Yes, yes, after Top, let's ban DRS.
Then fetchlands. Then anything but Brainstorm. Then i will be finally able to play my 4 brainstorm , 34 grey ogres and 20 lands deck.
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Yes, yes, after Top, let's ban DRS.
Then fetchlands. Then anything but Brainstorm. Then i will be finally able to play my 4 brainstorm , 34 grey ogres and 20 lands deck.
Then ban Delver. It's not like those decks are going to go away if you axe Deathrite or Delver, but at least a Delver ban would force them to find new (or old?) tools for the 1-cmc attacker slot. You also wouldn't have collateral damage against stuff like Elves or Mav.
Or just don't ban anything and wait to see how the format shakes out. People are really trigger-happy in this thread.
I think one of the major problems with unbans in Legacy, or hell any format, is that Wizards doesn't like making mistakes. For example; Golgari Grave Troll was banned in modern for a long time, and people complained because there wasn't a good dredge deck in modern and that it didn't deserve to be banned. So after awhile, Wizards unbanned the Troll and nothing happened for awhile, but they printed several cards over the course of 2-3 sets that made a dredge deck in modern tier 0 and eventually had to reban the Troll.
So in my opinion, there are things that can be unbanned in Legacy, like Survival of the Fittest because DRS is rampant, but Wizards is hesitant to unban anything because they don't want to make a mistake and release a tier 0 deck that's all their fault.
Unban Mind's Desire it will be fine.
Does that make the argument invalid, though?
Regarding DRS and Brainstorm, I understand why people don't like them. I just don't think banning them will solve the lack of variance between decklists: people will keep gravitating toward the best cards. (I also think that banning cards that enable broad strategies is worse than allowing them to appear in 60% of top-8 decks.)
I think DRS is actually a lot worse for this than Brainstorm is. Sure, Brainstorm and the rest of the "cantrip cartel" skeleton are everywhere, but they're part of a much wider variety of deck types and lists than Deathrite is. Deathrite lets people just go "4-Color Value Town" and run the same permission spells (and cantrips!) all the way down the list.
Maverick can still play Noble Hierarch / BOP and has access to GSZ for silver bullets like scooze and teeg. Just because Deathrite is black / green doesn't mean that banning it hurts black / green decks the most. It hurts Grixis / 4c decks the most because green can easily replace deathrite whereas grixis can't play any mana dorks besides the shaman.
This post honestly seems like a response to your previous post. The best deathrite decks don't even play delver. Delver can only attack, it doesn't ramp you and then drain you for 2 life a turn later in the game, all the while stonewalling 1/1s.
Try this, remove delver from any percentage list of bs/fow and see what the top cards are.
How many people that get pissed off about brainstorm are people that lose to a delver deck?
The format doesn't seem really bad, but honestly if anything is really nonsensical it's delver. At least DRS and BS make sense for their colors, blue having the most efficient creature is wrong. I wonder if a lot of the things hated about BS can really be pointed at Delver
I think each card has its own reason for being hated. For me, the card I hate the most in Legacy is TNN.
Delver, effective but honestly not a problem.
Brainstorm, broken in half but untouchable.
DRS, a mistake played in the two formats where mistakes are often a prerequisite for play.
TNN. A pain to play with or against and my personal bug bear.
SnT. A mistake in a format full of mistakes that enables the use of other mistakes. Will likely be banned someday.
In all honesty, I feel the drive to truly ban a card lost a lot of steam with Top taken out of the format. Yes, people want DRS gone, but I don't feel the push is the same. Also, on record, I won't cry if it goes but would not be my first choice.
Will all Pirates be emergency banned next?
Or just Hostage Taker?
Not even the slack jawed hooligans in Georgia respect the pirate menace?!?!?!?!?!?!???!?!?!???!!!
That card was already errata'd; cannot infinitely target self:
When Hostage Taker enters the battlefield, exile another target creature or artifact until Hostage Taker leaves the battlefield. You may cast that card for as long as it remains exiled, and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any type to cast that spell.
They have already overridden the infinite loop concerns and we're no longer banning cards like Worldgorger for these types of reasons.
Sorry to not respond for days. You basically got the reasons right - Storm decks (like most Deathrite decks) are fundamentally interactive in a way that Reanimator/Dredge/Show and Tell aren't (Lands is right on the line). Both players take actions that have meaningful counterplay from their opponent, and non-games are comparatively rare. Jamming with Storm decks comes at a real cost, while jamming with Show and Tell is basically free since the deck is so redundant. DRS likely does more good than harm simply by making graveyards much easier to interact with than they ordinarily would be, which both frees up sideboard slots and reduces the incentives to run linear graveyard decks in the first place. My issue with Probe is primarily that it creates too much free velocity in fair decks, and the information makes that even better.
I see the thread hasn't much changed in the last months other than the tone thankfully being less hostile. In addition to the usual suspects, it appears that Probe and DRS are the hot sauce discussed atm.
Tbh, I can see the issues people have with either, but I am not convinced that banning either would really make a difference other than chopping the Hydras head just to make space for a new Best-in-Slot emerging.
Probe is an annoying card to play against (coming from one who slings it in every deck) so I understand that the free check for counters and the interaction with Cabal Therapy is a gamewrecker for decks which rely on "the scare game". I however doubt that removing Probe from the pool just for more cantrips/disruption to inherit the open slots would make decks like Grixis, Storm, S&T, etc significantly easier to battle, given Probe can be used against these decks as well. We are not even (yet) down the road of non-blue decks abusing it to estimate their plays like dropping a hatebear vs dropping a threat based on info provided by Probe.
I think we agree that DRS is a 1cc Planeswalker and lovechild of Grim Lavamancer, Withered Wretch and Birds of Paradise. Hands down: I love that manadorks and creatures in general finally got more versatile than just attacking/blocking like they did during the rise of Tarmogoyf and maindeckable hate is what makes creature.dec playable in a format with combodecks around. DRS has opened up so many options in Legacy for creature.dec being more than just D&T + Delver/Stifle and I think, we should give the card some credit for making 3cc cards playable again and fight back the Wasteland/Stifle/Daze chokehold as well as Graveyard combos. The only arguments I am on board with is, that the creature has too much Toughness to act as a blocker and that the essentially non-existant color restriction for cost & generation is not only pushing blue as a color, but has caused a further streamlining of decks. I am actually baffled that combo decks like Storm or S&T haven't picked up DRS to fight back against Daze and opposing DRS at this point.
3CC creatures weren't hurting before deathrite. Maverick was doing alright. DnT was good. All deathrite has done is to give blue decks the power of a mana dork that they don't have to commit to green for and further make it less necessary to play non blue decks and threats, especially combined with the dumb fucking 3 drops like leoturd and true ape
Underground Sea shouldn't be able to cast Birds of Paradise. But thanks to DRS, it can. That's the real problem with it. Replace the black with white and the card is fine. Well, not really, but better at least.
There are many problems with DRS, that is the difference between a powerful legacy card and a banworthy one.
He should be 0/1, 1/1 the most. Instead, he is 1/2
He should be castable off of green only. Instead, he is castable off of G/B (so, Underground Sea as this has been mentioned many times)
He should probably only produce green or black mana. Instead, he produces any color
That's a tough case to make. If you want to go back to the beginning you have to contend with Channel and any number of green cards that gain life by counting 'x' in the yard or when 'x' dies gain 'y' life. Technically speaking, mono-green is better equipped than most to convert yard to life and then life to mana.
This is a black and green card so on the one hand you have unconditional tap to add mana (generally have to overcome summoning sickness) and on the other you have pretty stark conditions which can include life loss, sacrifice, discard, etc - either approach (G/B) can net mana and convert color. DRS being a black and green hybrid naturally can net mana and rainbow it, but it's always conditional...so the flavor of combining the two colors into a mana dork is actually fine.
We can talk about smaller issues like the cmc or stats, but I don't think that's productive. For example: Cavern of Souls should tap for any color of mana (or colorless), that mana should only be usable cast the tribe (and only the tribe, to include tribal spells), and make creatures of the tribe cast uncounterable - regardless of what you or I think about that fix for Cavern, it doesn't matter because the card is already printed; a sweeping overhaul like that is only going to be done by ban & replace. People seem to have a lot of feelings about DRS, and we're not going to get anywhere by arguing the green vs black flavor of DRS being a core issue - you say it's black @Zombie, the next post @rlesko says no mana dorks off Usea, and we can read above in my post and go with DRS flavor is technically a solid fusion of these two colors. What have we accomplished here debating flavor wins - we're talking about a game where Maze of Ith can target and affect Minotaurs.
What's the logic behind wanting DRS banned that people can relate to (and either rationally agree or disagree with)? You read through the DRS stuff and most of the arguments are based on subjective dislike that the mana of Czech Pile is working and the deck wins. Those arguments are tunnel-visioned on the mana generation and fixing of DRS in that 4c deck, but that's an oversimplification of the card. There's a lot of good content on the DRS debate, but the color-flavor stuff falls short. Poorly executed cards are played disproportionately in legacy (that's why they see play); needs to be better reasons behind ban arguments than this.
All I'm saying is that if DRS would be any other color than green, that color would be black. Not that it'd be a good idea to print the card as castable with B, I don't really think it's not. It's kind of in the same territory as printing Counterspell at {U/B}{U/B} or Bolt at {R/W}. Can make sense? Yes. Could be a nice effect on a card that's not priced as aggressively as possible? Sure. At the top of the line? No, at that point it really starts dismantling color identity and just generally throwing deckbuilding decisions into the trash can unless the card is something you naturally want in huge quantities.
I don't want a DRS ban nor do I think it should be banned even if I wanted it, there's about ten worse atrocities on the chopping block before that IMO. But mana dorks are a very fundamentally green color identity card and seeing 4c not-green piles play it is a worse situation than not seeing it.
Yeah the design of DRS is screwed off...
it should be 0/1 with G casting cost and the same abilities it has now, with the clause of only being able to generate G or B, that I think would balance it much more and make much more sense in the color pie.
Anyway, brainstorm is by far the most broken spell in the format, period. Brainstorm is not just a cantrip, it with fetches makes virtual card advantage while digging for other cards and that at instant speed for 1 mana, it is THE most broken card on the format. The thing is, BS is like what defines legacy today, so I find it hard for them to ban it, it would flip the format upside down, which could be good or... not.
I don't think they will ban too soon DRS, but that is probably the first card on their list to take away from the format, BS would change a bunch of decks if they taked it away, but i don't think that's ever going to happen.
Nah just make all 3 abilities Sorcery speed and that would bring the power level back down to reality. I mean the first ability isn't a mana ability anyways, so who cares if it's sorcery speed? Then the 1/2 body isn't as relevant because it'll either be blocking or doing anything useful.
It doesn't make a whole bunch of difference, but it does make some difference it being 1/2, because it dodges losing 2 creatures to forked bolt, Izzet Staticaster and non-kicked marsh casualties. I play elves, so there are times opp looks to the 1/2 and goes why the hell this has 2 toughness looking at his sided forked bolt/Izzet Staticaster/marsh casualties. Just something more to the already broken DRS, it wouldn't make that much difference he being 0/1, but there is no reason he is a 1/2.
If DRS is going to be a dual colour card the other colour should be Red. It is the other colour that can produce mana though spell and creature effects theses days. Burning Tree sitting as an example of what I mean.
I've heard a lot of rumblings about Rite of Flame being banned.
Scryb Sprites should probably be banned too.
While I find DrS too good for Legacy, I am not sure that the format would be better without it. DrS gave a lot of possibility for creature.deck and helps to keep delver in check (well, I know, Grixis Delver is playing DrS but fine).
People tends to argue that DrS is a blue dork, which would be the problem. I don't think than cutting DrS would balance the color pie, as a lot of non blue deck like maverick or jund would be crushed down without DrS. There is a lot of non Drs deck that are doing fine right now, like Stoneblade, Miracle or D&T.
Cutting DrS would probably makes some decks better, like Canadian ***** or Reanimator, but I'm fine with keeping those decks at Tier 2 Bay.
I really need to be convinced than banning DrS would make the format more healthy and more diverse.
A banning of DRS will make legacy less fun.
With DRS you have a small chance versus Reanimator G1 and you can fight them with tight play using counters, discard and surgicals off the board, as a fair blue deck. That makes the match up fun and interactive. Without DRS you will need to put more SB cards towards "real" GY-hate and legacy decks will look more like vintage decks - running 4 leylines. Now the Reanimator match up will be so borlng: you will loose G1 then play the game "mull to hate" versus "mull to artifact/enchantment removal". And GY decks will Rise with a banning of DRS.
That also means sideboard cards will be taken from other matchups and that will make those matchups more coin-flippy as well.
DRS is one of the reasons you can even play a reactive fair deck in legacy - without it the proactive plan will prevail.
If they print a worse (green? 0/1?) DRS then I'm ok with a ban otherwice i think it's a bad idea.
My biggest problem with DRS is that it blocks and nullifies goose and lackey. My 2 c.
GY decks weren't an issue before DRS, don't see why they would be after it
You are correct, I was not on point. I mean, yes they were not an issue cause fair decks packed actual hate. Now you can play less narrow cards to complimfnt the DRS in fighting graveyard strategies. I think it would come down to "did you guys bring your leylines today cause I'm on BR Reanimator?" Either i go 4-0 or 0-4 depending on if people skimp on the hate or no. To me DRS is one of the control elements that make non white decks actually playable in a combo meta - without being utterly bad versus the fair decks.
What is up with the graveyard abusing decks will rise argument? People were saying that combo decks would come back in force after Top got banned and for the first week they did (who would have guessed that powerful linear strategies would be that popular in a format where people are still trying to figure out things right?) but things have normalized. Graveyard abusing strategies function in the same way, the more yard hate that people are running the less likely they are to do well. It's not really a single piece of hate that beats most of these decks but a combination of hate pieces. Having maindeckable yard hate is going to get there sometimes but i've had a fair number of games where I was either on the draw or my DRS got killed before I could stop my opponent. Having to board in hate for these decks is no different than trying to combat other combo decks with their respective hate pieces.
I'm not sure how DRS is keeping delver in check? I guess it gets to gain you life if it doesn't die? Keeping tempo decks in check is the same regardless of whatever era we are playing in. You play around soft counters, kill their things and eventually their deck fizzles out. The format isn't going to become any better because DRS is banned. The format isn't going to be any more diverse because you ban the card, you clowns will just compare about whatever fills it's void.
I support the ban on rite of flames. Pls ban wotc.
Eh, I don't really agree with this. Deathrite isn't the reason BR reanimator is kept in check - as deathrite is usually summoning sick while they combo off. Surgical extraction is already like a 2-3 of in every sideboard. So what cards are you referring to that are "less narrow"? God draws from reanimator are always unbeatable, they just don't happen consistently enough to warrant a ban. As stated before - graveyard strategies were never overpowered before deathrite, and we only have gotten much better tools since hes been printed (RIP and Cage).