Format Discussion - The Ban List

[Finn]

FoolofaTook, when they banned Tinker, we got a pretty good hint at the philosophy. They will let the cards stay around, no matter how powerful, until it is abused. That makes sense to me. Otherwise you get stuff like Enlightened Tutor, Entomb, Goblin Welder, etc. getting the axe. Goblin Welder is totally broken and totally unuseable at the same time. Let people have their fun trying to bust him. A preemptive banning of cards like that are not necessary.

[Captain Hammer]

How about a 3cc black sorcery that says destroy target green or white permanent.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Burning Wish and Infernal Tutor are both post-2000 printings.

Infernal Tutor is fair. Either you...
1: Get another copy of a card you already have, which is fair.
2: Use it while Hellbent, which means you have to preemptively answer counters before you do it and basically go off that turn which is more or less fair.

I mean, it's a good tutor, but it's certainly not broken except when combined with LED which can mostly be blamed on LED being so good. Overall it's pretty fair though.

Burning Wish, first off that was almost 8 1/2 years ago and yeah it's the only broken tutor I can think of since. Second Wizards had no idea that it would be used the way it was in Vintage. I think it's not too bad in Legacy but the closest thing we have to a broken tutor.

I think the fact that no tutors made in the past 10 years are currently banned in Legacy shows that WoTC has more or less learned their lesson on tutors.

[Dark Ritual]

The wish cards are tutors, but they come at a price. That price being when half your SB is wish targets, it leaves less room for cards getting actually boarded in. And besides that, they can only get one specific kind of card. Obviously if ad nauseam was a sorcery burning wish would be broken in 2 probably banned at this point but being limited to only sorceries is a drawback whether you admit to it or not. Cunning wish is fair at 3 mana and so are the rest of the wish cards. Living wish being 1G doesn't even make it that good because it is the color green which is a weak color and it only fetches lands and creatures which are generally fair.

Infernal tutor is fair like DBIH said. You have to have zero cards in hand to abuse it; cracking LED in response to IT only to have it spell snare'd or forced results in you losing the game 99% of the time. Infernal tutor is fair. Especially when you can't get hellbent; then the card is dead weight usually.

[FoolofaTook]

FoolofaTook, when they banned Tinker, we got a pretty good hint at the philosophy. They will let the cards stay around, no matter how powerful, until it is abused. That makes sense to me. Otherwise you get stuff like Enlightened Tutor, Entomb, Goblin Welder, etc. getting the axe. Goblin Welder is totally broken and totally unuseable at the same time. Let people have their fun trying to bust him. A preemptive banning of cards like that are not necessary.

What this philosophy creates is experimentation followed by swarming followed by banning. That's an unhealthy place for any eternal competition to be in. If a card is broken but the deck that breaks it hasn't been found yet the Legacy meta would be better off and the competition would be more interesting if it was banned before that event occurred. If a card is broken and just waiting for an inevitable card or 2 to be printed or unbanned to make the break clear then just ban it and avoid the swarm.

Sometimes the swarm is really fast to assemble, as in when Flash was un-errata'd, and the banning is equally fast and the entire process added nothing to the competition except to reward the swarmers and de-rail a Grand Prix at the last moment. Sometimes it never fully forms, as in AnT never becoming dominant despite being totally broken in the hands of a good player, and we're left waiting for somebody in R&D to nudge really hard with something like Entomb being unbanned to create a collective over-powered swarm. Sometimes a concept, like reusable tutor limited only by mana and trigger cards, is clearly a break waiting to happen and then a few cards get printed and make it happen.

The point is that having the Legacy meta become flavor of the year with a succession of dominant decks based on cards soon to be banned is a bad thing. Much better off just to get all the bannings done at once and then let R&D go nuts for Standard without breaking Legacy repeatedly in the process.

[lordofthepit]

I don't think a powerful tutor (within reason) necessarily has to be banned, and I certainly disagreed with the Mystical Tutor banning, given the relatively weak performances of ANT and Reanimator. (I do understand the DCI's reasoning though, but I digress.)

The problem with Survival was not only was it a Tier 1 repeatably abusable tutor, but it was also an extremely powerful discard outlet all in one card. If there were a card that did this:

Darwin's Presence,
Enchantment
, Remove a creature card in your hand from the game: Search your library for a creature card, reveal it to all players, and put it into your hand. Shuffle your library afterwards.
"I refuse to use lame terms like exile," Lord of the Pit

You'd have a clearly powerful tutor effect, but one that doesn't have the "oops, I win" broken factor that ends up getting cards banned.

[FieryBalrog]

Living wish being 1G doesn't even make it that good because it is the color green which is a weak color

You mean weak for combo? (even then, Xantid Swarm and Autumn's Veil are tech) Because Green has been amazing in Legacy for the past few years, and no I don't just mean Goyf.

and it only fetches lands and creatures which are generally fair.

That strikes me as the real reason.

[Dark Ritual]

Green is good because of k grip and goyf. Survival as well until that got axed. What will green be good for post banning? Big fat beaters. And k grip. That's the only reason green has a place. Natural order isn't that great of a card because when a metagame adapts to it, progenitus will eat some hibernations or perishes a lot. Or just a simple innocent blood. Vengevine might be good post banning though so yeah. But really, green is the color of fat creatures for little mana. And enchantress effects lol.

Darwin's presence, the card suggested above, is fair. It can't abuse squee. It can't abuse vengevine without very specific pieces in hand to combo. Essentially it is like old school survival; you did this, I'll tutor up a creature to answer whatever you did. Fair. I see no problem arising if that card was printed.

[Grollub]

Darwin's presence, the card suggested above, is fair. It can't abuse squee. It can't abuse vengevine without very specific pieces in hand to combo. Essentially it is like old school survival; you did this, I'll tutor up a creature to answer whatever you did. Fair. I see no problem arising if that card was printed.

Recurring Nightmare would like a word with you. ;-)

[Julian23]

...which would do nothing combined with the card he was talking about.

[FieryBalrog]

Green is good because of k grip and goyf. Survival as well until that got axed. What will green be good for post banning? Big fat beaters. And k grip. That's the only reason green has a place.

"only" big fat beaters and K grip? Not only is that a ridiculous use of the word "only" to make it seem like Green sucks*, it's just false. Yes, Natural Order is a great card. Yes, Enchantress effects are in Green. Trygon Predator. Pernicious Deed. Life from the Loam. Noble Hierarch. Qasali Pridemage. Vengevine will still be good. Xantid Swarm.

*Black is "only" confidant and some discard effects and Dark Ritual, White is "only" swords to plowshares, Elspeth and stoneforge mystic, Red is "only" goblins, lightning bolt and firespout. Hey look at that, Green is still the second best color in Legacy! Which is backed up the stats posted in one of the threads recently- it's the most played color and the 2nd most successful. That will not change just because one of Green's best cards was banned.

[ummon]

I've realized Wizards is going to meddle with the legacy banlist too much and there is nothing I can do about it. So, I might as well be a bit selfish and demand that they ban the card I don't like to play against: counterbalance. xD

[The Big Ragu]

Hoping Worldgorger Dragon will become unbanned.

[dontbiteitholmes]

For all the shit people give WoTC about the banned list they sure seem to have a better grasp of the concept then most of the people on this board.

[thecrav]

For all the shit people give WoTC about the banned list they sure seem to have a better grasp of the concept then most of the people on this board.

A lot of this thread is people saying "This should be banned because it beats my pet deck" or "This should be unbanned because it makes my pet deck playable." Take it all with a grain of salt.