The testing of banned cards?

[Admiral_Arzar]

Cool idea Carsten, I've thought about doing something like this myself but never got around to it. The problem is, most of the people in this thread need to lay off the sauce (or the crack in some cases). Sure it might be fun to try and rationalize how Oath of Druids wouldn't completely wreck Legacy in some completely bizarro parallel universe, but that isn't very productive. Stick to cards that are easy unbans:

Black Vise
Earthcraft
Mind Twist

And cards that aren't easy but at least have a shot in hell at being argued for:

Mind's Desire
Frantic Search

Some more sketchy picks would be Seal, Jar, Drain, and maybe Dragon (although Dragon will likely always stay banned unless there is some kind of change to the infinite loop rules). In fact, the non-easy but at least possible unban candidates are probably the best cards to mess around with. Wishful thinking regarding Skullclamp (among my favorite cards in magic) isn't going to change the fact that the card is patently, ball-breakingly, absurdly busted in half and would literally make control strategies unplayable forever. So that I don't just spout off criticism, here's an embryonic list for one of the above cards:

Jar Tendrils

4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Grim Monolith

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
2 Flusterstorm/Chant
4 Force of Will

4 Memory Jar
3 Tendrils of Agony
3 Enlightened Tutor

4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Ancient Tomb
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Swamp
1 Island

Just a vanilla tendrils list, but different from ANT/TES etc. in that you can play FOW. Of course, you could just play LED over FOW and play a faster shell, perhaps add red for Welder/Past in Flames etc.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

So many good answers and interest - I seem to have hit on something here. I definitely hope we can get this to take off, thanks everybody!

To all of those arguing about the banned list, unbanning the cards I mentioned in Legacy and the whole B&R list discussion in general: you haven't understood the article. I'm not trying to get those cards unbanned. I even mentioned that for a lot of these I doubt having them legal in the format would be a good idea somewhere in the article. This is about getting to play with fun cards we haven't had access to for years while at the same time collecting data as to how broken they actually still are - because we might find some surprising cards that actually wouldn't do anything to break Legacy in half. In the meantime I finally get a format where I can go Ritual->Necro again and others get to do whatever they've been pining for, too. The question here isn't "should card X be unbanned" but "what could we do with it if it was".

Oath: the problem with actually unbanning Oath is that against creature-based decks it's essentially a one card combo. It would probably end up being super-Tarmogoyf more than anything else (build an aggro-control deck, remove the creatures, add four Oath, two broken fatties and 1-2 Gaea's Blessing and whenever you'd have normally dropped a Goyf to beat them down with, you now get a one turn delayed Emrakul or something similarly dumb). Making playing creatures a terrible idea isn't high on many players list of things to do in Legacy, I suspect. This is all theory-crafting, though, so having a chance to test it out while playing games with fun broken cards seems like a good idea.

@emidln: Trust for you to find the most broken update of KrOathan combo imaginable :p

@Dark Ritual: Unmask might make the Necro deck after I've played with it for a while. LED/Infernal won't - I want FoW in my Necro deck to actually make Ritual->Necro into an effective turn 1 win.

Skullclamp: There are a million different fun things to try out with Skullclamp, though I doubt it would be good for regular Legacy. It sure as hell would be nice to actually play games with and against it again and maybe we'll end up with a (big) surprise and see that it is actually fine. My first instinct would be to put it into Elves as Glimpse 5-8.

@sdematt: You definitely deserve some props for helping the idea mature in my mind. It's all thanks to me trying to build a broken Academy deck after reading that thread a long time ago and not managing to get anything better than what we already have. That and my desire to jam Necro, Will and some other sick fun cards from the banned list again.

@Admiral_Arzar: Agreed, most of the cards people will be interested in exploring won't be healthy for Legacy as a whole. Finally getting to play with them again will still be a hell lot of fun, I feel. You Jar-list actually looks like a pretty sweet starting point to see if it is actually as busted as we think it is. It's a perfect illustration of what I'd like Banned Battles to be to be about: exploring the banned list and doing fun things with the cards while doing so. If that list is what you're fielding, I wouldn't be afraid of piloting my regular decks against it, though I still expect it to be better than I'd be comfortable with to really unban.

ok... it MIGHT be fair in THAT format :)

I wouldn't know, I'd be playing Flash until it was re-banned, then Necro until it was re-banned

I'd definitely jam Necro first - much more fun and about as powerful (I actually expected it to be better than Flash but at least in the head to head they're quite even - did some two-fisted testing when bored). *g*

[leegoo]

I'd definitely jam Necro first - much more fun and about as powerful (I actually expected it to be better than Flash but at least in the head to head they're quite even - did some two-fisted testing when bored). *g*

Maybe we could really go deep (and old school) and make "Cocoa Flash"

I mean what's better than a combo deck? Adding 4 Necro's to it!

[LeoCop 90]

I suppose Goblin Recruiter could be unbanned without too many problems. I know it looks really strong but it is not more powerful than a lot of other stuffs that have been printed since his banning.
Let's examine what he could do if unbanned:
- goblin combo with food chain would return
- goblin aggro would run him as a one- two of as matron target.

I don't believe that the food chain recruiter combo would be too broken in today's legacy. It would be slower than other combo decks, with a beatdown alternative plan, that is what elves are basically doing at the moment. Moreover, running food chain would mean cutting (or at least tweaking) aether vial. So the extra speed gained against combo would be balanced with the more vulnerability against control ( due to the absence of vial).

As a silver bullet in an aggro list it would be a fantastic card for mid-late game plans, but it would not eliminate goblins weakness against combo. Recruiter is not a card that can be played early in the game , because if you are going to stack a lot of goblins on top of your library you must have a lot of mana in hand to cast the spells you draw.

All in all, i think that the unbanning of recruiter would make goblin aggro deck slightly better and would open the possibility for goblin food chain. Neither of these two decks would be too powerful in today's legacy.

[Lemnear]

I suppose Goblin Recruiter could be unbanned without too many problems. I know it looks really strong but it is not more powerful than a lot of other stuffs that have been printed since his banning.
Let's examine what he could do if unbanned:
- goblin combo with food chain would return
- goblin aggro would run him as a one- two of as matron target.

I don't believe that the food chain recruiter combo would be too broken in today's legacy. It would be slower than other combo decks, with a beatdown alternative plan, that is what elves are basically doing at the moment. Moreover, running food chain would mean cutting (or at least tweaking) aether vial. So the extra speed gained against combo would be balanced with the more vulnerability against control ( due to the absence of vial).

As a silver bullet in an aggro list it would be a fantastic card for mid-late game plans, but it would not eliminate goblins weakness against combo. Recruiter is not a card that can be played early in the game , because if you are going to stack a lot of goblins on top of your library you must have a lot of mana in hand to cast the spells you draw.

All in all, i think that the unbanning of recruiter would make goblin aggro deck slightly better and would open the possibility for goblin food chain. Neither of these two decks would be too powerful in today's legacy.

Read the B&R thread for this topic; we already had this and Food Chain is NOT the issue with recruiter. It's stalling the game for 10 minutes with each EtB aside with cheating by shifting more than your Library around the table if you know that i'm talking 'bout

[Amon Amarth]

Keeping a card banned because someone might cheat with it is not a good reason to keep it banned, at that point we might as well ban Explore. Also, are you trying to suggest that it takes 10 minutes to resolve a Ringleader trigger? Or something else?

[Lemnear]

Keeping a card banned because someone might cheat with it is not a good reason to keep it banned, at that point we might as well ban Explore. Also, are you trying to suggest that it takes 10 minutes to resolve a Ringleader trigger? Or something else?

Aren't we talking about Goblin Recruiter? You'll play those in multiples and include those into your ringleader draws to be able to restack your deck in case of unexpected actions. It was pretty common during Type 1.5 Games to do this so I suspect the same in current Legacy. Restacking the Deck for 10 minutes each 1 or 2 turns harms tournament play, the same way which got Sheherazade banned

[Koby]

NecroSpike

4 Necropotence

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Lim Dul's Vault

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Duress

4 Tendrils of Agony
4 Soul Spike

8 Fetch
4 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Scrubland/Bayou (depending on how you want to splash for SB)

Get Necro into play, pay 10+ life, Spike your opponent to avoid discarding anyway. Untap, cast 7 spells and Tendrils for 14-16, if they are not dead already, draw 15 more cards and Spike your opponent.

[LeoCop 90]

Aren't we talking about Goblin Recruiter? You'll play those in multiples and include those into your ringleader draws to be able to restack your deck in case of unexpected actions. It was pretty common during Type 1.5 Games to do this so I suspect the same in current Legacy. Restacking the Deck for 10 minutes each 1 or 2 turns harms tournament play, the same way which got Sheherazade banned

I don't know if using a recruiter would waste so much time, but i think that a good goblin player can resolve its trigger in 2-3 minutes or less. There are a lot of decks that require a lot of actions and time to be played, such as high tide and combo elves.... when their pilots have little experience theri turns can last a lot of minutes. We can't ban all cards that require some time to be played .

[dontbiteitholmes]

I don't know if using a recruiter would waste so much time, but i think that a good goblin player can resolve its trigger in 2-3 minutes or less. There are a lot of decks that require a lot of actions and time to be played, such as high tide and combo elves.... when their pilots have little experience theri turns can last a lot of minutes. We can't ban all cards that require some time to be played .

In This Thread: A whole lot of people who have never used Goblin Recruiter before. You think a Goblin Recruiter trigger could be resolved in 2 minutes, then maybe you should break out your goblins deck and see how fast you can stack every goblin in the deck into an ideal order taking into account things which might go wrong.

Not that that's even the only problem with unbanning recruiter.

[LeoCop 90]

I played goblins for a lot of years although i didn't play when recruiter was legal. I play recruiter in my edh deck aniway... i understand that stacking your library can take a some time, but then again , i think that it varies a lot from player to player.
And it's not like you must stack your deck in an IDEAL order. You know that you can't waste 15 minutes arranging cards, so i think you should learn to do the better you can in a reasonable time... otherwise you get a judge warning.

Comparing recruiter to Shahrazad is absurd. Shahrazad says that you must play another game inside the game... basically doubling the whole time needed to play.

[Lemnear]

I don't know if using a recruiter would waste so much time, but i think that a good goblin player can resolve its trigger in 2-3 minutes or less. There are a lot of decks that require a lot of actions and time to be played, such as high tide and combo elves.... when their pilots have little experience theri turns can last a lot of minutes. We can't ban all cards that require some time to be played .

You simply don't get the point: You can use Recruiter for stalling an insane amout of time in every game it benefits you, unless WotC releases a dedicated tournament rule concerning time, like they once did with sideboarding.

There is a difference in taking 10 minutes to execute your winning combo in TES, High Tide, Elves, TinFins or for a lesser midgame Action like Recruiter, Fetchlands, Sensei's Divining Top or Brainstorm.

I played goblins for a lot of years although i didn't play when recruiter was legal. I play recruiter in my edh deck aniway... i understand that stacking your library can take a some time, but then again , i think that it varies a lot from player to player.
And it's not like you must stack your deck in an IDEAL order. You know that you can't waste 15 minutes arranging cards, so i think you should learn to do the better you can in a reasonable time... otherwise you get a judge warning.

Comparing recruiter to Shahrazad is absurd. Shahrazad says that you must play another game inside the game... basically doubling the whole time needed to play.

Wrong, a Judge can't penalize you for taking time for such a complicated trigger. It's impossible to draw the line between careful prep. or stalling. No Chance a Judge can handle that well. She-Za was used to stall Games into Subgames into subgames which was a legal Form of stalling. Allowing Players to Stack up to 60 cards in a careful prepared order does nearly the same damage to organized play. 40 minutes Match Time Limit, up to 3 Games, 4 Recruiter trigger per Game. Do your math with your suggested 3 minutes and imagine the effect it has on the Games 2 and 3

[Amon Amarth]

You simply don't get the point: You can use Recruiter for stalling an insane amout of time in every game it benefits you, unless WotC releases a dedicated tournament rule concerning time, like they once did with sideboarding.

There is a difference in taking 10 minutes to execute your winning combo in TES, High Tide, Elves, TinFins or for a lesser midgame Action like Recruiter, Fetchlands, Sensei's Divining Top or Brainstorm.

Stalling is cheating. Plain and simple. If someone wants to stall out a game then they will find ways to do it regardless of what cards are banned or not.

Recruiter is a combo card, by the way. If you're stacking a ton of cards you're going to combo out. I can't remember a time when I stacked 16+ Goblins and didn't kill them with FC that turn.

Wrong, a Judge can't penalize you for taking time for such a complicated trigger. It's impossible to draw the line between careful prep. or stalling. No Chance a Judge can handle that well. She-Za was used to stall Games into Subgames into subgames which was a legal Form of stalling. Allowing Players to Stack up to 60 cards in a careful prepared order does nearly the same damage to organized play. 40 minutes Match Time Limit, up to 3 Games, 4 Recruiter trigger per Game. Do your math with your suggested 3 minutes and imagine the effect it has on the Games 2 and 3

You aren't stacking up to 60 cards, get real. No need to be hyperbolic to make a point. Secondly, you assume that there are always going to be multiple Recruiter triggers per game which isn't the case. The more triggers there are the smaller the stacks i.e. only setting up a stack for a Ringleader trigger. Third, if someone doesn't know what they doing they aren't going to be sucking up time in a tournament, they're just going to 0-2 drop. If you decide to pick up FCG and not memorize the stacks, when to cast Recruiter or even just lacking in expertise with the deck, you will lose. A lot.

[Lemnear]

NecroSpike

4 Necropotence

4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Lim Dul's Vault

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Duress

4 Tendrils of Agony
4 Soul Spike

8 Fetch
4 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
1 Scrubland/Bayou (depending on how you want to splash for SB)

Get Necro into play, pay 10+ life, Spike your opponent to avoid discarding anyway. Untap, cast 7 spells and Tendrils for 14-16, if they are not dead already, draw 15 more cards and Spike your opponent.

Everytime someone posts a storm deck without LED + Infernal Tutor, a fluffy kitten dies!

[phazonmutant]

NecroSpike

I really don't get what's so attractive about Necro compared to the sweet power of Bargain. Having to pass the turn and try to combo off with whatever 7 cards you keep just doesn't seem close to as powerful as Bargain for the low price of 3 mana. Like, it doesn't seem that much better than Doomsday. Sure, Necro isn't at an appropriate power level for legacy, but that's really just saying more about how busted Bargain is.

There is one thing that would get me excited for Necro. It's another enchantment, it's not banned, and it's free.
4 Necropotence
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
3 Tendrils of Agony
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Badlands
4 Leyline of Anticipation

[Lemnear]

I really don't get what's so attractive about Necro compared to the sweet power of Bargain. Having to pass the turn and try to combo off with whatever 7 cards you keep just doesn't seem close to as powerful as Bargain for the low price of 3 mana. Like, it doesn't seem that much better than Doomsday. Sure, Necro isn't at an appropriate power level for legacy, but that's really just saying more about how busted Bargain is.

There is one thing that would get me excited for Necro. It's another enchantment, it's not banned, and it's free.
4 Necropotence
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Past in Flames
3 Tendrils of Agony
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Duress
2 Cabal Therapy
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Badlands
4 Leyline of Anticipation

Are you wondering why a 6cc spell is stronger than a 3cc? The Point, which should be clear, is that Necro is insanly cheap to play. Land, Ritual, Discard spell, LED, Infernal -> Necro is much easier than generating 8 mana to Tutor bargain. I neither have any clue why you would run 3 Tendrils or PIF maindeck over a set of Burning Wishes.

[LeoCop 90]

Following the logic of stalling a game with goblin recruiter, there are other cards that should be banned.
For example, there was a belcher list without lands that ran Recross the Paths . Casting recross the paths without lands in your deck means that you can stack your entire library in the order you choose.
So, why Recross the paths is still legal? And i imagine other cards exist with similar effects.

Then again, if the problem was cheating and time, recruiter should be banned also in vintage.

Be realistic , recruiter is not banned because of cheating or time issues. It is banned because years ago goblins were dominating the format... and this will not happen nowadays if recruiter is unbanned.

[TsumiBand]

I'm afraid I don't agree with the assessment of Goblin Recruiter. Recruiter was a well-known and critical part of Food Chain Goblins, and even without FC a Goblins player is still well able to chain Goblin Ringleaders to draw four cards a turn. Recruiter is banned not because it allows you to stack your deck or stall the game, it is banned because it allows you to stack your deck with Goblins. Otherwise we would see odd bans like Recross the Paths and Dwarven Recruiter.

The only way I could see a player taking "too long" to stack with Goblin Recruiter would be if they had no clue how to actually do it correctly. Experienced players had predefined stacks for given situations, like trying to play around known countermagic or like, Trinisphere or whatever else was slowing them down; this process never took longer than it needed to. It probably shouldn't take any longer than the culmination of the average number of built-in shuffles a deck with fetchlands and tutors (maybe even Sensei's Divining Top-ing from time to time) wouldn't already be going through.

When cards are being banned because of their effect on the "50 minutes + 5 rounds" format of tournament play, it's important to understand what that really implies. This is actually why I hate it when people bring up Shahrazhad, because for all the theoretical and anecdotal garbage people bring to the table about what that deck is capable of, there was virtually no tournament data to back it up. The deck didn't show up often and it generally failed to launch when it did, because it had to fight through existing hate that was good against other decks already - it's like bringing a Tribal deck to a format full of Engineered Plagues to fight Goblins, it's a bad idea not because your deck sucks, but because you're not playing Goblins. It was mostly theorem and little proof.

[Lemnear]

Comparing Vintage and Legacy, again? Jesus, what's a goblin recruiter against Tinker, Y.Will and shit.

The lack of tournament data concerning SheZa could also be a result of being a 760€ playset then it was legal (now ~60€ despite being banned) and only playable in a Single deck. Pretty much like Recruiter just less playable

[Koby]

I really don't get what's so attractive about Necro compared to the sweet power of Bargain. Having to pass the turn and try to combo off with whatever 7 cards you keep just doesn't seem close to as powerful as Bargain for the low price of 3 mana. Like, it doesn't seem that much better than Doomsday. Sure, Necro isn't at an appropriate power level for legacy, but that's really just saying more about how busted Bargain is.

In terms of power level, there is no comparison. We're validating the statement: "Necropotence is too powerful in Legacy to be unbanned."

Both your list and mine can demonstrate that fact, even if mine does not include LED/Tutor as additional decision trees. Necro is powerful enough in either list to seriously consider leaving on the Ban list.

As for the actual discussion regarding Necro vs Bargain - yes the 3 mana cost makes a huge difference. A turn 1 or 2 necro is much more realistic off land ritual, or land land lotus, or land land cabal ritual, that it adds an incredible amount of consistency. The only issue of course, is finding Necro. Unfortunately, and unlike the Classic format version of NecroSpike, Demonic Consultation is banned in this quasi-Legacy format we're working in. This reduces consistency.