Of course Toxic Deluge also answers TNN. I was just telling this as an example how BUG decks adapted over the course of time.Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
CJ is reasonable costed, but its an abomination in design since it ignores basic rules of the game. Making removal for TNN might a noble cause, but not at the cost of fucking over all kind of protection mechanisms on-board like non-TNN protection creatures, etc. - once a CJ is cast, there's absolutely no way to save your card since you don't even know what exactly could be "targeted".
All while blue is laughing all the way to the bank because the color that plays TNN also has the best (and pretty much only, aside from discard) answer to CJ in form of counters.
I felt similarly regarding Council's Judgment and then someone reminded me about the long history of cards like Forcefield, the Runes like Rune of Protection: Red, the Circles like Circle of Protection: Green, Story Circle, and a lot more, that use "of your choice" and get around protection, shroud, and hexproof, and I felt a bit better.
I’m sorry, but I find this kind of argument overly simplified to the point of being wrong.
I agree that if WotC goes down because of not selling any product, the game will die. Not immediately, because at first privately organized tournaments will continue, but without a corporation backing it and providing new input, marketing, etc. it will die.
The point I feel is missing from the statement you made though, is: If the cards WotC needs to print or simply prints, because they can’t think of anything better, warp the game into something I can no longer enjoy, what is the difference to me between the game dying because of WotC ceasing business and me stopping to play the game because I sure as hell will not continue with a hobby that is no longer fun to me?
I don’t mean to sound like another guy crying about TNN killing his pet deck. I buried lots of pet decks, including my favorite deck of all times (I’m talking about decks you could win Legacy tournaments with, just to be clear), which I have not played in several years, yet I still continue to play nearly as much as I did before. But that is relying on me finding something new that I like after something I liked before is no longer possible.
Based on your writing and talking to you, I feel pretty safe to say that you a) like Storm and control decks like Miracles and b) hate non-interactive stuff like TNN and Griselbrand. Would you still be playing and liking the game as much as you do now if WotCs need to sell packs would create a game where decks like Storm and Miracles would no longer be reasonable decks to play in a tournament if you want to win and the only decks that are, offer an amount of interaction on the level of TNN or Griselbrand? In such a scenario would you go home from a tournament and think: “Boy, I sure am happy that WotC sells packs with such cards in them!”?
Once again for emphasis: I personally don’t think the game is at that point, where Legacy is concerned. But I also can understand people who quit the game because it is no longer what they enjoyed in the past. And if I look at Standard – where I have to admit my knowledge is limited to watching a match or two on SCG waiting for Legacy, so maybe I’m missing something – I get the picture that at some point – hopefully in the distant future – the vision WotC has of what the game should be, might differ from the type of game I enjoy. And then to come back to your argument: I will not be happy for WotC to sell packs anymore, because I will no longer care.
/rant
Warstorm, Zynga is a good example of what happens when you try to squeeze money out of your product. Watch it, it compares it to Magic too.
A combo deck is a whole deck built around that narrow, strong plan. Typically if you stop it, they just lose or turn into an iffy pile of crap with bad card quality at least.
TNN is a card that forces that type of interaction that is readily just slotted into goodstuff decks. It requires next to no commitment in deckbuilding or in play - oh hey, a three-mana creature spell to completely take over the game. Wow.
Contrast with NO-Prog, if you will. It requires deckbuilding commitment to have victims on board. Ingame, it costs 4 mana (a "magic number" where certain anti-broken things hate cards like Teeg turn on), is a Sorcery so falls victim to all the hyperefficient taxing counters that have seen print in recent years, and just casting it costs you board presence because of the additional cost. Even with all those checks and requirements, it can still be a pretty damn dumb card.
TNN is even dumber. If you answer it, oh well, the opponent still has a rock solid goodstuff deck to play with. The effect is kind of OK, permissible when you have to build around it, work for it. TNN doesn't need any of that shit. Hell, it even has Awesome so if it's crappy you can just pitch it to Force.
That's the difference between a combo deck and a Goodstuff+TNN deck.
We do not have a like button here so I will just quote it. I agree with what you are saying; Wizards can print as many Grizzlebees as they want to sell packs but if we are no longer playing the game it does not impact us. There has been a few comment in other topics recently about people wanting to play/create Classic magic (the reverse of modern you can only use pre-8th ed cards). To bring this comparison to other games Games Workshop have recently printed 7th Edition 40k and a lot of my friends have decided to stay with 6th Edition rules. For them it no longer matters what GW produce they are just kitchen table war-gamers. Clearly Legacy is not at that stage yet but if new cards devolve the format back to the level of interaction of Hulk-Flash how many people will still want to play?
My Legacy Decks of choice: Pox, Miracles, D&T or Lands.
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Exactly my point.
What's the use for WotCs money? I'm not a shareholder, so I don't care. The only thing that matters for me is the game I like. They may sell as few packs as possible, (or as many), but as long as I'm not playing the game, I simply won't care.
Back in 1997 I was the only one guy in my classroom who played the game; with the rest of our school having one another dude (my former classmate) who collected the cards. Two guys in the whole school. And I loved the game. We played with friends several hours a day, everyday. I liked the cards, but even back then I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them.
Fast forward 15 years. I guess that some 3-5 % of high school boys play some CCG, with at least half of them being in MtG scene. And what? Does it make the game any better?
In fact lots of old cards were horrible (I'm not thinking Erhnam-like horrible, I think of all those "pay cumulative upkeep to have mana to pay cumulative upkeep" type of crap), but this has nothing to do with those boys, it's about horrible old design.
Is the game more enjoable now when the scene is wider? Maybe. But the answer is not definitive. Simply put, whenever anything becomes mainstream (and WotC work hard to make th game mainstream, remember, they print it for the money), it quite often starts to stink.
So yeah, while the new age of MtG might be enjoyable for someone, and while the modern design trends might sell the packs, it really has nothing in common. Again: if they'd start throw Grislebrand into the packs, or if they'd give you a plastic toy and voucher for kids movie, would it sell the boosters? i guess it would. But would it make the game any better? I don't think so.
I don't know if it's rather sad or hilarious that Wizards printed "protection from everything - except even better" in form of TNN.
Power creep is bad, but I'm not sure if increasing the mana cost on everything across the board, including Magic staples like 1 mana dorks, is healthy for the game, either. Something which also happens to shift away from aggro into midrange decks.
As far as Wizards and money is concerned - sure, Wizards should make money to keep the game going, but what's the point if we don't get any return out of it while they swim in money? MTGO and its abyssal client/developer team are a prime example for that - shitty product with no drive to improve.
Which is one card. And it's not even good. An actual and concerning example of power creep would be the existence of mythics.
The tournament I started is over. You should join the next one.
really, TNN is a problem, sure, but there are easily printable answers--give us reasonable agro dudes (a-la-isimaru type stats) with a "damage can't be prevented" clause. Sure, this turns things into an arms-race of narrow answers to TNN, but the point stands that there ARE ways to design around the existence of TNN in a way that would have little impact on standard legal sets/constructed.
The card is actually very good. How are we defining any good here? Is it played in full sets of 4 as the definition? Or every deck playing it as the definition? Using those to define TNN as not any good would make you correct. But it's just lying to yourself. By power it is unmatched in terms of abilities tacked onto it for any card not costing 7+. By format effect it is slightly more subtle, but pronounced enough. Its presence is accounted for and must be adjusted to. From its release the card caused Deathblade, Patriot, and Bladecontrol to ascend into the top ranks of tier one Legacy decks. To some extent Team America as well, even though all the Team lists aren't playing TNN. But, yeah, I guess that isn't any good if going by "then why doesnt everyone play it or play all four?"
It was a joke that the significance of its presence in Legacy is greatly exaggerated.
Anyway, "tier" is not defined by "good". Often times "good" is tier, but tier itself is measured by popularity. When True-Name Nemesis was released, holy hell did it make those decks tier 1. At SCG Providence in November (happy birthday to me) I played against one Deadguy, one High Tide, one Reanimator, and I'm fairly certain the rest of the night I played against U/W/x Stoneblade with fourteen copies of True-Name Nemisis jammed in all night to the point where the top eight had five Stoneforge variants.
But it didn't necessarily make those decks stellar, and it wasn't at all the glue that held them together. U/W/x was already very well established. True-Name Nemesis just made them all flavor of the month. A good card? Yes. But not worth getting your panties in a bunch for. I'm not even sure if there's a deck that packs True-Name Nemesis specific hate. Hell, even Golgari Charm was already being run before True-Name Nemesis was printed. Certainly it put Golgari Charm in the spotlight, but the truth is that Golgari Charm's utility would keep it being used in its current amounts (sans meta-shift) even if True-Name Nemesis were banned.
The tournament I started is over. You should join the next one.
Nobody packs TNN-specific hate since it's so extremely narrow that it's a waste of slots. E.g. does D&T run Holy Light to deal with TNN? Fuck no, because it sucks.
But decks do pack cards like Golgari Charm, Zealous Persecution, Toxic Deluge and Council's Judgment with TNN in mind.
Good article and I think it really helps illustrate why aggro is bad in Legacy at the moment (and perhaps just from here on out). Sure TNN is a poorly done card, I don't think many would argue with that, but TNN isn't the reason that aggro died out.
I think the key point in all of this is that aggressive decks and aggressive creature strategies in particular are not bad. What has changed is that a 60 card deck doesn't need 30+ creatures to be aggressive. Due to cards like Tarmogoyf and most recently to Delver of Secrets, aggressive creature strategies only need 10-12 creatures to put up a really strong clock. Thus, traditional "aggro decks" have become obsolete in the face of aggressive creature decks packed full of disruption and cantrips.
The push towards midranged is a slightly different topic, but both subjects are related to WotC's recent overall gameplan of "print lots of really good creatures."
I'd be careful writing posts that actually reflect thought about the subject. You'll derail the conversation.
While I'm not the biggest fan of midrange's rise, I'm not upset that that 30 creatures, 20 lands, 10 burn spells aggro isn't good.
Hmm
Right
lolwut?
Did you literally just use a comparison of an unblockable untargetable creature and another unblockable untargetable creature and say one is fine and the other isn't?
Maybe you shouldn't quote me out of context to weave a fake statement I never made.
Crusader also dies to Burn and StP, something that TNN doesn't do, among other things.
I know, right?
In context, then... How many burn spells and copies of Swords to Plowshares does BUG-whatever typically run?Maybe you shouldn't quote me out of context to weave a fake statement I never made.
Crusader also dies to Burn and StP, something that TNN doesn't do, among other things.
For what purpose do you want to compare BUG's weakness to Mirran Crusader to TNN?
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