Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
@Mr.Safety the bonus card at the cost of deckbuilding restriction & advertising what deck you’re on before any game 1 mull decisions can only be said to be balanced against a non-companion 7 card keep. A mull to 6 vs companion is an effective mull to 5, and a mull to 5 is as winnable as a mull to 4.
They still need to update rules to say all mulls by a non-companion deck vs a declared companion are made at -1 card penalty. Until this is fixed all companion winrates are boosted to the point that we’ll never know if the mechanic is balanced - imagine playing any deck where all opponents who ever take a single mull against you begin at 5 cards, your winrate stats wouldn’t mean anything.
It's just such a shitty mechanic. I can't imagine it ever adding something positive to the game. It also just feels like something that shouldn't be part of the game since it breaks so many core principles e.g. starting hand size and randomness of draws.
The question is whether WOTC will be fine with 50% of the decks in every format being Yorion decks or whether that gets banned next.
On Arena, and at least in my experience, Traditional Ranked Standard seems like 75% 3-5c Yorion piles that all do the same thing. Leads to boring gameplay because every game is literally the same thing over and over.
I expect a lot of the same thing to happen in Legacy. A lot of the Lurrus decks will switch to being Yorion decks. There's almost no downside to playing an extra 20 cards because there is so much redundancy.
Then let's say they ban Yorion, a lot of decks can switch to some other companion because a lot of them are basically free rolls. Not so OP that it should be banned but still dumb that some decks will get to start with an extra card just because.
I wish they would just errata Companions in someway to basically remove the mechanic from the game. At the very least they should have it take a slot in your starting hand as opposed to a sideboard slot.
I assume they'll also be printing more companions, so we have that to look forwards to :)
Disappointed but not surprised about the banlist, its literally one Zirda away from being the bare minimum. I would've loved a Labe ban (and the Companion mechanic nuked) but oh well. I might just give up on D&T dreams and throw together Spiral Tide, or maybe that list you posted in the Pox thread.
I honestly never saw zirda, but saw it floating around various post discussions because of monolith. Was it really that good?
Also astrolabe needs to go if fetches do.
It was a pretty aggressive ban, but it's quite easy to see the trajectory the deck would take as it effortlessly and consistently butchers not-blue fair decks (removal, their prime way to interact, ain't ever stopping infinite mana which equals auto-loss to Ballista or Karn).
Just another example of poor design where every reduced cost past the first [per turn] didn't put a -1/-1 counter on Zirda. Why it's so hard to build in a speed limit like that is hard to fathom.
On Astrolabe without Fetches, it would be fine. You have an abundant amount of ways to color fix: Mirage Fetch, Evolving Wilds, Ash Barrens, Tithe (any white dual), Land Grant (any green dual), and many others. Question is whether or not you want speed (untapped mana) or skew towards more powerful effects (Brainstorm, Sanctuary at cost of the occasional Fetch with etb tapped clause).
At the end of the day you're still competing against fairly unaffected cores of legacy (Cavern/Vial, Mox/Loam, Sol Land/Chalice), and you're going to need an equalizer.
I don't see how Fetchlands vs Brainstorm is even a debate...
A comparison format already exists: Pauper. Brainstorm is bad in Pauper. Monoblue has always played 4 Ponder + 4 Preordain + 0 Brainstorm. That says everything that needs to be said.
(Since Ash Barrens, Brainstorm is run by multicolor decks with enough shuffle effects from Barrens + Evolving Wilds, but not in decks without them)
But fetchlands don't need to be banned. WOTC already identified the problem and solved it with Pioneer. Players who don't want all the shenanigans enabled by fetchlands can play Pioneer.
Legacy is reserved as the format for players to enjoy 4 Brainstorm + fetchlands, an interaction you can't use in any other format. Otherwise they clearly want players to play other formats instead.
Last edited by FTW; 05-19-2020 at 12:30 PM.
For those that want to protect brainstorm, because Pioneer is not a viable alternative, neither is modern keep the cantrip, ditch the pushed creatures.
Specifically - Delver, TNN, Clique, Snappy. If those creatures add dynamic game play, or something something, relocate them to different colors (tirbes change as/if necessary). Delver , TNN , Clique , Snappy . Making blue decks stretch further for their goods, not being able to be pitched to FoW, those are the balance effects missing in legacy.
Or ban brainstorm.
Edit - add Oko too.
Last edited by ahg113; 05-19-2020 at 11:31 AM.
Brainstorm + Fetchlands are never getting banned, I assume it is the hill that maro will die on with regards to legacy. This was decided long ago, and the format has since been warped around the power of these cards. They have shown through their card printings that they want legacy to be the format of blue card consistency + other wacky-not-as-competitive stuff. If you dont like playing blue cantrips you just have to accept this or deal with the fact that legacy isn't the format for you and go play something else unfortunately.
I'm also pretty certain of that but for a different reason. I think, judging from the latest events and designs that wotc is struggling with what to do with the game. On the one hand they need new and shiny splashy things to keep selling packs, on the other, they keep being tormented by old formats on which they (by their own statements) do not focus on or even consider when designing new sets. The virtually 100% online play at this moment brings the problems to light way faster than the paper metagame did, since they cannot hide for months behind a wall of 'waiting for enough results to take action'. I think at some point in the future they will have a hard decision to make which is to quite simply throw these old formats under the 'official' bus and hand them over to the 'community' to do as they see fit. This will leave them to focus solely on standard / limited / pioneer under whatever name it will have then. This way it will be far easier for them to bring new splashy things in each set with minimum risk of breaking every single format making them look like total idiots.
As it is, they cannot keep taking money from people for playing these old formats (via mtgo) and not do anything when the result of their actions is to break them with every new release. Clearly they like very much the money they make from them, but also clearly this current state of affairs will be progressively difficult to manage for them and the introduction of new mechanics will be impeded upon by these formats which in turn will affect their bottom line with regards to standard / limited.
The other side of this argument is that they are just bad at what they do as evidenced by the fact that standard has got 4 cards banned, something that should not happen if they indeed design taking standard into account. Under this argument we are heading for some chaotic few years ahead until pressure is too much and they will have to let the entire design team go and start that competence area from scratch.
It would help if we had card draw hate in the same abundance and quality of GY hate. Card draw is one of the strongest actions in the game, yet it basically goes unpunished - except by a few, expensive, one-sided blue cards (Leovold, Narset, Notion Thief if you want to be generous). Find the flaw. Chains isn't really playable and Spirit of the Labyrinth is even worse. That's it.
Give us cheap, quality symmetrical hate, not some stupid garbage like Mental Misstep that blue decks can abuse the most (I'm looking at you, Veil of Summer). E.g. why not a pitchable white creature with flash that jams the draws of both players? Against normal cantrips, it would trade the prevented draw with the pitched card, all while the cantrip player could still manipulate their library. Only playing Brainstorm would get super-punished.
Symmetrical draw hosers are always going to have that issue that they just don't seem to have a place in any existing Legacy deck. The only decks I can think of that want them are non-blue non-aggro decks, and that limits it to pretty much DnT and some more whacky stuff like Pox.
Combo decks usually need their own cantrips and they also don't care much about the opponent cantripping. They only care about their Forces and hate.
Fair blue decks badly want them to break the mirrors, but that will only allow one-sided draw hosing effects like Leovold and Narset. And I honestly don't expect us to get anything more efficient than those. Getting similar effects in other colors such as white and black would be interesting, but ultimately it would still only be the fair UX decks that would play them.
The other option would be something that would already be a very efficiently costed card by itself and have the hosing ability stapled on it. I'm thinking at least 2 power on a 2-drop to be a viable silver bullet in DnT you can find with Recruiter. In order for it to be a 4-of it would almost have to be Kird Ape stats, if not Nacatl/Delver/Goyf stats already.
Thinking about it... that would be a very interesting card. Stats that keep up with Delver's creature suite, but with a universal extra-card-drawing-hosing-ability stapled on it. What would a 3/3 Spirit of the Labyrinth for 1 generic mana do to the format? Ignoring the fact that they can and will never print this into any set, I don't think it would actually be broken in Legacy. Maybe it would enable decks to fill a niche that has been void since Zoo died... Maybe it would hurt Delver the most, because they couldn't keep up with something that hates on their drawing and keeps up with their threats on board at the same time. Maybe it would make Maverick/DnT the best deck in the format, idk. I'll take anything over UrokoSnow.pile right now.
H went to all that work to update some primers and now has to re-update them all. Bummer.
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Let's try to keep ourselves on track and discuss cards and/or policies, please, thank you.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/pos...uncement-if-we
"Companion is having ripples throughout almost all of the constructed formats in a way no singular mechanic ever has. It might call for special action."
Should the Storm Scale be re-branded the Companion Scale?
Leovold and Narset are good because they're 1-sided and blue, meaning you can outdraw the opponent in blue mirrors and end up ahead even if they do remove your hate. Symmetrical nonblue effects don't allow that.
Spirit of the Labyrinth was supposed to be the long-waited card draw hate for D&T. The problem is a nonblue card that just hates on card draw isn't good enough to play. You stop their card advantage, but then you don't get card advantage either. Eventually they 1-for-1 trade with your creature and outdraw you. What would a better version look like?
Chains of Mephistopheles has always been playable in some Pox builds. The problem is being symmetrical keeps it out of UBx decks, combo decks don't need to run hate, and there are basically no playable noncombo decks that run black but not blue. Deadguy Ale could maybe run it, since Chains doesn't interact with Dark Confidant.
There's another problem. These 2 cmc permanents that say "players can't cast Brainstorm until this card is removed" are competing with another piece of 2 cmc symmetrical card draw hate that already sees wide play: Chalice of the Void. Chalice costs the same, is harder to kill than Spirit, shuts off even more cards, doesn't restrict your colors, and can be cast off 1 land. Why would you play something else?
The bigger problem with Spirit of the Labyrinth is that monarch and SoFI conspicuously require the user to attempt to draw on that same turn. Meanwhile you’re getting styled on by Portent, and until the Lurrus ban Bauble.
Spirit saw little play even after its release, before Palace Jailer or Lurrus-Bauble, and when SoFaI had fallen out of favor as a maindeck SFM target. Some decks tried it. It just wasn't that good and the body dies to anything.
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