Gatecrash Spoilers

[Jenni]

Banning Survival didn't get rid of Vengevine. Instead, people discovered that the card was not very good without a broken tutor to enable it. Despite the initial outcry about Wizards banning the wrong card, Vengevine hasn't seen play outside of a couple of unpopular, niche, Dredge-esque decks since then. So much for your stupidly overpowered modern creature, eh?

I don't think that's quite the same. Show and tell is not a tutor, it's a way to cheat things into, the problem with survival and vengevine was that it is a tutor, vengevine is pretty bad for the most part, it was playable because of it's combo with survival.
Show and tell, is an enabler for powerful things, but without show and tell those things are still absurdly powerful, and it's just a matter of finding a new way to enable them.
Show and tell is by far the best way to make them work, but I don't think the deck concept really dies if you build it around Hypergenesis, or even really Eureka - it gets worse, yes, but with a deck built around the cards it's still reasonable to make it work.
As long as things like Emrakul, Omniscience, or even just Darksteel Colossus exist, people will try to make them work, it's just part of having big showy things in the game. There will pretty much always be a deck that tries to cheat them into play, and even if that deck isn't great, people will play it. Even show and tell isn't that great, it's a good deck, but it's not broken.

Honestly, banning show and tell would be perfectly fine with me, I don't think it needs to be banned, it's just not that bad, but banning it as a preventative measure or something could be reasonable.
I am also not saying emrakul and griselbrand and omniscience should be banned. The power level is ridiculous, but none of these are so good that they destroy every other deck and dominate the metagame.
Show and tell is a good deck, but it's not broken, at least not yet.

[Aggro_zombies]

I don't think that's quite the same. Show and tell is not a tutor, it's a way to cheat things into, the problem with survival and vengevine was that it is a tutor, vengevine is pretty bad for the most part, it was playable because of it's combo with survival.
Show and tell, is an enabler for powerful things, but without show and tell those things are still absurdly powerful, and it's just a matter of finding a new way to enable them.
Show and tell is by far the best way to make them work, but I don't think the deck concept really dies if you build it around Hypergenesis, or even really Eureka - it gets worse, yes, but with a deck built around the cards it's still reasonable to make it work.
As long as things like Emrakul, Omniscience, or even just Darksteel Colossus exist, people will try to make them work, it's just part of having big showy things in the game. There will pretty much always be a deck that tries to cheat them into play, and even if that deck isn't great, people will play it. Even show and tell isn't that great, it's a good deck, but it's not broken.

Honestly, banning show and tell would be perfectly fine with me, I don't think it needs to be banned, it's just not that bad, but banning it as a preventative measure or something could be reasonable.
I am also not saying emrakul and griselbrand and omniscience should be banned. The power level is ridiculous, but none of these are so good that they destroy every other deck and dominate the metagame.
Show and tell is a good deck, but it's not broken, at least not yet.

The reason people use SnT is because it's the best implementation. You can still make Vvine work with Entomb, Buried Alive, Fauna Shaman, etc., but the extra effort you have to go to makes it not worth it. Similarly, you could use Hypergenesis to drop Emrakul and company into play, but that strategy is significantly worse than just SnTing them in. Eureka is also worse for the reasons Kich867 outlined. It's still theoretically possible to cheat these cards into play, yes, but the question is: is it worth the effort? I suspect not:

Grisellybear will probably stay in Reanimator. He might see play in Hypergenesis; I don't know how often you'd really need to go off more than once with that deck, but I guess a 7/7 lifelink is still fine even if you never use his draw ability.

Emrakul won't see play outside of Hypergenesis. Sneak Attack might make a comeback, but without SnT to let you keep your fat it seems not so hot to me. Worldspine Wurm, I guess?

Omniscience won't really be a thing. Dream Halls and Hive Mind are sort of the same thing in terms of enabling a "weird non-storm combo deck", but you can actually cast them. Some people may try to Eureka Omniscience into play, but costing double of a color that's not the one for your cantrips seems like a bummer, and four mana means you lose speed and with it the ability to dodge counters. At that point, you might as well just stick with Dream Halls because it's going to take an equivalent amount of effort but keeps you in mono-blue.

Big stupid bombs are not inherently problematic - take out their enablers and up-front costs spike. Like you, I suspect it's only a matter of time until SnT gets banned because it's a card - like Survival - whose power level was masked by the crappiness of what you could do with it. As power and splash creep continue - especially for creatures - SnT is going to become incrementally more obnoxious.

[Malchar]

Considering there's a combat phase after the first combat phase, it's harder to abuse her ability with Karakas, but let's say you have the following setup:

Swing with Aurelia, deal combat damage, Momentary Blink/Cloudshift her ass, then swing again. Considering she should treated as a new card, she should swing for the first time this turn again, giving you overall 3 combat phases, right?

Yea this should work. You can blink Aurelia during the first end of combat step and then when you go to your second combat step, it will be just like the first one again. Aurelia will trigger, untap your creatures, and give you a third combat. Each blink effect that you use will effectively give you an extra attack with all your creatures.

Also note that extra combat phases have a great interaction with exalted because it will trigger multiple times and essentially stack with the previous bonus.

[swoop]

Yea this should work. You can blink Aurelia during the first end of combat step and then when you go to your second combat step, it will be just like the first one again. Aurelia will trigger, untap your creatures, and give you a third combat. Each blink effect that you use will effectively give you an extra attack with all your creatures.

Also note that extra combat phases have a great interaction with exalted because it will trigger multiple times and essentially stack with the previous bonus.

I do not think it will work.

[alderon666]

I do not think it will work.

Infinite combo with Galepowder Mage. LULZ

It will work because after coming back into play the card a new instance of itself, there it's the first it attacks that turn.

[SpikeyMikey]

Aggro: My problem with cards like Vengevine or Emrakul is not that the cards are too broken. My problem is that those enablers that you advocate banning are fun cards to have in the format. Survival as a toolbox card allowed for a lot of latitude in deck construction and really encouraged experimentation with different utility creatures. GSZ does that to an extent, but the green requirement makes it a little less flexible. Without creatures like Iona/Emrakul/Griselbrand, Show and Tell isn't a problem either. I remember a casual buddy of mine had a deck that would use Show and Tell to pop out Serra Avatars and Phantom Nishobas. There's nothing wrong with those kind of interactions. Had Wizards made Emrakul properly (i.e. given it the Phage ability), it wouldn't have been an issue. But those sorts of cards without drawbacks don't encourage intelligent play. Instead of back-and-forth games where the winner is the one who best leveraged their cards into board advantage, it's "I have a threat. Do you have the correct answer already in hand?" If the answer is yes, the game goes on. If the answer is no, the game ends right there. That's not about who's doing the best job of managing their resources, that's about who drew better.

[TorpidNinja]

Infinite combo with Galepowder Mage. LULZ

It will work because after coming back into play the card a new instance of itself, there it's the first it attacks that turn.

Whenever Galepowder Mage attacks, exile another target creature. Return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step.

So, no.

[Koby]

Dead Eye Navigator + Aurelia = alot of damage.

[Aggro_zombies]

Aggro: My problem with cards like Vengevine or Emrakul is not that the cards are too broken. My problem is that those enablers that you advocate banning are fun cards to have in the format. Survival as a toolbox card allowed for a lot of latitude in deck construction and really encouraged experimentation with different utility creatures. GSZ does that to an extent, but the green requirement makes it a little less flexible. Without creatures like Iona/Emrakul/Griselbrand, Show and Tell isn't a problem either. I remember a casual buddy of mine had a deck that would use Show and Tell to pop out Serra Avatars and Phantom Nishobas. There's nothing wrong with those kind of interactions. Had Wizards made Emrakul properly (i.e. given it the Phage ability), it wouldn't have been an issue. But those sorts of cards without drawbacks don't encourage intelligent play. Instead of back-and-forth games where the winner is the one who best leveraged their cards into board advantage, it's "I have a threat. Do you have the correct answer already in hand?" If the answer is yes, the game goes on. If the answer is no, the game ends right there. That's not about who's doing the best job of managing their resources, that's about who drew better.

I'll grant that Survival was a fun card, but it's also inherently broken. Any tutor engine is going to be broken. The fact that it was okay when the creatures you could find with it were bad doesn't excuse the fact that a cheap-on-both-ends, reusable tutor is seriously powerful and probably a mistake in terms of what should be printed. Now that creatures are actually good, Survival has the ability to live up to its potential.

SnT is kind of obnoxious. I don't think there are many players who ever lose to SnT and think, "Man, that was an awesome game. My opponent put a huge guy into play and I couldn't neutralize it so the game devolved into me trying to figure out how I could deal with this huge thing that hit play on turn two." This feeling has only been exacerbated by the auto-win-ness of the big things they've been making lately.

That said, I'm not going to complain too much that creatures are more powerful. I mean, people used to play shit cards like Order of the Ebon Hand in their Necropotence decks. One of the most broken draw engines of all time and the best way they could come up with to win with it was a bunch of 2/1s for two.

[Bright Light Bringer]

Yeah, let's ban fun cards that enable deck variety and non-broken cool strategies until all we have left is Delver and Miracles trying to gnaw each other, while everyone else stands still watching with their hands tied, as if that wasn't happening already. This "Show and Tell MIGHT become broken in the future, so let's ban it now" is the most absurd thing I have read in this forum, it's an approach to desperation in order to get something banned by trying to justify your irrational hate towards in. The reason to ban a card is very simple: it's affecting the board, as in RIGHT NOW, to such an extent that the entire meta revolves around it. Take down show and tell and you kill sneak attack, omnitell, dream halls, hive mind and you cut the legs off of hypergenesis and reanimator, as if these weren't having a hard time already. You may also want to notice that none of these decks have been putting consistent results lately and it really bothers me that someone even has the nerve to call out a ban on a completely NOT broken card while seeing RUG Delver, UW whatever and maverick (this one to a lesser extent now, but it still holding MUCH more value than your so called "broken" decks) swarming the fields like the plague itself. Seriously, it's so amazing that they should make a card out of this, perhaps Enter Dementia.

[Barook]

It would certainly help if Wizards printed more stuff that punishes people for cheating stuff into play. Imagine a red Thalia that nukes players whenever something is cheated into play for its CC. Emrakul sounds less hot when you eat 15 to the face, especially after Tomb activations and/or facing bolts.

Same goes with the severe lack of library manipulation hate. Where are the cards that slap your shit for using Jace/SDT every turn?

[Octopusman]

It would certainly help if Wizards printed more stuff that punishes people for cheating stuff into play. Imagine a red Thalia that nukes players whenever something is cheated into play for its CC. Emrakul sounds less hot when you eat 15 to the face, especially after Tomb activations and/or facing bolts.

Same goes with the severe lack of library manipulation hate. Where are the cards that slap your shit for using Jace/SDT every turn?

Burning-Tree Shaman

Though I would like to see more cards like the ones you've mentioned.

[death]

That said, I'm not going to complain too much that creatures are more powerful. I mean, people used to play shit cards like Order of the Ebon Hand in their Necropotence decks. One of the most broken draw engines of all time and the best way they could come up with to win with it was a bunch of 2/1s for two.

Well to be fair (back then), those were the decent stuff you can jam in the deck, and Drain Life, before there was Corrupt and Yawgmoth's Will still wasn't a card. Heck pros even tried breaking Mirror Universe with Necropotence, when Mirror was unrestricted.

[Richard Cheese]

It would certainly help if Wizards printed more stuff that punishes people for cheating stuff into play. Imagine a red Thalia that nukes players whenever something is cheated into play for its CC. Emrakul sounds less hot when you eat 15 to the face, especially after Tomb activations and/or facing bolts.

Same goes with the severe lack of library manipulation hate. Where are the cards that slap your shit for using Jace/SDT every turn?

There is not nearly enough slapping of shit in this game.

[SpikeyMikey]

I'll grant that Survival was a fun card, but it's also inherently broken. Any tutor engine is going to be broken. The fact that it was okay when the creatures you could find with it were bad doesn't excuse the fact that a cheap-on-both-ends, reusable tutor is seriously powerful and probably a mistake in terms of what should be printed. Now that creatures are actually good, Survival has the ability to live up to its potential.

SnT is kind of obnoxious. I don't think there are many players who ever lose to SnT and think, "Man, that was an awesome game. My opponent put a huge guy into play and I couldn't neutralize it so the game devolved into me trying to figure out how I could deal with this huge thing that hit play on turn two." This feeling has only been exacerbated by the auto-win-ness of the big things they've been making lately.

That said, I'm not going to complain too much that creatures are more powerful. I mean, people used to play shit cards like Order of the Ebon Hand in their Necropotence decks. One of the most broken draw engines of all time and the best way they could come up with to win with it was a bunch of 2/1s for two.

It's all situational. I don't think you can call a card inherently broken. In the right context, the most broken card you can name could be strictly disadvantageous. For some cards, that context gets a little more ridiculous than others. It's hard to make Ancestral Recall actively bad, but you could do it, assuming you have a format with no acceleration, no cheap countermagic and a ton of effects along the lines of Black Vice/Underworld Dreams/Storm Seeker. In that format, something like Lotleth Troll would be far more "broken" than Ancestral. Or if there were a card that cost 3UU with a flashback of 1U that said "Draw 3 cards", Quiet Speculation would be more broken than Ancestral.

So the question isn't really one of inherent brokenness, it's the dual question of "how easy would this card be to break?" and "what does it add to the format when it's not broken?" For something like Ancestral Recall or Necropotence, the answer to "how easy" is "very damn easy". Even when the best thing you could do with Necropotence is make pump knights, it was still pretty damn good.

But I would argue that when you talk about a card like Survival of the Fittest, the answer to "how easy" is actually "not very". It's not just that you need a creature that's powerful enough to make it worth building a deck around Survival. It also has to be cheap enough to be viable in the only formats that Survival is legal in. Vengevine fit the bill because 4 of them cost GGGGG. 16 power of hasted beats for 5 mana is ridiculous no matter how you look at it. And I never believed that VV necessitated the ban of SotF. I feel like people just refused to understand how they needed to adapt to beat it. Same goes for Mental Misstep. But that's neither here nor there. The point is that outside of a few interactions with creatures that add nothing to the game (seriously, what positive change does Iona bring to the strategy of the game?), Survival was good for Legacy. Sensei's Divining Top is good for Legacy. Miracles, on the other hand, are not. Emrakul is not. These cards don't encourage players to play smarter. They don't involve strategic choices or decision trees. I play something big and dumb and you either have the answer or you lose.

[Barook]

Burning-Tree Shaman

Though I would like to see more cards like the ones you've mentioned.

As much as I like BTS, his pinging ability is too expensive for its effect. That doesn't qualify as shit slapping - it's more of caressing them with a turd.

2cc and 2 damage per (more specific) trigger would probably be needed now, considering the power creep.

[JDK]

Sweet burning wish in High Tide -_-

Izzet Tide just got real.

[Aggro_zombies]

It's all situational. I don't think you can call a card inherently broken. In the right context, the most broken card you can name could be strictly disadvantageous. For some cards, that context gets a little more ridiculous than others. It's hard to make Ancestral Recall actively bad, but you could do it, assuming you have a format with no acceleration, no cheap countermagic and a ton of effects along the lines of Black Vice/Underworld Dreams/Storm Seeker. In that format, something like Lotleth Troll would be far more "broken" than Ancestral. Or if there were a card that cost 3UU with a flashback of 1U that said "Draw 3 cards", Quiet Speculation would be more broken than Ancestral.

This sounds remarkably like the sort of hair-splitting that goes into "strictly better" arguments. Yes, if you have two cards in your library, Ancestral Recall is not that broken. Yes, if Wizards prints some cards that work with other cards then Ancestral is not as good in those situations wherein you can get your combo together. However, under reasonable scenarios, I think most people would agree that Ancestral is inherently broken.

But I would argue that when you talk about a card like Survival of the Fittest, the answer to "how easy" is actually "not very". It's not just that you need a creature that's powerful enough to make it worth building a deck around Survival. It also has to be cheap enough to be viable in the only formats that Survival is legal in. Vengevine fit the bill because 4 of them cost GGGGG. 16 power of hasted beats for 5 mana is ridiculous no matter how you look at it. And I never believed that VV necessitated the ban of SotF. I feel like people just refused to understand how they needed to adapt to beat it. Same goes for Mental Misstep. But that's neither here nor there. The point is that outside of a few interactions with creatures that add nothing to the game (seriously, what positive change does Iona bring to the strategy of the game?), Survival was good for Legacy. Sensei's Divining Top is good for Legacy. Miracles, on the other hand, are not. Emrakul is not. These cards don't encourage players to play smarter. They don't involve strategic choices or decision trees. I play something big and dumb and you either have the answer or you lose.

Survival is a tutor (reduces variance) that is reusable (severely reduces variance) for very little mana (low barrier to use). Survival is inherently broken. If the only creatures you can get with it are shitty, it's still inherently broken because it does something that is bad for the game: it reduces variance in a game with a significant luck component. Yes, competitive players love to death cards like Survival precisely because they make the game more chess-like - where the better player almost always wins - but Magic was not designed to be chess-like.

I mean, I know you think Magic is shit now because Wizards is catering to the unwashed hordes instead of making a game to be played at the rarefied tables of true gentlemen, but variance can be good for a game's replay value. Puzzles become less fun to solve when you know exactly how to do so.

[Koby]

I mean, I know you think Magic is shit now because Wizards is catering to the unwashed hordes instead of making a game to be played at the rarefied tables of true gentlemen, but variance can be good for a game's replay value. Puzzles become less fun to solve when you know exactly how to do so.

BTW, that is precisely what Vintage can become - given more rewarding tools for its card pool. I'm thinking some sort of marquee enchantment in Red that doesn't directly go into Workshop or Goblin/Burn in Legacy.

I dare them. I dare them!

[Aggro_zombies]

BTW, that is precisely what Vintage can become - given more rewarding tools for its card pool. I'm thinking some sort of marquee enchantment in Red that doesn't directly go into Workshop or Goblin/Burn in Legacy.

I dare them. I dare them!

A Gentleman's Game of Strategy
U
Instant
Look at your library. You may put those cards back in any order.
Draw a card.
"And now, may the best intellect win." - Spikey McSpikerson, Pro Player