which was the bigger mistake?

[apple713]

Delver imo

[joemauer]

Only one of these cards were ever banned in Legacy.

Easy choice.

[Megadeus]

WOTC knows how good free spells are. I want to say amrakul because the eldrazi are super unfun to play against, but unfun doesnt make a mistake

[Greenpoe]

Jace, TMS. (I'm going to ignore Mental Misstep - it was banned so it's on a whole other level of mistakes by Wizards, not comparable to the others) Delver, Goyf and Emrakul are just power creep. If it wasn't these creatures, it'd surely be something else. Besides, at the end of they day, they're just creatures, and creatures can easily be dealt with. J-Pops is a major pain to deal with and has forever answered the question, "What should my win-con be for my blue control deck?" With Emrakul, if decks weren't dropping that, they'd be dropping some other huge monster (Iona, Inkwell, Griselbrand, etc.) that maybe wouldn't kill you 100% of the time, but 95% of the time they would. Goyf? Well, pre-Goyf, people complained that green didn't have the best creatures. Now green does. Delver? Kind of a pain, but at least it doesn't lock you out like Jace's +1 will.

[apple713]

Even though misstep was banned i still put it on here because i know many people in my community that dont agree with that decision.

I chose delver because that card should never have been a blue creature. It gave blue one of the best aggro creatures in all formats.

If anything it should have been a green creature for g 1/1 that flips to 3/2 trample for revealing a green creature card. Or something like that. It would have even been mpre appropriate as a black creature.

[kusumoto]

This was officially answered for us via banning.

[Valtrix]

Misstep is the clear choice, because it was a relevant (Basically) free counterspell that you could (and probably should) play in any deck. That's just poor design. After that Delver is the next most broken card--Blue should not get something that aggressive.

[nedleeds]

Misstep. Not even close. It essentially made the format a 56 card format (unless you were playing Chalice of the Void and/or Trinisphere). It suppressed a massive amount of cards; it made mulliganing miserable as you wanted your one drop and a misstep to protect the misstepped misstep. Derp derp derp.

Delver is a close second. Snapcaster is up there as well. Had delver at least been a B creature that flipped into blue; and SCM been RR they'd be fine. THey just had no business being blue.

[Koby]

Mental Misstep has been answered, and corrected in Legacy. While it's the strongest/most egregious abuse of free mana, it's no longer Legacy relevant.

Hence, I picked Delver of Secret. This card alone has done more to polarize Legacy into "hurp derp play blue or lose" mentality. I would not shed a tear to see Delver as a strategy die in napalm.

Patiently waiting for a :r: 2/2 Goblin Human that deals 2 damage to blue creatures when it EtB. It would be a fair card.

[Erdvermampfa]

Delver is a card I really want to see gone, although I dont really care much about legacy anymore, mainly because Delver has destroyed the format for me.

[Esper3k]

I don't mind Delvers myself. It's still a creature and susceptible to all the usual ways to remove it (Repeal X=0 is particularly hilarious to me).

Terminus is more annoying to me these days just because I think Wrath that effectively exiles your dudes for W is pretty busted.

[Piceli89]

I see in another way: it was Tarmogoyf being printed at the last moment with 1G in the cost instead of 2G to have been the first mistake, basically forcing from that moment card design to keep it up with its level- resulting into the first, evident starting point of modern-blocks power creep.
Don't you remember how scandalously overpowered it was in comparison to everything else at the time?
It took a real chunk of time to slowly spit out cards that could blur its brokenness, until today where other following bombs have really pushed it down-at least, in Legacy. If the Tarmogoyf mistake wasn't done, perhaps nowadays we wouldn't even be having Snapcaster Mage, nor Delver, nor Jace, and so on.

[apple713]

I see in another way: it was Tarmogoyf being printed at the last moment with 1G in the cost instead of 2G to have been the first mistake, basically forcing from that moment card design to keep it up with its level- resulting into the first, evident starting point of modern-blocks power creep.
Don't you remember how scandalously overpowered it was in comparison to everything else at the time?
It took a real chunk of time to slowly spit out cards that could blur its brokenness, until today where other following bombs have really pushed it down-at least, in Legacy. If the Tarmogoyf mistake wasn't done, perhaps nowadays we wouldn't even be having Snapcaster Mage, nor Delver, nor Jace, and so on.

With this mantality tarmogoyf wasent the issue. I believe it started with urzas saga and the many ridic cards in that set.

[wcm8]

Jace. This card is poorly balanced. The brainstorm effect should have been -1, the fateseal maybe +1, and the ultimate either removed entirely or have an increased cost. Alternatively, keep it the same but increase the casting cost to 5 or 6. The other cards on this list are mistakes, but don't function as Swiss army knives for the most annoying deck archetype to play against.

[nedleeds]

Mental Misstep has been answered, and corrected in Legacy. While it's the strongest/most egregious abuse of free mana, it's no longer Legacy relevant.

Hence, I picked Delver of Secret. This card alone has done more to polarize Legacy into "hurp derp play blue or lose" mentality. I would not shed a tear to see Delver as a strategy die in napalm.

Patiently waiting for a :r: 2/2 Goblin Human that deals 2 damage to blue creatures when it EtB. It would be a fair card.

When I win the Invitational I will produce this man:

Priest of Mephistopheles
BB

2/1 - Human Wizard

Flash

Chains Text

... i mean blue gets flash creatures normally reserved for red ... give black one ...

[ScatmanX]

Can't find the Show and Tell on that pool. There might be something wrong.

[Julian23]

Surprisingly, I answered Emrakul - for flavor reasons. I really enjoyed the times when something like Verdant Force was the Best Fattie Ever Printed. And by "Verdant Force" I mean "something super flavorful". Elesh Norn is cool. Any kind of giant Angel or Dragon will do. Flying Spaghetti Monsters on the other hand...I don't know. I realize that people were already cheating other things into play before we had Emrakul, but the Eldrazi just went so much over the top, why even bother. I'm still not worried about power-level in general, as he's still "ok" to handle because of the omnipresence of Karakas. What angers me is how they made him a pretty "dumb", non-flavorful card.


But to be honest guys, the real answer is Sensei's Divining Top.

[zendo]

But to be honest guys, the real answer is Sensei's Divining Top.

I'm going to have to agree with Julian23 here. Playing against Sensei's Divining Top is the least amount of fun you can have in magic.

[obituary 95]

I answered emrakul. I answered it because wizards continuously says they want a game that is interactive. they then make cards like emrakul,cavern of souls ,omniscience etc. these cards are not interactive at all, all they say is hey opponent you are probably dead

exception is with cavern since you still have a chance of winning if cavern is out.

the reason that i did not pick mental misstep is because i am not sure the format would be any different if the card was unbanned today. most of the decks that people where discussing still have not come back. the format is still about the same.

[apistat_commander]

With the exception of Misstep, this thread and most similar threads devolve into: (Insert card that beats my pet deck(s) here)

[csy]

Clearly the biggest mistake was brainstorm. DOY!

/troll

misstep was the biggest mistake on the list...

[TsumiBand]

Eternal formats are primarily shaped by cards that have pushed the envelope or broken it entirely, so trying to count the mistakes is a bit of an exercise in futility. Except in an instance like the banning of Mental Misstep, where the whole format just tableflips b/c everyone needs to play it, it's its own best answer and it demolishes mana curves everywhere, everyone is already ideally playing with a deck chock full of mistakes. That's why people play Blue; WotC has consistently admitted that for years, they just had "more fun" designing powerful, complex Blue and Black cards. They've managed to throttle the shit out of Black for years, but Blue's high playability will always express their mistakes in a much more palpable way.

Having said that.

On its face I do not care for Delver, and really all I can offer are mostly little kid reasons as to why it 'feels wrong' to me. Most creatures with 2+ power for 1 mana are generally quite conditional; Nacatl and Kird Ape depend on not getting Wastelanded, Goblin Guide can feed the opponent cards, Isamaru is Legendary, and so on. Delver's condition - topdecking an instant or sorcery - is exceptionally easily met given that Blue should 99.99994% of the time already be playing deck manipulation spells, in addition to a larger number of non-creature spells than other decks. That condition is more easily met and less easily disrupted in a productive way than most of the aforementioned creatures; it's almost a bigger deal if Delver never flips, because that requires exceptionally poor luck. It's a totally biased, flavor-centric perspective of The Way The Game Should Work, and at the end of the day it is just another duder, but it does kind of piss me off that an efficient beater with evasion and 3 power would ever be printed for one Blue mana. That's just not the way Blue works. Unless it is, because you control a Delver.

I mean yeah, Snapcaster should have been Red, but honestly I can accept a 2/1 with a Regrowth-y effect in Blue, because as a creature it's fairly weak and everything under the sun will trade with it. Delver just "gets there" though, and pretty much the only thing you have to do is be playing a deck with spells to flip it. You're being rewarded for something that has always been its own reward in Blue, so it's just durdley, and it challenges a ton of Green and White cards for Best Efficient Beater For Less Than Two Mana, so that's irksome too. Sure yeah Jace is super super good, but he costs 2UU and doesn't put Emmy into play, so so what.

[kiblast]

I voted Emrakul because I completely despise Show and Tell as a strategy. One thing that is really scary is how simple is for any Ubx.discard.deck to convert into Show and tell.deck post sideboard, I feel this transformational sideboard plan hasn't really been developed yet in legacy but it has the possibility to become widely used. Anyway Show and tell into Emrakul, as you know, is dumb. If Snt was on the list I would have voted for SnT because it's becoming increasingly broken with each new bomb printed.

Delver and Goyf are not an issue from my point of view. Well Goyf represents an historical error (as highlited by Picelli89) which lead to a long stream of raw power creep which is still going on, as if it triggered some sort of domino effect.

Misstep? I loved the card and still love playing it in Vintage (completely different environment of course). Anyway it was not long enough in the format to fully understand what was going on.

Jtms? Guys is freaking 4cc. Ok is the best game winning control tool blue got since forever, but it's 4 cc. Try casting it vs RUG/Goblins/Merfolk.

[Hardcore]

Show and tell. The card used to 'cheat' broken things into play.

[Dark Ritual]

Mental misstep. Whenever I hear people say it was good for the format I die a little inside. Yep, let's sling NO RUG and stoneblade all day! And when snapcaster comes to the party shit will get real good when the format devolves into snapcaster misstep in some UW(x) control shell that plays one game per match.

I really, really dislike delver but it's in a completely different league when you compare it to misstep. One card was banned, the other has been left to its own devices.

[Amon Amarth]

Delver. The other cards on the list do things that you would expect from their colors or from using an absurd amount of colorless in Emrakuls case. Delver is a hyper-aggressive Blue creature that should have never been printed. Delver was even from a modern set where you think they would be more vigilant. Nope. The color pie is apparently only a thing for the other four colors.

[Darkenslight]

Clearly the biggest mistake was brainstorm. DOY!

/troll

misstep was the biggest mistake on the list...

Gotta agree here: however, there are two other cards that were bigger mistakes. Those two are Skullclamp and Snapcaster Mage. SCM should really have been Red rather than Blue, and the Clamp....well, it's really ridiculously strong. One of the few cards, along with MM that was banned in, well, everything.

[Barook]

MM is banned, so I don't see why it's worth discussing, since it's an entirely different level of wrong.

I'm going with Delver. A 3/2 flyer for :u: is just fucking dumb, no matter how you look at it.

[Admiral_Arzar]

MM is banned, so I don't why it's worth to discuss, since it's an entirely different level of wrong.

I'm going with Delver. A 3/2 flyer for :u: is just fucking dumb, no matter how you look at it.

Voted Misstep because it wrecked the format, but you're completely right anyways. I would throw a party if they banned Delver, blue should never be able to out-aggro the aggro colors.

[Fizzeler]

Mental misstep. Whenever I hear people say it was good for the format I die a little inside. Yep, let's sling NO RUG and stoneblade all day! And when snapcaster comes to the party shit will get real good when the format devolves into snapcaster misstep in some UW(x) control shell that plays one game per match.

I really, really dislike delver but it's in a completely different league when you compare it to misstep. One card was banned, the other has been left to its own devices.

This

Mental Misstep was horrible for the format, either you played it as a 4 of or risked being behind turn 1 because you had no cantrips or 1 drops, or you played Dredge

[dunk]

Voted Misstep because it wrecked the format, but you're completely right anyways. I would throw a party if they banned Delver, blue should never be able to out-aggro the aggro colors.

The point of blue is that it is able to do anything. There is a reason a blue creature got the nickname "Superman".

Unlike you other guys I don't think any of the mentioned cards was a mistake - especially not Delver. All it does is making Canadian be still a viable deck. Otherwise the format would have degenerated into UW vs Combo vs Tier 2 decks. The way it is we have at least an aggro within the mix, which sounds a bit more healthy.

The newest cards I would consider mistakes are Omniscience and Terminus.

[xfxf]

The question assumes Mental Misstep was a mistake, which is debatable no matter what the haters think. There's still a good amount of players who don't agree with that.

I play RUG therefore I'm not a Delver hater but I think Delver of Secrets is a mistake.

[Admiral_Arzar]

The question assumes Mental Misstep was a mistake, which is debatable no matter what the haters think. There's still a good amount of players who don't agree with that.


Mental Misstep was a card specifically created with a deliberate purpose - giving non-blue decks a powerful hate card against combo. It succeeded in that aim (a lot of combo decks became near unplayable) - the problem was that the card did so much more (it greatly strengthened not just aggro, but blue decks and some combo decks - ReAnimator for example - as well), and was far more powerful and ubiquitous than the designers intended. Whether that's a mistake in the sense that Jace or Skullclamp or Goyf were mistakes (all were OP due to last-minute changes that weren't playtested much, if at all) is debatable. My personal opinion is that MM was the most format-warping and ubiquitous card since Skullclamp's brief reign of terror in standard, which I remember quite clearly.

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I'm going to ignore Misstep, because it's banned and is clearly in a whole different league. My vote is split down the middle with Emrakul and Delver.

Emrakul is one of a long line of Wizards trying to push huge fatties to sell packs to Timmies, results be damned. Progenitius started things up, and then you got Iona, the Eldrazi, Titans, Praetors, Griselbrand etc. It's just dumb that there are tons of fatties who can win the game on their own and have their own built in protection, whether it be protection, shroud, stopping your opponent from playing the game, instant speed draw seven, or card advantage on casting/coming into play. They're just stupid, uninteractive, and not fun. Emrakul got banned in EDH, the Timmy format, because no-one was having fun with a annihilating, time-walking, protected douche. That P.O.S. should be banned in every format, and I say this as someone who plays it in a deck or two. A lot of hate is lumped at Show and Tell, but when that card was designed, you were probably dropping a Serra Avatar or Verdant Force. A powerful play, no doubt, but manageable. But Show and Tell with modern fatties has made the most idiotic archetype to "grace" Magic with it's presence.

And Delver can burn for all I care. I find it laughable that Red's transforming one drop becomes a vanilla 3/2 that is harder to transform and can be turned back by your opponent. Heckuva job, Markie!

[Kich867]

I'm actually really surprised at this. Perhaps from a competitive standpoint Mental Misstep was bad, but in terms of magic cards, Emrakul was by far the most atrocious thing they've ever printed. All the eldrazi, really. They tried really hard to make him unable to be cheated into play but they missed some glaring issues. Seeing this card printed made me incredibly disgusted, I felt like I was staring at a YuGiOh card.

[Gheizen64]

I'm going to ignore Misstep, because it's banned and is clearly in a whole different league. My vote is split down the middle with Emrakul and Delver.

Emrakul is one of a long line of Wizards trying to push huge fatties to sell packs to Timmies, results be damned. Progenitius started things up, and then you got Iona, the Eldrazi, Titans, Praetors, Griselbrand etc. It's just dumb that there are tons of fatties who can win the game on their own and have their own built in protection, whether it be protection, shroud, stopping your opponent from playing the game, instant speed draw seven, or card advantage on casting/coming into play. They're just stupid, uninteractive, and not fun. Emrakul got banned in EDH, the Timmy format, because no-one was having fun with a annihilating, time-walking, protected douche. That P.O.S. should be banned in every format, and I say this as someone who plays it in a deck or two. A lot of hate is lumped at Show and Tell, but when that card was designed, you were probably dropping a Serra Avatar or Verdant Force. A powerful play, no doubt, but manageable. But Show and Tell with modern fatties has made the most idiotic archetype to "grace" Magic with it's presence.

And Delver can burn for all I care. I find it laughable that Red's transforming one drop becomes a vanilla 3/2 that is harder to transform and can be turned back by your opponent. Heckuva job, Markie!

And was uncommon too, for good measure of the WotC design team of LOLZ.

I loathe Delver more personally. Misstep was wrong in power level, but the idea behind it and the effect was nice. The card is making Vintage see aggro again, and in the old Overextended format that Verhey created (Everything from invasion onward, very short banned list, 10 cards or so), it was legal and saw limited play because of the nature of the format being more mid-rangey compared to legacy (and no waste i may add). I think the card wouldn't be too good in Modern either, with the format having much more mid-range than it will ever be possible in Legacy.

Emrakul is dumb and shitty, but i saw him as inevitable. Pro-all 10/10 monsters were already out there, and Grizzly afterward, the world will never be safe from those, and enablers will be banned. That's the natural cycle of life. But delver? A card that shouldn't have been blue in term of flavor and in term of creature efficiency (should've been black with intimidate, just like Snapcaster should've been red totally but sigh everything is more and more blue those days), yet it was the most powerful aggro creature ever printed. In blue. With evasion. With basically no drawback. There's no enabler to ban here, and the idea behind it wasn't nice. This was printed just as a dumb, power-creeped, power-busted blue creature, as the best aggro 1-drop of all time, and it can't even be flipped back.

So Delver fuck you.

[clavio]

Voted for tarmogoyf. Why?!?! He completely invalidated a whole boatload of creatures as soon as he was printed. Shit like Troll Ascetic and Watchwolf were legacy playable pre-goyf. Once he got printed cards needed to be scaled to his level of power, which ended up invalidating even more creatures.

[Lord Seth]

In blue. With evasion. With basically no drawback.Requiring you to play with enough Instants or Sorceries to actually make flipping reliably is a genuine drawback. And actually a pretty big one. Yes, the right decks can greatly minimize that drawback, but it's a legitimate drawback and is why Delver of Secrets only fits into a few decks. If it literally was "basically no drawback" you'd be seeing it in a lot more different decks than it is.

Maybe you can say I'm being nitpicky. But to claim there is "basically no drawback" is flat-out wrong.

As for the topic. I'm going to assume it means mistake for Legacy in particular. For example, Mental Misstep didn't have much of an impact on Standard and has (apparently) had a positive impact in Vintage in helping slow down the format. It was just in Legacy where it became so omnipresent it got banned. With that assumed...

Tarmogoyf and Emrakul should be immediately disqualified. I don't care how much you dislike either, if they were to be banned right this minute, what would honestly happen? Their decks would just replace them with something else. Show and Tell decks would just put Progenitus or something back in, while Canadian Threshold would just switch to Scavenging Ooze. Then they'd continue on their merry way.

Delver of Secrets is a more legitimate card to take aim at, as it's harder to replace. If it were banned today, UR Delver would pretty much cease to exist because the whole reason that deck even exists in the first place is because of Delver of Secrets. And even if it existed before Delver of Secrets, Canadian Threshold would have more trouble replacing it than they would with Tarmogoyf.

Jace is fine. He's just a good card.

This leaves us with Mental Misstep and Delver of Secrets. And Mental Misstep seems the obvious choice. Delver, sure, it's powered up some decks, but it didn't take control of the format anywhere close to the extent Mental Misstep did. Delver of Secrets made certain decks better. Mental Misstep changed the format.

[(nameless one)]

I would say Tarmogoyf because it made a lot of creatures obsolete. Then the WotC R&D guys had to start making things on par with Goyf. This is why outside of Goblins, most of the creatures played in Legacy (and Vintage) are in new frame.

Goyf was the root to the creation of Delver of Secrets and the rest.

[Malchar]

I don't think that mental misstep should be banned, but that's a whole different discussion in itself. I picked jace, not because I think it should be banned or anything, but it is easily the best planeswalker in what was already the best color. It lets you brainstorm each turn for free, and it can protect itself if necessary.

Strictly speaking, jace "beats" emrakul directly. Regardless, emrakul is strictly a "combo" finisher which requires you to untap with it and attack before you get any return on your value. Griselbrand is much more broken than emrakul since as long as you resolve it, you get to refill your hand in spite of any spot removal.

Tarmogoyf and delver are really quite a bit worse than everything else. They're merely efficient beaters that require you to build an entire deck to pump them up, and even then it's just a creature that dies to basically every removal. Emrakul has a much faster clock even if you account for the time it takes to combo it into play.

Calling mental misstep a mistake is like calling force of will a mistake. It will rustle the feathers of a lot of all-in aggro or combo players who hate it when their opponent actually gets to interact with them, but it's complete garbage in a control matchup. The only thing it can even counter in a control match is brainstorm, which is probably good for the format considering how powerful that card is.

I mean, how is it different from something like thoughtseize or even swords to plowshares? You're just trading one for one, and mental misstep is dead quite a bit more often than either of those cards anyway. Being able to pay 2 life for 1 mana ONE TIME to cast a specific spell is not so broken that it makes this card a whole tier above something comparable like thoughtseize. I mean, they finally give nonblue decks a way to answer certain spells, and everyone hates it. Apparently, everyone enjoys blue's dominance of the format, and they will resist any efforts to change it.

I hate the argument that "it counters itself, so everyone will be forced to use it". Guess what, force of will counters force of will, and daze counters daze, and the format is jam packed with both of them and no one ever complains about it. Tarmogoyf "counters" another tarmogoyf, and brainstorm "counters" another brainstorm in that you can negate the fact that your opponent drew 3 by drawing 3 of your own.

[Kich867]

Tarmogoyf and Emrakul should be immediately disqualified. I don't care how much you dislike either, if they were to be banned right this minute, what would honestly happen? Their decks would just replace them with something else. Show and Tell decks would just put Progenitus or something back in, while Canadian Threshold would just switch to Scavenging Ooze. Then they'd continue on their merry way.

If goyf and emrakul were to be banned several decks would stop being a thing. Progenitus can actually be raced and doesn't wipe your opponent's board, Scavenging Ooze is not in any way shape or form a replacement to Goyf. You actually need a ton of mana to make the Ooze not totally suck as a beater. I agree with a lot of your post, but both of these seem oversimplified and not well thought out points. Thresh wouldn't be a deck afterwards, the alternatives are so immensely inferior to Goyf's size and clock. Werebear would be a better alternative to Scavenging Ooze by a long shot, or some sort of 3/1 Bear/ooze split.

Show And Tell may go back to being just a hivemind deck, Progenitus doesn't provide the clock / power they often need (barring god-hands, but, as we all know the deck falls on it's face enough that any deck that presents a legit clock with a little disruption will beat it more often than not).

[Kich867]

I don't think that mental misstep should be banned, but that's a whole different discussion in itself. I picked jace, not because I think it should be banned or anything, but it is easily the best planeswalker in what was already the best color. It lets you brainstorm each turn for free, and it can protect itself if necessary.

Strictly speaking, jace "beats" emrakul directly. Regardless, emrakul is strictly a "combo" finisher which requires you to untap with it and attack before you get any return on your value. Griselbrand is much more broken than emrakul since as long as you resolve it, you get to refill your hand in spite of any spot removal.

Tarmogoyf and delver are really quite a bit worse than everything else. They're merely efficient beaters that require you to build an entire deck to pump them up, and even then it's just a creature that dies to basically every removal. Emrakul has a much faster clock even if you account for the time it takes to combo it into play.

Calling mental misstep a mistake is like calling force of will a mistake. It will rustle the feathers of a lot of all-in aggro or combo players who hate it when their opponent actually gets to interact with them, but it's complete garbage in a control matchup. The only thing it can even counter in a control match is brainstorm, which is probably good for the format considering how powerful that card is.

I mean, how is it different from something like thoughtseize or even swords to plowshares? You're just trading one for one, and mental misstep is dead quite a bit more often than either of those cards anyway. Being able to pay 2 life for 1 mana ONE TIME to cast a specific spell is not so broken that it makes this card a whole tier above something comparable like thoughtseize. I mean, they finally give nonblue decks a way to answer certain spells, and everyone hates it. Apparently, everyone enjoys blue's dominance of the format, and they will resist any efforts to change it.

I hate the argument that "it counters itself, so everyone will be forced to use it". Guess what, force of will counters force of will, and daze counters daze, and the format is jam packed with both of them and no one ever complains about it. Tarmogoyf "counters" another tarmogoyf, and brainstorm "counters" another brainstorm in that you can negate the fact that your opponent drew 3 by drawing 3 of your own.

I mostly agree with this. I felt like the whole mental misstep thing was grossly overexaggerated and people didn't bother spending time to figure it out, things were too different than what they were used to and flipped shit.

[Bignasty197]

Maybe you can say I'm being nitpicky. But to claim there is "basically no drawback" is flat-out wrong.


Yep, because being forced to play cards like Brainstorm and Force if Will to support your overly aggressive creature is such a drawback.

[Richard Cheese]

Regardless, emrakul is strictly a "combo" finisher which requires you to untap with it and attack before you get any return on your value.

If you aren't giving him haste you're doing it wrong.

[menace13]

Yep, because being forced to play cards like Brainstorm and Force if Will to support your overly aggressive creature is such a drawback.

It's only a drawback if you're not playing non-permanent spells. Which for most other colors means they don't get to use it, exception being red for obv reasons. And, also, It makes me feel that Delver Should have been red just like Snapcaster should be. There's, like, what? 3 good red cards, seriously tho....

Wasteland is a mistake, because I want to run 5 color all non basics control, and maybe Cloudposts!

[TsumiBand]

Yep, because being forced to play cards like Brainstorm and Force if Will to support your overly aggressive creature is such a drawback.

Right?

I seem to recall back in the day some mathematically sound number like "17 Blue cards" being the number needed to reliably Force at least one spell a game. I don't know if a similar number has been determined for Delver, but if it were even in the ballpark of 17 that is not a difficult goal to achieve by just playing a Blue deck. 4 Forces, 4 Brainstorms, 4 Dazes is already 12 nearly ubiquitous Blue cards; after that it's elementary to fill in the remaining 4. It cannot be nearly as much a drawback as some folks insist to 'support' Delver. It's the Tarmogoyf argument but in a different zone of the game; we can pretty much assume there will be cards in the 'yard, you don't need to "build around" Tarmogoyf, just play spells. Delver is quite similar in this regard; are there spells in your deck that aren't dudes? You will probs flip a Delver, nicely done.

[civet five]

Can't find the Show and Tell on that pool. There might be something wrong.

Show and Tell was printed 13 years ago and was a crap rare until recently - it was overshadowed by too many other powerful stuff. Does anyone remember Accelerated Blue? Grim Monolith + 22 islands --> Treachery, Morphling. But not Show and Tell, it didn't do anything. Same with Replenish decks - there simply wasn't anything to Show in (Confiscate lolz), and Tinker was simply better at accelerating finishers like Phyrexian Colossus, Masticore and Phyrexian Processor. In Extended, Oath, Necropotence, Trix, and some decks like original Junk could either drop a better, game ending threat, or kill your fatty. For some reason, it never really caught on as part of Reanimator decks, though it seems obvious that it should have.

It wasn't really until people had something to Show in that it skyrocketed in price and power. You can thank the likes of Progentius, Emrakul and Omnipotence for that.

[Fry]

To summarize what I agree with from Lord Seth's post on page 2:
-Mental Misstep was only spectacular in Legacy (Personally I say it gave blue another counterspell that didn't always have to cost life to play, where as every other color you had to pay 2 life and it was a hard counter even if it was only for one drops, in Legacy that's a big deal for the vast majority of decks)

-Tarmogoyf and Emrakul aren't broken, they'd just have their roles filled by other creatures that are slightly less efficient (My thought: Yeah, you hate Emmy, but you can't cast it turn one, you can theoretically cheat it in turn 1, but you can never hard cast (okay elves does it sometimes) it unless you're cheating with Omniscience, Goyf can be blocked all day long, especially by another goyf, ot doesn't win games on its own unless your opponent has no creatures... For the record I hate Emmy, but it's not broken)

-Jace is a great card, not broken but powerful. (I think that JtMS is answerable at CMC 4 it's not coming play right away, you're able to combo off, beat down (most of the way), or do your own crazy thing to stop it, or just kill by playing a jace of your own (preferably pre-emptively :P ). and it's not hard to counter or make it harder to cast (looking at you Thalia and Lodestone Golem (MUD))

-Delver of Secrets would be extremely hard to replace if at all. Also some of the decks wouldn't be nearly as good if it wasn't around... Mainly RUG. (I personally disagree with his part about there being a drawback (I don't there's a legit one in legacy) with having to play a certain number of spells that would flip it since the decks that use him are the decks that really want him anyway.)

There are many things that I disagree with posted by Malchar, also on page 2:
-He doesn't think Misstep should be banned (though he does agree that's a different discussion)
-Misstep is no better than StP or Thoughtseize since they one for one (Well StP gives the opponent life and Thoughtseize cost's two life, power yes, but not playable in every single deck EVER!)
-Says that it makes non blue decks better (I can agree with that to a point, but it made blue decks greater in comparison to other decks, they didn't always have to pay 2 life to use it and it allowed blue to control even more of the game with another hard counter)

-To use Emrakul it has to make it to the next turn (Ever hear of Sneak Attack... Anyone? Maybe??)

Over all to completely answer the question without the use of previous posts:
-Emmy is the hardest creature to deal with of the chosen creatures, but not unbeatable, just extremely hard (Karakas sort of stops it if your opponent is using Sneak Attack anyway since you can be in the declare attackers step, have it bounced, and since Sneak Attack give haste, if there's a red source open, they can sneak it in again and still hit you with it.)

-Tarnogoyf is strong but really not a game breaker, just very good.

-Jace is frustrating without a doubt, but beatable. This coming from a guy who EXTREMELY RARELY plays anything with blue in it. There are answers that just say no to Jace.

-Misstep was, in my opinion, only really bad for Legacy since it said no too efficiently, no way to keep it from happening like having to pay more mana (as is the case with Daze, that you can play around regardless of it being really good), and ontop of that you can pitch it to force. Didn't bother Standard, Extended (assuming that's even a real format anymore), Modern wouldn't be overly bothered by it either, and Vintage (as far as I've heard it's helped that format a bit allowing other decks to be viable, so it's changed that format positively), but it changed Legacy negatively since "If you aren't playin it, you playing Legacy right."

-I think that Delver is the most broken card in the list you posted since it can win on its own in at most 7 turns (often 6 or even 5 with fetches, forces, and other life reducing cards like bob and thoughtseize. Goyf comes in play turn 2 and is often times a 3/4 in the first turn or two in play and is typically a 4/5 at most. When Goyf gets to attack, Delver has already done 3, putting it at least one attack phase closer to defeat than goyf.), it flips and has no way of flipping back without a flicker or bounce effect with flying, which is what really puts it over the top, crazy powerful in standard, modern (where it's legal and Wild Nacatl isn't... Don't get that one, you can shink the cat with well aimed land-d or blood moon and oncec delver flips it never gets smaller short of the same exact things that would on the cat, and it FLIES to boot.), and of course Legacy where it's most popular (in my opinion at least) and shines through just how good it is more than any other format I've ever heard of.

In short delver is the most singular powerful card on its own merits, but the others have the potential to be if played in the right decks, but other cards are NEEDED to support them.

[Jenni]

I think misstep was the bigger mistake in terms of power level. A counterspell that doesn't require any colour commitment, and hits so many key cards in the format, is really rediculous.

In terms of design, though, I would say delver. It just feels like a colour-pie violation to give blue such an efficient, aggresive creature - that should be Red and White's jobs, and I think delver would be MUCH better in one of those colours. I don't think it's power level is that bothersome though. It's good, but it dies to basically any removal.

[Vacrix]

I see in another way: it was Tarmogoyf being printed at the last moment with 1G in the cost instead of 2G to have been the first mistake, basically forcing from that moment card design to keep it up with its level- resulting into the first, evident starting point of modern-blocks power creep.
Don't you remember how scandalously overpowered it was in comparison to everything else at the time?
It took a real chunk of time to slowly spit out cards that could blur its brokenness, until today where other following bombs have really pushed it down-at least, in Legacy. If the Tarmogoyf mistake wasn't done, perhaps nowadays we wouldn't even be having Snapcaster Mage, nor Delver, nor Jace, and so on.Exactly.

If the rest of you recall, Goyf was so good that it was rampantly played. Some of the best cards in the current metagame would probably have never been printed if they didn't have to compete in power with Goyf: Knight of the Reliquary, Ooze, Delver, Nacatl, Goblin Guide.. and arguably cards that have powercreep through their utility like Snapcaster, Clique, SFM, Noble Hierarch, Dryad Militant, Judge's Familiar, Krenko, and Thalia... which, if any of those had come out around the advent of Goyf, would have been absurd to even suggest their existence.

When Goyf happened.. cards started getting exponentially better. Since Goyf, the format changes dramatically every time they print a new bomb to balance out the bombs from previous sets. Since Goyf, we've been acquiring a wealth of new format staples that have completely warped the metagame.

Unfortunately for this argument, however, I actually prefer this format to the pre-Goyf format. Its more interesting and more fun to play in. However.. I do not believe any of the following bombs should ever have been printed:
Ad Nauseam - storm auto-pilot. It used to be a relatively difficult deck to play well. It didn't need this card at all and arguably produced necessarily better storm hate like Flusterstorm and Thalia.
Delver of Secrets - RUG will be secure as the best deck in the format as long as they have the most efficient creature in Legacy, the best counterspell and the best cantrip. They totally didn't need this when they already had Goose and Goyf.
Mental Misstep - This catastrophe was kinda like saying Kobe Bryant can play on everybody's team.. and the format got retarded faster than a half-aborted child doing whippits.


So in short, Goyf was a huge mistake that they've mostly corrected but they are still struggling to equalize the power creep and therefore printing stupidly good cards in the process. Sometimes its good for the format, sometimes not. I guess thats really a matter of what you consider a balanced format to be. Although.. I'll say again I do like this format more with the exception of the printing of the above 3 cards (unless I missed something).

If I were wizards.. I'd try to dislodge RUG from the top of the format by bringing an archetype out of Tier 2 by printing something specifically for it. What happened to mono-black aggro/control? The deck became Dead Guy, or people just play The Rock because of cards like Goyf and Ooze. I'd like to see some new hyper efficient black creatures that can't get played along side Force of Will.

[Setherial]

Mental mistep and Delver of Secrets obviously

Emrakul should't even be in the list. If you want a gamebreaking fattie Griselbrand is what makes a lot of these types of decks good, not emrakul. You can survive a resolved emrakul, you don't survive a resolved Griselbrand 9 out of 10 times.

Goyf is old news, yes it made creatures obsolete but now we're at a point that goyf isn't even that impressive anymore.

Jace might be nuts but it has a very fair mana cost in legacy and it's just one of the few very good 4 drops and that can win games for control decks these days.

[kingtk3]

I make some preliminary remarks: I'm analizing those cards by the Legacy point of view.

I think that Tarmogoyf WAS the biggest mistake: at the time it was printed it instantly obsoleted all the other creatures in an uncomparable way (the same was for wild mongrel but in a smaller scale). Someone already wrote this, but after goyf wizards has been printing more unreasonable creatures in order to fill the gap, and Delver is clearly one of them, although I don't see it as broken as was goyf at the time of his printing.

In fact, I don't see Delver broken at all. It's a 1/1 for U that may become a 3/2 flying, so it's clearly an aggressive creature, but in order to flip it you need to play Blue (which is not an aggressive colour) and many instants/sorceries, thus diliuting your creature count which weakens your aggressiveness.
Don't misunderstand me, first turn Delver, second turn flip it's almost ever a 6 turn clock if unanswered, but you have to build a deck around it (UR burn) or put it in deck that already can support it (Canadian *****): you cannot put it in every aggressive deck just by splashing U. Goyf, instead, over the years had become the creature of choice for aggro, aggro-control and some control (someone remembers bant countertop?) decks too because it's easily splashable and doesn't require a particular setup or deck building.

Mental Misstep was clearly too format defining for Legacy (someone wrote "it made decks of 56 cards": you're right!!) and is the card with the heavier immediate impact, but on the long run I think goyf was the biggest mistake: I don't think I'm too far from the target if I say that todays Leagacy is because of goyf.

[Amon Amarth]

I think some of you guys are mixing up your correlation with your causation: Tarmogoyf didn't suddenly make WotC start printing better creatures afterwards. Goyf wasn't even that good in Standard. It wasn't the herald of anything. They started printing better creatures because creatures sucked for most of Magic's history.

[tsabo_tavoc]

Actually, Delver of Secrets is not the problem, Incestile Aberration is, :laugh: I mean had they printed the Insect as a 2/2 flyer. I hope WotC will learn from this.

Mental Misstep is very elegent from the design point of view. It did warp the format too much, however, much like Brainstorm has been.

[rufus]

Show and Tell was printed 13 years ago and was a crap rare until recently - it was overshadowed by too many other powerful stuff.
That's the story of something like Lion's Eye Diamond too - it was a crap rare for a while. The fact is that Show and Tell breaks the fundamental rule of 'mana costs mean something'. Sure Tinker does the same thing, but better. That's why Tinker is banned. Yes, WoTC could have continued to print only terrible big creatures, but that's pretty sad. Moreover, WoTC *knew* that that mechanic was a bad idea since Eureka had already been in circulation for a while at that point.

[Gheizen64]

I think some of you guys are mixing up your correlation with your causation: Tarmogoyf didn't suddenly make WotC start printing better creatures afterwards. Goyf wasn't even that good in Standard. It wasn't the herald of anything. They started printing better creatures because creatures sucked for most of Magic's history.

Truth in those words.

[Asthereal]

I chose Delver. Blue was good enough as it was.

Misstep was probably the biggest mistake, viewed in general terms.
But... I liked Misstep. It was a cheap answer that any deck could play.
And it slowed down the really unfair stuff (Storm, Ichorid), so I could suddenly play GW creatures competitively. :smile:
(I don't really get how that's still a deck btw. :tongue: )

[phonics]

Truth in those words.

Creatures may have been pretty poor, but Im pretty sure there has always been relevant creature based decks in standard, like the fires deck during saga/masques. Just waiting till wizard prints

snapcaster abberation
RB
3/2
flash
flying
islands cant be used to cast this
snapcasts when eob

[Squirrel]

What i think about the choices(Being pretty costy (€) should never be the complain):
Tarmogoyf:
Tarmogoyf may be the first of a flood of better creatures, but the question is the creature-powercreep a mistake? i think no, spells are good already, and tarmgoyf is not even close in terms of power of some other creatures. and he's vanilla.

Jace the Mind Sculptor
Yes he is the best walker, Yes he is powerfull, Yes he is blue, but he isn't unfair. Why? I remember somebody told me, youre only playing cards with 4cc if theyre going to win.

Emrakul
the holy flying spaghettimonster, the yu gi oh card of magic: He may not be flavourfull, he certainly is powerfull, but along with the power creep of creatures, they want to go bigger, and for 15 i want something that wins me the game. There's a reason Krosan Cloudscraper wasn't good ever.

Delver of Secrets
Ahh, were getting to the powerlevel of "mistakes". Hes aggro, hes blue, he has evasion, his back isnt normal.. there are many reasons to hate, much like the other cards mentioned in my post (Snapcaster Mage, Senseis divining top,Brainstorm now mentioned for hate purposes)
My personal opinion says Delver is a little to powerfull ("should be red/black etc"), but not enough to say it's a big mistake.Is it a mistake? A small one, but nevertheless, a mistake.

Mental Misstep
DING DING DING We have a Winner here: Mental Misstep is blu.. No Whait the real reasons: Misstep is free for all, shifts the Meta and invalides many archetypes (more than the cards above). The card destroys mana curves and would be played in every deck that can afford the deck space. Also, the card is banned currently, and Snapcaster + Misstep is something which would let me quit Legacy and play modern. Its that shitty.

[Anusien]

As far as I can tell, R&D only considers two of these actual "mistakes". Hint: neither is winning in the poll.

[Freggle]

As far as I can tell, R&D only considers two of these actual "mistakes". Hint: neither is winning in the poll.

My guess would be Jace and Tarmogoyf.

Typically, things that are broken are enablers, and of the list provided there are no enablers.

Tarmogoyf: The card is fine. There is no doubt that in the right shell it pushes the cost vs. p/t ratio to an absurd level, however it is a vanilla, and is susceptible to graveyard hate. It would have been better as :g::g: making it more green centric, but its fine.

Mental Misstep: This card was fair. It is a card for a card. I think if the format was left alone it would have evolved around it. First by omitting most if not all 1 CMC cards, then pilots would move the Missteps to the board or eliminate them and the format would begin to balance out. There would be a long transition period, but I think that is healthy. I personally thought it was correct to give more fair strategies a tool against some unfair decks. I think Wizards was tired of the complaints, and was looking at the data in a way in which it did allow decks to win more when playing it, but didn't take into account the long evolution period. I also think they were preemptively stopping Snapcaster Mage and Mental Misstep being in Legacy at the same time (which I still think would have been ultimately is fine.)

Emrakul: It's 15 mana. 15! Look at the enablers not the bomb.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor Jace is a good card, but it's not unbeatable. A good aggro deck can handle a Jace fairly handedly, combo doesn't care so it's more of a control on control card. It's a good card, and needs to be answered, but that is what all cards should strive for.

Delver: Again, still annoying, but still vanilla. I do not know why :u: should get such an aggressive creature, but it's still not broken. It does have a draw back, but it's drawback does play into blues strengths so it is a weird design. I also find it odd that it does not transform back like most other transform cards. I find that to be very peculiar, but I chalk that up to an attempt by Wizards to make :u: great again (which draws / keeps a lot of people playing) So in the end very good, but not broken.

Of all the ones listed I do think Delver is the closest, but certainly not ban worthy. For the record I personally have a much bigger issue with Vendilion Clique (still not ban worthy) than I do with Delver. I do not understand why a :u::u: card should have the ability to quasi-discard. I can understand if it were gold, but a :u::u: card? Then to top it off with evasion (flying) an aggressive body (3/1) AND flash?

Okay flash is a blue ability, as well as flying, but a 3/1 that comes with hand information and card replacement all on the came card? That is a little much.

The cards that are coming the closest to banning today in my opinion are:

- Show and Tell
- Lions Eye Diamond
- Hypergenesis (sort of)

Lastly, to all the people that think Brainstom is overpowered I'd ask is it really the Brainstorms causing the issue or is it the fetches? Fetches fuel a LOT of powerful things in the format (Knight, Tarmogoyf, Goose, Brainstorm...) and make 3 colors possible (Xxx decks or XXx decks) and invalidate a number land destruction tactics.

A Brainstorm without the shuffle is very underwhelming.

[SaberTooth]

with all the hatebears and the actual numbers of players playing storm, led is not banneable. Delver of secrets is REALLY powerful

[Phoenix Ignition]

I'm surprised there's no Snapcaster Mage on here. I hate that card and it should have very obviously been Red.

That said, Mental Misstep was clearly the most terrible card in both gameplay and design that we've seen. I can't believe those idiots thought it would be a good thing for eternal formats.

[rufus]

I think the flip cards are a terrible design. As such, I had to chose Delver from that list.

[TsumiBand]

Delver: Again, still annoying, but still vanilla. I do not know why :u: should get such an aggressive creature, but it's still not broken. It does have a draw back, but it's drawback does play into blues strengths so it is a weird design. I also find it odd that it does not transform back like most other transform cards. I find that to be very peculiar, but I chalk that up to an attempt by Wizards to make :u: great again (which draws / keeps a lot of people playing) So in the end very good, but not broken.

I'll take it in the manner it was implied, but as a minor nitpick - Delver of Secrets may technically be a vanilla 1/1, but its counterpart has flying, which is entirely relevant to the discussion. I'll assume you meant that Insectile Aberration does not have an ability like, say, Thalia - it doesn't transform into a hatebear - but the flying bit is what makes it really truly great. If it was just a Reckless Waif that never flipped back, well, that's all it'd be. As long as we're talking about other cards that threaten design space, Tarmogoyf doesn't have evasion, so it's at the mercy of whatever derpy chumps get tossed in front of it. Typhoid Rats will trade with a Tarmogoyf. That will probably never happen to a Delver (you might run into Vampire Nighthawk on a bad day, but by then the opponent already took 9 in the air, so whatever).

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I think some of you guys are mixing up your correlation with your causation: Tarmogoyf didn't suddenly make WotC start printing better creatures afterwards. Goyf wasn't even that good in Standard. It wasn't the herald of anything. They started printing better creatures because creatures sucked for most of Magic's history.

I partially agree with this, but also disagree with a major component. I don't think Gotf spurred the creation or ever more powerful critters, but I also don't think creatures sucked after the Ice Age block had end (from Mirage block forward). It's an oft repeated mantra that "creatures were bad" but not necessarily true. From Mirage block onwards, critters played a key role in most strategies, taking center stage when Tempest was released in one of the biggest innovations in Magic strategy ever (Sligh), and taking almost complete control in the Masques-Onslaught period, which was the end of the "old" ways.

This meme is propagated mostly because cards/sets were not properly tested and a lot of Magic fundamentals weren't known. It took them years to understand that Necropotence was broken, Wizards R&D felt Dark Ritual, Counterspell, and Brainstorm were basic staples on the same plane as Shock, Rampant Growth, and Healing Salve, and they had no such thing as the FFL attempting to scout ahead for broken combos. So as a result, you had degenerate combo decks emerging in all formats, quashing most any "fair" decks. It wasn't that creatures sucked for most of Magic's history, it's that Wizard's R&D sucked for most of Magic's history. Creatures on the power level of Masques-Onslaught critters, with the design/development discipline that emerged around Invasion block were perfectly fine. You don't need absurd shit like Thragtusk, Snappy, Delver, Resto Angel, Emrakul, Angel of Serenity, Titans, and the like. You just need to make sure you don't reprint Necro in a core set, print Prosperity/Cadaverous Bloom in the same set, and realize that Brainstorm and Dark Ritual are good...really good in fact.

Of course, that all assumes Wizards is out for the health of the game above all. But I bet market research has told them splashy critters drive sales of packs, hence more critter power creep.

[Stinky-Dinkins]

Delver is absurd and obnoxious as a blue card and absolutely should never have been printed.

MM was more broken on a technical level but it was also more "bannable," so I take that into account. It was much simpler for Wizards to justify banning MM so, in a way, it made it less harmful in the long run (seeing as the damage to the format was limited by its lifespan) and less of a mistake. They thought MM would be a silver bullet that wouldn't be used exclusively by decks playing blue but actually work against the power of blue overall ("Hey, a card everyone can cast for free that does in Brainstorm, etc.") in decks that otherwise wouldn't be playing the color, which is a silly thought, but at the end of the day it only made blue more powerful. After MM worked against its original intent in a way that warped the format it was binned without a second thought. They won't bring the hammer down on Delver, it's doing exactly what it was designed to do so in that respect Wizards can't call it a "mistake" as they did with MM and push it off the table but I don't think its impact was foreseen. As a blue card, though, it's just too damn powerful.... it's not like the color needed the help.

I choose Delver.

[MoxBropal]

Delver is the clear answer for me. It's absolutely in the wrong color. It should have been red. Blue has no business getting cards that swing for 3 in the air on turn 2. Do I think its oppressive? No. But it is frustrating to see blue get a creature more aggressive than anything red has.

Everything else listed I think is less of a mistake...Tarmo is fair, JTMS is beatable, Emrakul sucks unless you surround him with enablers, and Misstep seemed more like a "HOLY CRAP WE'RE PRINTING ANOTHER FREE COUNTERSPELL BUY THE PACKS" ploy than anything else.

[Fuzzy]

Survival of the Fittest, obv.

[JDK]

Mental Misstep has been answered, and corrected in Legacy. While it's the strongest/most egregious abuse of free mana, it's no longer Legacy relevant.

Hence, I picked Delver of Secret. This card alone has done more to polarize Legacy into "hurp derp play blue or lose" mentality. I would not shed a tear to see Delver as a strategy die in napalm.

Patiently waiting for a :r: 2/2 Goblin Human that deals 2 damage to blue creatures when it EtB. It would be a fair card.
While I am always in for new red 1- and 2-Drops, I cannot understand how Delver is polarizing in terms of "blue vs. all". http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?23-Decks-to-Beat -> How many decks in there play Delver and are blue? "play blue because of Delver" is just far from reality. I would call it impactful, but neither "big mistake" nor "polarizing".

[Darkenslight]

While I am always in for new red 1- and 2-Drops, I cannot understand how Delver is polarizing in terms of "blue vs. all". http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?23-Decks-to-Beat -> How many decks in there play Delver and are blue? "play blue because of Delver" is just far from reality. I would call it impactful, but neither "big mistake" nor "polarizing".

Of the Tempo decks, Delver is in all of the base-Blue ones. Every one in the DTB forum that is Blue and Tempo-oriented requires 4 Delver. I'd argue that that is a polarizing effect on the deck-type.

[Malchar]

-Misstep is no better than StP or Thoughtseize since they one for one (Well StP gives the opponent life and Thoughtseize cost's two life, power yes, but not playable in every single deck EVER!)

All of the spot removal spells have their advantages and disadvantages. Thoughtseize costs 2 life and can only hit cards before they are cast. Mental Misstep costs 2 life and can only hit cards as they are being cast. Swords to Plowshares gives the opponent life and hits cards after they are cast. Strictly speaking, Mental Misstep has the narrowest window of application. It costs 1 less mana than the others, but it also only hits spells with cmc 1. I suppose it counters delver, which most people seem to think is one of the most imbalanced cards ever, but most of the game-winning spells cost 2 or more. Mental Misstep doesn't really counter any spells that would go on to win someone the game anyway, except perhaps brainstorm, but the meta would certainly be better off with less of that going around in the first place.


-Says that it makes non blue decks better (I can agree with that to a point, but it made blue decks greater in comparison to other decks, they didn't always have to pay 2 life to use it and it allowed blue to control even more of the game with another hard counter)

For the first time, it gave nonblue decks a way to stop brainstorm and ponder. Let me say again, for the first time, it gave nonblue decks a way to stop brainstorm and ponder. I think that blue decks definitely would have been worse off if they let mental misstep stay and the metagame had settled. I think that a lot of people dislike the blue dominance, but they mistakenly assume that any blue counterspell is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. What if mental misstep had been printed as a red card? The only disadvantage would be that you can't pitch it to fow. Is that really the difference between it being praised or hated?

[Michael Keller]

I felt like the whole mental misstep thing was grossly overexaggerated and people didn't bother spending time to figure it out, things were too different than what they were used to and flipped shit.

That's absurd.

Any card that warps an entire format to the point where deck builders are forced to either play said card or restructure their deck to avoid losing to it is at its very core ban-worthy. No such card belongs in a format where the turn one play is as crucial as Legacy; where critical plays are measured by the strength of a designers' ability to both create and execute. Both concepts are twisted with said card at large, and the reason people "flipped shit" was because the card existed in just about every competitive list during its legality. The power level of cards in Vintage allow deck builders to overcome something like Misstep easily and without its utility. Legacy doesn't have the luxury of playing out overpowered hands on a regular basis or with a greater frequency than Vintage, which is why a card that is largely predicated on stunting any and all turn one plays - possible in any deck with any colors at the cost of two life - should be eradicated.

Legacy by its very nature is the deepest and most wide-open format there is. All other reasons aside, every list starting off with the same four cards effectively nullifies the creative engine keeping the format progressing. Not to mention how boring and stale the card made Legacy while it was legal.

[death]

People seem to forget that Snapcaster Mage was on the verge of hitting the shelves when Mental Misstep got axed. Those two shouldn't be allowed to co-exist as they will tear this format apart, one had to go, a pre-emptive ban on Snapcaster obviously seemed ridiculous and would also hurt their integrity/profits. Their decision wasn't all that surprising in the end.

EDIT - Snapcaster Mage should have been there, Terminus should have been there but my vote goes to Jace, the Mind Sculptor - of all the "mistakes" WotC made since Tolarian Academy/Show and Tell/Tinker... I am glad they made a mistake on this one. Thank you Wizards, I love absolutely <3 the card !!

[Julian23]

The only good thing that came out of Mental Misstep was NO RUG. Deck was busted and played the best sideboard in the entire history of Magic. Till this day, I still have wet dreams about NO RUG.

[TsumiBand]

I think the Mental Misstep problem is the same as the problem with Delver, just in reverse. Delver is a Blue card that is on par with a series of other aggro creatures in other colors, where it "shouldn't be" because it's an efficient weenie beater which Blue "shouldn't have". Mental Misstep is a hard counter that every deck can play without running any Blue. Green decks "should not have" hard counters that are quite so unconditional, and so it's a design mistake in this regard.

[FieryBalrog]

I think the Mental Misstep problem is the same as the problem with Delver, just in reverse. Delver is a Blue card that is on par with a series of other aggro creatures in other colors, where it "shouldn't be" because it's an efficient weenie beater which Blue "shouldn't have". Mental Misstep is a hard counter that every deck can play without running any Blue. Green decks "should not have" hard counters that are quite so unconditional, and so it's a design mistake in this regard.

It doesn't always work like that. Colorless cards (or cards castable by anyone) often have effects from a particular color and make it available to other colors. Blue decks "should not have" sweepers like E.E., only white or green/black should... yet they do, eh? While MM was a mistake, I don't see why other colors can't get access to counterspells.

I mean, that was the whole point of Phyrexian mana (which you can argue was a design mistake overall, and that could be right). Gut Shot allows anyone to do 1 dmg to things. Metamorph gives everyone clones. Dismember gives everyone removal. Green and White... well there are no good phyrexian green or white cards, so.

[Hanni]

Mental Misstep was only absurd because the format is so centric on playing the most efficient spells. I'm not saying that the card wasn't format warping, because it very clearly was, but I think had it remained unbanned for a long enough time, we would have seen a trend in the longterm of decks evolving into higher cc ranges. It would have slowed down the format, but opened up some design space by allowing some of the more-powerful currently-unplayable cards in higher cc ranges to become viable.

The effect of Mental Misstep wasn't healthy, but it would have been interesting to see how the format would have evolved if it wouldn't have been banned so quickly.

[TsumiBand]

It doesn't always work like that. Colorless cards (or cards castable by anyone) often have effects from a particular color and make it available to other colors. Blue decks "should not have" sweepers like E.E., only white or green/black should... yet they do, eh? While MM was a mistake, I don't see why other colors can't get access to counterspells.

I mean, that was the whole point of Phyrexian mana (which you can argue was a design mistake overall, and that could be right). Gut Shot allows anyone to do 1 dmg to things. Metamorph gives everyone clones. Dismember gives everyone removal. Green and White... well there are no good phyrexian green or white cards, so.

No love for Birthing Pod? :( (maybe not in legacy)

Phyrexian mana probably can't be compared to artifact spells because of its "alternative casting cost" nature. Engineered Explosives for 0 cannot function in the same manner as Engineered Explosives for 2; meanwhile Dismember can, under circumstance of the mana base, cost 1 and 4 life or 1BB. For me this is where arguments about functional analogs really do break down, re: everything's a Time Walk, or colorless costs are colorless costs. Yeah, okay, so a Sword of Fire and Ice lets a monogreen deck Shock things and draw cards, or something dumb like Emrakul gives everyone a 15/15 Time Walking uberspaghetti monster. But they cost a lot of mana under their own power, and they have mitigating requirements beyond "take out the worst four cards in your deck and play me to make your deck better". Mental Misstep just goes in over your worst four cards.

In the strictest sense I don't disagree, that other colors should be able to experience countering spells, when there are so few other mechanics that aren't shared between colors (maybe discard is almost expressly Black, I'm half-out the door and not going to google-fu nonblack discard examples). But printing a method to enable every deck to play a hard counter on turn 0, that quickly becomes so popular and playable that not only does it find its way into almost every 75 you can think of but is really its own best answer (siding in MM for opposing MM), and it fundamentally changes the way Legacy decks have to think about their mana curve in ways that even Counterbalance can't touch b/c Counter-Top requires a whole set of conditions to be in effect... yeah, no, Mental Misstep itself would have infected the format in a big way.

[Hanni]

There are several decent green and white cards with Phyrexian mana, regardless if people aren't using them right now.

[FieryBalrog]

No love for Birthing Pod? :( (maybe not in legacy)

Phyrexian mana probably can't be compared to artifact spells because of its "alternative casting cost" nature. Engineered Explosives for 0 cannot function in the same manner as Engineered Explosives for 2; meanwhile Dismember can, under circumstance of the mana base, cost 1 and 4 life or 1BB. For me this is where arguments about functional analogs really do break down, re: everything's a Time Walk, or colorless costs are colorless costs. Yeah, okay, so a Sword of Fire and Ice lets a monogreen deck Shock things and draw cards, or something dumb like Emrakul gives everyone a 15/15 Time Walking uberspaghetti monster. But they cost a lot of mana under their own power, and they have mitigating requirements beyond "take out the worst four cards in your deck and play me to make your deck better". Mental Misstep just goes in over your worst four cards.

In the strictest sense I don't disagree, that other colors should be able to experience countering spells, when there are so few other mechanics that aren't shared between colors (maybe discard is almost expressly Black, I'm half-out the door and not going to google-fu nonblack discard examples). But printing a method to enable every deck to play a hard counter on turn 0, that quickly becomes so popular and playable that not only does it find its way into almost every 75 you can think of but is really its own best answer (siding in MM for opposing MM), and it fundamentally changes the way Legacy decks have to think about their mana curve in ways that even Counterbalance can't touch b/c Counter-Top requires a whole set of conditions to be in effect... yeah, no, Mental Misstep itself would have infected the format in a big way.

I don't argue in the slightest that MM was OK. I disliked it from the moment it hit the format. The problem with MM wasn't that it gave non-blue decks a counter, the problem was that it made blue decks even stronger, since MM slots more neatly into a FoW-Brainstorm shell than it does into, say, Zoo.

[monovfox]

Delver is not a mistake. No he shouldn't have been a different color, though removing the flying would have made it much more balanced. I am glad he exists, even though I hate tempo as a deck. I think he is a fair vanilla creature (and I don't care that he doesn't fit the "flavor" of blue.alao, had he been red it would have been so much worse, just imagine the amount of burn you would see. Eewwwww.

Show and Tell is the card that should be banned. It's just gross. Show and Tell omniscience into emrakul is gg for most non blue decks in game 1. (save maverick and death and taxes). Most decks have a problem with show and tell omniscience. You know it's bad when goblins nulls to 5 lookin for its answer to show and tell.

[slave]

Show and Tell has warped the format.
Almost every top-tier deck has some way to handle Show in the sideboard, same way you're meant to have graveyard hate, Grips for enchantments etc etc.
If changing the format qualifies for "Ban this card", then I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Its a good win-con, but then so is Reanimate with Entomb, and all the other crazy decks that can land a win-con on turn 2.


(Mental Misstep) would have slowed down the format, but opened up some design space by allowing some of the more-powerful currently-unplayable cards in higher cc ranges to become viable..... but it would have been interesting to see how the format would have evolved if it wouldn't have been banned so quickly.
Good Point.


I'd like to see some new hyper efficient black creatures that can't get played along side Force of Will.
Lets consider some 1-CMC R/B creatures;
Black gets creatures like Vampire Lacerator, Rakdos Cackler, Carnophage.
Red gets Goblin Guide, Vexing Devil, Figure of Destiny
They're all one-mana, but most have a significant downside worth considering.


The point of blue is that it is able to do anything.
This is crap.
Blue isn't meant to get aggro creatures that are as good, or better than, ANY of the other colours, their creatures are meant to be the weakest according to the colour pie.
The drawback of Delver in a deck full of cantrip-spells isn't a drawback at all, it's an inevitable process.
Look at the creatures I listed for R/B above, and you'll see how much Delver raped the colour pie.
Let's not stop there though, let's compare the most efficient White creature with Flying and 3 power. Serra Avenger. The only 2-CMC creature for White with close to Delver's power level. All others start at 3-mana, and even some of them have a downside or conditonal nature.

Surely, they should have made it weaker, more conditional (like say, flip it back if you get another spell), made it legendary, or put fading counters on it or something.
I can understand you believing Delver being a very Blue card - and that's fine - but it's too powerful for it's mana cost.

I vote Delver.

[Vacrix]

@ slave

Maybe if Lacerator were printed as a 3/3, but then control would run it along side Delver as seen with Goblin Guide. I'm thinking more of something like

(card name) B
Creature - Shade
Monomorphic (Sacrifice ~ if you control any non-Swamp lands or non-Black creatures)
3/3
U

Even then, it simply trades with a flipped Delver.

[Gheizen64]

@ slave

Maybe if Lacerator were printed as a 3/3, but then control would run it along side Delver as seen with Goblin Guide. I'm thinking more of something like

(card name) B
Creature - Shade
Monomorphic (Sacrifice ~ if you control any non-Swamp lands or non-Black creatures)
3/3
U

Even then, it simply trades with a flipped Delver.

Just make it BB or BBB bros, here's your card that is difficult to splash.

[Kuma]

The biggest mistake is easily Mental Misstep, as that card was correctly banned for making the format almost entirely blue and killing diversity. Delver of Secrets is the next biggest mistake by far, as it's arguably the strongest creature in Legacy in what is supposed to be the weakest creature color. We currently have two Delver decks in the DTB and one of them is far and away the most successful deck in Legacy.

Tarmogoyf, Jace, and Emrakul aren't currently having an oppressive effect on the format. They're all played in their respective decks, but they aren't overpowering or dominating the format. I guess Tarmogoyf gets third for once belonging in almost every deck.

[TsumiBand]

The biggest mistake is easily Mental Misstep, as that card was correctly banned for making the format almost entirely blue and killing diversity. Delver of Secrets is the next biggest mistake by far, as it's arguably the strongest creature in Legacy in what is supposed to be the weakest creature color. We currently have two Delver decks in the DTB and one of them is far and away the most successful deck in Legacy.

Tarmogoyf, Jace, and Emrakul aren't currently having an oppressive effect on the format. They're all played in their respective decks, but they aren't overpowering or dominating the format. I guess Tarmogoyf gets third for once belonging in almost every deck.

Yeah, Tarmogoyf has been overshadowed somewhat by power creep, but it took a shit of a long time for that guy to quit worming its way into every decklist ever. I mean Jesus, people were putting that dude into everything. BWg Deadguy feat. Goyf. Rg Goblins, now comes with Goyf. Stupid 3 color control deck + G for Goyf, and so on. There are so few other format staples that got splashed so readily (except for of course Misstep, I suppose).

Honestly I would have voted Tarmogoyf because he legitimately prevents a lot of really cool things from getting played. Anyone remember goddamned Werebear? I love Werebear. I hate that a 4/4 for 1G that taps for G can't be played b/c this stupid 5/6 for 1G exists. I would have voted for Tarmogoyf, but honestly he is in the correct color for dumb beaters without evasion, even if it is undercosted and should have been at least GG or 1GG or something like every damn other Lhurgoyf. Delver just breaks the rule too hard, I mean fuck it could at LEAST have the transform clause that everything else seems to have, at least that way it's somewhat on par with Reckless Waif. But instead it's just a really solid weenie beatstick, for U. Sadness.

[MoxBropal]

Good point bringing up Reckless Waif. It was printed at uncommon while Delver was printed at common. Its the flying that puts it over the top. Waif, on the other hand, is unplayable in Legacy. Do you guys think they even play Legacy in future league?

Maybe if WoTc had abandoned the stupid infect experiment and instead given us a block's worth of playable, on-color aggro creatures, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

[TsumiBand]

Good point bringing up Reckless Waif. It was printed at uncommon while Delver was printed at common. Its the flying that puts it over the top. Waif, on the other hand, is unplayable in Legacy. Do you guys think they even play Legacy in future league?

Maybe if WoTc had abandoned the stupid infect experiment and instead given us a block's worth of playable, on-color aggro creatures, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they only test Standard and maybe Modern (and doubtless Modern testing will only last a few more years until the format's brokenness just becomes as high as the older Eternals, at which point they seem to trust the format to handle itself). I mean some of the derpy stuff they throw out there has just got to be in spite of Vintage (if not Legacy). Consider some of the huge robots they print from time to time. There's no chance in hell that they didn't realize how Tinker > Blightsteel Colossus would play out. It's not even about testing it at that point; if you're designing Magic cards in the 21st century, it's just got to be a fact of knowledge and intuition by this point that a large robot is already a combo with Tinker. So why bother testing it? There's nothing to gain from testing Tinker > BSC, because the only thing that happens is the opponent either untaps and wins, or they don't.

[JDK]

Of the Tempo decks, Delver is in all of the base-Blue ones. Every one in the DTB forum that is Blue and Tempo-oriented requires 4 Delver. I'd argue that that is a polarizing effect on the deck-type.

So now we went from "blue" to "blue tempo", which basically comes down to RUG and BUG. That's 2 out of 6 DTBs with blue in them...

[Piceli89]

There's no doubt that Delver is overpowered, but I wouldn't call it broken. Sure it allows strong plays (espcially on the play) for tempo decks that often manage to stick a first turn Delver, flip it and make it go to the home for 6 turns, but you also have to take into account that:
- he's a mediocre topdeck in certain situations. If the game has prolongued to mid-game, he's a topdecked 1/1 that won't resolve board states like Goyf could do (and Mongoose against some decks choked of 2/x- 1/x).
- he can be REBbed in addition to other removals;
- bouncing it means the opponent loses two turns.
- although tempo decks are obviously built with the higher chances of it flipping, it still remains a risky card, that will betray you and your math from time to time not flipping when you crucially needed it to win the game. By the way, Delver seems to work on a consistently-enough base only in decks ala Threshold; it was tested in other several shells (with Stoneforge, with Jace, and so on), and it produced few/poor results (aside from a UWb thingie doing well in the last BoM).
This makes it pretty much a tempo-only card, and tthose are being hurt by some of the new RtR entries.


The real issue posed by those decks isn't Delver per se, but the mana-denial structure around it that allows to capitalize its p/t ratio quickly.
Most of the decks fold to Stifle and Wasteland before than to Delver itself; if you build it to endure tempo decks' initial assault, where they shine because of their structure (i.e. lots of basics and cheap removal, which also turn out to be not-surprisingly good in a metagame where all aggro and aggro-control is packing Wasteland and Deathrite Shaman+Confidant are becoming serious threats) you're already halfway there.
Strictly talking from a midrange deck perspective.

[Greenpoe]

With Deathrite Shaman + Abrupt Decay bringing a rise to junk decks which will deal with tempo (B/G decks should be strong vs. tempo, since they have big creatures, raw card advantage, and plenty of removal), and with S&T Omniscience seeming to lose steam and Helm/Rest in Peace starting to rise up, I expect a meta-shift.

[Zombie]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they only test Standard and maybe Modern (and doubtless Modern testing will only last a few more years until the format's brokenness just becomes as high as the older Eternals, at which point they seem to trust the format to handle itself). I mean some of the derpy stuff they throw out there has just got to be in spite of Vintage (if not Legacy). Consider some of the huge robots they print from time to time. There's no chance in hell that they didn't realize how Tinker > Blightsteel Colossus would play out. It's not even about testing it at that point; if you're designing Magic cards in the 21st century, it's just got to be a fact of knowledge and intuition by this point that a large robot is already a combo with Tinker. So why bother testing it? There's nothing to gain from testing Tinker > BSC, because the only thing that happens is the opponent either untaps and wins, or they don't.

They've said themselves they largely focus on Limited and secondarily Standard during FFL testing. A smidge of Modern might be expected. Legacy and Vintage are left to the wolves.

[dunk]

They've said themselves they largely focus on Limited and secondarily Standard during FFL testing. A smidge of Modern might be expected. Legacy and Vintage are left to the wolves.

Eh, not true. They often print cards that are intended for eternal formats, latest example is Abrupt Decay. Lodestone Golem is another example of a card made for vintage - they could imagine the impact it would have on the format, and that is why they created it in the first place.

[FieryBalrog]

Delver was very stupid in Standard too, what with half a dozen free instants and Ponder and Mana Leak in the format, and it doesn't exactly take a genius to figure out that throwing them together results in a brutal tempo deck. Actually they've said that Delver was a late change (like so many other broken cards) and that they severely overestimated how hard it was to flip him. Still, it should have set off alarm bells that a U creature permanently flips to 3/2 flying for a non-crazy condition. It just doesn't fit the color, period.

[feline]

Since Mental Misstep is the only one on the list that's banned, I voted for that one.

[obituary 95]

The biggest mistake is easily Mental Misstep, as that card was correctly banned for making the format almost entirely blue and killing diversity. Delver of Secrets is the next biggest mistake by far, as it's arguably the strongest creature in Legacy in what is supposed to be the weakest creature color. We currently have two Delver decks in the DTB and one of them is far and away the most successful deck in Legacy.

Tarmogoyf, Jace, and Emrakul aren't currently having an oppressive effect on the format. They're all played in their respective decks, but they aren't overpowering or dominating the format. I guess Tarmogoyf gets third for once belonging in almost every deck.

if mental misstep "killed diversity" then why has there not been a jump in the number of playable decks in legacy. when you look at the numbers of decks that were played during missteps time in the format(august 2011) you see that there were 49 different decks being played. were as if you look at last months results (October 2012) there were only 50 playable decks.

even if you want to take a look at the month the card was banned(September 2011) then you will notice that there were more decks being played at that time( not a lot more just 5 more archetypes) so it does not seem like misstep killed of diversity. the card may have been oppressive to a point but it did not effect diversity. in fact it seems like the format has a set number of archetypes playable at any one time.

the banning of misstep reminds me of when people wanted to ban swords to plowshares in the early 90's

[DLifshitz]

if mental misstep "killed diversity" then why has there not been a jump in the number of playable decks in legacy. when you look at the numbers of decks that were played during missteps time in the format(august 2011) you see that there were 49 different decks being played. were as if you look at last months results (October 2012) there were only 50 playable decks.

even if you want to take a look at the month the card was banned(September 2011) then you will notice that there were more decks being played at that time( not a lot more just 5 more archetypes) so it does not seem like misstep killed of diversity. the card may have been oppressive to a point but it did not effect diversity. in fact it seems like the format has a set number of archetypes playable at any one time.

When people speak of diversity, they can mean either a variety of different decks, or individual decks being different from each other. Mental Misstep did reduce diversity in the second sense. There was little reason not to play it. I do hope I don't sound whiny now, because in my own inconsequential Legacy career I probably played Mental Misstep more than a nice person should, but a few months after the release of NPH, when it seemed like Legacy decks played an average of 3 Mental Missteps in their 75, it was starting to get boring. In the end, I think the gestalt consciousness of Legacy players didn't want to allow Mental Misstep to become one of the lynchpins of the format, and the banning decision simply reflected that.

[Centurion]

While Misstep was a fiasco, there I can at least see Wizards having the right intentions. They were trying to come up with an Eternal-format card to help non-blue decks; their execution was horribly wrong, but at least they tried (? It's still the worst mistake of the poll options though)

Goyf was literally a misstake as they have said multiple time, supposed to be a */* and cost 2G. Emrakul is just stupid but at this point is far from alone in that respect. BigJace annoys the crap out of me but I loathe it less in the context of legacy as I do because it is the textbook definition of a "utility" mythic for me doing every non-counterspell thing blue wants to do in one card.

Delver...well really it's just the worst example of the recent attempt to make blue a tempo color in standard since WotC is stripping away other parts of the color's identity (heavy draw, 'filter' cards like Ponder, heavy counterspells, etc.) Just looking at Innistrad and seeing blue getting the best 1, 2, and 3 drop should raise any number of alarms.


But if we're talking about the biggest mistake to the health of Legacy, I'd argue it's a different card: the fetchlands. I've felt for years that the existence of the fetchlands is the secret cancer of the format. Without even getting into the graveyard interactions they naturally alter (more Lavamancer uses, Goyf's inherently getitng +1/+1...) there are two main reasons for this. First of all, the ease at which they allow one to shuffle away dead cards greatly powers up cards like Brainstorm and Jace. Being able to get rid of chaff in addition to fixing your mana is incredibly useful, and since blue gets the lion's share of cards dealing with the top of the library, the fetchlands help skew the format even more towards that color.

But the real problem with fetchs is the role they play in mana-fixing and deck construction. Fetchs make 3 color-decks if not the norm, then at least easy to play, too easy I would argue. Further more, fetchs mean that all new dual lands printed by Wizards are irrelevant. the Alpha duals would alwys be the best lands, but without an easy way to find them decks would also look to other duals to fill out there manabase. And there there would be choices. Does an aggessive decks turn to the shocklands, or would the Scars duals work best for their deck? Control decks might take a second look at the Innistrad duals, or even the Shadowmoor hybrids. Those last two are a stretch, but the point is clear: with only 4 of each ABU dual deckbuilders would actually look at the others. Instead, we have fetchs acting as copies 5-16 of whatever land you need for fixing at that moment, which has the effect of oversimplifying and homogenizing manabases and further upping the importance of the original duals, helping to raise their price to even more restricting levels.

Just my 2c

[Antonius]

I'm pretty sure this came up the last time Misstep was discussed, but I think it would have been just fine if it could only counter 1cmc non-creature spells.

[Barook]

While Misstep was a fiasco, there I can at least see Wizards having the right intentions. They were trying to come up with an Eternal-format card to help non-blue decks; their execution was horribly wrong, but at least they tried (? It's still the worst mistake of the poll options though)
Anti-blue cards only work they're completely symmetrical and screw over the user just as much for playing blue. Otherwise, blue decks are always the decks which get the most kick out of such cards, hence blue decks even splashing for REB.

I don't mind fetchlands since they enable stable mana bases and there's always Wasteland to keep Duals in check, but I would love to see more MD playable fetchland hate aside from Stifle.

[SilverGreen]

Show and Tell was printed 13 years ago and was a crap rare until recently - it was overshadowed by too many other powerful stuff. Does anyone remember Accelerated Blue? Grim Monolith + 22 islands --> Treachery, Morphling. But not Show and Tell, it didn't do anything. Same with Replenish decks - there simply wasn't anything to Show in (Confiscate lolz), and Tinker was simply better at accelerating finishers like Phyrexian Colossus, Masticore and Phyrexian Processor. In Extended, Oath, Necropotence, Trix, and some decks like original Junk could either drop a better, game ending threat, or kill your fatty. For some reason, it never really caught on as part of Reanimator decks, though it seems obvious that it should have.

It wasn't really until people had something to Show in that it skyrocketed in price and power. You can thank the likes of Progentius, Emrakul and Omnipotence for that.
Finally someone's pointing out what everyone knows, but anyone seems to notice. Show and Tell was always a fair and safe card, a card for fun and joy by all means, including flavor and name. And it should still be a fair card, if it wasn't for MaRo asking his twin babies for a new design to sell RoE.

"Hey kids, what would you like to see in a $3.99 booster pack?"

"What about a 15/15, indestructible, unblockable dude with protection from everything and that makes the opponent lose the game when it comes into play?"

"Seems fair. Let's put a Time Walk on it also, just to make it saucier. I'm so proud of you, children!"

He could have written an article about it. He loves to write articles about his children and his personal accomplishments, anyway.


And speaking of the errors of today's professionals wrecking havok on the yesterday's amateur's goals, I miss the times when "toolbox" was a viable Legacy archetype. Survival was a much loved, popular, fair and - people say it, not me - fun strategy to play in the past, until a certain mythic, anger, flavorless plant was printed. And so an entire, fundamental archetype got the axe. Was SotF really the monster it was told it was, or did it suffer from a strange kind of "scapegoating" decease? It makes me think if they'll someday print something to make enchantress or stax decks "oppressive". A world where Argothian Enchantress or Ensnaring Bridge are banned doen't seem so unlikely to me.

And just for the record, I was never a Survival or Enchantress player.

[Jenni]

And speaking of the errors of today's professionals wrecking havok on the yesterday's amateur's goals, I miss the times when "toolbox" was a viable Legacy archetype. Survival was a much loved, popular, fair and - people say it, not me - fun strategy to play in the past, until a certain mythic, anger, flavorless plant was printed. And so an entire, fundamental archetype got the axe. Was SotF really the monster it was told it was, or did it suffer from a strange kind of "scapegoating" decease? It makes me think if they'll someday print something to make enchantress or stax decks "oppressive". A world where Argothian Enchantress or Ensnaring Bridge are banned doen't seem so unlikely to me.


Survival WAS fine, the problem really is that it's a card that limits what can be done - vengevine is an interesting card, and recursive, hard-to-kill threats attract certain types of players. As long as survival is around, though, they can't make cards like vengevine.
There are a couple ways to handle this, of course - one is to not print stuff like vengevine, which is perfectly reasonable, but obviously not the direction R&D wants to take. The other is to ban Survival before it breaks even more.

Show and Tell has a similar problem, the more giant splashy things they make, the better it gets.
The ways they seem to have decided to handle it are ignore it until it breaks too much and becomes oppressive, at which point they ban it (I do not think Show and tell is at this point yet.)
Alternatively, they could stop making "I win" permanents, which they have obviously decided against doing.

I don't necessarily agree with the decision to print 15/15 creatures and all your spells are free enchantments, but it's the direction R&D has decided to take.

[SilverGreen]

Last time I checked, interesting, recursive, hard-to-kill Vengevines are still to spam a new turbocabbage beatdown archetype... =/


Just kidding. I understand your point of view and agree with it, even not being happy with it. I understand the reason why they do such a thing, but I don't need to LIKE it. The possibility to play with SnT, SotF, dual lands and the rest of the A-Team is the reason I'm a Legacy player, in the first place. It's a good thing when every new set brings some new cards to the format, it's part of what makes Legacy a deep, interesting and (as much as possible) dynamic format. But if every new mythic bomb they release invalidate an entire old archetype, Legacy begins to lose the "eternal" meaning of its nature. And Legacy is amazing. I don't want it to become a cripple, artificial, top-to-bottom format like Modern, with a ban list that does not reflect what it trully is.

As an old school player, I love Legacy because it allows me to play the cards that have a place in my heart, as simple as that. I miss Survivals, as I'll miss Show and Tell if - when - it gets banned. But I don't care about Omnisciences or Vengevines, I leave the all fun of those gems for the (pseudo)Eternal Modern adepts.

[Jenni]

Last time I checked, interesting, recursive, hard-to-kill Vengevines are still to spam a new turbocabbage beatdown archetype... =/


Just kidding. I understand your point of view and agree with it, even not being happy with it. I understand the reason why they do such a thing, but I don't need to LIKE it. The possibility to play with SnT, SotF, dual lands and the rest of the A-Team is the reason I'm a Legacy player, in the first place. It's a good thing when every new set brings some new cards to the format, it's part of what makes Legacy a deep, interesting and (as much as possible) dynamic format. But if every new mythic bomb they release invalidate an entire old archetype, Legacy begins to lose the "eternal" meaning of its nature. And Legacy is amazing. I don't want it to become a cripple, artificial, top-to-bottom format like Modern, with a ban list that does not reflect what it trully is.

As an old school player, I love Legacy because it allows me to play the cards that have a place in my heart, as simple as that. I miss Survivals, as I'll miss Show and Tell if - when - it gets banned. But I don't care about Omnisciences or Vengevines, I leave the all fun of those gems for the (pseudo)Eternal Modern adepts.

Yeah, I'm not particularly happy about it either. Survival was a fun card, and it does suck that some of the new additions to the format kill old archetypes, but not much can be done about it, save let the format break and leave it. I would much rather lose one archetype (eg. survival) than have the format as a whole become unhealthy because nothing else can compete.
Like I said, the path R&D has chosen for magic is one which will break some of these old cards, because they like to push the cards power over the top, under the assumption that mana costs can balance it. They seem to just ignore that when they make a broken creature or enchantment etc., it only cost 2U to get it into play in legacy.

So other than complain about it, what can we do? WotC has made up their mind, and it seems these big effects are here to stay, maybe it's good for business, maybe it's just because a certain type of player loves them. We just need to adapt, and accept that sometimes the new toys will break our old favourites. I love show and tell, and have no real emotional attachment to omniscience or emrakul etc, so I would rather keep S&T and lose the new things that will most likely break it in the future, but ultimately, S&T is what enables these cards to be broken, and it's better to ban one card than to have to ban one or two mythics every other set.

As for survival, I don't think vengevine is that powerful really, but it is an interesting card, recursive threats are something I've liked since I first saw Nether Shadow, they just finally made one that synergized a bit too well with survival, which I think was really only a matter of time anyway since they frequently make new recursive threats.

[TraxDaMax]

I'm going to have to agree with Julian23 here. Playing against Sensei's Divining Top is the least amount of fun you can have in magic.

My friends actually thoughtseize them and trinket mages out of my hand, just not to have to deal with my slow thinking.


oh btw, where is Grieselbrand :-P