Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bardo
they have the least amount of tolerance for combo as an archetype, as repeatedly losing to combo pushes away players and makes them stop playing the game.
This needs to be repeated. As anecdotal an evidence it may be, it applied to myself.
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
Wow. I take a week's vacation from the internet and return to this?
Mystical Tutor? Really? What was it busting? If there was an explanation given on mtg.com, I missed it.
Yeah, this puts a big nail in combo's forehead. It will persist of course, as it always does.
I wonder what the rationale is. I mean, Reanimator was very good but not exactly dominant; and the other combo decks were a rather small part of the metagame, falling prey to the big bad aggro control decks. Plus, Reanimator has enough reanimation spells available to replace MTutor with. They lose versatility but not much in the way of consistency.
Sure, I can see them wanting to eliminate t1-2 combos to make the metagame more interactive and maybe open up more possibilities for aggro as opposed to aggro control. If so, MTutor wasn't the way to go, now, was it? It slows combo by making it less consistent rather than just slowing it down; now combo craps out more often and thus will be less fun to play but also less fun to lose to.
Also, for what possible reason would anyone want to play control now? The more combo gets hit, the more control suffers too.
Seriously, what did MTutor do that was so freaking dangerous? I mean, sure, it was only a matter of time. At the very inception of Legacy, it was readily appearent that they indended to keep as much accel as possible while axing engines and, by extension, tutors. But why now?
Oh well, guess Doomsday is BUR now. Dredge, I guess?
Monolith sucks, and you can have that in writing. It could find a niche but unless I'm missing something major the only legitimate use is as a colorless Ritual the turn after you cast it. Refueling is only an option if you have nothing better to do - which you should.
Mask is more interesting; seems they're acknowledging that there's little they can do to keep Legacy affordable in the long run. It made no sense to have it banned for power concerns. Hard to see what could be done with it that'd be more exciting than Stifle/Nought. Morphs? Meh.
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Noman Peopled
Seriously, what did MTutor do that was so freaking dangerous? I mean, sure, it was only a matter of time. At the very inception of Legacy, it was readily appearent that they indended to keep as much accel as possible while axing engines and, by extension, tutors. But why now?
ANT and Reanimator were both very good and very easy to play. WoTC doesn't like that. Neither do I actually. My philosophy is if you are going to win before I even get to drop a land it better be badass and it better be hard to pull off. That was pre-AdN combo. Now we are returning to those days when combo was the hard archetype to master. WoTC could kill two birds with one stone by banning Mystical Tutor. I'm very happy with this ban.
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
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Originally Posted by
TheAardvark
I want to point out that I am not a WotC apologist; far from it. However, I think that the majority of the decisions that WotC makes for the game (WotC, not the DCI; in my view, the two are often mutually exclusive) tend to work out in the end. My perspective is just different, I suppose, as someone who was a big Legacy player at one point, and now I play it maybe once per year. I just see what could happen to Legacy being very similar to what has happened to Vintage, and thought I'd share a sort of "outsider's" view.
I could very well be wrong, and I hope I am. But I think the issues I have mentioned are very real possibilities and should at least be considered food for thought.
Well, it's not really it works out in the end, more like we suck our thumbs and either continue playing or quit (that's what I learnt from my times in the military). And unfortunately, I have done the latter, for now at least, I'll wait till the meta stablizes, if it's heavy aggro (or even a specific deck heavy) like T2 now, I guess it's time to let go till it's back to the post banning era. =(
I just find it tiring, when I get a new strategy, get it out, only to find wizards banning it a couple of months later (combo players from the older sets might get this better).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vacrix
ANT and Reanimator were both very good and very easy to play. WoTC doesn't like that. Neither do I actually. My philosophy is if you are going to win before I even get to drop a land it better be badass and it better be hard to pull off. That was pre-AdN combo. Now we are returning to those days when combo was the hard archetype to master. WoTC could kill two birds with one stone by banning Mystical Tutor. I'm very happy with this ban.
As for combo going off on turn 1 before you lay a land, how often does it happen? From my experience ANT and reanimator more oftenly tends to go off on turn 2-3 consistently, despite mullis, besides they aren't easy to play either, if they really were and that strong, Reanimator and ANT would have heavy showings like Jund in T2.
Overall, I'm quite unhappy with the way they banned stuff. Like what above folks have said, don't do anything until it's broken.
Anyway, since M Tutor's gone, hopefully, I get back my Worldgorger Dragon and maybe Flash back. =x
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vacrix
ANT and Reanimator were both very good and very easy to play. WoTC doesn't like that. Neither do I actually. My philosophy is if you are going to win before I even get to drop a land it better be badass and it better be hard to pull off. That was pre-AdN combo. Now we are returning to those days when combo was the hard archetype to master. WoTC could kill two birds with one stone by banning Mystical Tutor. I'm very happy with this ban.
ANT and Reanimator were only easy to play if your opponent was a goldfish. ANT was very hard to play correctly against anything that had blue or black or Chalice/3sphere. Never mind it would occasionally whiff and thus could be hampered with fast damage.
Doomsday is very hard to play and it got bashed over the head as well.
Of all these decks (bar Belcher), Reanimator seems to me to have been hit the least while putting up the most numbers. It's still as easy to play as it was before - in fact, even easier because you don't have to choose what to tutor for. Is it weaker? Yeah, sure.
Belcher can still beat you no problem unless you have exactly the specialized tools you needed for the more robust but slower combos - except with those you could actually lose to fast aggro. Yeah, one could argue that nobody plays that because it just craps out too often. There's still Dredge, which is harder to play against aggro than MTutor combo was but not so against blue.
Besides, why should combo be harder to play than any other archetype? It's not like the payoff is actually higher, certainly not by win percentages. AdN in less than apt hand (like mine) was very brittle to a huge number of cards that needed to be dealt with - and considering the aggressive metagame, dealt with fast. By contrast, while other decks certainly don't win t2-3, they do have the potential to create a gamestate during those turns that is just as unfun.
Maybe you're right about that being the goal though; make combo less consistent in general in order to make other decks more attractive. As stated, I don't think power level concerns would have been near enough, and I maintain that Reanimator suffered the least since it was never really a MTutor deck to the degree Doomsday or AdN were.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to the banning of MTutor; I would just have hoped for an explanation better than "it's banned".
//edit: I guess with MTutor gone, it's time to dust off my old High Tide ideas ...
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
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Originally Posted by
Noman Peopled
ANT and Reanimator were only easy to play if your opponent was a goldfish. ANT was very hard to play correctly against anything that had blue or black or Chalice/3sphere. Never mind it would occasionally whiff and thus could be hampered with fast damage.
Doomsday is very hard to play and it got bashed over the head as well....Besides, why should combo be harder to play than any other archetype? It's not like the payoff is actually higher, certainly not by win percentages. AdN in less than apt hand (like mine) was very brittle to a huge number of cards that needed to be dealt with - and considering the aggressive metagame, dealt with fast. By contrast, while other decks certainly don't win t2-3, they do have the potential to create a gamestate during those turns that is just as unfun..
QFT.
The problem I hear the most about Legacy (from people who've had zero or tangential interaction with it, mind you) is that it's non-interactive. I took one of my friends to the recent Lotus event in Syracuse, and the whole way up there, he's all about how fucked he is and how he's going to be terrible, but I helped him with some basics on the four-hour drive up, and a guy who arrived not being 100% sure of the Oracle text on all his cards went 3-4 and had a blast. Another week of testing for a Grand Prix he's suddenly interested in has him knowing triple what he did that Saturday and loving the format even more. I quote; "You never realize how lame Standard is until you see all the cool shit you can do in Legacy."
Point being that any deck is unfun to play against if you don't know what you're doing, while most any deck can be interactive if you know the format. The lack of interaction may be people being wowed by the cool stuff they can add to their old decks and not paying attention to anything else, then getting blown out by things they hadn't troubled to look up.
I'm not going to lie; there are matchups that are frustrating. A good storm or dredge player will leave you a phenomenally small margin of error, and Lands! can make you feel like a toddler in a seminary. For me, though, the matches where you have to think hard and make the tough judgment calls and occasionally fly by the seat of your pants are what make Magic my favorite game by a wide margin. At that Lotus event I beat Zoo two games in a row with a timely Pox in both games, the second time a turn after Dark Confidant had shown me a Tombstalker. Another round I beat ANT while on the draw by playing a Pox first turn off a Dark Ritual that he never recovered from. I couldn't have daydreamed that kind of shit, and the kind of ingenuity that Legacy both demands and allows makes it my favorite format.
I would also say for the record that 'favorite' is a value judgment, and there are people who are simply turned off by the size of the card pool; there's something undeniably safe about the strict limitations of Standard or the presumed parity/luck of the draw in Limited. I would just hope that people who argue for or against the format have a logical basis for their arguments.
Just my two cents.
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
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Originally Posted by
Tokobotenkai
As for combo going off on turn 1 before you lay a land, how often does it happen? From my experience ANT and reanimator more oftenly tends to go off on turn 2-3 consistently, despite mullis, besides they aren't easy to play either, if they really were and that strong, Reanimator and ANT would have heavy showings like Jund in T2.
Its just me exaggerating. Not being able to drop a land is basically saying 'not being able to interact'. People like to be able to interact with their opponent. I'm not saying, ban everything that doesn't interact. Rather, consider the implications of allowing decks like ANT and Reanimator to remain as consistent as they were (due to Mystical Tutor); you have people winning even before the opponent has a chance to interact. This drives players away from the playing magic AND it distorts the metagame. Combo used to be an uncommon matchup. Pre-AdN combo was mostly considered 'unstable' and 'unreliable' because few players took the time to learn how to master it. Then AdN came along and in a sense gave some steroids to storm combo. All of a sudden it became easy to pilot and everyone and his mom was playing ANT. Reanimator took a similar path, not taking too much effort to pilot effectively. Also, keep in mind that all of the storm combo players began having to adapt to a changing meta. As storm got more popular, so did storm hate, and so did the decks that beat storm. Now we can go back to the days where there was less storm hate and fewer players were familiar with each storm variant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Noman Peopled
ANT and Reanimator were only easy to play if your opponent was a goldfish. ANT was very hard to play correctly against anything that had blue or black or Chalice/3sphere. Never mind it would occasionally whiff and thus could be hampered with fast damage.
Doomsday is very hard to play and it got bashed over the head as well.
Of all these decks (bar Belcher), Reanimator seems to me to have been hit the least while putting up the most numbers. It's still as easy to play as it was before - in fact, even easier because you don't have to choose what to tutor for. Is it weaker? Yeah, sure.
Belcher can still beat you no problem unless you have exactly the specialized tools you needed for the more robust but slower combos - except with those you could actually lose to fast aggro. Yeah, one could argue that nobody plays that because it just craps out too often. There's still Dredge, which is harder to play against aggro than MTutor combo was but not so against blue.
Besides, why should combo be harder to play than any other archetype? It's not like the payoff is actually higher, certainly not by win percentages. AdN in less than apt hand (like mine) was very brittle to a huge number of cards that needed to be dealt with - and considering the aggressive metagame, dealt with fast. By contrast, while other decks certainly don't win t2-3, they do have the potential to create a gamestate during those turns that is just as unfun.
Maybe you're right about that being the goal though; make combo less consistent in general in order to make other decks more attractive. As stated, I don't think power level concerns would have been near enough, and I maintain that Reanimator suffered the least since it was never really a MTutor deck to the degree Doomsday or AdN were.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to the banning of MTutor; I would just have hoped for an explanation better than "it's banned".
//edit: I guess with MTutor gone, it's time to dust off my old High Tide ideas ...
I'm sorry but ANT was NOT hard to play. ANT practically stood for 'A Not-hard-to-play Tendrils-deck'. Not hard to play, compared to what? Compared to Zoo? Compared to other storm decks? What is your standard of value to determine what is hard to play and what is not? Most of magic is just doing some basic math. Storm combo usually requires you to calculate damage all the time to make sure you aren't within burn range (at least against aggro). It also requires you to not fuck up or else your mistakes will haunt you immediately, rather than prove to be the turn of the tide in the long run. AdN was a very easy to use draw engine. All you do it not kill yourself. Thats not much to ask. Please. Try picking up one of the harder to play storm decks and then you can appreciate how easy it really is to play with AdN. Mystical Tutor was the crutch that ANT needed to be good. ANT was a streamlined storm deck; it was easy to play around hate in part because of MT. If this is a hard deck to play, I'd like to hear what your idea of an easy deck is. As for 3sphere/CoTV nonsense... Mystical Tutor --> Rebuild is hard? Really?
Why should storm combo be hard to play? I'm not saying that this is objectively true. Its just my opinion.
I consider storm combo variants to be the best decks in the format. They can win quickly, play around hate, and protect their combos. If someone is going to play a deck like this, I believe it should be really difficult to pilot. Think about it in black and white extremes. If your opponent only had to play 1 card to beat you, would you play magic? If your opponent could simply lay down a land that said, you win the game when this comes into play, would you play magic? Probably not. The same goes for if you would have to play an unlimited number of cards to win. My point is, if you are going to win before the other player gets a turn, it ought to be difficult to pull off that way everyone isn't doing it. Look at Belcher. Its really easy to pull off, but it sucks so much ass. Players have adapted to it and merely dismiss the tokens as irrelevant. Belcher often gets its kills by resolving a lethal Belcher, which STILL has the chance to misfire. I see no problem with people playing this deck. More than half the time you are just dropping Goblins tokens and winning on turn 2/3. Why bother playing this deck in the first place when you could be playing TES which can also win on turn 2/3 fairly consistently? Because people don't want to take the time to learn how to play a better deck. SI vs. Belcher is the best example I can give. SI is by and large, was always, will be for the foreseeable future, the fastest combo deck in legacy. YET people play Belcher instead of it. People do not want to learn how to play SI well. They would rather take the easy route and play Belcher. Now, I highly doubt that you will ever see a surge in SI simply because its hard to play.
Also, I've worked very hard to hone my skills playing Solidarity and SI. I wouldn't want to see all that effort go to waste by giving storm an unnecessary crutch to bad players who don't want to learn how to consistently complete a beautiful spell chain.
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vacrix
I'm sorry but ANT was NOT hard to play. ANT practically stood for 'A Not-hard-to-play Tendrils-deck'. Not hard to play, compared to what? Compared to Zoo? Compared to other storm decks? What is your standard of value to determine what is hard to play and what is not? Most of magic is just doing some basic math. Storm combo usually requires you to calculate damage all the time to make sure you aren't within burn range (at least against aggro). It also requires you to not fuck up or else your mistakes will haunt you immediately, rather than prove to be the turn of the tide in the long run. AdN was a very easy to use draw engine. All you do it not kill yourself. Thats not much to ask. Please. Try picking up one of the harder to play storm decks and then you can appreciate how easy it really is to play with AdN.
First off, yes, AdN was easy to play when compared with other combo decks. That's not easy by any stretch of the imagination, not against an opponent that could actually do something.
Not kill yourself is nowhere near all you had to do unless you were in fact playing against slow aggro without hate bears. Try that against anything that you know for a fact is playing Forces and Balance/Top, or anything that can deal 5-7 t1-2. Determining when to go off is vital with AnT (probably most combo decks, in fact); any card naturally drawn increases your chances, but of course it also gives your opponent more options. Against aggro with burn it would be mostly easy to determine when to try and go off; but even then, the answer varies with what burn they're holding - if they're not, going off a turn later with one mana more would be better.
But yes, much easier than other combo decks.
Second - and more crucially - it was not only ANT that got hit by the bannings; it was like half the combo decks, some of which, as you noted, were much harder to play correctly. If the problem was the ease with which AdN could be played, banning Mystical Tutor is utter overkill. It'd be like banning Sensei's Top when trying to nerf Doomsday exclusively. That's not what they did. They could've easily said "look, we think that if you can win t1-2 you should have to work for it; AdN makes that too easy so we're axing it". Everybody would've just switched to the harder to use and less stable IGG/Doomsday things, or something else.
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Why should storm combo be hard to play? I'm not saying that this is objectively true. Its just my opinion.
Fair enough.
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I consider storm combo variants to be the best decks in the format. They can win quickly, play around hate, and protect their combos.
Winning quickly is no measure of success. Most decks can play around hate to some extent; if they couldn't, they'd die out. It's just more obvious with combo because you have tor resolve specific pieces rather than relying on redundancy. Protecting your key pieces is something that aggro-control can do better, and decks like Zoo don't generally have to because they're not so reliant on them.
Storm combo variants are not the best decks in the format statistically; whether this is due to a general lack of playskill or other factors, why consider it a problem? It's not like every pro is picking up storm combo and doing well with it while the average shmoe is watching them play solitaire.
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Also, I've worked very hard to hone my skills playing Solidarity and SI. I wouldn't want to see all that effort go to waste by giving storm an unnecessary crutch to bad players who don't want to learn how to consistently complete a beautiful spell chain.
Not all players are lazy just because they're unable or unwilling to put hours of testing behind every deck that strikes their fancy. (Besides, if you're bad with AnT, you will lose to anything with countermeasures.) Some people have a hard job, other interests, etc. This does not entitle them to an easy-to play-combo deck any more than your rigorous testing entitles you to demand that combo be hard to play. (At least, not on that basis.)
Also, I'm not actually pissed about ANT, I'm pissed about Doomsday. I just assembled it and was testing it. What about my invested hours gone to waste? Even so, I don't necessarily disagree with their decision. I would just, for once, like to see an entire article (hell, anything longer than a three-sentence paragraph would do) with the rationale.
So I'm not even ultimately pissed about Doomsday; I'm pissed about it being nerfed with me having to idea why. MTutor was not the problem card in Reanimator. If AdN was the problem, banning MTutor makes no sense as it also hits other decks. If the goal was to nerf combo in general, why leave the ones without MTutor untouched?
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vacrix
I'm sorry but ANT was NOT hard to play. ANT practically stood for 'A Not-hard-to-play Tendrils-deck'. Not hard to play, compared to what? Compared to Zoo? Compared to other storm decks? What is your standard of value to determine what is hard to play and what is not? Most of magic is just doing some basic math. Storm combo usually requires you to calculate damage all the time to make sure you aren't within burn range (at least against aggro). It also requires you to not fuck up or else your mistakes will haunt you immediately, rather than prove to be the turn of the tide in the long run. AdN was a very easy to use draw engine. All you do it not kill yourself. Thats not much to ask. Please. Try picking up one of the harder to play storm decks and then you can appreciate how easy it really is to play with AdN.
First off, yes, AdN was easy to play when compared with other combo decks. That's not easy by any stretch of the imagination, not against an opponent that could actually do something.
Not kill yourself is nowhere near all you had to do unless you were in fact playing against slow aggro without hate bears. Try that against anything that you know for a fact is playing Forces and Balance/Top, or anything that can deal 5-7 t1-2. Determining when to go off is vital with AnT (probably most combo decks, in fact); any card naturally drawn increases your chances, but of course it also gives your opponent more options. Against aggro with burn it would be mostly easy to determine when to try and go off; but even then, the answer varies with what burn they're holding - if they're not, going off a turn later with one mana more would be better.
But yes, much easier than other combo decks.
Second - and more crucially - it was not only ANT that got hit by the bannings; it was like half the combo decks, some of which, as you noted, were much harder to play correctly. If the problem was the ease with which AdN could be played, banning Mystical Tutor is utter overkill. It'd be like banning Sensei's Top when trying to nerf Doomsday exclusively. That's not what they did. They could've easily said "look, we think that if you can win t1-2 you should have to work for it; AdN makes that too easy so we're axing it". Everybody would've just switched to the harder to use and less stable IGG/Doomsday things, or something else.
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Why should storm combo be hard to play? I'm not saying that this is objectively true. Its just my opinion.
Fair enough.
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I consider storm combo variants to be the best decks in the format. They can win quickly, play around hate, and protect their combos.
Winning quickly is no measure of success. Most decks can play around hate to some extent; if they couldn't, they'd die out. It's just more obvious with combo because you have tor resolve specific pieces rather than relying on redundancy. Protecting your key pieces is something that aggro-control can do better, and decks like Zoo don't generally have to because they're not so reliant on them.
Storm combo variants are not the best decks in the format statistically; whether this is due to a general lack of playskill or other factors, why consider it a problem? It's not like every pro is picking up storm combo and doing well with it while the average shmoe is watching them play solitaire.
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Also, I've worked very hard to hone my skills playing Solidarity and SI. I wouldn't want to see all that effort go to waste by giving storm an unnecessary crutch to bad players who don't want to learn how to consistently complete a beautiful spell chain.
Not all players are lazy just because they're unable or unwilling to put hours of testing behind every deck that strikes their fancy. (Besides, if you're bad with AnT, you will lose to anything with countermeasures.) Some people have a hard job, other interests, etc. This does not entitle them to an easy-to play-combo deck any more than your rigorous testing entitles you to demand that combo be hard to play. (At least, not on that basis.)
Also, I'm not actually pissed about ANT, I'm pissed about Doomsday. I just assembled it and was testing it. What about my invested hours gone to waste? Even so, I don't necessarily disagree with their decision. I would just, for once, like to see an entire article (hell, anything longer than a three-sentence paragraph would do) with the rationale.
So I'm not even ultimately pissed about Doomsday; I'm pissed about it being nerfed with me having to idea why. MTutor was not the problem card in Reanimator. If AdN was the problem, banning MTutor makes no sense as it also hits other decks. If the goal was to nerf combo in general, why leave the ones without MTutor untouched?
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
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I'm pissed about it being nerfed with me having to idea why. MTutor was not the problem card in Reanimator. If AdN was the problem, banning MTutor makes no sense as it also hits other decks. If the goal was to nerf combo in general, why leave the ones without MTutor untouched?
Agreed. The correct banning(s) would have been Entomb (and Ad Nauseam if necessary).
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
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Originally Posted by
Dia_Bot
Agreed. The correct banning(s) would have been Entomb (and Ad Nauseam if necessary).
Um... no.
This.
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Originally Posted by
Silent Requiem
Actually, if they were indeed out to tone down ANT and Reanimator, then banning Mystical was absolutely the right thing to do.
What Wizards has effectively said is NOT that combo has no place, but that combo should be tricky to play, and that the tradeoff for avoiding interaction with your opponent is increased interaction with your deck. Mystical Tutor made combo too easy to play.
They didn't ban Entomb because they think Entomb is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did not ban Ad Nauseam because they think Ad Nauseam is a cool card that deserves to see play. They did ban Mystical Tutor because it is a force multiplier that makes otherwise reasonable cards and strategies too powerful and consistent.
For the record, I own 4 Mystical Tutors and I don't think it needed to be banned. But if Wizards felt that combo was getting too consistent or easy to play then it was exactly the right card to ban, and I would much rather they ban Mystical Tutor than the actual combo cards.
EDIT:
Also, clearly MT was the problem card. It created the consistency those decks need to be good. Now that its gone and all the Reanimator and ANT players are shitting their pants, its pretty hard to argue that its NOT the problem card.
Re: [B&R] Mystical Tutor banned / Illusionary Mask and Grim Monolith unbanned
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If the goal was to nerf combo in general, why leave the ones without MTutor untouched?
Because it wasn't their goal?
