Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Probe vs street wraith doesn't make any sense.
Probe has more applications than street wraith.
1st it's blue (fow).
2nd it can influence cabal therapy.
3rd it can be flashed back with PiF, snapcaster
4th it provides information.
I'm not sure why that wasn't mentioned in the last post.
-rob
I think Taconaut and Fox are discussing particular aspects of Gitaxian Probe to arrive at conclusions about what makes cards banworthy in general. In the quoted posts they’re talking about the Delve applications. (As in, “Is cycling for 2 life inherently bannable? No, because of Street Wraith. Is seeing the opponent’s hand on turn 1 inherently bannable? No, because of Thoughtseize. What exactly is bannable?”) Gitaxian Probe has other qualities besides synergizing with Delve, but the issue is how to generalize them into broader criteria for banning cards.
Street Wraith also has purposes other than Delve, but it’s not bannable. It’s a black creature that can get exiled for Ichorid, it can be targeted by Reanimate in Shadow Delver decks, the cycling is usually uncounterable, and it can be hardcast in a pinch. “It fuels Delve and has a laundry list of other applications” must not be sufficient reasoning for a ban, since if it were, Street Wraith would be banned. I think Taconaut is trying to elicit that further reasoning by making comparisons to cards like Street Wraith and Thoughtseize.
Edit: Put another way, your bullet points do a good job of explaining why the card is good. But lots of cards are good. Explaining why a card should be banned is a higher bar than merely explaining why it is good.
YES, thank you! This is exactly the point of the arguments I've outlined.
The idea, like BirdsOfParadise highlighted, is that the characteristics Probe has that people don't like are shared by plenty of cards, yet somehow Probe is the only one that irks them. I essentially want to get to the bottom of why that is (personally, I think it is just bias, and that Probe does not meet the criteria for banning).
Well this is the whole problem with discussing the banned list in general especially in Legacy, there is lots of criteria but that doesn't necessarily matter at all.
BS as WOTC has said, meets every single criteria and more so of what is ban worthy (ponder is close too). So there is an admission that they don't just ban things cause of the criteria but also cause of feelings.
I think Probe falls in to that. There are a ton of people who just don't enjoy the card, or the fact that it takes away all the hidden information.
So the criteria is Fun and Feelings/feel bads.
Self describing smart players love to bluff and have those edges, and it takes them all away.
For me i love the card, cause i love playing silly things like Kiln Fiends etc. so i used it more "fairly" but i also have no problem with it being banned and respect people not enjoying playing against it (glad i can rock it in pauper still) despite it being my favourite card in the format.
The 'criteria' for banning is more complex than just 'ban the most powerful cards'. Probe was a powerful card that irked people and decreased the amount of meaningful play to a game. Wizards' aim for format management is 'make it fun to play, so people keep playing Magic'.
If enough people are sick of playing against a powerful card, there's sufficient justification for banning it. This is not a court of law where all cards have a moral right to exist until they're judged sufficiently 'broken'.
It is easy to argue that Probe was less broken than other still-legal cards, because...it was. But it's hard to argue that it actually made for better Magic games, in any sense of the word better. It was a card that made for worse Magic, feel-bad moments, and was sure to enable more broken strategies in the future. That's more than enough justification for banning.
I've tried to say this numerous times. I don't know if I am not being clear, people just don't want to believe it, or people think I am so incorrect it isn't worth addressing, but very few people want to even consider this angle. Probably because it leaves little to argue over.
There are actually really deep epistemological issues, along with the sort of issues that Immanuel Kant was addressing oh-so-long ago and the length of this thread speaks to how we have not really made any head-way into the fundamental issue of the discussion, which is basically: can we justify a Value (the Banned list) via Objective Facts (Data). To quote a summary of a summary (I'd be more than happy to explain what I mean in likening this to Legacy and it's Banned list, but only if people will actually read it and want to engage in exploring the implications of the whole proposition):
“Among true propositions, some are true independently of experience, and remain true however experience varies: these are the a priori truths. Others owe their truth to experience, and might have been false had experience been different: these are the a posteriori truths…. Kant argued that a priori truths are of two kinds, which he called ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’. An analytic truth is one like ‘All bachelors are unmarried’ whose truth is guaranteed by the meaning, and discovered through the analysis, of the terms used to express it”. This appears to be the mapping of one concept directly on to another, akin in some sense to the mapping of a fact onto a value (or at least onto another fact), where the second concept is truly implicit in or even identical to the first. “A synthetic truth is one whose truth is not so derived but that as Kant puts it, affirms something in the predicate that is not already contained in the subject” . It is such truths that require structure as a mediator, because the conclusion is not implicit in the premise. Scruton states, “what is original….is Kant’s insistence that the two distinctions (between the a priori and the a posteriori, and between the analytic and the synthetic), are of a wholly different nature. It is mere dogmatism on the part of empiricists to think that they must coincide.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I think Brainstorm, while obviously a bananas card, has been closer to reasonable as of late; there was a while where it was like 80% or something representation, but now it's back down to more like 60%, which isn't unreasonable if you figure:
- decks in legacy are often 3 colors, because the mana is good
- blue is in 3/5 (60%) of the possible 3 color combinations
- Brainstorm is probably the best blue card
- if you're playing a color, you should probably play the best card in that color
So it makes sense. I think cantrips are fun and make the game more palatable to play because you lose to variance less often, though I know a lot of people disagree with that. I think a brainstorm ban would be defensible but disappointing; I think Probe ban is both disappointing and indefensible from a power level perspective.
I do admit, though, that my perspective on brainstorm may hinge on my disposition towards cantrips; I'll concede that point. I just honestly think Legacy would be worse without them. Fortunately, for Brainstorm and Ponder, at least for the time being, I get to be in the favored camp, unlike Probe, which I'll probably never get to play again.
I think the reason I would like for them to stop using the "feel bads" banning criteria is that it just always seems to hit the decks I like, and never the decks I don't. That's why I try to make it clear I like some of these things; otherwise, they just assume everyone hates Probe and get rid of it.
No! No. I have answered this many, many times. Of all the arguments against Probe, this is easily the weakest.
Again, cards that give you exactly as much information as Probe:
Thoughtseize
Duress
Unmask
Sorcerous Spyglass
Vedillion Clique
These cards are all playable, and "smart" players like to play them, too. No one complains about them for some reason.
As soon as your opponent has a draw step or plays a cantrip, hidden information returns! Plus, again, if you couldn't beat them before they saw your hand, you weren't going to beat them if they played well anyway!
There are plenty of things in magic much, much less enjoyable than someone getting a peek at your hand. I've listed many I find more irritating in other posts. Nobody who thinks that the information asymmetry is what makes Probe bannable is being honest with themselves. This is just not a reasonable argument on which to base a case for banning.
At least you're another person that likes Probe, bonus for that. We do exist - so many people act like Probe ban was just a, "duh, of course," but not everyone disliked it.
EDIT:
That doesn't strike you as an unsatisfying position?
What if the next card that meets that criteria is Thalia?
By my count, Thalia:
- "irked people": I certainly am "irked" when someone plays a resistor that can kill me, is bounceable with Karakas, and can carry equipment
- "decreased the amount of meaningful play to a game": when Thalia is in play, all of my spells cost more, and perhaps enough that I cannot cast them.
- "feel-bad moments": well, I could've gotten you next turn, but all my spells now cost more. That feels pretty bad.
The only criteria you mentioned that doesn't necessarily fit Thalia is "ennable more broken strategies in the future," but I don't think that is necessarily true of Probe either (though it's perhaps more likely for a number of reasons).
Chalice, I think, hits all the marks. Why not ban these cards?
Sure, you can say, "maybe the banning process has a lot of intangibles in it, and play feel is one of them;" I'm saying, that's worse, because now the process is arbitrary. It only feels like a reasonable justification when the banned card is one you dislike.
I think people mostly agree.
Could you give an example of a synthetic truth?
All of these cards have a tempo cost (except Unmask, which costs card advantage), while Probe does not. If Probe cost a blue mana it wouldn't be ban worthy. Being free is enormous. It allows for turn 1 Therapy with total hand knowledge, it lets you keep Daze mana open, it leaves you the option for turn 1 Brainstorm, etc.
On its own, knowing what's in an opponent's hand isn't overpowered, but when that knowledge is completely free and cycles and pitches to FoW and feeds Goyf and makes Young Pyromancer tokens and pumps Prowess and can be Snapcastered, it's like... I dunno, maybe it's kinda too good?
You can reasonably argue it's not too good to be banned, but to compare to other cards with similar effects while ignoring the fact that it's entirely free and has a huge host of other benefits is kind of intellectually dishonest, imo.
Absolutely agree, all great points.
The idea behind comparing it to specific other cards is to address each of those points individually and demonstrate why they are not meaningful contributions to its banworthiness. Even if it has many contributing factors, if the factors are all small, they may not add up to a bannable card (and don't, in my opinion, for Probe). I promise I am not ignoring those factors; I have addressed each of them in different posts.
Also, again, I dispute it is completely free - if that were true, and all the things you're saying are true, every deck would play it. Plenty of decks did not play it, so it either must not be as broken as you're saying, or people were building their decks wrong. The fact that some decks employ different engines (like chalice, for instance) does not change this argument, because a card should only be bannable if you are forced to play it. Probe is not so busted that you had to play it or lose. Sure, it is very good, but I still feel that the bulk of the reasoning at WotC was, "well, we just don't like this."
HARD DISAGREE, this card is ruining our format! Ban PEEK!!!
@Taco
Agreed that the hidden info isn't a reasonable argument, if you look at my post i was saying that other people FELT that way, it was not my position at all. But carry on i get your points and agree for sure.
Chalice should obviously be banned. It's the most feel-bad card in legacy, leads to the most non-games of any card in legacy, and does not reward skill in any sense.
Thalia is less powerful and most of the format chooses to play ways to deal with a 2/1 creature cast on turn 2, which makes her a nuisance, but a manageable one. In terms of feel-bad I think there is a gap between resistor effects and the pure prison effects like Blood Moon, Bridge, Chalice, Prelate, Counter/Top where the game of Magic basically ends and you're forced to play to your 5% out.
That said - if a sizable majority of legacy players hated playing against DnT more than anything else then sure, ban Thalia.
I don’t get the big bolding. Every deck that has use and space for Mountain Yeti plays Mountain Yeti. The whole point is that if not every deck has use and space for a card, then the card must have its drawbacks.
Edit: Sure, everyone knows that (as H stated nicely) the actual hard and fast criterion for banning is that there are no hard and fast criteria. Banning is done by feel. Gitaxian Probe felt wrong to WotC, and arguing about the exact characteristics or quantitative measures that should make a card bannable won’t budge WotC’s needle. But there’s some part of us that wants everything to be orderly, and trying to agree on an orderly principle for banning is in some way fun. So we’re suspending disbelief in an orderly principle and trying to figure out what it ought to look like if it did exist.
Edit2: Taconaut’s “a card should be bannable only if everyone is forced to play it [to win in a competitive setting]” is an example principle. Do you measure that with Top 8’s? It seems like you are proposing a quantitative measure (a threshold percent saturation among decks that achieve a threshold high placing). Make it a rolling window of time and I could almost get behind that... with the caveat that it would be super embarrassing if any duals or fetches were individually banned.
OK, it sounds like you have a reasonable, consistent outlook on it.
I would also like to point out that you could easily add factors to the Thalia description like Zilla did for Probe ("well, it's a 2/1, but it does have first strike and the deck plays equipment; it is legendary so karakas protects it; it can be given protection with Mother of Runes, which comes down a turn before; it's often put into play with Aether Vial or cast with Cavern of Souls, so it's typically uncounterable; it's a nuisance in the abstract, but an actual lock when considered alongside wasteland and port; etc etc etc"). I think both Thalia and Probe are fine to be legal in Legacy, so it's a great example of how many factors can still add up to "not actually bannable, even though they're irritating."
Once again, Birds gets it.
Well, I personally think that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori is more important really.
In the context of Magic, for example:
Brainstorm is a Legacy card. This is an "analytical truth", because we have the criteria for the set [Legacy cards] and that set can demonstrably be shown to include the card Brainstorm, . It is a priori because we need not experience Brainstorm or Legacy, because we can demonstrate this simply by by having knowledge their definitions.
Brainstorm is the most prevalent card in Legacy Top 8s. This would probably be the closest thing we have to an a priori synthetic truth in Magic. That is, we don't need to have experienced Legacy or Brainstorm to simple count the frequency of it's occurrence (a priori) and truth of it cannot be derived solely from the definition of Legacy or of Brainstorm (synthetic).
Again though, I think the key distinction is that of a priori vs a posteriori, because what we consider "good" vs "too good" is completely dependent on our experience. And even worse, on our interpretation of our experience.
This is the essence of the problem of deriving values from facts. We have tons of facts, but what schema do we use to order those facts into values? In other words, what really matters? Facts alone? Interpretation of those facts? Interpretation alone (does that even make sense)?
Wizard's position is that interpretation of facts is what matters most. So, Legacy is "defined" by relatively few cards that are fundamentally, demonstrably better than others, that is a fact. The question left to interpretation though is, when is a card too much better and worthy of being banned? That can only be answered interpretatively. To make matters worse, the nature of that interpretation is largely inscrutable and not necessarily based on facts. It is also based off experience. And even more nebulously, on ideals. This is all a posteriori because what the "experience" is, necessarily informs what and how we will interpret the facts.
Facts alone are useless without a means to interpret them. The means we have to interpret facts about the format are subjectively biased, idealistic to some degree, human beings. So Legacy has an a priori definition, but an a posteriori identity. So, people want to make cases that, essentially, the facts dictate that such-and-such should or should not be banned. No such thing could be true.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I like reading about philosophy, and this post was interesting.
I think that the bolded part is the part I am arguing against; namely, I do not think that the question of Probe's banning had anything to do with "too much better," and everything to do with, "people have a negative visceral reaction to this card, despite it not being broken." I don't dispute that bannings are necessarily an a posteriori concept, but that the foundations on which those perceptions are built are misguided.
If all of the Probe detractors just came out and said, "Look, I hate this card. It's not the most powerful thing you can be doing, it doesn't break the game in any real way, but I just hate games of Legacy that involve this card in a real, visceral way," and there were enough of them that the majority of the Legacy community was shown to feel this way, then I would be at peace with the banning. It would mean that, for the most part, the banning improved games, even if it were just because people enjoyed them more. I can't argue against that, because then at least it's admitting that the point of the banning was about an emotional reaction and not a reasonable basis, and at the end of the day, I want a lot of people to play Legacy, so if more will with Probe gone, then, great, let's get rid of it.
By contrast, arguing that Probe is broken or free or destroys hidden information or whatever - those concepts just aren't tenable arguments, so those are the ones I address. If we just say, "we're gonna ban stuff that feels bad," then great, I won't bother. Until then, I would prefer there be an actual, reasonable basis for the bans (like format penetration, top 8s, etc - things that actually demonstrate brokenness).
I believe that both of the bans, i.e DRS and Probe, were simply done to shake up the format. Neither card was too powerful, they were just really good cards in a format full of other really good cards.
Grixis Delver proved to be the most played and best performing deck over a long enough period of time, and so they banned two of the best cards from it. Not quite enough to kill it, but enough to remove it as the best deck in the format. In the case of DRS, it didn't help that he was very easily splashable into most decks, therefore boosting the number of copies found in Top 8's. Probe was a bigger shock to me when they announced the bans, and honestly they probably should have started out with just DRS first and saved Probe for a future announcement to shake up the format again, but it is what it is.
However, there is now a precedent set by WotC; if a deck emerges and is accepted as the best deck in the format for a long enough period of time, they will ban a card or cards from it, even if those cards aren't powerful enough to be ban worthy.
Long story short... if Grixis Control and Miracles continue to be the best performing decks in 2019, I'm willing to bet that they ban Snapcaster Mage next.
Well, to say I am a novice on philosophical topics is generous.
In fact, I think I lost myself in the weeds there a bit, because the very concept of "too good" is really not very solid. I think the real consideration is something more akin to what you say next:
I actually don't think Probe is "too good" or broken. It's just not "good for" Legacy, whatever that means. Undesirable play patterns? Incongruent with ideal play? Harms imperfect information? Who knows...
It really doesn't come down to emotional versus rational though. There are rational arguments for it's banning or it's legality. There are also emotional arguments for it's banning or it's legality. The facts can support either side, actually.
It's about how to derive the "value" (legality in this case) from the "facts." In other words, it depends on what notions, ideals, expectations, experiences, perceptions, and other criteria are that warrant a Banning. There is no fact of this. It's an arbitrary decision informed by the "collective" representative minds at Wizards.
Well, I think I have bad news. As I have said in other posts, the process is designed to be, and likely always will be, inscrutable. You don't get to see how they make the decisions, or know why. You can lob facts back and forth at each other, but because you lack a common "valuation" schema between you and whoever, along with a common schema with those at Wizards that make the decisions, you will never agree. You will never even agree on what constitutes a fact and what doesn't, in context, let alone which facts are the ones necessary to take action or not.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
In response to your last paragraph, I believe the criteria has changed. WotC used to only ban cards that were obviously broken, like Flash. Mystical Tutor, Survival of the Fittest, Mental Misstep, Treasure Cruise, and Dig Through Time all made sense at the times when they banned them. These cards were banned because of their individual power level, as opposed to the collective of the deck(s) that they were played in.
In retrospect, WotC is now banning cards to dethrone the current best deck of the format. This started with Sensei's Divining Top and some bullshit response about time, rather than the actually busted cards (Terminus and Counterbalance). Miracles needed to be weakened, and so they banned a card from it. Then they did it to DRS and Probe to weaken Grixis Delver. I expect this new trend to continue, and we'll likely see Snapcaster Mage go bye bye next.
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