The card is a problem. Like Brainstorm, Chalice, Leo. It's a fucking format of problems. Please quote me having ever said ban DRS. I'll wait.
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The card is a problem. Like Brainstorm, Chalice, Leo. It's a fucking format of problems. Please quote me having ever said ban DRS. I'll wait.
It's the same play patterns we've seen for years now though is the issue. Sure the kill condition is different but every game really just ends up being: play my deathrite, cast cantrip to find removal, remove your deathrite. Force your next spell, cantrip into threat and play threat. Then it just becomes who has a deathrite at the end of slinging removal at the other creatures ends up winning on deathrite activations eventually. Same shit, different year. Cantrips give you an illusion of decision making, but probably 90% of the time I don't even have to think about what to put back or how to order things it's all pretty simple.
I never mentioned bans. That's between you and Echelnon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
I asked why its a problem in the context of the meta.
Do you even like this game? Did somebody pee in your beer this morning?
What do you want the play patterns to be, Mega?Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
You are describing, what, 3 decks?Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Where I play, there are also decks like ANT, Lands, Prowess, D&T, Elves, Eldrazi, Miracles, and more.
Bitch about a card.Quote:
Originally Posted by taconaut
Card gets banned.
Bitch about another card.
Wash, rinse, repeat?
The DRS debate is one of the reasons that it's hard to put stuff into Legacy. I think that I could've made that same list I made above and had Noble Hierarch in it a couple years ago, and everyone would agree that it would be inconceivable to imagine a better mana dork. Now they've actually made one and its non-stop griping. (I know, there's space between Noble Hierarch and DRS in terms of power level, but this is what they made, so....)
DRS should've been a victory for Wizards -- it was a Legacy-relevant card that didn't warp Standard. It is the kind of card Legacy needs in order to support cards from new sets, actually. The only place effects can compete is up the curve where they are safer and easier to balance in Standard. That means decks need access to mana acceleration and ramp that isn't dogshit at other times of the game. It's too bad that it's become so polarizing.
IMO, the format is way more warped by TNN than DRS, simply because TNN's uninteractivity and inevitability protects it from the efficient removal of the format while forcing play patterns that polarize around answering it. You can't play any cool 3-drops that come out in sets, even those that I believe are powerful enough in a vacuum for Legacy, because your opponent can just Swords it and move on or play a TNN and brick it while you scramble for an answer. Snapcaster Mage allowing players to recycle efficient spells doesn't help either because even if you bait a STP with your DRS, when you both have three lands, that STP is always a threat to come back and eat your Excavator or Tireless Tracker or whatever. (DRS is one of the best weapons against Snapcaster, incidentally.)
Or, to rephrase: Putting a 3-drop in your deck that can be removed for no value by a STP is not tenable as long as you have the option not to. Absent TNN, everyone's 3-drops would be vulnerable enough that it would be a fairer fight.
In his Ravenous Chupacabra rant, Patrick Sullivan hit on this point nicely. He said that with every creature providing value as it hits the table, there's no tension in seeing if you get to untap with your bomb. You don't really care what your opponent does because you got your thing. It's a problem across MTG right now, not just Legacy, and hopefully they will find a way to fix it soon.
Actually, Sullivan's DRS rant is relevant here as well. We say we want Legacy-relevant cards, but when we get one that's actually impactful -- it's "ban now" city.
This. I play Legacy every week, and while some individual games can be fun, I don't feel like I'm experiencing anything different from one week to the next. Clearly the format's fine for some of/most Legacy players, but there's a subset of us who are finding it stale.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
I agree with almost everything you say (which is a nice change for us). :smile:
I disagree with this:
This isn't quite true.Quote:
Originally Posted by maharis
This is more like it.Quote:
Originally Posted by maharis
3-drop (creatures) that see play need to have impact. Leotard accomplishes this. Reclamation Sage. Flickerwisp. Sanctum Prelate, Recruiter of the Guard. Tireless tracker. Mentor. New Thalia. In Maveric, Ramunap or Rallier. Clique still sees a little play. Metalworker and Crusader seem to be exceptions.
Ultimately I think this is less that TNN is pushing other creatures out, and more about efficient 1cc answers punishing high cc threats. Legacy has been like that as long as I can remember, and 3-drops have always had to meet a very high bar. In the past maybe it was Bloodbraid Elf, Shardless Agent, or Geist - also cards that can't be removed for no value. Nothing has really changed here.
Switch decks, maybe? You don't have to play DRS + cantrips.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuart
I play Maverick, MUD, and Burn, but yeah I agree that it's on yourself to keep it fresh. Personally, I'm finding it's better to just hop formats when I get tired of Legacy - currently, that's meant more Vintage and Modern.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
What has worked for me was not playing. Deck building is the best part of the game to me and that basically doesn't exist anymore at a competitive level. I have more fun building my deck than when I actually end up playing it whether I win or lose. Every night I leave legacy I feel like I have just wasted my time playing against the same shit I've played against for 4 years. But I always enjoy going home and building a deck before I remember that my deck can't remove a goddamn True Name and I die to random idiot who does everything wrong except play this shit 3 drop Progenitus
As the format gets more refined, I guess it becomes harder to brew. Part of that also might be a relative low impact from newer sets, failing to shake up the former paradigms.
That said, I do believe we just saw a hitherto unknown tempo-stompy hybrid go on a real tear. David Long gave us a new take on Lands a couple years back. RB Reanimator came out of nowhere. None of those decks are blanked by a TNN. Brewing is still a thing. Just not very many of us can actually do it well.
Just play Pox and tell people to get fucked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
I am unaware of what tempo stompy deck you are referring toQuote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
Right!Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
TNN isn't kicking everything out, but it is having a coalescing effect. Using MTGTop8.com data, TNN appears in 24.7% of decks that placed in live tournaments in the past two months. It's the second-most played creature by this measure after DRS.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
Absent TNN, some of those decks would play Clique, some would play Knight, some would play Mirran Crusader or Trygon Predator or Geist or Shardless or something else. It would provide a more varied tournament experience and require more thought at the point of deckbuilding.
Of course, even then, the baseline of efficient spells one needs to compile to compete in Legacy still means that many decks would overlap significantly. But that is a much more difficult knob to turn because it is hard to disincentivize playing 1-drops. The last time they tried, well, Mental Misstep wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, was it?
I think Chalice being legal and played at a decent rate is good to disincentivize just playing a pile of 1 drops, but I don't think the incentive and inconsistency is worth playing the powerful artifact. I thought Prelate would have been enough, but it turns out that getting bricked so easily by shit like True Name makes it borderline unplayable.Quote:
Originally Posted by maharis
Yep, very good points. Kambal is another card that fights spells that, in addition to being easily removed, isn't any good against TNN. It seems obvious to use Mom as the way around that, but that doesn't stop "cast TNN, attack for 3 every turn until you die." Unless you have the entire D&T house of horrors set up, in which case Prelate is a hammer. But subject to variance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Of course, all those cards also shut off the controller's ability to use cards like Thoughtseize and STP that are good. A non-symmetrical cantrip hate card that blue decks somehow can't play would be nice. Would have to hit blue specifically or cost like BBB so that the U decks can't play it.
Maybe they'll figure out a way to make Oath of Nissa type effects printable and playable.
Isn't this more of a problem with the ubiquity and availability of information afforded by the internet than an issue with any particular format? A similar argument could be made for Modern or Standard; it would be extremely unlikely that a single person could come up with a new, unique, powerful deck concept on their own because there are just too many eyes on the cards. No one is going to play brews in a competitive context, by definition, and banning isn't a reasonable way to mediate that. It sounds like you may be more interested in a more casual context, where having the best of everything available isn't the driving motivation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
That being said, I'm sorry that it isn't doing it for you - I believe you that it is frustrating, and it would put me off if I felt similar.
This was a pretty entertaining rant by Patrick Sullivan on the recent design of Magic cards - focus on Ravenous Chupacabra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=356ilzFF8BE
I believe Modern is the closest thing Magic has to the wild west. Recently Humans became a deck. Previously (as far as I know) a single player brewed a streamlined Scapeshift deck eschewing blue and top 8'd a GP and it is now a DtB. Death's Shadow was a sub par deck until people started working on it and now it's format defining...Quote:
Originally Posted by taconaut
I'm not arguing that Modern is a perfect format. The criticism I hear most is that decks are too linear and non-interactive and sideboard cards are too powerful (or game influencing).
I have had fun with Modern when I get burnt out on Legacy. And vice versa. And alternating either with EDH keeps me from getting burnt out on playing competitive matches.
for years i advocated to ban brainstorm. in fact i was one of the first on this board and got laughed at. but nowdays i dont think bs is the problem, nor is drs. the problem are fetchlands. they allow for ridicilous synergies and mana bases and also stall the game. so i think fetchlands should be banned.
Amen to that brother, I 100% agree about the fun in brewing/deckbuilding. Luckily I have a fairly diverse local metagame that plays a couple grixis delver, a couple miracles, at least 2 Chalice/Stompy players, Death and Taxes, at least 2 storm players, 2 off/on Pox players, and a Maverick/Nic Fit player consistently. It makes for a fairly random spread each time I play (with my janky shit, lol.) I do a lot of modern as well. I truly do believe there are potential decks out there to develop, but it has been stagnated lately by 'herp derp' set design that focuses almost solely on Standard. They literally did a set with both pirates and dinosaurs. The closest thing we've gotten lately is As Foretold and Hazoret's Undying Fury, both of which aren't really making any real splash (but I haven't given up on Ruby Storm yet...)Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
I really think True Name is worse than DRS for the format. The setup for landing a Progenitus (Natural Order) takes effort. A blue three drop? In legacy it's easier than Alex Trebeck's mom. Leovold is also just fucking stupid in terms of what it does.
NO is also heavily nonblue and a risk to cast at all. NO, Glimpse, Storm and traditional A+B combos usually all require exposing a piece before casting the second. TNN, you're risking one card to get to a stupid gamestate. S&T, you're exposing one card to get to a stupid gamestate.
SnT should go away for the same reason Mystical Tutor did. They're not going to stop printing ever stupider giant monsters, so the card just becomes more and more and more of a problem.
TNN and Leovold should go away for being at the power level of "Big stupider monsters" but costing 3 mana and being blue.
I think we are pretty close to the asymptote as far as stupid giant monsters that essentially win on the spot.Quote:
Originally Posted by morgan_coke
I think OG Emrakul and Griselbrand represent the high water mark for asinine power levels on big monsters. Most of the big splashy monsters they make these days don't do anything that matters in Legacy, so no matter how strong they are on paper they never break out. The format now is all about raw efficiency along some vector, and Emrakul is the best attacking creature while Griselbrand is the best card advantage creature. There's a reason SnT has edged Reanimator out of the format and it's because none of the other fatties people used to cheat into play come anywhere close to touching those two in their respective domains.
This card has existed almost since day one in the form of Chains of Mephistopheles. The problem with cards like this is that they preclude you from running your own consistency fixers so over a lot of games, you tend to lose more often than you would if you just ran cantrips and tried to fight Turbo Xerox with Turbo Xerox. It's part of the reason why some variation of UGxy Threshold-ish decks have been viable in Legacy for years while non-blue decks tend to be more flavor of the month.Quote:
Originally Posted by maharis
4 years? Delver was printed in 2011, Terminus 8 months later, and DRS 5 months after that. Shitty Legacy started 1st grade this year.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
*sniff* They grow up so fast!
Except they did stop printing ever stupider giant monsters. The last time they printed something that was better than what Show and Tell already was running was back in 2012, more than five years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by morgan_coke
That ended in me agreeing with Dice, so everything's cool there :laugh:Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
quotes:maharis
This is absolutely a fantasy. The suggestion that below TNN there is some egalitarian plateau of 3 drop creatures that are all equally playable is stupid. People will just figure out what the best one is and then use that, c.f. every single other time a card/deck has been banned.Quote:
Absent TNN, some of those decks would play Clique, some would play Knight, some would play Mirran Crusader or Trygon Predator or Geist or Shardless or something else. It would provide a more varied tournament experience and require more thought at the point of deckbuilding.
If you're implying that TNN is analagous to Chupacabra then I feel like you completely missed the point of his argument. In Legacy TNN is far closer to his Baneslayer example.Quote:
In his Ravenous Chupacabra rant, Patrick Sullivan hit on this point nicely. He said that with every creature providing value as it hits the table, there's no tension in seeing if you get to untap with your bomb. You don't really care what your opponent does because you got your thing. It's a problem across MTG right now, not just Legacy, and hopefully they will find a way to fix it soon.
If this is true (that putting non-protection 3 drops in your deck is currently such a huge liability) then getting rid of TNN/Leovold means that people don't play 3 drops anymore, not that Trygon Predator suddenly becomes playable.Quote:
Or, to rephrase: Putting a 3-drop in your deck that can be removed for no value by a STP is not tenable as long as you have the option not to. Absent TNN, everyone's 3-drops would be vulnerable enough that it would be a fairer fight.
Said this prior to the whole TC & DTT bans already and repeated it since then until the SDT ban and through the usual BS complaints.Quote:
Originally Posted by Humphrey
None of the haunting engines in Legacy would work without Fetchlands. We would not have 4c goodstuff decks, no BS/Ponder cherrypicking, no DRS menace and no one would have banned all the cards of recent years. The joke is that some players think a ban would hurt their already inferior non-blue decks more than it would fuck over all the blue decks, as if S&T would be able to work properly without the cantrip/fetch cardselection.
Elves! would still be pretty damn good without fetchlands. I'm up for it :laugh:
I agree, but an Underground Sea already costs something like three hundred bucks - the incidental damage is unfortunate WRT shuffling, but unless the reserved list goes away, Fetches are also one of the only reasons Legacy as we know it is still playable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
I think we would still have 4C Goodstuff decks, their mana would just be slightly worse (and much more expensive). Brainstorm and DRS would definitely get a nerf, but Ponder would still be a good card. I'm actually not sure about the bans; it might've saved them, but perhaps not; it's hard to say.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
I'm also not sure about this - I think I still take the cantrip deck over the non-cantrip deck, even in hypothetical fetchless Legacy. Sure, maybe SNT and delver variants get a little worse, but even if you're only working with Ponders and Preordains, there are going to be plenty of games where the blue player finds the right combination of throusand dollar duals and/or combo pieces and their nonblue opponent just doesn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Overall, I agree with you, though - if it were possible to do without destroying the already-tenuous economy of the format, I'd love to try it.
Edit: Also, about TNN, maybe I'm biased because I play storm and miracles (and other things that can generally just ignore it) is TNN really that big of a deal? Things you can do to beat it include:
- non-targeting -1/-1 effects (golgari charm, marsh casualties)
- Meddling Mage effects
- Counterspells (even in nonblue, as you can REB/Pyroblast it)
- Council's Judgment
- Edict Effects
- Winning the game faster (Combos, stronger board state, even fliers or something?)
I feel like if the biggest problem with Legacy is, "my opponent sometimes has a Trained Armodon that I JUST CAN'T KILL," we are in a fantastic place. I'm not saying it's not boring, because it's definitely boring, but I can think of at least five things more miserable before getting to it in Legacy.
The money for some of the manabases sure is a problem but stuff like Land Tax or Eternal Dragon for manafixing still exists (sorry I am old and lack newer examples). Legacy decks are also long gone from being reasonable affordable for average kids/highschoolers to buy in and I guess we see the effect in the rising age of players. I am not sure the current stalemate of the format in terms of being somewhat solved and ridiculously expensive is able to be solved easily. Prining "snow duals" doesn't fix the stale format of 4c goodstuff, banning fetches to mess with the 4c cantrip orgy just makes the format more expensive and dull.
I support banning fetchlands because it would make Astral Slide viable again, as cycling would be a very strong card selection engine that isn't fetch dependent, at all. YMMV.
Banning the fetchlands would certainly change the format. Decks with less reliance on splashes or using alternative land mechanics would be much stronger in that setting. So lands and tribal stuff would be obvious things to consider in that format.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
In other news, Kotaku has an article up discussing how the economy works so far in MTG: Arena. The wildcard and vault things seem pretty solid. Only getting cards from packs does not.
https://kotaku.com/how-buying-cards-...ena-1822151318
I think without fetchlands even 3 colour decks would be a stretch.
I guess tempo decks can run w/o basics, but fetchlands allow midrange decks to run on just a couple basics and not be easily blown out by Wasteland, Moon, B2B, etc.
As a Lands player, my inclination might be to test replacing 3 fetches with 2x Field Of Ruin and an extra Forest.. But I doubt many decks could afford to run that clunky piece of jank.
I'd be careful what to wish for...
Fetch ban would probably kill legacy simply from a priced out stand point. Current prices make it difficult for many. Fetch ban could maybe almost double the price. An average Grixis/ BUG deck already retails for the price of a used car. Just think if that price climbed closer to vintage prices?
There's supposed to be an article up later this day on the MtG Arena site. It wouldn't suprise me in the slightest if Kotaku broke the NDA for a few cheap clicks.Quote:
Originally Posted by morgan_coke
Edit: There's also going to be a stream on https://www.twitch.tv/magic later today.