Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
I don't really think it'd be much of a problem, you've got 2 main phases on the draw to find an answer or do something cooler and win; such a land isn't going to let you alt-cast Daze, and Fatal Push/StP/Decay are all still cards. Plenty of ways to word a land if that were a concern though like "only while untapped, Torpor Orb" and such. There's not much difference between what such a land would do and what Cavern of Souls does in terms of favoring one style and disfavoring another. If you were on the play, maybe you lead Wasteland and hold it up b/c that's a thing you have to think about now; it's not like Dreadnought would become some unbeatable strategy (but ya, it'd be a lot better).
The main point of the example isn't Torpor Orb on a land has to be printed specifically, just demonstrating that this is the kind of wording you'd need to see on a card to function as a hate card for ETB critters. No type of playable ETB hate exists, and b/c of that we're reaching a point where you can't win in legacy without non-ETB guys.
You look at DRS from this perspective and kinda have to say he was one of the good guys, and while he wasn't great at hating on SCM, he was at least decent. I'd rather have DRS back and strip Hymn out of the format to make sure we'd stop seeing him played with SCM (unless you were combo like Elves or exceedingly low to the ground like Grixis Delver, everything you could do with DRS was going to lose to Hymn-Snap or Shardless-Hymn with DRS). It'd just be nice to stop banning legacy towards ETB nonsense for once.
A couple of things:
—Torpor Orb's effect doesn't stop cast triggers, so Emrakul's still busted.
—One could always make a nonbasic Torpor-land with no mana abilities.
—Much as I'd like to see every copy of Thought-Knot Seer disappear (haha, an ill-timed rhyme!), are EtBs really doing that much damage? I, for one, just usually don't play them and haven't found them to be that oppressive, with exceptions like the aforementioned. Also, though I don't want to get into a big dust-up, arguing that we need to give cards like Tarmogoyf a chance to shine by dumping on EtBros feels an awful lot like saying we need Chalice so people can get mileage out of their Sedge Trolls.
—I've never been a big fan of "printed-for-the-sideboard" cards, and I have a feeling they're not going to make many players happy because for casual players they feel like dead pack-pulls, and in the eternal formats there's so little room for new ones that are really worth running. Heck, they've printed at least two cards (Amulet of Safekeeping and Damping Sphere) in the past couple of years that pretty much read, "Storm can go die in a fire," but I've never seen them played.
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I think either need to nerf blue creatures, nerf blue spells or buff non blue card selection. It used to be either good spells or good creatures, but since blue has access to both now they probably have to either take some toys away from blue or give some toys to everyone else.
I don't see how this is worse than Griselbrand or Tomb->Chalice. This is an objectively kinda crappy hypothetical land that says you yourself can't really play ETB guys, which is a clearly successful strat. The whole point of this isn't about the details of the card, and it could tap for no mana like @Ronald Deuce points out (it also wouldn't be the first time WotC made a horrid mistake like why does Cavern tap to cast Vial). Also what happened to "Dreadnought is a bad card, it dies to removal" ?? Also you'd need to have both of these cards in your opener, which means you'd be playing 4x of this land - I think you're giving the efficacy of that strategy a bit too much credit.
The point here is that competitive ETB hate cards don't exist, but that they would have to resemble something kinda ridiculous like this. Otherwise we can sit here proving a rather pointless hypothesis: if your creatures aren't ETB-value scum, they will not compete with SCM/StP/Terminus or SCM/Strix/Hymn/Kcomm - isn't legacy fun and diverse, maybe I'll sleeve up some TNNs, that seems healthy.
If you want to dwell on the specifics of the hypothetical, remember that the land actually has tap for mana so that [non-Dreadnought] non-ETB users can still incorporate it and not lose net win percentage. So to fix it for you "taps for colorless. Torpor Orb. As long as this land is tapped your opponent can choose whether or not creatures entering your side of the battlefield will generate triggers" or "taps for colorless, cannot be used to cast artifacts. Torpor Orb."
I'm with Fox 100% on this!
Edict, fatal push, swords, daze, force... ya'll are afraid of a turn two 12/12 swing? Crying that you won't have snapcaster to hymn me twice? Crying you can't go infinite on a vendilion clique karakas lock? Gotta get batterskull the hard way? Can't flickerwisp? :(
Legacy IS great because we have cards like blood moon, choke, city of solitude, back to basics, contamination, wasteland. Why not explore a new hate axis? WOTC print us a 3 drop artifact or enchantment that won't let plainswalkers enter the battlefield.
A playable portcullis for planeswalkers! Should be interesting to see.
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I understand the arguments why it might be ok, and they are very reasonable; there is plenty of removal and faster decks. I think chances are still that it will be too good, making other creature based strategies less relevant. The examples you mention require some major deck building sacrifices [edit: and card disadvantage] to use the Dreadnought, while the land described would not. Otoh, maybe it would enable a new aggressive archetype with it's own unique strengths and weaknesses to complement existing ones, I guess we'll never know.
I mostly just wanted to briefly mention the obvious danger of such a card as described in order to avoid a longer peripheral discussion on it, since like Fox said the card can be balanced if needed. And I agree, and have argued before, that new printings are a good way forward in making the format more interesting, bannings are not the only way. The challenge apparently lies in making these balancing cards good enough to be useful but not too good so that they ruin archetypes. It's a thin line to thread.
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I am baffled that its even a topic if a land without EtB restrictions, producing mana while providing a strong EtB hate ability would be balanced. It's like asking if a land producing White mana with a Thorn of Amethyst effect would be ok.
People are already complaining about storm, SnT, chalice and Delver. Do we even want to go down the road of legacy players slamming dreadnoughts and FoWs into each other like apes to win/lose games by turn 3?
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How is a 1 mana 12/12 trample shittier than a 3 mana 15/15 from a tempo and deckbuilding aspect? Dreadnought and the land in question would be a straight boon to the aggro-control supertype making it even more pointless to run clunky decks like SnT in order to "go large" in the format.
A 12/12 T1 on the play is absurd to handle in Legacy especially with the presence of 0cc counters/discard. Oh and of course it goes well with the cantrip shell and has no tempo-/carddisadvabtage if answered either.
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This is quite a bit different than your first scenario; a hypothetical land that says no ETBs doesn't do anything and it doesn't stop an opponent from being able to play magic.
On the second point: 4x hypothetical Torpor Orb land + 4x Dreadnought is not a good deck. Dreadnought + Chalice not really played together for obvious reasons - we're talking about:
-a creature that is heavily associated with using colored mana
-in a variety of shells which all rely heavily on Stifle + Wasteland to generate win %
-which is most often seen played with Delver and/or Standstill
I get that it seems like a super good combo, but ain't nobody winning more games because they went 8x Fetch, 6x mana producers, 4x Torpor Land (no Wasteland), nor is someone going to do better with Delver or Standstill b/c they went 8x Fetch, 6x mana producers, 4x Wasteland [or 4x Factory, not both], and 4x Torpor land. This isn't a 4x card strategy if you want to win with Dreadnought; at best you're looking at seeing UG builds with 1x Torpor Land and ~2x Crop Rot...or some strange Depths/Dreadnought/Expedition Map thing (probably with Urborg and Hunted Horror). Other presentations would stop at 1-2x copies if they're actually running the stats on win %.
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