that annoys people. And blue? Blue will be shifted back to Anti-Combo and Consistency rather than Every-Deck-Is-BUG[x]
Decay? Will see less play for once. It's still good, but the Edrazi, Gurmags, Leovolds, and Mirran Crusaders will chase it out as a ubiquitous 3-4 of.
Patriot. Bant. Grixis. Esper. RUG. Maybe even Junk, Jund, Maverick, etc..
All these decks that homogenized around Decay will be released from captivity.
TES will get to be a thing again. RUG Delver will have to fight DRS, but it did that before with great success. Patriot won't be locked out for not being BG. Grixis will probably un-splash.
All the salt will not make up for the salt of the literally dozen or more decks that have been utterly squashed by the inability to run more than one creature on the board at a time. All of the decks that were covered in creature-based CA getting pwned by a lucky draw of a Terminus. All of the Grave-recursive creatures get a new lease on life.
Salt in this case will lower my blood pressure. Salt here is a healthy alternative to the frustrating garbage format that had been flattened into BUg[x] vs. UWr CTop.
I can't hardly type enough praise of the unexpected relief that will probably push me back into playing regularly.
Man the rose-colored glasses are thick with this one. Aside from Dark Bant Blade and Grixis Delver/Control (all decks already currently seeing play), none of the decks you think are coming back will come back. BUGr's meta share just gets wider. News flash: bad decks are still bad. Lands wasn't being pushed out by Miracles; Storm was killed by Leovold; SnS was already making a comeback but that deck barely cares about the metagame.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Feelings are so confused today. My beloved Maple Leafs lost and are out of the play offs, but then they Ban top today.
I haven't played a major legacy event since the debacle that was GPNJ. Having an event run 3 hours over time each day was really put off.
Future looks bright!
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
RiP Doomsday :'(
And also just as I was planning on building Painter or Bomberman next!
Should have been Terminus that went.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
I'm going to try really hard not to step on toes with this.
Quote:
In Legacy, Miracles—a deck that is focused on combining Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top to control what opponents can or (mostly) cannot resolve—has been the best deck in the format for some time. We were hopeful that this would change over time, but it has not. That alone is not necessarily enough to move to ban a card from the deck, but Sensei's Divining Top comes with its own host of issues that center around the timely conclusion of matches in a tournament setting. The necessity of repeated Top activations to play the card slows down match play and leads to tournament delays. Coupled with the power of the Miracles deck, this is reason enough for us to take action on Top. Therefore, Sensei's Divining Top is banned in Legacy.
So Aaron's point is twofold: Miracles is too powerful; and Top, which is integral to the deck, gums up the game.
Both of these may be correct, but he did a poor job of making the argument that both of those factors when taken together warrant a ban for Top yet that neither factor on its own—least of all the indisputable (yes, indisputable) dominance of a deck that relies on the card—is a good enough reason for the ban. I get the impression that his explanation might as well read, "Top slows down the game to an inordinate degree, which makes the card bad for competitive Magic. Also, Miracles exists."
I hold an opposing view that, largely, is colored by my experience. I have never had match-length trouble against Miracles, perhaps because I typically play decks that win or lose decisively—often in a single turn—and I rarely play tournaments of more than four rounds, where fatigue really sets in. I have never even heard of people's having match-length trouble against other decks that run Top unless those decks were both as complex as Doomsday and piloted by inexperienced players.
[EDIT: It strikes me that, if match-length was the problem they wanted to address, it was the top-flight deck running Top that was causing problems, not the Top in and of itself.]
All of that is anecdotal, but I feel like the length of matches involving Top is really much less problematic than the other factor Aaron mentioned, which is the elephant in the room. (This doesn't mean that cards shouldn't be banned for slowing down the game; I just haven't found that to be a problem with Top.)
Frankly, one has to do some pretty extreme logical gymnastics to avoid the conclusion that Miracles is/was the best deck in Legacy by a very wide margin for an inordinately long time. Not unbeatable, not the only viable choice, but definitely the best for the longest. I'm still almost never a proponent of bans, but when a deck is doing what Miracles has been doing, I can understand and accept a ban.
Personally, I'm glad I won't have to keep slotting a playset of off-color cards into three-color decks to make a matchup even. I'm glad I won't need to 'board nine cards into Storm for the same matchup. I'm glad that attrition battles will take a downward turn—I fatigue quickly, and I like big upsets and crazy swings more than I like grindy games. But I don't think Top was the best card to ban, and I don't think Aaron's reasoning makes sense.
If a deck had become oppressive and homogenizing because of deck-specific busted cards, the busted cards specific to the deck (like Terminus, Entreat, or, y'know, COUNTERBALANCE) should have been banned rather than the cards other decks were using, too. If, as he emphasizes, the time spent spinning Top was such a big problem, it should have been banned a long time before Miracles even came into existence. Aaron's conflated those two arguments, which masks the fact that Wizards failed both to keep Miracles viable without hamstringing it and to tread lightly enough not to axe other decks in the format.
So if I were a voting man, I'd vote "no," but I'm not sorry to see Miracles take the hit.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ronald Deuce
Personal opinion.
Not only is it disputable, but you haven't provided any evidence to dispute.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
I suppose this is the end of an era in Legacy. It's been a long time coming. I'll treasure mine forever, just like my Skullclamps. Good times and sweet memories.
peace,
4eak
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
This is the best decision Wizards has made in a long time!
FINALLY THEY DID the 100% RIGHT THING.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Machinus
Sensei's Divining Top did not meet justified critera for being banned.
Yes, that's why we can play the card tomorrow in Legacy. Oh wait, we cannot. :eek:
Btw, I love how you disregard every others opinion and posts by "quoting" them with some silly remark followed by a "nononononononoononoonono noooooooooooooooo".
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
I am certainly happy due to schadenfreude
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CutthroatCasual
Storm was killed by Leovold
How does Leovold "kill" Empty the Warrens for example? Leovold is a hatebear like everyone else
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Machinus
Not only is it disputable, but you haven't provided any evidence to dispute.
So like you did for the following two Statements:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Machinus
- There was no power level problem with Miracles.
- Sensei's Divining Top did not meet justified critera for being banned.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tormod
Feelings are so confused today. My beloved Maple Leafs lost and are out of the play offs, but then they Ban top today.
I always just assumed Leafs fans don't care about playoffs?
:tongue:
I'm a Habs fan who enjoyed having Miracles in the format, so we are having backwards emotions!
Go Oilers!
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
65 to 36. And I didn't even mess with the numbers.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
I know soooo many players who expressed a renewed interested in Legacy. They are all excited to play again and explore this new, open format.
All the Miracles players I know were fully aware that their deck was busted. They have other decks lined up and ready to play.
Everything is gonna be great!
I'LL SEE Y'ALL AT GP VEGAS!
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
danyul
I'LL SEE Y'ALL AT GP VEGAS!
Prick. You get to go play at the largest event Wizards has run in years and I am stuck on the other side of the world... Not fair. :tongue:
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Terminus/Counterbalance would have been a better ban. RIP card selection for janky non-blue tier 2-3 decks
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dice_Box
Prick. You get to go play at the largest event Wizards has run in years and I am stuck on the other side of the world... Not fair. :tongue:
It's gonna be a wild one. Especially with the meta in flux. I'll take a selfie with a torn up Top for ya.
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dice_Box
You get to go play at the largest event Wizards has run in years
You make that sound like a good thing?
Re: No one should be happy about Top.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dice_Box
Prick. You get to go play at the largest event Wizards has run in years and I am stuck on the other side of the world... Not fair. :tongue:
Well clearly just sell all of your non-BUG cards to fund the trip, no point in having them apparently.