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I think everybody agrees, even those who are calling this discussion "foolish" (as I am doing). The point is you still have to explain why we should see this as a problem.Originally Posted by Fox
Why? Why should we care about "manabase strategies" as long as we can have different "deck/gameplan" strategies?
Before some MrSafety starts again saying that I am putting words in your mouth, IF you are not saying that manabases differentiation is more important than deck differentiation (as in combo/control for example) or at least important "per se", what should "the problem" be?
Or (it appears I should try using the doubtful form if I hope to avoid stupid and annoying memes) are you perhaps suggesting that the current metagame is not diversified? or maybe it's not diversified enough?
Are you o aren't you saying that we can't call two deck diverse if they both employ fetches?
again?! fetchland impact on deck thinning can be calculated and is not relevant. Can you please go visit the link I provided you previously or at least do a quick google research?
[1] This is inherently anti-diversity.
[2] There is more than one thing going on here, otherwise we would not see non-cantrip/non-Sol Land/non-Cavern + Vial decks all using Fetchlands. They play Fetchlands, they win more for no other reason than they chose Fetchlands over non-thinning mana producers. There is one single better option.
Sorry to bother you, can you please have the patience to expand and answer to my specific questions? Because otherwise some troll will come here and say I put words in your mouth, I will reply, someone will order popcorns, etc. etc.
Why deck strategy diversity shouldn't be enough and why should manabase diversity matter at all?
If they win more (I haven't seen proof that dragon stompy for example is less efficient) the reason can't be merely the thinning effect (since it's minimal, as can be mathematically proven). I'd expect fetchland do their part (but in the sense of a more stable manabase, not because of the thinning effect) but are not the only reason, the deck overall being "stronger".
I am not. Sorry if you are. Why should anybody? Why should this matter enough to justify a ban?
I swear I am not mocking you. I will replace fetchland with duals just in order to try to make you understand why I and many others can't see any reason in what you are saying. What would be the difference if we were saying this:
There is more than one thing going on here, otherwise we would not see non-cantrip/non-Sol Land/non-Cavern + Vial decks all using ABU duals. They play ABU duals, they win more for no other reason than they chose ABU duals over [other] mana producers. There is one single better option
[1] This is exactly why the Moxen and Black Lotus are banned: mana inequality.
[2] That is a Sol Land deck.
[3] Mana inequality~only one way to play the game broadly.
Why mana equality works in vintage: Moxen/Lotus/colored cards vs Moxen/Lotus(sometimes)/Workshop/Sol Land vs Bazaar of Baghdad (virtual mana/CA engine). Now we can look at legacy and see three distinct mana inequality engines as well - but everything is not fine; Fetchlands massacre the other two (Cavern/Vial and Sol Lands). Now WotC can try to replicate vintage by specifically ramping up Cavern/Vial and Sol Land, but legacy is a much better positioned format to ban Fetchlands (ignoring financial realities) and have 5, 6, 7+ viable manabase approaches which compete for fair meta shares. More diverse starting points = a more diverse format.
1) It's not.
2) I don't see that as evident without proof. Many others and I already gave reasons to believe the opposite.
If you don't answer to my specific questions (like "why should mana inequality matter more than deck diversity or even matter at all?") I don't see the point in continuing the discussion. You can collect the audience cheers and congratulations.
Solomoxes is banned because is a free mana ramp that you would be forcet to play instead of a manabase allowing to go 4/5 mana on turn 1 every single game making legacy a manaless format?
Do you really think that power is played to fix your mana?
Mox can be compared at most with sol land, because both of them allow to "break" the 1 mana per turn axiom of MTG, fetchlands are not doing that, all they do is provide you with the color you need, when you need it, which is quite impressive, but not even remotely close to be as op as ramping freely in any deck would be.
"You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"
[1] Hard disagree. This is exactly why they're banned, you can't compete vs that unless you run them as well (or have a viable alternative).
[2] Each of those three strategies in vintage runs massively different cards - there's your evidence. Different starting points = different card evaluation and selection. That's called diversity. When the starting point changes so does your final destination.
I'm not sure what you are refuting in my statement with this comment. If diversity is our goal, what is the alpha level we should obtain? Is my jokingly presented model not ideal? Why or why not?
Simply stating that Fetchlands are very good and so are Moxen, I'm not at all sure what you have proven, besides that tautological fact (which we all already know, it's why we put them in decks and not Rocky Tar Pits and Charcoal Diamonds).
Again, I am not sure what you are proving here. It's tautalogical that Fetchlands are good because they are legal. Mox Sapphire isn't good in Legacy because it is banned, but this proves nothing about Mox Sapphire itself.
Again, the question isn't, "is a fetchland good?" The question also is not "are fetchlands the best possible way to construct a multicolor mana base, when paired with dual lands?" The metagame has already provided the answer to these questions.
The question is, what is the actual level of diversity you are aiming for? And why is it that number? How do you arrive at it?
Well, your point three directly contradicts the last paragraph. Anything better than something else, as determined by the metagame, necessarily decreases diversity. No one wants to play something that has no place in the modern metagame. Does anyone still jam 4x Glowrider over 4x Thalia? What about Smother in the face of Fatal Push? Why isn't this lack of diversity bad? So yes, the argument that fetchlands are bad for the format because of their ubiquity and power-level does hinge on the problem of some things being better than others.
Part of the allure of Eternal (and to some extent non-rotating) formats is that we get to run the best available card to solve our metagames. This fact is absolutely, 100% diversity averse. The question that my mainly satirical post asks is, what level of diversity is OK?
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Your post went directly into color pie @H. You skipped the prefix went straight to the suffix (the colors of mana). In your second paragraph you're talking about bringing back old cards and defunct old decks (finished products).
There is a more even playing field when deck construction begins, when nobody gets to use Fetchlands in legacy. You've skipped way too many steps between what that means and gone straight to talking about specific cards like Thalia/Glowrider. Different manabase philosophies find different optimal cards - you keep throwing around examples of optimal cards which are seen only from the Fetchland starting point.
There isn't any problem with a card being outclassed by power creep because those are end-stage outlets for mana; that is different from having only one clearly best pathway to optimally/competitively provide that mana.
You do realize the sole purpose of that soda analogy was to mock your way of arguing, right? If you think the analogy was dumb, great, it's exactly how you were arguing.
Overall, this last post (I didn't include all of it) was actually decent. Now, was that hard?As for other currently banned cards becoming less powerful, I can agree in principle for some of them, but personally I think both delve cards and top would remain overpowered nonetheless.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
The bolded part is the key. There will always be some cards that are outclassed and unplayable, and there will always be excellent cards that define the format.
Nobody wants a solved format with exactly one top deck that nothing else can compete with, and nobody wants a format where the strongest cards are always banned as a matter of policy until the weakest cards are good. All of us are somewhere in between; in fact, all of us are very close to the end of the spectrum where very few cards are banned.
"There will always be strongest cards" may be perfectly true, but it's also an empty statement in the context of curating a ban list. It does not point us in any direction except in the direction of having no ban list. "There will always be strongest cards. Why not play with Sol Ring?" You need further reasoning to decide what actually goes on the ban list.
The argument for banning fetch lands is that we'd move from the current location on the diversity vs power level graph to a location that is close in power level (a bit lower), more diverse, and still recognizably Legacy. If you don't agree that this is correct or desirable, that's totally OK; but let's not forget that the exact placement of the needle on the spectrum, with few cards being banned but some number of cards definitely being banned, is just a matter of taste. It's a trap to assume one side of the discussion just wants to kill blue, just wants to kill Brainstorm, just wants to kill tier-1 decks, and can't comprehend that some cards are better than other cards.
I am sorry to state the obvious, but judging from recent pages, it bears mentioning.
(I do not mean to direct this at you personally, H, in any way --- I quoted you merely because of the bolded part.)
Edit: With that out of the way, I'll try to be more concrete regarding the quoted question that I bolded. Mana bases are among the most fun part of Magic's strategy space, which is something I've especially come to appreciate after playing Hearthstone. The spell side of Legacy decks has diversity (and although there is debate on whether it's enough, let's put that aside for a moment); the mana side of Legacy decks has much less. As Fox has been saying, there are Cavern/Vial monocolored mana bases, Sol land monocolored mana bases, and fetch land/dual land multicolored mana bases. (Actually, there's also Lands, which is sweet, and which runs counter to the ban fetches argument.) The fetch lands wipe out other mana bases, or force them into narrow confines, just as surely as Flash or Skullclamp would do the same to competing spell strategies. If you asked me if Legacy would be better off if fetch lands had never even been printed in the first place (a question that is upstream from whether they should actually be banned), my answer would definitely be yes. I'll repeat my question from higher up in the thread: Does anyone think we'd be better off if triple fetch lands with no 1-damage drawback were printed in the next set?
True, I did take a wide look at "diversity" in general, a mistake on my part. The nostalgia aspect was issued by Finn and echoed by several others. Which is why I brought it up.
"There is a more even playing field when deck construction begins, when nobody gets to use Fetchlands in legacy." More even from what perspective? Not getting the synergy that is offered by the fetches collectively nerfs decks that use them and so boost the metagame power of decks that can prey on fetchless mana bases. Hypothetically speaking, this could plausibility make something like Death and Taxes the de facto top deck, for example. If so, how is this "more diverse" though? It simply took things tier one and made them tier two and tier two decks and made them one (not literally, exactly, but simply is a flipping the meta game on it's head). The presupposition though, seems to be that these new fetchless tier one decks would be less "oppressive" than the ones we have now. I don't see any evidence this would be true though.
You say I "keep throwing around examples of optimal cards" when I only mentioned 5 cards by name, one of which is Mox Sapphire and 3 of the other 4 have no real bearing on Fetches. It was a mistake to include Fatal Push though, because that does interact with Fetches, but wasn't my intent, it was just the first superior recent printing that came to mind. The point is that, in Legacy, we are "forced" to adopt the "best available" version of whatever we are trying to do. That is one of the cruxes of an Eternal format, the ability to get the best (legal in the format) version of the card that fulfills the role we are looking for. This function is necessarily and by design diversity averse, is my point.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
You do realize that I wasn't replying only to you and there was plenty of people more worthy of mocking that you did not reply to, do you?
You aren't so egomaniac to think I was referring only to you, are you?
I am sorry to state the obvious, but when someone states something that in the surface could be plausible but it's completely foolish once you spend 2 seconds considering it, someone may dismiss it as a fool dream, someone else, more rough on the surface but actually more open minded, would go to great length to try and find some sense in a madman thoughts, and one of the typical sense who can find is that he is not telling all the truth. (especially when another one who support the same argument as the first one admits it)
I am sorry to state the obvious, but when someone start telling that subtracting elements will increase the number of combinations that you can build from those elements, when someone start saying that if you have deck with less colors then the diversity will increase, trolling is just behind the corner.
You can play colors xyz in a deck, OR you can play xy, xz, or yz. Yes, seems more diverse.
Not at all, lol. Just pointing out that it's clear you have the capacity for civil conversation, but choose not to in many posts. You are a self-admitted troll, are you not?You do realize that I wasn't replying only to you and there was plenty of people more worthy of mocking that you did not reply to, do you?
You aren't so egomaniac to think I was referring only to you, are you?
As for others more worthy of mocking, I will disagree. Your approach from the very start was borderline patronizing.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
The number of combinations is irrelevant. The number of viable combinations matters. Adding Flash and Skullclamp to the format is unlikely to increase the number of viable deck types even if it increases the number of possible combinations in a literal sense.
That's a somewhat warped and oversimplified version of what I said, but since this is where you want to go...
If all decks were 4 colors, there would be 5 combinations. If you then reduced the number of colors per deck to 2, there would suddenly be 10 combinations.
If all decks were 3 colors, there would be 10 combinations. If half of decks started played 2 colors instead of 3, there would be 20 combinations.
I was making an argument not about combinatorics, but rather about the variety of 2-color fixing lands, rainbow lands, and utility lands that might see use, but if you want to be wrong about combinatorics, I can't stop you.
Sure, if you think patronizing is worse than foolishness.
I wasn't referring to you in particular.
By the way, to refer to things like skullclamps is a wrong analogy since it's a single card, whereas intervening on the manabase would cause a far more disruptive change.
Anyway, if the cards available for the manabases allow anything from 1 up to 4 colours, the available combinations are 5 monocoloured, 10 bicolored, 10 tricolored and 5 fourcoloured, for a total of 30 combinations. In a world of this kind nothing stops you from playing LESS colours, and you can't state that the maximum number of colours would always be the strongest (thus pushing out strategies with less colors). On the contrary, of course, if you have less color available you can't build decks with MORE.
If the cards available for the manabases allow anything from 1 to 3, the total would be of 25.
If the maximum is two colours, the total decreases to 15.
Not that it matters so much (since in my view the numbers of possible decks goes way beyond the number of color it can play), but if you want to be wrong about combinations, I can't stop you.
It seems there are reasons to patronize when most people lacks in basic arithmetics. You're forgetting that when you can play xyz nobody forbids you to play xy,xz,yz and build a competitive deck with that. It's not like UW miracle couldn't be a thing in a world of 4c delvers.
To try again to go to great lenghts to find a sense in why you are forgetting that in a world of 4coloured decks there CAN exist decks with less colours, I'll suppose you are still shocked by the recent past where decks like czech pile were tier1. Apart from the fact that tri- and two-colored decks were played even in this metagame, I'd like to remind you that we JUST had a ban that should severly reduce decks ability to play 4 colours, so maybe you can all just wait a while and see what happens before starting proposing fetchland bans
[1] There is already a marginal card quality improvement that happens each time you crack a Fetch; just by playing lands that pull out a second land, your deck is ahead statistically. The more obvious aspect is the perfect mana tutoring. This is better draws on average + better fixing (lower variance for time cards sit in hand waiting for a color req) + less chance of interactive variance (susceptibility to Wasteland, etc...) + zero loss of speed. That is too much power, by itself, for a deck with mana producing lands to overcome (exceptions for Sol Land and Chalice/Vial) within legacy's competitive timing window - I'm not even hitting on the implications of shuffles and land in yard yet.
The syntax you used there is confusing, so I'm not sure that answers the question you intended to ask. If you were talking about Cavern/Vial and Sol Land as preying upon non-Fetchland, then that's a hard point to make since non-Fetchland decks don't exist competitively. This nonexistence has everything to do with those potential manabases just winning more games if they decide to run Fetchlands. I think "play Fetchlands, you'll win more games" is not a contentious statement due to data (again talking about decks without Sol Land or Cavern/Vial).
[2] Yes, DnT uses one of the currently three competitive mana engines in legacy; however, we have never seen it in action against non-Fetchland/non-self/non-Sol Land decks. It might actually be fine, or we might have to take a more serious look at the mana-cheating power of Vial. As discussed earlier, Mox Diamond is probably the first card you have to scrutinize after a potential Fetchland ban.
[3] When you risk topdecking non-perfect mana sources, deckbuilding must account for those occurrences with card selection. The cards these lands are providing mana for have to be selected for fulfilling a role and also providing contingencies which justify the manabase at work. If you want to see examples of Fetch-less mana bases being less oppressive, look at how little of the meta share actually goes to Cavern/Vial and Sol Land versus Fetchland decks.
[4] The definition of optimal tools are generally less-shared between distinct manabase engines. Let's again look at Sol Land and Cavern/Vial, they use different pools of optimal cards because the implications of their mana engine demands it.
Isn't the core lesson of the DRS meta, that there is no reason to settle on mono-, bi- or tri-color decks, if your manabase easily supports 4 colors without automatically folding to Wasteland/Bloodmoon/Back2Basics?
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