No one should be happy about Top.

[Ellomdian]

Hottest of Takes:

- Huh, that was unexpected. And kind of out of nowhere, since WotC doesn't really seem to care about organized Legacy right now. Wonder if logistics for Vegas played into this at all. <eyeroll>

- Using slow play as an excuse to ban a card is one of the most frustrating things WotC has done from a rules and policy perspective in their history, and this marks the 4th time they've formally done it by my marks. I count Top preemptive ban in Modern, Eggs, Sharhazad, and now Top in Legacy. It's a cop-out to addressing the actual problem that is getting judges to effectively control slow play and getting players to learn what that really means. It's scary to see them behave like this, because at the end of the day, it means they can potentially ban stuff just because whoever bothers to write the list today wants to. Or is there another reason Imperial Seal is still banned???

- The amount of unmitigated gall in this thread is impressive. I'm particularly moved by the trolls... I mean, Regular Forum Members... who like to represent that the reason they stopped playing/sold cards/whatever the fuck was because Miracles, and now that the Witch is dead, they will be happy to grace us with their regular attendance at events. Where they will try to play shitty T3 decks from a decade ago, and bitch endlessly because they aren't competitive anymore, and then 'quit' again, but for some reason hang around the forums and bitch about how Brainstorm is ruining the format again.

- It's going to be kind of fun to watch the actual-good former Miracles players pick up Stoneblade variants and beat the ever-loving piss out of people who think that because CounterTop is dead, said players aren't good anymore. It's gonna be Jace-tastic!

[Parcher]

I'm excited that Top is banned. Miracles was so far above the rest of the format, I was preparing to play it at Vegas. Seriously.

[morgan_coke]

I think all the issues with top and fetches show they need to implement a Chess Clock in paper. None of these things are problems online because if someone is doing that nonsense I can just play to time them out. Right now in paper you can gain an advantage by playing slow, which is just insane to me.

Really wish they'd address that.

I'd also really like to see a "fixed" SDT without the ability to tap:draw. I think that would solve most of the problems that existed with it as a card, while still allowing non-blue decks a useful amount of library manipulation.

[Kanti]

Hottest of Takes:

- It's going to be kind of fun to watch the actual-good former Miracles players pick up Stoneblade variants and beat the ever-loving piss out of people who think that because CounterTop is dead, said players aren't good anymore. It's gonna be Jace-tastic!

i am laughing at the thought of some poor miracles player running out of Brainstorms and not knowing wtf to do with is life. How will they ever cope with going back to a 7 card hand, after playing with 10 for so long?

[Ellomdian]

...they need to implement a Chess Clock in paper.

/sigh.

/sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[s&s]

i just changed my nic fit deck

its now called Nic Fit postop

[Machinus]

I heard from a guy a thing and I believe that since I can't figure out reality myself.

I hope you don't make any important decisions in your life using such a stupid process.



Miracles is not overpowered.

[s&s]

Miracles is not overpowered.[/FONT][/COLOR]

Was bro, its past tense now.

[Kap'n Cook]

Mods can we please prisoner exchange top for a nedleeds unban? I truly want to read his opinions and rants about this ban announcement

[TsumiBand]

I guess I dunno what people expected to actually disappear from Miracles, or the format at large, considering Brainstorm is the sacred cow of all things powerful but un-bannable.

Top has the "rate of play" stigma attached to it which tournaments have despised ever since those "there is no win condition" Squee-Confinement decks popped up like a fuck-billion years ago that I can't recall the tournament reports for but it rustled enough jimmies for things to get pre-emptively banned on the same principle but without the actual results to back it up (honestly the only card I can think of that got hit on this same merit is Shahrazad, but everyone's so into their tourney stats that please I beg you, show me the list that ran the table and proved itself to be this big tournament clock-running time waster. It never existed.) and it isn't as if I want to see rounds regularly going to time, that's stupid - but what's worse is a slippery slope fallacy.

This might be the 'rightest' ban one could expect, since again no one's willing to touch Brainstorm I guess. But it is kind of on the back of some... suspect reasoning, and that is the sort of mentality that shouldn't really be the driving force behind format altering decisions.

I'm not a fan of SDT but I think hitting cards for the right reasons matters as much as the actual ban.

[Zllig]

Mods can we please prisoner exchange top for a nedleeds unban? I truly want to read his opinions and rants about this ban announcement

"something something apes something mouth breathers something tier 3 shit brews because muh foreign collection something my decks are still bad"

Found that on his blog

[Di]

Joe, Bob, Anuraag all already acknowledged the powerlevel of the deck. Let alone most EU players. The question had already long shifted to what would need to be banned.

You denial isn't gonna help you. Or are we going full-"FAKE NEWS!" here anyway?

Let alone the winner of the most recent Legacy SCG (Eli Kassis), who piloted Miracles as well. Who literally said it in his interview.

But let Mr. Coppola and anyone else feel free to remain ignorant of the facts here. Just because a deck doesn't necessarily perform at the level of the format's most historically broken decks ever doesn't mean it isn't overpowered. "Overpowered" as a term doesn't need to mean broken, but within the context of today's format it fits the bill. If a single deck necessitates warped construction strategies for the entire rest of the format to the point of oppression like Miracles did, then there is a problem and it is overpowered. If a single deck invalidates entire chunks of potential strategies and rendering them unviable, that deck is overpowered.

Miracles wasn't broken by any means, but it didn't have any consistent individual checks and had very few weaknesses. You won't ever see Storm combo accomplish this for example because there are plenty of answers within the metagame paradigm. If Storm is the consensus best deck then you can still reasonably play aggro, since Storm has checks elsewhere in the meta. This wouldn't greatly skew deck building or selection either, at least not as far as what Miracles did. Miracles did not have this same issue given it had game against anything, and considering we've seen the stagnation of meta over the last three years, the level of its oppression is evident. It won the most during that span, was the most consistent deck during that span, and the number of viable decks sharply decreased during that span. There is empirical data to back this up.

For what it's worth I would've liked to see Counterbalance go instead of Top as it affects other decks, but if Miracles being gone means opening the format for new strategies to succeed or at least increasing the number of viable decks, we should be for it. If for any other reason, the lack of a ban would've spared us all to dealing with Machinus and his typical condescending attitude. Being pissed about a banning is one thing, but no need to attack people for no reason.

[hymnyou]

Mods can we please prisoner exchange top for a nedleeds unban? I truly want to read his opinions and rants about this ban announcement

We've already planned emergency Tusk Talk casting for tomorrow night. Should be out the following day.

#freenedleeds

[Dice_Box]

Miracles is not overpowered.

The trend line, over 4 years, was always in the decks favour. I am sorry you lost something you loved but this is not going to suddenly change. You don't have to like it, hell you don't even have to admit that the deck was a problem, but you have to accept what's is done is done.

At this point your best course of action is likely walking away from the site for a few days. Get some air, go outside, calm down a little. Because emotions are charged right now and your debating with not only the victors, but the victors that feel this day would never come and fought for it tooth and nail. People who feel as strongly that they are right as you feel you have been wronged. Your not going to get anywhere with that, the die has been cast. Your the mourner at funeral for Thatcher. In your own small group while everyone else is buying Wizard of Oz singles.

To everyone else. Give him some space. Right now he needs it.

[CptHaddock]

To everyone else. Give him some space. Right now he needs it.

Doesn't he have enough though? There is a sea of internet between him and everyone else.

[Dice_Box]

Doesn't he have enough though? There is a sea of internet between him and everyone else.

There is, but if you don't respond, he will have nothing to feed off.

[CutthroatCasual]

Let alone the winner of the most recent Legacy SCG (Eli Kassis), who piloted Miracles as well. Who literally said it in his interview.

Nice job cherry picking and ignoring the fact that in the same breath he said Ancient Tomb and Daze should be banned.

[Machinus]

Let alone the winner of the most recent Legacy SCG (Eli Kassis), who piloted Miracles as well. Who literally said it in his interview.

But let Mr. Coppola and anyone else feel free to remain ignorant of the facts here. Just because a deck doesn't necessarily perform at the level of the format's most historically broken decks ever doesn't mean it isn't overpowered. "Overpowered" as a term doesn't need to mean broken, but within the context of today's format it fits the bill. If a single deck necessitates warped construction strategies for the entire rest of the format to the point of oppression like Miracles did, then there is a problem and it is overpowered. If a single deck invalidates entire chunks of potential strategies and rendering them unviable, that deck is overpowered.

Miracles wasn't broken by any means, but it didn't have any consistent individual checks and had very few weaknesses. You won't ever see Storm combo accomplish this for example because there are plenty of answers within the metagame paradigm. If Storm is the consensus best deck then you can still reasonably play aggro, since Storm has checks elsewhere in the meta. This wouldn't greatly skew deck building or selection either, at least not as far as what Miracles did. Miracles did not have this same issue given it had game against anything, and considering we've seen the stagnation of meta over the last three years, the level of its oppression is evident. It won the most during that span, was the most consistent deck during that span, and the number of viable decks sharply decreased during that span. There is empirical data to back this up.

For what it's worth I would've liked to see Counterbalance go instead of Top as it affects other decks, but if Miracles being gone means opening the format for new strategies to succeed or at least increasing the number of viable decks, we should be for it.

You cannot in one breath talk about opinions and anecdotes, and then in the next claim you have any access to "facts" or understanding of the format. There is no consensus! And you don't get to decide how that is acheived. It's a very weak place to start making arguments from. If one starts to believe that their little life bubble is a good sampling of the state of a competitive worldwide game, then their arguments sound extremely dense and they lose credibility, especially if you confuse such unreliable methods with "facts." Simply, if you resort to such lazy and useless methods as polling, then your results are guaranteed to be garbage.


If you want to start making measurable and challengable statements, you have to move into more measurable, objective terms. I provided above a chart showing the real status of the Legacy metagame, which we can observe from the composition of Grand Prix Day 2 metagames. From this chart it is undeniable that not only is Miracles not overpowered, it has also not been the best deck in the format for at least two years, maybe even never. Delver does better on Day 2s, and as well or better in Top 8s. This is probably the most reliable evidence you could come up with to assess this question. Now, I would not argue that Miracles is not a good deck. Even if, which it's not clear that it is, it were the "best" deck, that is still meaningless. There has to be a "best" deck by definition. You would have to have something more to say, and find evidence for that. Such proof has yet to be presented.


Now, if you want to move into more subtle arguments about Sensei's Divining Top and/or Miracles, such as suppressing other decks, altering design in Legacy, or replacing different Control decks, you may or may not have a point. It's hard to say, since those things are hard to measure, and it's also largely a matter of opinion if they are good or bad. You could basically make similar arguments about every single competitive deck, since they all exert an influence on deck design and the metagame. So, it should be apparent that these things are not relevant to the issue of bannings. None of those things are acceptable reasons to ban cards.


Sensei's Divining Top did not meet justified critera for being banned.

[Machinus]

The trend line, over 4 years, was always in the decks favour. I am sorry you lost something you loved but this is not going to suddenly change. You don't have to like it, hell you don't even have to admit that the deck was a problem, but you have to accept what's is done is done.

At this point your best course of action is likely walking away from the site for a few days. Get some air, go outside, calm down a little. Because emotions are charged right now and your debating with not only the victors, but the victors that feel this day would never come and fought for it tooth and nail. People who feel as strongly that they are right as you feel you have been wronged. Your not going to get anywhere with that, the die has been cast. Your the mourner at funeral for Thatcher. In your own small group while everyone else is buying Wizard of Oz singles.

To everyone else. Give him some space. Right now he needs it.

I did not love or play Miracles. But thank you for your misguided and confused advice.

[tescrin]

EDIT: I missed Dice's ask to lay off. I am editing this to be empty now.
Sorry!

That said, I voted "good that it's gone" or w/e in the poll