[Article]Eternal Europe: Conspiring in Legacy

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Well, Conspiracy is known now, time to talk about what we can do with the new cards!

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28661_Conspiring-in-Legacy.html

Enjoy! :)

[Zombie]

There's an efficient answer to the latest special-set problem card

That conveniently blows up all nonblue problems with basically no recourse and that blue, the colour of said problem card, can counter and laugh all the way to the bank.

I love that they printed a direct answer to Nemesis. I fucking hate that the answer is just as ludicrously dumb as Nemesis itself.

[nevilshute]

That conveniently blows up all nonblue problems with basically no recourse and that blue, the colour of said problem card, can counter and laugh all the way to the bank.

I love that they printed a direct answer to Nemesis. I fucking hate that the answer is just as ludicrously dumb as Nemesis itself.

The fact that it can be countered... well on the one hand I totally get where you're coming from, but at the same time I don't want counter magic to be invalidated as a strategy. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Abrupt Decay got printed, but I don't want uncounterable, high-impact spells to get printed willy-nilly.

I also echo your sentiment in that I'm also glad they addressed TNN but at the same I'm luke warm on this card from a fundamental perspective. The fact that "voting" is a design that allows them to circumvent 'protection' and 'hexproof' doesn't seem very logical within the framework of the game. First of all, "voting" when you have only two actors seems... counter intuitive. It also makes you feel unsure about the rules they set up. I know the game can't stay static, but fidgeting with 'targeting' (which this, ostensibly feels like) makes for uneasy sailing to me.

[Zombie]

The fact that it can be countered... well on the one hand I totally get where you're coming from, but at the same time I don't want counter magic to be invalidated as a strategy. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Abrupt Decay got printed, but I don't want uncounterable, high-impact spells to get printed willy-nilly.

I agree 100%. I didn't mean to say it should be uncounterable. I meant to say that it's amusing how blue is the colour best equipped to deal with it when it is also the colour of the problem. And the nonblue decks get to eat all the splash damage because all their normal ways of dealing with removal - dies trigger value(which is already bad against white decks to begin with), graveyard recursion, extra bodies against edicts, untargetability, regeneration - none of it matters one iota.


I also echo your sentiment in that I'm also glad they addressed TNN but at the same I'm luke warm on this card from a fundamental perspective. The fact that "voting" is a design that allows them to circumvent 'protection' and 'hexproof' doesn't seem very logical within the framework of the game. First of all, "voting" when you have only two actors seems... counter intuitive. It also makes you feel unsure about the rules they set up. I know the game can't stay static, but fidgeting with 'targeting' (which this, ostensibly feels like) makes for uneasy sailing to me.

QFT.

[Esper3k]

Can you imagine how much more bitching there would be if it was uncounterable?

[Zombie]

Can you imagine how much more bitching there would be if it was uncounterable?

Well, 80+% of the format is blue, so...

[Barook]

Can you imagine how much more bitching there would be if it was uncounterable?
The card design is already dumb enough. Considering its intended purpose (killing TNN), they could have gone all-out as well since it's already kinda breaking the color pie. "NOBODY IS SAVE!" is still a better message for balance purposes than "NOBODY IS SAVE - except blue decks - again..." - and this is a card especially designed with Eternal play in mind.

But I agree with previous posters - you don't weaken blue when they're the only ones with answers while the other colors get the short end of the stick again (minus black with discard - maybe). Chances are that you're actually feeding blue since it tends to picking up the best anti-blue cards that don't hurt them, too.

They should rather hurry up and print the Sulfur Element variant for blue creatures as it seems a way more balanced and in-pie (minus the Flash part) answer to TNN.

[twndomn]

There're things Counterbalance-top can deal with; for everything else, there's Council's judgment.

[Finn]

CJ is going to be a decisive card in D+T mirrors, and great against D+T in general. I agree with Carsten that the card's home looks comfortable in Miracles.

[Barook]

CJ is going to be a decisive card in D+T mirrors, and great against D+T in general. I agree with Carsten that the card's home looks comfortable in Miracles.
While it can be great for D&T mirrors since it can kill anything despite Mother and can even catch Batterskulls, that's the one single match-up where bitching about the casting cost of :1::w::w: might be justified. Resolving it between Wastes for your non-basic white sources and Port Wars, it's going to take a while to find said mana in the main phase.

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

Interesting to see such a negative feeling about the card. Sure it's a spell so blue is best equipped to answer it but really that would be true of anything as long as they don't start throwing around the "can't be countered" clause like candy on parade-day. It's also the closest thing to a counterspell they could give non-blue colors without ignoring the color pie (it deals with absolutely any single permanent, similar to what counterspells do), it costs double colored mana to make it reasonably committing (though that is, obviously, mitigated by the existence of duals and fetches) - I definitely expect to lose matches to being unable to get to WW on time with Miracles - and it's powerful and flexible enough to maindeck. This last point is quite important as there were a ton of ways already to deal with Nemesis in the form of specialized cards from the board (Golgari Charm et al.), what we were missing were tools to force interaction against Nemesis maindeck other than Wraths and Liliana. That's what Council's Judgment delivers.
As to it being as ridiculous as TNN, it's still going to just be a Vindicate 85+% of the time (with it being much worse some of the remainder because the opponent is on High Tide or Creeping Tar Pit). I think that Vindicate, while good, is on the "barely playable" side of the effective Legacy cardpool, not the "damn that's sick" one. We will need to adapt to the fact that it has once again become a little harder to set up board states that are impossible to break (be it thanks to Mom, Lightning Greaves or Sterling Grove) but I think any claims to CJ being even close to as absurd as TNN are overvaluing how much the corner case scenarios change the value of a three mana destroy anything. I'd also say that making locks breakable instead of full lockdowns is actually good for gameplay overall.
Also note that CJ is an answer, not a threat like TNN. While it's hard to answer CJ straight up, just playing another threat works just fine (whereas against TNN, it'll kill you eventually all by itself).


@Finn: As someone who has never touched D&T (far too many cards with P/T ;) ), what's the most important aspect of CJ in the mirror (compared to earlier options like ORing)? Hitting Mom? Circumventing Mom to get other things? Genuinely curious here.

[Barook]

@Finn: As someone who has never touched D&T (far too many cards with P/T ;) ), what's the most important aspect of CJ in the mirror (compared to earlier options like ORing)? Hitting Mom? Circumventing Mom to get other things? Genuinely curious here.
Not Finn, but I would say it actually depends on the board state, with Mom being most likely a prime target. Hitting various equipments also seems like a boon when you can't get your hands on an active Manriki-Gusari.

[nedleeds]

Are DNT players boarding out Thalia in the mirror? I would guess she's a bit awkward with so much Karakas flying around. If she's going out then CJ seems a little more realistic.

[Philipp2293]

Yes, Thalia usually gets boarded out in Mirrors, since she doesn't tax much and is perfectly symetrical. Also, like mentioned above, Karakas makes her even more akward to have around.

[TsumiBand]

Interesting to see such a negative feeling about the card. Sure it's a spell so blue is best equipped to answer it but really that would be true of anything as long as they don't start throwing around the "can't be countered" clause like candy on parade-day. It's also the closest thing to a counterspell they could give non-blue colors without ignoring the color pie (it deals with absolutely any single permanent, similar to what counterspells do), it costs double colored mana to make it reasonably committing (though that is, obviously, mitigated by the existence of duals and fetches) - I definitely expect to lose matches to being unable to get to WW on time with Miracles - and it's powerful and flexible enough to maindeck. This last point is quite important as there were a ton of ways already to deal with Nemesis in the form of specialized cards from the board (Golgari Charm et al.), what we were missing were tools to force interaction against Nemesis maindeck other than Wraths and Liliana. That's what Council's Judgment delivers.
As to it being as ridiculous as TNN, it's still going to just be a Vindicate 85+% of the time (with it being much worse some of the remainder because the opponent is on High Tide or Creeping Tar Pit). I think that Vindicate, while good, is on the "barely playable" side of the effective Legacy cardpool, not the "damn that's sick" one. We will need to adapt to the fact that it has once again become a little harder to set up board states that are impossible to break (be it thanks to Mom, Lightning Greaves or Sterling Grove) but I think any claims to CJ being even close to as absurd as TNN are overvaluing how much the corner case scenarios change the value of a three mana destroy anything. I'd also say that making locks breakable instead of full lockdowns is actually good for gameplay overall.
Also note that CJ is an answer, not a threat like TNN. While it's hard to answer CJ straight up, just playing another threat works just fine (whereas against TNN, it'll kill you eventually all by itself).

So, for my part -- my biggest problems with TNN were always pretty much "it's subversive as hell" and "it shoulda been White".

"It shoulda been White" is the less relevant of the two, and really there are a lot of cards that could arguably appear in a different color without actually changing anything except the mana to cast it. But it ties in with the first point, because 'protection from player' has a much wider use-case and a much more competitive advantage than any of White's previous "protection from _____" effects. WotC fudged a bit on which color is supposed to be on top of the heap for protection; they self-edit their stance to switch White from "king of protection" to "king of protection from colors", which leaves Blue as the go-to color for "protection from other stuff". Other stuff having no apparent bound, the natural place to try experimenting is with entire players.

This leads right into the subversive nature of the mechanic. I'll try to make a not-uncommon point without being pedantic or too surface-level -- there truly are certain mechanics that don't need to exist. They promote power creep or they interact with the game in such an unspeakable way that they warp the gameplay. Games work because fundamental rules exist which must be adhered to. There is a difference between innovating those concepts and burying them in semantics. As Magic players we are familiar with phrases such as "Everything is a Time Walk"; finding plays which are functional analogues to other plays is just one method of assessing tempo, right? If "Terror your threat" can incur the same tempo swing as "Time Walk during my main phase", then it's worth investigating it as a playable card (it isn't, really, but for the sake of example, Terror is *totally* a Time Walk).

What I and many people dislike about TNN is the same thing that is disliked about Council's Judgment; TNN's unprecedented ability to shut out a player from interacting in standard "Magic-like" ways has lead to a card which similarly introduces a new method of selecting a permanent and removing it from play. I do not wish to see 400 Terror variants, don't misunderstand me, but when you have to change so many things to return the interactivity to a place that it already lived, you have to sit back as game designers and scratch your heads wondering just how you let it get to that point.

And there's collateral damage to these effects as well. Mother of Runes has been a pretty on-the-fence card for years, but Council's Judgment puts a big dent in her credibility. What was the purpose of the hexproof experiment, if a card can still allow a player to CHOOSE that permanent? What about indestructible? What are all these mechanics doing being expanded into potent cards like Geist of Saint Traft or Fleecemane Lion, if I can just vote them off the island? It's targeted removal for indestructible/hexproof things. That's stupid as fuck. Yes, it provides an answer to another stupid-as-fuck card, but it's like.... how many avenues of Magic gameplay need to be blown off just to re-establish them in a roundabout way? That's kludgy as shit, and it smacks of a group of people unaware of each other's actions with no oversight to the point that they have to print apologies -- not answers, but apologies -- for cards that are recognizably operating in detrimental ways. Not detrimental like broken unanswerable combo, just blatantly disregarding the foundation of the game. It's like allowing horses in a roller derby game. The fuck is a horse doing there? Is it even good to have someone on a horse? The hell is going on?

[Barook]

So, for my part -- my biggest problems with TNN were always pretty much "it's subversive as hell" and "it shoulda been White".

"It shoulda been White" is the less relevant of the two, and really there are a lot of cards that could arguably appear in a different color without actually changing anything except the mana to cast it. But it ties in with the first point, because 'protection from player' has a much wider use-case and a much more competitive advantage than any of White's previous "protection from _____" effects. WotC fudged a bit on which color is supposed to be on top of the heap for protection; they self-edit their stance to switch White from "king of protection" to "king of protection from colors", which leaves Blue as the go-to color for "protection from other stuff". Other stuff having no apparent bound, the natural place to try experimenting is with entire players.
I find the argumentation of "blue has protection from other stuff" downright laughable. Not only is blue the color with the least protection cards out of all five colors, it also has historically three cards that goes into "protection from stuff"-category, with two being protection from a certain creature type and one being protection from lands.

Innistrad block alone had six cards in that category.

Just because Maro has a raging boner for blue while whining for years when red gets something like Chaos Warp doesn't make his argument for TNN more sound.

[Finn]

@Finn: As someone who has never touched D&T (far too many cards with P/T ;) ), what's the most important aspect of CJ in the mirror (compared to earlier options like ORing)? Hitting Mom? Circumventing Mom to get other things? Genuinely curious here.It's the fact that it targets without targeting, removing the option to profitably respond with it on the stack.

Flickerwisp
Mother of Runes
Karakas
...these guys can't save anything from exile with this spell. Karakas is kinda meh after game 1. But Flickerwisp is usually huge in the mirror.

Plus the Mystic/Batterskull issue you mentioned. Also, Jitte-on-Jitte fights, which are already a nightmare game of chicken can now be won outright.

[Zombie]

Hexproof/shroud/protection from white/everything
Damage prevention
extra bodies against Edicts
Indestructible
Value from dies triggers
Moving the primary target into another zone in response
Graveyard recursion
Instant blink
Cannot sacrifice clauses (eg. Sigarda, Tajuru Preserver)

An actually effective solution? Hahahaha.

Counterspell? Yeah, I guess that's ok.

[Dzra]

As to it being as ridiculous as TNN... but I think any claims to CJ being even close to as absurd as TNN are overvaluing how much the corner case scenarios change the value of a three mana destroy anything.

What I think TsumiBand and others are saying is that Council's Judgment is like True-Name Nemesis not in its "power level" or ability to warp the format but because of its breaking of standard Magic: The Gathering tenets.

For example, Protection is generally a narrow ability that comes at a cost (either only Protection from one color or being forced to play a weak creature like Mother of Runes that doesn't actually affect the gamestate until the next turn, etc, etc). Shroud was something of another type of Protection. It was less narrow and thus more powerful but the cost being that you cannot target your own Shroud guys (not to mention that Shroud guys were usually weak or required further interaction to become good: Nimble Mongoose).

Next we get Hexproof, which by itself might not be so bad, but the fact that it came attached to a creature as powerful as Geist of Saint Traft really fundamentally changes how interaction works. If Hexproof wasn't bad enough, they really broke the barrel with True-Name Nemesis. TNN defies all previous rules of what a creature should be able to do, and what really separates it from Mongoose or Mom or even Geist is that it comes at no real cost.

Now we have Council's Judgment, which is a fine and honestly a welcomed answer to True-Name Nemesis. However, we still have the same problem: WotC is breaking the tenets that have been in place for a very long time. Protection and Shroud are both very well established and the cards that were designed with them are honestly pretty balanced. Despite however much people hate TNN and Hexproof, Council's Judgment has a lot of fallout against aspects of the game that people were happy/comfortable with.

If the it stops with TNN (and its answer in Council's Judgment) then that's fine and we can live with it. The problem is if this trend of breaking established game norms at no cost continues. I really hope that WotC thinks up some good ideas and stops with the cheap and inelegant gimmicks.

[TsumiBand]

I find the argumentation of "blue has protection from other stuff" downright laughable. Not only is blue the color with the least protection cards out of all five colors, it also has historically three cards that goes into "protection from stuff"-category, with two being protection from a certain creature type and one being protection from lands.

Innistrad block alone had six cards in that category.

Just because Maro has a raging boner for blue while whining for years when red gets something like Chaos Warp doesn't make his argument for TNN more sound.

IKR?

"In the past, Blue has done things. This card is an extension of that. I don't see what the problem is."


What I think TsumiBand and others are saying is that Council's Judgment is like True-Name Nemesis not in its "power level" or ability to warp the format but because of its breaking of standard Magic: The Gathering tenets.

Essentially, yeah. Going out of their way to print effects like Terminus and Council's Judgment as answers to these hexproof, indestructible, protection-from-player stuff kind of dicks over the rest of the game in terms of the defined interactions. I'm not suggesting that Council's Judgment is the end-all be-all of removal spells, but its effect goes beyond targeting while executing in more or less the same way in 1v1 (unless your opponent sucks and names a different permanent they control, in which case so much the better I guess).

I mean, really think about the times when new players scratch their heads with Magic; it's when semantics that don't seem like they should matter, do. Some of them are legitimate game-play mechanics, like Wrath of God destroying a protection-from-white creature, because protection doesn't actually offer insurance against that effect. Then there's stuff like "target" vs. "choose"; this has indeed been around for a while, but it still 'feels like' cheating to a new-jack. "If I control True Believer, WHY can my opponent not target me, but choose me with True-Name Nemesis?" They sound like different actions but the net result is the same. So now there are all these functional analogs to things that we were already doing anyway, only they operate in a completely separate fashion from the rest of the game and they undermine older things if they run into them.

I mentioned Mother of Runes earlier; she's useless against 'choice removal', and she's arguably much worse in general than True-Name Nemesis for what she does. Consider the effect Goblins hate used to have against other tribes; if Goblins is prevalent, AND Engineered Plague is good tech against Goblins, tribes which are potent but arguably less so than Goblins are MUCH worse because they are intrinsically hated out of the format. Goblins doesn't just make Pirates worse because it exists; it makes it worse because its opponents are already gunning for it without even trying. So when you have an interaction or series of interactions based on the predication that a lot of the creatures these days are either indestructible, hexproof, or have protection from players, that builds in a lot of incidental hate for things which classically fared well but can now be easily dealt with. Solid protection creatures like Etched Champion or those fringe-awesome guys like Mirran Crusader or Stillmoon Cavalier are delegated to novelty status. Lame.

On one hand, this happens all the time - The People vs. Tarmogoyf is an age-old cautionary tale of power creep and its effect on creature diversity. But in fairness all Tarmogoyf did was jump the mana curve; it didn't redefine the rules of creature combat. TNN vs Council's Judgment, Geist of St Traft vs Terminus, indestructible guys vs exile and tuck and etc etc etc... it puts an abstraction layer on top of the game. Remember when people argued that "Dredge is not a Magic deck" because what it did was SO different from everything else? It's that kind of nasty feeling I get when I see cards like this. Power level has nothing to do with it; it's the game it creates on top of the game, that's the part I take issue with. That's why I don't like "choice removal". I see what they did there, but it's hacky as fuck.

[Finn]

There's something to be said for someone who can so be eloquent and potty-mouthed at the same time. I quite like reading Tsumi's opinions. But I wish to add a further perspective. I like both the flavor and the effect (effect on the meta - not the ugly phrase "choose, vote, etc.") of Council's Judgement. I actually think that this direction for power-creep is sorta necessary, rather than the balls-to-the-wall brute force that tarmo brought. In a sense, this is a more elegant form of power creep too. Creatures have been getting better and better protections with lots of different variations. It is a terribly untidy mess. Shroud; Hexproof; Protection from x, y, z; Emrakul's hand-crafted protection; etc. This card pushes all that bureaucracy to the side and just says "no" in a next tier of power creep of a different kind. Be on the lookout for new keywords to circumvent Council's Judgement and similar cards.

MC Hammer - "can't touch this..."
Second Amendment - "Sure it kills lots of innocent people and has outlived it's usefulness, but procedure, culture, owned politicians, and the NRA say it stays"
Keyser Soze - "OMG. You can't kill this! In fact, don't even say it's name."
martyr - "Go ahead and destroy this permanent. I dare you."

[Cire]

I'm sure the next ability will be this

? U
Creature - Human Rogue C
Nameless (This card can't be named or chosen in any zone)
1/1

[Barook]

I'm sure the next ability will be this

? U
Creature - Human Rogue C
Nameless (This card can't be named or chosen in any zone)
1/1
Actually, the next logical step would be:

~ can't leave the battlefield.

[M+1]

At this point I am just waiting for the counterspell that counters any spell, even those that can't be countered.

[Barook]

At this point I am just waiting for the counterspell that counters any spell, even those that can't be countered.
Time Stop, but especially Mindbreak Trap do that already.

[M+1]

And Ertai's Meddling.
Six- and four mana counterspells are not playable in Legacy. I meant a playable one. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
OK, Mindbreak is playable but not in that way.

I really don't like Council of Judgement or TNN, and I hate that we now have new mechanic (voting) in Legacy that makes absolutely zero sense in a two player game. These gimmick cards make Legacy look silly. People will say they were designed for multiplayer games, but they are allowed in Legacy because it is such a silly format anyway.
And now they added the drafting specific Conspiracy cards to the Legacy banned list. Why? It's not like they are real cards. They might as well add the FNM inserts too.

I am leaning towards banning all multiplayer sets in Legacy. Reprint the well designed stuff like Flusterstorm in a real set and ditch the multiplayer garbage.

[Barook]

It would be interesting to hear what are Maro's thoughts on cards with clear multiplayer design in 1-on-1 games. Stuff like TNN and Council's Judgment seems downright silly in that regard.

Maybe I get an answer on that question.

[TsumiBand]

I really don't like Council of Judgement or TNN, and I hate that we now have new mechanic (voting) in Legacy that makes absolutely zero sense in a two player game. ...

I am leaning towards banning all multiplayer sets in Legacy. Reprint the well designed stuff like Flusterstorm in a real set and ditch the multiplayer garbage.

Well, it's a double-edged sword; these multiplayer sets are supposed to be their inlet for printing new, Eternal-only cards that could never see print in Standard. The fact that they've printed derps like TNN is unfortunate, but the method for delivery is all right. They just need to not print things on the justification that "in the format they're intended for, they're fine" because they have acknowledged on more than one occasion that these sets facilitate precisely that "new cards for Eternal" function.

It's really sloppy but they talk out of both sides of their mouth on this point; if something is well-received they go "Why thank you! We knew you'd appreciate it." and of course when things are met with resistance they change their tune to "again, guys, as a dickhead reminder, this is a m-u-l-t-i-p-l-a-y-e-r set. If you play the card like we asked you to, it's savvy." As if the mean brokenness between two formats is close enough to 0 that that fixes anything. (if it did, they'd just print it in standard OH WAIT)

[Cire]

Actually, the next logical step would be:

~ can't leave the battlefield.

Yeah, but you can't thoughtseize my card :cool:

[Zombie]

Yeah, but you can't thoughtseize my card :cool:

I'll be playing my can't leave the battlefield cards in a deck with Leyline of Sanctity (aka Fuck You That's Why) and casting them with Cavern of Souls. Fuck interaction, why play games WITH people? Joke of the year.

... ;_;