Standard comparable to Legacy?Originally Posted by Lord Seth
I mean, shouldn't there be more playable non-blue CQ tools available in Legacy pool? And I'm asking seriously, this isn't any kind of troll attempt. also, I'd love if ppl won't scream in panic "blue would absorb those spells!" I don'tbelieve it's true, it has enough CQ effects as it is, e.g. I cannot imagine Strom.dec including any Natural Selection or similar green stuff; the deck has all the Brainstorms, Ponders and Preordains that it needs. Imho other colors should get some of those tools to not remain in spinster bracket.
I'm not sure about black, as one mana draw two with some life loss attached is still pretty overpowered. Maybe something similar to Bitterblossom (in manacost and upkeep effect), but yeah Bob For Poor is not exactly thrilling and necessary.
Same goes for white, I'm not sure what could be done except for glueing scry or similar effect on cheap removal. Maybe some kind of Scroll Rack, idk.
Red and green are easy, otoh. Red should get reaonable looting (but as long as the best one isn't played anywhere else than in Dredge, maybe it's not the best design), while green could use some creatures with etb:scry or etb:draw or w/e effect. Otho, it has got Mirri's Guile, it has got Glimpse of N., it has got Visionary, the whole Tress archetype, etc. Maybe we already got the tools, but only are lazy to explore the new horizons?
Black has what you asked for in Phyrexian Arena.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I was thinking about something less EDH, more Legacy. Idk why I wrote Bitterblossom when I was clearly thinking Arena (or that cmc3 Enchantment Creature - Bob), but yeah, maybe I should wake up before writing.
TS-Lor Standard was fun :3
Mulldrifter(+recursion), Think Twice, Careful Consideration, Jace 1.0, Harmonize, Ponder, Primal Command...
CA and CQ can't be turn 4 propositions. They can't even be turn 3 propositions. In Legacy the game can be almost over based on what you have seen by turn 3.
The RUG and BUG and Miracles lists all have 8 ways to gain CQ at no cost in terms of CA on turn 1. That's why blue is out of control right now. It's why blue has been out of control for most the existence of Legacy. No other color has the ability to look at cards turn 1 and fix in a big way.
The thing is that all the other colors would kill to have on-color access to the "bad" cantrips, like Sleight of Hand, Serum Visions and Portent. Having access to options like that would go a long way towards fixing the consistency problems that non-blue lists have. If we restricted blue to just those options it would still be the strongest color in the wheel and it would still be played by people trying to get consistency.
Yeah, this. I still think that instead of Ponder-like spells, the other colors should get something more in line with "their position and role considering color pie".
Magma Jet is fine. So is Infernal Contract. Sylvan Library ain't bad. But those are etiehr weak for Legacy and/or they don't do anything before turn3 unless accelerated. This is... maybe not exactly wrong, but consideringblue's effects, it's laughable how very few consistency tools are in other colors.
Rather that looting, I'd rather see Red explore more abilities like what Chandra, Pyromaster offers. That fits Red's theme pretty well I think (sort of "here it is, but you have to use it now" type effects). Something comparable to Brainstorm for Red:
Sorcery - CMC: R - Exile the top 3 cards of your library. You may cast them this turn (or you may cast any one of them this turn...or one + some sacrifice to cast the others).
Yeah, that's busted, but not as busted as Brainstorm. Blue could use it I guess, but this isn't the greatest with counters, and it requires you to tap out on your own turn to make effective use of it. It would be nuts with certain combo decks, but that's fine with me, I'd rather combo get a boost than Delver decks. This could also help make R/G aggro somewhat viable again by "reloading" once the hand / board is empty.
Or even Gamble type effects, since that's part of Red's scheme (exile the top 3 cards. Your opponent chooses one at random. Put that in your hand and the remaining cards in your graveyard / exile).
Green's theme should be tied to creatures / land. Sort of like Domri and Courser of Kruphix, but obviously they'd need to be a bit better than that to make it into Legacy. I'd also like to see WOTC explore the "fight" mechanic more as a means of giving Green some removal. Sort of like Prey Upon, but instant speed at one CMC.
Black's got plenty of draw, that's not the problem there.
White is tricky. I'm not sure what fits the theme. Perhaps Scry. The problem with White is the ease with which Blue adopts it.
You realize that this is never going to happen, right? Wizards isn't going to print card-neutral library manipulation in colors other than blue or black, and there's very limited interest in playing the black manipulation. Night's Whisper is played in Vintage; its absence from Legacy is sort of puzzling to me, as is the fact this Bob isn't widely played in Legacy. There's likely a few competitive decks that use these cards out there that are currently not well-tuned enough to reach the top tier, so I think some of the stagnation is driven by a lack of successful deckbuilding, but that's really beside the point.
I really think that if people are this upset by the fact that most decks that do well run blue that they would better served by playing a different format, because blue's strength in Legacy isn't going anywhere in the absence of mass bannings.
I'm rather irritated by it, actually, because green "draw" can basically never hit into more draw, so you have to lucksack into the next draw spell again. At worst, it gets sent to the bottom of your damn deck in those absurd reveal type effects. It's annoying, stifling. Sorcery-speed raw draw a la Harmonize feels just fine in green to me (and fits great with the contemplative druid branch of green flavor - it's not all monsters and hunters and stuff) maybe do the "at least GG in mana cost" thing they do to black cards to those, too.
I don't think that green draw/manipulation effects need a boost, they just need to be played. Jund can abuse the shit out of Sylvan Library + Bob, but Sylvan and Mirri's Guile are fine on their own and are inexplicably not widely played. I'm glad that BUG decks are finally picking Sylvan up.
Red and White really get the short end of the stick here, but something like discard first looting as was mentioned several pages back seems about right for red, though it doesn't help combo too much. I don't see a non-broken way to give something to White other than a Land Tax-style effect.
I could get behind some Gamble effects, perhaps - in RtR there was thatInstant that lets you search for 3 creatures with different names, then you put a random one into your hand and shuffle the rest back. But that R for 3 cards, even if they're exiled EOT - that's just an Ancestral in every combo deck that would play Red, or would play Red if it could draw 3 for 1 mana. You'd need some kind of a delimiter on what kinds of spells could be played.
Sometimes I wish that there were a way for colors to search for their 'pocket' cards more effectively. Like if Red could more easily have something that just drew/searched for burn spells and wouldn't have some weird rules fuckery built-in that some combo player could take advantage of -- like it can't just be "search for an instant or sorcery" or "search for a card that says 'damage'" or whatever because both examples are easily turned into non-burn spells. I almost (almost) wish that there could retroactively be a subtype that could be attached to cards that would distinguish burn from draw from removal, but that's annoying as shit. I don't think there's a way to do it without creating a verbose POS card that no one wants in their deck.
Ok, so here's my take on this. WotC has already violated the color scheme numerous times in the past. The most recent example was Delver of Secrets, which gave blue an under-costed beater with evasion, something they were never supposed to have in the overall scheme (and don't start with Serendib Efreet because it wasn't considered a tier 1 beater even in the single format of the mid to late 90's). Delver is the *best* early beater in Eternal magic at the moment. Blue has the *best* under-costed beater in the game. So the color wheel has already been thrown out the window by WotC. There's no reason they can't compensate by giving other colors under-costed CA and CQ.
Similarly, TNN is one of the best shroud creatures in the game. This is also a green characteristic. TNN should have been
It's hypocritical of them to give blue access to things that are not in it's supposed realm of play and deny the other colors similar advantages.
In TNN's case, protection is usually a white characteristic, but I strongly believe that everything about TNN was deliberate on Wizards' part - they wanted to print a card for Legacy that would make both RUG Thresh worse so that they wouldn't have to ban anything, and they wanted to slow everything down to improve the positioning of the midrange goodstuff decks they like so much. They succeeded.Ok, so here's my take on this. WotC has already violated the color scheme numerous times in the past. The most recent example was Delver of Secrets, which gave blue an under-costed beater with evasion, something they were never supposed to have in the overall scheme (and don't start with Serendib Efreet because it wasn't considered a tier 1 beater even in the single format of the mid to late 90's). Delver is the *best* early beater in Eternal magic at the moment. Blue has the *best* under-costed beater in the game. So the color wheel has already been thrown out the window by WotC. There's no reason they can't compensate by giving other colors under-costed CA and CQ.
Similarly, TNN is one of the best shroud creatures in the game. This is also a green characteristic. TNN should have been
It's hypocritical of them to give blue access to things that are not in it's supposed realm of play and deny the other colors similar advantages.
Delver is a product of their attempts to give every color aggressive creatures for Standard/Limited play - where they've basically abandoned the color wheel aside from a few very distinctive features for each color - and I seriously doubt that they even considered the impact on Legacy and Vintage.
I think there's already a 'create a bad card thread'. Speaking in general terms, I would definitely like to see more and better non-blue cards that interact with the stack, or with card quality. (I'd also like to see delver die in a fire for being a flip card ...)
That seems like more "blue is so strong that it justifies keeping the other colors weaker" silliness.... The problem with White is the ease with which Blue adopts it.
@btm10 -- I agree that TNN was a deliberate attempt to boost Midrange. What bothers me (and all of us I think) is that they accomplish the same thing by sticking to the color wheel and making it cost WW1 and having it be a Cat subtype (or whatever).
@rufus - Yes, Chandra is bad, but that 0 ability is a fit for Red card draw / filtration. Surely some variation of that could be explored in greater detail to give Red what we're talking about here. RE: White, I'm not sue what fits it's color wheel. What has white had for draw / filtration historically? Also, it's just a discussion...if you don't like other ideas, offer up different / better ones. That's the whole point of the conversation.
This may be true, although I see many faster lists than midrange making top 8's at this point. Some of them even use TNN as their finisher.
I don't buy this at all. They knew Delver would flip in Threshold type lists and give blue a very under-costed beater in an archetype that already had other good under-costed creatures available to it. They knew that RUG type lists would now have a critical mass of creatures and even some interesting options to tailor the list a specific way. Nimble Mongoose and Goyf were a strong 8-pack for the archetype but neither of them did immediate damage and put that kind of pressure on the opponent alongside the disruption. Delver of Secrets is the perfect complement to the list because it is hard to block and it does lots of damage early on. If it eats a bolt the opponent is about even but if it eats a plow they are way behind because they needed that plow for Goyf a few turns down the road.
The difference is that 1UU is playable in many Legacy decks, whereas 1WW only has a home in Death and Taxes.
The only decks faster than midrange that run TNN is UWR Delver, which is hardly a dedicated tempo deck, and in BUG Delver lists, which are even less tempo-y (look at Rich Shay's list that runs Sylvan Library...and Jace). It's rarely seen as 1-of in RUG Delver, but that's as a response to other people's TNNs, and makes the deck way less aggressive and tempo-oriented because it needs to support a 3 mana creature.
R&D has explicitly stated that they don't test for Eternal formats and don't consider the impact of new cards on them.I don't buy this at all. They knew Delver would flip in Threshold type lists and give blue a very under-costed beater in an archetype that already had other good under-costed creatures available to it. They knew that RUG type lists would now have a critical mass of creatures and even some interesting options to tailor the list a specific way. Nimble Mongoose and Goyf were a strong 8-pack for the archetype but neither of them did immediate damage and put that kind of pressure on the opponent alongside the disruption. Delver of Secrets is the perfect complement to the list because it is hard to block and it does lots of damage early on. If it eats a bolt the opponent is about even but if it eats a plow they are way behind because they needed that plow for Goyf a few turns down the road.
How is that functionally any different from just "draw a card"?
I guess if the cards go into your graveyard instead of exile it's Thought Scour, but Thought Scour is basically unplayable in Legacy.
Well, Mental Note was a long time Thres.hold staple and this one can even mess with your opponent. Ponder and Delver however made those threshold-feeders less relevant :/
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I will rebut with an irrefutable syllogism.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is greater than all.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor is blue.
Therefore, blue is greater than all.
Matt, your article was nice, but as you can see it's simply wrong.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
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