The Legacy identity: why SDT was the wrong ban

[LeoCop 90]

I agree with basically everything you wrote.
Defending wizards because their logic is to ban enablers is not a valid point, because they should just ban brainstorm, that is the enabler of everything in the format.
Banning the only real non blue source of strong card selection is just stupid, color diversity should be important in magic.
Banning terminus or counterbalance would have weakened miracles a lot anyway and made it a tier 2 deck, i think everyone can agree on this.
Personally, i'm extremely sad that r/w painter is dead, because it is the most fun deck i have ever played in magic, and a lot of pilots of that archetype share my same sentiment. A deck with the unique ability to play all the roles (combo, prison, control, aggro), often switching between them during games. Without top, painter is just another iteration of dregon stompy, and i prefer dragon stompy at what it does.

[Final Fortune]

The format is better now than it has ever been, I got to take Affinity to a local shop and win second place this Sunday, and I can't remember the last time so many tier 3 decks had a fair shot in the metagame because Miracles would have blown them out otherwise.

The ends absolutely justified the means, go play some home brew

[Dice_Box]

Defending wizards because their logic is to ban enablers is not a valid point, because they should just ban brainstorm, that is the enabler of everything in the format.

I don't want to dive too deeply down the rabbit hole here, but (always a but...) the fact is Brainstorm is in Legacy what Workshop is in Vintage. A card that a lot of people know causes "issues" but is never going to be touched. So to say "They didn't touch the card we all know they should but never will" is not really an argument. Of course they could have banned the ultimate enabler, but if that was going to happen it would have been done so by now. Since the choice to protect the card, like it or not, has been made that doesn't excuse other cards from causing issues and being reacted to.

That said, please never restrict Workshop, I really don't want to play White Eldrazi. I hate that deck.

[tescrin]

While Leo's aren't taking over atm, afaict anyway, Leo's do also present an easy-to-run punishment of 4 BS, 4 Ponder, 4 GP, etc. decks. Cantrips received an obnoxiously-badly-designed nerf because unlike SotL who increases your weakness to X/1 effects, is not possible to run in your blue shell, and offers no true CA, our Leord and Savior provided a Blue Anti-Blue card; which means he'll at least be in sideboards to grind with other U decks.

That's a fine nerf. Casting BS may be quite good (and I honestly do it in response to Leo every time) but it's also a card that's got some reasonable targeted hate. Now that slower Fair-U decks are back, maybe D&T will Vial-SotLs or something. Hard to say. I remember when Notion Theif first came out and would randomly hose a U player for 7-CA.

[Richard Arschmann]

People are still winning events and making 5-0s with Miracles, it's just no longer Tier 0 and you can't borderline slow play the game out to turns if you win Game 1 any more. The Top ban was better than the trash bans we've gotten for Modern.

[Lemnear]

Defending wizards because their logic is to ban enablers is not a valid point, because they should just ban brainstorm, that is the enabler of everything in the format.

That's just not true.

- SDT made Counterbalance, Entreat and Terminus as busted as they were.
- Fetchlands make SDT, Brainstorm, Ponder, DRS, Loam, etc as busted as they are

Fetchlands have a higher metagame share than Brainstorm and a MUCH greater number total in every monthly statistic.

[DracoOccisor]

so much crying going on. the format is a lot better without miracles being tier 1. osmano also went 5-0 with a miracles list using terminus and entreat. it's innovative and probably doesn't crush everything (which is obviously better for the format as a whole).

i was getting very tired of throwing abrupt decay in every non black or non green deck just so i could have a shot of beating that deck. i played doomsday and nicfit and do miss top, but not as much as i hated playing against a deck that spent 5 minute turns doing nothing. (certainly a hypocrite playing those other two decks from time to time, but it's better for everyone in the end).

for reference:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/648213#paper

seems fun with unexpected + jace/predict/clique/surgical

This list actually looks like a lot of fun. I might give it a shot. I'm not sold on 4 predict at first glance, but that's what testing is for!

[Brael]

I agree with basically everything you wrote.
Defending wizards because their logic is to ban enablers is not a valid point, because they should just ban brainstorm, that is the enabler of everything in the format.
Banning the only real non blue source of strong card selection is just stupid, color diversity should be important in magic.
Banning terminus or counterbalance would have weakened miracles a lot anyway and made it a tier 2 deck, i think everyone can agree on this.
Personally, i'm extremely sad that r/w painter is dead, because it is the most fun deck i have ever played in magic, and a lot of pilots of that archetype share my same sentiment. A deck with the unique ability to play all the roles (combo, prison, control, aggro), often switching between them during games. Without top, painter is just another iteration of dregon stompy, and i prefer dragon stompy at what it does.

Non blue has plenty of good card selection. White has THREE fantastic tutors in Ranger of Eos, Recruiter of the Guard, and Stoneforge Mystic. Several decks have shown that Tireless Tracker is pretty darn strong. Life From the Loam is a thing, and Dark Confidant is actually pretty well positioned (oddly, better positioned than it was with SDT in the format) because it's a joke these days to overload removal.

I'm not going to say I've broken the format or anything, but I've been playing a deck lately with 4 Tireless Tracker, 4 Stoneforge Mystic, and 4 Dark Confidant. I'll put my bgw monster up against a cantrip shell deck (Brainstorm, Ponder, etc) any day of the week. And I bet you I end up with way more cards at the end.

[Lava Snacks]

Non blue has plenty of good card selection. White has THREE fantastic tutors in Ranger of Eos, Recruiter of the Guard, and Stoneforge Mystic. Several decks have shown that Tireless Tracker is pretty darn strong. Life From the Loam is a thing, and Dark Confidant is actually pretty well positioned (oddly, better positioned than it was with SDT in the format) because it's a joke these days to overload removal.

I'd like to see more non-blue and synergistic/specialized card selection, but there is more than many people acknowledge. This is part of a good list I came across on MTGS.

White has Enlightened Tutor, Recruiter of the Guard, and Stoneforge Mystic.
Blue has Brainstorm, Ponder, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Preordain, Intuition, Cunning Wish, Careful Study, and Trinket Mage, and lots more.
Black has Infernal Tutor, Entomb, Dark Petition, Grim Tutor, Doomsday, and Diabolic Intent.
Green has Sylvan Library, Green Sun's Zenith, Life from the Loam, Crop Rotation, Natural Order, Living Wish, and Mirri's Guile, and lots more.
Red has Burning Wish, Faithless Looting, Goblin Matron, Imperial Recruiter, and Gamble.

[jandax]

I'd like to see more non-blue and synergistic/specialized card selection, but there is more than many people acknowledge. This is part of a good list I came across on MTGS.

White has Enlightened Tutor, Recruiter of the Guard, and Stoneforge Mystic.
Blue has Brainstorm, Ponder, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Preordain, Intuition, Cunning Wish, Careful Study, and Trinket Mage, and lots more.
Black has Infernal Tutor, Entomb, Dark Petition, Grim Tutor, Doomsday, and Diabolic Intent.
Green has Sylvan Library, Green Sun's Zenith, Life from the Loam, Crop Rotation, Natural Order, Living Wish, and Mirri's Guile, and lots more.
Red has Burning Wish, Faithless Looting, Goblin Matron, Imperial Recruiter, and Gamble.

And Moggcatcher. Don't leave out the best creature in Legacy

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

[s&s]

I played in a 72 person tournament and in the first 4 rounds noone went to time.

It was extremely refreshing.

[Dice_Box]

Wait, Goblin Matron is a card worthy of name dropping in a Legacy debate... Hahahahahahhaha. Hahahah... Ha... Cough... I need to breathe.

[Stevestamopz]

Wait, Goblin Matron is a card worthy of name dropping in a Legacy debate... Hahahahahahhaha. Hahahah... Ha... Cough... I need to breathe.

Guy on Goblins: Man I really need to hit my 5th land so I can cast more than 1 spell a turn. Thank god my Matrons + Ringleaders can save me! oh wait.

Guy with Ponder/Brainstorm in his deck: Lol everything costs 1cmc and I'm playing 83 colours without being punished.

Not quite the same thing is it.

[Noctalor]

I'm not quite sure how long this post is gonna be, as i tend to rant a lot, but i hope i can condense and focus this just enough.

It's been a short while since the SDT ban, and while the ban certainly had rationale behind it (there was a sign at WotC parking lot asking for it so it had to be done), i had the feeling the ban was extremely misguided.

Let's start by saying that top was the right ban 100%

First of all, let's premise saying that i've always been in favor of unbans more than bans.

You can't fix something broken with stuff even more broken

Second, on what the B&R list should achieve. I personally believe there should be only 2 goals, in orders of importance:

- deck diversity/unicity

- interactivity

BR only gives fucks about limiting broken decks, miracles was a broken deck and it got limited, that simple

First of all, SDT is a fairly unique card. It's library manipulation in colorless, comparable in power to something like portent or preordain rather than ponder , or god forbid, brainstorm. There are extremely few analogues, with the closest one, scroll rack, miles away in term of power level.

Top was at least a "I will ponder my draw step for the rest of the game, and I will always fuck up every single discard you'll ever have, and you can't interact with it unless I let you do so", not really close to be a portent, or anything else, give sylvan librasy the "{T}: Draw a card, then put

---

Sensei's Divining Top Sylvan Library on top of its owner's library." if you want something close to top

Many say that miracles stifled diversity as in: it made aggro obsolete, but i disagree. In theory, miracles was a positive effect on the metagame. As the top deck, a control deck with a softlock made all stupid decks hoping on non-interaction as the way to win much worse than they'd otherwise be. Its softlock working vs tight curves promoted non-creature threats and especially more diverse curves (especially in conjunction with AD).

What defines a deck as stupid?
I find stupid that my braindead opponent has the right to sweep my board for W.
And miracles warped the format so fucking much that you couldn't even play G without B, play aggro without vial, play combo without boseiju

The issue for miracle was purely one of power level. Everything it did, it did it a bit too well. It could have a fast wincondition, good mass removals and targeted ones, and both FoW and a prison softlock for combo and to outgrind other decks.
In this sense, banning SDT certainly make the deck not as good anymore, but more importantly, it remove it altogether as an archetype, as well as removing SDT itself from the game. SDT, which we posited early, is a fairly unique card with no clear replacements, especially in non-blue colors.

This is how MTG works, Pod got banned, twin got banned, survival got banned, top got banned, that simple, operating this way is smart in the sense that they don't have to worry (honestly they dont give a fuck but let's pretend they do) about printing more cards that could be broken paired with xbroken enabler, terminus and entreat should be garbage cards, but they used to be broken thanks to top, this could happen again if you leave top untouched

The only angle from which SDT is bannable in my opinion was the time one. But this is not an argument i believe has particular merit because :
- draws should be discouraged in general by giving them less points anyway relatively (aka 0.5 points for each draw)

The game should be changed to keep top alive?
Also, draw for 0.5 points would be kinda bullshit and drive the unregular splits up like crazy

- legacy is not a competitive sanctioned format anyway. We get 1 GP an year, some matches going to time once an year should not be an issue for the whole format, given that the majority of legacy nowadays is played online where time is a non-issue.

Following this logic they should let us have fun with Shahrazad, which would be way more enjoyable actually

- if we were to ban on time issues, fetches would probably be, by far, the biggest time waster in any match ever on average in legacy.

This is just bullshit, it takes 20s to resolve a fetch, and players are going to fetch like 5 times per game each, a shitty miracle player would resolve top activations as ponders, taking at least 20s per activation and most likely at least one activation each turn for the entire game.

With that said banning SDT, not only removed miracle from the format, it essentially eliminated an archetype by removing countertop. And it could've as well removed it from all magic since Legacy was the only format where such an archetype was viable.

Pod was a viable archetype that got removed from magic
Survival was a viable archetype that got removed from magic
Eggs was a viable archetype that got removed from magic
Doomsday was a viable archetype that got removed from magic

It's just how it works

This is, in my view, a real disaster because countertop was one of the decks whose strenght was much greater than the sum of its parts and not a generic "good cards.dec".

Miracles was the embodiment of playing a bunch of good cards and cantrip into them the entire game actually.

You can see how lists already tended to be 4xbs+4xponder+4xfow+4xdrs+whatever else etc... it's starting to feel more like vintage where lists effectively are 20-25 cards.

4c goodstuff is a problem not related to top

Granted, there still are several decks that don't fall under this fold, like elves, but , in general, the blue tempo/cantrip shell is so good that the format homogenize around it. Miracle as the top deck of the format suffered from this but not as much. Despite playing the infamous 4xbs + 4ponder +4fow it also played a suite of winconditions and lock cards that were unique to it, making it decisively more interesting, as well as being defined by its extremely reliable mana base.

And being broken as hell

Option 1: unbans
There are 4 cards that can easily be unbanned: mind twist, earthcraft, goblin recruiter and survival.
None of those cards go in miracles, and some are moderately good against it. Powering up more archetypes could diminish the dominance of miracles. More importantly, with the exception of mind twist, all those cards go in specific archetypes that can't run the blue tempo shell: earthcraft is a combo enchantment that need lots of creatures and forest, recruiter only goes in a goblin deck, and survival need around 30 creatures to be consistent. All of those cards would have created "different" strategies and shell and promoted diversity in the format. I have doubts, however, that any of those decks could've stopped miracle's dominance.

Wizard never fixed a problem this way from what i recall, why should miracles get this treatment?

Option 2: ban a miracle (either Entreat or Terminus)
Removing one of the miracles would've had the effect of leaving the archetype alive while reducing its all-around goodness. Terminus going, especially, would've surely made the deck have some real bad MUs against creature strategies, especially go-wide ones. However, i think this ban would've been wrong because:
- it's bad optic to ban the 4th or 5th best card in a deck
- it reduce the amount of unique cards played. Lateral sinergies are the big appeal of big card pools, and miracles , like countertop, are an example of that.

Already talked about that, the problem was top and top only, why should they start banning every single card that gets broken paired with it?

Option 3: ban the elephant in the room
If wotc had banned brainstorm instead of top we'd have:
- miracle still an actual deck, while significantly neutered, meaning the control-prison archetype still exist in the format. Would move away the deck from multiple entreats and 4x terminus though, and it would have more difficulties outgrinding value creatures.dec and the format would have more game against it.
- tempo shell made significantly smaller. Instead of starting at 12 cards, you'd start at 8. Yes, preordain and portent are cards that exist, but are nowhere as powerful as brainstorm is. More importantly, there would be arguments for cards like thought-scour in decks heavy in delve-cards (and therapy), portent in miracle lists, preordain in combo ones etc... Suddendly, there's no longer an all questions one answer card
- discard get significantly better against combo as you can't protect key combo pieces as well anymore. Clunkier combos like SnT also get substantially worse, while not losing the unicity of the SnT card and archetype.
- you get no decrease in deck diversity. This because unlike SDT, there are way more equivalent substitutes to brainstorm (preordain/portent/thought scour) than SDT. As such, no deck would "die" outright from losing brainstorm, but you'd see more cards played in its place as each has pros and cons in different shells. At the same time, fringe decks using SDT (nic-fit/painter etc...) are unchanged by the ban.
- you get increased card diversity. One big deal about brainstorm is the ability to play multiple colors and wastelands with a relatively small drawback. Non-BS cantrips can't shuffle away bad mana hands, while still fixing your draw. As such, 4-color decks get less viable, and in turn decks get less homogeinized because you can't just play "all the good cards". Again, make deckbuilding more interesting, and you don't lose an archetype.

This is a completely different topic, I don't want to argue with this because I think brainstorm is untouched mostly to avoid an uproar from the community, it still has nothing to do with top being a stupid card