"He who laughs last, laughs best".
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LOL, spoken like a true noob. Hating on people for owning cards you don't, give me a break. I had no plans to sell Jaces anyways since I play more Legacy than Standard, but this pretty much ended me for Standard at least until next big rotation at next block. So I'll just play the waiting game and by the time I'm looking to liquidate he'll be back to $70+ easily as long as they don't reprint. At least now I can get those SFM's rock bottom.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardd...product=171669
50% off at SCG already. I bet one could get them for $5 a piece if they looked hard enough.
Yeah Jace is a little under $50 now, he went from under 50 back up to high 50's now back to about 50 solid. I think if you want Jace now is the time. This is about the lowest he's probably ever going to get, once Extended season rolls around it's CawBlade time again and he's back to at least $60.
Yeah, I'll be picking up my foils finally. I want a set just for BUG if anything. Plus I want to find a nice Russian one for EDH, though he's a little crappy for EDH.
Quick question though. Has anyone actually played with Land Tax in a modern deck? I played it back when it was allowed in 1.5, but not since it got banned. I was wondering if it's really as time consuming with Tops as Wizards seems to think it would be. I can see how it would make a turn take forever, but it still seems like a joke to me to have that card on the list.
Is there any chance that they unban Mind Twist? I'm just asking, because it's one of my most favourite cards ever.
Most people agree there's a pretty good chance of it since it's fairly underpowered in Legacy anymore. Great card, but a little slow by today's standards.
As long as they don't let Hermit Druid off, I'm happy. Screw that card, I don't like having to add cards to decks just for stupid bad combos that can go off turn 2 easily.
Land Tax only works with decks that are time consuming (Enchantress and other W-splashed control decks). It might work with a weenie-based deck. I myself have a semi-tuned "Legacy" Parfait deck. Playing the deck is like playing Lands. It's really slow. But not because of Land Tax but what you could do with the deck. I mean any control deck can be slow from conventional Landstill to Enchantress right?
Also, setting up a new Scroll Rack stack every turn could take a while on the hands of a Saito-like player.
Maybe in the near future when Wizards fuck something up.
When Flash got banned, they unbanned Replenish and Mind Over Matter.
Mystical Tutor - Grim Monolith and Illusionary Mask
Survival of the Fittest - Time Spiral
Time will tell when these will get unbanned.
I was going to post this in the "show and tell" thread, but I don't really want to get caught up in that discussion. I have no real experience with hivemind (with or against), but I know how powerful show and tell is. I'm not going to whine, but I'd like to comment that the last time people did complain about a deck, the main card in that deck got banned. I am sure that show and tell will be banned.
I'm pretty sure that Vengevine-Survival got banned because it kept winning and Scars of Mirrodin made it even more broken with the Necrotic Ooze combo, not because people complained hard enough.
I highly doubt the same thing will happen to Show and Tell. I think people are simply just going to adapt to it, like they have already.
I still don't understand why everyone thinks Show and Tell is so broken. Sure it is strong but it does not win the game when cast and can be easily answered. Removing it would only really slow hive mind decks down by a turn. There are so many ways to do degenerate things in legacy. Sure the card isn't symmetrical, but neither is LED. The difference between a two mana spell one card combo and a three mana spell two card combo is huge. SotF was incredibly strong and yet I think Wizards made he wrong choice in banning the engine. Legacy is getting to a point where it will have it's pillars much like vintage. There they keep the pillars and move around the support cards. The amount of deck design that cards like SotF and Show and Tell allow are amazing. They are much less narrow than a card like LED which is still the single strongest card in legacy.
Seth
I love how people still make veiled allusions to LED being broken even when nobody plays storm combo anymore.
I wouldn't say that was the reason Survival was banned, although it was certainly part of it. More like the reason why MYSTICAL TUTOR was banned.
Removing Show and Tell slow the combo down and make it much weaker against counters. Turns out that actually losing the spell when you cast hurts instead of just losing a Show and Tell.
But the main point would be that the deck would have just one angle again. You could side in Angel's Grace and just not lose against a random 15/15 coming out of a class exercise.
You overrate Emrakul. Please tell me how any deck that can fight the Hive Mind strategy can't fight Emrakul. SnT -> Emrakul is not random. It was random in 2010, in GP Columbus. Now, it's vulnerable. Any blue deck facing Hive Mind will focus on Hive Mind and not need to care about Emrakul, because they're not going to be stupid enough to take out their Jaces for more counters.Quote:
Originally Posted by alderon666
Just bc the current meta is very hostile to combo doesn't make LED any less powerful. When I made my comparison I was talking about the raw power of the card.
I really don't understand why people think that it is terrible having a combo deck with two paths to victory. Do people complain when control decks win with goyf or Jace. There really are a lot of ways to handle the hive mind decks. It just takes time for people to adapt. Banning a card like Show and Tell would be short sighted to say the least. I still miss SotF and I enjoy a format where deck designs are wide open. I vaguely remember people calling for the banning of Lackey some years back. Just bc a card is strong doesn't mean it needs to be banned. And you do realize if the drop an Emrakul you get a chance to untapped and respond. Ask anyone who plays Doomsday list how much it sucks passing the turn after resolving your Doomsday.
Seth
Hive Mind is a fair and fun strategy, but even before that deck showed up Show and Tell was a broken enabler that just about any deck packing 6+ manacost spells must use. Any deck with blue can pack 4 Show and Tell and 3 of the latest, biggest spaghetti monster in the sideboard as a backup plan.
I admit that I find Show and Tell strategies with FoW backup difficult to defend against, and somewhat unfun. I know it can be interpreted as whining, but that's just my opinion. Show and Tell is like the Yawgmoth's Will or Tinker of Vintage some years ago - a three mana sorcery that must be answered.
Playing against TES or ANT is a lot more fun than S&T->you lose. At least with real combo, you can choose your favorite hate and it's an actual battle, because cards you'd be playing anyway have relevance, like needle effects, artifact destruction, Null Rod, lifelink, Moat/Deed (vs. ETW), etc. It doesn't need a ban, just new cards to make the fight manageable. Enlightened Tutor into Sundial helps. Or just unban Mystical Tutor, since Mental Misstep is running around.
"Blue Control Player"- I wish they would just ban Show and Tell as well as LED so can finally control everything with Mental Missteps and Spell Snares. Maybe if they printed some more and better free counterspells. Or at the very least Errata that Show and Tell so I can play my jaces for free. Come on wizards save control already and kill combo. Boo hoo hoo.......
Correct me if I'm wrong, but are we going to have another banlist update announcement on 20/09/2011, right?
If so, what are your thoughts on banning of Mental Misstep? I see a lot of hate talk about it in various topics, and I myself would love to see it banned.
You guys think that the banning of it in Modern could be a sign? Or that was just something they did to give Modern a identity(read: make aggro decks good)?
The banning of misstep was not a sign, it was only a mistake. If they did it to "give modern an identity (read:make aggro decks good)", they just completly failed to. Modern is a pure combo format at the moment, aggro decks are far away and control simply not there. It is not uninteresting, but much less than Legacy meta thank to some staples like FoW, MM or Wasteland.
I really hope they will not ban anything, the only card I see borderline is brainstorm, but I really hope it will stay in the format at the moment.
I kind of doubt they will change much of anything.
Personally, I don't think there's much wrong with Show and Tell. It's cheesy yeah, but our area is pretty quick to change things up if a deck starts becoming dominant and Show and Tell never even broke top 8 very often. I guess I can't see all the hooplah over it.
Misstep is far from busted, though it was quite format warping. Unfortunately for the people who want it gone, it warped the format in a way Wizards likes. It pushed storm decks down a little further. Cry all you like, but when any card makes people play Storm less, it makes Wizards happy.
The funny thing is if you look at all the tournaments going around from Legacy dailys SCG 5k's, and just what I see at other countries, Stoneblade, No RUG, Maverick, and Aggro Loam seem to be the far and away most popular choices and winners. More argument to let things stay the way they are.
I think they could do something, The last SCG top 8 had 28 Mental Missteps 28 Force of Wills and 28 Brainstorms out of a possible 32. I don't mind blue being good, as long as there are other options to beat it. It may be too soon, but I think something could change to make the format more diverse. I would like to see cards such as mind twist and goblin recruiter off the ban list.
Nothing will change. Not until Snapcaster Mage.
I'm predicting that it'll actually be Brainstorm that finally gets the axe. It needs to be. This will hurt the digging abilities of blue-based combo and control, and give people an incentive to play cards like Thoughtseize/Inquisition/Duress again, and the decks that can use them. This should make decks like Deadguy Ale, Rock, and Hexmage Depths able to be more competitive against Blue.Format, and add another viable set of strategies other than the "Do everything a deck needs to do at instant speed with islands" setup that exists now.
I personally think Misstep's solid for the format. I like the fact that any deck can have some way of interacting now. Legacy's way more interactive and strategic than it used to be now. And it's forcing new decks to evolve rapidly. There's a Black/Green deck going around here right now where every single card in it has a CMC of 2 or 0, and it's proving to have a stupid amount of potential.
What kind of deck is this BG deck you spoke of?
I could easily see Brainstorm getting the axe on power level alone. Most of the time it's Ancestral Recall that protects your bombs from discard.
But man I don't really want to lose Brainstorm and I'm pretty sure many Legacy players feel the same way. I wonder what the response would be like- definitely a bitter pill.
I would love to see that damnable card leave this format once and for all. I hated it when it was first spoiled, hate playing with it and hate playing against it. That card has single-handedly wiped out many fun and diverse decks off the face of the format. I can't recall ever feeling that a card needed to go as much as I do about Misstep (maybe Flash was the exception).
How many of you remember the awesome format this was, post-Survival / Pre-MM? Heck, even with Survival dominating it was really fun and quite a few decks were viable. I don't know about the rest of you guys but I feel that the format has become stale and - I hate to say it - boring since this card was unleashed. Nothing would make me happier than a return to the Pre-MM Legacy.
No, it doesn't. The meta coped quite well with it since Legacy was created, not to mention that its a very fun (but yes, powerful) card to play with. Some people like their games to be more about skill than luck of the draw. Getting rid of one of the most skill intensive cards ever printed would be horrible for Legacy. One can just look at the state of Vintage since Brainstorm got the chop for evidence of what may happen to Legacy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tacosnape
Just curious, first it was Time Spiral that needed to be axed when it won a couple of tourneys, then Show and Tell and now it's Brainstorm, right? I know you don't like combo, but damn...
People keep repeating that brainstorm remove the random aspect and can't banned for this reason, but this is not factually true. Blue has a shitload of cantrips it can play to smooth his draw and minimize the random component of the game, it's just that Brainstorm is head and shoulder above all the rest. And i honestly think it being an instant make it actually less skill intensive than the sorcery alternatives for the sole reason you can't always play it at the best times but you have to make a lot more decisions just casting it.
It's as if red mages complained for an hypotetical ban of a Superbolt R: instant deal 4 damage saying that it would remove the ability of red of having reach and control creatures. That's not actually the case, the issue isn't what the card do, is how cheap it is compared to what it do (especially with fetches).
I'm quite certain they've already calculated the ridiculous interaction between Misstep and Snapcaster Mage. Mental Misstep is a card that will never rid itself in any competitive deck running Blue - or any other color for that matter - as long as there are powerful one-cost spells running around this format, which there just happen to be a large assortment of. The card is seeing an overabundance of play in so many different archetypes that it is forcing players to play with it - not around it - just to cancel opposing Missteps out with each other.
A single card should never force a large percentage of decks in a format such as Legacy to warp or alter their base-strategies because they fear playing a card at CMC of one will be countered. When that happens, the strategic value of the game increases in the sense that players opting not to run Misstep can simply forgo spells at one mana. This could also significantly decrease brewing strategies and exploratory endeavors due in large part to the fact that you need to base your new strategy on whether or not it has the sustainability of withstanding a format dictated by Mental Misstep.
So in theory: Why should any format, especially one as (potentially) fast as Legacy, be forced to shift to a "converted mana cost of anything but one" format because of one card playable in any deck in existence? All Snapcaster Mage is going to do is reinforce the fact that Misstep will be even more ridiculous than it is right now, and it will unquestionably force players to play Misstep for the simple reason it stops their "Flashback-able" spells at CMC of one (i.e. Brainstorm, Swords, etc.). Mage is going to give all of those cards extreme value, but the fact remains Misstep is still an impedance to innovation and will only get worse as time goes on (the format, not the card - which can only get better).
The "Flash" ability is what really put Mage over the top. The number of plays sustained by this one card is going to be ridiculous.
Replace with SuperTop (a sensei's divining top that cost look the first four card instead of 3) then. Has the same perks as Brainstorm, point still stand. Or hell, go for a just better brainstorm. Ancestral. Where do you draw the line?
People saying that Brainstorm is too strong (me included, while i'm actually on the fence about a possible ban), simply argue that Brainstorm power level is too high and that at the same time it make discard worse. This can't be proven as absolutely true or false, since "too strong" is too vague of an affermation, but at least can be debated since everyone agree that Brainstorm is a very good card. From "very good", to "too good" there's some space, but not an ocean.
On the other hand, saying that Brainstorm is somewhat the holy keeper of format balance by removing randomization and increasing the skill ceiling is just false. There are a lot of alternative cantrips to Brainstorm and some of them even are more skill intensive than it (i'd argue that the old next best Brainstorm, Portent, is possibly the most skill intensive and the richest in the decision tree U cantrip ever).
A similar if not the same argument against banning has been done to death for Force, but there are good reasons in FoW's case that make those arguments stand that are not there for Brainstorm. First, there isn't a direct equivalent T0-T1 counter. Foil is horrible and is like comparing Hymn to Mind Rot. Daze and MM are good, but aren't catch-alls. Pact is usable only in combo. Last, but most important, Force is a reactive cards, and as such, it's inherently better against the broken and worse against the fair. That make it the quintessential definition of a "good" card for the format. Brainstorm, on the other hand, is better with the broken and worse in linear "fairer" decks like Merfolk, where drawing a card isn't that much worse than getting a Brainstorm effect.
That said, how WotC can still make the "promote unfun play" argument for Tax when MM exist? How can they say Twist break control mirrors when JTMS exist?
The B/R list management has been so uncomprensible lately i don't expect anything logical anymore.
I really doubt anything will be banned atm. There isnt any card that is really at the level Survival of the Fittest, Mystical Tutor was. Only cards that are remotly close imo are Show and Tell and Natural Order but even does I dont think is even close to be banned.
I would really love to see Mind Twist come off, it's a powerful but completely fair card. It would see only marginal play but would be a great tool to have around.
Land Tax obv., Black Vise, Goblin Recruiter should also come off.
Also I agree with Gheizen that I generally consider it harder to play Preordain or Ponder correctly than Brainstorm. I mean much of the time Brainstorm is dumb easy to play, get rid of two lands and drop a fetch. Not really a mind-breaker there. Sure, sometimes it's really tough figuring out what to put back, and sometimes it's really tough knowing whether to use Bolt to take out a creature or save it to dome someone, but most of the time Brainstorm is easier than most other card filtering since you can hang onto and get rid of crap in your hand.
I also wouldn't mind them banning Natural Order and Show and Tell. Reanimator without the hoops and vulnerability to sideboard hate isn't a strategy that I think adds much of value to the game. I'm not saying that they should ban either card- it's not clear that they're too powerful- I am just saying that I would give 1-0.999... fucks if they did.
Anybody think Yawgmoth's Bargain could come off?
You're all going bonkers
This is going to sound inane, but I draw the line at Brainstorm. It's easily the strongest card in the format for its cost, but a) it requires a great deal of skill to use optimally, and b) its power level isn't really "unfun" for either player during play.
While you might call the card objectively unfair because of its cost, it doesn't feel particularly unfair during play, as, say, Mental Misstep does, or Natural Order does, or Show and Tell does, or Stoneforge Mystic does, or Hive Mind does. (Not that I'm advocating the banning of any of these cards, mind you.)
There will always be an objectively strongest card in the format. The fact that this one is skill intensive, fun to play with, and not particularly punishing to play against, makes it a pretty good candidate in my opinion.