Blue needs a Nerf

You've obviously never had three of them dumped on you first turn. That thing is horrible. I hope Black Vise never comes back again. It's not quite the powerhouse it used to be, but it's sure one mean card that I really wouldn't want to see in playsets again.

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

You've obviously never had three of them dumped on you first turn. That thing is horrible. I hope Black Vise never comes back again. It's not quite the powerhouse it used to be, but it's sure one mean card that I really wouldn't want to see in playsets again.

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It's funny, because i wanted to say the same. I've tested it and the card sucks, i had far better memories of it, but i guess those were the days before FoW. Dropping 3 is doable only via DR, and you have to realize that a single FoW on one of those absolutely wreak you since you wasted 5 cards to make 3 damage to your opponent. A MM isn't as bad but you'd take only 6, at most 8 and then the control deck would recover quickly seeing as you mindtwisted yourself, leaving easy game for control to answer your leftover threats. I'd prefer hymn off a ritual, it's more sinergistic with the eventual black deck you're hypotizing there and less vulnerable to MM.

The card is unplayable in burn as it is a worse lava spike. In prison it could work (actually, it would sucks as it is no real win condition and no real prison lock), but it has bad sinergy with CotV, and prison sucks in general. In aggro the card is an absolutely dead draw past t1 and you shouldn't run it unless you had a way to recycle artifacts (affinity mb?). The best deck for it is probably a prison/stasis blue deck with Arcane Denial, Howling mines, lot of counterspell and bounce. And that would scoop to so many things it isn't even fun.


If anything i've changed my mind and i don't want it unbanned because it would do nothing to the format, wouldn't hose control any more than cursed scroll do and would go only in Tier 3 annoying decks.

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

You've obviously never had three of them dumped on you first turn.

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One of reasons why I like singleton formats.

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Originally Posted by lordofthepit

Sounds like a lot of fun on Isochron Scepter. Exactly the type of game I'm sure WotC would like to promote.

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Agreed, my bad. That's too much. Maybe make it a sorcery with flash and split second?

Although none of it is really necessary. I agree with the 'play more red decks' opinion if you want to beat on blue.

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Originally Posted by Solar Ice

That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?

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There are tons of matchups where your force and blue card is not worth their one card, particularly against most aggro and midrange type decks. Obviously it depends on what you are playing and what they are playing, but for example, playing Team America vs. Junk or Merfolk is a case where TA would side out Forces for more relevant sideboard cards.

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Originally Posted by wcm8

There are tons of matchups where your force and blue card is not worth their one card, particularly against most aggro and midrange type decks. Obviously it depends on what you are playing and what they are playing, but for example, playing Team America vs. Junk or Merfolk is a case where TA would side out Forces for more relevant sideboard cards.

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Or as another example, against Zoo, pretty much any deck that uses Force of Will should side it out. This is because Zoo's gameplan doesn't revolve around trying to cast any "must-counter" spells. Just about all their non-land cards are in the deck to be under-costed and deal damage, so this level of redundancy makes it not worthwhile to go -2 cards, -1 life in order to counter one of their cards.

I remember I had a similar kneejerk "I can't side out FoW, that's crazy" type of reaction as this Solar Ice character, the first time someone mentioned this strategy to me. But as amazing as FoW is, occasionally it's just one of the worst cards in your deck in some particular matchups.

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Originally Posted by rukcus

For every matchup where FOW eats another card to take out a beater, is a matchup where FOW protects you from losing the game right now against Glass Cannons and other combos. Which would you rather be left out in the cold against?

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You are one of the people who overrates counters btw.

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Originally Posted by Solar Ice

That's news to me. I don't think that I've ever sided out FoW against anything. Care to elaborate on the MUs that it's sided out in?

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Max McCall wrote a great article about this very topic over at Star City Games.

All I see in this thread is "Hey, here's how to win through a counterwall."

There's not nearly enough of "How do you not lose through a counterwall?" Specifically, we're talking about blue combo, and how the shell for it is essentially now Force, Misstep, Brainstorm, Daze, Intuition, random 2-card combo, other stuff.

Seriously. Painter is strong. Reanimator is strong. Fucking Hive Mind is strong. I wouldn't be surprised to see somebody top with an Illusions/Donate list, honestly. Because right now the beginning of Legacy combo starts with Force of Will, Mental Misstep, Intuition, and usually Daze. And quite frankly, the combo you stick in the shell really doesn't matter all that much. You're just playing roulette with the metagame hate.

Legacy's turning into a weird 4-way rock-paper scissors match between Blue Aggro-Control, Blue Control, Blue combo, and old archetypes with a ton of blue hate in sideboard (Which, for the record, is omnipresent in all Zoo placings recently. Thruns, Chokes, REBs, and Grips are all good against different forms of blue decks.)

So yes, blue needs an axe. There just isn't a great choice to ban. Axe Mental Misstep and we go back to the endless absurdity of trying to keep storm, dredge, etc. in check. Axe Force and the format gets out of control. Axe Brainstorm and you aren't really going to solve the problem. Ditto for Jace. Probably ditto for Intuition, though this is actually the card I'd pick to ban. But really, the problem isn't any one card. It's all of them put together.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

All I see in this thread is "Hey, here's how to win through a counterwall."

There's not nearly enough of "How do you not lose through a counterwall?" Specifically, we're talking about blue combo, and how the shell for it is essentially now Force, Misstep, Brainstorm, Daze, Intuition, random 2-card combo, other stuff.

Seriously. Painter is strong. Reanimator is strong. Fucking Hive Mind is strong. I wouldn't be surprised to see somebody top with an Illusions/Donate list, honestly. Because right now the beginning of Legacy combo starts with Force of Will, Mental Misstep, Intuition, and usually Daze. And quite frankly, the combo you stick in the shell really doesn't matter all that much. You're just playing roulette with the metagame hate.

Legacy's turning into a weird 4-way rock-paper scissors match between Blue Aggro-Control, Blue Control, Blue combo, and old archetypes with a ton of blue hate in sideboard (Which, for the record, is omnipresent in all Zoo placings recently. Thruns, Chokes, REBs, and Grips are all good against different forms of blue decks.)

So yes, blue needs an axe. There just isn't a great choice to ban. Axe Mental Misstep and we go back to the endless absurdity of trying to keep storm, dredge, etc. in check. Axe Force and the format gets out of control. Axe Brainstorm and you aren't really going to solve the problem. Ditto for Jace. Probably ditto for Intuition, though this is actually the card I'd pick to ban. But really, the problem isn't any one card. It's all of them put together.

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i'm glad you say that brainstrom really isn't going to solve the problem. but the ban on brainstorm will definitely nerf blue a bit. Thats the only way i see it.

The competitive scene requires you to play blue to be competitive basically. I am glad that one zoo deck did go through. I guess combo got hated on early on so they probably all dropped, or combo didn't dare show his face with so many blue decks running rampant.

I really think Wizards needs to give it the hell up and stop ignoring the people who want old school hosers.

There hasn't been a good hoser like Choke, Perish, Light of Day, Chill, or some other monster like those in a really long time. Hell, we still are using those hosers since they refuse to print good ones again. Ok, ok, Submerge was a unique case, but it took fetches being universally used to make it decent.

I want a Leyline of making your counters cost 2 more or a Red Sinkhole Island/Plains. Cryoclasm, you still sucked, but that was on the right track. It just needed to hit two if you're going to pay that much.

We need something severely devastating again.

Mind Twist, I doubt that one would even hurt blue all that much anymore. It needs to be decent if you're going to be taking on the streamlined decks. Some really good burn that targets island players or my personal fav would be a white weenie monster that can blink for cheap. Blue would have hell with that.

It would be worth printing a few exceptionally nasty ones just so my foil Misdirections got some use again.

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

I really think Wizards needs to give it the hell up and stop ignoring the people who want old school hosers.

There hasn't been a good hoser like Choke, Perish, Light of Day, Chill, or some other monster like those in a really long time. Hell, we still are using those hosers since they refuse to print good ones again. Ok, ok, Submerge was a unique case, but it took fetches being universally used to make it decent.

I want a Leyline of making your counters cost 2 more or a Red Sinkhole Island/Plains. Cryoclasm, you still sucked, but that was on the right track. It just needed to hit two if you're going to pay that much.

We need something severely devastating again.

Mind Twist, I doubt that one would even hurt blue all that much anymore. It needs to be decent if you're going to be taking on the streamlined decks. Some really good burn that targets island players or my personal fav would be a white weenie monster that can blink for cheap. Blue would have hell with that.

It would be worth printing a few exceptionally nasty ones just so my foil Misdirections got some use again.

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the thing is blue has an answer to EVERYTHING. thats why its so devastating. creatures, it has the submerges and wipeouts, into the roil, and other bounces.

land destruction, it has counters.

blue also has its own set of fast cheap creatures ie. merfolk.

no other color has that kind of consistency, and if they want to, they need to splash. Even if you are playing black, i would not dare cast mind twist against blue because you are 1. tapping yoruself out. 2. misdirection.

They had to give blue the best plains walker too.

Great job R&D team.

Red, green or white deserved the best walker. Though elspeth is a close second to Jace.

To the players who believe that the color wheel should not be equal, I say this makes for boring magic. It's becoming less of a diverse metagame.

Look at the top 8 decks on the Grand prix. 1 out of 8 decks did not have blue.

blue - 7 decks
black- 1 deck
white - 3 decks
green - 4 decks
red - 3 decks

And with the exception of the BANT deck, most were piratically all blue decks with other colors to splash.

BTW black is the second best color,overall. Undergound Sea is slightly more expensive then Tundra which is slightly more expensive than tropical island. I hope that clears that up.

So black is the second most powerful color, yet the least represented in the GP?

Why is the only proposed solution to de-power Blue? Alternatively, WotC could print other cards to empower the other colors. Though those cards will ultimately get paired with the awesome Blue cards in Legacy :-)

This discussion, general calls for banning, and actual bans that are done for the sake for "format diversity" all suffer from the same problem. Specifically, there really isn't a good idea of what quantifies as "format diversity".

The specific issue here is a call to de-power a color. Yes, Blue has a number of awesome cards that work well in many decks. However, there are a several viable tier one decks that do not use Blue. Off the top of my head:

BW (both the disruptive and aggro versions)
Junk
Zoo
Team Italia

And several that occupy tier 1.5:

Goblins
Enchantress
Dredge
Elves
MUD

I mean this is Legacy. In Enteral formats people always play the best color; its Survival of the Fittest sort to speak. So gaming out the proposal in which a number of steps are taken that de-powered Blue in the format, the next most powerful color then proliferates in a manner similar to Blue. Then we have a new thread in a year titled "[insert color] needs a Nerf". Its impossible to achieve a "balanced" or "diverse" format because there isn't an interpretation of what that means; attempts to "diversify" the format only lead to a new color becoming dominate and results in the same problems.

This thread makes me remember an ooooold joke article in The Duelist, about how they were going to ban Islands. The fact of the matter is, blue being the best color has been an in-joke of Magic for almost as long as the game has existed. I'm not saying it's right or wrong (and personally I think the other colors should be 'brought up to equal level' a bit)... But I think it's gone so far that it's almost an ingrained tradition of MtG game design by now.

Anyways, on to practical matters. I think banning "blue card X" is probably the worst possible solution to the problem, unless there is one card that is allowing an archetype to unfairly dominate (ie Mystical Tutor or Survival of the Fittest.) Banning, for example, Brainstorm, would for one thing, probably not accomplish that much in the long run as far as balancing blue's power level. It would engender the ill will of many players (since it's seen as one of the flagship cards of the format, and people enjoy playing it), and blue mages would get by with Ponder, Predict, Preordain, etc when they needed a cantrip. All of these cards see play already anyways. Intuition is probably the most intelligent suggestion I've heard as far as a blue card to ban (as far as what would diminish blue's omnipresence the most without ruining the balance of the format (like banning FoW would, for instance)), and I still don't think it deserves the banhammer.

I think far better solution(s) would be to start printing brutal color-hosers again (with the nastiest ones only affecting blue decks, and ideally providing a symmetrical effect so blue decks can't sideboard them effectively, ie more like Choke less like Llawan), and most importantly WotC needs to find ways to print powerful spells in other colors. I truly believe that the problem right now is not that blue is broken or unfair; it's just the best color when considered from a wide perspective. This is because, for example, while blue gets effects like countering spells and drawing extra cards, white gets effects like preventing damage and gaining extra life. (The preceding sentence is a hyperbole, but you get my point.)

I think also, an important point to make is that there should be more powerful cards printed that are not so easily splashed into decks of another color. For example, if Tarmogoyf costed :g::g: instead of :1::g:, it would be much harder to just stick it in any deck where you need a dumb undercosted beater; if Dark Confidant was :b::b: then you wouldn't be able to just be like "well I have a low curve and I wouldn't hate drawing extra cards, guess I can justify a black splash with a couple sideboard cards." I don't think that they should stop printing powerful cards that only require one colored mana, but if there were more incentives to play cards that required two or three colored mana, I think we would have a format that looked a lot less like "Blue, splashing x and maybe y."

Also, we just need some good blue hosers. And they need to either have a symmetrical effect, or not be easily splashable (in addition to probably needing them to be counter-proof.)

EDIT: For the sake of full disclosure, all these statements are coming from someone who plays Merfolk.

Re: Blue needs a Nerf

So black is the second most powerful color, yet the least represented in the GP?

I knew someone would point that out, so I mentioned the Underground Sea justification, which you can't argue with.

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Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght

This thread makes me remember an ooooold joke article in The Duelist, about how they were going to ban Islands. The fact of the matter is, blue being the best color has been an in-joke of Magic for almost as long as the game has existed. I'm not saying it's right or wrong (and personally I think the other colors should be 'brought up to equal level' a bit)... But I think it's gone so far that it's almost an ingrained tradition of MtG game design by now.

Anyways, on to practical matters. I think banning "blue card X" is probably the worst possible solution to the problem, unless there is one card that is allowing an archetype to unfairly dominate (ie Mystical Tutor or Survival of the Fittest.) Banning, for example, Brainstorm, would for one thing, probably not accomplish that much in the long run as far as balancing blue's power level. It would engender the ill will of many players, and blue mages would get by with Ponder, Predict, Preordain, etc when they needed a cantrip. All of these cards see play already anyways. Intuition is probably the most intelligent suggestion I've heard as far as a blue card to ban (as far as what would diminish blue's omnipresence the most without ruining the balance of the format (like banning FoW would, for instance)), and I still don't think it deserves the banhammer.

I think far better solution(s) would be to start printing brutal color-hosers again (with the nastiest ones only affecting blue decks, and ideally providing a symmetrical effect so blue decks can't sideboard them effectively, ie more like Choke less like Llawan), and most importantly WotC needs to find ways to print powerful spells in other colors. I truly believe that the problem right now is not that blue is broken or unfair; it's just the best color when considered from a wide perspective. This is because, for example, while blue gets effects like countering spells and drawing extra cards, white gets effects like preventing damage and gaining extra life. (The preceding sentence is a hyperbole, but you get my point.)

I think also, an important point to make is that there should be more powerful cards printed that are not so easily splashed into decks of another color. For example, if Tarmogoyf costed :g::g: instead of :1::g:, it would be much harder to just stick it in any deck where you need a dumb undercosted beater; if Dark Confidant was :b::b: then you wouldn't be able to just be like "well I have a low curve and I wouldn't hate drawing extra cards, guess I can justify a black splash with a couple sideboard cards." I don't think that they should stop printing powerful cards that only require one colored mana, but if there were more incentives to play cards that required two or three colored mana, I think we would have a format that looked a lot less like "Blue, splashing x and maybe y."

Also, we just need some good blue hosers. And they need to either have a symmetrical effect, or not be easily splashable (in addition to probably needing them to be counter-proof.)

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Agree with everything you said. Hope the R&D team is reading this thread

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Originally Posted by dragonwisdom

Re: Blue needs a Nerf

So black is the second most powerful color, yet the least represented in the GP?

I knew someone would point that out, so I mentioned the Underground Sea justification, which you can't argue with.

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Black is the second most powerful color in VINTAGE and necessary for Tendrils decks in all Eternal formats, hence Undergroud Sea is the most expensive dual land.

^^This. Underground Sea is the go-to land for Vintage; that's where a large part of the demand comes from. In Vintage, it gives you access to the most broken non-power spells: D. Tutor, V. Tutor, D. Consultation, Y. Will, Y. Bargain, Necro, I. Seal, etc - Not to mention Bob and Seize. Also, you can't forget EDH.

I don't think you can arbitrarily use price as a guideline for strength in Legacy. Willow Satyr is going for as much as Dark Confidant on Star City, but you don't see people claiming it to be the next great green dude.