There was a debate at a tournament a few days ago about the powerlevel of Frantic Search, and Tog in modern legacy. I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.
To my knowledge, Psychatog and Yawgmoth's Will were the two cards that broke Frantic Search in half and led to it's banning.
In modern legacy, the decks I can think of where Frantic Search might see play in are Solidarity, Reanimator, Madness, Tog and possibly some Welder Stax variant.
The one thing that all of these decks have in common is the fact that none of them are currently tier one, and almost all of them need something like Frantic Search in order to reach the cusp of playability. Reanimator and Madness in particular are decks that used to be very popular, but were completely crippled by a recent banning and haven't registered many top 8s since. I also don't see Frantic Search breaking any of these strategies to be honest.
What are your thoughts on the card? Is it still as broken as it once was?
I don't think it's particularly broken anymore. The format has sped up a lot, and Psychatog isn't even playable. I doubt the card would see play outside of Tide combo, tbh. It might speed up Solidarity by a turn, which would go a long way toward making that deck halfway competitive.Originally Posted by Clark Kant
Lord of the Chalice
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Might break high tide specially with the unbanning of Time Spiral as well...
It would allow Spiral Tide/Solidarity to start pulling off T3 wins at an alarming rate at the very least, and that in decks that can easily pack enough countermagic to slow down and power through most everything.
Still, Tendrils combo does set the acceptable power level bar pretty high. I wouldn't mind seeing it unbanned, but I don't think it'd stay that way particulary long.
I think it's still good. In storm decks it digs 2 +1 count and untaps lands, Reanimator could use this and Study to play 8 bin effects all blue for FoW, and some sort of Venge/madness list. High Tide of course, now with Spiral.
It's definately still good, and would see some play. The fact that several decks can make use of it is why whether the card stays banned or not is relevent. I'm wondering if it would break the format though. I don't see how it would.
Would AnT even play it? It has access to so many high powerlevel cards already.
Yeah, Frantic Search helps High Tide immensely. But High Tide isn't showing any signs of life even with Time Spirals unbanning. If it somehow gets super strong and breaks the format, I would much rather Wizards ban Time Spiral (a card that only High Tide can make use of) than reban Frantic Search (a card that about a half dozen tier two decks can make use of).
Besides High Tide, it probably works well with anything that plays U and 2-mana lands, except for stax, and in anything that plays blue and graveyard tricks. Affinity, U Chalice Aggro, and Team America come to mind in addition to reanimator, but there are probably others.
I don't think it should be banned anymore. It seems like one of those cards that used to be in every deck of yore, and when the bannings came they took many innocent casualties. Brainstorm is in every blue deck now, but even if the current meta is broken, it doesn't mean brainstorm is the culprit. I think that Wizards is slowly (and safely) repairing the ban list as evidenced by time spiral's unbanning. I am optimistic that since time spiral seems to be fair, I think that they will also choose to unban frantic search. Then again, I don't know much about what makes a truly ban-worthy card, so this might be all heresy.
As a purist, I prefer to have as few banned cards as possible. Keeping the old-guard power cards legal in the format is the best defense against "power creep". The fact that vintage continues to be mostly a mesh of old broken cards is testament to the fact that power creep is vastly exaggerated. In fact, it is the sequential banning of old cards that leads to new cards being the only good thing left.
Solidarity is good enough right now, I wouldn't want to give it Frantic Search. Although, Counterbalance really poops on that strategy, so it may be alright. It seems a bit too good tho.
If Solidarity was good enough, it would actually be putting up numbers somewhere. Of course, some of that scarcity has to do with how difficult it is to pilot properly, but you get my drift.
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I dunno... I've played my pauper tide deck for fun against legacy decks and comboed them off turn 3 with relative ease because of that card... for some reason that makes me feel the card is still busted enough to deserve it's spot on the list.
I wouldn't mind seeing it come off... shit I'd love to play it in this format... I just think it's a rather risky proposition.
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The question isn't whether or not it would be too good for the format to handle, the question is how much more more storm pushes the format towards "play combo or play Force of Will or don't play". When it comes to unbanning cards only combo will play, I'm all in favor of an extremely cautious approach. Tide is definitely playable. The lack of results isn't a lack of playability, it's a lack of saturation. That I'm aware of, Jacob Baugh's Spiral Tide is the only Tide deck at either KC or Indy and he did well in both events. If it were as heavily played as say Goblins or CB, there would be copies in the T8 at both events.
Who cares about Reanimator, Madness, WTF Tog? This card belongs only to one deck, that is High Tide.
The reason why people play that crappy Cloud of Faeries is because Frantic Search is banned.
Frantic Search wasn't banned because of Will or Tog. It was banned because of High Tide.
Frantic Search is ridiculous in High Tide. It makes it a consistent turn 3 combo deck, which is on par with ANT/TES, except it is worlds more resilient and consistent. The format doesn't need this.
Suddenly, Fluffy realized she wasn't quite like the other bunnies anymore.
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Doomsday//Emrakul would like it too, and it could play FoW/Daze.
Well the card basically says - improve your hand for free. So I'm having a hard time seeing how that is bad. The stipulation being you have the three mana and at least one card in hand. It's an instant and it's blue.
I'm thinking because the card hasn't been an option for deck designing for so long that people are underestimating what a card like this can do. I'm thinking more along the lines of a U/Artifact infinite recursion engine deck. It wouldn't be centerpiece of the deck but it would make for some degenerate T1-T2 plays.
^^ To most decks this card would read:
0
Instant
Draw 2 cards.
Same reason Gush is banned. The card is too good, not only is it drawing you cards virtually no investment, but the discarding and untapping business enables so many other strategies. Solidarity aside, this card would do too much.
David Sutherland * the Dallas Crab
I would even run frantic search in tempo thresh esque decks. Why? because drawing 2 cards and discarding 2 lands is nice filtering then untapping lands to play what you just drew? Oh yeah. And reach threshold quicker or pump goyf. The card is very good the question is whether it should remain banned. I say it should maybe be tested in legacy i.e. they unban it and if it proves too degenerate they reban it. Then again a high tide deck with 4 time spirals AND 4 frantic search might be too much to handle because the deck would go off on turn 3 very consistently.
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Frantic Search increases the odds of winning on turn 3 in Solidarity, but it is far from consistent (I've playtested Frantic Search in Solidarity quite a bit). Frantic Search would perhaps put the deck back on the map as a contender. It would still suffer from half the cliche, classic problems you can name. I wouldn't mind seeing this deck back in the running, some of the weirdest and most complex games of magic I've played have been with and/or against this deck -- I'm all in favor of that sort of thing.
Non-High Tide usage, who cares? Go for it.
peace,
4eak
Legacy doesn't need blue cards that produce mana AND draw cards at the same time, that'd just be stupid.
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