FixedOriginally Posted by Arsenal
BAN LACKEY!!!!!!!!11111111!!!!
These types of discussions seem to cycle in and out. If someone were to ask me cards that kept the format healthy and promoted diversity FoW would probably be close to the top followed by Vial, Lackey and maybe some stuff like Dark Confident. Cards that force the opponent to interact with you.
To be honest, I destest combo more than I detest counters. There are enough ways around counters, you either outpaced those decks or built strategies like rebels that left their spells totally worthless.
Combo? It's all speed without the luxury of a counter strategy. I guess you could have a Battle of Wits deck against Brain Freeze decks, but other than that what defense do you have without FoW and a few other staples to keep combo down? FoW and friends keep combo in check without waltzing over decks, it would make red very powerful. However, even then not all can outpace a good combo hand.
The format is healthy enough right now that tribal can exist alongside combo in harmony with controller decks. The rest I believe is building new quality cards to make certain deck types viable, other than that there's really nothing much else necessary to be changed.
Unless if you want a Fifth Edition+ format.
Leave it alone. It is there to keep the format in check and balance.
I do think Blue is a bit overplayed, but the format is healthy. All decks are represented. Aggro, Control, Combo, Aggro-Control, etc are all represented in most Top 8s. This is amazing.
This is what the motive behind this thread is:
Dear wizards:
I quit because I can't play my darksteel collosus combo, where I play two and swing for 22 with trample.
There's already enough decks in the format that if asked just to list the tier 1 and tier 2 decks, I would undoubtedly forget some. Possibilities don't have to be infinite for a format to be healthy.
The threat of counter magic is valuable. Having it dominate the format the way it currently does is not. They need to find a way to tone down blue without crippling it. Brainstorm is about the only answer I can think of, given that Force of Will and Brainstorm are the only cards that all great blue decks have in common and the threat of Force of Will seems to be necessary to keep other things in check.
Unlike Vintage, wherein the sheer power of cards like Timetwister, Mana Drain and Yawgmoth's Will warps the format into using these powerful cards, Countermagic in Legacy is simply a strategy that thwarts the Combopart of the Rock-Paper-Scissors situation mujadaddy pointed out. It does not invalidate other strategies but rather makes other strategies possible.
Sure, we need blue and counters to keep combo in check. But by playing blue, and playing counters, we're allowing aggro to Vial in their creatures to stomp control. That makes the whole format fun in my opinion.
So, yes, I think you're right. Legacy's health is partly dependent on Countermagic.
This message has been deleted by Nightmare. Reason: Boo fucking hoo
I think the problem with countermagic is a problem of attitude. There are many decks that are discovered and proven competitive, but then appears a doofu that claims that they got a superior version by totally butchering the deck and adding islands, four Force of Will and four brainstorm minimum; and everytime I see that happens, it looks like an abomination. It's like throwing the recipe of a dish and replace it with fast-food and claiming their 'dish' tastes better because it has addictive salt in it.
Personally, I don't think that Force of Will is required at all to keep the format healthy, in fact, I think it has the opposite effect. Combo isn't inherently more evil than control, but a control-ridden format is seen as healthy, while if the best deck is combo the format is unhealthy, and if aggro, then is "undeveloped"!!! That attitude is bad, bad, bad. Health means that the basic strategies all have the same opportunities, and this require that their tools have to be balanced, too.
But people seem think that broken control pieces shouldn't be banned, only broken combo and aggro cards like Tarmogoyf should go. Tarmogoyf is bannable because it makes control too powerful, but combo decks destroying their original structure to pack 4xForce of Will in order to become "deck-to-beat" is not format warping.
However, I'm pretty sure that WotC won't ban Force of Will, because they acknowledge that certain cards are too powerful, but enjoy the kind of environment they create. They did the same thing with Necropotence; it was the obvious thing to ban, and they banned everything except it, until they had no choice but let it go. Right now, they have restricted everything except Force of Will in Vintage.
I hope that in a distant future, serious deckbuilding will not mean "add the default blue cards to the combo of choice".
The problem with Counter Magic is that in the right hands it will turn into a win, all luck being equal, more often than any other archetype. It takes the right deck to make this happen, but if you give a good pilot a good control deck the odds are very much in their favor. This doesn't mean that a combo or aggro deck can't get a nuts draw against even a very good pilot and kill him, because this happens also, but all things being equal the control deck is going to win more often. For reference here I will use Dreadstill and several of the players who play it regularly and the results they achieve. I'll use Canadian (Tempo) Threshold and several of the players who play it regularly and the results they achieve. I'll use Ugw Threshold of a year or two ago and several of the players who played it regularly and the results they achieved.
Counters at some level are required to keep the format healthy. The question is how you enable counters without making them a healthy step up on "I Win!"
For a truly healthy Legacy format you need to carefully balance power level such that blatantly broken cards aren't creating a dominant archetype that towers above all others. This should be a conservative effort but it should be done on a regular basis. There are two ways to do this, you can either make targeted removals against the decks that become dominant, taking the cards that cause the dominance, or you can print cards that explicitly confound them in order to create a more balanced meta. Of course cards that are just too powerful for the meta really should be removed when they are discovered.
Force of Will is not the primary problem in blue. It's a very powerful card and it can swing the game defensively and offensively, but once used (at a substantial cost) it often leaves the control player sitting and hoping his opponent does not now topdeck an answer in the next turn. Currently Force of Will is not used in combo much and so it does not power instant wins.
The problems in blue are Brainstorm and Counterbalance. Brainstorm because it creates insane card quality when it is used and because it allows blue to potentially go lighter on lands than most other archetypes creating a greater density of threats and responses. It creates the card quality in all blue decks and the density in those that choose to exploit that characteristic. Counterbalance is a problem because it turns the temporary gains that Force of Will creates into permanent gains. Brainstorm works brilliantly with Counterbalance also, both to find it and as a virtual counter spell in many situations.
They only need to print one card right now to make Force of Will very balanced:
Essence of Teeg
G/W G/W
Enchantment
Noncreature spells with converted mana cost 4 or greater can't be played.
Noncreature spells with Variable Colorless in their mana costs can't be played.
That would do it, and would also handle Ad Nauseum and Tendrils of Agony fairly well.
Hey Drago, I take great pleasure in making my opponents play FoW on my schedule to force them into a position of card disadvantage. Unless you are under the gun from an uncontested Tarmo or something, I have no problem stranding Daze and/or making my opponent use a FoW on my spells when a more specific, but less versatile defense would be better for him.
FoW is at its best when nothing else will do. The further you go from that circumstance, the worse FoW gets compared to the actual right card for the job.
The prevalence of FoW makes a lot of other cards "fair" while at the same time not being especially good against the entire field. And Daze sucks past a certain point.
Very necessary. Very healthy.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
I'm going to actually try to address the original question on it's merits;
I do think it would be healthier if combo in the format looked more lik pre-Storm combo... you know, where they actually used a combination of cards to kill you, rather than a bunch of mana spells leading up to a big burn spell.
Dragon was an excellent deck in this respect; it lost to both resolved Enchantment hate and creature hate, in addition to bounce and counters. Graveyard hate was also pretty good, although it didn't have that remove-your-board-from-the-game factor.
At the same time, with Bazaar it was fast and resilient enough to be a top deck.
I wouldn't unban Bazaar because that's retarded, but unbanning Worlgorger Dragon and Entomb, and Hermit Druid and Earthcraft and other more permanent-based cards, would help balance the format's colors a bit, I think.
So would banning Tendrils of Agony or Lion's Eye Diamond.
Primarily, however, blue is dominant because of Tarmogoyf and the effectiveness of Counterbalance-Top.
Banning Force of Will is a bad idea because you're attacking a symptom of blue dominance rather than the cause; and if you did so, either Blue would remain on top through CB and Daze and Stifle, or more likely, Tendrils-combo would be rampant.
If you want to ban anything to fix the color dispersion in the format, it should be Tarmogoyf and/or Tendrils or possibly LED. I've actually been pushing LED, but now that I think about it Tendrils if the fundamental problem, and has been since it was printed. Tendrils of Agony completely changed the way combo was played, and not for the better, I think. Which is ironic, because Storm was supposed to be an anti-counter mechanic, yet the only decks that can really stop it effectively rely on counters to do so. And sometimes Orim's Chant or Thoughtseize, although those are less reliable.
My $0.02
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I think you might want to read this Tom's LaPille article about recent vintage bannings. Maybe you can find enlightening that he depicts the meta as "dark ritual decks" and "force of will decks", because as the article states, is Force of Will the card that shapes these decks. R&D doesn't agree with your claims of it being just a tool that happens to be in the most played color, but the main reason the color is so played. They allow it to exists ONLY because they find these decks interesting, much like they see interesting broken storm combo!! They don't ban tendrils nor Dark Ritual because strong combo is needed for the format in their eyes, and it might perfectly be because otherwise they would have to ban FoW.
Also, you know, there are other decks besides blue that have to face Tendrils, and all them pack combo hate, and they do fine with it! It's just that they have to play a first turn and/or use enough slots for early game countermeasures. Force of Will+Brainstorm totally bypass that, so much that they don't need to change their deck a bit to protect against fast combo, it already comes with the pack!
Moreover, locks like countertop might be fairer if you only had to wait for one disruption spell instead of two because of the Force of Will backup. Other countermagic also protects it, of course, but only Force of Will+brainstorm allows it to enter play so early. And saying countertop is the same as saying anything broken that Force of Will decks can play so soon because they don't have to worry about disruption: Tarmogoyf, combo pieces or whatever. In that sense, Force of Will doubles the time other decks require to be able to fight back (need two answers), and halves the time the Force of Will deck need to start their game (don't need mana open nor a decoy for their opponent disruption). It doesn't matter that after using it you are in a bad position card-wise, because you have broken your opponent by just casting it.
In addition, I don't agree that banning it would make tendrils unstoppable, there are still a lot of zero and one-mana counters on blue's arsenal that stops it, they aren't as prevalent right now simply because there's no need. And blue can still use artifacts and other color's defense mechanisms against tendrils. In fact, FoW is probably hindering right now the printing of cards in other colors that might provide defense against storm, because it's overplayed and it's so good against it (and against the rest of the field).
I still don't think it will be banned, but it's not because it doesn't deserve the banhammer. Probably they will take away brainstorm or top, more likely the last one because it protects itself like recurring nightmare did.
I recognize that Force of Will modifies the choices that are made before the game (archetype choice, how you build your deck, and metagame predictions), but it also makes actual gameplay itself more interesting and rewarding to skilled players.
Force of Will promotes interaction in the format, which is part of maximizing the number of choices available during a game. Choice is the medium by which skill is tested, and choice is therefore the basis of competition/gaming. Force of Will's enhancement of non-trivial interaction increases skill caps (the point at which an increase in player skill stops translating into game winning benefits), both enabling diversity of strategy and creating greater depth to the format. Force of Will promotes competitive gaming.
peace,
4eak
Last edited by 4eak; 06-05-2009 at 01:04 AM.
Unban Land Tax.
Counters are good, but only if they come in the form other than a 2cc enchantment.
What's wrong with hesitation?
Just so we all remember, other than both formats having some very old cards run, legacy is not vintage. Vintage is a format driven by a majority decks filled with piles of enablers, acceleration, and a win con. Yes, there are some aggro exceptions, but most of the decks move very fast, and force allows the other side of the equation some interaction beyond shaking hands and rolling dice.
Legacy, on the far removed other hand, has a much slower game speed most of the time. Force forces interaction (please forgive the pun), but it does not ruin peoples days like it can in vintage. Forcing an early goyf is no where near as game changing as forcing an early Tezzerat.
If 4 of the 5 decks with a [DTB] tag had Dark Ritual included would anybody be arguing much against Dark Ritual as a ban target? If the majority of [DTB] decks historically had revolved around Dark Ritual and Tendrils of Agony would anybody be arguing that those spells were necessary for the health of the format?
Blue dominates, as it has done for 15 years now, due to the fact that card advantage/selection and the ability to say no at crucial times in a game promotes a consistent ability to integrate powerful win cons into a hard control shell and then inevitability takes over.
Banning Tarmogoyf would just promote a new addition to the standard blue counter suite in Arcane Denial, as Lorescale Coatl became the new thing that killed inevitably in combination with Counterbalance, Brainstorm and Force of Will. People would die just as surely to the Coatl build as they did to the Goyf build. With Sower of Temptation added to the roster of creatures Counterbalance can even counter 4cc spells now and then, which was basically the one real hole in the system previously.
If WotC is serious about creating some form of balance in the color wheel they'll ban a few cards that make blue powerful and accept the fact that the alternative is to ban a large number of splashable win cons otherwise and never print anything else that blue could possibly take as a win con.
This is like the Flash argument all over again. People who wanted to ban Protean Hulk thought that he was what was broken in the combo. People who wanted to ban Flash recognized that *something* would always be broken or threatening to become so as long as Flash was in the format.
Banning Tarmogoyf isn't quite the same thing, but there are probably a half dozen cards in the meta right now that would replace goyf as a blue shell killer if he was suddenly pulled out of the mix. Goyf isn't the killer, the blue shell is.
Lol at the second comment. The card "Flash" wasn't broken. Sure, Flash into Sundering Titan is pretty savage...but not broken. It was Flash + Protean Hulk. One of the two needed to go. If Hulk had been banned, but not Flash, Flash wouldn't be played right now.
Also, lol. Arcane Denial is terrible, Coatl or no.
I think what it comes down to is that I think a midgame aggro/coptrol deck like Thresh, Meathooks, or NLU is a HEALTHY best deck for the format. I don't see a need to ban a bunch of cards to knock Thresh off of the pedestal as the Best Legacy Deck.
If the best Legacy deck was TES or ANT, then I might want to shake things up, because these decks aren't very interactive. Thresh is all about interactions-counter their stuff, Swords their creatures, beat them to death. Sure, they're super efficient, but both players get to play spells. Can you imagine a tournament where a third or half of the players were playing storm combo? There might be some Thoughtseizes and Orim's Chants floating around, but the format would be decks that beat Storm, and Storm. Storm mirrors would involve the mirror, and a well timed Thoughtseize or Chant.
On the other hand, Aggro/Control mirrors are interesting to play. Aggrocontrol versus combo is interesting. Thresh and friends force interaction between the players, and that's healthy.
Sure, I'd be happier if the dominant deck was Survival or Aggro Loam, but I think Thresh is one of the healthier decks to be the Top Dog in the format.
Control matches are all about interaction. Combo matches against other combo decks and aggro decks are all about Goldfishes. Control decks are a lot more interactive than combo decks; and that is healthy. The more interactions players make, the more difference playskill can make. If you're Steve Menendian, playing Soldiers against TES, all the playskill in the world isn't going to save you. If you're playing Zoo, it'll be closer, but a good TES player will steamroll a great aggro player. On the other hand, if you're Steve Menendian playing control against an aggro player, and the match is 60/40 in his favor, by golly, playskill can make all the difference.
That's why Control is seen as more healthy than combo. Extra opportunities for interaction between the players, and more chances for playskill to make a difference, makes a control-defined metagame more interesting than a combo-defined metagame.
InfoNinjas
I don't know buddy... banning counters from a format is like telling a basketball team not to play defense anymore. Free points for the attacking team... everytime. It's just stupid.
++ Team aYb - all your base (are belong to us) ++
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote