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Thread: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

  1. #1

    Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Standard: Teferi, Reclamation, Growth Spiral, and Cauldron Familiar

    Pioneer: Inverter of Truth, Kethis, Ballista, and Breach

    Historic: Reclamation and Teferi

    Brawl: Teferi

    Nothing for Legacy.

    Most interesting thing is they said they made several changes because the enviroment wasn't "fun" and players were playing less - specifically regarding killing all the combo decks in Pioneer. Maybe changes for Legacy later if they decide they want more participation?

  2. #2

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Wizards can do what they want, of course, and I'm happy that they're printing powerful new cards. Printing without being scared and then using the banhammer to manage formats instead of just printing timidly in the first place is absolutely the right move. That said, I'm disappointed in the Pioneer bans because it really seems to plant a flag on Pioneer as being hostile to combo generally. The ban is not really justified by a lack of format diversity - there are four decks all apparently doing well and competing with one another, not a single dominant strategy - but instead designed to reduce interaction.

    Note their justification:
    https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...d-announcement
    This should open up the field for more traditional midrange and control decks and put less pressure on aggressive decks to also focus on hand disruption and counterspells.
    In other words:
    Timmy does not want to have to interact with his opponent outside of the combat step, so we killed all the combo decks.
    That makes me sad because it means that, like Modern, Pioneer is just not going to grow into a format that an old Legacy/Vintage player would enjoy on Arena.

  3. #3

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by MaximumC View Post
    Wizards can do what they want, of course, and I'm happy that they're printing powerful new cards. Printing without being scared and then using the banhammer to manage formats instead of just printing timidly in the first place is absolutely the right move.
    Is it, though? If the format becomes stale and unfair with these cards that just turn players off prior to a theoretical future ban, is it worth the satisfaction of these printings in the short term against the long-term effects of losing a Legacy player base - specifically as it pertains to LGSs?

  4. #4
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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Keller View Post
    Is it, though? If the format becomes stale and unfair with these cards that just turn players off prior to a theoretical future ban, is it worth the satisfaction of these printings in the short term against the long-term effects of losing a Legacy player base - specifically as it pertains to LGSs?
    I think you're asking the right questions. I would be completely fine, along with a healthy number of Legacy players, with no breakthrough cards for legacy for the next year or more. Let us go back to a cyclical metagame where metagame brewing and savvy sideboarding are the ways to make progress rather than just jamming in the newest broken shit.
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  5. #5

    Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    I hope they tone down the power level of future printings. Even though it may have been correct to ban all those cards, this much bannings can not be seen as anything else than a failure.

  6. #6
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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand called it. On multiple platforms, within about six seconds of seeing their December announcement.

    Lots of interesting discussion here, even if I don't agree with certain people's views.

    MaximumC, I'm totally with you about the need for better cards and sets generally. (I could go on and on because this is so multifaceted, but I won't.) That said, I want to hear more about your opinion that this (i.e., printing more permissively and banning more judiciously) is a better course than the one we'd been on before. I've always been of the impression that bans were generally dangerous for consumer confidence (lol) and for establishing clarity, so do you see evidence that this is producing a better play environment in Legacy and elsewhere?

    Full disclosure: I have no interest in Standard or Pioneer. So maybe I lack the context and experience to say what I'm about to say, but what's wrong with letting combo out-compete other archetypes once in a while? Nobody likes losing, but why is it qualitatively worse to lose to combo than to anything else? I might be in the minority here, but I've found most combo decks to be a lot less abrasive than decks that force you into long-game grinds that are already foregone.

    I've also noticed that combo thrives where there's no good value strategy. Maybe that's a problem Wizards should focus on instead of banning everything under the Sun.
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  7. #7

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    WOTCs new FIRE development philosophy which started with War of the Spark may have contributed to this. They have also been a lot looser in their design, 2020 isnt even over and there have been more bannings in the 4 major constructed formats ever in a calendar year I think.


  8. #8

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce View Post
    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand called it. On multiple platforms, within about six seconds of seeing their December announcement.

    Lots of interesting discussion here, even if I don't agree with certain people's views.

    MaximumC, I'm totally with you about the need for better cards and sets generally. (I could go on and on because this is so multifaceted, but I won't.) That said, I want to hear more about your opinion that this (i.e., printing more permissively and banning more judiciously) is a better course than the one we'd been on before. I've always been of the impression that bans were generally dangerous for consumer confidence (lol) and for establishing clarity, so do you see evidence that this is producing a better play environment in Legacy and elsewhere?

    Full disclosure: I have no interest in Standard or Pioneer. So maybe I lack the context and experience to say what I'm about to say, but what's wrong with letting combo out-compete other archetypes once in a while? Nobody likes losing, but why is it qualitatively worse to lose to combo than to anything else? I might be in the minority here, but I've found most combo decks to be a lot less abrasive than decks that force you into long-game grinds that are already foregone.

    I've also noticed that combo thrives where there's no good value strategy. Maybe that's a problem Wizards should focus on instead of banning everything under the Sun.
    The problem with combo is that you have to interact on the stack or hand to beat it, and those two things are restricted to blue and black, respectively. So if combo is dominant, 3/5ths of the colors don't matter. Personally I think they should go back to permanent combination combo like Ali from Cairo/Spectral Cloak or something, or just let every color interact with the stack, but as long as they don't, if you're not a blue or black player, and really, it's mostly just blue/tempo, then it feels terrible because you're playing magic and the other person is playing solitaire. But their solitaire beats your magic.

  9. #9

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    The funny part is that the various attempts to make creature removal actually be combo interaction is still mostly a failure. (Modern Storm is probably what they want combo to look like, because the cost reducers are vulnerable to creature removal and more importantly the strategy is basically all-in, unlike the various combo and combo-control strategies in Pioneer.)

  10. #10

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Maybe this is a shitter take but I have the opposite stance of MaximumC. I get that sometimes they make mistakes, even really bad ones like Mental Misstep and Treasure Cruise. But..... eh. 2019 power creep being a larger, formal design decision was just too much for me. Of course, I don't buy new product anyway because I think their new philosophy sucks, so it's not like my opinion matters.

    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Keller View Post
    Is it, though?
    You have no idea who I am but I've been a fan of yours for a long, long time.

    edit: I missed Mr. Safety's post. Nailed it better than I could have ever articulated.

  11. #11
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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    I will always struggle to understand how a 4 mana do-nothing enchantment, that you need to play 4x (and kinda gets worse with every redundant copy drawn, but mostly makes deck unplayable if you don’t draw it), will ever need to be banned. Maybe there’s just too many instant speed effects for such a low-power format?

  12. #12

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Since I only play Arena now, I can't comment on Pioneer.

    The rest is absolutely warranted. Most of these cards should have never seen print.
    Historic was basically either ramp with (Field of the Dead or Reclamation or both + a diverse cast of fatties) or various control decks that made you feel like Piper Perri surrounded by Teferis.

    One of the biggest and recurring issues is that they undercost/overstat threats which is why ramp into whatever has been so prevalent.
    M21 also brought back Cultivate so I guess it's not going to stop.
    They can't ban 10 cards like krasis, Ugin, Nissa, ... because there are already 15 more available.
    The other issue is that they make cards/strategies to hard to interact with (Cat, Reclamation, Teferi).

    It's really ironic that the new "playtest team" was hailed as salvation for standard.
    Either they are not doing there jobs or they are deliberately ignored which begs the question why to have them in the first place.
    While you can't catch everything or every interaction with obscure cards in eternal, a lot of cards that have been band in the last years should have never seen print.
    Cards like 3feri, which invalidate a whole card type and most meaningful ways of interacting with it ,or Fires, which is the latest attempt in a long line of almost exclusively broken free spell mechanics, should have been caught.

    Either they want to kill paper magic off and only have arena or they want to make everything commander since it generates the most cash because at this point I'm not buying it anymore that all these are just simple "mistakes".

  13. #13
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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Zoid View Post
    I'm not buying it anymore that all these are just simple "mistakes".
    Don't assume malignance if it can also be explained with stupidity - and WotC has plenty of that.

    Their current cardinal design sins are making cards hard to interact with (e.g. Field of the Dead) and stuffing too much shit into too little mana cost (e.g. W&6, Oko, Uro, etc).

    Personally, I'm not really a fan of the repeated format disruptions, especially if cards like Astrolabe and Oko overstay their welcome with no end in sight.

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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    EDIT by H: The post in question was deleted, so the response is now edited out.

    As much as people want to moan and groan about 2019/2020 cards, the format has few truly problematic fundamental issues. Oko (and Wrenn) are just Counterbalance and Hymn and Grixis Delver's Probe/Therapy by another name; it's the same "how is this crap legal" fraction. Before this it was Goyf. The format has always been ruined by this unbroken chain, but Oko is at least not stackable [legend supertype], making him the least unpleasant.

    Beyond this there are tiny blips made by Misstep, TCC/DTT, Breach, and Lurrus. Pretty much anything else you don't like is best explained by: this is what happens when you ban DRS.

    What is interesting is that total hand destruction was so clearly and unacceptably overpowered for so long, but both Wrenn and then Oko invalidated that cheese [Veil helped ofc] almost overnight. Both cards are bullcrap, but it was still progress. The best move is still unban DRS ban Hymn, unban Top ban Counterbalance, and then ban Oko.
    Last edited by H; 08-04-2020 at 05:01 PM.

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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    As much as people want to moan and groan about 2019/2020 cards, the format has few truly problematic fundamental issues. Oko (and Wrenn) are just Counterbalance and Hymn and Grixis Delver's Probe/Therapy by another name; it's the same "how is this crap legal" fraction. Before this it was Goyf. The format has always been ruined by this unbroken chain, but Oko is at least not stackable [legend supertype], making him the lesst unpleasant.

    Beyond this there are tiny blips made by Misstep, TCC/DTT, Breach, and Lurrus. Pretty much anything else you don't like is best explained by: this is what happens when you ban DRS.

    What is interesting is that total hand destruction was so clearly and unacceptably overpowered for so long, but both Wrenn and then Oko invalidated that cheese [Veil helped ofc] almost overnight. Both cards are bullcrap, but it was still progress. The best move is still unban DRS ban Hymn, unban Top ban Counterbalance, and then ban Oko.
    ban brainstorm and all those unbans would be legit...

  16. #16

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Barook View Post
    Don't assume malignance if it can also be explained with stupidity - and WotC has plenty of that.
    See that's the thing, I'm not sure either. Kind of agree with Zoid.

    Not to say that it's exactly the same, but when I was a developer of a competitive game we had situations like this come up too. Some of the mistakes were legitimate, but some were clearly specific members of development trying to sneak something in for personal reasons. I can't help but feel the same here, and I think some cards like Oko or DTT are probably accidents. And then yeah it's probably just innocent stupidity, mistakes happen, etc. Speaking from experience, development like this is just really messy sometimes.

    But then you see shit like MMisstep, W6, or DRS having 2 toughness. I don't know man, I just don't buy it.

    -----

    As an aside, I know I'm in the minority on this one but- I kinda wish they would just ban Oko, Astrolabe, and the entire planeswalker card type. I definitely feel like "old man yells at cloud" but I super hate the planeswalker card type since they just keep power creeping the shit out of them and it always seems like some significant percentage of the player base agrees.

    /rant

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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by non-inflammable View Post
    ban brainstorm and all those unbans would be legit...
    Eh, I mean the real problem is Fetchlands when it comes to DRS, delve, Bstorm, etc. You have to accept a level of annoyance as long as they're legal on the back of the refusal to reprint duals.

  18. #18

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce View Post
    ...

    Full disclosure: I have no interest in Standard or Pioneer. So maybe I lack the context and experience to say what I'm about to say, but what's wrong with letting combo out-compete other archetypes once in a while? Nobody likes losing, but why is it qualitatively worse to lose to combo than to anything else? I might be in the minority here, but I've found most combo decks to be a lot less abrasive than decks that force you into long-game grinds that are already foregone.

    ....
    I only play Arena, and at that mostly Historic with a bit of Standard. I think I can see where they are coming from. To start with, some of these cards created (especially in Historic) board states in which one player had the game won, but the game would still last for a long , long time, because those decks just take ages to win. Meanwhile, the opposite player quite often was still thinking he had even a chance of win. After a long game, they would lose. They would then start another game and this would repeat because reclamation decks are (were) so ubiquitous. This was highly disappointing for some players. The problem in arena is that you have a crap-load of casual players. They are looking for a bit of quick fun, where they throw creatures at each other for a while and someone wins. Not to face a deck that is seemingly doing nothing and then just wins (like combo decks) or a deck that slowly grinds the life out of everything before winning.

    That's why I don't think any lessons can be learnt re legacy bannings from what's happening in arena. They are completely different environments with totally different player expectations. The 'fun' factor weights very heavily in arena, way more than in any format that is not supported in Arena. As an aside, Historic is coming to Arena, so they are making their best not to bring into Arena another format dominated by combo decks, by killing them before the format fully enters Arena.

  19. #19
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    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    I'm going to head this off right now, we are not going to be discussing the social implications of accidental qualities of Magic cards. Discuss the cards themselves as they relate to the game and to remind everyone, racial, political or social issues are not for discussion here.
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  20. #20

    Re: Banhammer swings like Babe Ruth, hits everything

    Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce View Post
    MaximumC, I'm totally with you about the need for better cards and sets generally. (I could go on and on because this is so multifaceted, but I won't.) That said, I want to hear more about your opinion that this (i.e., printing more permissively and banning more judiciously) is a better course than the one we'd been on before. I've always been of the impression that bans were generally dangerous for consumer confidence (lol) and for establishing clarity, so do you see evidence that this is producing a better play environment in Legacy and elsewhere?
    Oh, happy to share my personal perspective and my attempted objective perspective.

    I play Vintage, Legacy, Cube, and casual 60, and I love finding interesting interactions and synergies between cards. I am the happiest when I see WotC experiment with unique effects and complicated cards. I love finding obscure interactions, I love finding new homes for quirky old cards, and I love unintended consequences. Personally, then, I want WotC to feel free to experiment without being super careful to make effects safe and make people only play the specific play patterns they intended. If this means cards have to be banned in Standard now and then, fine.

    Putting on a more objective hat, I think printing powerful cards is good for other reasons, too. Reason number one is the Reserve List Policy. People love whining about this (it's not ever going away) but they really miss the forest for the trees. There's nothing inherently wrong with refusing to reprint cards as such. Most cards on the RL don't raise an eyebrow because they're terrible cards. No one cares about [card]Farmstead[/card]. What people do get uptight about are cards that are the best at what they do AND happen to be on the List, like the original dual lands. Well, you know what eliminates the need for RL reprints? More powerful new cards that fill the same niche. The more powerful new cards we get, the more the value of the cards on the RL are eroded. If you are a RL whiner, stop it, and encourage WotC to keep printing the list into the historical dust bin.

    Quote Originally Posted by Maximus View Post
    Maybe this is a shitter take but I have the opposite stance of MaximumC. I get that sometimes they make mistakes, even really bad ones like Mental Misstep and Treasure Cruise. But..... eh. 2019 power creep being a larger, formal design decision was just too much for me. Of course, I don't buy new product anyway because I think their new philosophy sucks, so it's not like my opinion matters.

    You have no idea who I am but I've been a fan of yours for a long, long time.

    edit: I missed Mr. Safety's post. Nailed it better than I could have ever articulated.
    Yeah, we just disagree on that I guess. I like picking through the chaos for fun new brews and I don't mind them having to ban things if they screw up. I dislike Homelands, Masques, Kamaigawa, and original Theros for the overly safe and generally underpowered designs. (Yes, naturally there are exceptions: they are exceptions.) I've been happy as a clam since Kaladesh.

    Quote Originally Posted by morgan_coke View Post
    The problem with combo is that you have to interact on the stack or hand to beat it, and those two things are restricted to blue and black, respectively. So if combo is dominant, 3/5ths of the colors don't matter. Personally I think they should go back to permanent combination combo like Ali from Cairo/Spectral Cloak or something, or just let every color interact with the stack, but as long as they don't, if you're not a blue or black player, and really, it's mostly just blue/tempo, then it feels terrible because you're playing magic and the other person is playing solitaire. But their solitaire beats your magic.
    I can dig this, but it's more a question of the format than combo as such. I think it's important for each combo to have answers available in other colors, though I'm fine with not every combo having an answer in every color. There's an element of rock-paper-sissors to combo that should be preserved. That's easier in eternal formats with larger card pools. Taking a look at the most recent bans:

    Helios + Balistia = Blue countermagic, Black discard or creature removal, White creature/enchantment removal, Green artifact/enchantment removal, red.... whoops!
    Inverter + Oracle = Blue countermagic, Black discard, White, Green, and Red.... eh?
    Breach + Anything = Blue countermagic, Black discard or yard hate, White Green and Red... too bad!

    You could imagine fixes to these holes. Red having the ability to punish lifegain in playable cards would help Helios combo. White, Green, and Red having more stifle-like effects could help Inverter. All colors just need yard hate or sphere effects against Breach. But, we don't live in that world in Pioneer, I get that. The bans seem OK.

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