[Article]Eternal Europe: Love//Hate

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

well, a little more personal than my usual fare - let's see how you like it :)

http://www.starcitygames.com/article...In-Legacy.html

[Megadeus]

Fun article! My list is like:

Favorites:
Life from the Loam
Wasteland
Cabal Therapy

Hatred:
True Name Nemesis
Show and Tell
Deathrite Shaman

Maybe I'm just a pile of salt for hating these cards. Shaman I just hate because it weakened a lot of strategies I enjoy so maybe that one is irrational hatred, but the other two I feel are valid because whenever I lose to them I feel like my opponent won despite me sculpting a good game.

[Richard Cheese]

One true love:


Now to sit back and see how long it takes this thread to get locked.

[TheArchitect]

I enjoyed the article, it is nice hearing about peoples loves/hates in MTG.

Love:
Cabal Therapy
Sensei's Divining Top
Green Sun's Zenith
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

I like the skill testing and gambling/mindgame type of cards like force of will or brainstorm, but therapy is the most fun of these cards. I love consistency in my decks, top and GSZ give that, while also rewarding synergy with deck building. Tezzeret is a very fun card, but really I love most cards that reward you for building your deck around synergies rather than just piling a bunch of goodstuff together.

Hate:
Gitaxian Probe
Delver of Secrets/TNN
Show and Tell*

Limiting information makes for of those fun gambling/mindgames situations. Probe completely kills this fun aspect of the game at basically no cost, to a lot of decks. Delver (and to a less extent TNN) are just abominations that would be overpowered and unfun regardless of their color, but making blue just makes things even worse. Show and tell is currently a horrible card in legacy. However, pre-alara block it wasn't so bad and could actually make for a kind-of-fun minigame. *Really its not S&T that I hate, but the stupid yugioh monsters WoTC keeps printing that make the card unfun. Also the decks using it require no skill and do not create fun games. While all my hated cards are blue ones, blue is actually my favorite color.

[Julian23]

Love:
Noble Hierarch
Vendilion Clique
Eternal Witness

Hate:
Terminus
Show and Tell

[Emo]

Cards I hate:
TNN (Almost always ruins the combat interaction of the game)
Show and Tell (Most powerful combo enabler, least skill intensive combo card)
Treasure Cruise (Drawing 3 for the cost of U and delve feels too powerful in legacy. U/R which is a quintessiantial aggro deck can morph into a midrange deck)
Terminus (one W for a sweeper forces aggro decks to be almost exclusively blue)

Cards I love:
JTMS (powerful card in legacy but requires skill and 4 cmc is fairly costed)
Aether vial (Love the archetypes it enables)
dark confidant (great design)

[M+1]

I enjoyed the article very much, especially this part about consistency:

I want games in which both players are able to implement their gameplans at full efficiency, where the game is a clash of the titans with both decks firing on all cylinders and throwing their punches as they're meant to be thrown. I don't want to lose because my opponent drew a bunch of powerful cards and I couldn't find answers, and I don't want to win because my opponent rattled of five lands in a row and never made a meaningful play all game.

Edited for Love/Hate:

Love:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Berserk
Lightning Bolt
every card ever printed with the old frame

Not sure:
Delver of Secrets. If I hate this, it is because of the stupid flip card mechanic.

Hate:
every card ever printed with the modern frame
Treasure Cruise - I am beginning to think this card is too good.
True-Name Nemesis
Council's Judgement, and everything else with the voting or any other multiplayer mechanic.
Griselbrand, and Omniscience.

[Tourach]

Love:

Dark Confidant
Vedalken Shackles
Sylvan Library
Blood Moon
Hymn to Tourach
Snapcaster Mage


Favourite Card (design-wise):

River Boa


Hate:

Show and Tell
Liliana of the Veil
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

[Barook]

Cards I love
- Flickerwisp
- GSZ
- Knight of the Reliquary
- Cabal Therapy

Cards I hate:
- Brainstorm
- SDT
- Terminus
- S&T (and the dumb crap it enables, in particular Griselbrand)
- TNN
- Delver
- Treasure Cruise (Who right in their mind thought it was a good idea that interacting with your opponent punishes you because it makes it easier for them to reload?)

[btm10]

In terms of good cards?

Love:

Deathrite Shaman - Maindeckable graveyard hate is one of those things that opens up a lot of deck design space while keeping the most abusive things in check; DRS is probably the biggest reason why 'unban Survival' is a defensible rather than insane position to take.

Sylvan Library/Brainstorm - Carsten's consistency argument basically says everything for Brainstorm, but I really like how BGx decks can use Sylvan not only as a consistency engine, but also as a card advantage engine in a lot of matchups (basically anything against a deck that doesn't aggressively attack the BGx player's life total). It's also similar to Top but without the sometimes tedious repeat spinning.

Zur's Weirding and Standstill - I really like the subgames that Weirding and Standstill create. Weirding takes bluffing out of the game, but when cast at or near parity, it also forces both players into a lot of potentially complex weighing of each other's draws. It does make games against Miracles considerably less fun (it's a one-card combo that beats them), but it makes for fascinating control mirrors. Standstill is a more recent card that I think should see more play in the UR Delver era as it really punishes high velocity decks while testing the opponent (and sometimes the caster) on when is the best time to break it. While "when the person drawing will have to discard the most cards" is frequently the right time, that isn't always the case and there's a good skill cap on identifying those moments.

Hate:

TNN/Mother of Runes - Total interaction kill. I generally don't enjoy playing with/against creature strategies, but these cards (and TNN in particular) mean that you need a sweeper - and usually a -X/-X or "destroy" effect at that - in order to interact at all.

Show and Tell - Basically the same reasoning as everyone else. As long WotC keeps printing absurd creatures (and they will), this will only get worse. At least Natural Order demands that you build around it to some extent.

Honorable Mention:

Transmute Artifact - The not-broken Tinker has always had a soft spot in my heart. I really want to see the card be good, because the deckbuilding possibilities are so cool. I tried to break it with Myr Enforcer years ago, but unfortunately nothing came of it.

[Zombie]

Love:
Green Sun's Zenith
Past in Flames
Force of Will
Shardless Agent
Gaea's Cradle
Glimpse of Nature
Tidehollow Sculler
Cabal Ritual
Wurmcoil Engine

Value/drawing a shitton of cards, interesting conundrums, card selection/tutoring (Elf examples chosen because I enjoy the feel of their mechanics more), going broken in a big but complicated way that combines many cards into what feels like crime - you can't help but smile when that Llanowar Elves is actually Ancestral and Dark Ritual stapled together, you hardcast Hoof off a single land or flashback that Cabal Rit to up your mana pool to 14 (yes, feline, we all know it isn't very impressive).


Hate:
Griselbrand/Emrakul/Jin-Gitaxias/Omniscience/Enter The Infinite
Terminus
Dredge.dec
True-Name Nemesis/Council's Judgment
Rest in Peace
Leyline of Sanctity

Dumb cards, little else to say here. I don't mind cheating fatties into play - I love the strategy. I'd just sorely wish the huge bombs actually gave two fucks about matchup and game state the way they used to. I echo Carsten's comments on the sheer dumbness of S&T strats and Omni+EtI taking away the magic of playing combo.

TNN+Judgment are obvious affronts to sane and competent game design and should burn.

Dredge, I cannot stomach. In a way, it's beautiful that you can do it, but a deck that doesn't play in the same zones and with the same mechanics normal Magic is played in/with has no right to exist. It turns games into uninteractive snoozefests.

Rest in Peace because there are limits to hate after which it turns dumb the way S&T does. Leyline of Sanctity protects broken combo decks except hi guys, no mana investment, no vulnerable card here. It turns mulligans against S&T into a stupid lottery where discard-heavy hands can be insanely good or just full of complete blanks. Not my idea of fun gameplay. Trying to find time to play protection and then go for the kill - sometimes to even land the protection/hate piece itself - is my idea of fun.

Terminus is just The One Removal Spell To Rule Them All, and not in any interesting way - it's not even a card being astonishingly well-rounded, it's just insanely, superlatively good at everything to the point of complete stupidity and brain cancer.

[Humphrey]

Hate: Brainstorm

[Grand Superior]

Surprised not to see Griselbrand in your article, Carsten. Have you changed your opinion on the card?

My list:

Love:
Cabal Therapy
- Most skill-intensive card in the format IMO.
Green Sun's Zenith
- Fair nonblue variance-reducers. We need more of these kinds of cards.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
- Still one of the most awesome cards ever printed. It's absolutely demoralizing to be fatesealed out of the game, but I feel like most decks have tools to combat it.
Liliana of the Veil
- One of the best additions to the format in recent years. She gives black a tool that is subtly good against almost every matchup.
Force of Will
- Cliche, but it keeps Legacy afloat. I love that it is a terrible card until you need it to stop a combo, at which point it is the best card in the format.
Preordain
- Totally dumb reason, but I've gotten new appreciation for this card after spending a few months playing Modern and only having access to Serum Visions. I swear, I die a little inside every time I cast Serum Visions.

Hate:
True-Name Nemesis
- One of the more egregious "rich get richer" printings I've seen. Blue should not be getting creatures as powerful as this. TNN may not be as big of a problem anymore but I still don't like the constraints it's put on the format. I thought that Legacy was almost perfect, balance-wise, before Commander 2013
Treasure Cruise
- I know it's early, but I don't think that easy Ancestral Recall effects are fair to have in the format. Especially in blue. It gives tempo decks a very easy way to get card advantage and thus removes one of their key weaknesses. Also pushes base-black decks out of the format because it makes hand disruption terrible.
Terminus
- Sweepers should not cost one measly white mana, especially when it is pretty easy to set up. This card single-handedly killed a lot of Legacy's aggro decks.
Deathrite Shaman
- Mana dork for Underground Sea decks that provides them reach and stability? 2 toughness to block Goblin Lackey all day? Ugh.
Umezawa's Jitte
- With the old legend rule this card was fine and fair because other copies could counter it. With the new legend rule, it makes mirrors super miserable because, without sideboard hate, the first one to connect with Jitte is at an absurd advantage.
Griselbrand
- Reanimator used to be an interesting deck in that you had one main target, Jin Gitaxias, that was generally good against most decks (but could still be interacted with) and a toolbox of interesting one-ofs for different matchups. Now it's just Griselbrand. Sneak and Show has a similar story.

Just to preface, I play Sneak and Show and Team America and still think that some of its components were terrible additions to the format.

[Wanderlust]

Love:
Lion's Eye Diamond
Sensei's Divining Top
Any and all tutors and Wishes
Ancient Tomb / City of Traitors
Sylvan Library
Survival of the Fittest / Artificer's Intuition
Glacial Chasm

Hate:
Delver of Secrets
True-Name Nemesis
Surgical Extraction / Extirpate
The existence of Burn as a competitive deck

[JamieW89]

I loved the article and agree on pretty much every point.

[ankharlyn]

Love:

S&T
Omniscience
Treasure Cruise

Hate:

JTMS
Jitte
Terminus
Dark Confidant

[thecrav]

I don't truly hate very many cards. Either I think they're dumb, like your Delver example, or I'm excited that someone wants to be playing them. I hate getting locked out by Stax style decks but I love that people are playing different strategies. That in mind:

Love:
Counterspell - A hard "no" that's well balanced - how well balanced? It's good enough to see play in legacy but not good enough that anyone wants it as a 4-of.
Dark Confidant - Along with stronger cards like Yawgmoth's Bargain and Necropotence, this card shows one of Black's longest-living traits, succinctly explained in the flavor text: Greatness, at any cost

Hate:
Delver of Secrets - Maybe if there was a condition that caused it to flip back, I would like it. As is, it's off-pie and a virtually guaranteed flip in the kind of deck that wants to play it. I might even give it a pass if it simply lost flying.
Lodestone Golem - My dislike for this card stems from having played it. This applies more to vintage when he's playable on turn one but in legacy, a turn 2 golem is not uncommon in the decks that can support the thing. As with Delver, if any part of it were reduced, I would like it. CMC 5, 4 power, 2 toughness, sphere effect applied to fewer types would all make him less annoying.

[Nuke is Good]

Love:
Smokestack
Liliana of the Veil
Show and Tell
Exhume
Entomb
Punishing Fire
Divine Intervention
Umezawa's Jitte

Hate
Delver of Secrets
True Name Nemesis

TNN if it was white probably wouldn't bother me as much. Delver needs some kind of downside to the card. I wouldn't care if it was a 3/2 non flier. But the fact it's basically a blue lightning bolt with buyback annoys me.

[Humphrey]

TNN if it was white probably wouldn't bother me as much. Delver needs some kind of downside to the card. I wouldn't care if it was a 3/2 non flier. But the fact it's basically a blue lightning bolt with buyback annoys me.

well in a world where R&D aka Maro would care about the colorpie and balancing TNN would be white, Snapcaster red, Treasure Cruise black and Delver probably green or

[Norm]

Love:
Show and Tell
Dig through Time
Force of Will


Hate:
Delver of Secrets

I don't even really "hate" Delver, but I do find it amusing when Delver pilots complain about combo cards...

As long as legacy continues to feature a bunch of "fair" decks with room for combo to succeed, I'll be a happy guy.