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If you take away FOW and Daze I PROMISE you that combo will run rampant. The issue with non counter combo hate is that you have to have to stick it. You can't bluff it and your opponent clearly knows what they need to do to win, i.e. oh you didn't mull into a CoTV I guess you lose on my second turn then...
That's a blatant lie. I've had more interaction against TES, long.dec, ichorid and dragon that playing against pure control decks like Stasis, Trinisphere, Oath, Stax, Nether Void, Forbiddian, countertop, scepterchant, and even mana denial decks packing Wasteland + Crucible of Worlds.Quote:
Originally Posted by AngryTroll
In addition, games against combo decks were more intense, faster, and a whole lot more fun than against those decks, and you know why? Because all these control decks were all about preventing me for ever casting a spell! And even though they didn't always manage to do that, their intent was always far, far away of "promoting interaction".
Control decks have a reason to exist, but it's not because they promote interaction, unless by interaction you mean "you can't do anything against this card because I have this other card that says you only get to watch". That's not interacting, it's just the opposite, you are not allowing me to interact. Counterspells not always work that way, but they do it from time to time, and in cases like Counterbalance, it's almost always used that way!
So, I think that it's not crazy to ban certain control cards that have been proven many times to be too powerful, And it's sad that they had to use price tag as an excuse to ban Mana Drain instead of simply saying that the card was freaking retarded and broken beyond repair, and shouldn't have been printed in the first place.
What's up with all the crying about combo and counterspells all of a sudden?
Play discard, or aggro-control yourself.
Not everybody likes to dump a horde of little green men onto the table and repeatedly attack. Some folks like to play a big nasty dude, and protect it as it smashes your face.
This all sounds like "I can't play the deck I want to play in my meta-game, ban stuff."
Take advantage of your meta. If you're tired of people playing combo or control, hate it out. Warp it to the point that you can play what you want to play for awhile. But banning stuff like force of will and tendrils of agony is absurd.
There isn't any crying going on at all. If you had read the original post more carefully, you would have seen this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dembones
Welcome to The Source, Dembones. This is called a conversation. People typically express opinions in them. Some of those are bound to conflict with your own.
Boy do I disagree with this. (see what I mean?)Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Thanks for the warm welcome.Quote:
Originally Posted by Finn
Two threads talking about the banning of combo/fow in the same week kind of struck me as odd. I suppose this is all coming up because of what month it is.
[Flame removed. Verbal warning. Careful. - Bardo]
Take care!
It's just that we have a B&R update this month, and we were talking in another thread about which cards are the most overpowered in the format. I posted a link about DCI's stance about FoW and Dark Ritual, which seems to prove that they want to keep them both as format-defining cards and are therefore not in danger, but maybe their support cards might get the axe this time.
Now, I personally think that FoW is overpowered and should be banned, because I have a hard time accepting that blue as a color is deep enough to allow for over two dozens of radically different blue decks making half of legacy top 8s, when the other four colors combined are much, much less represented, and not thinking that FoW hasn't anything to do with it, even though it's the only card all these decks have in common.
But it seems that I'm just a whiner and a loser that wants to destroy Magic because my decks lose to that card, and that combo will run rampant because WotC will not just ban FoW, but also all other cards that, if left unbanned, could stop combo without being broken by themselves.
But that's just my opinion. A opinion that is supported by historical data about past and present perfomance on tournaments, and R&D's data about "Force of Will decks being much, much better than the other archtypes", but an opinion nonetheless. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJones
FoW isn't something you can just "splash" into a deck. You have to have enough cards to throw away to it, while other cards, such as the Goyf, you can literally throw in some tropical islands and boom, you have a win con. (Not that I'm advocating the banning of anything.)
You really threw yourself into a snakepit so I admire your courage for that. But as much as throwing onself into a snakes pit is a bad idea, banning countermagic is too. When I just started playing Vintage years and years back, I hated FoW. When I finally got to a point where I had all my conditions met to play my wacky combo they would always have FoW. Over the time I came to like FoW as a card that keeps the format together. I actually think FoW is fairly priced, 2 buisiness cards and a life for 1 buisiness card + mana isn't all that degenerate. Key to beating FoW is keeping the mana you spent on your buisiness card as low as possible thus keeping the tempogap as small as possible. This is the reason why Goblins and Merfolk can so adequately attack FoW, their buisiness spell costs 1 or 2 (Vial, Lackey, Standstill, Lord of Atlantis).
In Vintage we say; FoW is the glue that holds the format together and I think this is true for Legacy as well. It keeps Combo and Goblins in check.
That's funny, I thought that what made Goblins playable is that they play 8 1-mana cards that make counterspells useless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mantis
It's an out to Vial and Lackey, so it's a double edged sword I guess.
This is most assuredly not true. if you banned Force of Will and Daze a lot of things that are thoroughly suppressed at the moment, like Landkill and non-red Chalice Aggro would get off the mat and come up swinging, and combo would hate facing those. Nothing like a Dark Ritual for Trinisphere to make Storm combo go home for the day.Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzykat
Blue control does a better job of suppressing Ice Storm, Stone Rain and Sinkhole than it does of stopping Storm combo.
'Kay. SI/Belcher vs. any "Landkill" list of your choice: 90% for the Storm deck is my estimate, more if the Storm player is actually good.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
Aside from that, I'm not sure why you think that SixteenSinkholes.dec would ever be viable in a format with fetchlands (and Vial and Moxes and Lackey etc.), or that "non-red Chalice Aggro" is being suppressed by FoW/Daze.
Team America? FoaT was talking about "Ice Storm, Stone Rain and Sinkhole". ~NCQuote:
Originally Posted by Nihil Credo
What's suppressive is not the 6 fetchlands that each multi-colored deck runs, and it's not Lackey, which is trivial for a dedicated mana suppression deck to deal with, it's the 8 potential free counters, 4 of which are guaranteed to work (Daze) AND the 6 fetch lands.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nihil Credo
What we don't have in the format right now is turn 1 Encroach or Dark Ritual - Trinisphere/CotV, followed by turn 3 Sinkhole, Vindicate or other 3cc Landkill into a lock by turn 4. That's not because Zoo beats that because it runs even at best, or because Storm combo beats that, it's because blue control owns it. If you don't have a god draw you lose to the blue control deck 80%+ of the time because they have so many ways to evade the landkill. With Stifle they avoid the wastes.
So what you have is one archetype that does not just keep the format in check, it keeps many archetypes from even being explored effectively. It's a veto on creativity while being one of the most boring archetypes to play itself and one that is stultifyingly boring in the mirror.
And BTW, you're wrong on the combo matchup, which is highly favorable for effective mana suppression. The landkill is actually secondary to Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void in that matchup. By the time Storm draws the way to remove the suppressing artifact they can no longer cast it and will not be able to again in that game.
With the exclusion of extreme cases of brokeness (flash or back in the day: original necro donate decks), formats with massive card pools have always seemed to keep themselves healthy and balanced by the sheer virtue of the creativity massive card pools allow. Neutering counter magic would fuck up the balance in a big way. Looking to standard and [a ruined] extended format is a stupid move because those formats change rapidly and are victims to the whims of the design team as far as how they want the game to be seen by new and prospective players. In other words: it is easy to remove the trappings of the past from the two money formats.
Removing the better permission cards from this format would be like exterminating an animal that is part of the medium level in a food chain: it would fuck everything up and things that were previously kept in check by its presence alone in some cases would run rampant(think hyenas eating lion cubs or something). I haven't played much storm combo, so I could be quite wrong here, but I think there are things that I fear more than FoW, like barages of discard. FoW in and of itself is pretty easy to deal with, when you consider chant and duress.
I don't see it ever happening, but if good counterspells were removed, there would be consequences besides combo being dominant(assuming other people are right in this assumption): some archetypes would be crippled while other mediocre ones would rise and a format that many people love for the complex array of points of strategy would have been made dumber. I'm a firm believer that money formats, while attractive because of the whole going pro thing and the constant flood of new shit are idiot/child formats. They're simple and extremely straightforward and part of that is because elements such as the permission-based control deck has been removed and everything has been put in black and white as far as clearly defined aggro, mid range or control goes. It's fucking sad. Extended is starting to follow that route too with the last few rotations that it has seen.
I am not a vintage player anymore, but I once was and back then, I saw the vintage format as a format that was all about using the cards on the restricted list to their full potential. Permission was/is a means to that end. Vintage may have changed in the last while, but when I see recent deck lists, it still looks like a fucked up(as in crazy, not good or bad...just crazy) format to me and that isn't because of the presence of countermagic, it is because the many of decks are composed of umpteen different broken interactions and redundant slots, like five tutors that get you exactly the card that you need for under three mana and such. You can get a second turn colossus or tendrils combo OR control the game with a bob and remora and all with the same deck. It's crazy.
When I see people asking whether a format like legacy or any format would be better off without permission, it makes me want to facepalm because removal of permission was the first step taken to ruining the money formats and turning them into what they are today. Permission is balanced by efficient discard and fast threats. The latter two elements were controlled by others and so on and so forth.
I'm finding myself going on in circles, so I'll leave it at this:
Removing permission from legacy without making a bunch of other huge sweeping changes would be like letting a blind retard with no thumbs remove three Jenga blocks from the bottom of the pile. A bad idea anyway, but also a disaster for anyone that had been enjoying the game up to that point.
I want to point out that we are not suggesting taking away permission from the format, but broken cards that happen to be permission.
Specifically, banning Force of Will would still leave blue with the following ultracheap (can be played for 1 mana or less) counters to protect itself, all of them played in the past or in the current meta, so don't tell me they aren't good:
1. Annul
2. Cursecatcher
3. Misdirection
4. Pact of Negation
5. Spell Snare
6. Daze
7. Commandeer
8. Stifle
9. Hydroblast/Blue Elemental Blast
10. Foil
11. Circular Logic
12. Mindbreak Trap
Plus these others, which I'm unsure about their power but don't seem totally useless:
1. Disrupting Shoal (this one can be played for free)
2. Force Spike (good, but obsoleted by daze)
3. Disrupt
4. Envelop
5. Nyx
6. Thwart (this one can also be played for free)
7. Divert
8. Untapped island
And that's only cards for 1 mana or less, because there's too many good 2cc counters. Additionally, blue decks can still use Chalice of The Void, Pithing Needle and all the artifacts that other colors have to use as their only options.
Also, I'm coherent enough to say that any combo deck that cannot be stopped by one of the twenty aforementioned cards was clearly broken from the start and should be banned too (unless the deck is incredibly junky and loses to itself half the time, that is).
Finally, even though I don't think the change would cripple blue beyond repair, I don't give a damn if blue becomes the worst color in legacy, because frankly, there's always a worst color and I don't pick favorites, and ALL colors can fit the control role.
EDIT: To make things clear, I actually have wrote to Mark Rosewater and Aaron Forsythe in the past asking for a fairer replacement to Force of Will so that the card can finally be banned, so I'm not against blue's permission, but against broken cards.
Banning Brainstorm and Counterbalance would achieve more than banning Force of Will in terms of lowering blue power levels and would leave the threat of a turn 0 counter in the meta.
Banning Brainstorm over Force of Will would also adjust blue's power level without much hurting MUC, which clearly is not a dominant deck at the moment.
:u:-based (aggro-)control >>> Storm-combo
Storm-combo >>> many-many decks
Top Aggro decks (today it's Zoo/Goyfsligh) has a descent chances against :u: and poor chances against Storm.
I hate to play against CB+Top+Force+Brainstorm, but...
Banhammer FoW will give a huge boost to Storm-combo, wich means typical aggro will be far less competitive. That's bad.
Banhammer Counterbalance will give an equal boost to aggro and Storm, but storm already beats typical aggro, so again, Storm will recieve better boost. Again, that's bad.
Banhammer Brainstorm will affect :u: AND Storm, so this can be fair.
Banhammer Top = Banhammer Counterbalance
There is one deck that I worried about: Ichorid.
Dredge >>> all, but fortunately hate >>> dredge, so it looks OK now. And as I can see, possible bans/unbans will not affect the situation.
But you should always keep Dedge in check...
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJones
hahahahahahahahahaha *coughs* hahahahaha
You're actually serious? You want 1.5 to be a shitty format for retards, like the money formats? If people don't like permission, gtfo of playing in eternal formats, step up yo' game or play discard, it's that simple.