Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
CB is still every bit as broken as it always has been, it is however currently not enabled. It was never SDT that caused the vast majority of the entire format to run the un-interactives: Boseju, Cavern, Vial, CB, Decay, and/or Chalice. SDT never gave you infinite counterspells, it made the card which provided that reliable. All that we're doing in legacy is going set to set hoping that WotC doesn't turn CB back on.
Edit: It's important to look at what's going on in standard, WotC seems to understand that having 10 lands on the field and being hellbent isn't exactly a formula for a healthy format. There's a very real push by R&D to find mechanics that mitigate mana flood, be it cards like Courser of Kruphix (out of rotation for a while now), Nissa, Vital Force's ultimate, the explore mechanic, and others - there is a very high risk of enabling a card like CB b/c to varying degrees they are playing around with the idea of top-of-deck manipulation as a way to virtually increase hand size.
We already have Soothsaying which gives so much control over the top of the Library and is still unplayable / marginally-playable / obviously-nowhere-near-close-to-DTop
It seems almost impossible that Wizards would print a new card that approaches the following qualities:
- Gives soothsaying-like control of the top of your library for 1 mana
- Can put itself on top of your library to counter a 1 with CB
- Cantrip itself on top of your library to shuffle it away if you draw multiples
- Draw 1 card at anytime to enable Miracles
Not to say that I believe top was or wasn't the correct ban, but it's pretty telling that decks like painter and 12 post are basically dead after the ban. Yes 12 post preyed on miracles, but it also lost it's best filter card
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Hey man, it's not dead yet.
ddft.wiki
New DDFT pile Doc
The Doomsday Codex
We're catching bullets in our teeth,
Its hard to do but they're so sweet.
And if they take a couple out,
We try to work things out.....
Meow.
Its not even true to say that "12 post preyed on miracles", as most miracle decks had B2B / blood moon and mentor to clock and disrupt cloudpost decks. Of course, if you only ran 1 entreat then yes, it preyed on miracles. At least post can run crap like ancient stirrings, what does painter get, faithless looting? LOL
Oh, that is 100% untrue about the matchup, mentor is a clock that helped the deck, but it went from 10/90 to 25/75 at best, post decks on Miracle Era were UG or mono-G, they ALL played krosan grip, so miracles had 1 shot to stick a blood moon or B2B hoping he doesn't have a basic forest AND doesn't find any krosan grip AND if he finds one you have your counterbalance with a 3-mana card on top and hope he krosan grips exactly at that time, its like... all odds must be on miracles favor to win this. The thing is... it was bad against 80% of the rest of the field, but that is how legacy is to some decks. B2B is actually pretty bad against a deck with Candelabra, just whatever untap 2 posts and next turn untap everything.
I think he's saying it displays a card's power level when it's the capstone to 4+ deck archtypes (Painter, 12-Post, Miracles, DDFT) and that them all falling into relative[*] obscurity after it's ban is telling to the cards' power level.
*[Note that word before ranting about how Miracles is still good]
Other than the holy grail of cards (BS), even a ban on Delver or Goyf wouldn't eliminate their decks. DRS ban would probably kill Grixis(delver) and BUG, and whittle down a lot of the effectiveness of non-blue midrange (and to a lesser degree, blue midrange.) I imagine we'd see a large uptick in Stoneblade variants and the format would slow down by about a turn.
This is a good point, but I don't share your optimism (or pessimism? Not sure what decks you play). Let's face it: we're playing in a format rife with game-design mistakes. There are two cards that lock out upwards of 50% of the cards in most people's decks on the first turn. There's a 1-mana 3/2 Flying. There's a thing that lets you switch bad cards from your hand with other cards from your library and protects you from discard—also for 1 mana. There's a 2-mana 6/7. And just last year, they printed a 4/4 for 4 that Thoughtseizes (sans the life cost), which regularly comes down on turn 2.
Counterbalance is getting pretty high on the list of cards that will break if a given set has a single library-manipulation card at relatively low cost. Though it's a moot point now, and the card relied heavily on another one to set up its (soft, though not that soft) lock, CB is extremely high risk. I think they missed the boat when they left CB in the format but took out Top, particularly given that all the problems they cited with Top don't really surface until the card's used with Counterbalance.
All Spells Primer under construction: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...Tl7utWpLo0/pub
PM me if you want to contribute!
This tells us that a card seemingly as subtle as top in comparison to what the rest of the things those decks can do (turn one blood moons, turn 4 emrakuls) is actually incredibly powerful in holding those archetypes together since they are basically non existent by losing top. Painter and 12 Post both were legitimate very very good meta predators that now are unusable
Those decks weren’t exactly world beaters with top, they may have been contextually good but it hardly seems worth it to worry over less than 1% of the format (else nothing would ever get banned in any format)
As I said on The Salt Mine after the banning, once action was decided it should be taken against Miracles Top was always going to get hit. Because it's Wizards M.O. to target enablers not enabled cards. Well outside of Vintage.
Top also had the time issue against it, a criticism not of Top alone but of both Top and Fetches. But since Fetches are untouchable Top was on the arse end of the horse and looking for a ride.
As for Counterbalance. Unless you get a repeatable manipulation spell that's cheap and efficient, Counterbalance is unlikely to be "Broken" again. That's not to say that won't ever happen but I just don't see something better than or equal to Top coming along.
The fact that they probably are in the 1% range and putting up a decent amount of top 8's just goes to show how powerful top was in those decks. We all know that the real reason those decks weren't played as much is because they required multiple copies of very niche expensive cards, candelabra and recruiter
I think it was more like 40/60 with a mentor configuration, from what I personally observed, however that could obviously be skewed. But I didn't purport that miracles was favored in the matchup, just that it is not nearly the underdog it is claimed to be in mentor build against post decks. And only hoped to illustrate that even its "worst" matchup was not nearly as unwinnable as made out to be.
And yes, Candle beats B2B, but any miracle deck would have artifact destruction brought in as well.
I’m wouldn’t be certain of that, in paper, it’s for sure a limiting factor but that wasn’t the case online where those issues don’t exist. I know this for sure with Painter which was sub $200 last I checked (which was a while ago) and the deck never did particularly well online (that could be attributed to burn being much more popular online admittedly).
Furthermore, those decks being more expensive (and thus rare) means that the few who do play them have more free wins due to opponents not knowing how they work.
Tax/Rack was considered pretty broken in it's day. Both those cards are still legal, and nowhere to be seen, despite the former coming off the banlist. Also, Chalice has been run since it's printing, and the same with Vial. Decay was printed for fighting CounterTop. Before that, people used Krosan Grip. (I would've liked to see Harsh Mentor vs CounterTop, myself) Also, this:
Pretty much. Cheap, reliable, repeatable library manipulation that protects itself vs. an enchantment that promises free counterspells if the stars align and your card matches their mana cost. I don't think there's any contest here for power levels.
I wouldn't say fetches are 'untouchable', but that they're more like Pringles. You can't just ban one of them.
^ "you cant have just one" is lays not pringles. Smh.
Real talk format is great right now, plz no bans :(
There are currently 1964 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1964 guests)