Is the format ready to unban Hermit Druid?

[Aggro_zombies]

The deck will be torn into pieces by every blue based aggro control deck. Classic case of OCS (Overestimating combo syndrom).

Since when does aggro-control beat combo-control? You get to run all the same disruption and draw, except you don't have to attack them turn after turn to end the game.

The thing about Hermit Druid is that it would probably be hands-down the best blue-based control deck in the format. Your combo takes up all of, what, twelve slots including Druid (4 Druid, 4 Narc, 1 DR, 1 Angel, 1 Lab Maniac, 1 Azami)? The rest of the deck can be discard, draw, and counters. Like Flash, you wouldn't want to be focused on turboing the combo out as soon as possible; you get the best returns from waiting a bit, disrupting along the way, and then killing the opponent when you're sure he can't fight back. RUG shows you can easily build a stable, entirely nonbasic manabase, though Hermit would likely run more lands and turn Wastes into Cavern of Souls/Hall of the Bandit Lord. The best part is, you can totally run a transformational sideboard into generic midrange BUG if you wanted.

That there is a deck that operates on roughly the same principles as Druid (that one worse-Belcher thing) doesn't mean Druid itself is a good card to unban.

[apple713]

I would be happy to take a bet for a couple of duals if it would BREAK the format. Because that's what we are talking about. Becoming an established combo archteype: sure. Threat to the format: no.

Classic OCS... happens all the time.

I would bet my beta set of power this card would break the format.

I play it regularly in EDH.. very similar to vintage and it is consistently a t3 win with all sorts of protection. If they remove it sure whatever...shallow grave it into play on t3.... theres your haste effect... Oh you think it'll get countered... Cavern of souls is your answer.

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showt...290260&page=18 <-----second post on the page, the poster is Emether

The above link outlines in detail all possible situations that it has answer for main deck. In legacy it would actually be more consistent than EDH and more abusable.

look I would love for the card to be unbanned cause it would be top of my list to play. It's degenerate.

Compare it to survival. Both cards abuse the graveyard, and have means to win the game shortly after casting. The difference is that Survival doesnt win when you untap with it... and survival got the ban hammer.

[monovfox]

Phyrexian Revoker, Abrupt Decay, SHOW AND TELL. Etc. I don't see it being that much of a problem. Sure, the deck can run force. I think Show and Tell is more degenerate

[apple713]

Phyrexian Revoker, Abrupt Decay, SHOW AND TELL. Etc. I don't see it being that much of a problem. Sure, the deck can run force. I think Show and Tell is more degenerate

hermit druid is more resilient than show and tell. Here's why.

hermit druid dies before activation. next turn it gets postmortem lunge (<---my preference) into play and wins on the spot.

same situation with show and tell would be that it gets countered and you are holding a fatty in hand... Did you put regrowth in your deck? You have to find another one... Or you have to find a sneak attack. Lets say you have a sneak attack in your hand... you have to get 4 mana as opposed to the 2 mana that hermit druid costs.

lets say your playing omni tell. You are now playing a 3 card combo compared to a 1 card hermit druid tutorable combo...womp womp womp from the start. I've played this deck enough to know that its not better than sneak and show.

Having hermit druid killed is not a problem there are tons of ways to bring it back.

unearth
reanimate
corpse dance
necromancy
on and on... the deck is playing black...

if you are really worried about it getting killed you have answers that curve perfectly.

mother of runes
sylvan safekeeper

you also have tons of tutors

worldly tutor
sylvan tutor
intuition
green sun's zenith
summoner's pact
... tutoring for creatues is what green does.

intution ---> hermit druid and 2 postmortem lunges .... looks like i get to keep my hermit druid :)


so now that you are playing black you have cards like thoughtseize and duress to pick apart early removal if the whole mother of runes / sylvan safekeeper isn't your style. If you would rather play slowly you can play blue, spell pierce daze misdirection fow .

Since hermit druid is splashable you have your choice of support, discard or counterspells, depending on your meta.



Since you are playing green artifacts / enchnatments have never really been a problem for green. Pithing needle and revoker get smashed by ancient grudge, krosan grip, ray of revelation for enchantments and i think crumble even gets there


in short the deck plays along the same graveyard shenanigns as dredge but 10x more consistent and has ALL the answers. It should have a ridiculously high game 1 win % with a slightly lower game 2 win %.


All i ask is that you pick the deck up sometime and just play it against the most broken decks you can find.

Oh yeah, once the druid mills the deck your set... there are tons of answer to be played from the grave

memory's journey
pull from eternity
ray of revelation
ancient grudge

[Mewens]

The nature of Hermit Druid is troubling, as well, even if its power level were in line with the rest of Legacy (and I don't think it is – I think it's more degenerate than Hulk-Flash, honestly).

Flipping coins is balanced: Over a long enough timeframe, you'll win about half of your coin flips. That doesn't mean coin-flipping's a good game, and combo decks that are coin flips – "I got my turn 2 combo off, you lose; you got your turns 2 hate off, I lose" – don't make for good games, either. SnT is already perilously close to that paradigm; I'm not sure we should be advocating more linear, powerful and quick-to-close combo decks.

And because I know that comment's gonna piss off some of you, just a quick clarification – I'm not advocating for the end of combo decks, nor am I saying all combo decks are coin-flipping, herp-a-derp piles. Hell, I'm not even against a few dumb-as-a-rock combo decks floating around; they kind of keep things honest, in a weird sort of way. But there's a certain point where there's too many of them, and even if they're not posting 55%+ win ratios, they're injecting a lot of chaos into tourneys and undermining the "skill" part of the game.

(Just to put that all in perspective, I'm playing an enchantress combo deck right now that's probably more herp-a-derp than smart, so I'm at least a little guilty of this.)

[Megadeus]

I think the comment that said, At best it adds nothing and At worst it breaks the format in half.., Holds true. A One card combo is just not good for the format. And it can be built in so many different shells.

[HPB_Eggo]

Druid combo would take one of two forms...

1) A deck focused on powering out Hermit Druid and going nuclear ASAP. Is a turn faster than a lot of other combo decks, but can be interacted with by more cards - importantly, cards that are run by nearly every deck in the format. I would have zero problems with seeing this, other than it being stupidly simple to play and possibly driving out a lot of more interesting combo decks.

2) A deck that plays more or less exactly like current control decks, but instantly wins the second it can meet some specific requirements. This sort of deck could be both better and more compact than RiP/Helm, which frightens me.

Vote goes for not allowing it back in. It won't contribute anything meaningful to the format other than, maybe, pushing out some combo that can only be interacted with on the stack in favor of one that can only be interacted with via removal, which might be a nice boost to non-blue decks but would otherwise just narrow down the format more, and there's a possibility of a very scary control deck that just wins with the best one-card combo ever printed when you let it get ahead for even a single turn. Scary stuff, man. Scary stuff.

[Ellomdian]

No. It's not a matter of "readiness" - it's a matter of the next major event turning into HulkFlash.

Just because a significant amount of Hate exists for a specific strategy or card does not justify unbanning it. Expecting the community to self-police is bad - at least FoW is a general answer to degeneracy. Forcing everyone to run RiP/Leyline to have a chance would just be stupid.

I would put Oath on the list above druid, and that would be testing the waters pretty heavily...

[Dice_Box]

With the printing of Emrakul... Yea no. Don't need this thing firing off, responding to Emrakul's trigger, hitting dread return and then shuffling the grave along with Emrakul straight back into the library. Then you can just do it all again. Yeah no.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I would put Oath on the list above druid, and that would be testing the waters pretty heavily...

That's like saying I'd rather shoot myself in the foot then get hit in the face with a baseball bat. Two things that should never happen for the good of everyone.

[catmint]

It has been pointed out by a couple of people that you can run a "combo-control" deck because you only need a couple of dead slots for the combo. Just because you run counterspells and discard does not make a deck combo-control to me. The way I understand combo control is to "really get control" and then win with whatever. Like RIP miracles or with a jace or entreat if you like to see that as a 1 card combo. A combo deck that runs enough disruption to survive and to setup the kill can play "controlling" but is it really "combo-control". But that's not the point of the discussion.

I seem to be pretty alone with my opinion that he would not break the format. My thoughts are:

- If you don't run supporting cards like crossroads or postmortem lunge every removal spell disrupts this combo and legacy has become a very removal heavy format.

- Deathrite, RIP and Surgical are so common because they are really good cards - even without any graveyard deck being Tier1.

- Dead cards do matter a lot. If you start 60%+ with an "auto-mull" which sometimes also forces you therapy yourself before you can win and if you have a certain % of "dead draws" that does hurt a decks consistency and should be taken into account.

- The best version of the deck would likely be BUG right?. Green and blue obviously and you might need to cabal yourself to be able to win. This means you are at least to some degree also vulnerable to wasteland.

- Countermagic for hermit itself is probably weak since pierce/fluster are a lot more common than snare and cavern can be a thing, but the tutors and supporting cards are all vulnerable to those taxing counters.

As I said I cannot see a build that has an edge over aggro control variants, but maybe that is not even relevant for "breaking the format". If it is much faster than other combo decks and cannot be disrupted by them it could be in a way that no other combo deck is viable and that would not be good.

So summing up: I don't think hermit would win over aggro-control, but being harmful to the format: might be.

[Gheizen64]

It has been pointed out by a couple of people that you can run a "combo-control" deck because you only need a couple of dead slots for the combo. Just because you run counterspells and discard does not make a deck combo-control to me. The way I understand combo control is to "really get control" and then win with whatever. Like RIP miracles or with a jace or entreat if you like to see that as a 1 card combo. A combo deck that runs enough disruption to survive and to setup the kill can play "controlling" but is it really "combo-control". But that's not the point of the discussion.

I seem to be pretty alone with my opinion that he would not break the format. My thoughts are:

- If you don't run supporting cards like crossroads or postmortem lunge every removal spell disrupts this combo and legacy has become a very removal heavy format.

- Deathrite, RIP and Surgical are so common because they are really good cards - even without any graveyard deck being Tier1.

- Dead cards do matter a lot. If you start 60%+ with an "auto-mull" which sometimes also forces you therapy yourself before you can win and if you have a certain % of "dead draws" that does hurt a decks consistency and should be taken into account.

- The best version of the deck would likely be BUG right?. Green and blue obviously and you might need to cabal yourself to be able to win. This means you are at least to some degree also vulnerable to wasteland.

- Countermagic for hermit itself is probably weak since pierce/fluster are a lot more common than snare and cavern can be a thing, but the tutors and supporting cards are all vulnerable to those taxing counters.

As I said I cannot see a build that has an edge over aggro control variants, but maybe that is not even relevant for "breaking the format". If it is much faster than other combo decks and cannot be disrupted by them it could be in a way that no other combo deck is viable and that would not be good.

So summing up: I don't think hermit would win over aggro-control, but being harmful to the format: might be.

Point is that RiP-Helm go for slower control because the win conditions cost 6 mana in total. Hermit would go for more tempo-oriented control (cheap counters, cantrips) because its win condition cost 2, no reason to wait for T5 to win the game. Hermit is stupid and i'd unban at least 10 cards before it.

[YamiJoey]

As you basically said in your opening statement; it's a fun card to grab Basics with. If it had some kind of 'If you don't find it shuffle them all back' clause it'd be great to play with, almost like a Weathered Wayfarer (the Land Tax-esque White Creature. I'm crap at my older card names.) As is it's just another random Belcher card. The deck is borderline excellent, let's leave it like we leave Dredge.

[apple713]

It has been pointed out by a couple of people that you can run a "combo-control" deck because you only need a couple of dead slots for the combo. Just because you run counterspells and discard does not make a deck combo-control to me. The way I understand combo control is to "really get control" and then win with whatever. Like RIP miracles or with a jace or entreat if you like to see that as a 1 card combo. A combo deck that runs enough disruption to survive and to setup the kill can play "controlling" but is it really "combo-control". But that's not the point of the discussion.

I seem to be pretty alone with my opinion that he would not break the format. My thoughts are:

- If you don't run supporting cards like crossroads or postmortem lunge every removal spell disrupts this combo and legacy has become a very removal heavy format.

- Deathrite, RIP and Surgical are so common because they are really good cards - even without any graveyard deck being Tier1.

- Dead cards do matter a lot. If you start 60%+ with an "auto-mull" which sometimes also forces you therapy yourself before you can win and if you have a certain % of "dead draws" that does hurt a decks consistency and should be taken into account.

- The best version of the deck would likely be BUG right?. Green and blue obviously and you might need to cabal yourself to be able to win. This means you are at least to some degree also vulnerable to wasteland.

- Countermagic for hermit itself is probably weak since pierce/fluster are a lot more common than snare and cavern can be a thing, but the tutors and supporting cards are all vulnerable to those taxing counters.

As I said I cannot see a build that has an edge over aggro control variants, but maybe that is not even relevant for "breaking the format". If it is much faster than other combo decks and cannot be disrupted by them it could be in a way that no other combo deck is viable and that would not be good.

So summing up: I don't think hermit would win over aggro-control, but being harmful to the format: might be.

Compare Druid to vintage dredge. There are 3 decks in vintage, bazaar dredge, mana drain control, and stax. Since dredge is 1 of three decks you have to sideboard against and almost all the decks run leylines, bazaar dredge is proof that you cant hate out a deck.