[Premium Article] Six Cards to Unban in Legacy (VOTE!) [Archive]

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 12:36 AM

Aaron Forsythe twittered that he'd like community members to give the DCI and WOTC feedback on cards people think could be banned or unbanned.

No card in Legacy has been banned for 5 years for power level reasons except as a consequence of power level errata fixes. Only three cards have been banned (time vault, flash, and sharazad), which is a remarkable testament both to Legacy's balance and to the DCI"s original banned list. I can't think of another format where the DCI has had such a 'hands off' policy, or where it has worked so effectively.

Rising to forsythe's challenge, I chose one card from each color and an artifact, and made the best case I could for unbanning. These are discussion starters, and not the end of the story. I present arguments, but I also have a poll for each card presented, and request that people express their views in the forum so Forsythe can see them.

Have at it!

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/19052_So_Many_Insane_Plays_Six_Cards_To_Unban_In_Legacy.html

heroicraptor

03-30-2010, 12:44 AM

Goblin Recruiter?! Are you serious?

Clark Kant

03-30-2010, 12:46 AM

kicks_422

03-30-2010, 12:48 AM

It's not April 1 yet, is it?

cjva

03-30-2010, 12:53 AM

I think that most cards on the list can be safely unbanned. (except maybe earthcraft, seems to easy to go infinit with sentinel)

Anyways, what i rely think is that sensei's divining top should be banned. Not cause it's to good, but for the time it takes when people top all the time. So a similar banning on top as they did in extended.

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 01:10 AM

Goblin Recruiter?! Are you serious?

I felt it was the safest red card, moreso than WGD.

Do you think that Food Chain Goblins would dominate legacy? I don't.

kicks_422

03-30-2010, 01:21 AM

Well, Vial Goblins has survived so many meta shifts and is still a DTB. Wouldn't giving them access to Goblin Recruiter give them such a huge boost? In today's builds, fitting in 4 Food Chain and 4 Goblin Recruiter would be easy.

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 01:23 AM

Well, Vial Goblins has survived so many meta shifts and is still a DTB. Wouldn't giving them access to Goblin Recruiter give them such a huge boost? From today's builds, fitting in 4 Food Chain and 4 Goblin Recruiter would be easy.

Goblins is definitely a deck to beat, but I don't think that Food Chain Goblins is much better -- if at all -- than Vial Goblins. Food Chain is an awkward spell alot of the time. Goblins is just fine as is.

And even if it does make Goblins better (considering Goblins has lots of problems with certain popular decks like Zoo), does anyone really believe that Goblins would dominate legacy? I mean, I could see it maybe making up 12-15% of a field, but it's hard to see how it could be much more. I dunno.

AngryTroll

03-30-2010, 01:35 AM

Goblins is definitely a deck to beat, but I don't think that Food Chain Goblins is much better -- if at all -- than Vial Goblins. Food Chain is an awkward spell alot of the time. Goblins is just fine as is.

And even if it does make Goblins better (considering Goblins has lots of problems with certain popular decks like Zoo), does anyone really believe that Goblins would dominate legacy? I mean, I could see it maybe making up 12-15% of a field, but it's hard to see how it could be much more. I dunno.

I very much agree with both parts of this statement. Food Chain Goblins is not automatically better than Vial Goblins...it may be slightly better, but it won't bring back the old days, when people wanted Lackey banned because of the power, consistancy, and percentages Goblins used to have. Recruiter is the most debatable choice in the article, but not outrageous.

I felt it was the safest red card, moreso than WGD.

Is Dragon actually that big of a deal? With Pridemages, Krosan Grips, and graveyard hate everywhere, AND with Bazaar banned, it doesn't seem overpowered. It's a three card combo, Animate Dead / Necromancy are enchantments, plus you need something like Compulsion to draw cards...ending games in stalls is lame, but it's another combo like Earthcraft that won't be wrecking metagames any time soon.

kicks_422

03-30-2010, 01:35 AM

You could technically just remove the "chaff" in Vial Goblins (say, 4 pieces of removal and 4 from an assortment of Piledrivers, Instigators, Chieftains, etc) to end up with Vial Goblins with a combo option. Something like:

22 lands (maybe even 4 Chrome Mox here?)
4 Aether Vial

4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Recruiter
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
2 Siege-Gang Commander

4 Food Chain

Doesn't that look nice? Of course we can't say just how much power Goblins will really get from unbanning Recruiter, but I think everyone would assume that the deck would only get much better.

EDIT: Also, I think the general consensus is that Dragon without Bazaar is just plain bad.

conboy31

03-30-2010, 01:36 AM

It seems Mask, Monolith, and Land Tax would be fairly innocuous. From there it gets a little trickier. I would probably just do those 3 to start with, then commence a few more for the upcoming months.

GtF

03-30-2010, 01:38 AM

I actually think WGD would be a safer card to unban than recruiter. It requires more setup to be good, requires a mana sink and a way to stop the combo once it gets going (I know some cards could fulfill both roles, but most of these are not very good on their own). All in all it's a lot more disruptable than current reanimator builds, which aren't dominating the format by any means.
Other than that I think all those other cards could be safely unbanned and the only one I see having a major impact would be earthcraft, with land tax and mind twist seeing moderate play. I think grim monolith also might be safe to unban.

jrsthethird

03-30-2010, 01:42 AM

Uh what's the blue card and why is no one talking about it?

GtF

03-30-2010, 01:48 AM

The blue card was time spiral. I can't speak for anyone else but I wasn't talking about it because I don't think unbanning it would have much of an effect.
Part of me wants to see what would happen in a format with hermit druid legal, but the other part of me suspects that probably isn't a good idea.

Aggro_zombies

03-30-2010, 01:51 AM

Goblin Recruiter would be fine, even if it is something of a scary card. The combo approach is pretty bad, and the aggro approach would be the final nail in the coffin for control decks (not that that particular coffin needs any more nails, seeing how many it's already got). Short of chaining Ringleaders, which is easily possible but very slow, it will take a while to take advantage of having put all of your guys on top. Even then, it doesn't do much to stop the current bad things for Goblins: Tabernacle/Moat, burn spells to the dome, fast starts for the opponent, combo, etc. If anything, it would make Goblins Tier 1 again, which it hasn't been in forever. I see nothing wrong with that.

Uh what's the blue card and why is no one talking about it?
Time Spiral, and because it's not that good. Mind's Desire is better for storm decks and would see very little play because of the double blue requirement.

EDIT: I think they're all fine cards to unban. Recruiter is the only one with potential to get out of hand, but Goblins lacks playable lords in the densities Elves and Merfolk have, and it's yet another deck that loses to combo.

morgan_coke

03-30-2010, 02:35 AM

Having played against Elves! combo in MTGO Classic, I vote against Earthcraft. Sentinel just straight up makes that card into bad times. I'd vote no on Mask simply for clarity issues. Seriously, does anyone know how the card actually works? (not how it plays, or what it does, I mean how it works. Subtle but important difference.) Also not too keen on Recruiter, but it may be ok, then again, there are all kinds of ways to mess with it besides Food Chain. Thinking of Skirk Prospector and Goblinstorm type decks here. If you have say 3+ lands and Recruiter in your opening hand, you should be able to use Prospector and Warchief and Ringleader to draw and cast a lethal attack on t4ish (t3?) pretty consistently, with defensive bounce/chumping prior to the assault.

Mind Twist and Time Spiral seem ok, but I'd be watchful of unbanning Twist and Monolith at the same time.

Vacrix

03-30-2010, 02:47 AM

I'd LOVE for recruiter to get unbanned so I can wreck havoc on them with SI. :D
Honestly though, Goblins isn't that hot anymore. I wouldn't mind seeing it take out all the CB players for me either.

Someone remind me why is Mind Twist banned. At X = 2 its just an overpriced Hymn and X > 2 you need to invest some early acceleration like multiple Dark Rituals to make it profitable. The format can handle it.

And Land Tax? It was legal in some MWS tournament on mtgsalvation and i didn't hear anything about it raping the meta. Seems safe.

Is Time Spiral that good nowadays? Combo can hit 6 pretty easily to play it. I don't think its format breaking at all but maybe some TES/NLS players can give us some thoughts on it.

EDIT:
Elves is a janky mcjankjank deck. It needs something like Earthcraft to be good.

Master Shake

03-30-2010, 02:59 AM

I'm confused on why this article was even written.

But this should help everyone:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

BreathWeapon

03-30-2010, 03:10 AM

Time Spiral and Land Tax have no place on the banned list when they're compared to Diminishing Returns and Life from the Loam, and honestly Mind Twist and Earth Craft are just under powered too. I don't even think these proposals for unbannings are even worth discussing, unless they unban something like Worldgorger Dragon, Grim Monolith, Mind's Desire, Illusionary Mask or Skull Clamp etc. which could either create a new archetype or improve an existing archetype it's pretty obvious what should come off safely.

I'd give Goblin Recruiter a big, fat fucking no, Goblins is fine and doesn't need the help at all - as sick as it sounds I think Skull Clamp would be the best card to shake up the format and give Counterbalance and Zoo a run for their money (it'd probably over power Goblins and Stoneforge Mystic, but at least it makes Affinity, Elves and Weenie White a contender)

johanessen

03-30-2010, 04:52 AM

DukeDemonKn1ght

03-30-2010, 05:13 AM

Mana Drain? Are you frakkin' serious? I mean, if control decks were the only thing that would play it, I'd say yeah they probably need the boost. But that card would get degenerate real quick.

johanessen

03-30-2010, 05:22 AM

Maveric78f

03-30-2010, 05:38 AM

Which deck would benefit? Dream Halls and Landstill? The first is a bunch of crap, and nobody plays Landstill nowadays. The only deck I can see taking profit is Counter top and I can`t see Mana Drain an auto include on every CBTop deck, only in controlish lists with new Jace and such.
All in nuance. The only argument in favor of Mana Drain is that Legacy does not play high CC cards. But you are completely wrong. Dream Halls can be a very good deck and Landstill / Ultimate Walker are decks that can take huge benefit of Mana Drain.

cjva

03-30-2010, 06:09 AM

The problem is not if some deck would take benefit from an unbanning. Hopefully they do, cause otherwise the unbanning doesn't matter.

The problem comes when we think that an unbanning would lead legacy into the same thing as standard is in now. Jund or anti-jund.

Evaluating each card with the eye on "would this card make a deck take up to big a portion of the meta?" If no, the card could safely be unbanned.

I actually think it would be good for legacy if some cards gets unbanned and we eventually end up with ~10 good/decent decks to chose from, instead of todays 20-30.

Unbanning Dragon is probably safe as well, gives the meta yet another GY-depentent combo deck. Peoples sideboards shouldnt change in order to handle it, when we have meta that include dredge and reanimator. And besides, dragon not only fold to GY-hate, but STP, Path aso aso as well.

The interesting discussion comes when we start to talk about some money cards. What would their impact be on legacy if Bazzar, Mishra or Liberary where to be unbanned? And if the impact would be low, or just making some strats more valid but not taking up to big chunks of the meta, what are the reason to keep em banned?

Valdez

03-30-2010, 06:34 AM

SpikeyMikey

03-30-2010, 06:35 AM

I very much agree with both parts of this statement. Food Chain Goblins is not automatically better than Vial Goblins...it may be slightly better, but it won't bring back the old days, when people wanted Lackey banned because of the power, consistancy, and percentages Goblins used to have. Recruiter is the most debatable choice in the article, but not outrageous.

Is Dragon actually that big of a deal? With Pridemages, Krosan Grips, and graveyard hate everywhere, AND with Bazaar banned, it doesn't seem overpowered. It's a three card combo, Animate Dead / Necromancy are enchantments, plus you need something like Compulsion to draw cards...ending games in stalls is lame, but it's another combo like Earthcraft that won't be wrecking metagames any time soon.

When Dragon first hit the scene in T1, no one (except for me) was running Bazaar of Baghdad (I was also the only one running Tarnished Citadel). Incredible but true. It was strong and consistent enough that it got Entomb restricted without the pitchland. Now to be fair, we don't have access to jewelry and Ancestral and Walk and Wheel and all the rest of that happy horse hockey, but Dragon would still be incredibly strong and consistent. Of course, I don't think it'd be much stronger than modern day Reanimator; Dragon wins in 1 turn instead of having to beat you 2 or 3 times, but we didn't have PtE back then and most decks weren't packing 4+ direct removal spells. Control at the time usually had 1 StP and 1 Edict. Would it be something that modern decks could deal with? Probably, but the real issue is this: right now, we enjoy a format where you can play a wide variety of decks and have a chance at winning. The more and varied the competitive combo decks are, the less and less that things like Zoo and PT Junk can compete. You reach a point where you're either playing combo or you're playing blue. Similar to what happened in T1 when Mirrodin hit the scene, you either packed 4 Forces or 4 Trinispheres, but you were not competitive unless you were running one or the other. I would HATE to see Legacy reach that point, because I think that aggro is an important part of any metagame. So why don't we just leave well enough alone and avoid unbanning strong combo cards?

Amon Amarth

03-30-2010, 06:38 AM

I think all the cards suggested are fine to unban. The only thing I'm iffy on is Goblin Recruiter. He's kinda silly. Worst case, he makes other aggro decks unattractive or just obsoletes them. However, I don't think Recruiter is stronger than Entomb so even that would most likely be OK too. I'd also add Grim Monolith and Hermit Druid to that list as well. They are too slow.

Also I doubt they will unban Dragon due to how easy it is to create a game states where the only outcome is a draw.

jazzykat

03-30-2010, 07:10 AM

Earthcraft would give a HUGE boost to Enchantress, so I say NO to unban Earthcraft.

Safe unbans: Time Spiral, Land Tax, Mind Twist, Goblin Recruiter, Illusionary Mask, Mana Drain, Grim Monolith, Frantic Search. I`d like to see Skullclamp unbanned too but I think it`s too risky.

This.

Caveats:
Recruiter may be a little iffy, because a good aggro deck with a possible combo finish is pretty hard to argue against.

Mana Drain my initial feeling is the card is too powerful but the decks that would benefit most from it (Dream Halls and "Landstill") are not decks to beat. It might just make them that. IMO Dream Halls is tier 2 and I would play it behind Reanimator, Ichorid, Bant Survival, and AdNT, so if you got 1 more tier 1 combo deck I think that would be great. Landstill, it seems to die to a fair amount of the format. It still pounds on CB/Top, Supreme Blue, and Thresh, but it has a pretty crummy game vs. combo, and depending on the builds zoo can burn it out. However, it generally doesn't fare that well vs. combo and goblins gives it a pretty bad day too. So, I'm in favor of bringing the power level up on non-tier 1 decks.

DrJones

03-30-2010, 07:27 AM

I think the format doesn't need yet another combo enabler that can be stopped by FoW but actually isn't, and I actually think there are too many of those already and would suggest banning entomb again, and also Show and tell. All you are doing with some of your suggestions is increasing the "swinginess" of the format, that is, how strong a deck is punished if it doesn't have an answer ready when the opponent plays a spell.

I would ban: Brainstorm, Entomb, Show and Tell.
I would like to see either banned or reprinted: dual lands.
I would unban: Mind Twist, Land Tax, and a colorless producing artifact like Grim Monolith.
I wouldn't unban: Goblin Recruiter, Time Spiral, Mana Drain, Hermit, nor Earthcraft.

Infinitium

03-30-2010, 07:40 AM

I would ban: Brainstorm

Wait, what? Blue decks being consistent is one of their defining traits, and brainstorm is one of the most skill-intensive cards of the format.

Elfrago

03-30-2010, 07:41 AM

Time Spiral would be a lot of fun for Spring Tide, the old Solidarity little brother. The deck would benefit a lot from it but I'm not sure it would be competive, you know, the old Counterbalance + Top wrecks combo decks thing.

Recruiter is good, really good. Not broken but it would give a boost to Goblins. A boost that ATM Goblins doesn't need. On the other hand the WGD combo requires more than two pieces and is distrupted by creature removal, enchantment removal, graveyard hate and countermagic/discard/allthatotherstuff. Ya, sick combo =/

Mind Twist and Mask are on the banned list? Really? Feel free to stifle your 12/12, but you can't pay 2 + 1 for it. LOL.

Earthcraft is probably the only card that should remain on the list of the ones you mentioned.

Cabal_chan

03-30-2010, 07:51 AM

Aaron Forsythe twittered that he'd like community members to give the DCI and WOTC feedback on cards people think could be banned or unbanned.

With all due respect sir, seeing how the reprint issue was handled...how to phrase this...'I wouldn't trust him with a potato gun.'

This is just a move to try and direct attention away from that. It looks like the e-mails may have had some affect, but not the effect we hoped for. :cry:

Julian23

03-30-2010, 08:09 AM

How can I email Aaaron about my thoughts? I would like to share my opinion on why SDT has to be banned in Legacy.

(nameless one)

03-30-2010, 08:36 AM

Whats with the hate with SDT?

Is it because of its interaction with Counterbalance?

And on Land Tax, I believe my signature says it all.

johanessen

03-30-2010, 09:07 AM

Whats with the hate with SDT?

Is it because of its interaction with Counterbalance?

I believe most people (>95%) don`t wan`t SDT banned due to interaction with counterbalance. It`s a good interaction, but it`s comproved that doesn`t break the format.

We want to see SDT banned because it`s a card that dodges removal stupidly, and mainly because it`s too lame, too easy to abuse and buy time.

Julian23

03-30-2010, 09:20 AM

SDT needs to be banned because of the round time issues it causes.

frolll

03-30-2010, 09:40 AM

Yep, just like in Extended, when it did end banned.

OTOH : Time Spiral : Safe. Land Tax : Safe. Mask : Safe. Drain : Safe. Dragon : Safe. Recruiter : Safe. Mind Twist : Safe. Earthcraft : NOT safe. SDT : Ban for tournament timing issues (like they did w/ it in Ext.). Grim Monolith : Safe. Frantic Search : Safe.

Yay, pretty much as everyone else, actually.

Tacosnape

03-30-2010, 09:52 AM

Yay. Another Land Tax thread.

I say no to Land Tax, no to Earthcraft, no to Goblin Recruiter, and -hell- no to Mask.

Probably safe are Mind Twist and I don't honestly know about Time Spiral. Haven't thought about it much.

That said, if you just take the rules of what Smennen said (Pick the most unbannable of each color/artifact), it's hard to argue his result. I might have picked Memory Jar over Illusionary Mask, but there's really no good choices for artifacts to come off the banned list. Everything else is hard to argue. Land Tax, Earthcraft, Time Spiral, and Mind Twist are definitely the least offensive of their colors. Goblin Recruiter might or might not lose out to Worldgorger Dragon, though.

yankeedave

03-30-2010, 09:54 AM

Wait, what? Blue decks being consistent is one of their defining traits, and brainstorm is one of the most skill-intensive cards of the format.

You are of course forgetting that DrJones would also like Force of Will banning, but seems to be keeping quiet on that these days.

Mark Sun

03-30-2010, 10:08 AM

SDT needs to be banned because of the round time issues it causes.

I think I'd rather (try) to keep combo in check on that one.

SDT is fine, Krosan Grip still kills it. That's not to say that the card is damn powerful, but I would rather have a healthy format than save time on matches.

alderon666

03-30-2010, 10:31 AM

I think I'd rather (try) to keep combo in check on that one.

SDT is fine, Krosan Grip still kills it. That's not to say that the card is damn powerful, but I would rather have a healthy format than save time on matches.

SDT is just boring. I play 4 in Storm Combo and sometimes even I hate it. Sometimes it just goes "EOT check top, crack fetch, check top, Mystical Tutor, check top, draw check top, play fetch, crack fetch, look top" and all that time my opponent is just staring at me with a tapped Nacatl, some lands and a Goyf. While timing issues are centainly not a problem in the Storm deck it is in control decks like Supreme Blue or any U(w/b) Whatever.

I also really hate how Countertop is an easily assembled combo that locks a lot of decks out of the game (combo especially) and can even protect itself. I would just love seeing Countertop fanatics having to play with Scroll Rack or some other non-utterly broken artifact along with Counterbalance.

jrsthethird

03-30-2010, 10:45 AM

Dragon is bad, it was the reason Entomb was banned to begin with. Plus, no one wants to have lethal damage pending just for the Dragon player to autodraw the game with a stupid infinite loop.

Until Top shows up in every deck, which it won't, it shouldn't be banned. But
if Land Tax is unbanned, Top must be banned, since the combination of them would
certainly cause time considerations.

Mana Drain would be a nice kick in the pants for pure control decks to get off the ground.

Earthcraft is too good.

Time Spiral is fine; once you get to 6 mana there are better ways to win the game. Frantic Search, on the other hand, would not be good because High Tide decks would get ridiculously good.

caiomarcos

03-30-2010, 10:59 AM

Time Spiral is fine; once you get to 6 mana there are better ways to win the game. Frantic Search, on the other hand, would not be good because High Tide decks would get ridiculously good.

I see Time Spiral as an Ad Nauseam for High Tide decks. It is a must counter, otherwise you're dead. Getting 7 cards and a bunch of mana from 1 spell is broken, and I wouldn't like to see another deck like ANT running around. Actually I think that Ad Nauseam is already over the top, it is a freaking one-card combo.

DrJones

03-30-2010, 11:07 AM

You are of course forgetting that DrJones would also like Force of Will banning, but seems to be keeping quiet on that these days.I think it would be the best for the format, but I don't enjoy getting kharma-banned just because some players really enjoy winning tournament after tournament with them.

emidln

03-30-2010, 11:14 AM

Time Spiral is a a better Diminshing Returns in NLS (and would immediately replace DReturns in all NLS sideboards) and I'm not sure about TES. The reason I'm not sure on TES is that with so much acceleration, TES often uses DReturns as an "all in" play for 6-7 mana floating 0-1 mana. TES plays so many initial mana sources that this has a very high chance of resulting in a kill whereas in something with lands replacing moxen/rituals/spirit guides (NLS), you're not as likely to have a t1-t2 DReturns be lethal.

The nice part about Time Spiral is that, while it does cost a couple extra mana (not an issue in storm combo), it will generally provide between one and three mana as it resolves giving decks without as many initial mana sources but more business (say, NLS) a very large benefit. Whether this is bigger than just casting DReturns with 2 mana floating would require some math and a lot of testing.

Arrowni

03-30-2010, 11:16 AM

Ok, first of all I won't be discussing Mana Drain and Worldgorger Dragon because clearly they shouldn't be the first cards in the unban list for a number of reasons.

The rest:

Land Tax: Unban. Or ban top, because everything Land Tax does its done annoyingly by top a hell lot worse. Card advantage is nice but its restrictive and there is only a number of decks that could use Land Tax and get advantage from it -remember, the average number of basic lands isn't that big outside rogue decks-. Probably the nastiest thing you can do with land tax is to run less lands and have a less diluted deck, that may be good, but not broken.

Goblin Recruiter: Unban. As others said, Food Chain goblins isn't even completely superior to vial goblins, unless you find a middle point in which Recruiter is broken without Chain then this card will be hardly an issue.

Illusionary Mask: Unban. It comes from a day an age in which it was needed to get Dreadnought down, right now we got stifle, vision charm and a number of ways to cheat the big 12/12 into play which can be useful on their own. Right now it just does too little for too much cash.

Mind Twist: Unban. Your average deck cannot do anything with it, decks that pull that much mana that fast better be combo decks or have ancient tombs laying around; in both cases Mind Twist would be a lot less dangerous than other cards since it asks for lots of resources to actually become good.

Time Spiral: Unban. Could be a cool card to have around, like Dream Halls, no current deck can use it to a breaking point. As its a combo piece, its likely to go unused for a long-time so either unban it quick or don't feel pressed to do it, its presence in the format ain't likely to spawn new strategies.

And I think those unbans should be the first to take place. Among those I mentioned the only one who could have an open ended use would be Land Tax, the rest is mostly safe because of their respective niche in which they are surpassed already. Earthcraft, Grim Monolith and Frantic Search could be discussed further before their removal from the list, we're not in a hurry and unbanning from 3 to 5 cards before should be nice enough for the moment.

No bannings should take place. SDT is annoying but hardly broken, not unlike Brainstorm, Tarmogoyf, Aether Vial and other emblematic cards of the format.

MMogg

03-30-2010, 11:18 AM

I'm most likely going to get hated on, but I can't understand why some cards seem beyond discussion, and the mere mention of discussing them brings about a backlash. I think a lot of people pre-suppose banned cards are broken without having ever tested them in the current environment. I think if Forsythe is really interested in developing a banned list that reflects a true separation between broken/bad for the game and good for the game, he needs to have people knowledgeable in the format to build and playtest cards in consideration for unbanning.

For example, (here comes the hate), Oath of Druids is an automatic undiscussable topic for some people. I remember when I first joined The Source last August there was an SCD thread made for Oath and it was promptly locked. That kind of inability to even discuss the card makes me wonder how truly broken it can be. I mean, ANT can go off on turn one and consistently on turns 2 or 3 (see my signature). But somehow a :1::g: enchantment (that brings out a creature during my upkeep if my opponent controls a creature) is supposed to make me shit my pants? People talk about how fragile Belcher is, but isn't Oath also a little fragile? Yeah, it runs counters, but doesn't Reanimator as well? Reanimator has shown us (I believe, anyway) that there is a nice thick line between great and broken/format warping. Entomb enabled another tier 1 deck, but that deck is not trouncing every other deck in the world. Top 8s are still varied. I guess I don't see clearly how Oath would demolish every other deck in the field and start posting 4 or 5 of the top 8 at most tournaments.

My point is not to start discussing Oath here and now, more to say that cards need to be thoroughly tested and that blanket, knee-jerk refusal to discuss them is not beneficial to anyone.

Forbiddian

03-30-2010, 11:32 AM

I'd vote no on Mask simply for clarity issues. Seriously, does anyone know how the card actually works? (not how it plays, or what it does, I mean how it works. Subtle but important difference.)

If people played it/against it, they'd learn the rules on it.

Other mechanics, like Dredge, Bridge from Below, and Morphs are a lot more confusing.

@ Above: I can't believe Oath of Druids has to be discussed. I've played against it in Vintage, and used to play against it all the time before the split. Especially with Forbidden Orchard, it would rape the modern game.

You talk about Goblin Charbelcher's consistency, but obviously you have no idea what you're talking about. Oath is a 1 to 2 card combo (and 2 only if your opponent runs ZERO creatures). It also requires very minimal room in the deck, at most 8 or 10 slots. Ok, Survival of the Fittest is played. One of their combos is discarding a creature and paying GG to turn it first into Iona, then into Imperial Recruiter, then paying 2W to play it (so 2GGW+a creature) to get Iona. Iona isn't even good enough to see play in Oath, who can get it out for free.

You could have picked a better example, maybe... I dunno Goblin Recruiter. Something most people don't want to see unbanned who only have vague recollections of it being far too strong from a metagame 6+ years ago (where Tarmogoyf would have been unbelievable). But Oath is just ridiculous to discuss.

How about we unban Black Lotus, you guys? It's only like Dark Ritual!

Meister_Kai

03-30-2010, 11:33 AM

@MMOG:

Could you image turn 2 15/15 Eldrazi guy? The annihilator 6 guy? The pro colored spells guy? That would just be too stupid. Comparing the deck to an already degenerate deck (Belcher) doesn't really help your case.

Nobody likes combo (except combo players). We tolerate combo. I cannot tolerate there being 2-3 more combo decks in the format than there already are.

That said,what SpikeyMikey said about play blue or play combo is almost a direct quote of what nearly all pros think about the format already
(such as Charles Gindy). This is clearly not the case, as shown by decks like Aggro Loam, Goblins, Enchantress etc winning all the SCG 5ks. Pros like to think like this because it makes them feel as if they have a grasp on the format by there being only 4-6 "real" decks. This is why people like Cedric Phillips always play Belcher, he doesn't need to know jack shit about the format besides the fact that he destroys everything without force of will in it.

I agree 100% with comments about how Legacy doesn't need to become more swingy with cards like Recruiter or Skullclamp. Goblins has won the last SCG 5k and got 2nd at the one before that, it obviously doesn't need any help. It doesn't need to be made better.

I would wager that the only safe unbans are Time Spiral and Mind Twist. The only experimental unban would be Earthcraft. So what Elves get better, some 12 year old plays Squirrel Nest, or Enchantress becomes slightly better?

Arrowni

03-30-2010, 11:46 AM

Mmmmh....?

Oath preys on creature strategies, some people say its a two card combo, but its a one card combo against creature strategies that happens to pretty much win the game. And creatures strategies are the best for the game in the long run because we get to play new cards instead of just comboing with the same three strategies forever.

That's why Oath is not discussed, it just warps the format too much.

johanessen

03-30-2010, 11:46 AM

Ok, first of all I won't be discussing Mana Drain and Worldgorger Dragon because clearly they shouldn't be the first cards in the unban list for a number of reasons.

Now. Seriously. Stop trolling. Try to make a deck using a playset of Mana Drains and test it against the 7-8 tier decks of legacy (say: Goblins, Zoo, Merfolk, AggroLoam, ANT, CBTop, Aggro/Survi-Bant, Ichorid). Then ask yourself: Is Mana Drain is breaking the format?

If more than three people in this thread is advocating to unban Mana Drain, at least it`s not that "Clearly". Or you should be insulting us.

Aggro_zombies

03-30-2010, 11:48 AM

That said,what SpikeyMikey said about play blue or play combo is almost a direct quote of what nearly all pros think about the format already (such as Charles Gindy). This is clearly not the case, as shown by decks like Aggro Loam, Goblins, Enchantress etc winning all the SCG 5ks. Pros like to think like this because it makes them feel as if they have a grasp on the format by there being only 4-6 "real" decks. This is why people like Cedric Phillips always play Belcher, he doesn't need to know jack shit about the format besides the fact that he destroys everything without force of will in it.
To be perfectly honest here, there actually are only a few Tier I decks in the format: Zoo, NO Counterbalance, Merfolk, and Ad Nauseum. Other decks are Tier II or Tier 1.5 if the meta for them is right, but don't conflate metagame foils and decks that only do well if the amount of blue in the room is high enough to suppress storm with actual Tier I decks.

Banning Top for time issues while advocating the unbanning of Land Tax is silly.

Earthcraft in Enchantress seems weak for a number of reasons, most already mentioned by Stephen: the combo is easy to break up with Pithing Needle, making it poor as a sole win condition; it requires two cards, neither of which piggyback off of the deck's engines like Sigil or Words of War currently do; Earthcraft is basically a blank by itself because the Enchantress deck plays very few creatures; you can't run Moat and Earthcraft in the same deck, making your aggro matchups worse. It seems fine for the format.

EDIT: Oath is probably a little too strong. Imagine taking the Reanimator shell, swapping 4 Entomb for 4 Oath, and then cutting all but two creatures for more counters - stuff like Counterbalance-Top, say. Or add board control. Mystical becomes Enlightened, etc. You could drop black and run Bant colors.

Meister_Kai

03-30-2010, 11:51 AM

Now. Seriously. Stop trolling. Try to make a deck using a playset of Mana Drains and test it against the 7-8 tier decks of legacy. Then ask yourself: Is Mana Drain is breaking the format?

If more than three people in this thread is advocating to unban Mana Drain, at least it`s not that "Clearly". Or you should be insulting us.

I think a big reason Mana Drain goes on being banned is because its price would skyrocket (buzz word!) if it were unbanned. Legacy blue decks don't need ANOTHER $500 or whatever playset to be competitive.

Dragon should stay banned. I don't care how shitty the combo is. The least thing any format needs is lots of combo decks running around that require the opponent to play Force of Will or mull for one STP.

EDIT:

@Aggro_zombies: I can't read the article, but what you said is true. I also think Land Tax is too much of a time-misers card.

johanessen

03-30-2010, 11:57 AM

I think a big reason Mana Drain goes on being banned is because its price would skyrocket (buzz word!) if it were unbanned. Legacy blue decks don't need ANOTHER $500 or whatever playset to be competitive.

Pocket shouldn`t be an issue in terms of banning/unbanning. In fact, 'they' say it isn`t.

AngryTroll

03-30-2010, 12:03 PM

Dragon should stay banned. I don't care how shitty the combo is. The least thing any format needs is lots of combo decks running around that require the opponent to play Force of Will or mull for one STP.

Have you ever played against Dragon? I used to. First of all, we don't have Bazaar. That means the deck needs a few turns to set up. Second, it doesn't like graveyard hate, creature removal, or enchantment removal. That means it's weak to:
Unsummon
Swords/Path
Extirpate (bonus for uncounterable)
Krosan Grip (also uncounterable)
Nature's Claim
Pridemage
Faerie Macabre
Tormod's Crypt and Relic
Leyline
AND countermagic.

Although it takes up fewer slots, that's the same list of weaknesses that Entomb-Hulk has. That deck sees no play. Dragon isn't that big of a deal.

(nameless one)

03-30-2010, 12:17 PM

johanessen

03-30-2010, 12:23 PM

I seriously think Land Tax should get considerations. MTG Salvation is running a Legacy tournament with Land Tax and I have not heard any complains about Land Tax, whether its format warping or time consuming.

Online tournaments never had time issues with top also, but that doesn`t mean real tournaments may have.

morgan_coke

03-30-2010, 12:25 PM

I think one argument that hasn't been mentioned w/regards to unbannings is design space restrictions. The more "it's close, but probably ok" cards we take off the banned list, the more times R&D will be in the process of designing a card for Legacy and have to stop and say "wait, this is broken with X. I mean, I really like this version of the card, and its really innovative, but if we print this, we'll have to ban X. Is printing this card worth banning X?" The answer to that question will almost always be "No". So, with a few exceptions like the obviously safe Land Tax, I'm generally not in favor of taking much off of the banned list. I'd like to see WOTC continue to try and sneak a few Legacy aimed cards into newer sets than get 5-6 semi-broken cards back from ban-land.

Also, Mind Twists real power isn't on T1 in this format, it's on T3 when it can emtpy your hand without your opponent screwing up their whole game plan. It's a HUGE boost to Rock style decks and midrange, but in a swingy, unfun way. Don't know if they want that in the format or not.

EDIT: Time isn't an issue with stuff like Top/Tax online because MTGO has a chess clock. It prevents people from "winning" by stalling out game 2 if they win game 1 with a slow deck. I've always wondered why RL tourneys don't use a chess clock themselves, would seem a good way to address slow play issues.

Arrowni

03-30-2010, 12:30 PM

Now. Seriously. Stop trolling. Try to make a deck using a playset of Mana Drains and test it against the 7-8 tier decks of legacy (say: Goblins, Zoo, Merfolk, AggroLoam, ANT, CBTop, Aggro/Survi-Bant, Ichorid). Then ask yourself: Is Mana Drain is breaking the format?

If more than three people in this thread is advocating to unban Mana Drain, at least it`s not that "Clearly". Or you should be insulting us.

Mmmmmmh? You feel I'm trolling? Excuse me if I gave you that impression. I assume you don't know I have always advocated for unbanning Worldgorger Dragon, I think the card should be unbanned but I don't think it should be unbanned just now. The unbannings have to be part of a process, weak cards should leave the list first and then move into stronger cards. Should we unban Tolarian Academy and let Frantic Search banned because of their interaction? Of course not, there should be order, even if we're among those who think Tolarian Academy wouldn't be a problematic card -Tolarian combos ceased to exist before storm even existed-, its more logical to let Frantic Search roam free before unbanning the poster problem card. Or maybe Tolarian Academy is acceptable but Frantic Search breaks it in half? Clearly there is more to say in this kind of debate than in Land Tax's or Goblin Recruiter's. As such, I think they have no priority, nor does Skullclamp, for example.

Can the format handle mana drain? Probably. Can they handle Grim Monolith? Most surely. But people are afraid of unbannings and have the banned list in a good esteem, this is a good think, the process should be gradual until we can say that cleaning the list has been effective and acceptable before going places that people feel are "too far".

jrsthethird

03-30-2010, 12:33 PM

Have you ever played against Dragon? I used to. First of all, we don't have Bazaar. That means the deck needs a few turns to set up. Second, it doesn't like graveyard hate, creature removal, or enchantment removal. That means it's weak to:
Unsummon
Swords/Path
Extirpate (bonus for uncounterable)
Krosan Grip (also uncounterable)
Nature's Claim
Pridemage
Faerie Macabre
Tormod's Crypt and Relic
Leyline
AND countermagic.

Although it takes up fewer slots, that's the same list of weaknesses that Entomb-Hulk has. That deck sees no play. Dragon isn't that big of a deal.

I played against Dragon before people used Bazaar (or at least people who couldn't afford Bazaar). It came down to whether I drew hate or not. Not that that is the only reason for banning the deck, but the deck just flat out isn't fun. It can draw the game consistently on a whim and that is terrible for the format. You unban Dragon and all of a sudden you have people going 3-0-4 or something in swiss rounds which is just annoying, and top 8 matches would take forever because all the Dragon player needs to do is draw the game until he can draw a kill spell. Dragon will never be unbanned because of the infinite loop interaction.

I think a big reason Mana Drain goes on being banned is because its price would skyrocket (buzz word!) if it were unbanned. Legacy blue decks don't need ANOTHER $500 or whatever playset to be competitive.

Can blue decks support a UU hard counter? Counterspell is a great card and it doesn't see play. A good amount of decks with blue use a ton of colored mana so the extra colorless boost might not even help them too much. It would fight for spots with Counterbalance, and Counterbalance would usually win because of the interaction with Top. Pure control decks seem to be practically dead and I want to see people powering out a turn 4 Morphling with protection again. Maybe it's nostalgia for when I started out during the Vintage boom right before the split, but I see no problem with Mana Drain in the current metagame. Obviously this one needs to be tested a little more but I think it's solid.

Banning Top for time issues while advocating the unbanning of Land Tax is silly.

Land Tax should only be unbanned along with a simultaneous ban of Top.

Grim Monolith is safe and should be unbanned also.

Cabal_chan

03-30-2010, 12:35 PM

Online tournaments never had time issues with top also, but that doesn`t mean real tournaments may have.

There is also the question of whether or not people are actually running Land Tax in that tournament.

Gulang Weinmer

03-30-2010, 12:50 PM

The Unban of Earthcraft can give to Enchantress a clock.

This has allow Enchantress to remove other win condition and to use Chrome Mox|Elvish Spirit Guide|Lotux Petal to play Earthcraft with Squirrel Nest in early game turn.

johanessen

03-30-2010, 01:02 PM

Mmmmmmh? You feel I'm trolling? Excuse me if I gave you that impression. I assume you don't know I have always advocated for unbanning Worldgorger Dragon, I think the card should be unbanned but I don't think it should be unbanned just now. The unbannings have to be part of a process, weak cards should leave the list first and then move into stronger cards. Should we unban Tolarian Academy and let Frantic Search banned because of their interaction? Of course not, there should be order, even if we're among those who think Tolarian Academy wouldn't be a problematic card -Tolarian combos ceased to exist before storm even existed-, its more logical to let Frantic Search roam free before unbanning the poster problem card. Or maybe Tolarian Academy is acceptable but Frantic Search breaks it in half? Clearly there is more to say in this kind of debate than in Land Tax's or Goblin Recruiter's. As such, I think they have no priority, nor does Skullclamp, for example.

Can the format handle mana drain? Probably. Can they handle Grim Monolith? Most surely. But people are afraid of unbannings and have the banned list in a good esteem, this is a good think, the process should be gradual until we can say that cleaning the list has been effective and acceptable before going places that people feel are "too far".

I`m.... lost. So what`s the exact reason you`re giving that you think Mana Drain is banned?

(nameless one)

03-30-2010, 01:03 PM

Honestly, I would not use SDTop with Land Tax. I would use Scroll Rack with it.

03-30-2010, 01:12 PM

Is Dragon actually that big of a deal? With Pridemages, Krosan Grips, and graveyard hate everywhere, AND with Bazaar banned, it doesn't seem overpowered. It's a three card combo, Animate Dead / Necromancy are enchantments, plus you need something like Compulsion to draw cards...ending games in stalls is lame, but it's another combo like Earthcraft that won't be wrecking metagames any time soon.

I can guarantee if Worldgorger were back in the format, it's be rebanned within the next six months. Once Entomb was unbanned, I made a theoretical list of what the deck would look like currently. It was a complete blowout against the entire field. Reanimator is one of the best decks in the format currently, and Dragon is just as fast if not faster, even more resilient thanks to Necromancy, and wins immediately. It's generally faster than a majority of the hate cards you'd see like Pridemage and Krosan Grip, and it could very easily run Abeyance out of the sideboard to shut off all hate and then Ritual out the win. The deck is blazingly fast and even more consistent than current Reanimator decks. On top of that, cards that shut off Reanimator such as Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance aren't nearly as good against Dragon due to diversified mana costs of Animate spells. On top of this, Necromancy's instant speed completely bypasses things like Tormod's Crypt if paired with another Animate spell. It still also has bounce spells as well, and would likely run upwards of 16-20 draw/tutor spells to find everything (some combination of Brainstorm, Ponder, Intuition, Lim-Duls's Vault, and Read the Runes would likely make the cut) so it's always going to find am answer or a way around hate. It's just too damn good imo.

anonymos

03-30-2010, 01:25 PM

Banning Top for time issues while advocating the unbanning of Land Tax is silly.

Earthcraft in Enchantress seems weak for a number of reasons, most already mentioned by Stephen: the combo is easy to break up with Pithing Needle, making it poor as a sole win condition; it requires two cards, neither of which piggyback off of the deck's engines like Sigil or Words of War currently do; Earthcraft is basically a blank by itself because the Enchantress deck plays very few creatures; you can't run Moat and Earthcraft in the same deck, making your aggro matchups worse. It seems fine for the format.

I think Top and Land Tax shouldn't be allowed to play together. I see that being a legitimate time concern more than anything else. We can live with having them exist in a vacuum, but together may be a bad thing. It's also another card I'd love to tinker around with in enchantress.

Enchantress not wanting Earthcraft?!?! Are you kidding? I love how people immediately think about squirrel nest. We already run Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth and white cards. Know what that means? FOR PONY! Yes, that means the return of everyone's favorite white enchantment Sacred Mesa. I'd be willing to suffer having a marginally useless Earthcraft as a one of (can still use it with an Enchantress to get more manas) that means I win next turn with another card that is still semi-played. I think I'd even be convinced to make the swap toward Spatula's combo list if this happened.

lordofthepit

03-30-2010, 02:07 PM

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 02:22 PM

Hey Smmenen, I understand that you need to post premium articles because StarCityGames pays you to share your tech or the data that you've spent a lot of time researching. However, it seems counterproductive in this case, where you're presenting an argument for unbanning six cards, and as it affects the entire format, it seems like this is an argument you'd want to share with the entire community and not just premium subscribers. Especially considering that you're encouraging us to vote for feedback, which isn't possible without a premium subscription. =)

On the other hand, a premium subscription costs what a Subway footlong costs, so it's pretty accessible to anyone. I'd highly recommend a subscription. Especially since I just received every single decklist from GP Madrid, which I will be sharing in the next couple of weeks :p

Also, WOTC will be reading the poll data in the article. So get a subscription and vote!

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 02:24 PM

Bahamuth

03-30-2010, 02:33 PM

While I don't agree that Reanimator is one of the best decks in Legacy right now, I don't see how Dragon could be better at all. If I'm correct, Dragon is a 3-card combo? That's absolutely terrible.

Doesn't Dragon lose the instant Pridemage hits, or Grip comes online? You can't race a 3 turn clock with potential counter backup with a deck built around a 3-card combo. There's no way. Even most forms of Tendrills combo, that are way more redundant, can't always win turn 3 protected.

ANT is running Chant, which is better than Abeyance, and the engine of the deck is superior, yet that deck isn't overpowered? I don't see how a 3 card combo that is susceptible to graveyard hate and enchantment removal could possibly be better than the engine of storm combo.

morgan_coke

03-30-2010, 02:43 PM

I'd vote no on Mask simply for clarity issues. Seriously, does anyone know how the card actually works? (not how it plays, or what it does, I mean how it works. Subtle but important difference.)

That said, if you just take the rules of what Smennen said (Pick the most unbannable of each color/artifact), it's hard to argue his result. I might have picked Memory Jar over Illusionary Mask, but there's really no good choices for artifacts to come off the banned list.

Have you read the new errata on Mask? It's awful. The creature can now be countered. How is Mask a problem?

Incomprehensible card is bad. I'm glad Time Vault is banned just so I don't have to spend 10 minutes figuring out what the current errata is and how it affects play every time somebody drops one.

Vacrix

03-30-2010, 02:52 PM

I played against Dragon before people used Bazaar (or at least people who couldn't afford Bazaar). It came down to whether I drew hate or not. Not that that is the only reason for banning the deck, but the deck just flat out isn't fun. It can draw the game consistently on a whim and that is terrible for the format. You unban Dragon and all of a sudden you have people going 3-0-4 or something in swiss rounds which is just annoying, and top 8 matches would take forever because all the Dragon player needs to do is draw the game until he can draw a kill spell. Dragon will never be unbanned because of the infinite loop interaction.

Couldn't WoTC get around the draw interaction by adding something to the rules that says 'all infinite loops end at a finite number'? That would prevent the draws I think. Your opponent isn't actually looping it 100,000 times. He says that he does that way he doesn't actually have to cycle through the whole thing again. If a player can do something like that, then why can't a rule also say that he must stop cycling at some point, ie. at a finite number. Just make a player pick a number and he does the loop that many times.

On a side note, Solidarity doesn't really win shit anymore and seriously needs a speed boost like Frantic Search to be competitive. Solidarity and Spring Tide would run it, but which other decks would run it? Its deals you 3 off AdN but current ANT/TES/NLS builds can't really abuse it that much because untapping lands just makes it a free card quality spell. Its not insane like it is in High Tide where you want card quality and untap abilities. I think it would completely replace Turnabout in most High Tide builds. I can't really see it fitting in anywhere else and being broken. Its like a double street wraith that makes you discard twice. I vote to unban it.

(nameless one)

03-30-2010, 02:55 PM

On the other hand, a premium subscription costs what a Subway footlong costs, so it's pretty accessible to anyone. I'd highly recommend a subscription. Especially since I just received every single decklist from GP Madrid, which I will be sharing in the next couple of weeks :p

Also, WOTC will be reading the poll data in the article. So get a subscription and vote!

The problem is not about WotC reading the article, its if they would actually listen to it.

Remember what happened with the Reprint Policy? So much for getting you guys summoned. Not blaming you and all, the main issue if they would actually listen/approve.

Also, lordofthepit actually has a point.

Arrowni

03-30-2010, 03:07 PM

I`m.... lost. So what`s the exact reason you`re giving that you think Mana Drain is banned?

There is no reason.

We can agree that the card is powerful, some people with say "too powerful" others with say "just powerful enough to matter", I think the latter, but I don't expect everyone to think like me. The thing is, when it comes to wizards asking our opinion I think that the most important thing is reaching consensus.

I don't mind keeping some cards in the list a little longer, because each unbanning sets a precedent. Both Entomb and Dream Halls were cited by some as "too powerful" and the latter as "too weak" at times, either way many doubted the unbannings would take place and/or have a propose. Now we have a precedent that those cards have allowed new archtypes into the format without warping things beyond recognition. So if we continue to follow these path people will realize that unbannings can be good for the format and maybe then we can move into the heavy names such as Mana Drain.

Personally I don't think more than three bannings/inbannings should happen at a single time, because otherwise you don't realize which choice is changing the format entirely if undesired things happen. As such, I'll be happy if just some of the less debated cards are unbanned.

DrJones

03-30-2010, 03:08 PM

On a side note, Solidarity doesn't really win shit anymore and seriously needs a speed boost like Frantic Search to be competitive. Solidarity and Spring Tide would run it, but which other decks would run it?At least those decks: Enchantress, Lands, Survival-Iona, Countertop-progenitus.

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 03:12 PM

Incomprehensible card is bad. I'm glad Time Vault is banned just so I don't have to spend 10 minutes figuring out what the current errata is and how it affects play every time somebody drops one.

do people agree that this is a reason to ban a card? There are many other cards that are difficult to read/understand, especially without oracle (Chains of Mephistopheles comes to mind), but they aren't banned, nor imo should they be.

emidln

03-30-2010, 03:16 PM

After thinking about it some, I'm fairly sure I would like to play a deck that starts like this:

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Sensei's Divining Top

and ends like this:

// acceleration
4 Dark Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
2 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Lotus Petal

// bombs
3 Doomsday
2 Burning Wish
4 Lim-Dul's Vault/Mystical Tutor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Meditate
1 Tendrils of Agony

4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island

Of course, I'd also probably consider this deck:

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Counterbalance
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Tarmogoyf
32 Other cards, possibly including some lands

Some fun drain sinks for Legacy:

Thopter/Sword of the Meek Combo
Gifts Ungiven
Fact or Fiction
Pernicious Deed
Humility/Moat
Sensei's Divining Top
Mishra's Factory
Meditate
Smokestack/Crucible

While I don't see it ever getting unbanned on price alone, it seems like, at the very worst, some sort of Ux ThopterFoundry Gifts deck would really like it some Mana Drain, if not something more exotic like my Doomsday list that uses Drain as acceleration into the kill.

menace13

03-30-2010, 03:18 PM

If people played it/against it, they'd learn the rules on it.

. Iona isn't even good enough to see play in Oath, who can get it out for free.

!

I think i read this wrong, not sure, but i know Iona is what has given Oath a boost in play and top 8s-not sure if u were sarcastic hard to read into online-

There are a large number of cards banned that today wouldnt be. Land Tax,Mind Twist,Mask and monolith can safely come off the list.
I do not think WGD w/o Bazaar is good at all-for example, it is availlable fully on MTGO Classic and has never made a showing this year at all not once ever even no not 1 time. Havent built a legacy legal list(someone said they had built it, curious as to the list, would love to build and test it vs DTBs)
Not sure on Hermit Druid -that has shown up a few times on classic and can sometimes just turn 2 win.
Would have to ask the combo experts on Time Spiral and Mind's Desire-Desire has shown top 8s on classic, but nowhere near the amount of ANT.
Earthcraft elves was for a time one of the best decks in classic , not sure if it was due to the Skullclamps too-they usually broke the game wide open once clamp hit play-.
Cant really comment on Mana Drain-sees play in Classic, but usually not fast enough for Bazaar Ichorid and ANT. Could it make Landstill of old a top deck again?

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 03:22 PM

FYI:

Do you believe Illusionary Mask can be safely unbanned?
Total votes: 681
(88.99%) results! Yes
(11.01%) results! No

So far...

wolfstorm

03-30-2010, 03:26 PM

I personally would love to see frantic search unbanned.. would be fun to play solidarity again or try making a madness list with it.

morgan_coke

03-30-2010, 03:47 PM

do people agree that this is a reason to ban a card? There are many other cards that are difficult to read/understand, especially without oracle (Chains of Mephistopheles comes to mind), but they aren't banned, nor imo should they be.

I am 100% in favor of banning Chains of Mephistopheles for exactly that reason. Cards shouldn't be so complex that they require the mental agility equivalent of Chaos Orb skills to be playable. Having effects going on that the majority of players don't/have difficulty understanding is bad for the game.

Chromatic Sphere was replaced with Chromatic Star simply due to the sheer counterintuitiveness of being able to use Sphere to get the blue mana to play Thoughtcast AND simultaneously get the Affinity bonus from it.

I'm not arguing against complex card interactions, I'm arguing against overly complex hard to understand exceptionally re-errated card interactions. Chains, Mask, and Vault all fall into this category. Humility is very close. And I like Humility, but if it has six pages of oracle text, errata, clarifications, and corner case rulings, the game could probably do without it.

Arrowni

03-30-2010, 03:52 PM

Chromatic Sphere could also make you draw a card after breaking LED.

frogboy

03-30-2010, 04:11 PM

Chromatic Sphere was replaced with Chromatic Star simply due to the sheer counterintuitiveness of being able to use Sphere to get the blue mana to play Thoughtcast AND simultaneously get the Affinity bonus from it.

You can do that with Sphere or Star. Costs are locked in when you announce the spell; you may use mana abilities afterward.

morgan_coke

03-30-2010, 04:18 PM

Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong corner case then, but I remember there was one Affinity trick you could do with Sphere but not with Star that was just.. weird. I thought it was the Thoughtcast one because of the separated clauses, but I'm willing to admit I might be wrong. Which just goes to prove my point: Overly complex and rules-lawyery cards are bad. The most extreme examples of the breed - cards such as Chains/Vault/Mask - should be banned for incomprehensibility.

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 04:46 PM

alderon666

03-30-2010, 05:22 PM

theintangiblefatman

03-30-2010, 05:59 PM

Couldn't WoTC get around the draw interaction by adding something to the rules that says 'all infinite loops end at a finite number'? That would prevent the draws I think. Your opponent isn't actually looping it 100,000 times. He says that he does that way he doesn't actually have to cycle through the whole thing again. If a player can do something like that, then why can't a rule also say that he must stop cycling at some point, ie. at a finite number. Just make a player pick a number and he does the loop that many times.

When Dragon draws the game it creates on honest to goodness infinite loop, not an arbitrarily repeatable loop. Deciding to stop the loop after some arbitrary number of iterations doesn't work within the rules of the game.

morgan_coke

03-30-2010, 06:23 PM

But they aren't incomprehensible. Time Vault is very simple. Chains and Mask aren't incomprehensible, they just have long text.

Why should magic be dumbed down?

Time Vault's current errata is very simple right now. That hasn't always been the case, and if history is any guide, won't always be the case. The problem with cards like Chains and Mask and to a lesser extent, Humility is that you need a detailed intimate knowledge of the rules to understand how they work. And I'm talking beyond the knowledge needed for say a level one judge. (SBE Layering order? Seriously? Ugh.)

I don't want the game dumbed down, but I do want it to not be made overly complex. I also want the cards to work either as they're written, or at least pretty close to it. You shouldn't need a copy of Oracle on hand to play a tournament. You can do a lot of very complex things that reward knowledge of the rules in the game without getting silly about it with cards that judges and TO's regularly refer to as rules nightmares.

If a card only works after repeated errata, addendums, and can only be fully understood after undertaking extensive research into the comp rules, then its probably a bad card design that should be thrown out.

MMogg

03-30-2010, 06:28 PM

My point is not to start discussing Oath here and now, more to say that cards need to be thoroughly tested and that blanket, knee-jerk refusal to discuss them is not beneficial to anyone.

Exhibit A (Nice helpings of hyperbole thrown in to up the knee-jerk ante. Emphasis added.):

@ Above: I can't believe Oath of Druids has to be discussed. I've played against it in Vintage, and used to play against it all the time before the split. Especially with Forbidden Orchard, it would rape the modern game.

You talk about Goblin Charbelcher's consistency, but obviously you have no idea what you're talking about. Oath is a 1 to 2 card combo (and 2 only if your opponent runs ZERO creatures). It also requires very minimal room in the deck, at most 8 or 10 slots. Ok, Survival of the Fittest is played. One of their combos is discarding a creature and paying GG to turn it first into Iona, then into Imperial Recruiter, then paying 2W to play it (so 2GGW+a creature) to get Iona. Iona isn't even good enough to see play in Oath, who can get it out for free.

You could have picked a better example, maybe... I dunno Goblin Recruiter. Something most people don't want to see unbanned who only have vague recollections of it being far too strong from a metagame 6+ years ago (where Tarmogoyf would have been unbelievable). But Oath is just ridiculous to discuss.

How about we unban Black Lotus, you guys? It's only like Dark Ritual!

Exhibit B:

@MMOG:

Could you image turn 2 15/15 Eldrazi guy? The annihilator 6 guy? The pro colored spells guy? That would just be too stupid. Comparing the deck to an already degenerate deck (Belcher) doesn't really help your case.

Nobody likes combo (except combo players). We tolerate combo. I cannot tolerate there being 2-3 more combo decks in the format than there already are.

Exhibit C:

Mmmmh....?

Oath preys on creature strategies, some people say its a two card combo, but its a one card combo against creature strategies that happens to pretty much win the game. And creatures strategies are the best for the game in the long run because we get to play new cards instead of just comboing with the same three strategies forever.

That's why Oath is not discussed, it just warps the format too much.

Thanks guy for proving exactly what I was trying to say. Seems all of you misread:

My point is not to start discussing Oath here and now, more to say that cards need to be thoroughly tested and that blanket, knee-jerk refusal to discuss them is not beneficial to anyone.

but I'm nevertheless glad you proved my point exactly. None of you sat down, built a Legacy Oath deck and tested it thoroughly against other decks in the format, and instead you're using your imagination to conjure up some reasons that are not based on playtesting.

@ Forbiddian, I actually didn't talk about Charbelcher's consistency, I said it was fragile. I think I would rather come across as someone who knows nothing than someone who thinks they know everything. :tongue:

@ Everyone, I still think that if Forsythe and the DCI want to start considering unbanning cards that appear to be powerful, they need to thoroughly test them, and not base their decisions on statements that begin, "imagine . . . "

SpikeyMikey

03-30-2010, 07:09 PM

But they aren't incomprehensible. Time Vault is very simple. Chains and Mask aren't incomprehensible, they just have long text.

Why should magic be dumbed down?

For the same reason that they changed the rules in M10. To take a game of intellect and skill and mass market it to retards. Don't you want Johnny Casual playing Legacy with you? Complex rules might make his head hurt.

For the record, I built a Mana Drain deck. If anyone wants to playtest against the rough draft, email me at spikeymikey1981@hotmail.com. That way, my Blackberry will flash a little red light at me telling me that I have a message, which is significantly better than a PM here that I won't see for a few days or any sort of messenger which would require me to log on. I'm sure it's not the most busted use of Drain, but it seems to work out ok in testing.

Forbiddian

03-30-2010, 08:38 PM

Have you ever played against Dragon? I used to. First of all, we don't have Bazaar. That means the deck needs a few turns to set up. Second, it doesn't like graveyard hate, creature removal, or enchantment removal.

I played against Dragon. It was the strongest deck in the format when Bazaar was also legal, but I think without Bazaar it's pretty managable.

Not any worse than Reanimator at any rate.

I seriously think Land Tax should get considerations. MTG Salvation is running a Legacy tournament with Land Tax and I have not heard any complains about Land Tax, whether its format warping or time consuming.

1) The tournament is not timed, so it doesn't matter. Also, there's an auto-shuffle on MWS that takes like <1s.

2) If they unrestricted Necropotence on MTGSalvation, at least a third of the people would go, "Lol, why would I pay life just to draw cards? That's exactly what the burn player wants." These aren't the best players in the world and I doubt any good designers are bothering to make a Land Tax deck.

If Land Tax could be broken, there's no way that a few random people on MTGSalv would be able to break it.

3) Also, since the tournament is still ongoing, very few people are actually talking about the matches. Certainly they wouldn't complain about a specific card like Land Tax.

EDIT: At why Mana Drain is banned:

Mana Drain was banned because it was the strongest non-restricted card in Vintage. Original Legacy was more akin to Odyssey-era Extended. The fundamental turn was 3-4 and skipping over three turns AND getting countermagic is just nuts.

I'm pretty sure it would still be broken unbanned now.

The fact that current decks aren't constructed in such a way to abuse it (cards like The Abyss, Fact or Fiction, and Intuition --> AK combo aren't too far out of playable (and Counterspell isn't too far out of playable either), but aren't played at all, yet combo with Mana Drain in profoundly warped ways). I mean, true: No current deck, -4 random cards, +4 Mana Drain would be broken, but it's not hard to see that players would change their decks to take advantage of Mana Drain.

Playing against Mana Drain was very risky, because any time your opponent had UU, you risked losing the game if he was able to counter one of your spells. Even a spell costing 1 or 2 getting Drained would allow him the oxygen to blow past your deck. Although it's true back then the power level (relative to modern times) lay pretty far toward the Control Player side, but the fact that vanilla Counterspell still sees occasional play makes me think that Mana Drain would be broken.

Smmenen

03-30-2010, 09:21 PM

I can attest to that.

Mana Drain is utterly ridiculous, and actually dominates Vintage. I'm not sure why you'd want a card that dominates Vintage to be legal in Legacy. Mana Drain decks are usually well over 30% of top 8s.

jrsthethird

03-30-2010, 10:20 PM

While I don't agree that Reanimator is one of the best decks in Legacy right now, I don't see how Dragon could be better at all. If I'm correct, Dragon is a 3-card combo? That's absolutely terrible.

Draw the game on a stick = not fun. Same reason why Shaharazad is banned. Not power level reasons, fun reasons.

Couldn't WoTC get around the draw interaction by adding something to the rules that says 'all infinite loops end at a finite number'? That would prevent the draws I think. Your opponent isn't actually looping it 100,000 times. He says that he does that way he doesn't actually have to cycle through the whole thing again. If a player can do something like that, then why can't a rule also say that he must stop cycling at some point, ie. at a finite number. Just make a player pick a number and he does the loop that many times.

Not allowable. You can't just skip ETB triggers/LTB triggers willy nilly. They need to go on the stack and they need a target. If there is another creature in a graveyard, then sure, he can make 1000000 mana by repeating the loop so many times and finally end by Animating your creature but if there's no other target the game is a draw.

I am 100% in favor of banning Chains of Mephistopheles for exactly that reason. Cards shouldn't be so complex that they require the mental agility equivalent of Chaos Orb skills to be playable. Having effects going on that the majority of players don't/have difficulty understanding is bad for the game.

I'm not arguing against complex card interactions, I'm arguing against overly complex hard to understand exceptionally re-errated card interactions. Chains, Mask, and Vault all fall into this category. Humility is very close. And I like Humility, but if it has six pages of oracle text, errata, clarifications, and corner case rulings, the game could probably do without it.

The Oracle is there to make things less confusing. I'm sure if Illusionary Mask was banned they would clean up the errata to make it as intuitive as possible. There's not much they can do about Humility, the problem with the card's complexity is embedded in the game rules. Chains is very simple to understand if you read the Oracle.

Chromatic Sphere could also make you draw a card after breaking LED.

So can the Star. What's your point?

I also want the cards to work either as they're written, or at least pretty close to it. You shouldn't need a copy of Oracle on hand to play a tournament.

So someone shouldn't need an explanation when someone drops a Waterfront Bouncer next to Lord of Atlantis and swings for 4? There are more cards than you or I could name that have some sort of non-trivial errata, which Oracle is essential to clarify.

Aggro_zombies

03-30-2010, 10:27 PM

The issue with Chromatic Sphere, and the reason why they replaced it with Star, is that it makes you draw a card as part of a mana ability, which is all sorts of "wut." Look at the card: the draw is part of the same block of text as the mana ability.

Mana Drain would be about the only card capable of making control a real deck again. Of course, it would destroy the format, but you would actually be able to justify playing a control deck over an aggro-control deck at that point.

Morrison103

03-30-2010, 11:03 PM

If I had my way these are the cards I would unban:

Black Vise
Earthcraft
Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter
Grim Monolith
Gush
Hermit Druid
Illusionary Mask
Imperial Seal
Land Tax
Library of Alexandria
Mana Drain
Mind Twist
Necropotence
Oath of Druids
Skullclamp
Time Spiral
Windfall
Worldgorger Dragon

Arrowni

03-30-2010, 11:23 PM

I consider myself pretty radical when it comes to accepting suggestions for the banned list changes, but I've already been categorized and judged twice just by addressing what people say in their post. Leave your preconceptions behind people! Let's work to improve the format instead of being closed!

@jrsthethird: You're right, that was not the difference I meant. Actually I wanted to say "you draw the card before you get the mana fixed by the sphere", neither cares about LED breaking but about when the filtered mana can be used.

Smmenen

03-31-2010, 12:30 AM

You shouldn't need a copy of Oracle on hand to play a tournament.

Actually, you absolutely should. Every judge is supposed to be able to give you oracle text on any card upon request. With rules changes, templating changes, and all kinds of mechanics, having oracle on hand is a necessity.

Meekrab

03-31-2010, 01:47 AM

jrsthethird

03-31-2010, 01:57 AM

Is Black Vise really that bad? And what kind of deck abuses Hermit Druid? I know it can tutor practically your whole deck into the yard but what do you do with it then?

Aggro_zombies

03-31-2010, 02:00 AM

Is Black Vise really that bad? And what kind of deck abuses Hermit Druid? I know it can tutor practically your whole deck into the yard but what do you do with it then?
Reanimate one of two things and swing for the win:

- Sutured Ghoul with Dragon's Breath on it
- Flame-kin Zealot and probably 8+ Zombie tokens

Meekrab

03-31-2010, 02:05 AM

Is Black Vise really that bad?
Well considering it's been legal as a 4-of in Vintage for as long as I can remember and no one has ever played it, probably not; but, its one of those cards that just automatically goes in any aggressive deck, and even some control decks, doesn't care about your deck's actual gameplan, and just generally changes the game of magic in a dumb, unfun, strategically uninteresting way. It's like if Tarmogoyf was colorless and didn't use the attack step, but even cheaper and harder to remove.

Bahamuth

03-31-2010, 02:56 AM

menace13

03-31-2010, 03:46 AM

Hermit Druid is deceptively powerful, if not answered right away-yes many answers to a 1/1 pro nothing-. The deck does use counters and some Discard(some decks just can not frequently answer a 1 turn clock with disruption/counters) making removing or countering it not the easiest thing to do.
Here is a list that has placed in Classic dailys, it would only lose 3 tutors and a Mana Crypt in a Legacy port.
http://www.classicquarter.com/decks/deckview.asp?DecklistId=1916

Gush is underplayed and has been on Classic, I can only point to the lack of Fastbond that allows it to be unrestricted, not many decks can take advantage of it aside UW Tempo and Solidarity?

Have never actually played with Library of Alexandria, although i only see it used in contol or combo, unbanned in Legacy would allow x4 use of the card-probably better just leaving this one alone-.

Oath is just a tad format altering and ranks as the top 3 Classic decks in terms of power(Bazaar Ichorid and ANT) not without good reason. Played it, against it and watched it, not fun to face down at all.

johanessen

03-31-2010, 04:40 AM

Playing against Mana Drain was very risky, because any time your opponent had UU, you risked losing the game if he was able to counter one of your spells.

That`s what a control deck was supposed to do. And now there`s no control deck available. (Garden?)

I`d sincerely give it a try.

Tangle.Wire

03-31-2010, 04:51 AM

1: Back to the first pages, as you might think unbanning time spiral would be out of sense, remember dream halls and mind over matter are legal in legacy also high tides and other stuff that could boost out kinda like the old "moma" decks when urzas saga came out.

2: Land tax is kinda tricky, i also have no idea how it could impact the legacy format but i feel very uncomfortable by giving the loam/land decks any more support, even for ww or death and taxes it could be usefull but i think loam/land decks are strong enough by the moment so unbanning land tax sounds not that easy to me.

the entirly rest posted in here would be changing the format to much into an low budget wannabe vintage even if i would like to play a lot of the stuff banned right now in the end people would rape the cards in decks that just get annoying after 1-2 weeks. <- imo

jrsthethird

03-31-2010, 08:14 AM

Reanimate one of two things and swing for the win:

- Sutured Ghoul with Dragon's Breath on it

Does Lord of Extinction have huge power and toughness when in the graveyard? Otherwise I don't see how Sutured Ghoul gets huge.

Gush is underplayed and has been on Classic, I can only point to the lack of Fastbond that allows it to be unrestricted, not many decks can take advantage of it aside UW Tempo and Solidarity?

This may be an unnecessary holdover from when control decks were good. I could see it being played in more than just those decks as a 2-of or something.

caiomarcos

03-31-2010, 08:21 AM

Does Lord of Extinction have huge power and toughness when in the graveyard? Otherwise I don't see how Sutured Ghoul gets huge..

Refer to Cephalid Breakfast decks, but milling yourself would require a 2 mana card, instead of a 2 card combo.

ktkenshinx

03-31-2010, 09:50 AM

We had so much fun figuring out what Hermit Druid dies to. It's rediculous. The deck would be so bad. I could probably list an entire page of cards that Hermit Druid loses to. Not all Legacy playable, but even with those alone I'd get quite far.

Let's substitute in some other card names into this sentence to see its absurdity.

"We had so much fun figuring out what Oath of Druids dies to. It's rediculous. The deck would be so bad. I could probably list an entire page of cards that Oath of Druids loses to. Not all Legacy playable, but even with those alone I'd get quite far."

Just because a card can be countered and destroyed does not mean it is safe for the format.Arguments for unbanning need to be mostly positive statements (Hermit Druid would add to the format), not negative refutations (Hermit Druid is easily killed). At this point in Magic, all cards are "easily killed", given the enormous pool of killing spells out there.

The safest card to unban remains Land Tax. If you do not think so due to time-constraint reasons, then you must also believe that the safest card to BAN is Sensei's Diving Top. If you do not, then you are being inconsistent in your reasoning, and there is nothing to be gained by reading your posts. I make no comment in regards to the other cards that the article suggested at this time.

-ktkenshinx-

Bahamuth

03-31-2010, 12:48 PM

Let's substitute in some other card names into this sentence to see its absurdity.

"We had so much fun figuring out what Oath of Druids dies to. It's rediculous. The deck would be so bad. I could probably list an entire page of cards that Oath of Druids loses to. Not all Legacy playable, but even with those alone I'd get quite far."

Just because a card can be countered and destroyed does not mean it is safe for the format.Arguments for unbanning need to be mostly positive statements (Hermit Druid would add to the format), not negative refutations (Hermit Druid is easily killed). At this point in Magic, all cards are "easily killed", given the enormous pool of killing spells out there.

The safest card to unban remains Land Tax. If you do not think so due to time-constraint reasons, then you must also believe that the safest card to BAN is Sensei's Diving Top. If you do not, then you are being inconsistent in your reasoning, and there is nothing to be gained by reading your posts. I make no comment in regards to the other cards that the article suggested at this time.

-ktkenshinx-

No. First of all, all a Legacy Oath list would have to run, is 4 Oath and 1 Progenitus, giving it room to run a regular Countertop variant around it. Second of all, Druid dies to way way way more that Oath. Graveyard removal is the biggest concern, but the deck also insta-loses to bounce and Stifle.

I'm all for unbanning Hermit Druid. Maybe the deck would be competitive, but it definitely won't be too strong (like Oath possibly would).

jrsthethird

03-31-2010, 01:36 PM

Hell even Engineered Plague set on Druid or Human stops Hermit Druid.

Vacrix

03-31-2010, 02:17 PM

Bahamuth

03-31-2010, 03:52 PM

Just because answers exist for a card doesn't mean it should be unbanned. I could answer Black Lotus with Force. You want to unban that? Oath and Hermit Druid would do stupid things to the format. Just keep in mind that your opponent isn't always a scrub on MWS. They will have answers for your answers.

On another note, UW Tempo would be nuts with Gush. Nuts.. but I wouldn't limit it to just UW Tempo and Solidarity. I'm sure other control decks will try to take advantage of it. Especially when you can respond to land removal like wasteland. Also, I'm sure Solidarity wouldn't play it. Bouncing your Islands isn't a happy play when they produce UUU every time to you tap them. What Solidarity wants to go nuts is Frantic Search. I believe it would push Solidarity to the high end of Tier 2. What other decks would Gush see play in? Would Tog make a come back? Probably not. I can see it going into Thresh. Merfolk would love it too.. playing Vial and all.

Either way, I think they should unban SOMETHING. It makes the format more interesting when new archtype enter the meta.

You can answer pretty much anything with FoW. The difference is that Hermit Druid gets hated by so many cards at the same time, it would never be a reliable engine. I hope you realise the quantity of hate matters a lot.

Doomsday ANT would be completely broken with Gush. But there are probably many different decks that can abuse the card really well. I don't think it would be a safe unban. I agree with Frantic Search. Only Solidarity would sunstantially profit, but the deck still won't be better than ANT is right now.

Smmenen

03-31-2010, 04:12 PM

I think it would be most fruitful if the discussion focused on the cards discussed in this article, and the arguments presented there.

(nameless one)

03-31-2010, 04:22 PM

So, what is the general consensus on Land Tax?

Vacrix

03-31-2010, 04:23 PM

Doomsday ANT would be completely broken with Gush. But there are probably many different decks that can abuse the card really well. I don't think it would be a safe unban. I agree with Frantic Search. Only Solidarity would sunstantially profit, but the deck still won't be better than ANT is right now.

IDK about that. Decks with AdN won't run Gush. Its CC is too high and it only draws 2 cards. I doubt even Doomsday would run it. Its an inferior engine to stuff like Doomsday and AdN. The decks hardly have room to add it in as it is.

Only Solidarity would sunstantially profit, but the deck still won't be better than ANT is right now.

I don't known if you've played with Solidarity but it would be dam good if it got a turn faster. Its a great deck against combo, being able to combo off in response, run Force MD, run Twin Cast MD, run Cunning Wish --> Mindbreak Trap, run Remand, and run Mindbreak Trap postboard. Its the ideal deck to play in an aggro-control meta, as it preys on such decks for breakfast; Mindbreak Trap is bomb post board in winning counter wars. Its just horrid against Dredge and its meh against Counterbalance and aggro. The format just got too fas, about 1 or 2 turns faster and CB became more popular. Solidarity dropped from DTB to the low end of Tier 2. It can't compete because of speed issues. Its a combo deck that has a meh matchup against fast aggro. I beat Zoo if I go first. So all Solidarity needs right now is a speed boost so that it can compete with aggro. I think it would be much better than ANT, though its obviously far more skill intensive, so IDK if it would rise to DTB status again just because ANT is competitive and SO easy to play.

fregle

03-31-2010, 04:36 PM

I think limiting yourself to one card of each color and one artifact is arbitrary and made for weaker suboptimal suggestions.

Yes, Illusionary Mask, Earthcraft, Land Tax and Mind's Twist deserve to be unbanned.

But there's no reason why some other cards (Grim Monolith for example) couldn't be unbanned either. Grim Monolith would fare well in this format, and honeslty wouldn't even see that much play.

And I'm not sold on unbanning Recruiter given how strong Goblins is already and how strong an effect Recruiter has.

I don't see why Black Vise would be such a problem either. I really don't see an easy third or second turn win with that card. I see more potential for abuse in Earthcraft, more potential for second and third turn wins too. Land tax is one I'm not sure of either, it would give several of my control decks a truly immense boost, maybe too much of a boost. Otherwise I agree wholeheartedly.

I must say I'm scared of some people here... They don't seem to remember some of the cards they are suggesting... Oath of Druids? Anyone suggesting that should not be listened to in this debate. Hermit Druid? It's a second turn win all on its own, Dredge needs 3/4 of a deck to do the same. And there have been some more truly scary suggestions... Mana Drain?! With the new rules?!?! No way. :D And Fastbond is simply too stupid to believe as a serious suggestion (first turn wins in legacy anyone?)

majikal

03-31-2010, 05:30 PM

And there have been some more truly scary suggestions... Mana Drain?! With the new rules?!?! No way.
I've been testing Mana Drain for months now. It's pretty innocuous, in all honesty. Sure, every once in a while you get some blowout plays, but for every one of those you get a game where you just lose because you can't drain anything expensive enough to put you far enough ahead. The fact of the matter is that you have to build your deck in a way that abuses Drain mana, and that's really hard to do effectively in such a fast environment.

Tacosnape

03-31-2010, 05:51 PM

I think it would be most fruitful if the discussion focused on the cards discussed in this article, and the arguments presented there.

It would be most fruitful, yes, but there's two things wrong with this.

1. 97% of the people reading this thread don't pay for SCG Premium and thereby have no idea what your arguments actually -are-. I'm sure at the very least four of the six are good. Your track record's pretty solid. But we still can't discuss what we can't read.
2. Anytime the words "Ban" or "Unban" appear in a thread, the entire thread becomes derailed and everybody goes on their soapbox about how they know more about the format than anyone else, how Black Lotus really isn't that good but Top/Counterbalance/Tarmogoyf/Whatever-Card-That-Person-Hates is so format-skewing that the only way to balance it out is to bring a pair of scissors to every sanctioned match and cut up every copy your opponent attemps to play then call a judge on him for having an illegal deck, etc etc blah.

Vacrix

03-31-2010, 05:58 PM

I've been testing Mana Drain for months now. It's pretty innocuous, in all honesty. Sure, every once in a while you get some blowout plays, but for every one of those you get a game where you just lose because you can't drain anything expensive enough to put you far enough ahead. The fact of the matter is that you have to build your deck in a way that abuses Drain mana, and that's really hard to do effectively in such a fast environment.

Agreed. People play stuff with low CC in Legacy. Some exceptions are Dream Halls and AdN which are are matches that blue already has a good matchup against. Its a mediocre slot against most decks. If it were any good than countertop would be bad. CB thrives because everything is low CC. It makes no sense to keep Mana Drain banned.

To caveat, its not dangerous right now, but with all the Eldrazi crap hitting the fan, it might find a use in some deck, likely a new archtype. I can see blue stax being pretty good with Mana Drain. Draining Dream Halls into Lodestone Golem is pretty tech.

EDIT:
Just realized. Mana Drain on KotR = Dream Halls next turn. I guess its not bad in Dream Halls then either.

dontbiteitholmes

03-31-2010, 06:12 PM

Goblin Recruiter needs to stay banned. Goblins doesn't need to be any better and WOTC loves Gobos way too much anyways, who knows what they will print over the next 2-3 blocks. If you unban Recruiter you have to look at it through the glass of what other goblins they will print in the future and it gets murky really quick. Not to mention, all other reasons aside, have you ever had someone play Recruiter on you? It sucks, the card takes f-in FOREVERRRRRR for someone to basically stack every goblin in their deck exactly how they want them. Then if they break a sacland or something and play another Recruiter. Jesus man, might as well add a line in the text box about sacrificing the next 5 minutes of the game.

WGD also needs to stay banned. The combo in itself is not a huge deal since it's 3 cards. The real problem I see is that it's way to easy to just draw a game with 1/2 the combo, which is bullshit. I've had someone down to 3 life, duressed out their win condition so they didn't have to combo, then they played Dragon/Animate Dead and drew the game just so they wouldn't lose and we had to shuffle up and play another game. So to recap, the 3 card combo isn't too strong on it's own, but the ability to play the 2 card combo which basically functions as a reset button on the game is something that is not being discussed enough and can't be ignored.

Vacrix

03-31-2010, 06:39 PM

So to recap, the 3 card combo isn't too strong on it's own, but the ability to play the 2 card combo which basically functions as a reset button on the game is something that is not being discussed enough and can't be ignored.

I suggested this:

Couldn't WoTC get around the draw interaction by adding something to the rules that says 'all infinite loops end at a finite number'? That would prevent the draws I think. Your opponent isn't actually looping it 100,000 times. He says that he does that way he doesn't actually have to cycle through the whole thing again. If a player can do something like that, then why can't a rule also say that he must stop cycling at some point, ie. at a finite number. Just make a player pick a number and he does the loop that many times.

Which apparently doesn't work.. because the opponent literally can't break the loop. What if such a loop resulted in a game loss instead? Could WoTC put something like that in the rules? Just like the opponent could sit there looping everything until time runs out, if he doesn't stop the loop at some point (even if he can't) then he loses.

SpeedOfDark

03-31-2010, 08:36 PM

walkerdog

03-31-2010, 08:53 PM

When Dragon first hit the scene in T1, no one (except for me) was running Bazaar of Baghdad (I was also the only one running Tarnished Citadel). Incredible but true. It was strong and consistent enough that it got Entomb restricted without the pitchland. Now to be fair, we don't have access to jewelry and Ancestral and Walk and Wheel and all the rest of that happy horse hockey, but Dragon would still be incredibly strong and consistent. Of course, I don't think it'd be much stronger than modern day Reanimator; Dragon wins in 1 turn instead of having to beat you 2 or 3 times, but we didn't have PtE back then and most decks weren't packing 4+ direct removal spells. Control at the time usually had 1 StP and 1 Edict. Would it be something that modern decks could deal with? Probably, but the real issue is this: right now, we enjoy a format where you can play a wide variety of decks and have a chance at winning. The more and varied the competitive combo decks are, the less and less that things like Zoo and PT Junk can compete. You reach a point where you're either playing combo or you're playing blue. Similar to what happened in T1 when Mirrodin hit the scene, you either packed 4 Forces or 4 Trinispheres, but you were not competitive unless you were running one or the other. I would HATE to see Legacy reach that point, because I think that aggro is an important part of any metagame. So why don't we just leave well enough alone and avoid unbanning strong combo cards?

Having played Classic like Morgan, Earthcraft should not come back. It makes it extremely easy to go "I win" with Elves!. Dragon on the other hand can come back whenever. It loses to everything Reanimator loses to, but it needs one more card (the mana sink) to win. Also, losing your WGD to removal is much harsher than losing your Sphinx/Iona.

dontbiteitholmes

03-31-2010, 09:03 PM

@ mind twist:

I'm a fairly new player, so I'm not that familiar with magic history. But I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that mind twist was most likely banned for unfun reasons and not because it is overpowered.

As ktkenshinx argued, "Arguments for unbanning need to be mostly positive statements." Meaning we should attempt justifying wether a card adds something interesting to the format, instead of wether or not it causes problems. As far as mind twist is concerned, it will probably reinforce acceptable discard-based archetypes. So the initial queston can be reworded: do we want discard-based archetypes in legacy?

Personally, I think it could give rise a few interesting archetypes. In general, discard has the effect of slowing down a game (both for the caster and the target), and I think something that slows the pace of an otherwise hasty format is welcomed. Of course, we don't want the discard to be so strong that both players are in top deck mode from the start, but this should very rarely happen because there isn't enough mana accel in the format.

I think what people hate the most about tourach/mindtwist is losing all their lands on turn 1. Assuming you play swamp, ritual and tourach (or mindtwist) on turn 1, these are the chances the opponent loses all their lands:

one land hand: 28.57%
two land hand: 4.76%

As you can see, its not even that probable. And this doesn't take into account the (acceptably small) chances of having swamp/ritual/tourach(twist) in your starting hand in the first place.

Conclusion: unban mindtwist! weeeee!
Mindtwist DOES NOT EQUAL Hymn to Tourach. Can we please stop comparing these two cards. I get it Hymn to Tourach discards two at random, Mind Twist can make you discard two at random, that is officially where the similarities end. Hymn costs two black, Mind Twist costs one black and X. What does that mean to us? It's the difference between requiring your deck to dedicate itself to black and running 1 or 2 black sources and some fetchlands. Hymn goes in black decks, Mind Twist fits in any deck with a black splash. Also worth noting at this point that Hymn is one of the best black cards ever printed. Mind Twist was long considered one of the most powerful spells in Magic being one of the only cards on the banned list for vintage due to power for a very long time. Hymn only hits two cards, ever. Mind Twist can rip a whole hand in one turn. Dark Confidant + Mind Twist = 1 damage and a very small commitment to black, just saying. Duress or Thoughtseize is one thing, if you're playing control and the aggro player is rocking Mind Twists in the SB it's a must counter.

Edit- Oh also Magic history lesson. Mind Twist was banned long long ago in Vintage, I'd say around the time 4th Edition came out. Basically it was restricted before that, so everyone ran 1. Control was very popular at the time and creatures were weaker, games went on longer. Eventually way too many games were decided by who drew their singleton Mind Twist first. They would basically just rape the opponents hand and then have a full grip to go nuts with. Do I think that could happen with Legacy? No, not really. One fact remains though, Mind Twist is a control players nightmare. In a format where control decks are already pitifully underplayed, do we really want to unban a card that is really good against control, and is too slow to matter against aggro or combo? At this point in Magic it is literally nothing to splash a color. Every deck that exists now would have SB access to a card that owns control by adding one land. If or hopefully when control ever gets good again Mind Twist would be a killer SB card for the mirror also. Nothing I'd rather play in a landstill mirror late game then a nice soul crushing Mind Twist and then have a full hand to go off with.

Smmenen

04-01-2010, 12:23 AM

Since we are on the topic of history lessons, Mind Twist was unrestricted in Vintage in 2007, and it's officially seen virtually ZILCH play. That's because it's terrible.

walkerdog

04-01-2010, 12:41 AM

I do think Twist would be very playable, but not to the point that it needs to remain bant.

Meekrab

04-01-2010, 02:02 AM

Edit- Oh also Magic history lesson. Mind Twist was banned long long ago in Vintage, I'd say around the time 4th Edition came out. Basically it was restricted before that, so everyone ran 1. Control was very popular at the time and creatures were weaker, games went on longer. Eventually way too many games were decided by who drew their singleton Mind Twist first. They would basically just rape the opponents hand and then have a full grip to go nuts with. Do I think that could happen with Legacy? No, not really. One fact remains though, Mind Twist is a control players nightmare. In a format where control decks are already pitifully underplayed, do we really want to unban a card that is really good against control, and is too slow to matter against aggro or combo? At this point in Magic it is literally nothing to splash a color. Every deck that exists now would have SB access to a card that owns control by adding one land. If or hopefully when control ever gets good again Mind Twist would be a killer SB card for the mirror also. Nothing I'd rather play in a landstill mirror late game then a nice soul crushing Mind Twist and then have a full hand to go off with.
Yes, Mind Twist was overpowered back in the same format Kird Ape was overpowered. Now Kird Ape doesn't even warrant 4 slots in most Zoo decks, and discard as a mechanic is only played if it lets you see your opponent's hand.

morgan_coke

04-01-2010, 02:27 AM

I think people here fundamentally misunderstand what Mind Twist would do in Legacy. It's not a "accelerate and play on t1 lol" spell. It's a midgame spell that says "target opponent discards their hand". Now, whether or not you think that's a good thing is a whole other question, but that is what Mind Twist will do and how it will do it.

Bahamuth

04-01-2010, 02:30 AM

IDK about that. Decks with AdN won't run Gush. Its CC is too high and it only draws 2 cards. I doubt even Doomsday would run it. Its an inferior engine to stuff like Doomsday and AdN. The decks hardly have room to add it in as it is.

Doomsday combo would most likely drop AdN and go full Doomsday with 4 Gush. Doomsday wins for 1 mana if you have a Gush in your hand I belive. That's pretty damn good. Remember the rest of the deck is still going to be filled with very strong tutors and Rituals.

I don't known if you've played with Solidarity but it would be dam good if it got a turn faster. Its a great deck against combo, being able to combo off in response, run Force MD, run Twin Cast MD, run Cunning Wish --> Mindbreak Trap, run Remand, and run Mindbreak Trap postboard. Its the ideal deck to play in an aggro-control meta, as it preys on such decks for breakfast; Mindbreak Trap is bomb post board in winning counter wars. Its just horrid against Dredge and its meh against Counterbalance and aggro. The format just got too fas, about 1 or 2 turns faster and CB became more popular. Solidarity dropped from DTB to the low end of Tier 2. It can't compete because of speed issues. Its a combo deck that has a meh matchup against fast aggro. I beat Zoo if I go first. So all Solidarity needs right now is a speed boost so that it can compete with aggro. I think it would be much better than ANT, though its obviously far more skill intensive, so IDK if it would rise to DTB status again just because ANT is competitive and SO easy to play.

I've played Solidarity constantly for about 2-3 years. I know the deck quite well. Right now, the deck is about even against combo. Twincast provides the alternative as an answer in this matchup, but you can't rely on Wish to find you one. Turn 3 on the draw is quite likely not going to happen.

Solidarity is not ideal in an aggro-control meta, just like any other form of combo. With Frantic Search, it still loses to Counterbalance and it loses harder to it than Tendrills combo right now. It's also still going to have trouble with aggro that boards in hate. It also loses much harder to Merfolk than today's Tendrills combo (Daze your Tide twice? damn...). Aside from that, the deck also still loses to Sui style decks. With Frantic Search, it should be able to race aggro game 1 better, but it's going to have as much of a problem as it had before when hate comes in.

And Solidarity is not that much more skill intensive than ANT. If you aim to play ANT perfectly (and I'm not even talking about NLS, which is quite a bit more complicated than Solidarity), you're going to have a very hard time.

I also think Dragon should stay banned because of it's ability to draw games. It's not like a format with Dragon would be any more interesting anyway. I was just disagreeing with the statement that the deck would be too strong.

Earthcraft is a joke. Seriously, the only place that card would have use, is in some form of combo, and that deck would definitely be worse than today's combo.

Mind Twist seems fine. I think people would play that card, but I doubt it would be too strong.

Vacrix

04-01-2010, 02:59 AM

Doomsday combo would most likely drop AdN and go full Doomsday with 4 Gush. Doomsday wins for 1 mana if you have a Gush in your hand I belive. That's pretty damn good. Remember the rest of the deck is still going to be filled with very strong tutors and Rituals.

I'm not familiar enough with Doomsday.dec enough to know either way. I just know that AdN is a dam powerful draw engine and Gush would have to bring some serious biz to the table for them to drop AdN.

I've played Solidarity constantly for about 2-3 years. I know the deck quite well. Right now, the deck is about even against combo. Twincast provides the alternative as an answer in this matchup, but you can't rely on Wish to find you one. Turn 3 on the draw is quite likely not going to happen.
Depends man. What build do you play? I think the combo matchup is much better than even. Brainfreeze makes sweet love to Doomsday piles, Force is always great, and Remand is practically a hard counter when the opponent tries to ramp into an AdN. If they let you get to turn 3, then you have access to a whole lot of goodies like Cunning Wish--> Mindbreak Trap. I think you don't give Solidarity enough credit. Its certainly not 80% like I might have made it sound, but its at least 60% and I'd claim 70% based upon the matches I've played.

Solidarity is not ideal in an aggro-control meta, just like any other form of combo. With Frantic Search, it still loses to Counterbalance and it loses harder to it than Tendrills combo right now. It's also still going to have trouble with aggro that boards in hate. It also loses much harder to Merfolk than today's Tendrills combo (Daze your Tide twice? damn...). Aside from that, the deck also still loses to Sui style decks. With Frantic Search, it should be able to race aggro game 1 better, but it's going to have as much of a problem as it had before when hate comes in.

Then something is wrong here. I have yet to lose a match to Merfolk with Mindbreak Trap in the board. Seriously. I'm that good, that lucky, or haven't played the matchup enough. I know and claimed the counterbalance matchup is meh. I can't say I've played much against Sui, so I concede there. I love playing against aggro control though with Solidarity. Its not an easy matchup, but the deck performs. Even against Thresh, Goyfs are so small. Solidarity only plays Instants and land. I'm usually dealing with 2/3 goyfs until I go off.

SpeedOfDark

04-01-2010, 07:50 AM

Mindtwist DOES NOT EQUAL Hymn to Tourach.
Well, I don't think I said it did, but it might seem like I implied it. My point was rather that in I believe that in most circumstances the devastation of mind twist is mostly felt in the first few turns, because after that not only has the player had plenty of time to play the best cards in his hand, but its also much easier to counter.

And if you accept the premise that mind twist is more potent turn 1-2, then it is fairly comparable to hymn to tourach, apart from the color commitement that you mentioned, which honestly I had not considered.

Edit- Oh also Magic history lesson. Mind Twist was banned long long ago in Vintage, I'd say around the time 4th Edition came out. Basically it was restricted before that, so everyone ran 1. Control was very popular at the time and creatures were weaker, games went on longer. Eventually way too many games were decided by who drew their singleton Mind Twist first. They would basically just rape the opponents hand and then have a full grip to go nuts with. Do I think that could happen with Legacy? No, not really. One fact remains though, Mind Twist is a control players nightmare. In a format where control decks are already pitifully underplayed, do we really want to unban a card that is really good against control, and is too slow to matter against aggro or combo? At this point in Magic it is literally nothing to splash a color. Every deck that exists now would have SB access to a card that owns control by adding one land. If or hopefully when control ever gets good again Mind Twist would be a killer SB card for the mirror also. Nothing I'd rather play in a landstill mirror late game then a nice soul crushing Mind Twist and then have a full hand to go off with.

Thanks for the info. Well I guess it's a nightmare for control players not running a decent chunk of blue... Not sure if that's a good enough reason to keep it banned though. There are plenty of legal cards which are "nightmares" for archetypes that aren't good enough to make the cut. To be honest, what I dislike most about this card is the fact that, as you mentioned, almost any deck can splash for it so easily. I think it would be a better card overall if it read "spend only black mana on x" as drain life does. But even so, I don't think there would be enough players using this card to make decks more stale.

Cabal_chan

04-01-2010, 08:08 AM

cjva

04-01-2010, 08:19 AM

Cabal: Mind Sludge and Mindtwist are not the same thing. With twist you can still have blue as your duals main color, instead of having 4 Underground Sea as only blue source. Splash black instead of splash blue. Infinit much better.

But on another note, yes, mindtwist should come of the list, im not sure many decks would play 1-4 of it anyways thanks to the fact that you need to spend lots of mana on it in order to be effective.

Bahamuth

04-01-2010, 08:23 AM

Depends man. What build do you play? I think the combo matchup is much better than even. Brainfreeze makes sweet love to Doomsday piles, Force is always great, and Remand is practically a hard counter when the opponent tries to ramp into an AdN. If they let you get to turn 3, then you have access to a whole lot of goodies like Cunning Wish--> Mindbreak Trap. I think you don't give Solidarity enough credit. Its certainly not 80% like I might have made it sound, but its at least 60% and I'd claim 70% based upon the matches I've played.

My results come from quite a while back. I doubt things have changed much. Playing against a version with 4+ Chant, both Remand and Trap are pretty much worthless. I don't think I'd play Trap anyway though. Twincast is probably better in the combo matchup, and with 4 FoW 3 Twincast and Wish to Twincast, my results were about even. I haven't tested the combo matchup with Spell Pierce though. Might be slightly better.

Then something is wrong here. I have yet to lose a match to Merfolk with Mindbreak Trap in the board. Seriously. I'm that good, that lucky, or haven't played the matchup enough. I know and claimed the counterbalance matchup is meh. I can't say I've played much against Sui, so I concede there. I love playing against aggro control though with Solidarity. Its not an easy matchup, but the deck performs. Even against Thresh, Goyfs are so small. Solidarity only plays Instants and land. I'm usually dealing with 2/3 goyfs until I go off.

I don't see how Trap is any good against Merfolk. They're never going to play 3 counters. No chance. Trap seems completely dead.

My matches always came down to me having 4 land on turn 4-5 and having to win that turn. Sometimes the opponent has like 1 FoW, which you can beat. Sometimes he has a Cursecatcher and a Daze, and you're very likely to die. You play Tide, he Dazes + Cursecatchers, you have 2 mana post Tide and you need to win with just that. Often, that's just not doable.

I'd probably play this deck if Frantic Search is unbanned (which is probably not happening unfortunately). After playing a lot with a deck as sick as ANT or DDANT is right now, I can't stand being raced by random aggro I should just be able to beat with my eyes closed.

Shabbaman

04-01-2010, 08:27 AM

I would like to see Chaos Orb unbanned. That card is unbelievably cool. Especially the oversized version, it's better than Tarmogoyf.

jazzykat

04-01-2010, 09:13 AM

So the initial queston can be reworded: do we want discard-based archetypes in legacy?

First, I compliment you on the unique way to look at this question. However, I don't think we should take that view. My fundamental belief is that Legacy was created to provide players a place to play as many cards as possible while eliminating brokenly swingy cards. For some reason, there are tons of viable decks and most people would say that the format is balanced. I ask myself, does the banning or unbanning of a card open up the format to more viable decks with a draw usually goes to unban.

jrsthethird

04-01-2010, 10:43 AM

With the number of black duals people can have, Mind Sludge does the same thing.

Random discard is better than chosen. Also, why spend 5 mana when your opponent only has 1 or 2 cards in hand?

Anusien

04-01-2010, 11:03 AM

How many of the people out there pointing out how fragile Hermit Druid is ever got hit by Goblin Lackey?

Nightmare

04-01-2010, 11:06 AM

How many of the people out there pointing out how fragile Hermit Druid is ever got hit by Goblin Lackey?

There's a subtle but important difference, though.

Goblin Lackey isn't a combo card. It doesn't win the game (really) on the spot when it attacks. In fact, often it can be the correct play to let it hit, in order to get your opponent to extend into a sweeper, for example.

Hermit Druid warps the format into a more proactive combo creature being the center of the format's focus. It becomes more important to deal with the 1/1, and therefore, the format adapts to the point where running cards like Darkblast isn't just accepted, it's necessary.

DrJones

04-01-2010, 11:56 AM

FieryBalrog

04-01-2010, 12:24 PM

There's a subtle but important difference, though.

Goblin Lackey isn't a combo card. It doesn't win the game (really) on the spot when it attacks. In fact, often it can be the correct play to let it hit, in order to get your opponent to extend into a sweeper, for example.

Hermit Druid warps the format into a more proactive combo creature being the center of the format's focus. It becomes more important to deal with the 1/1, and therefore, the format adapts to the point where running cards like Darkblast isn't just accepted, it's necessary.

I think he was agreeing with you.

Hermit Druid just needs one turn out to win the game by itself.

What's the consensus on Land Tax?
Sadly I think the consensus on Land Tax is that no one really gives a shit so it stays banned. The card is pretty ludicrously placed there on the list with the others.

Nelis

04-01-2010, 01:53 PM

DrJones

04-01-2010, 02:04 PM

It was a reliable 2nd-3rd turn kill, just like the one in GP Tinker, except that you couldn't stop it. Search the forums for the decklists. I would do it for you, but the search function doesn't display results previous to the update of the forums.

Arrowni

04-01-2010, 04:31 PM

I'm not familiar enough with Doomsday.dec enough to know either way. I just know that AdN is a dam powerful draw engine and Gush would have to bring some serious biz to the table for them to drop AdN.

Well, its the difference between I-may-win the game and I-will-win-the-game-disruption-be-damned.

Nidd

04-01-2010, 06:36 PM

Unbanning Skullclamp seems to be both crazy and quite reasonable at the same time. Everyone who played T 2 back in the days knows how broken this card was, but the powerlevel of legacy is freaking high and it doesn't really look that format breaking.

Sure, Clamp Elves would be strong, but hey, is this a bad thing? I can't see them getting out of hand as this looks quite easy to disrupt.

Lothian

04-01-2010, 06:44 PM

Well, when we are at it, let's unban some proper Magic spells instead of some pile of junk like land tax or mind twist.

Unban Balance and Necropotence!

My 2 favorite cards ever

You want hardcore, go hardcore and now let's play for real

They are both cheap, powerfull, skill-oriented cards, just loving it

Vacrix

04-01-2010, 07:47 PM

They are both cheap, powerfull, skill-oriented cards, just loving it
Agreed. It requires a lot of skill to win after drawing 19 cards.

evanmartyr

04-01-2010, 10:54 PM

Mind Twist is extremely powerful...more so than most of you are giving it credit for, but I don't think it's format-warping, just a powerful tool for the decks that can take advantage of it.

Balance maybe should be unbanned, but I would pay a lot of attention to what effect it has on everything. My main problem with it is not that it eats hands or lands when set up appropriately, but it shifts the effective "board sweeper" mana cost of the entire format to 2. You're either exposing yourself to non-basic hate and playing it, or you're using cards that are absurdly less powerful than it and have a more solid manabase. Some people would argue that that's probably a good thing, that it's a skill tester, but I have a feeling it would be less of a skill-testing decision and more of a coin flip (run it and lose to moon, or don't run it and win against moon...what skill!)

Land Tax is absurdly underpowered as an engine these days. While drawing three lands for a single mana is good, it's not overpowered in most decks, and fairly lackluster even in land-centric decks, because you're limited to basic lands.

HELL NO on Hermit Druid.

HELL NO to Frantic Search. I'm pretty sure that pushing Solidarity's "reasonable to win on turn" to turn 3 is not a good idea. It's not a great deck, it deserves a little bit of love, but not this much.

Illusionary Mask should be fine. It's not hard to understand, I think most people don't really understand it because they haven't played with/against it. It really just lets you play creatures for their mana cost but ignore any "comes into play" triggers. Fairly simple, however...

Probably no on Mana Drain, and this is why I wouldn't unban Illusionary Mask as well: Expense. Cards that are this frickin pricy probably should not be legacy staples, especially when the average cost of a legacy deck is pushing 500$ as it is. Especially if WotC is going to stick to this retarded reprint policy, price of cards available to the average person really should be somewhat of a concern.

I miss Worldgorger, but being to draw the game so easily when presented with an untenable situation blew. A lot. It blew dick. You *could* let judges call game losses through those sorts of game states, but that's a big can of worms as well.

EDIT: Ok, little rant here. WTF is with this reprint policy? Wizards has this booming game, they keep stringing people along paying for new cards, which I have no problem with. But why, WHY force people to pay absurd amounts of money for an ever-dwindling supply of older cards when they could easily reprint them and sell them at a much higher price than your average card and affect the prices of power cards currently in the market marginally, if any? I would LOVE to play Legacy in every tournament I could get to, but WotC can fuck themselves if they think I'm investing this much money in some fucking cardboard. Jesus.

For example, if they unbanned Mana Drain, yeah, we'd see not that much huge effect on the metagame, because it's marginally better than existing spells in most situations. But only the people who can afford 250 or so dollars will have access to those random explosive turns Mana Drain enables, whereas the rest of us will just have to use Counterspell, or something. If you wanna argue with me, fine, but: p3k. Diaf.

mikez0r

04-01-2010, 11:29 PM

Here are my six choices:
Channel: It's day is over, it's almost useless.
Illusionary Mask: Stifle nought is already in the format, at least stife can hit fetch lands.
Land Tax: It would be a new deck type, might even be good.
Vampiric Tutor: All the other tutors of this style are legal, this one should be also.
Grim Monolith: I doubt the format would suffer from Power Artifact + Grim Monolith.
Mind Twist: It's day is over, it's almost useless.

Regarding channel, good point by jrsthethird I had forgotten that Wizards will be printing those colorless creatures.

menace13

04-01-2010, 11:40 PM

Lets keep the trolling to a min plz. I mean c'mon mannn really? 4x Balance and Channel and Vampiric Tutor? do you kids even play magic?

mikez0r

04-01-2010, 11:47 PM

I wasn't trying to troll with the suggestions about channel and vamp tutor. I really don't think channel would see play and vamp tutor seems worse than mystical given the decks in the format.

markbris

04-01-2010, 11:47 PM

Here are my six choices:
Channel: It's day is over, it's almost useless.
Illusionary Mask: Stifle nought is already in the format, at least stife can hit fetch lands.
Land Tax: It would be a new deck type, might even be good.
Vampiric Tutor: All the other tutors of this style are legal, this one should be also.
Grim Monolith: I doubt the format would suffer from Power Artifact + Grim Monolith.
Mind Twist: It's day is over, it's almost useless.

lol vampiric tutor....why make combo/reanimator have to search out an instant or sorcery when they can go get any card they want.

jrsthethird

04-01-2010, 11:53 PM

Channel would not be good. You could drop a turn 2 Emrakul, get another turn, swing, and your opponent sacrifices their whole board. Nothing they can do about it. Card will never be unbanned due to broken shit like that.

Vampiric Tutor is an interesting call. We get Grim Tutor, which is -1 more life and 2 more mana for card straight to hand. I think this could be played, but I'm not sure if there are any corner cases where it might be absurdly broken. It was fine during its day in Extended alongside Mystical and Enlightened Tutors. Hell it would make Eldrazi Explosion playable. =D

Vacrix

04-01-2010, 11:58 PM

Screw that. Keep Vampiric Tutor banned. Its way too powerful. Combo and Reanimator would have a field day if it were legalized.

mikez0r

04-02-2010, 12:00 AM

I agree that vamp tutor is a controversial choice, but I think the tools are already there for its impact to be less significant.

reanimator: has access to entomb (arguably better than vamp in this deck).
combo: you know has tutors, and may include a vamp or two. I don't think it gives them any advantage they already have now since they are still going to search for the same combo pieces.

Vacrix

04-02-2010, 12:25 AM

No. Vampiric Tutor lets them search for LED or SDT, not just protection. It would be strictly better than Mystical Tutor. Reanimator does have access to Entomb, but again, it would replace Mystical Tutor, allowing them to find creatures to pitch to Careful Study, Reanimation spells, protection.. Not just that, it would significantly improve decks that lack good tutors like Dream Halls.

SpikeyMikey

04-02-2010, 12:29 AM

Except they aren't limited to instants and sorceries. They could, for instance, grab LED. Or that land that they desperately need instead of getting Brainstorm and trying to draw into it. Or a second Xantid swarm against control after the first one got countered. And EVEN, EVEN if it wasn't strictly superior to Mystical often enough to make it worth running, do you honestly think that they'd just run one or the other? I'll just run 4 Doomsdays and 8 Tutors. They could cut a lot of things if they could guarantee a turn 2 Doomsday every game. AdN wouldn't even see play anymore, it'd just be Doomsday Tendrils. Who knows if they'd even run IT anymore, it might become superfluous. Vamp stays banned. While it would be great for decks like Rock or other midrange aggro control, those decks would be driven under by Tendrils and you'd reach the point where you were playing Force of Will or playing Tendrils of Agony. Doesn't sound like a fun format to me. Even Reanimator wouldn't be competitive anymore, with or without 8 freaking tutors, because it merely drops a fatty on turn 2, not goes off and wins on turn 2 consistently against anything not packing C-Spells or MD Leyline. I refuse to play another gay combo vintage type format.

(nameless one)

04-02-2010, 01:00 AM

Honestly, as I read along, I just cant help think that these are just a bunch of trolls.

As much as I would love to discuss the ban list, it disappoints me when a bunch of trolls take over.

Seriously, I think Land Tax, Grim Monolith and Mind Twist should be safe to reintroduce. Mind Twist is essentially a Funeral Charm, Hymn to Tourach and somehow Mind Sludge in one convenient package. Its a really good card but it will not break the format.

Image this scenario: Survival of the Fittest was never legal in Legacy. I bet you a lot of you guys would argue that it should not be legalized in Legacy because of its ability to turn a dead creature into an Eladamri's call at the cost of :g:.

For most of you, I suggest that you look at the B/R Speculation Thread. Look at all the hysteria behind Entomb, Metalworker and Dream Halls when they were still banned.

Im not saying that all cards are candidate to be unbanned. Just process in your mind what you are about to post.

Edit: Just to let y'all know, Mana Drain can be reprinted as it is not under the Reserved List

evanmartyr

04-02-2010, 03:05 AM

Legacy seems to be running into a similar problem 5-color had a while back, in that there are a few different things happening to the card pool.

1: Power Creep. Every expansion or so, WotC either prints some absurdly powerful card, or a card that does what an old, relevant card did, but does it better.

2: Variant Creep. How many ways can you tack something onto a single mana blue spell that ends up drawing you a card before a version is released that slowly infiltrates (and drastically improves) existing decktypes? I think they can probably do this for quite a while, and what it does is allow the Eternal decks, instead of working within a reasonable boundary of card choices, to really go nuts. For example, Fetchlands made Brainstorm pretty much awesome. Then they printed enemy-color fetchlands! Now, in quite a few decks, Brainstorm is awesome-er. Dredge would probably be pretty meh if it had access to all the reanimate variants EXCEPT for Dread Return, but it has Dread Return, and is uniquely able to take advantage of it, so it's that much more powerful.

Variant Creep is what happened in 5-color. The 5-color banned/restricted list a few years ago looked absolutely silly, even though a lot of it was necessary. There were just too many tutors available, and you spent a lot of your games paying some inconsequential amount of mana to put Contract from Below, Yawgmoth's Will, Balance, or Armageddon into your hand, despite what archetype you were playing. When every deck in the format is running Dizzy Spell (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=87925), something is wrong.

So, cards that don't snowball with existing (or even potential) decktypes to make them absurd are probably all acceptable for unbanning. Those cards that probably do are not, and those cards that warp the format in some unsavory way are also probably not acceptable for unbanning.

Probably does Snowball:]Fastbond, Frantic Search, Necropotence, Skullclamp, Oath of Druids, Hermit Druid, Worldgorger Dragon, Channel.

This category includes that, were they to be unbanned, I would be flabbergasted and scared.

Fastbond would drastically increase the flexibility and consistency of Lands.deck.
Frantic Search would be scary in a lot of combo decks.
Necoropotence would get stuck in a lot of combo decks and is better than our current engine.
Skullclamp would essentially combo-ize every aggro deck out there.
I can see decks hinging on a 1/1 being somewhat balanced...
...but any deck that can muster GG having access to 19 mana on it's first turn? Noooo thank you.
Worldgorger Dragon seems fine, but being able to force a game draw seems abuseable. I don't see anyone on either side of that walking away from a 1-0-2 match with a good taste in their mouth.
Oath...in this format, with this format's reliance on board development and creatures, would be just painful. Especially with ridiculousness like Emeria and the Eldrazi.

Maybe Snowballs:Mana Drain, Earthcraft, Black Vise, Gush, Time Spiral, Illusionary Mask, Grim Monolith, Library of Alexandria, Balance.

The cards in the "Maybe Snowballs" category are somewhat safe, but I wouldn't be overly enthused to see them floating around.

Mana Drain is good, but not great in most matchups.
Earthcraft could be somewhat frightening as a means of turning Elves into combo, but who knows.
Black Vise has a lot of potential but might not be fast enough to matter (ditto Gush).
Time Spiral seems kind of win more for Solidarity.
Illusionary Mask would probably be safe, but it is somewhat confusing, expensive, narrow, and potentially very abuseable if they print more creatures similar to Phyrexian Dreadnought.
Grim Monolith is nearly worthless outside of the Power Artifact combo but a 2 card, 1 color, 4 mana, infinite mana combo may be too much for the meta to comfortably absorb.
Finally, Library of Alexandria is just poop in such a tempo-oriented, non-basic hating metagame but is also pricy (and on the reserve list) and could just turn into one of those "control vs control each player sides in 4" cards. It may find homes in some decks and what amounts to a draw engine for a single mana with no real, further investment could easily end up being too powerful.

Probably won't Snowball: Mind Twist, Land Tax, Goblin Recruiter,

The "Probably won't Snowball" category has cards that really, really should be unbanned. I cannot figure out why, given the current environment, we aren't allowed to play with them.

Mind Twist is splashable, flexible, and powerful, yes, but it doesn't easily slot into a lot of existing decks and doesn't affect the board directly, which means it's just plain bad in a lot of situations.
Land Tax is slow, requires that you be behind in your mana development, and doesn't directly contribute to winning the game.
Goblin Recruiter seems fine because, while Goblins is good, Food Chain goblins doesn't seem markedly better than just regular old Goblins.

pippo84

04-02-2010, 05:41 AM

Guys, have you ever payed T1 or ever tried just playing with cards you are saying that should be unbanned?
I think that playing with/against these cards is the only way to give a reasonable comment because on paper the card may seem good orcrap, but in play it could be different.
As soon as I have more time I'll write my opinion on cards that should/shouldn't be unbanned.

Cthuloo

04-02-2010, 06:06 AM

Not directly discussing the merit of the unbanning of any single card, I want to point out an interesting observation someone already made before.
Unbanning a card makes sense if it makes new archetypes or strategies viable (or brings back old strategies that have disappeared), especially now that the format seems healthy and there's no need to ban/unban something to balance things. Of course, then one should think of how do we want the format to look like. Making other combo enablers legal can be a dangerous move. Not only because of the possibility that one or more of the decks resulting from the unban could be broken. The sheer number of different combo strategies can be a problem for the format. By now we already have many different combo archetypes. To cite the most prominent:

- Storm Combo
- Charbelcher Combo
- Dream Halls
- Reanimator
- Painter/Grindstone
- Dredge (less and less combo, nowadays, but still worth to be mentioned)

Each deck requires different hate: grave hate stops dredge and reanimator - but does nothing to the other decks - canonist may stop Storm, Belcher and Dream Halls (the latter not completely) - but is dead against painter/stone or reanimator - needle is strong against belcher (that has a backup storm plan, though) and painter - but useless otherwise - etc.
Of course there's one piece of combo hate that hurts them all: Force. The massive amount of viable combo strategies can make non-blue decks struggling to fit all the hate they need or simply die to a deck they were unprepared to face. I don't think anybody wants a field divided into blue vs. combo. This is why I would be reluctant to unban cards like Hermit Druid or Time Spiral (not even mentioning stuff like Oath): they may or may not give rise to broken archetypes, but at the moment I think there's enough combo in the format.

On the other hand, control almost disappeared in the last months. I think it could be nice to give control players some new weapons to fight. I don't know if Mana Drain, LoA or Balance are broken or not (the first two are maybe already too expensive), but if I was to test some unbanning, I will begin from those kind of cards.

DrJones

04-02-2010, 08:06 AM

Each deck requires different hate: grave hate stops dredge and reanimator - but does nothing to the other decks - canonist may stop Storm, Belcher and Dream Halls (the latter not completely) - but is dead against painter/stone or reanimator - needle is strong against belcher (that has a backup storm plan, though) and painter - but useless otherwise - etc.
Of course there's one piece of combo hate that hurts them all: Force. The massive amount of viable combo strategies can make non-blue decks struggling to fit all the hate they need or simply die to a deck they were unprepared to face. I don't think anybody wants a field divided into blue vs. combo. This is why I would be reluctant to unban cards like Hermit Druid or Time Spiral (not even mentioning stuff like Oath): they may or may not give rise to broken archetypes, but at the moment I think there's enough combo in the format.I agree with this, I even used the same exact argument last time we discussed the banned list, and it's sad that we have to keep repeating the same arguments over and over again (for both sides) because they are not stored anywhere for easy referencing. A deck can only have so many "answer spells", and if you can only fit 12, it's hands down better to have 12 counterspells that answer everything, than 6 creature removal spells and 6 cards to answer non-creature permanents. Well, one could say that it's okay as long as the more limited cards are cheaper to play or more efficient, but it just happens the opposite here. Counterspells in eternal formats are cheaper (FREE!) and stronger than the next better removal spell (swords to plowshares). Hell! Blue mages even have counterspells that answer lands and doubles as land destruction (stifle), being at that miles better than the second best land destruction spell in the format (Sinkhole)!! This is simply stupid and I wonder why R&D allows blue to be so over the top without nerfing it down a bit. It looks like R&D tries to compensate their mistakes by printing ridiculous cards like Ad Nauseam and allowing other ridiculous cards like Entomb and Aether Vial, to raise the bar of power in the other colors so they can overcome the monster of blue-based aggro-Control decks. It's not by happenstance that Stoneforge Mystic, one of the strongest white creatures recently printed, specifically has an ability that evades counterspells, and the reason Qasali Pridemage was printed was precisely to reduce the number of slots needed in non-blue decks against non-creature threats.

That's it. I'm saying that if we have stupid, er, "smart" combo decks like Ad Nauseam is because blue decks are so strong. Would otherwise Wizards print a card so obviously and stupidly powerful without banning it in eternal? Have you ever wonder why Ad Nauseam is okay, but Mind's Desire gets preemptively banned?

For people saying that Force of Will keeps the format safe from degenerate combo decks, please return to reality. Almost all banned cards in this format were used in decks packing Force of Will. The explanation is simple: if a broken deck plays <answer card of choice> and it's obviously better than the rest of the format, you will win more games playing that broken deck that playing any other deck that also uses <answer card of choice>.

menace13

04-02-2010, 01:27 PM

For people saying that Force of Will keeps the format safe from degenerate combo decks, please return to reality. Almost all banned cards in this format were used in decks packing Force of Will. The explanation is simple: if a broken deck plays <answer card of choice> and it's obviously better than the rest of the format, you will win more games playing that broken deck that playing any other deck that also uses <answer card of choice>.

Just stop..stop right now no one believes you..ever.

jrsthethird

04-02-2010, 05:15 PM

Degenerate combo decks (Hermit Druid, Worldgorger Dragon, etc.), decks that win with only like 2 cards, can support Force because they can put it in a nice blue shell. Belcher doesn't run Force because it doesn't have enough blue to support it, and neither does ANT. I'm actually kind of surprised those lists don't run Pact of Negation in the board or something to stop opposing Forces on the winning turn.

Lothian

04-02-2010, 06:17 PM

[quote]For people saying that Force of Will keeps the format safe from degenerate combo decks, please return to reality. Almost all banned cards in this format were used in decks packing Force of Will. The explanation is simple: if a broken deck plays <answer card of choice> and it's obviously better than the rest of the format, you will win more games playing that broken deck that playing any other deck that also uses <answer card of choice>. [quote]

You sound like a smart and articulate man Dr. So how can you come up with something so off the mark regarding R&D? Let's say you have no FOW, no daze, no Blue hard counter for 2 turns.. Then you are finished with control altogether, combo kills everything and aggro is gone too. So it will be a battle between belcher, ANT, dredge, and who starts is the one who wins.

That explains the very existence of blue, permission.

While I agree, and we all agree that blue is the best color of older sets, therefore the price of anything blue (power 9 has 3 blues and 6 artifacts, seas etc..), they have to raise the bar of other colors. Hence the usually dreadfull set of blues in the latest few sets, since Urza's joke.

On the other hand, creatures of any colors get stronger and stronger by the day in their mana/strenght ratio (Tarmo), making aggro an interesting bet as good as ever.

R&D know exactly what they are doing, and they don't cater for Legacy scene anyway. When people say FOW holds T1 and Legacy together you surely should listen a bit more. R&D major concern is the balance between colors and style as well as making sure that a game lasts a minimum of turns to allow strategy AND interactions between players.

Would you play in a format decided in the first 2 turns? And I mean 2 TURNS.

You should be thankfull that FOW keeps combo at bay (a bit) so aggro can exist also.

Magic is made of 2 pies: 6 colors, Aggro-Combo-Control

That's the way Garfield created it as a great probabilist, and that's the way it should stay if you want magic to thrive

Cabal_chan

04-02-2010, 06:52 PM

That's it. I'm saying that if we have stupid, er, "smart" combo decks like Ad Nauseam is because blue decks are so strong. Would otherwise Wizards print a card so obviously and stupidly powerful without banning it in eternal? Have you ever wonder why Ad Nauseam is okay, but Mind's Desire gets preemptively banned?

It might have something to do with the lifeloss.

cjva

04-02-2010, 08:30 PM

DrJones: Imagine a format without FoW. What kind of format would that be? First of we would need to ban everything that gives you access to acceleration. So, no Dark ritual for mono-b sui/aggro. No acceleration for dragon stompy, aso, aso.

Have you ever played with FoW? Have you ever played FoW against a aggro deck? Then you should understand that FoW'ing random threats against Zoo often are a bad plan. You lose 2 cards and 1 life, he lose one card for 1-2 mana. Bad equation.

FoW allow combo of different sorts to be a viable strategy, and if you don't want to play in a format with combo as a strat, i strongly advice you to try out standard. No combo and a mid-range aggro deck as the best deck in the format.

And on to the subject.

When it comes to banning/unbanning cards in legacy I think entomb is a good example on what WotC should do. Unban a card that make a new deck viable without harming the format in a deranged way.

I believe that TIme spiral is safe, to expansive for what it does, and not at all good in solidarity as somebody said before. Its a sorcery.

Land tax might open up lands edge or something similar as a viable strat, i don't know. But i don't believe that access to basic's can be used in a to deranged way.

I don't believe that Dragon would be bad for the format. Bounce/removal/counters and GY-hate takes care of it, and it might even be good if another GY-based combo becomes viable. More use of the GY-hate.

Timespiral is meh, but WotC could try out to unrestrict Tax and see what happens, and work on the list slowly. Slow but steady with the main goal to unban as many cards as possible.

And just a side note when people talk about LoA and Drain being to expensive to get unbanned. It's just a bad argument, almost as bad as "they should ban duals cause they are to expensive". Open up the possibility if its believed that the format can handle it and see where it leaves us.

Gheizen64

04-02-2010, 09:51 PM

Wouldn't it be more interesting if we discussed cards that actually aren't super swingy and do something good for the format, like slowing it down by pushing control (tax, loa), push higher casting cost cards without favoring combo (monolith), or, again, make midrange more viable (Twist maybe?). I don't think discussing cards like Spiral or frantic search is a good thing. Even if they don't degenerate right down the format, they're still annoying in the sense they make combo and faster decks even better. Unless Wizard print another version of Force that's good enough agains combo deck, i don't see more combo cards coming out from the restricted list, not soon anyway, after the unban of Entomb/Halls.

Morrison103

04-02-2010, 11:10 PM

I would rather not slow down the format. I dont like playing control decks and while i dont mind them being part of the meta i dont want the balance tilted in favor of control. I play legacy to play with bad ass cards in a sanctioned enviornment, where not only are the cards good but there are alot of good decks. If i want a slower pace ill go play standard. That is why I favor a high number of unbannings. If an unbanning created a flash situation you could always ban it again, I would rather unban cards and see what happens.

Fuzzy

04-03-2010, 12:15 AM

@Mind Twist: The last Standard season had Mind Shatter and no one played that. Why anyone thinks it would degenerate Legacy?

Seriously, i'm fine with that.

Meekrab

04-03-2010, 01:12 AM

I'd like to be able to play 4 Balance in some sort of Stax deck for 3 months, who do I have to pay off to make that happen? I don't even care if it wins any tournaments, I just want people to rage that control isn't supposed to be good in Legacy.

morgan_coke

04-03-2010, 01:46 AM

@Mind Twist: The last Standard season had Mind Shatter and no one played that. Why anyone thinks it would degenerate Legacy?

Seriously, i'm fine with that.

Riiiiiiiggghhht. Because XB = XBB. One is totally splashable and efficient, one isn't. Not like what I'm saying matters, the only reason anyone would even attempt to compare Mind Shatter in Standard and Mind Twist in Legacy is straight up trollery. Congrats, you've been fed. Now go back to your bridge and accost some more billy goats.

evanmartyr

04-03-2010, 02:34 AM

Riiiiiiiggghhht. Because XB = XBB. One is totally splashable and efficient, one isn't. Not like what I'm saying matters, the only reason anyone would even attempt to compare Mind Shatter in Standard and Mind Twist in Legacy is straight up trollery. Congrats, you've been fed. Now go back to your bridge and accost some more billy goats.

Eh...it's not that far off. Standard is ridiculously slower than Legacy (or tends to be, exceptions exist). When you take the speed difference into account, and think of it as a mana difference, they're remarkably similar. I think the argument he meant to use, is that aside from the difficulty in splashing, neither are efficient in the environments we're thinking of them in.

Bahamuth

04-03-2010, 04:24 AM

Also, we tested a while back two hermit druid decks, one like the current reanimator deck with a lot of counters and discard effects, the other with red and haste-granting effects. Both were totally nuts. A Hasted Hermit Druid is almost unstoppable because as soon as you play it you activate it and then there's nothing the opponent can do because he doesn't even get priority.

I'd like to see those lists. It's just not true at all you can't to anything once the opponent plays a hasted Hermit Druid.

Also, what the hell? You're forced to play Darkblast? Like we are forced now to play Counterbalance to beat ANT? There's no way. As you know just as well as I do, ANT loses to more than just Counterbalance, and this is even more true for Hermit Druid.

Amon Amarth

04-03-2010, 04:50 AM

I'd like to see those lists. It's just not true at all you can't to anything once the opponent plays a hasted Hermit Druid.

Also, what the hell? You're forced to play Darkblast? Like we are forced now to play Counterbalance to beat ANT? There's no way. As you know just as well as I do, ANT loses to more than just Counterbalance, and this is even more true for Hermit Druid.

I'm not so sure what the big deal is wih Hermit Druid. It seems like it's an Enotmb that's twice as expensive, in a worse color, has summoning sickness, eats it to bolt and every other removal spell, much more vulnerable to GY hate... I mean if Reanimator is a great deck but even it isn't breaking the format. Who cares about a card that for all intents and purposes a worse Entomb?

deadlock

04-03-2010, 07:15 AM

Interesting that people are so focused on the aspect to what sorts of spells Hermit Druid dies to. In my opinion this is only a minor point. The amounts of possible answers to the combo is always relative to other factors aswell, which are more or at least equally important:

-Its a one card combo basically, which is a big difference to say reanimator (needs two cards). This makes it even easier to assemble than say Flash (but not easier to succesfully activate).
-It kills instantly, compared to Reanimator, where your opponent still has a chance to do something (sometimes ;)
-Its quite cheap mana-wise and easy splashable in different shells (example below). As the deck is forced to run none-basic land only, Lotus Petal could provide both speed and mana stability, which would make a first turn Druid possible.
-The combo is smaller than the Reanimator combo. A loose comparison:

Reanimator:
8 Reanimate spells
8 Discard spells
6 creatures to reanimate.
--
22 cards

Hermit Druid (there may be more efficient ways, please tell me if you think this is supoptimal. Note there is also the Kiki combo as a possibility).
4 Druid
3 Moemba
1 Dread Return
1 Ghoul
1 Dragons Breath
1 Lord (if there is no other fodder creature)
--
11 cards

- As the combo is so small, there quite some possibiltes to fill the last slots. I asume that each version would run these (with small deviations):

4 FoW
4 Daze
4 BS
4 Ponder (maybe fewer with SDT)
2 Cabal Therapy (to clear the way after a Druid activation)
4 Worldly Tutor
--
22 + lets say 20 mana (more likely a little less, if we compare this to Reanimator, which runs 18 mana most of the time)
--
53 cards total with already 10 disruption spells in the deck!

For the last 7 (some more if you cut down on other spells) some examples:
- Bob
- Goyf (as alt win and Ghoul fooder)
- 2 Nought and 4 Stifle (Ghoul fooder, disruption and alt win)
- CB / Top (disruption / protection).
- Thoughtseize

This forms a very potent deck, which gives your opponent very little breathing room. Please do not criticize my example deck list / possibilties, its just there to illustrate my case.

Amon Amarth

04-03-2010, 07:47 AM

Interesting that people are so focused on the aspect to what sorts of spells Hermit Druid dies. In my opinion this is only a minor point. The amounts of possible answers to the combo is always relative to other factors aswell, which are more or at least equally important:

-Its a one card combo basically, which is a big difference to say reanimator (needs two cards). This makes it even easier to assemble than say Flash (but not easier to succesfully activate).
-It kills instantly, compared to Reanimator, where your opponent still has a chance to do something (sometimes ;)
-Its quite cheap mana-wise and easy splashable in different shells (example below). As the deck is forced to run none-basic land only, Lotus Petal could provide both speed and mana stability, which would make a first turn Druid possible.
-The combo is smaller than the Reanimator combo.

Why play a combo deck that scoops to a resolved Grim Lavamancer? People play combo decks so they can ignore decks not running Blue or a certain subset of cards (discard, Chalice, etc.) To say that the combo kills instantly is misleading because you play Hermit Druid and still have to pass the the turn. Post board it gets really bad because everyone is prepared for GY based decks, in addition to the spot removal in most maindecks. While it does kill much faster than Reanimator, a 2nd turn Iona is often tantamount to winning. The glaring weakness to Wasteland, Blood Moon and Co. is significant as well. Also, there are quite a few blanks in there too that you never want to draw. I'm not convinced.

Greenpoe

04-03-2010, 01:36 PM

menace13

04-03-2010, 01:41 PM

Why play a combo deck that scoops to a resolved Grim Lavamancer? People play combo decks so they can ignore decks not running Blue or a certain subset of cards (discard, Chalice, etc.) To say that the combo kills instantly is misleading because you play Hermit Druid and still have to pass the the turn. Post board it gets really bad because everyone is prepared for GY based decks, in addition to the spot removal in most maindecks. While it does kill much faster than Reanimator, a 2nd turn Iona is often tantamount to winning. The glaring weakness to Wasteland, Blood Moon and Co. is significant as well. Also, there are quite a few blanks in there too that you never want to draw. I'm not convinced.

Log on to MTGO, I have it built and will playtest a few games with you or anyone pm. The deck is fast, disruptive and has counter backup..its good in legacy take my word for it.

Lurker101

04-03-2010, 04:04 PM

I don't have as much familiarity with legacy as most of the people here (I'm primaraily a vintage player) here are the cards I would be behind getting unbanned:
Hermit Druid (slower and more disruptuptible than Oath and not really a replacement for survival)
Earthcraft
Time Spiral (make High Tide good again please!)
Frantic Search (which should also be legal in Vintage IMO)
Worldgorger Dragon (maybe, the whole idea of drawing a game so easily does make me hesitant here)
Land Tax
Grim Monolith
Illusionary Mask (wasn't this originally bannned for financial reasons? That's no way to ban a card. Also, stifle is a more versatile option)
Mind Twist
Goblin Recruiter

Cards that should stay banned:
Mana Drain (This is a defining card for vintage, I think the vintage pillars aside from dark ritual and null rod should stay out of legacy. It's a card that defines Vintage and like workshop and bazaar should stay banned)
Oath of Druids (The thing that drives me to legacy in the first place is the viability of aggro decks when compared to vintage, I like Hermit Druid and Survival I would rather see them flourish in a format then have Oath be another defining deck in eternal. Oath is fine in Vintage but let legacy play with a healthy aggro environment)

majikal

04-03-2010, 04:07 PM

Why play a combo deck that scoops to a resolved Grim Lavamancer?
It doesn't though. Doesn't anyone remember the old Angry Ghoul deck? You entomb Anger and then go off as soon as you cast your Hermit. A build stuffed full of Spirit Guides, Lotus Petals, and no basics can kill on turn 1, even after mulling to five.

edit: I just fucking realized you can run Summoner's Pact and Pact of Negation in a build like this. Fuck that. This guy should never come off the banned list, ever.

Vacrix

04-03-2010, 04:54 PM

I think its worth noting that if quite a Oath or Hermit Druid got banned, Spell Snare would probably see much more play given that its a silver bullet against either deck.

It doesn't though. Doesn't anyone remember the old Angry Ghoul deck? You entomb Anger and then go off as soon as you cast your Hermit. A build stuffed full of Spirit Guides, Lotus Petals, and no basics can kill on turn 1, even after mulling to five.

edit: I just fucking realized you can run Summoner's Pact and Pact of Negation in a build like this. Fuck that. This guy should never come off the banned list, ever.

This.

Dude said exactly what I was going to say. Pacts make Hermit Druid fucking nuts. As long as you can give him haste, like with Entomb --> Anger, you're good to go the turn you play him, likely with FoW/PoN protection. Its surely not another hulk flash, but its another combo deck in the format that looks like it will have a fairly consistent turn 2 with protection.

Who is down to ban Progenitals? I fuckn loathe that card with a passion. Its so dumb good. Not like Tendrils. Good ToA decks are fairly difficult to play.

MMogg

04-03-2010, 06:05 PM

It doesn't though. Doesn't anyone remember the old Angry Ghoul deck? You entomb Anger and then go off as soon as you cast your Hermit. ....

...Dude said exactly what I was going to say. Pacts make Hermit Druid fucking nuts. As long as you can give him haste, like with Entomb --> Anger, you're good to go the turn you play him, likely with FoW/PoN protection. ...

Just a clarification, from what I remember of playing Angry Ghoul, you don't Entomb your Anger and that won't usually give Hermit haste because you need that all important Mountain, which is usually the card you get when you activate Druid. Usually you need one turn for the Druid to get over summoning sickness, then activate, grab the Mountain, play it, reanimate Ghoul, who hopefully now has haste, and attack for the win. *sniff, sniff* memories. Anyway, just wanted to clarify that Entombing Anger does not give Druid haste and that is a rare play and only good if you lucksacked and drew the Mountain in your opening seven. (This is referring to the old Extended deck, not a new, hypothetical post-ban deck.)

Edit for on-topic content:

I would rather not slow down the format. I dont like playing control decks and while i dont mind them being part of the meta i dont want the balance tilted in favor of control. I play legacy to play with bad ass cards in a sanctioned enviornment, where not only are the cards good but there are alot of good decks. If i want a slower pace ill go play standard. That is why I favor a high number of unbannings. If an unbanning created a flash situation you could always ban it again, I would rather unban cards and see what happens.

I agree with Morrison in that unbannings are easily solved with re-bannings. Although that's not a good thing, I nevertheless think that there is more to gain than lose. Although someone quite rightly said we should justify unbannings with positives (as in what they bring to the format as opposed to harm they may not bring), I think had we held a discussion on Entomb, Metalworker and Dream Halls in August, we'd have a large swath of responses espousing how broken those cards are and how horrible it would be if they were unbanned. What, in reality, we ended up with is another viable tier 1 deck, a viable tier 2 (1.5) deck and a not-so-viable tier 3 deck. I don't think this format is easily swayed and bent towards one deck. Even if something powerful were unbanned, I'm not convinced it would warp the format and there are solutions if something bad happened.

majikal

04-03-2010, 06:52 PM

Just a clarification, from what I remember of playing Angry Ghoul, you don't Entomb your Anger and that won't usually give Hermit haste because you need that all important Mountain, which is usually the card you get when you activate Druid. Usually you need one turn for the Druid to get over summoning sickness, then activate, grab the Mountain, play it, reanimate Ghoul, who hopefully now has haste, and attack for the win. *sniff, sniff* memories. Anyway, just wanted to clarify that Entombing Anger does not give Druid haste and that is a rare play and only good if you lucksacked and drew the Mountain in your opening seven. (This is referring to the old Extended deck, not a new, hypothetical post-ban deck.)

We have fetchlands now, and you would obviously get Badlands (or Taiga, depending on what else is in your hand) to go with your Lotus Petals and Spirit Guides, so Entombing Anger will give Hermit Druid haste 100% of the time if you build it correctly. You won't even need to put basic lands in your deck, because you will win once you activate the druid.

Something like

4x Hermit Druid
4x Summoner's Pact
4x Entomb
4x Thoughtseize
4x Pact of Negation
4x Worldly Tutor (this could probably be something else, but I had five slots left so why not?)

3x Narcomoeba
1x Dread Return
1x Sutured Ghoul
1x Lord of Extinction
1x Anger
1x Dragon Breath (just in case? can't really even think of anything else the deck would even need)

4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Lotus Petal
4x Verdant Catacomb
3x Bloodstained Mire
3x Wooded Foothills
3x Taiga
3x Badlands

wcm8

04-03-2010, 07:04 PM

I'd love to see Earthcraft. There are several ways to break it, but I doubt it'd make the format degenerate like other combo possibilities.

Arrowni

04-03-2010, 10:29 PM

After reading the combination of the druid with summoning pact and unbanned entomb I painfully have to agree that it would be quite a very aggressive contendant in the format and may be better to let it banned as it is. This is a silly thing, because like with Worldgorger dragon having Entomb unbanned actually tips the card's power towards "too strong" instead of relative fairness. I guess entomb is the most interesting card so is the best to let unbanned among them.

Smmenen

06-18-2010, 02:51 PM

FYI, this article is free.

And, they actually unbanned one of the cards suggested!

Again, the poll results:

Poll 1: Do you believe Illusionary Mask can be safely unbanned?
723 votes
Yes: 89.21%
No: 10.79%

This was the most decisive of all six polls. Virtually 90% of you believed that Illusionary Mask is a safe unbanning.

What's amazing to me is that over 70 people voted that it couldn't be safely unbanned.

Who are those people!?!?!?

Also:

Poll 5: Do you think that Land Tax can be safely unbanned?
588 votes
Yes: 82.99%
No: 17.01%

The next safest result. Of course, Erik Lauer wasn't about to unban this. Someday, though. Someday.

The others:

Poll 2: Do you think Mind Twist can be safely unbanned?
648 votes
Yes: 66.05%
No: 33.95%

Poll 3: Do you think that Earthcraft can be safely unbanned?
596 votes
Yes: 68.12%
No: 31.88%

Poll 4: Do you think that Goblin Recruiter can be safely unbanned?
587 votes
Yes: 51.45%
No: 48.55%

Poll 6: Do you think that Time Spiral can be safely unbanned?
573 votes
Yes: 71.73%
No: 28.27%

yankeedave

06-18-2010, 02:57 PM

Steve, I know you are most likely writing an article on this at the moment, but give us a taster - what's your opinion on the recent changes?

morgan_coke

06-18-2010, 04:47 PM

smennen,

I voted against unbanning Mask because I don't want to have to deal with its atrocious rules baggage. Ever. I think the card is overly complex and accomplishes nothing in its current wording that other cards don't already do better/more interestingly/more comprehensively.

I have no idea why other people voted against it though, but theres some insight into one of the "No" votes.

dahcmai

06-19-2010, 03:50 AM

I'd personally just not want to hear the bitching about the price if someone actually found some "good" obscure use for Mask as it's price would skyrocket. It's already pretty expensive. I voted to unban it, but I only did because it's a safe one. I would have rather have seen it banned, but that wasn't what you were asking.

Hermit Druid, you people are nuts to want that back around.
First turn - Concordant Crossroads/Thoughtseize, Duress, Cabal Therapy or some such.
2nd Turn - Cast Druid, win if Crossroads went out, otherwise win next turn. ho hum...
I remember that crap, it's stupid fast. Sure, it's easy to stop if you have creature kill that survives a Duress and can go through a Force of Will. Maybe you have Simian Spirit Guides or something and a few Bolts to try and hit it before it goes. Oh wait, it had haste that turn, you lose anyway.

Trust me, I had to play against that thing once in our local meta. It was horrible. Even in our Vintage tournaments, it would scrounge wins because Vintage decks don't win even half as fast and even with playing extreme hate for Gorilla Shaman at the time it was no contest for many of the decks. It's too much any deck to ask to always have kill open on the second turn, just in case that guy comes out.

I never want to see that stupid Hermit Druid Ghoul deck back in Legacy.

(nameless one)

06-19-2010, 01:57 PM

Here is the current Banned list of MTGO Classic (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/TCG/Resources.aspx?x=magic/rules/mtgoclassic):

1x Balance
1x Channel
1x Demonic Consultation
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Flash
1x Imperial Seal
1x Mana Crypt
1x Necropotence
1x Strip Mine
1x Tinker
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Yawgmoth's Will

The moxes are not existent on MTGO. A lot of vintage powerhouses are not existent in MTGO. Ante cards are not existent in MTGO. Masque block is yet to exist in MTGO.

Yes, that format has Land Tax, Oath of Druids, and Hermit Druid out of its banned list. I personally don't play Classic on MTGO but I haven't heard any of those cards warping that format. Yes, Oath and Hermit are really powerful cards but that meta was prepared for that.

The reintroduction of Entomb in Legacy was based on how the card fared on Classic.

I am not saying straightforward that we should allow Oath and Hermit back in the format but I think we should consider the possibilities.

The same post I posted at MTG Salvation under their B/R discussion.