[Article]Eternal Europe: Legacy's Nemesis

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Well, seeing as part of last week's thread instantly became TNN discussion, I thought I'd finally make my ideas about the card public:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27437_Legacys-Nemesis.html

Enjoy :)

PS: Sorry for the delay in answering last week's comments, they're much appreciated and I hope to get around to it during the weekend (as well as answering what comes up in here).

[UnderwaterGuy]

Thank you for bringing a little more publicity to this card and taking a stance on it. Nice article.

[lyracian]

I have been playing True-Name Patriot at our local and won 2 out of 4 events. From my experience if I manage to cast TNN I just win the game. Now I know you have listed quite a few cards to deal with it and sideboards will adapt over time but it does seem the ultimate in Unfair creatures. I have also noticed a sudden upswing in Pox decks being played (which as it is my favorite deck I am quite happy with).

[Lord Seth]

"Essentially, what Nemesis feels like to me is a R&D thinking mistake along the lines of Mental Misstep. Where for Misstep the idea was to create a free counter nonblue decks could use—forgetting that the blue decks would also have access to it—Nemesis looks as if they meant to create a strong hard-to-deal with creature so that creatures would see more play in Legacy because the format's incredible removal suite—Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt—suddenly doesn't deal with all of them anymore."

I don't think that's true at all. I think Nemesis looks as if they meant to create a unique card for multiplayer Commander, and they either didn't realize or didn't care about its possible effect in Legacy.

[Gheizen64]

This reflect my feelings on the card completely. This is just a bad card from a spectator point of view, and it make non-blue aggro (and in turn, non-blue decks in general) just not really worth it. This card is a disaster for legacy and i hope it get banned as soon as possible.

[Hardcore]

I recall reading an article saying the R&D didn't bother to test how new cards work in all formats. Considering the amount of work for such a task I am not surprised. I figure they first and foremost make sure all new sets work well, in themselves, which is probably not that easy. Next they may consider how the cards will affect standard. And that is it, I think.
Am I correct it suggest they should be more generous with bans than they are now. After all, they would have no idea what new cards could do in formats with access to over 10k+ cards!

Here is another idea; there may be a conflict between the requirements of cards for new sets, and those of the meta game in major tourney formats. For all I know (nothing :wink:) TNN may be just the thing for its set, or for standard.


It only took a bioweapon to do it.:laugh:

[Barook]

Great article as always. It hits my impression about TNN pretty much on-spot.


I don't think that's true at all. I think Nemesis looks as if they meant to create a unique card for multiplayer Commander, and they either didn't realize or didn't care about its possible effect in Legacy.
They knew exaclty what they did. Every color (except red) has more or less a "chase rare" planted to sell pack, be it Restore (which sucks), Unexpectedly Absent (great design, but people completely forgot about it once the TNN shitstorm started raging) and Toxic Deluge (great card that is probably still underrated) which leaves blue without a chase rare. Hence putting TNN into blue despite making absolutely no sense color pie-wise with an asspull reasoning.

I think what they underestimated is how much players hate it. Sure, it sells packs (and that's pretty much the only thing that matters to them) - but were is the chorus of praise for this card? The opinions ranges between "ban this overpowered, uninteractive PoS" and "I play it because I have to because it's powerful and I don't think it needs to be banned, but I still would prefer to see it gone because I hate this uninteractive PoS and what it does to Magic".

[Dzra]

Unexpectedly Absent (great design, but people completely forgot about it once the TNN shitstorm started raging)

I was thinking about this the other day actually. It's sad that the one card from the set that had really nice design and power potential is completely overshadowed by the fact that it does actually zero against True-Name Nemesis.

[Barook]

I was thinking about this the other day actually. It's sad that the one card from the set that had really nice design and power potential is completely overshadowed by the fact that it does actually zero against True-Name Nemesis.
It can remove problematic equipment, though.

[Darkenslight]

It can remove problematic equipment, though.

I think it might actually have had a better response if UA and TNN had switched colors.

TNN is still a horrifically badly-designed card, but it makes a ton more sense in white over blue. Hell, it makes more sense in red than blue.

[Hardcore]

Hell, it makes more sense in red than blue.

+1

[Lord Seth]

I think it might actually have had a better response if UA and TNN had switched colors.

TNN is still a horrifically badly-designed card, but it makes a ton more sense in white over blue. Hell, it makes more sense in red than blue.
How in the world does it make more sense in Red than Blue?

Though I stick by my statement that, as the card currently reads, it makes no sense in any single color. Now, if it had been specified as only working in multiplayer, I could've easily bought the argument for it being Blue, but as long as it's active in even single player games, no color really has access to what is a functional "protection from everything." It'd make a little more sense in White, but not by much.

[ESG]

Thanks for the well-reasoned article, Carsten. I share many of your sentiments.


"Is there really nobody in R&D that thinks about these things for even five minutes?"

I'll point you to this recent response from MaRo's blog.

vapocool asked: "So... who designed True-Name Nemesis?"

Rosewater: "I believe is was designed by Mark Gottilieb with multiplayer in mind. Why do I need to ally with someone? Because I have a threat that I cannot deal with but they can."

:(

[Darkenslight]

How in the world does it make more sense in Red than Blue?

It makes more sense in Red over Blue because blue is barely passionate. TNN seems to be about someone who has a literal vendetta against a particular person. That level of fury, and the accumulation of power for vengeance, is very much a Red aesthetic. The fragility of TNN is also heavily in red.

[Dzra]

Rosewater: "I believe is was designed by Mark Gottilieb with multiplayer in mind. Why do I need to ally with someone? Because I have a threat that I cannot deal with but they can."

I actually really like TNN from the standpoint of EDH. It's actually fine there and this logic works great for multiplayer games.

[TsumiBand]

Excellent read.

You've summed up a lot of my thoughts on the card as well.

I like the direction that the conversation takes; "so how do we deal? by making it irrelevant" and then going down a list of potential answers in the form of single cards as well as decks which try to neutralize the card.

At the end, where you talk about what the format has to become in order to effectively deal -- that's the part that seems to sting almost as much as the "dear god, why are you a Blue thing" question. The thing I've enjoyed about Legacy since its inception is the fact that aggro-control GoodStuff has been the cornerstone of a lot of decks for a long time. I *like* being able to drop in once in a while if there's an odd Legacy event in-reach of me, with some junk like Guys And Burn or SFM + 20 Other Assholes, or just something hearty and midrange-y and delightful - and feel like I at least have a fighting chance to play by sense of smell and do okay. TNN kind of takes that and capitalizes on it to the point where, that *is* the aggro-control deck, and now everyone from Maverick to Zoo to whatever-the-fuck is actually left has to compare itself directly to that. Critical mass is a thing, it happens, I know this; but man, it was so open (whether falsely or actually, is a different discussion) for so long. Now aggro-control is summed up in a core set of cards - SFM + equips, TNN, Brainstorm, Force - and that's kind of a bummer.

[lyracian]

They knew exaclty what they did. Every color (except red) has more or less a "chase rare" planted to sell pack, be itRed, like Green, has a card. However, also like green, Widespread Panic is not really that good in Legacy. The effect is nice to allow Red to hate on Fetch lands and IInfernal Tutor but unless it costed 1 mana or was on a Hate Bear it is just not going to see play.

As for TNN - it is stupid design for a 2 Player game; but then most of what is played in Legacy is the broken cards that got printed. If you want a format where you can play 99% of magic cards you are going to end up with a format where 97% of them are not good enough to play. As a card it looks like it will kill off a couple of archetypes (bye bye Goblins, Zoo) but then there are quite a lot of old archetypes that are not good enough any more (Hello Stasis).

Carsten listed 10 cards* to deal with TNN and there is Golgari Charm and Runed Halo both of which have uses against other decks; there is also Humility and Moat (not that many people can afford it).

*11 If you want to look at both Blasts as being different card names

[HSCK]

I'm sorry, was Zoo a contending deck to begin with to be killed? And why does it kill Goblins? 3 mana 3/1s are not scary...Gobbos' enemy has always been the Mystic.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I'm sorry, was Zoo a contending deck to begin with to be killed? And why does it kill Goblins? 3 mana 3/1s are not scary...Gobbos' enemy has always been the Mystic.

Agree here. It seems to "kill" a lot of decks that are more or less dead already.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Great article as always, pretty much sums up my thoughts on TNN. My only nitpick is on your reasoning for it being printed - from MARO's comments I picked up more of a "we printed this for commander and didn't think about any other formats because #YOLO" vibe rather than any kind of well-thought-out reasoning.

[TsumiBand]

Great article as always, pretty much sums up my thoughts on TNN. My only nitpick is on your reasoning for it being printed - from MARO's comments I picked up more of a "we printed this for commander and didn't think about any other formats because #YOLO" vibe rather than any kind of well-thought-out reasoning.

Well here's the thing about all the lingo surrounding the printing of the card -- and to an extent, other cards which look and feel like pretty obvious 'plants' in product like EDH sets, Planechase sets, and others -- is that they'll edge right up against saying, "We printed this for Legacy and stuffed it in a secondary product." Like, they say things like, "When we printed Baleful Strix, we did it with the knowledge that it might just end up in Legacy, and we weren't disappointed at what we saw!" There's no definite statement there; maybe might kind of end up somewhere, and however things are going now isn't disappointing, hooray! But it doesn't MEAN anything.

This article goes into how they know that Legacy and Vintage deserve to be kicked a bone every once in a while, and so it goes into the way they "aim at" Eternal, and "hope" that their cards will show up, and so on.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/269

They never actually just say, "This was made for Legacy", but they lean right up against it. And how fortunate; by being clearly uncertain, they can take a variety of stances once the chips fall and the format either absorbs or rejects a card.

"You guys like it? We *totally* made it for Legacy!"
"Oh, don't like it? Well, it wasn't really *for* Legacy."

So it's Schrodinger's card; no matter the result, they just change the nature of their answer today, which retcons their previous statements because they didn't actually make any definite statements, just a lot of wishing and hoping and praying that things might happen and now that we're 'here', no one back at HQ is the least bit surprised or disappointed, because clearly they called it in the air just a couple of articles back.

[Guest2511]

Agree here. It seems to "kill" a lot of decks that are more or less dead already.


Well, Zoo was not Tier 1 anymore. But I'm sure it was playable, Tier 1.5. You went to a tournament and there would be 1-2 guys playing zoo. And they could win with some luck/favourable opposition.

TNN completely kills zoo, as they have no viable (in their strategy) way of dealing with it and the matchup with Delver (and other blue decks) suddenly becomes very bad. I can understand decks fading during a period of time (as was happening with zoo), but a deck being killed because of stupid design is too much. Legacy prides itself on its diversity and should try to maintain some of it. Unfortunately, TNN is not format warping enough for a ban I think.

[Ellomdian]

It's easy to complain about TNN. Obviously there is a lot of noise about this card, and it disappoints me that it seems to have taken some of the hot-seat focus off SnT.

It's hard for many, MANY players to tweak and tune decks when the available card pool is literally... everything. I feel that, in the last 18-24 mos especially, Legacy has been getting a LOT of love from new Standard cards. This means that most of the cards you are building with are modern (or close to it) legal, and many new players have gotten comfortable with it. Most of the best answers to TNN aren't in that comfort zone - Massacre is a BEATING against most of the TNN decks - but because they aren't Decay (given the amount of furor with design around TNN, why didn't this card make more noise...) people don't know how to make them work.

You can have very elegant answers that require a high degree of skill and understanding of match-ups and game flow, or you can have Swords and Decay that require neither.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Well, Zoo was not Tier 1 anymore. But I'm sure it was playable, Tier 1.5. You went to a tournament and there would be 1-2 guys playing zoo. And they could win with some luck/favourable opposition.

TNN completely kills zoo, as they have no viable (in their strategy) way of dealing with it and the matchup with Delver (and other blue decks) suddenly becomes very bad. I can understand decks fading during a period of time (as was happening with zoo), but a deck being killed because of stupid design is too much. Legacy prides itself on its diversity and should try to maintain some of it. Unfortunately, TNN is not format warping enough for a ban I think.

Zoo was NOT Tier 1.5 anytime in the last 12 months. 1-800-CALLING-BS

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Thanks for reading and sharing everybody, even though I only get around to answering now!

@Lord Seth/Hardcore: The no-testing for Eternal is true and makes a lot of sense. I'd appreciate if they took maybe ten minutes to think about this kind of stuff at least, though. I don't think it should take longer to figure out Nemesis is going to make fair deck games horrible in Legacy if you know how MtG works - which I'm pretty sure RnD does.

The whole it killed Zoo thing: I think Zoo has been pretty dead for a while already (amusingly enough, roughly since they banned Misstep...) but TNN doesn't just hit Zoo. It makes it very likely that any non-UW midrange strategy is suddenly just inferior to Nemesis + Blade, which doesn't sound like the best thing to happen to the format.