Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pettdan
I agree with Zulabnar [edit: regarding the state of the format], however the format is still evolving and it should be given time to continue to evolve and settle. The next step in banning everything but the main offender would be to ban Snapcaster Mage, as a friend argued today, and I think this might help. Sure they (i.e. Miracles and Grixis Control) would get Mission Briefing, but not getting that 2/1 flash creature would be a step back [edit: this is debatable though].
On the topic of the banning of G. Probe, I have been reading the discussion half-heartedly but I think my first comment said the relevant stuff. Well, to each his own..
Edit, again: actually, it's kind of interesting when, hypothetically, the t0 deck consists of only very fair cards (maybe a single broken card, though this is of course debated) and this still makes it overpowered. Considering banning Snapcaster Mage is strange indeed, such a fair card.
Well, this was part of why banning Deathrite was not really ideal. We saw it happen in Modern too, where Deathrite was what held Snapcaster back from being obviously the best Creature in Modern (at the time). While Deathrite was likely a mistake in being as powerful as it was, I still think it was over-all better for the format than it was a detriment.
This is exactly the type of sentiment that I decried when Deathrite got banned. This war against excellence, which ends up a war against whatever emerges as the "next best thing." There will always be a next best thing. If the aim is to always just cull from the top simply because it's the top, we are working our way toward a format where all we have a ETBF Tapped lands and Great Wall. Am I being dramatic? Of course, but I'm illustrating how absurd the general principle is/was in banning Deathrite and now this subsequent idea that Snapcaster should be banned. Or even considered for banning.
Hierarchy is the entire point of Legacy. The format is absolutely predicated on the very notion that some things are demonstrably better than others. Leave your Post-Modernist notions in the realm where they belong: ideas that seems reasonable but don't actually work in or pertain to the realistic world.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ronald Deuce
Mission Briefing is pretty busted. Calling it now: better than Snapcaster Mage.
I don't think this can be true, because Mission Briefing can't kill your opponent, whereas Snapcaster Mage can.
Edit: we're pretty much exactly on the same page with everything else though.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ronald Deuce
Also, apropos of Pettdan's comment, Mission Briefing is pretty busted. Calling it now: better than Snapcaster Mage.
And that thing is instant? Oh for fuck's sake.
Meanwhile in Green, the ostensibly more graveyard-based color of the two:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers...3063&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers...2925&type=cardhttp://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers...tions=rotate90
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zombie
And that thing is instant?
It gets better. It doesn't target so it gets around Silent Gravestone/Ground Seal, it digs two cards deep for Hail Mary plays, and it lets you pitch blue cards in your hand to cast Force out of the graveyard.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
@taconaught putting responses to blocks of your post:
1) The game-ending (before it began) is the weakest point in the argument against Probe; however an amount of games did end on turn 0 [effectively] because Probe was legal - the failure of Probe to cost any mana made that possible. It's not about how often people feel like that happened; the point is that objectively speaking, that Probe's zero mana cost is the underlying mechanic that made it possible.
There are a lot of cards on the banlist [particularly ones without mana engine aspects] which are banned b/c they are kinda just bullcrap. Now bullcrap comes in two [non-mana engine] flavors: "this is overpowered, and the only way to beat it is to play it" [ ex. Ancestral Recall/Mental Misstep, subset diversity killer] and "this is just plain stupid" [ex. Yawg Will, Time Vault, etc.]. There is a precedent for banning cards just on the basis of "this is bullcrap," and turn zero Probe-Sea-Therapy, take 2 cards-gg is something that qualifies as sufficiently stupid play pattern. An argument of "Probe is to powerful, it should be banned" is inherently subjective, but it's not necessarily wrong [nor is it necessarily right].
2) There is a very large difference between needing to play a land and use its mana to cast a discard spell, and needing zero mana and getting a new card. An opponent cannot interact with something as non-committal as Probe [unless life total is a meaningful axis of interaction from the onset of a game, which is to say specifically Burn].
3) It's not about the info quality in a dynamic game state, nor about how people play in-game. I'm just looking at the raw mechanics of Probe and stating that the purpose of the card is to move a game of magic away from interactive, precisely because no meaningful axis of interaction was exposed to an opponent.
4) Treasure Cruise would have gotten itself banned post-theoretical Probe ban. DTT probably also, but we'll never really know. What we can say though is that any card with keyword delve is castable at least 1 turn quicker in the presence of Probe. This can currently be appreciated in legacy by watching Death's Shadow [with Street Wraith] and any other non-Wraith deck with Gurmag. That increase in velocity is objectively noteworthy.
5) Chalice requires extreme concessions in deckbuilding. The cost of Chalice's power is that you're at the mercy of an opponent's strategy because Chalice decks are exceedingly easy to predict possible plays (and if Chalice didn't stop their plans, your deck is going to offer very little dynamic resistance). Also notable: most Chalice decks do not get the benefit of increasing the EV of their topdecks by thinning via Fetchlands.
@Ronald Deuce some of the above post relates to your post. Building on that I'll just talk about what it all means when I apply it to Grixis Delver.
The entire deck of Grixis Delver [pre-DRS/Probe ban] is built upon the premise of abusing Fetchlands in an amount of ways no other decks could. There are of course the cantrips and DRS mana implications; then apart from Fetchlands was the notable ability to shred opponent's hands on the back of Probe/Therapy. That hyper-consistent, hyper-efficient, hyper-disruptive, and high-velocity strategy then got the delve mechanic - and suddenly Probe/Therapy is now also buffing the Fetchland abuse because both feed into the DTT/Gurmag reward pathway. It was not challenging to capitalize on that payoff by turn 3. While it wasn't unbeatable, the chances were the opponent never really got to play magic/make meaningful decisions before they died.
Probe being legal meant an opponent would die at least ~1 turn quicker. Another way of stating this: with delve, Probe is mana positive.
The hidden oracle text on Probe is: Pay 2 life, your opponents' ability to interact is diminished and the amount of time they have to interact will be diminished. Results may vary [deck construction + variance], and don't reassess as long as Fetchlands are legal. :cool:
Re: All B/R update speculation.
BAN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Show and Tell
Dark Depths
possibly Griselbrand
format would be way more fun
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
porcupinetreeman
BAN:
Dark Depths
format would be way more fun
Heathen.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
A Griselbrand ban would be great. Just think that Reanimator might actually have to make real decisions when it comes to figuring out what to entomb for instead of Griselbrand 95% of the time
Re: All B/R update speculation.
I don't really mind Show and Tell quite as such - I mind Show and Tell into abject braindeath. Cleaning the "if this lands the game is over then and there with basically 0 requirements" type of cards from the payoff list would make the card more interesting. Show and Tell is broken, but it's S&T->Griseltard/Emralolol/Omnidrool, maybe S&T->Jin-Git that are the issue.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
For all the hate SnT gets, it really only punishes small-minded magic grinding out their little incremental advantages. The balance is that things go horribly wrong when you cast SnT into decks that are going big. There's no doubt SnT is stupid and generally uninteresting, but it's still symmetrical.
The card SnT operates to hurt SCM/SFM/Strix/etc ETB-value scumming into [insert planeswalker]. As bad as the SnT matchup is for the non-blue fair deck, the fact of the matter is that said fair deck is relying on ETB value scum precisely because they can't go big vs cheap removal spell into Snapcaster. Losing to SnT might feel awful, but SnT isn't taking deck-building freedom away from the non-blue fair deck.
Hopefully WotC learns to print less miserable cards [preferably lands] that hate on ETB-value magic than SnT. Even if a fair deck [given tools to hate ETB without going out of their way] is gonna stop at Goyf, the quality of card they could dump in off SnT would have improved significantly.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
H
Well, this was part of why banning Deathrite was not really ideal. We saw it happen in Modern too, where Deathrite was what held Snapcaster back from being obviously the best Creature in Modern (at the time). While Deathrite was likely a mistake in being as powerful as it was, I still think it was over-all better for the format than it was a detriment.
This is exactly the type of sentiment that I decried when Deathrite got banned. This war against excellence, which ends up a war against whatever emerges as the "next best thing." There will always be a next best thing. If the aim is to always just cull from the top simply because it's the top, we are working our way toward a format where all we have a ETBF Tapped lands and
Great Wall. Am I being dramatic? Of course, but I'm illustrating how absurd the general principle is/was in banning Deathrite and now this subsequent idea that Snapcaster should be banned. Or even considered for banning.
Hierarchy is the entire point of Legacy. The format is absolutely predicated on the very notion that some things are demonstrably better than others. Leave your Post-Modernist notions in the realm where they belong: ideas that seems reasonable but don't actually work in or pertain to the realistic world.
I think there are two reason we have these bans: Wizards silence on what cards are sacrosanct and there inability to stop printing dumb blue cards. Outside of a Tweet by Aaron Forsythe on Brainstorm (a Tweet, really?) we don't know what cards will never be banned and by extension will be banned around. I can't play Top but I can play Brainstorm and Ponder in all of my Blue decks and I don't think I need to mention the stupidity of Griseltard. This feels really similar to how they manage the Banned List in Modern, very heavy-handed. It would be nice if we were told if they had a vision for the format because looking at the cards that are banned and the ones I can play is kinda confusing.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
porcupinetreeman
BAN:
Brainstorm
Ponder
Show and Tell
Dark Depths
possibly Griselbrand
format would be way more fun
These are all fine. You may not like them, but they aren't overly powerful to the point that there is a legitimate reason to ban them.
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Griselbrand should go and has needed to for awhile. It would be great if the combo decks didn't just instantly win when their big fatty resolved 90% of the time. Especially for non blue decks that can't fight on the stack it might give fair non prison non blue decks some sort of game against combo.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zombie
You do understand that wizards doesn't give a shit about legacy? These cards are decent in standard an bg is a very strong deck also because of good the recursion tools it has.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
taconaut
As I've said before, that might be good for the game, as it's bigger than it has ever been; it's just a bummer when it always seems like it's the decks you like that Wizards takes shots at :frown:
That deck would be?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ronald Deuce
When the hell was Storm on top of the format? In the Mystical Tutor days? And how is casting T1 Thoughtseize throwing away a turn? It neuters opponents' hands. For one mana. And it gives you "free information." And it takes anything that's not The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. (/sarcasm)
I genuinely can't tell who's for real in this thread anymore. Anyone who has ever lost a Legacy game to a T1 Probe followed by nothing probably shouldn't be playing games that involve critical thought. The interaction of Probe, Therapy, and Young Pyromancer was the core "problem" (assiduously sticking to scare quotes here) that rational people complained about, and their complaint never held water. As a corollary, to people who aren't interested in numeric data, why wouldn't you want to ban Chalice of the Void if it's more ubiquitous and powerful than Gitaxian Probe? Bias.
I hate getting this frothy, but seriously, there's a lot of nonsense in these recent posts. And lest anyone forget, the "reasoning" provided by Wizards behind banning probe had nothing to do with any of your arguments: it was, effectively, "Probe is really good. We chose to ban it in a lot of formats. Therefore, we should ban it in Legacy."
SOunds like a salty storm player?
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MorphBerlin
That deck would be?
Ooh ooh, I know this one! WotC hates Doomsday, all formats. :laugh:
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GrimoirePath
Unban chaos orb.
Yes!
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MorphBerlin
SOunds like a salty storm player?
I am salty about the ban, and I am a Storm player, but those two aren't directly connected. Again, Storm's actually in a better place now precisely because it's not vulnerable to Probe-Therapy-Therapy plays; even though Storm used Probe-Therapy, it suffered against it more than it benefited from having the option around. It's the apparent lack of reasoning, testing, and logic in the ban announcement that makes me angry, especially when the community largely just goes, "Huh, ok," without holding the arbiters to a standard of logic or transparency. I've left Modern forever because I'm tired of watching anything and everything powerful that's not an ETB creature get sniped, and I think that in a format like Legacy, which has such a steep financial barrier to entry, there'd better be pretty good reasoning and transparency in the banning process if decks are going to get hammered. Sure, there's a lot of versatility in Legacy's expensive staples, but it's infuriating to see the higher-ups just go, "Well, we're banning Probe because we banned it in other formats." At least they gave some kind of coherent reasoning behind the Deathrite ban, sad though I was to see it.
Fox, sorry I missed your post. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about Probe specifically, because I'm with you about most of your arguments and I think you've got an interesting perspective; I just don't think the card warranted a ban.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fox
For all the hate SnT gets, it really only punishes small-minded magic grinding out their little incremental advantages. The balance is that things go horribly wrong when you cast SnT into decks that are going big. There's no doubt SnT is stupid and generally uninteresting, but it's still symmetrical.
A thousand times this. It's a card with a built-in out to itself. (Won me some games by flopping my own Griselbrand in Dredge, flopping a Charbelcher and firing away, or flopping Stingscourger in Burn.) Eureka and Hypergenesis have the same feature, and I suspect that's the reason they're fringy these days. Sure, Show and Tell is a bit dumb, but isn't it dumber that there are 15/15 Annihilators and 7/7 Bargaintown creatures running around?
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Ban: True-Name, Terminus, Counterbalance, Mentor, Griselbrand
Unban: Top, Earthcraft
Format solved
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kap'n Cook
Format solved
i like where you're going but i've got a detour: unban probe, top, deathrite, earthcraft, mindtwist and ban brainstorm.
no more shaky keeps just 'cause you have a BS and a fetch :rolleyes:
you wouldn't HAVE TO play blue "cause i'm a spike nonsense"...
EDIT: i'd even campaign to get DTT and treasure cruise back if it meant BS gets the ban hammer.
