Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
That running joke literally is Legacy.
Years ago, I asked this very question. You can go back and see what people felt the answer should be.
The fact of that matter is, Wizards has definitively answered this and the fetch-Brainstorm interaction is absolutely a cornerstone, if not the keystone. You can argue there shouldn't be sacred cows, but there are and they aren't going anywhere.
This ban though is no different than the Twin ban in Modern a few years ago. People feel there is a defacto "best deck" and ahead of a Pro Tour, Wizards takes the head off of it. Nothing surprising or unprecedented here.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I was saying you were hating fetchlands, not DRS
You're just next in the line of "X got banned, complain about Y"However, i am kinda annoyed that WotC once again just chopped the hydras head, instead of laying hands on the enabler of all the problem cards. For more than half a decade, we just dance around the 0cc shuffle, colorfix and manabase protectors, while bitching/moaning/banning every card (directly or indirectly) running on their back. TC, DRS, SDT, DTT, BS, Ponder, Delver, Angler, Leovold, and many, many more.
It has become a running joke to ban everything but Fetches + Brainstorm + Ponder
Fetchlands aren't going to be the unique exception
That implies, I jump from one card to the next, which just isn't true. I keep pointing to fetchlands being the core issue since Miracles was dominating the format. No one "hates" fetches. I just outlined my points on how these cards create and feed dominant cores again and again. On my end, I am of course fine with different opinions.
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I think that if fetch lands do get banned, it would shake up the format so fundamentally that all bets would be off. I really feel that it would be like 2005 all over again. And let me tell you. That was an amazing time.
-The Goblins deck was constructed by dozens of people. It was all very egalitarian. We were trying lots of angles with no map to guide us. Aether Vial with Goblin Ringleader came about as the best strategy for it over time. Nobody even knew which goblins were better than others.
-Landstill was the de facto control deck. The only reason this was true is because it was popular in Vintage at the time. The exact cards in it ranged widely. Again, we had No Idea what would work best.
-Combo was a virtual blank slate. There was Solidarity (High Tide), and IGGy (Ill-Gotten Gains-Tendrils) came out soon after. But it was never that good. This was before Empty the Vaults and Ad Nauseam made TES possible. And there was Belcher, but it killed its user all the time because the search and tutor cards were weak. Lots of old Extended decks were attempted too.
-There were a multitude of attempts at nonblue control decks, but none of them ever quite caught on.
-There were also a variety of strange decks that all used Survival of the Fittest long before Vengevine got it banned. Goblin Welder (my first design and entry into Legacy) and Tradewind Rider were the most popular.
-And then there was Threshold. This was the very first version of what we would call RUG now. It was the best of the early decks but it took us many months to even figure it out. There were just not a lot of people and we were trying to figure out the boundaries as we went.
It was fantastic. It would be my pleasure to get a second chance to experience that.
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I agree. I thought Onslaught block was awesome!
Yeah, I answered that its Fetches, Duals and the fact that the format is managed by a banned list compared to vintages restricted list.
While i still think its true as a factor to distinguish Legacy from Modern or Standard, it has become a significant crutch for Legacy by maintaining the cantrip shells dominance. We are already down to only ask how much dominance is bearable (which is kinda ridiculous by itself), jumping from
Fetchland + BS + Ponder + FoW + TC to
Fetchland + BS + Ponder + FoW + DTT to
Fetchland + BS + Ponder + FoW + SDT to
Fetchland + BS + Ponder + FoW + DRS to
Fetchland + BS + Ponder + FoW + newest abuser
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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
Then following from that, we should ask, what then should define Legacy?
I think the easy answer there would be "The Banned List," but of what character is that? Note, the Modern Banned List does have a character, even if it isn't exactly consistent. Does the Legacy one?
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
I like the magic word "should". I don't think the Legacy ban list has any fundamental concept (unlike the Modern one), nor can I answer the question, which concept it "should" have.
To get closer to an answer, the banlist would need to get reviewed as a whole. We know that it makes little sense that certain cards are banned, but others remain legal
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As someone who missed the glory days, I for one would appreciate the chance to mess around with a few of the old banned cards.
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I wasn't implying it would be a bad thing, it would probably be the best way to systematically de-power a format that has become (in my opinion) far to efficient. Fetches would still have a home in modern/ vintage/ edh, it weakens basically every card that has been banned in the past 8 years(except misstep) so some could potentially come back. It weakens cantrips like brainstorm and ponder, any deck running more than 2 colors, and by association blues ability to access good efficient cards in other colors (which I think was a large contributor to format homogeneity since they could just poach the best cards from whatever color they wanted). The format in general lowers in power level, making more fringe strategies viable and increases format diversity. They would probably have to ban Griselbrand as well since I think reanimator/ snt strategies would probably fill the void in the de-powered format. This is of course all speculation but I think in general it would make it harder to use more colors which limits the power of the strongest decks which opens the format.
I think Maro takes the blame for something that has been developments fault. If you look at most of the mechanics since Theros, they have been mechanics that fundamentally don't work when the opponent has the removal to interact with them. Remember, it's their lead developer who said that the problem with Affinity in standard was that there were too many Shatters running around stopping all the cool things he wanted to do so only the one deck was viable.
Aren't mechanics design's jobs while development fine-tunes ideas, like adjusting power levels?
People like powerful things. Overcosting everything for the sake of shitty balance is demetrical to the game. No wonder Standard has become such a shitshow over the years with overcosting everything, mana-dorks suddenly being considered OP until recently and development pushing their set sellers to stupid levels that they cause problems.
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