View Poll Results: Most bannable card in Legacy? (not that they will touch it)

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192. You may not vote on this poll
  • Brainstorm

    16 8.33%
  • Force of Will

    4 2.08%
  • Lion's Eye Diamond

    35 18.23%
  • Counterbalance

    34 17.71%
  • Sensei's Divining Top

    103 53.65%
  • Tarmogoyf

    46 23.96%
  • Phyrexian Dreadnaught

    2 1.04%
  • Goblin Lackey

    4 2.08%
  • Standstill

    6 3.13%
  • Natural Order

    8 4.17%
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Thread: All B/R update speculation.

  1. #22221
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    the anti-veil crowd is probably the pro-brainstorm crowd. i'm so glad there's a card that can punish blue.
    i'm gonna keep a green source untapped, for life...

  2. #22222
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    The only cards that should be looked at are Veil, astro, oko. Lets see how breach works out
    UR Dreadstill creator and BRx WGD Combo Pioneer
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    EDIT: and Roodmistah. If Dreadstill sucks then he's been mopping up the East Coast with a "crap" deck and making you all look bad.
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    "Protection from player" is like a joke ability from Unglued. Ban this crap from legacy asap.

  3. #22223

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    For example, lets take the Chalice of the Void case. While we can consider that, subjectively, one does not "have fun" being locked behind a Chalice for 1 with a hand of one-man spells. However, I think it is facile and flatly short-sighting to end the valuation process there. Not to mention, under what auspices do we discount the subjective valuation of the Chalice player? By making a normative claim? On what do we base that?
    You don't need to put "have fun" in scare quotes if we can arrive at an agreed definition of what that means. Repeating myself: "Games are more enjoyable when players have more opportunity to make meaningful decisions in-game. "Meaningful decisions" can be defined as nontrivial (i.e. made with consideration for the specific matchup and gamestate) decisions where the outcome significantly influences who wins."

    If you agree with this definition then it seems pretty clear to me that Chalice contributes negatively because it promotes a "does this wreck you?" "did I have it on turn 1?" "can my opponent answer this immediately" kind of gameplay that de-emphasizes the importance of making decisions throughout the game and instead emphasizes matchups (chalice very good against a deck full of 1-mana cards and worse or near-useless otherwise) and opening hand quality (turn 1 chalice vs turn 3 chalice vs turn 1 FoW etc).

    If you don't agree with this definition then you have some other idea of fun (or you don't think fun is the ultimate ideal, but I'm not going to address this because anybody who thinks this is already too far lost in the weeds), for example
    - Games that de-emphasize decision making are more fun
    - The randomness of encountering good or bad matchups is fun
    - The randomness of games being decided by your opening hand is fun

    I think it's possible to justify disregarding this position based on the following ideas:
    1. A large part of the current and historic appeal of MTG is based around the idea of it being a legitimate competitive endeavour where the most successful players are the most skilled/talented ones. It seems to be a consensus that it is less interesting for both players and spectators for games to be decided by factors that are largely outside of the player's control such as matchups/mulligans/the die roll
    2. Even if we agree that random games of chance are the best kind of games, there are plenty of casino tables that already cater to innumerable variations of these. In the space of all possible games it is much more interesting for MTG to be a game where the winner is determined by the skill of the players. (While there are also many other games that combine elements of chance and skill, such as Poker or Backgammon or Hearthstone, the difference between all of these games is far more meaningful than the difference between e.g. Blackjack/Roulette/Slots, which is largely an aesthetic illusion)

    Of course some variance is a good thing (there is a legitimate reason why many people find MTG more appealing than Chess) but [warning: subjective] this is already provided for in the maximum-4-copies rule and by drawing a random card every turn. You can admit a preference for more randomness if you want, but then you also have to admit that you want the game to move in a direction that de-emphasizes in-game decision making

    I think Chalice can be viewed a metagame and deck-building stressor, that turns the "naturalist" fact of the efficacy of efficiency and optimization back against itself. I believe this is, in fact, a good thing. It is one of the few factors that pushes against a "race to the lowest" CMC cards possible and one of the few forces against Xerox style strategies that is actually effective. Minus Chalice, there is essentially no reason to ever not be 100% mana-cost optimized (that is, the lowest possible CMC is best).
    This is a relatively common opinion but you are making an unjustified implication that a ubiquity of 1cmc cards is a bad thing for the format. This is similar to the argument that a ubiquity of blue cards is a bad thing for the format. Neither of these things necessarily has any impact on the tendency for games to involve meaningful decisions, so the burden is on you to introduce some additional metric for why it's positive thing to be able to punish people for playing low-cmc cards. You can cite format diversity, which I agree abstractly makes the game better, but you can still have various control decks, aggro/tempo decks, and combo decks, all playing as efficient cards as possible, and without relying on the awful dynamic of "oh my opponent turn 1 chaliced me I guess I lose / oh I had the answer guess I win." If you want to increase the space of playable cards to include spells further up the curve (which is possibly a good idea, because it could lead to more interesting deckbuilding decisions) then you should be arguing to ban daze and/or wasteland rather than pretending Chalice of the Void contributes positively to the format.

    As for the claim that Veil is pushing people to run decks that either use or don't care about Veil, or that it has lead to a decline in Blue and Black disruption, seems, well, completely unproven aside being totally hypothetical. What if it's the case that people who were on ANT switched to TES? Or, were on Ur Sneak and now on Ug Onmi, or that people want to try to new combo-deck flavor of the week with Breach?
    Thats why I put a big "hypothetical" in that post, I wasn't trying to say "here is the ironclad case for banning veil as the format exists right now", it was simply an example trying to illustrate that
    1. Truly objective standards for bans do not (cannot) exist
    2. You can (and probably should) make subjective arguments for banning a card by basing them in some simple axioms that most people should agree with

  4. #22224
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by H View Post

    I am trying to read what you are saying as charitably as I can, but all I continue to find are seeming appeals to historical notions and subjective valuations that I honestly have no idea how to evaluate as factual or not.
    It's funny how you will quote back a lot of what I've said and play "teacher" without actually answering any of the questions.

    Please go back and read post #22112 on page 1106 of this thread. It explains a lot of the questions you are asking me to answer myself. "Historical" values of magic cards is the division of power between the colors - red does direct damage, black destroys creatures, blue bounces, white exiles - blue counterspells, black discards, green has big creatures, blue draws cards, and red has haste. Red can destroy artifacts but not enchantments, black uses the graveyard, etc. - the list is compiled very well in the link in the article linked in post #22112.

    Someone pointed out that combo running Veil over Thoughtseize is good for the non-blue fair decks and other combo decks, which is a good point.

    The 'Blasts (Pyroblast / Hydroblast / Red Elemental Blast / Blue Elemental Blast) - also break the historically values of magic cards - red cards don't counterspell or destroy permanents and blue spells don't destroy permanents - but if you look at the Blasts, they were printed in Alpha through Fifth Edition, basically the beginning of Magic when the R&D and power balance is still being discovered. Legacy is full of cards that boarder upon being banable - Brainstorm is often discussed. However, I would point out that these cards were printed in Magic's early days. Brainstorm wasn't considered an over-powered card when it was printed because there were not very many shuffle effects - the cards you put back you typically drew over the following turns. Thawing Glaciers worked and some people did that to shuffle. With fetch lands, Brainstorm all of a sudden became a lot better, R&D learned, and they have not printed other cards like that.

    Fast forward to 2020 and there is major power creep. Theros Beyond Death is the first set in a year that feels how a set release should feel for a Legacy player - Modern Horizons, War of the Spark, and to a lesser extend, ELD and M20, were all high on the power level and it seems like Wizards is trying to make more powerful cards, which I don't know if I am a huge fan of. The reason is that it creates player burnout when there is a constant need to spend time and money acquiring cards - I know a lot of us spent $100 each on W6 and Oko only to see W6 get banned and now probably not Oko, but who knows. The solution is not to print these over-powered cards to begin with.

    Tabletop Magic now has Online and Arena to compete with. Legacy now has Modern, Pioneer, Brawl, and Standard all drawing from the player base. Star City Games is no longer including Legacy on the series, so it seems like Online is the place to play, where thankfully the reserved list hasn't ruined the game - many more people would play tabletop legacy if duals were affordable.

    Back to Veil - a few things I think overpower the card:
    1) The "Silence" effect - the fact that Veil makes all of your cards uncounterable until the end of the turn - it's too powerful - if it said everything on the stack or target card cannot be countered, that is more reasonable. Also, if it limited cannot be countered to blue and black cards - should not include red and artifacts.
    2) Permanents and player gaining hexproof until end of turn - it's too powerful - should not include all permanents and the player.
    3) Card draw - blue doesn't have a 1 cc counterspell that replaces itself, it's too powerful if you Thoughtseize into Veil, not only do they cancel your Thoughtseize, but also draw a card. Veil shouldn't be better against Thoughtseize than Spell Pierce because blue's primary ability is to counterspells, not green.
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  5. #22225
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Regarding objectivity/subjectivity on bans, here are a few things to consider:

    1) Unless you have all of the entrants from a tournament (all decks, all places), the information is not as helpful. Many lists only post the top 25% or less of decks, which is somewhat helpful, but it doesn't show how many people played the deck or card.

    2) What you really need to know is how decks performed against opposing decks - this is done by analyzing lots of data, which Wizards possesses, mainly through MTGO. Here is the announcement where they ban W6 in Legacy - https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...d-announcement - here is a quote "Since their adoption of Wrenn and Six, Temur Delver variants have become dominant in Legacy. In Magic Online league play over recent weeks, Temur Delver has maintained a 56.5% win rate and earned over three times as many 5-0 finishes as the next deck. Most importantly, it has a favorable matchup against each of the other ten most-played decks."

    56.5% win rate is very objective - W6 was creating an unfair advantage and it was unfun for players who did not play W6 and it wasn't that fun play W6 vs W6 mirrors either.

    Three times as many 5-0 finishes as the next deck - a bit troublesome, because we don't know the number of entrants - what if the deck had four times more entrances?

    Favorable matchup against each of the other ten most-played decks - this is great data showing that W6 created an unfair, unhealthy environment in which it dominated Legacy and needed to be banned. I personally liked W6 as a card (subjectively), but after I read this data, I understood why I liked W6 so much and that is because it was winning me games against everything except combo.

    3) A lot of people won't play combo - "fair" decks tend to be more popular - combo tends to be 10-15% of the Legacy metagame - https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/legacy#online - Currently, Underworld Breach is 4%, TES 2%, and ANT2% of the online meta - to look at a series of tournament results and say "x card only posted x times or in x% of lists" usually doesn't matter.
    "Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference."

  6. #22226
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Chalice of the Void keeps coming up a lot in this thread. I think now it matters less than ever. The reason is that the decks it stops have more ways to play around it or remove it. Oko takes care of it. Brazen borrower does too (or it least returns it for a turn). Wishclaw finds Chain of Vapor with fewer drawbacks than Infernal Tutor.

    I play RUG Delver - prior to Modern Horizons, the deck had 30 1-drops (maybe 28) and no maindeck answers to Chalice. Now Brazen Borrower and Oko both are maindeck answers to Chalice and Force of Negation is another answer.

    ANT/TES have fewer one casters (less discard) and Wishclaw to find a maindeck answer, which they never had before.

    Veil of Summer actually negates Chalice (if they play it on 0 or 2).

    Karn destroys Chalice with +1.

    Abrupt Decay sees a good amount of play.

    Shenanigans is a solid sideboard option.

    Which decks is Chalice stopping? Chalice seems like it is losing power at the moment.
    "Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference."

  7. #22227

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Water_Wizard View Post
    Chalice of the Void keeps coming up a lot in this thread. I think now it matters less than ever. The reason is that the decks it stops have more ways to play around it or remove it. Oko takes care of it. Brazen borrower does too (or it least returns it for a turn). Wishclaw finds Chain of Vapor with fewer drawbacks than Infernal Tutor.
    I only cited chalice as a clear example of a card which I believe has a detrimental effect on gameplay.
    I agree that the recent proliferation of chalice answers (specifically FON and Oko and to a lesser extent Borrower) have made the card far less competitive, and that a card being not competitively viable is a valid reason not to ban it (otherwise you would have to ban many weird cards that seem similarly miserable on principle but are entirely unplayable, like Mana Clash or whatever).

  8. #22228
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    You don't need to put "have fun" in scare quotes if we can arrive at an agreed definition of what that means. Repeating myself: "Games are more enjoyable when players have more opportunity to make meaningful decisions in-game. "Meaningful decisions" can be defined as nontrivial (i.e. made with consideration for the specific matchup and gamestate) decisions where the outcome significantly influences who wins."
    I think this is a perfectly fine view on having fun, or more generically speaking the values you may have for what constitutes a good format, and it can be used to steer bannings to promote this type of gameplay. That's pretty much what modern represents, I think (or at least a bit closer than for Legacy). Sure one can let this have some influence over Legacy too, and to some degree I support it.

    For Legacy, I appreciate that there are strategies that are "unfun" for the opponent, because their existence, with different extremes among them, make the format more interesting and they also balance each other. It's ok to play t1 combo like Reanimator or Tin-Fins, even if it's not fun for the opponent who don't get a chance to interact. On the other side of the spectrum, it's also ok to play a stax deck that tries to render the opponent incapable of doing anything, like running Chalice and Trinisphere or even closely related running Stifle and Wasteland. Fun in legacy, for me personally, is not defined by whether I get to interact or not during a specific game, it's more related to having to strategically navigate through a sea of stax and t1 combo decks, and all other extremes on different sides of this multi-dimensional spectrum, in my deck building and in my gameplay.

    For me, the problem is rather when one or two extreme strategies are too strong and they don't balance the format allowing a variety of decks coexist in a competitively relevant way but instead center the format around itself, or themselves.

    Edit: on a first level I consider diversity for format health. Diversity in strategy, in tactics, in colors even (yes they still matter, separate discussion). Being able to interact I'd put on a second level, it's also relevant, but not crucial. Sigarda can exist, even if she might be hard to interact with, because she doesn't render archetypes obsolote, to take an example.

  9. #22229
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    If you agree with this definition then it seems pretty clear to me that Chalice contributes negatively because it promotes a "does this wreck you?" "did I have it on turn 1?" "can my opponent answer this immediately" kind of gameplay that de-emphasizes the importance of making decisions throughout the game and instead emphasizes matchups (chalice very good against a deck full of 1-mana cards and worse or near-useless otherwise) and opening hand quality (turn 1 chalice vs turn 3 chalice vs turn 1 FoW etc).
    Well, I do disagree with your notion that fun, whatever that is, would be the ideal format aim.

    Even so, when you speak of "meaningful decisions," why should we only consider in-game decisions as "meaningful?" I don't actually take the stance that a race to 1 CMC, or lower, is a bad thing in itself, but it is (if there are no forces to have one consider a higher CMC) a way to make deck-building decisions less meaningful. Since there is never any reason then to consider a 2 CMC card of a 1, unless the effect is massively higher.

    It seems that you take the stance that such decision making either doesn't, or shouldn't, matter, only in-game skill. I'd highly disagree.

    I could write more on Chalice, but megadeus pretty much said it all concisely, as it was. To play Chalice requires far more deckbuilding constraints than Misstep does, Chalice doesn't answer Chalice, Chalice precludes Xerox and so has consistency issues you get in trade with the power of being able to cut off a CMC.

    Quote Originally Posted by Water_Wizard View Post
    It's funny how you will quote back a lot of what I've said and play "teacher" without actually answering any of the questions.
    Well, if I came across as trying to teach you anything, I apologize. I can't do that, because I don't know anything.

    My aim was intended to be to interrogate (despite that words negative connotation) your claims. So, you make a claim and I question the claim in order to try to judge if it seems factual or not. I think you might take me as presupposing you are wrong, or, presupposing that Veil does not deserve a ban. In some way, I do have a sort of a priori stance against banning things until I see, or am presented with, (what I can take as) evidence of bannable criteria. In other words, I have no made up my mind, and so, if someone is going to make a case, I want them to make the best (again, of course, to me) case they can, so that it will be as clear to me as possible if we should be for doing something, or not.

    Maybe I just have too "typical" an American stance, on "innocent until proven guilty." That is, I want to have reasonable doubt that Veil is guilty here, before I am apt to sentence it to be banned. So, yes, I will plead with people to make clear cases, either for, or against. Of course though, since I'd start with a presumption of innocence, the larger burden of proof is on the side of those who would say it needs to be banned, for me, personally.

    As for the issue of historical precedence, again, I think this is something of a spurious notion. It is, as you point out, a matter of fact that some colors do some things better, more efficiently, or not at all. However, everything cannot simply be precedented on a historical notion like this. If that were so, we should likely be equally as set on banning Delver and TNN since Blue should draw cards, not have sufficient creatures. In the same way, we could make the case for the banning of Pyroblast and REB, because, while they are historically printed, why should we allow them to fly in the face of the historical precedent that "Red doesn't do that?"

    Do you see why that case does not, to me, hold water. Because then we just take the if it's "old" it's OK, if it's new, it's not. I don't like that, I don't buy that at all. If we take the route, we will be stuck forever in an anachronistic paradigm. I'd much rather take a more progressive stance, personally.
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  10. #22230
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by pettdan View Post
    But still, I think Miracles loves beating up on all creature pile decks. I've spent quite some time trying to figure out which creatures or planeswalkers I should play to have a good fighting chance vs that deck, it seemed tough to me but I guess I need to check my own assumptions too, I haven't played a pile of green value creatures against Miracles.
    Goblins has always been favored over Miracles and other UW control. It's one of their best matchups! They're also slightly favored over Delver and Snow Control.

    If your creature feature deck has 30 creatures and can force Terminus on 1-2 creatures at a time, or your creatures have haste/flash or generate card advantage, you can overwhelm them. Creature decks like that beat blue decks by having more threats than blue can answer. They can also abuse uncounterability to dodge answers. Those decks just lose hard to combo.


    We were discussing printing a green creature with the powerlevel of TNN. I think it would be good for the state of legacy.
    I think it would be good for Legacy. I just think it won't be enough to make those green decks worth choosing to play over blue decks.

    I'm currently trying out Thrun and Sigarda in Maverick, that's a bit dated pre-TNN tech. There's not much printed that's better and Oko resistant and StP resistant, and if it isn't, it's likely to be had for breakfast by blue control decks. Actually it needs to be resistant to Coatl too, so only Thtun passes those tests
    Any hexproof creature cast by Cavern of Souls or Aether Vial is blue-resistant, Oko-resistant and StP resistant. To beat Coatl protection from blue, regeneration would work. Flash or haste helps beat planeswalkers like Oko. Beating both blue AND StP is hard, but you can also beat StP by redundancy (play a lot of threats).

    Oko and Coatl have made it harder for creatures to beat blue control, but they're a relatively new part of the meta. Before that any of these should have done decently:


    Hexdrinker
    Skylasher
    Destiny Spinner
    Witchstalker
    Great Sable Stag
    Gruul Spellbreaker
    Prowling Serpopard
    Troll Ascetic
    Thrun, the Last Troll
    Nullhide Ferox
    Yeva, Nature's Herald
    Shifting Ceratops
    Spellbreaker Behemoth
    Bristling Hydra
    Mistcutter Hydra

  11. #22231
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Goblins has always been favored over Miracles and other UW control. It's one of their best matchups! They're also slightly favored over Delver and Snow Control.

    If your creature feature deck has 30 creatures and can force Terminus on 1-2 creatures at a time, or your creatures have haste/flash or generate card advantage, you can overwhelm them. Creature decks like that beat blue decks by having more threats than blue can answer. They can also abuse uncounterability to dodge answers. Those decks just lose hard to combo.
    Oh, definitely, I agree, I'll have to revisit the discussion and reframe my post there I think.. (Which I won't do right now.) If creatures have haste, whether built-in or pseudo-haste from Vial, or provide card-advantage, or even better a combination (which Goblins has), then you have a chance. Or lots of hatebears, or mana-denial (Death and Taxes). 40 Grizzly Bears however don't have a chance.

    Edit: Oh, I didn't need to reframe the initial post, you provided the relevant context for it in your post below. We were discussing green decks, and how a GGGG Trun-Questing-Beast would be helpful for that group of decks:

    Oh, I made that argument earlier. Put 30 creatures including at least 15 of those threats together into a cohesive deck.

    [...]

    Blue isn't the problem for green beatdown, combo is.
    End of edit.

    I think it would be good for Legacy. I just think it won't be enough to make those green decks worth choosing to play over blue decks.
    Well, Maverick has seemed reasonably positioned from time to time, I think a good attacker would help immensely.

  12. #22232
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Water_Wizard View Post
    Which decks is Chalice stopping? Chalice seems like it is losing power at the moment.
    Chalice @ 0 stops Cheerios and Salvagers pretty hard.

    Chalice @ 4 stops Oops All Spells

    Format warping.

  13. #22233
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Oko and Coatl have made it harder for creatures to beat blue control, but they're a relatively new part of the meta. Before that any of these should have done decently:
    That is a good list, however, even pre-Oko, none of those cards (minus Hexdrinker) was even close to played in any statistically significant number. What should we draw from that then? (This is not a rhetorical, or sarcastic question, mind you, I am seriously asking what we should make of this.)
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by pettdan View Post
    If creatures have ... [useful abilities].... 40 Grizzly Bears however don't have a chance.
    Of course, but there's no reason to play 40 Grizzly Bears. The Legacy card pool is huge. There are a lot of strong creatures that aren't currently in tier decks that have relevant abilities vs blue control. That's what I meant by "casual" or "homebrew", not 40 Grizzly Bears or 20 Ghazban Ogres lol.

    True, maybe Maverick just needs a GreenNN to push it over the top. Oko must be a problem.

  15. #22235

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    For Legacy, I appreciate that there are strategies that are "unfun" for the opponent, because their existence, with different extremes among them, make the format more interesting and they also balance each other.
    Decks like Belcher are only interesting insofar as they create games where something atypical happens. I agree that this represents a minor nonzero positive contribution to the format but only because these kinds of decks are not competitively viable, so in the long run most players are not upset to play against them (because even though the gameplay quality is bad, by playing a "real deck" against them you tend to win more). To put it another way, if decks like BR Reanimator or Belcher were the accepted Tier 1 and "fair" decks like Delver or Miracles were considered the fringe option for casual players, do you not think that format would be much worse?

    It's ok to play t1 combo like Reanimator or Tin-Fins, even if it's not fun for the opponent who don't get a chance to interact. On the other side of the spectrum, it's also ok to play a stax deck that tries to render the opponent incapable of doing anything, like running Chalice and Trinisphere or even closely related running Stifle and Wasteland.
    Again operating under the axioms that:
    1. The main goal is fun
    2. Fun is achieved by playing games in which both players have maximum opportunity to make meaningful decisions
    ...I do think that these decks are "less ok" than other decks that are more interactive.

    Fun in legacy, for me personally, is not defined by whether I get to interact or not during a specific game, it's more related to having to strategically navigate through a sea of stax and t1 combo decks, and all other extremes on different sides of this multi-dimensional spectrum, in my deck building and in my gameplay.
    I don't take issue with this idea on a superficial level but I think you're deluding yourself as to what "strategically navigate in my deckbuilding and in my gameplay" actually means for matchups where the extent of this navigation is largely something like "put leyline of the void in my sideboard and hope to draw it".

    Edit: on a first level I consider diversity for format health. Diversity in strategy, in tactics, in colors even (yes they still matter, separate discussion). Being able to interact I'd put on a second level, it's also relevant, but not crucial.
    Without interaction, diversity in strategy and tactics is not especially meaningful, because it just becomes a bunch of different decks trying to goldfish each other as fast as possible (the chief complaint with pre-2019 modern)

    Well, I do disagree with your notion that fun, whatever that is, would be the ideal format aim.
    Please feel free to provide your own alternative, keeping in mind that if you pick something like "diversity" instead to be the supreme ideal trumping fun you naturally are accepting of more-diverse formats with awful gameplay

    Even so, when you speak of "meaningful decisions," why should we only consider in-game decisions as "meaningful?" I don't actually take the stance that a race to 1 CMC, or lower, is a bad thing in itself, but it is (if there are no forces to have one consider a higher CMC) a way to make deck-building decisions less meaningful. Since there is never any reason then to consider a 2 CMC card of a 1, unless the effect is massively higher.
    I have a few problems with this:
    1. Metagames tends to naturally evolve to compensate for this as higher-costed cards tend to be more powerful; there is a truism something along the lines of "to win you have to go a little bigger or a lot faster". A deck of all 1 mana 1/1s will beat a deck of all 6-mana 6/6s but lose to a deck of all 2 mana 2/2s. It's therefore still reasonable to expect some variation in cmc even without artificial pressure of something like Chalice, the effect does not need to be "massively higher".
    2. Even if we agree that this natural "curve creep" doesn't happen in legacy without Chalice due to Daze/Waste/FoW/Delver pressure, the goal is kind of arbitrary and meaningless anyway. Do you only want more 2 drops to be playable? Do you want decks to be able to curve out to 5 drops like a standard deck? The reality is that even for expensive cards there are only going to be a few slots worth considering (just like how Ponder/Preordain/Brainstorm and maybe Portent are your playable 1mana cantrips and nobody cares about Sleight of Hand/Serum Visions Opt, for "3 drop threat" you only really have TNN, Mentor, Borrower, and Oko, and this range is probably not going to expand if 3-drops in general become more appealing for some reason.

    It seems that you take the stance that such decision making either doesn't, or shouldn't, matter, only in-game skill. I'd highly disagree.
    Metagaming and deckbuilding involve decision making and I do consider these to have nonzero importance but in-game decision making supercedes them.

    As for the issue of historical precedence, again, I think this is something of a spurious notion. It is, as you point out, a matter of fact that some colors do some things better, more efficiently, or not at all. However, everything cannot simply be precedented on a historical notion like this. If that were so, we should likely be equally as set on banning Delver and TNN since Blue should draw cards, not have sufficient creatures. In the same way, we could make the case for the banning of Pyroblast and REB, because, while they are historically printed, why should we allow them to fly in the face of the historical precedent that "Red doesn't do that?"
    I agree with this.
    Also WRT to Water_Wizard's argument you have to be really careful about saying things like "the silence effect is too powerful and permanent and player gaining hexproof is too powerful" because then you're forced to confront the issue of whether 'U instant draw 3 put 2 back' is not also "too powerful"

  16. #22236
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by H View Post
    That is a good list, however, even pre-Oko, none of those cards (minus Hexdrinker) was even close to played in any statistically significant number. What should we draw from that then? (This is not a rhetorical, or sarcastic question, mind you, I am seriously asking what we should make of this.)
    Oh, I made that argument earlier. Put 30 creatures including at least 15 of those threats together into a cohesive deck. It can have great matchup against blue control... but scoops to combo. Combo is why those decks aren't Legacy viable. I've tested it before with various homebrews (before W6 and Oko though). Those creatures aren't strong enough as standalones, but in large numbers you get redundant pressure.

    Blue isn't the problem for green beatdown, combo is. Wizards has printed many anti-blue creatures for green in the last 10 years, but very little anti-combo interaction. Combo cleans up on homebrews in the early rounds at large tournaments. Green has very few ways to interact with combo decks. Once you build a green deck with a decent anti-combo plan (Maverick, Chalice), it limits the design space left to fight blue control. Why even play green when you can play blue aggro instead?

  17. #22237
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Well, in a sense, you a preaching to the choir with me, because I actually believe that the worst mechanic ever created in Magis is Storm. That bias aside, I do think Combo in general, occupies a "rightful" place in the very broad notion of a metagame paradigm, in establishing a sort of "three-body problem" rather than a "two-body problem."

    Now, in actuality, the "bodies" are not fixed, they are just loose concepts, around notions of universals and (sometimes) presence of certain particulars. That is a whole other aside though. But, what we broadly (and so, necessarily falsely to some degree) have is an struggle between aggro, combo and control. Some of those blend in the particulars, some more than others here or there, but still, the broadest view still provides us with something.

    In the end, the "most effective" strategies can often by "hybrids" but that doesn't stand for Combo, because it has a slightly more "unique" nature, that is, more particular in each case, than the other two. Even so, what we want is for each to hold the other "in check" which, to me, means something like relatively within whatever we deem an acceptable rate of winning.

    In a physics "three-body problem" one body almost always ends up ejected from the system. In our meta-game three-body problem, that is exactly what we want to avoid. In other word, we need to engineer a sort of manner to keep it a "perpetual motion machine" where each is justifiable in it's own right, even if (and sometimes specifically because) it not optimal. In another way of thinking about it, we want to keep the whole thing running as a sort of "sub-optimal equilibrium" where each one holds the other(s) from full optimal implementation.
    "The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
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  18. #22238
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    I think somehow the first post responds better than the scattered responses I can provide. Not that it's wrong to ask all questions, but it's so hard to follow the discussion on this forum, Reddit would be better for that. I'll respond to the thing that seemed more central to me now, and then we'll see when or if I pick up on the others. Just trying to not scatter the discussion too much, focusing on what seems important.

    Quote Originally Posted by pettdan
    fun in legacy, for me personally, is not defined by whether i get to interact or not during a specific game, it's more related to having to strategically navigate through a sea of stax and t1 combo decks, and all other extremes on different sides of this multi-dimensional spectrum, in my deck building and in my gameplay.
    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    i don't take issue with this idea on a superficial level but i think you're deluding yourself as to what "strategically navigate in my deckbuilding and in my gameplay" actually means for matchups where the extent of this navigation is largely something like "put leyline of the void in my sideboard and hope to draw it".

    Without interaction, diversity in strategy and tactics is not especially meaningful, because it just becomes a bunch of different decks trying to goldfish each other as fast as possible (the chief complaint with pre-2019 modern)
    This seems like a mistaken logic. Legacy is the format of interaction, and I got the impression that you wanted to ban some interaction because you didn't like how strong the interaction was, iirc (Chalice an example, I think). I like interaction. Varied interaction. And interaction to the interaction. That means, you build your deck to be able to interact with Chalice or Leyline, and if you choose to run a deck that can't, that's up to you.

    I think perhaps you're deluding yourself here; in a diverse format, there will be a huge variation of interaction, it is basically required by the diversity of the format itself. Diversity of threats, diversity of answers, diversity of answers to answers (Veil here, btw). Furthermore, I've never played a deck that can only interact by using Leylines, and even if there was one deck that did that in the meta-game, I wouldn't mind that, it's up to that deck and the pilot of it. Anyway, any deck being vulnerable to Leylines tends to play answers to it, so the response strategy of only interacting with Leylines is probably not going to be successful so we don't need to worry about this being a frequent occurrence in the overall meta.

    I'm not sure if this explained anything, sorry if I missed the point or something.. It's a bit confusing so I probably did.

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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by H View Post
    Well, in a sense, you a preaching to the choir with me, because I actually believe that the worst mechanic ever created in Magis is Storm. That bias aside, I do think Combo in general, occupies a "rightful" place in the very broad notion of a metagame paradigm, in establishing a sort of "three-body problem" rather than a "two-body problem."
    I agree with you. I like combo. It's always been a healthy part of the rock-paper-scissors. Banning combo isn't the answer.

    I think the problem is blue gets to play both aggro & control, which upsets that balance. Blue has FoW and Daze/Spell Pierce to keep unfair decks in check, an important part of the 3-body balance. But blue also gets unrivaled aggro threats in Delver & TNN and splashable threats that synergize well with Xerox like Tarmogoyf, Gurmag Angler, Young Pyromancer, Dreadhorde Arcanist, Oko. When blue can both play both aggro & control, it invalidates pure aggro. Delver replaced the space many fair decks would have occupied.

    I think the Legacy metagame was healthiest and most diverse before Delver was a thing, when you had to make more of a choice between aggro vs control. I still enjoy Xerox decks and combo decks. But that 3rd body needs more support to restore the balance.

    I don't see GGGG uncounterable hexproof threats fixing that. It might give aggro a better edge against blue without blue getting to splash it, it might beat Oko, but as long as it's soft to combo Delver still straddles that line better. Unless it can interact with combo (to have game against the whole field, like Delver does), it would need to completely blow out blue matches 80-20 to the point where blue isn't the best aggro anymore.

    Maybe...
    Catsectile Apurration - G - Creature - Cat Warrior
    Reach. Can't be countered.
    Cumulative upkeep: Each player loses 2 life for each Island he or she controls
    2/4

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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by FTW View Post
    Maybe...
    Catsectile Apurration - G - Creature - Cat Warrior
    Reach. Can't be countered.
    Cumulative upkeep: Each player loses 2 life for each Island he or she controls
    2/4
    Way too powerful in Delver shell with Daze, you’d burn out every other blue deck in like 3 turns.

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