What? Why dont you believe me? This is getting ridiculous...Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
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What? Why dont you believe me? This is getting ridiculous...Quote:
Originally Posted by CabalTherapy
I feel like this guy should be allowed to make as many B&R threads as he likes. These posts are amazing.
Imho Miracles should be weaken by a ban because it overperformed too hard compared to the other decks. I dont say ban Top because that would destroy this deck and a lot of others, as many said here before.
We saw it at GP Prague and GP Columbus! Miracles overperformed and that makes the meta less diverse.
The top8 in Columbus 4 of 8 decks were Miracles thats horrible....
In Prague the top 8 was better but overall too many Miracles deck that performed well.
I am not sure whats the right ban but a ban of miracles is a must!!
I hope you arent being sarcastic...Quote:
Originally Posted by supremePINEAPPLE
Anyways for that more complete answer, Legacy/Vintage are the formats where WotC should really stay out of hand-picking/micro-managing the 'ideal' meta game, if for no other reason than they really don't go out of their way to promote these formats. We all saw what they did in modern: extensive banning of generically good cards. You want to them to treat Miracles like Amulet Bloom and randomly ban Summer Bloom ~ Terminus; that's not a widely desired viewpoint here. The eternal community is more than capable of crafting the ideal meta-game on its own as long as the DCI confines itself to hitting the especially egregious cards.
Decks come and go, and that's fine; if they banned Counterbalance a new control deck would emerge (or rather re-emerge: UWx Stoneblade) and it would cost a minimal amount to fully transform miracles. Unlike modern, once you have the foundation (duals, fetches, power if vintage), eternal formats don't really suffer from losing value if their deck is banned. What is really odd about people's insistence that miracles never dies (i.e. lose Counterbalance), beyond that weird fairy tale that legacy will no longer have a control deck, is that they were totally silent when Omnitell with DTT had it's beating heart ripped out. Where was the miracles treatment for that deck? Why weren't people saying "DTT ban is bad b/c it will kill the deck, they should have just banned Cunning Wish and it would have been ok"??
Unlike modern, legacy/vintage don't care about propping up established deck names so much as what the most viable decks will come out looking like given the communal confines of the format. If a card doesn't belong it gets banned or restricted; just as it would not make sense to ban Chrome/Opal/Diamond Moxen and LED just to allow Tolarian Academy as a legacy 4x, so too does it not make sense to ban a plainly good card like Terminus + other cards to follow as the card catalog grows, just to allow a known power level problem card like Counterbalance (or SDT) exist.
There is a problem with miracles or there isn't - in eternal magic you take problems head on if they exist. Again deck name branding doesn't matter, certainly not for a deck-killer like miracles, which killed UWx Stoneblade decks by providing a strictly better/more winning alternative. You will always run into problems when you arbitrarily choose what decks get to be in the meta game conversation; ban the nonsense, the community will create the meta from there.
Top isn't even close to the power level, or ubiquity, or utility of Ponder or Brainstorm. Banning it is absurd. People are taking just as much time to stare at Ponder #6 of the game on the 4th turn than to dick about with top. It's disingenuous to ban a worse, less played, more easily hated out card.
Option 1:
Ban one of the cantrip mafia, these camera matches with 6 Ponders in the graveyard by turn 4 are just absurd. The Prague matches were an endless circle jerk of 1 mana busted cantrips in every arch type. Enough is fucking enough. It's become acceptable in a way to play decks with 6 actual lands. This is why a 16 round event is nearly impossible to top 8 without the cantrip cartel.
Option 2:
Unban everything that's so obviously worse than Ponder, Brainstorm (or 10 other cards), start with Mind Twist, Earthcraft, and Goblin Recruiter. Salt with Survival of the Fittest and Frantic Search.
I have said it several times for several years, but I think that fetchlands should go.
The only reason I am bringing it up again is because they have a very positive synergy with the current topic of the week, Brainstorm. They also have a significant positive synergy with top and ponder. Not that anyone will agree with my conclusion (or likely my points), but here they are.
Fetch lands dramatically increase the time needed to play a match
Fetch lands introduce many more opportunities to cheat
Fetch lands make great cards like brainstorm very overpowered
Honestly, I bet Miracles would play Terramorphic Expanse and Evolving Wilds if fetchlands were banned, and that is saying something.
Does anyone agree with me?
I don't disagree that they are part of the problem but fetch lands have the benefit of ensuring everyone can get the colors needed to play their spells, it does make cards much more powerful then intended, but everyone at least gets to play magic by letting them play out their spells.
It's ultimately a benefit to keep them then otherwise.
I agree with your analysis, but not the conclusion. Colored mana requirements are supposed to be a restriction. Fetchlands pretty much nullified it, in my opinion. The only thing that people are worried about today is the number of basics that are needed to avoid dying to wastelands. Legacy and vintage can probably be treated as single color formats.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds
Without Fetchlands, Wasteland and Blood Moon become incredibly oppressive cards. DRS becomes unplayable, which in turn makes Wasteland and Blood Moon even better.
Fetchlands allow you to have access to a reasonable number of basics while still hitting your colors. There are more real games of Magic when people don't autolose to not drawing the right lands or to a single piece of mana denial. And there are more potential strategies and interesting combinations of cards when you can play more than 2 colors.
They are not great for paper game-play and a totally free shuffle effect is too strong when people have deck manipulation - but there would be pretty significant unintended consequences if they were gone.
I wouldn't say that Wasteland and Blood Moon would become incredibly oppressive, I would say that they would help reshape the balance between using more colors or not. Currently there is no question, always add more colors. I intend for the consequences to occur. It is not "unintended".Quote:
Originally Posted by iatee
But banning fetchlands would result in side effects which I believe most Legacy players consider undesirable.Let's use the RUG Delver mana base as an example:
- Daze becomes much worse
- Blood Moon becomes much better
- Dual land prices would soar to new heights
- More games are decided by variance
8 fetch lands
4 Wasteland
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
Under a fetch-less system, Trop and Volc would be upped to 4, but that still leaves 6 slots to fill.
At that point you'd have to use shocklands and I think we can all agree that shocklands in Legacy is a travesty. :tongue:
Colored mana requirements are supposed to be a restriction, but moreso for Limited and Standard. As you move towards Modern, you get to play whatever you want but with an increasing cost in life. Legacy lets you play whatever you like without the drastic life loss, and Vintage lets you play whatever you like without the penalties and throws moxen in there to add explosiveness.
*Jedi handwave*
These aren't the changes you're looking for...
These are the changes that I am looking for, but they are likely the changes that only I am looking for. I will give you that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ace/Homebrew
For what it is worth, almost every deck would have similar needs for redesign. It isn't like RUG delver would be playing against other decks that have fetch lands. Fetch lands are nitro fuel for decks (and cheaters), so people tend to like them. In addition, they are probably the most visible cards in the eternal formats at this point. My suggestion to ban them is telling everyone that I am taking their fun away, so the masses respond with a big "no way".
I think my points stand and my suggestion is a good one, but I don't think Wizards would ever do it simply because of the response by the players. People want to play with fetchlands, so of course they aren't going to ever get banned.
If you currently play a 4/5c manabase you risk losing to a single Wasteland, and you almost certainly lose to any Blood Moon that resolves. There are already consequences. But if you play a 2c deck in legacy, you're generally not going to lose to a single Wasteland and you can very easily play around Blood Moon. 3c deck is somewhere in between. This would all stop being the case with fetchlands gone and even 2/3c decks would be vulnerable. 3c decks are viable in fetch-less Standard only because powerful mana denial doesn't exist.
Anyway, I think Wizards knows that fetchlands were a design mistake (if only for how much god damn shuffling they require) but it's the kind of mistake that isn't going anywhere. Legacy is very much a mana denial format and fetchlands play an important and interesting balancing role.
There is a problem with Miracles which is that it is too dominant which reduces format diversity...Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Miracles is not strictly better than Stoneblade... They are two different decks, one is a midrange deck and one is a control deck... If miracles were to be banned Stoneblade would not take its place as Legacy's control deck. If miracles would be banned Stoneblade would not become any more powerful because its relative powerlevel wouldnt change... the best thing to do is too weaken Miracles so both Stoneblade and Miracles are available deck choices.
I highly doubt that if Terminus is banned Miracles will get another card that pushes it over the top because WotC is moving away from printing good control cards... And if something does push miracles over the top again and we have to ban it the format isnt dead...
Talking around the issue by propping up other cards as ban candidates is a waste of time. Fetchlands are fine without Brainstorm.
Brainstorm is the problem. I don't understand why this is such a difficult issue for people to come to grips with. It's far too powerful and has only gotten more and more abused as the cards/decks it enables get better and better.
Black discard might have a fighting chance against all the blue decks if they could punish players for holding all those spells in their hand that they suddenly couldn't hide away with Brainstorm.
It's not a "fun" card, it's not a "skill" card, it's just an overpowered blue sore on the format that has stifled out all of the other colors for a very long time.
Since this has already been said before over and over and over, please don't offer up other fair cards around Brainstorm as the problem candidates.
I think you're forgetting that this is WotC's game, not ours. Acting like you're the one in the power position here is pretty deluded.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
+1. I think everyone who responds 'ban island while your at it!' 'ban fetchlands' and 'pillar of the format' is on my ignore list so if I've missed the context for your response I apologize.Quote:
Originally Posted by frogczar
WotC can ban/restrict cards, they'll print new cards...they don't control how the meta shifts in reaction to those changes. Could they step in and arbitrarily say 'we're going to implement modern-style bans to lower miracles win-rate' - sure. It doesn't make much sense to step into formats they don't really support and hand-pick the meta deck-by-deck; they could...but they currently aren't. I don't know why saying they could do that matters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Morzas
There are like 700 pages in this thread, you're a little late to the party to tell people to stop talking/thinking about b/r because wizards owns the game. No one here expects WotC to do what we say, we're just spending time discussing the format with other members of the community who share our passion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nedleeds
We can quibble about "fun", but the main issue is that Wizards has made it abundantly clear that Brainstorm is untouchable, so offering up other candidates is the sane thing to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by frogczar
When a game starts each player has an equal share of the fun.
It's 1 persons job to take all the fun at the end of the game.
If you can't beat "brainstorm.Dec" you need a better deck.
Yeah, if you can't beat 60% of the decks. You need a better deck. Totally.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidneyious
The power of blue is overrated...
There are plenty of decks that are extremely competitive that don't have blue in them...
For combo you have Belcher and Elves
For Midrange you have JUND and Junk and Nic Fit
For Aggro you have Eldrazi and Burn
For Tempo you have Death and Taxes
And most prison decks aren't blue...
I think if more people were to stop paying attention to the Brainstorm or Bust people, the meta would have less blue in it... I personally play Jund and I consistently top 4 FNMs with it... Instead of complaining about Brainstorm, hop onto and master a deck that doesn't play it and you will be surprised at your success.
Even if I were forced to play Brainstorm I wouldnt quit or anything... there is plenty of diversity in blue decks in this format...
I dont get the haters what are they complaning about??? No one is forcing you to play Brainstorm in this format
It's about 40%-50% last I looked on mtgtop8 but that's 90% mtgo so not a really basis of the whole legacy meta(cardboard).Quote:
Originally Posted by Vandalize
The recent GP' maybe but that's because people see popular decks from mtgo and expect that when from the reports I read here was not true.
I'm of the opinion if you struggle against a specific deck you need to tune your deck to that.
Copy+paste does not fix the problem of your deck is not optimized for that deck/meta.
Me my boogieman is dredge type decks and I play high tide, burn and affinity.
All decks that have bad matchups with dredge shenanigans because they are not as fast to end the game or find they few hate cards.
I'm not making a hateboard just for one deck because I got 5 other decks to worry about that may not be as fast as the mtgtop8 lists but close.
Unlike that other guy I adapt instead of cry ban this and that.
Don't make a fool of yourself and claim BS is not a skill card. It is likely the best spell in Legacy so saying it is overpowered might be reasonable, but not a skill card? come on...Quote:
Originally Posted by frogczar
Is this purposefully basically the same argument against brainstorm being legal? Because these are essentially the same exact reasons for brainstorm being banned except for the fact that it has an actually ridiculous amount of top 8 penetration.Quote:
Originally Posted by ramanujan
Simple case of disproportionate loud overactive voices. The overwhelming majority of Legacy players don't want Brainstorm banned. Fact.
For the record, I don't want to read this fucking thread, please don't make me. If anything pops up, report it. Just report it. Don't respond, don't edge on others. Just hit that triangle and move on.
Hopefully this volcano will become dormant again soon.
I'm sure a lot of people didn't want Lodestone restricted in vintage but Sam Black and his buddies got it done.Quote:
Originally Posted by LOLWut
Snipped and sigged :laugh:Quote:
Originally Posted by LegacyIsAnEternalFormat
Pure gold.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dissection
Oh my god, that's glorious.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dissection
I think you are missing something. The idea is that if we lose Miracles (ie, ban Counterbalance), Legacy will no longer have a non-midrange control deck. This distinction may not matter to you, but clearly it matters to me and to other people too. That's why nobody cried boohoo when we lost Omnitell. There are other combo decks that play a very similar game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Incidentally, CB + SDT is the defining engine in Miracles. Losing DTT took Omnitell down a notch - enough that it is no longer tier one. But it didn't negate the deck's core identity the way losing CB would completely gut Miracles.
And there is no need to destroy the deck! If we were to agree that Miracles is too strong, there are a number of ways to take it down a peg without completely ruining it. Personally if we had to choose a Miracles staple to ban I would vote for Mentor. The card makes it much harder to attack the deck with a single strategy, plus it gives Miracles outs against what would otherwise be tougher MUs.
I think you're conflating Deathblade (which is definitely a controlling midrange deck) with UW, Jeskai, and Esper Stoneblade, which are control decks. Running creatures doesn't make them not control decks; some Miracles lists run 7 or 8 creatures MD, as compared to ~10 in most Stoneblade lists. Wall of Air has a long pedigree in Ux control, and the fact that having a Batterskull in play on turn 3 or 4 is occasionally enough to completely shut an aggressive deck down doesn't detract from the fact that the control deck stabilized the board and rendered the aggro deck's draws mostly irrelevant before it won the game. Old mono-blue control decks had plenty of draws against Suicide Black and Sligh where the right line was to play Morphling with U up and Force + Blue card as early as possible and ride that to victory. On a somewhat related note, I'm not sure how likely Stoneblade as we know it is to make a comeback since it's so easy for actual midrange decks to just run it over with card advantage and superior creatures.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
The best argument I've heard for banning something from Miracles is that its conversion rate at GP Columbus is a direct result of there being a larger number of US players than European players (mostly top end GP/PTQ grinders and high-level Pros) who are both willing and able to 'just play the best deck' and not be significantly punished for not being regular Legacy players. I'm not sure how accurate this assessment is, but it's in line with WotC's history of placing more emphasis on the feelings of Pros and on North American results than on community sentiment or results from outside North America when making B/R decisions.
I don't think it's an accurate assessment at all. Legacy isn't like Modern or Standard where you can pick up the best deck and autopilot it with minimal format exposure. If you look at the Miracles players doing well, they're all players that have been on the deck for years.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
If Counterbalance is banned, people will figure something out. Just as nothing will stop someone from playing post-DTT Omnitell or Sneak and Show, miracles die-hards could still play SDT/Terminus/Entreat (i.e. some second-rate control deck that can exist without losing the mysterious label of 'non-midrange,' however one goes about that). I'm just not sure how changing 4x CB -> 4x SFM and 3x SDT to 1-2x Equip and 1-2x Trinket Mage means it's suddenly a midrange deck - when did the nomenclature change?? Sure Terminus amounts are probably dropping too, but like how is adding in some 1/2s and your 4/4 changing from creature type angel to germ constituting some new 'midrange' archetype? The key difference is that, like everyone else, a Stoneblade player has to lose a card from hand to deny an opponent a card (or two life according to Zur's Weirding precedent) each time they want to deny one - I'm not sure why a move in this direction is anything but desirable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
Going back to why things get banned in Legacy/Vintage it's generally due to: quality of life/ethics (i.e. Goblin Recruiter, Earthcraft, Shahrazad), power level (i.e. Yag. Will, Necro, Frantic Search, Gush, Fastbond), or diversity killing (i.e. Survival, Library of Alexandria, Mental Misstep - most in this category have power level problems as well). When you look at any of these three broad categories, only SDT and Counterbalance can fit the bill. Don't misunderstand, there is zero reason why Monastery Mentor tokens should ever have had prowess, but I'd really look to vintage where you could legitimately have claimed diversity-killing status right after Lodestone restiction - but even there looking at the most recent tournaments Mentor/Gush is getting Snuff'ed Out (pun intended, but really start re-using this to kill TKS in vintage) of top 8s by white eldrazi lists. While Mentor is, like Terminus, a generically good card in legacy it [Mentor] lacks power, quality of life/ethical issues (dragging games on), and diversity-killing status (not even all miracles lists run this card, let alone other decks).
There have been far too many Abrupt Decays [importantly pairing BG together, lowering diversity] for too long, and recently a more severe drop-off in combo decks (sure ANT and pseudo-combo won GPs...with 5 miracles in top 16)...and I think, we all know what deck is to blame; even if we don't agree on the specific card. The DCI always makes the call regardless of what stance one takes nor how sound one's reasoning is in a forum like this, but this advocating of banning good cards instead of the problem cards they enable has to stop somewhere - can we at least keep the modern ban mentality out of legacy forums? The primary motivation has to be health of the format, not deck identity.
After playing Miracles I really don't think anything needs to be banned from it. It isn't as good against Wasteland as people seem to think, most of the power comes from Snapcaster Mage & Jace which aren't at all exclusive to Miracles, and as Joe Lossett was saying the other day in the Tales of Adventure stream people just aren't sideboarding enough to beat Miracles.
Yes, he might be biased because he is an adamant proponent of the deck, but I have to agree with him. People aren't putting in enough hate.
Seriously though, if you want to learn how to beat Miracles more often, try playing with it. Proxy it up and test with/against friends. It is more susceptible to all sorts of hate than it may seem. Playing with the deck against some very talented opponents opened my eyes.
I don't know how many 3-4x Abrupt Decays you need to see before you can't make the claim that people aren't boarding for miracles, or that diversity in the format is suffering.Quote:
Originally Posted by ironclad8690
The fact of the matter is that you need between 8-12 cards to effectively stop Counterbalance directly, which means you're hemorrhaging win % vs other decks. It is much less slot intensive to stop playing magic (Caverns/Boseju) or employ basic land hate than it is to deal with CB. There is no viable game actions-only deck that can win a post-board game. 50/200 decks with "good" miracles matchups [Shardless/Edlrazi] advanced 1 deck into the top 16 between the 2 GPs while miracles advanced 5 copies. You can make an arbitrarily questionable cmc deck and it will generally beat miracles, but is that really where you want legacy to go?
Now all of that in the last paragraph is certainly biased, but it's still a pretty accurate summation. As frustrating as CB is though, it's the kind of card that would get banned because:
-it wastes time; it's the only card that consistently encourages spinning SDT >1x between draw steps.
-it wastes time again; you can concede to Voltaic Key/Time Vault (combo pieces that do almost nothing alone unlike CB and Top). This is the same 1cmc spell into 2 cmc spell, except it doesn't certainly end the game on the spot...and they are 4-ofs.
-it is overpowered; it can counter more spells than :6: discounted Decree of Silence, which would be instantly banned in all formats.
-it kills diversity; see Abrupt Decay or meta-game breakdowns.
There are any number of perfectly legitimate reasons to ban the card, and none of it has to do with "I don't like card x." It is saying something when banning CB and unbanning Time Vault would make legacy more enjoyable with less extra turns time between rounds...not that that card should ever actually be unbanned.
Again competitive decks in-part designed to have "good" matchups vs miracles are consistently losing to it. Now I respect the opinion that 'nothing is wrong with miracles' a whole lot more than 'ban terminus,' but what exactly do you need to see before you say something isn't right here? Does combo have to fall under x%, do you need to see quad-Grip/quad-Decay 75s, does miracles need consistent GP wins rather than flooding top8s, does it need >20% representation on mtgo?
Since I'm still very much on the fence about whether anything in Miracles ia banworthy I'm going to respond somewhat sceptically to both of you.
The problem with Miracles hate (as opposed to cards that are merely incedentally good against it) is that unlike BGx hate (Blood Moon, Price of Progress, Ruination) is that it's either extremely difficult to execute (they can't beat Zur's Weirding, but it's a 4 cmc blue enchantment and they board in 2-3 Pyroblasts against other blue decks) or unavailable to most decks in the format because it's nearly as hateful toward them (Boil, Choke). Non-combo decks can't really make use of Boseiju, and even decks that are otherwise strong against Counterbalance, Mentor, and the incremental advantages that Top provides are soft to Entreat. It's entirely possible that Winter Orb in particular isn't being used enough relative to how good it is, especially aince it has applications against wide swaths of the format.Quote:
Originally Posted by ironclad8690
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Abrupt Decay and Krosan Grip are more like Null Rod in that they're good against one of the deck's engines but don't rise to the level of 'hate' the way that Boil or Blood Moon does. Lossett and ironclad are right, though, in that people haven't adapted to updates in Miracles technology. If we all harp on Null Rod, Sylvan Library, and Liliana of the Veil like it's 2013, then we deserve to lose to Miracles because they've adapted and we haven't. While those cards are all fine, most Miracles players are accustomed to working through them, and there's little uncertainty as to whether decks that can include them will do so. Sloppy technical play also costs many players games against Miracles that they should be winning. I've discussed the effectiveness of appropriately Wastelanding Miracles' uncracked fetches in at least two other threads and I continue to have a lot of success with this approach despite hardly ever seeing anyone else do it. Similarly, people aren't being nearly aggressive enough with regard to exploiting their graveyards for advantage now that most Miracles players have dropped Rest in Peace for Surgical Extraction. Miracles isn't Cruise or Dig where there was an obvious problem on power level alone that can't be fought effectively without hate like maindeck Pyroblasts. The fact that it's developed technology much more quickly than other decks is a community problem, not.a deckbuilding problem, and using bans to.fix a community problem is unprecedented.
As for the GP results: it's clear from the coverage of Prague that a second Shardless player drew himself into 9th and the Miracles player into 8th. Make that one inversion of 8th and 9th places and you have a much starker difference between the two GPs in terms of top 8 composition. I think it's fair to say that Eldrazi succumbed to an overwhelming amount of hate aimed squarely at it, while Shardless put up the top 8/16 numbers at Prague that one would expect based on its numbers at the start of day 2 (and a second in the top 8 would more-or-less double the expected number). Discussing two different tournaments as though they can be meaningfully understood as a single entity is silly. It definitely seems like something weird happened at Columbus, bur no one has offered a compelling explanation as to why that might be.
Yeah, when I'm watching people play against Miracles I've also noticed people don't see these plays. Wastelanding fetches can limit their outs or disrupt a deck that's been carefully stacked.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
Strong players play Miracles because it's a deck that has game against everything and is fun + difficult to master. Because it's a good deck that the best players gravitate to, it does well pretty consistently. If you want to load your SB to beat it (which as Lossett noted, few people actually do, strange considering it's the most widely played t1 deck) and don't let yourself get outplayed, you can beat it. Most Miracles players *aren't* Joe Lossett and are going to make some mistakes. I think legacy is in a much better place when a very difficult control deck is the top dog and not something like Eldrazi or SnS, both of which could be handed to someone who's never played legacy before.