All B/R update speculation.

[Dice_Box]

They don't have to design cards for Legacy and Vintage because they're already legal for both formats when released anyhow. Obviously Wizards isn't going to design something for Legacy and Vintage specifically because the legal card pool never rotates; it's always the same until a new set is released. Most of the time cards just happen to be good in Legacy or Vintage inadvertently, which is fine. We already have thousands upon thousands of cards to choose from.

Abrupt Decay.

[btm10]

I agree with you here. My point is that bans sometimes make sense in legacy to make the format of legacy better. Playing modern isn't an argument in the sphere of making legacy better.

They absolutely do, no disagreement there. But the bar for requiring a ban in Legacy or restriction in Vintage is much, much higher than the bar for banning in Modern, and there isn't an obvious hard and fast rule for any format aside from the "earliest consistent kill by a tier 1 deck" rule, which isn't relevant for this discussion.

Because there isn't a hard and fast rule, we're all left defending our gut feelings and (hopefully) checking that against some insight as to what's best for the format as a whole. For instance, I really don't like Delver of Secrets. At all. I play with it because it wins me games, not because I enjoy doing it. On top of that, I really don't like what Delver does to the metagame. That being said, I don't think that it should be banned. My vision for the meta is one dominated by a slow, plodding control deck and a resilient combo deck so that most of the interaction takes place on the stack and in people's hands. I recognize that most people don't enjoy that, and Delver decks have weaknesses that all of the format's other decks can attack, so Delver shouldn't be banned just because it makes tempo decks a thing. If your gut feelings lean toward a more aggressive B/R policy than we have in Legacy and Vintage, then perhaps these formats aren't for you.

[Michael Keller]

Abrupt Decay.

No one can say for sure Abrupt Decay was printed for Legacy and Vintage unless Wizards specifically stated as such, no matter how good it may be in the format or how much of a fit it may seem.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

I think they stated abrupt decay was printed with legacy/counterbalance in mind, I could not locate the article if you asked me though :/

[iamajellydonut]

I think they stated abrupt decay was printed with legacy/counterbalance in mind, I could not locate the article if you asked me though :/

The closest thing I could find was...

"Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/mag...daily/twtw/222

[Bed Decks Palyer]

For instance, I really don't like Delver of Secrets. At all. I play with it because it wins me games, not because I enjoy doing it. On top of that, I really don't like what Delver does to the metagame.

I'd sign this.

That being said, I don't think that it should be banned. My vision for the meta is one dominated by a slow, plodding control deck and a resilient combo deck so that most of the interaction takes place on the stack and in people's hands. I recognize that most people don't enjoy that, and Delver decks have weaknesses that all of the format's other decks can attack, so Delver shouldn't be banned just because it makes tempo decks a thing. If your gut feelings lean toward a more aggressive B/R policy than we have in Legacy and Vintage, then perhaps these formats aren't for you.

Delver's ban would severely hurt the only "real" deck I own, although this might be mitigated in the long run by the metagame shift and some revival of blue tempo. However a meta of control vs. combo seems lacking something. I believe aggro should be present, even if it's a proxy aggro like Ux Tempo. Moreover I like tempo decks - I think it's pretty interesting strategy and it's as close to "fully-powered" experience as one may get without using the true thing -, so for these reasons I'd hate the loss of competitive tempo deck.
But the blue shell, or however you wish to (not) call it, is so omnipresent, and (although tactically/strategically diverse) it plays quite the same, that the gaming experience is painful. For that matter I'd... well, maybe not exactly welcome, but at least tolerate a new powerful decks/shells/archetypes that would turn Legacy into a different state than what we got now when half of the games start with fetchUSeaPondergo

[menace13]

The closest thing I could find was...

"Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/mag...daily/twtw/222

This was one of the things I learned from speaking to Tom L on mtgo. He and Eric would routinely come in to the practice rooms to play legacy decks like intuition control lists with loam locks. This was like 4 years ago. Fun guys to play against and shoot the shit with. After a while I would ask them questions about the format composition. First trollish ones asking for unbans of my favorite cards ;p. Tom being more social than Lauer, told me he regretted letting SFM slip through design and that he wanted Misstep to help battle Brainstorm and slow down the format. After that I began to see why some design decisions were made. Like Eldrazi shuffle clause.

Miss those days. Made the game feel like an open community where the devs interacted with the player base. Now it's just a shittier client milked by Worth. But to not be off topic, they do design cards for Legacy in mind. They do not consider that a reason to NOT print something and allow it to infringe on the design process.

[mikeshimoji]

This was one of the things I learned from speaking to Tom L on mtgo. He and Eric would routinely come in to the practice rooms to play legacy decks like intuition control lists with loam locks. This was like 4 years ago. Fun guys to play against and shoot the shit with. After a while I would ask them questions about the format composition. First trollish ones asking for unbans of my favorite cards ;p. Tom being more social than Lauer, told me he regretted letting SFM slip through design and that he wanted Misstep to help battle Brainstorm and slow down the format. After that I began to see why some design decisions were made. Like Eldrazi shuffle clause.

Miss those days. Made the game feel like an open community where the devs interacted with the player base. Now it's just a shittier client milked by Worth. But to not be off topic, they do design cards for Legacy in mind. They do not consider that a reason to NOT print something and allow it to infringe on the design process.

I second this. I'm pretty sure there was an article on designing cards for Legacy when they introduced commander sets. I think the article mentioned toxic deluge and unexpectedly absent. That article specifically talked about those cards being designed for Legacy. Don't know the link though.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

The closest thing I could find was...

"Lauer: Modern is a format created by players, not developers. So we tend to be hands off, although we try to avoid adding turn-three kills. With Legacy, we sometimes design "answer cards" such as Abrupt Decay being an answer to Counterbalance. When appropriate, we might do that with Modern. But we haven't had to yet."

http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/mag...daily/twtw/222

That's it

[Zombie]

Funny thing how FoW somehow became a problem. In fact I see it quite the opposite, I playit to stop problems. Like, you know... that turn1 Trinisphere that stops and wins the game right here. Or Belcher. Or anything else.
Banning FoW is like "don't play Swords (or Bolt or Terror or Pillage), it's unjust as it kills my Sengir (or Birds or Erhnam or Outpost)" mantra I heard back in the days. Yeah, it sucks to spend mana or other resources to have your dude/land/spell killed or countered, but that's the game. And Force is pretty ineffective in countering spells, look, it needs another card to properly function. (Counterspells as a whole suck, there are what, three-four of them used in the whole Eternal?) So if the people really wish just to look at their collectible pictures or cuddle with their decks, fine, but once they wish to actually play the game, they should expect at least some interaction and some opponent's attempts to stop the gameplan/wincons. Which is where FoW excels. Thus it's played. Easy as that.

<3

I hate many blue cards. I hate TNN, S&T (or rather S&T to the big dumb fucks like Omni, Griseltard and spaghetti monsters. Showing/Reanimating big domineering but not instawin things is a thing that should be IMO. Make that stuff situational, basically), don't think the Delve draw spells are all that good of an idea and dislike Brainstorm being head and shoulders above basically any other card selection spell out there (after BStorm I'd say the competition starts being pretty even) and how it negates discard and frees blue decks to play clunks with relative impunity compared to other colors. But Force is an actively beneficial card for the format. It's not a card you should always play - it's actively bad in many matchups but acts as a failsafe against stupid all-in stuff where the broken decks have to find ways to not die to force. Which slows them down and allows black and white disruption to see play.

To make an analogy to fighting games, all the best games (IMO) involve strong characters doing crazy things, but have the important quality that the system itself contains failsafe "fuck it, I'm outta here" buttons that keep the worst excesses in check while still allowing that crazy freeform gameplay. Force is one of those failsafes for Legacy (Decay and GY hate 1 drops being the other big ones). It's a drag that it's blue only, but it's absolutely a thing that should be.

I'm getting sick of people saying that all variations on "go play modern" are bad arguments across the board. For a lot of the people complaining about blue being substantially better than the rest of the format, Modern presents a real alternative. Modern is also good for people who want regular bannings to knock off the best deck. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Modern, but it isn't Legacy. People who want Modern-like features should play Modern, because Legacy clearly isn't something they enjoy at this point.

Because clearly people want to play a format where good card selection is banned? Disliking the strength of Brainstorm doesn't mean I want to see Ponder, Preordain, GSZ, Library, Glimpse, Visionary+Symbiote, SDT, Ringleader, Matron, Ancestral Vision etc. gone. I love playing (primarily nonblue, creature-based) engine decks. But one look at placing Pod lists, for example, an archetype I should love to bits? It has four cards total that find anything. Four. I'd basically have to play Scapeshift to be able to play a deck that can see cards worth a damn. At which point, why fucking bother when I could just sleeve up Storm or some fair blue deck in Legacy?

I stopped playing German Highlander exactly because they banned most of the tutor suite that made my deck a deck, allowed it to have a plan instead of just being a pile of good cards. wtf persist in playing Nantuko Husks when the cards that find them or their friends when needed get banned for being good in goodstuff piles? Piles that just replaced the tutors with more good-by-itself stuff?

[FoolofaTook]

There's nothing wrong with tutors and cantrips that have some form of disadvantage built in. Ponder is really strong but it's a Sorcery and all it does is search 4 cards deep and act as a reshuffle mechanism when you need that. Preordain searches 3 cards deep and lets you bury unwanted cards on the bottom of your library but that's all it does.

Brainstorm is just much too powerful with it's ability to let you draw 3 at instant speed and then keep as many of them as you have dead cards in hand when you cast it. It has other very important applications also but it's main power level is due to the raw power of draw 3 at instant speed. It's just too good for Legacy players not to go out of their way to play it and to include it in any list that can reasonable play it. There are some blue lists that don't play Ponder despite it being an excellent cantrip. That's because it's not so good that you must play it if you're playing blue.

Brainstorm has no disadvantages other than getting shut down a bit more often as a 1cc spell due to Counterbalance and Chalice of the Void. All of the other cantrips that are currently played share the same disadvantage.

[Lord Seth]

But one look at placing Pod lists, for example, an archetype I should love to bits? It has four cards total that find anything. Four.

What about Chord of Calling? It's true they all start with 4x Birthing Pod, but most of them play some number of Chord of Calling.

[iGrok]

What about Chord of Calling? It's true they all start with 4x Birthing Pod, but most of them play some number of Chord of Calling.

And all of them would play GSZ if it weren't banned. There's also the fact that Pod is a tutor-on-a-stick that also makes your creatures uncounterable.

[Zombie]

What about Chord of Calling? It's true they all start with 4x Birthing Pod, but most of them play some number of Chord of Calling.

Chord is clunky. If people are playing stuff like Delver decks, Jetski combo, Affinity etc. I'd infinitely prefer Decays. Otherwise the stuff I do is just too slow. Shit on field, Overseer GG != fun.

And all of them would play GSZ if it weren't banned. There's also the fact that Pod is a tutor-on-a-stick that also makes your creatures uncounterable.

Pod being strong is irrelevant. It's still just 4 cards that let me see/tutor cards all the same. Basically there's games where I can control where I'm going and games where I can't and get to play Jund. Yay.

[iGrok]

Ok, so many people are calling for weird bans that I actually went and did some math.

I took the top 16 of each of the past 3 SCG Opens, Separated them by Deck, Archetype, and Colors. When I have some free time, I'll go back and include GPNJ and any other tournaments you guys can provide me with top 16 info. Here are the results:



There is one number that is clearly larger than all the other numbers: Delver. It's not even close to other archetypes. Blue has a commanding lead with Red not too far behind, and everything else quite under-represented. Delver represents 30% of the past 3 Top 16s, compared to 12.5% for the next best finishing archetypes (Miracles and Stoneblade).

So then I decided to see what the results look like if we remove the delver decks.



That looks a lot better, though still skewed a bit. Miracles and Stoneblade are now 17.5% of the meta, Dredge and Storm are 12%each, Elves is 9%, Death and taxes, Lands, and Sneak and Show make up 6% each. Blue falls to 59%, with Red basically tied, but now White is close, with Black and Green still underrepresented. But if there aren't any delver decks, perhaps Black and Green decks could fill in the missing slots.

Anyways, here's some numbers to chew on. To me, this screams "Delver is the issue!", but I can understand why some people would disagree - even I didn't realize how skewed it was towards Delver before I threw this together.

[Grillo]

I don't think Delver is an archetype at all. Several blue based archetypes have Delver in their lists, which is a different thing.

Also, I don't think the second table is accurate because, if you ban delver decks altogether, top16 penetration should vary in percentages.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I don't think Delver is an archetype at all. Several blue based archetypes have Delver in their lists, which is a different thing.

Also, I don't think the second table is accurate because, if you ban delver decks altogether, top16 penetration should vary in percentages.

I'm pretty sure a group of decks that share 24 or so nonland cards, all pursue the same strategy (tempo) and have a standardized set-up for the remaining unshared cards (4-8 removal, 6-8 other threats, 4-8 assorted disruption depending on color) are quite easily categorized as an archetype. Call it "Uxx tempo" if you so desire, but you'll notice that every "Uxx tempo" deck shares a playset of one particular creature in addition to the classic "blue tempo shell" of FOW, Daze, and a bunch of cantrips. The only "blue-based archetype" that has Delver in it is tempo. Therefore, calling Uxx tempo "Delver" for short is perfectly reasonable, in the same way that calling a bunch of different decks that have similar cores but all win with cards that have a particular mechanic "Storm" is.

[iGrok]

I don't think Delver is an archetype at all. Several blue based archetypes have Delver in their lists, which is a different thing.

Also, I don't think the second table is accurate because, if you ban delver decks altogether, top16 penetration should vary in percentages.

Delver is blue-based tempo. Whatever colors it splashes, it's still a blue-based tempo deck, usually with red. Esper delver and esper stoneblade were the one more control-y list, and they pretty much died.

I'm not sure why you think the second table is wrong? The "penetration" percentages are different from the top table.

EDIT: Admiral_Arzar said it best: Its Uxx Tempo, which just happens to always include 4-of Delver.

[Grillo]

Esper delver and esper stoneblade were the one more control-y list, and they pretty much died.

I was thinking about those types of Delver decks precisely. Also older UR Delver lists were much more aggro decks than tempo decks.. But I agree that Delver decks have standardized into tempo mostly.

I'm not sure why you think the second table is wrong? The "penetration" percentages are different from the top table.

EDIT: Admiral_Arzar said it best: Its Uxx Tempo, which just happens to always include 4-of Delver.

I mean, if you ban tempo delver decks, other decks like Combo (for example) would be much more abundant in top16s.

[iGrok]

I mean, if you ban tempo delver decks, other decks like Combo (for example) would be much more abundant in top16s.

Possibly more combo, but my hypothesis is that the decks delver pushed out (Jund, deadguy) come back in a big way. No way to know for certain though