http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...c-mtgrss#77755
You have to hit Transform to read Hill's commentary, but in particular his take on Delver of Secrets reads quite unlike anything LaPille would have said:
Imagine that, a columnist who thinks that a format representing 20 years of cards might be able to handle a 3/2 flyer (or more abstractly, that generally Vintage/Legacy are better at self-correcting than smaller formats).This little guy has been tearing up Legacy as of late, and made a decent name for itself last week at the World Championships as well. Its stats are certainly generous: you get a full three mana off your Moon Heron if all goes right, and can start attacking as soon as the second turn. Cards like Brainstorm and Ponder allow you to manipulate the top card of your library and flip this guy much more frequently than would ordinarily be the case. So how did we allow this to see print?
What we found was that in Limited it tended to flip so infrequently that oftentimes including it in your deck was actually a liability. After all, no one is scrambling to cram Fugitive Wizard in their 40-card decks. Occasionally it'd come out early and turn the game around, but when that happens rarely enough it's a fun moment. What you don't want is for the format to start revolving around a random effect like that. Later on in the game the Delver is such a poor topdeck that we felt like printing it with these stats added texture to the Limited environment.
In Standard, although it's correspondingly easier to transform Delver of Secrets into Insectile Aberration than in an average Limited game, it's also far easier for opposing decks to recover from the tempo advantage an early 3/2 flier provides. Enough decks have to be concerned with killing early creatures that the size advantage relative to other creatures of comparable cost becomes a mild upside, not a back-breaking game-changer.
In older formats like Legacy and Modern, creature removal spells are proportionally less powerful because the diversity of viable strategies in these formats renders removal more of a liability in creature-light matchups. It therefore becomes easier for a card like Insectile Aberration to take over a game—particularly when there are so many efficient ways to protect it, and when cards like Brainstorm virtually guarantee an early transformation. Fortunately, these formats tend to be robust enough to adapt to a creature that, for all its power, simply attacks and blocks.
I don't necessarily like what Delver of Secrets represents, inasmuch as it's an efficient weenie flyer in goddamned Blue, precisely the color with the (ideally) weakest weenie dudes. Still, you have to admire someone who's publicly calling Legacy out for being robust enough to deal with one more guy that just attacks and blocks. It's almost like he trusts the players to use the tools at their disposal to think of a Good Answer to a threat. Holy shit.
Yeah, that is a really good post. I feel even more strongly that printing this guy in blue is fucking moronic in a format perennially pushing the boundaries on how much blue we can stomach.
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What I find what is astounding is the original wording had in flipping on creatures. During their play testing in limited they decided that it was way to overpowered. If a 3/2 creature is to overpowered in limited which has almost zero library manipulation, I don't understand how the card was printed in it current form. This make's R&D motives clear about the eternal formats. They rather ban cards that are overpowered in eternal then limit what they can currently print. While this may work fine in legacy this will break vintage in half eventually due to inability to ban a cards.
Moved to Community.
While I don't disagree that the costs to building a competitive deck in any Eternal format can be restrictive to some (even Modern's shocklands that I don't already have are way out of my "three layoffs in three years" budget), I really don't think that this is what I was talking about. :(
This might belong more in the Modern forum than the Legacy forum as the impact may be felt more strongly there than in Legacy. However, I just thought it was nice to see someone from 'the mothership' acknowledging the notion that an older cardpool has the capacity to deal with a 3/2 flyer that (most likely) UU to be a guaranteed to be active on the 2nd turn. It's a nice change of pace from Mr. "Eat my format and like it" LaPille.
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All RnD staff should attend a 50+ person legacy tournament before they're credible about writing on the eternal formats. They break it down in to very wordy Idiot's-Guide text walls, when in reality the exact same logic can be applied to any constructed format. To me it just shows they don't know what they're talking about. Seems they should have an Eternal consultant on staff if they really want to promote the format
Quoted from Zac Hill, which got my attention, concerning Delver of Secrets:
I think this guy is actually open-minded about working through goof-ups and having a level-headed view. I think this guy may have actually played a legacy game or two, which helps.So how did we allow this to see print?
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Actually, I'm pretty sure there's an official R&D line for the various "cards people complain about," and his job is just to regurgitate it when someone feels it's necessary for civilians like us to know.
Wait until they ban something and Mr. Hill here talks about why before passing judgement. I'm fairly certain that not all of the derpy things that came out of LaPille's mouth were his opinion alone.
That makes sense. He is after all simply a spokesperson.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
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