Shaheen Soorani, hot off a 2nd place finish at the recent SCG Legacy Open, recently posted an article on Starcitygames discussing some proposals for various formats with regard to bannings and unbannings and improvements that could be made:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article...Solutions.html
His solution for Legacy? Ban Sensei's Divining Top and Punishing Fire. His rationale is basically that Lands and Miracles cause a ton of problems for Legacy tournaments in terms of time wasted and confusion caused, and removing these two cards would alleviate the bulk of the issues that cause these decks to drag out matches.
I, for one, am fully on board with these suggestions. Other pros such as Luis Scott Vargas have echoed these sentiments. What does the Legacy community as a whole think about these suggestions, and this article in particular? Discuss.
Last edited by MGB; 08-10-2015 at 12:15 PM. Reason: name
I think the argument that Lands needs something banned out of it is laughable. I'll be the first to admit I'm biased because I'm a player of the deck but if you honestly think Lands is what is wrong with legacy right now then you just aren't paying attention.
Him not even mentioning Dig Through Time is just as big of a bias as my own in favor of Lands and shows that this article really isn't about thinking critically about what is good for legacy and more about his own personal pet peeves with the format.
Haven't read the article but "wotc pls ban teh durdles" is a horrible thesis.
Ban nothing.
The format is fine and will adjust.
Top has a somewhat reasonable argument. Punishing Fire? Laughable. His argument is that because it is sometimes a secondary win condition in a tier 1 deck that it should be banned? You are more than welcome to scoop if you feel like time is becoming an issue.
Originally Posted by Richard Cheese
In before lock.
Banning SDT and not Brainstorm is a joke. If you want to kneecap Miracles ban CB or Terminus.
Banning Punishing Fire is high comedy, how is 1R shock a threat when 2U I win is in the format?
One thing is for sure, Wizards needs to do something to this format at the next BnR update, plenty of people who prefer all kinds of styles see the stagnation.
I guess I should have expected 90% of the replies to this article to be along the lines of "Wait, I play Punishing Fire/Sensei's Divining Top.dec! What a dumb idea, lolz!"
Just try to take yourself out of your own personal situation and look at the format and Legacy tournaments as a whole. Wouldn't the game be better with less draws and faster rounds? How much value are Miracles and Lands *actually* adding to the format as a whole? I think, along with Shaheen and others, that the loss of being able to play Miracles or Lands is outweighed by the benefit of kneecapping these decks to allow for more efficiently run tournaments and less slow, drawn-out control matches.
Just ask yourself: before Survival was banned, there were alot of Survival afficianados that played the deck for a long time, before it even got out of hand. Were these people losing something when Survival as an archetype was axed by the banning? Sure, their #1 deck that they've played for a long time was sacrificed for the sins of Vengevine. But in the end, the format as a whole was better, and those people just moved on. The same would happen if Top was banned, or any critical piece of the Lands deck was banned.
A show of hands for actually reading articles, please. The man was not even wading into the mess of Brainstorm debates (didn't stop us from turning it into that in less than 30 minutes though). He is discussing length of rounds only.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
If he wants a solution for slow play, why not introduce a chess clock or something? Banning Punishing Fire, Loam or Dark Depths would be beyond insane. It kills two perfectly viable non-blue strategies in Lands and 4C (Aggro) Loam, not what we need right now!
Chess clock is completely unviable in tournament Magic play. The game uses so many priority changes that the logistics involved in using clocks to manage each player's time would be completely, utterly, impossible.
Banning a card or two is infinitely simpler, and has a similar effect. I personally don't think that banning Punishing Fire or Loam is completely necessary, but the banning of Sensei's Divining Top would be a GREAT move.
You misunderstand the author's objective.
SDT causes players to make Brainstorm-like decisions every turn, sometimes multiple times, forever, slowing the game down.
Punishing Fire allows players to durdle with their graveyard and attempt to win over 18 turns as relatively common backup plan.
In his view, these things lead to long rounds and unintentional draws. Soorani isn't going after the power level of the decks (because Life from the Loam is the obvious target in Lands, and instant speed Wrath for W is clearly the most powerful thing Miracles is doing) he was trying to remove cards that enable excessively slow games.
And like I originally said, I disagree with that approach.
Banning things just because it can be time consuming is not the solution. Legacy is complex, sometime that many of us appreciate about the format. Removing that complexity just to make rounds happen faster is pretty lame.
Cockatrice: Bosque
Right, but banning Top nukes Miracles anyway, and the card is really only problematic in concert with Counterbalance and Miracle cards where players have to tank on their order to make sure they stack the triggers right and/or activate multiple times per turn. So why take a key tool away from other decks because this one deck encourages slow play? It's why they got rid of Land Tax and not Scroll Rack initially too.
He did say PF is probably fine and he's biased from how much he loathes the card. But why even write that? I really hate Tarmogoyf but I know it's not bannable in Legacy. I would've liked to read an article from a guy who just finished second about his deck selection and matchups.
There's still plenty of room for complexity if we just ban Top. There is a line between "intellectually complex" and "excessively durdly". Top probably falls more into the latter category on that spectrum than in the former.
There is this persistent myth that banning Top would be a huge loss for so many non-blue strategies. Where is this coming from? Top is the centerpiece of one and only one deck in Legacy: Miracles. It occasionally will see play as a 1-of or 2-of in random BGx decks, Storm decks, Cloudpost decks, but never as the centerpiece of those decks or even an essential component in their strategies. There is basically no deck that is truly hurt by an SDT ban other than Miracles.
And the problem with leaving Top in Legacy is that it promotes slow, durdly play as a fundamental aspect of its design. It's a badly designed Magic card that shouldn't really be in any format. We don't want to see slow-play-promoting cards in formats if we can help it. This isn't about just knocking Miracles down a peg, it's about removing toxic cards that promote slow play.
The problem with top is that it is played in what is commonly known as one of the best decks in the format. So that is when you get less experienced players picking up the deck and slowing down the tournament because they are unfamiliar with the decision tree that is presented to them at various situations in a given game. There's nothing that you can really do to change that other than simply hoping something gets created that can nerf miracles a bit. As for lands, like I have said, you are definitely more than welcome to scoop at any time if you feel that winning in the set 50 minutes isn't going to be possible. I played 4 color loam where it was fairly common to do a large amount of your damage via punishing fire, and sometimes win the game like that and I don't think I ever went to time with that deck. Players just need to play faster.
There's something you can do that is simple and completely solves the problem: ban Sensei's Divining Top. No more problems with newbies picking up Miracles and playing slowly, because they're either not picking up Miracles or they're picking up a version without Top that will naturally be faster.
Sure, except there really isn't too much a reason to ban Top with other certain cards in the format. WOTC doesn't give two shits about legacy and its inability to finish rounds quickly. Modern was one thing because it is their new go to eternal format, but legacy has 3 events a year that WOTC truly cares about. And this is coming from someone who hates Miracles. I don't find top to be an overpowered card in any way
Banning Brainstorm decimates the blue decks. Have fun playing green dudes against Belcher twice a tournament.
If you want to weaken blue, the best card to ban is Ponder. You weaken miracles, you weaken delver, and you weaken combo, but all the decks continue to function.
Other than Cloudpost, many decks that would play Top are held back by Miracles' presence in the format. You would probably see more proactive BGx decks that play top (Nic Fit especially) if Miracles weren't omnipresent and overpowered.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote