Thread for going out on a limb

I thought it would be fun to make a thread where you can state your opinion things which are very different from what most people think. I'm definitely not proclaiming myself to be an expert at predicting the future; for instance, I correctly said that Temporal Mastery would not be good in the format, but incorrectly though that Deathrite Shaman would not see long-term play except in Elves.

Here's my most recent prediction: the new legendary permanent/planeswalker rules will not affect the metagame. It will certainly change how some games play out, but the overall impact will be comparable to that felt when we lost damage on the stack and mana burn. (The reason I mention this is because two SCG premium articles today suggest that JtMS became much better.)

I am quite certain that the metagame will shift, due to Jace-Decks becoming more concerned about the mirror.
This will eventually mean that, i think, it will be forced to adapt a lot.

I don't think Jace changes a lot. Clique got worse thou, and Show and Tell will be more focused on Omnitell/Dream Halls variants.

The new uniqueness rule will force Blue players to play real answers to planeswalkers, instead of using silly things like "the rules of the game" to win games. Speculators unfamiliar with the finer points of Magic will fixate on terrible cards such as Psionic Blast and Thought Devourer, driving their respective price points unnecessarily high. In unrelated news, in the third quarter of 2013 the value of my homebrew mono-Blue deck will skyrocket, and I will finally be able to attain a line of credit to the extent of that value which will net me that Gibson Les Paul I've been meaning to get for the last my entire life.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

Here's my most recent prediction: the new legendary permanent/planeswalker rules will not affect the metagame. It will certainly change how some games play out, but the overall impact will be comparable to that felt when we lost damage on the stack and mana burn. (The reason I mention this is because two SCG premium articles today suggest that JtMS became much better.)

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No, this rule change will consequently cause some cards to be banned, aka Gaea's Cradle.

Geist of Saint Traft is terrible in non-aggressive decks.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

I thought it would be fun to make a thread where you can state your opinion things which are very different from what most people think. I'm definitely not proclaiming myself to be an expert at predicting the future; for instance, I correctly said that Temporal Mastery would not be good in the format, but incorrectly though that Deathrite Shaman would not see long-term play except in Elves.

Here's my most recent prediction: the new legendary permanent/planeswalker rules will not affect the metagame. It will certainly change how some games play out, but the overall impact will be comparable to that felt when we lost damage on the stack and mana burn. (The reason I mention this is because two SCG premium articles today suggest that JtMS became much better.)

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I support your prediction.

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Originally Posted by twndomn

No, this rule change will consequently cause some cards to be banned, aka Gaea's Cradle.

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Cradle won't get banned. It's not that good. If u have a lot of creatures for it to be good you are probably winning already.

Thespian Stage / Dark Depths is overhyped garbage. It will win some games against scrubs, but against any player worth their salt it will be a colossal waste of time and resources.

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Originally Posted by twndomn

No, this rule change will consequently cause some cards to be banned, aka Gaea's Cradle.

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I can't really get behind this line of thought, as I feel it can only be reached through not actually thinking what Gaea's Cradle does in the deck it's used in (elves).

First off, elves loses to all things: removal, counter spells, discard, and board wipes. It's not a particularly great deck against enough of a diverse meta to reliably make it through most tournaments. Secondly, having more mana (which is, most of the times, -not- the issue of the deck) doesn't actually help it, it's rarely the thing it needs, it needs a lot of creatures to draw more cards. Anyone who's played the deck for an extended period of time will tell you: if you have the choice between drawing cards or making mana, always draw more cards, it'll just naturally lead to more mana.

So we've established that elves both: isn't that great of a deck and the benefit of gaea's cradle in multiples isn't all that useful. Elves already has all the mana it ever needs just inherently. Odds are, you're looking at your hand and hoping to dig to a GSZ, Natural Order, or Glimpse of Nature. And you're doing that because you have a lot of mana and are bouncing visionaries like crazy.

Going out on a limb: I don't think deathblade is a good deck at all. You got a deck that is trying to do everything without actually being good at any one thing to the point were anything focused can just overwhelm it. I'll attribute its recent success to the lack of combo at higher tables and better players championing the deck as opposed to something else.

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Originally Posted by Tammit67

I don't think deathblade is a good deck at all.

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I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not good "at all", but when I look at it, it really just looks like UWB Fish decks of old, just updated with the newest toys to play with.

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Originally Posted by apple713

Cradle won't get banned. It's not that good. If u have a lot of creatures for it to be good you are probably winning already.

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I think it's okay, but I don't consider it a top deck. It seems terrible against most combo decks, in addition to aggressive decks like Merfolk and a deck with better inevitability like Punishing Jund.

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Originally Posted by Koby

Thespian Stage / Dark Depths is overhyped garbage. It will win some games against scrubs, but against any player worth their salt it will be a colossal waste of time and resources.

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I like this as an occasional tutorable combo in Lands or Knight of the Reliquary decks as an occasional trick, a la Loyal Retainers in Survival/Maverick. I do agree building a deck around it is terrible though.

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Originally Posted by Arsenal

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not good "at all", but when I look at it, it really just looks like UWB Fish decks of old, just updated with the newest toys to play with.

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I'm on a limb dammit, don't try to let me edge closer to safety!

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Originally Posted by Tammit67

Going out on a limb: I don't think deathblade is a good deck at all. You got a deck that is trying to do everything without actually being good at any one thing to the point were anything focused can just overwhelm it. I'll attribute its recent success to the lack of combo at higher tables and better players championing the deck as opposed to something else.

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Have you tested with this deck yet? I think it's the real deal and it's combo match up is not bad. It's proactive plan forces opponents to interact and quickly or they get buried. With the original esper blade you could keep a loose hand and be find if they didn't have a SFM.

Edit - Jund is the only deck I've tested against deathblade that has had an obvious advantage.

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Thespian Stage / Dark Depths is overhyped garbage. It will win some games against scrubs, but against any player worth their salt it will be a colossal waste of time and resources.

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100% agree here. You lose 2 maybe 3 cards to get a 20/20 which gets killed by a snapcaster flashing back a swords.

Cradle won't get banned either. Mox Opal still won't be that good.

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Originally Posted by testing32

Have you tested with this deck yet? I think it's the real deal and it's combo match up is not bad. It's proactive plan forces opponents to interact and quickly or they get buried. With the original esper blade you could keep a loose hand and be find if they didn't have a SFM.

Edit - Jund is the only deck I've tested against deathblade that has had an obvious advantage.

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Deathblade's combo matchup is not favorable. You have very little in terms of clock, no mana disruption and lists these days have been cutting counters for discard (meaning storm is happier since you have a harder time interacting on their turn and show and tell is happier since they just bring in leyline of sanctity and shut you down).

The deck grinds and rewards pros for making consistently good decisions. It weakens its manabase to include all the sweet cards pros want to play and have experience with in other formats.

Saying a deck has a proactive plan that forces an opponent to interact or lose is meaningless: this is legacy. Unlike Limited or Standard, we are less concerned about card advantage in the traditional sense and more concerned about executing a gameplan while disrupting our opponents (with some notable exceptions on the disruption front). If you do not interact you better have speed since the threats in this format are powerful and diverse enough to make purely reactive plans bad. With the exception of all in decks with no disruption, every deck in the format looks to interact and forces certain lines of interaction, deathblade is not alone in this.

Why do I have no respect for this deck? I feel there are much better much more playskill rewarding decks out there besides the latest pile of jam 60 powerful cards across 4 colors with little synergy together

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Originally Posted by Tammit67

Going out on a limb: I don't think deathblade is a good deck at all. You got a deck that is trying to do everything without actually being good at any one thing to the point were anything focused can just overwhelm it. I'll attribute its recent success to the lack of combo at higher tables and better players championing the deck as opposed to something else.

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Damn, this forum really needs a like button!

+1 on this

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

I thought it would be fun to make a thread where you can state your opinion things which are very different from what most people think.

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I think this thread will eventually turn into another reserved list dicussion!

So I guess my take: I would perfectly happy if my collection's value was cut in half if it meant twice as many people playing legacy at my LGS.

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Originally Posted by thecrav

I think this thread will eventually turn into another reserved list dicussion!

So I guess my take: I would perfectly happy if my collection's value was cut in half if it meant twice as many people playing legacy at my LGS.

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Agree 110%

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Originally Posted by Tammit67

Going out on a limb: I don't think deathblade is a good deck at all. You got a deck that is trying to do everything without actually being good at any one thing to the point were anything focused can just overwhelm it. I'll attribute its recent success to the lack of combo at higher tables and better players championing the deck as opposed to something else.

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Yeah, Deathblade suffers from trying to jam all the "second-coming-of-Jesus-in-cardboard-form" creatures into one deck. FFS, haven't we stopped collectively nutting over DRS yet?

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Originally Posted by Koby

Thespian Stage / Dark Depths is overhyped garbage. It will win some games against scrubs, but against any player worth their salt it will be a colossal waste of time and resources.

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I'm not sure if there is a new archetype that can be built to take advantage of it but I think there is certainly potential there. A UG, splashing white or black, Counterbalance shell would be pretty cool with Standstill and Loam and Intuition. You can run goyfs and factories as additional wincons and CB is pretty awesome against all those mean anti-DD cards. Something I've been tinkering with, anyways.

I think the combo absolutely has a place in 43 Lands because Stage is awesome with Chasm, Port, Maze, etc. and the combo is easily recurred, DD only takes two slots and can be replayed quickly via Exploration. Here, the combo is something you can assemble easily. It gives you inevitability and reduces the chance you'll draw games by a significant margin. The deck is still a control/prison/ramp hybrid monstrosity but now it can also kill out of nowhere too.

In the next decade, we will see these cards unbanned:

Mind Twist (gotta keep Land Tax in check somehow)
Black Vise (Lava Dart in permanent form)
Worldgorger Dragon (maybe a new combo deck that can also lose to everything)
Goblin Recruiter (throw enough goblins and it a format and it'll go away)
Hermit Druid (people end up playing Swords, Bolt and Tormod's Crypt... MAINDECK!)
Earthcraft (elves or something)
Memory Jar (MUD needs more awesome and so does combo maybe)
Frantic Search (High Tide isn't good enough yet)
Mind's Desire (UU is a bitch)
Survival of the Fittest (some people haven't played it)

We may also see Misstep, Windfall, Drain and Seal too. Maybe. Basically, everything you could possibly unban without turning the format into Vintage.