All B/R update speculation.

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Originally Posted by BirdsOfParadise

When Show and Tell is legal but Earthcraft is still banned, I have to assume that there are no consistent criteria for banning cards, but rather that WotC aims to minimize change. They’re also inconsistent in minimizing change, however, since Land Tax is legal (a change I like, since I’m having a great time with a Land Tax deck). It’s as if, for some reason, both Shoreline Ranger and Chartooth Cougar had gotten banned a decade ago, and then WotC later remembered to unban only one of them. There are a surprising number of inconsistencies in the banned list that have stood the test of years.

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I just thought of something regarding this - if wotc did a drastic adjustment of the banlist, it’d shake up the meta, right? Then, the meta would settle, and legacy might start getting stale.

The playable cardpool in legacy moves glacially as it is, so maybe wotc just wants to leave some unbannables for when they feel like there isn’t going to be any meaningful changes to the cardpool for a long time (or some conspiracy along those lines).


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I think you're giving WotC too much credit. Eternal magic is not a topic that breaches their frontal lobes regularly.

They've long needed to let Legacy/Vintage B&R go and be managed by people that give a damn.

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Originally Posted by pettdan

Aaron Forsythe (@mtgaaron) Tweeted:
"It's one of the "pillars of the format" that makes it unique and players tolerate/love. It's like Brainstorm in Legacy. Every saturation metric we could ever invent would point to it being banned, but people love it. Transgressive stuff needs a place to live."

https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/...188588544?s=17

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Added to opening post.

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Originally Posted by schweinefettmann

The playable cardpool in legacy moves glacially as it is, so maybe wotc just wants to leave some unbannables for when they feel like there isn’t going to be any meaningful changes to the cardpool for a long time (or some conspiracy along those lines).

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I think it's actually the opposite - they know full well those cards wouldn't do anything, but sometimes they slip up and print something like Dig Through Time and need to ban it, and being able to say, "well, you can't play with this new toy we just printed, BUT, here's Goblin Recruiter/Earthcraft back!" softens the blow a bit.

It doesn't matter if those cards are in the format now, so there's not really a cost to having them on the list, and it gives them some nice options when their hand is forced.

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Originally Posted by taconaut

I think it's actually the opposite - they know full well those cards wouldn't do anything, but sometimes they slip up and print something like Dig Through Time and need to ban it, and being able to say, "well, you can't play with this new toy we just printed, BUT, here's Goblin Recruiter/Earthcraft back!" softens the blow a bit.

It doesn't matter if those cards are in the format now, so there's not really a cost to having them on the list, and it gives them some nice options when their hand is forced.

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I actually think this is correct, from what I've read from WOTC. They are holding a couple safe cards in reserve for their next royal fuckup.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

I actually think this is correct, from what I've read from WOTC. They are holding a couple safe cards in reserve for their next royal fuckup.

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I was willing to believe this until they had Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe shot and thrown out of a plane without giving us anything. Now I find it more likely that they think Earthcraft is too strong. They even printed two "not Earthcrafts" in recent memory (Cryptolith Rite and Song of Freyalise)

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Originally Posted by whienot

I think you're giving WotC too much credit. Eternal magic is not a topic that breaches their frontal lobes regularly.

They've long needed to let Legacy/Vintage B&R go and be managed by people that give a damn.

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Hahaha players are way too up their own butts for that too work. Look at this thread as an example.
And getting people to try and follow some "official council" seems like pissing in the wind. The egos are too big.

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Originally Posted by itslarryyo

Hahaha players are way too up their own butts for that too work. Look at this thread as an example.
And getting people to try and follow some "official council" seems like pissing in the wind. The egos are too big.

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I hate to admit it, but I can't help but agree with this. I don't necessarily think that a group managing the format outside of wizards is a bad thing, but I can't help but think there's a good chance it may not go great.

Regardless, I've always been a fan of Wizard's 'hands-off' approach with eternal formats...but I sure wish they had the same approach when it comes to cards in supplemental sets.

I'm not sure if it's a matter of big egos as much as it is a matter of strong opinions, but maybe these things overlap. Anyway, I think it would be hard to have a leadership emerge spontaneously from a group of people scattered over the world whichever the group may be. But, if some well known players agreed to form a new banlist and started streaming events, that might work. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind seeing several small communities test different variations of the ban list, as they prefer, and learning from what others are doing. Edit: if some changes would turn out to be fruitful, these might spread to other communities, and this might both change the attitude of players in general and Wizards' perception of requested changes from the community, aswell as reducing the risk for them in making changes.

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Originally Posted by Watersaw

I was willing to believe this until they had Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe shot and thrown out of a plane without giving us anything.

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As I've argued before, these bans were about public perception, rather than actual brokenness. In this case, the boon to the playerbase was assumed to be the banning itself, so no compensation was needed - if the thing you wanted was Probe gone, for whatever personal vendetta you had against the card, then there's no other compensation required, because you got what you wanted.

If Wizards thinks that people will be happy with the ban, they won't try to offset it with an unban.

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Originally Posted by taconaut

As I've argued before, these bans were about public perception, rather than actual brokenness. In this case, the boon to the playerbase was assumed to be the banning itself, so no compensation was needed - if the thing you wanted was Probe gone, for whatever personal vendetta you had against the card, then there's no other compensation required, because you got what you wanted.

If Wizards thinks that people will be happy with the ban, they won't try to offset it with an unban.

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I agree with this, I remember Top's banning being quite the contentious occurrence. Most were in favor of the ban but a lot of people had serious money invested in Miracles (and didn't think they could play the deck without Top, ha, jokes on them...) They seemed to feel the need to 'throw us a bone', which I think was Worldgorger Dragon at the time.

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Originally Posted by taconaut

As I've argued before, these bans were about public perception, rather than actual brokenness. In this case, the boon to the playerbase was assumed to be the banning itself, so no compensation was needed - if the thing you wanted was Probe gone, for whatever personal vendetta you had against the card, then there's no other compensation required, because you got what you wanted.

If Wizards thinks that people will be happy with the ban, they won't try to offset it with an unban.

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Good Post. What were the last couple they softened?

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Originally Posted by kinda

Good Post. What were the last couple they softened?

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Just looking at the timeline of a few recent ones (I can't really speak for the time before I played regularly, because I wouldn't have a good sense of the community sentiment):

Modern, 2014: Ban DRS; Unban Bitterblossom and Wild Nacatl
Modern, 2015: Ban DTT, Treasure Cruise, and Birthing Pod; unban Golgari Grave Troll
Legacy, 2015: Ban Treasure Cruise; unban Worldgorger Dragon
Vintage, 2015: Restrict Treasure Cruise; Unrestrict Gifts Ungiven
Legacy, 2015: Ban DTT; unban Black Vise
Vintage, 2015: Restrict Chalice of the Void and DTT; unrestrict Thirst for knowledge
Modern, 2016: Ban Eye of Ugin, unban Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek (this is surprising to me because at the time it was completely obvious that Eye needed to go, the deck was bananas)
Vintage: Restrict Thorn of Amythyst and Monastery Mentor; unrestrict Yawgmoth's Bargain

Examples of popular Bans (i.e., WotC felt no compensation was necessary):
Modern, 2013: Ban Second Sunrise
Modern, 2016: Ban Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom
Pauper, 2016: Ban Peregrine Drake Edited, thanks Zombie
Modern, 2017: Ban Gitaxian Probe and Gorgari Grave Troll
Legacy, 2017: Ban Sensei's Divining Top
Legacy, 2018: Ban Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe
Modern, 2019: Ban Krark Clan Ironworks

It's not a 100% guaranteed tactic, but I think it does play meaningfully into their decision schema.

Plus, as others have pointed out, a lot of the banlist management has to do with playerbase perception, and unbanning a card just to reban it later looks more foolish than just leaving it on, and the formats are mostly fine even with some dubious inclusions/exclusions.

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Modern, 2016: Ban Peregrine Drake

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Wrong format.

So it looks like they unbanned cards to make up for the delve shitstains. This sets a soft precedent that they hold safe cards on the banlist to be released for the next fuckup.

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Originally Posted by taconaut

As I've argued before, these bans were about public perception, rather than actual brokenness. In this case, the boon to the playerbase was assumed to be the banning itself, so no compensation was needed - if the thing you wanted was Probe gone, for whatever personal vendetta you had against the card, then there's no other compensation required, because you got what you wanted.

If Wizards thinks that people will be happy with the ban, they won't try to offset it with an unban.

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It's also notable that Probe was most used in Combo and DRS was most used in "Fair"; hitting both sides slowed both sides down. Combo has to go off in the dark or with protection more often, while Fair decks have a harder time with 3 colors, and definitely shakey at 4 (and don't accelerate much) While it's weird to be in a world without DRS; the fact that I don't get probed T1 by every DTB is kinda neat. Neat enough that; while it's taken me 6 months to figure out what I'd do without DRS and care enough to build a deck; I'm actually kind of excited again.

Don't ban Brainstorm.

But please unban every single thing on the ban list thats not blue or an artifact.

Ehh, nevermind. Just ban brainstorm already from all formats. Thanks to the existance of fetchlands, Brainstorm is for all intents and purposes is an Ancestral Recall.

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Originally Posted by Clark Kant

Just ban brainstorm already from all formats. Thanks to the existance of fetchlands, Brainstorm is for all intents and purposes is an Ancestral Recall.

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This is what happens when people don't test against All Spells. And yes, your cross-posting is noted.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

I actually think this is correct, from what I've read from WOTC. They are holding a couple safe cards in reserve for their next royal fuckup.

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Am I the only one who actually wants them to fuck up on a semi-regular basis? That means they are actually printing new cards with a chance to disrupt the eternal formats.

IMO it is much more interesting for the format when they print high power-level cards that can *gasp* disrupt the meta.

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

Am I the only one who actually wants them to fuck up on a semi-regular basis? That means they are actually printing new cards with a chance to disrupt the eternal formats.

IMO it is much more interesting for the format when they print high power-level cards that can *gasp* disrupt the meta.

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I don't mind them 'disrupting the format' with powerful cards, the only problem I have is often the cards are either more shit for dnt or shit that can get absorbed by the blue shell. or something like tnn which should just be retroactively aborted

On that note, I've been glad theyve taken to printing some strong spells lately...Light Up the Stage seems hopeful, for example.

If they fuck up and make new decks that's cool. If they fuck up and just outclass a whole lot of cards then please don't.

There's a difference between printing shit like Shardless Agent, Scavenging Ooze, Flusterstorm, Past in Flames and DRS and printing shit like TNN, Griseltard, Omnidrool or Terminus. You have to make cards both strong and interesting or I'd rather not have them.

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Originally Posted by Purple Blood

Am I the only one who actually wants them to fuck up on a semi-regular basis? That means they are actually printing new cards with a chance to disrupt the eternal formats.

IMO it is much more interesting for the format when they print high power-level cards that can *gasp* disrupt the meta.

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You are not! You make a really good point.

Legacy players will be dissatisfied every time a set comes out with nothing impactful. Also, Legacy players will be dissatisfied every time a set comes out with something impactful.

It just takes longer in the latter case to hear the complaints. But in the meantime, there are a lot of great innovations happening. In the former...nothing.

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Originally Posted by Zombie

printing shit like TNN, Griseltard, Omnidrool or Terminus. You have to make cards both strong and interesting or I'd rather not have them.

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funny how all those cards you mentioned get busted when paired with BS, especially terminus which is innocuous without BS.

Would you rather have shaman, probe, top, earthcraft, mindtwist, dig through time, treasure cruise, fastbond and even mana drain instead of BS?
Yes, please...

If they ever banned Terminus, they'd have to ban Vial. It's not really acceptable to have DnT making wraths cost 6 [Port/Thalia] +/- Wastelands. Otherwise you'd need an unconditional 3 mana sorc speed wrath, or a 4 mana unconditional instant speed one. As always, ban CB and unban SDT - combo can make miracles stop playing so many white cards, aggro has comprehensively failed to make miracles stop playing Counterbalance.

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Originally Posted by Finn

You are not! You make a really good point.

Legacy players will be dissatisfied every time a set comes out with nothing impactful. Also, Legacy players will be dissatisfied every time a set comes out with something impactful.

It just takes longer in the latter case to hear the complaints. But in the meantime, there are a lot of great innovations happening. In the former...nothing.

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I also like his post; mistakes mean they are at least trying to push boundaries. Until recently cards that have jumped to legacy have only supported mid-range or control strategies (kcommand, asstrophy, most notably.) When cards break through, but aren't oppressive, they tend to be good stuff cards, which pushes the metagame fair (which it overwhelmingly is atm.) Then they printed goblins that broke into legacy. Hell, Goblins just won a local 1K yesterday i played in, and there was another copy in the top 8. They recently got trashmaster and cratermaker. I hope this trend continues because having legitimate non-delver aggressive decks is great for the format.

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Originally Posted by Fox

If they ever banned Terminus, they'd have to ban Vial. It's not really acceptable to have DnT making wraths cost 6 [Port/Thalia] +/- Wastelands. Otherwise you'd need an unconditional 3 mana sorc speed wrath, or a 4 mana unconditional instant speed one. As always, ban CB and unban SDT - combo can make miracles stop playing so many white cards, aggro has comprehensively failed to make miracles stop playing Counterbalance.

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Yeah, uh, if the best deck in the format is mono white piss in your Cheerios, that’s fine.

Mostly because the last time a non-blue deck was the best deck in the format was...Maverick in 2012

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

Yeah, uh, if the best deck in the format is mono white piss in your Cheerios, that’s fine.

Mostly because the last time a non-blue deck was the best deck in the format was...Maverick in 2012

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Not really about DnT’s position in the meta; you have a mana-cheating artifact that makes a creature-feature deck pretty much immune to [not-Terminus] wrath effects. Denying the mana is fine, but not when a 1-drop = never a window where you have to stop powering up Ports and chucking Wastelands to develop a board state that can kill before ~6 land drops from an opponent.

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Originally Posted by Fox

If they ever banned Terminus, they'd have to ban Vial. It's not really acceptable to have DnT making wraths cost 6 [Port/Thalia] +/- Wastelands. Otherwise you'd need an unconditional 3 mana sorc speed wrath, or a 4 mana unconditional instant speed one.

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I don't think there is a need to spoil people with powercreeped unconditional boardwipes if there is just so much room to give to fantastic narrower cards which have fallen from grace like Dread Of Night or Pyroclam to battle weenie armies.

If you ask me the game desperately needs reasons to sleeve narrow silverbullets and tradeoffs instead of just getting to rely on the ever same catch-all cards like Terminus, Decay and such in every deck running the respective colors, just for us to complain about everyone playing with the same tools

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

Mostly because the last time a non-blue deck was the best deck in the format was...Maverick in 2012

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What a pity.
(Yes, that's a flammable :tongue: comment, but since there is again someone speaking of brainstorm :cool:)

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Originally Posted by non-inflammable

funny how all those cards you mentioned get busted when paired with BS, especially terminus which is innocuous without BS.

Would you rather have shaman, probe, top, earthcraft, mindtwist, dig through time, treasure cruise, fastbond and even mana drain instead of BS?
Yes, please...

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Isn't there a modern deck that is playing terminus? I'm pretty sure that format doesn't have Brainstorm in it.

I also don't think that banning brainstorm would make it possible to unban DTT, Cruise, Fastbond, or Mana Drain. The rest they could totally unban right now, would be fine (though I personally think Mind Twist is just kinda dumb - like, what good games are going to come of that?).

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Originally Posted by Lord_Mcdonalds

Yeah, uh, if the best deck in the format is mono white piss in your Cheerios, that’s fine.

Mostly because the last time a non-blue deck was the best deck in the format was...Maverick in 2012

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I mean, DnT is a DTB and has been regularly for the past few months, it's not like it's some subversive underdog. It certainly takes skill to play, but it's also unambiguously miserable to experience as their opponent.

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

If you ask me the game desperately needs reasons to sleeve narrow silverbullets and tradeoffs instead of just getting to rely on the ever same catch-all cards like Terminus, Decay and such in every deck running the respective colors, just for us to complain about everyone playing with the same tools

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If you want this dynamic, I don't think eternal formats are what you want - the nature of non-rotating formats is that only the best tools will be useful because of the high bar for powerlevel. They specifically design standard to have these choices, by contrast: they don't print counterspell, but instead print Negate, Essence Scatter, and Cancel, so you have to pick which one you think will be most useful, and have moments where the one you picked is garbage and doesn't do anything.

I personally hate that feeling, and like it more when the interesting choices in interaction have more to do with evaluating intra-game threats rather than having to guess which weapons to bring.

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

I don't think there is a need to spoil people with powercreeped unconditional boardwipes if there is just so much room to give to fantastic narrower cards which have fallen from grace like Dread Of Night or Pyroclam to battle weenie armies.

If you ask me the game desperately needs reasons to sleeve narrow silverbullets and tradeoffs instead of just getting to rely on the ever same catch-all cards like Terminus, Decay and such in every deck running the respective colors, just for us to complain about everyone playing with the same tools

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EDIT: Goblins is on the rise again as well, it took 1st at a local tournament (The other 'Goblins' player was a Moon Stompy deck playing Rabblemaster.) You know what card Goblins isn't afraid of? Terminus. I'm not saying Goblins vs. Miracles is a bye, but it's overwhelmingly favored.

I like your comment about narrower cards like Dread of Night and Pyroclasm. I would slam Pyroclasms in every deck I own if it was good enough, and in most case I think it is. What holds it back is True-Name Nemesis, everyone is in a panic to make sure their wiper deals with TNN. By artificially changing the metagame around that card people are going to lose a lot of games to swarms of small dudes.

Just to throw some other good wipers out there:

Zealous Persecution
Electrickery
Volcanic Fallout
Virtue's Ruin
Nature's Ruin
Perish
Engineered Plague
Pyrokinesis
Cave-In
Settle the Wreckage

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Originally Posted by taconaut

If you want this dynamic, I don't think eternal formats are what you want - the nature of non-rotating formats is that only the best tools will be useful because of the high bar for powerlevel. They specifically design standard to have these choices, by contrast: they don't print counterspell, but instead print Negate, Essence Scatter, and Cancel, so you have to pick which one you think will be most useful, and have moments where the one you picked is garbage and doesn't do anything.

I personally hate that feeling, and like it more when the interesting choices in interaction have more to do with evaluating intra-game threats rather than having to guess which weapons to bring.

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Without a doubt the best overall tools will float atop of other options as staple cards, but it would not hurt to leave some space for more narrow answers rather than immediately removing that space with some new uncontested powerhouses like proposed. The format is fine without Terminus or a hypothetical 3cc unconditional boardwipe and DnT isn't a real argument in favor of Terminus being fair and mandatory

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

EDIT: Goblins is on the rise again as well, it took 1st at a local tournament (The other 'Goblins' player was a Moon Stompy deck playing Rabblemaster.) You know what card Goblins isn't afraid of? Terminus. I'm not saying Goblins vs. Miracles is a bye, but it's overwhelmingly favored.

I like your comment about narrower cards like Dread of Night and Pyroclasm. I would slam Pyroclasms in every deck I own if it was good enough, and in most case I think it is. What holds it back is True-Name Nemesis, everyone is in a panic to make sure their wiper deals with TNN. By artificially changing the metagame around that card people are going to lose a lot of games to swarms of small dudes.

Just to throw some other good wipers out there:

Zealous Persecution
Electrickery
Volcanic Fallout
Virtue's Ruin
Nature's Ruin
Perish
Engineered Plague
Pyrokinesis
Cave-In
Settle the Wreckage

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I would add old but gold Wing Shards good mostly uncounterable.

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Originally Posted by Lemnear

Without a doubt the best overall tools will float atop of other options as staple cards, but it would not hurt to leave some space for more narrow answers rather than immediately removing that space with some new uncontested powerhouses like proposed. The format is fine without Terminus or a hypothetical 3cc unconditional boardwipe and DnT isn't a real argument in favor of Terminus being fair and mandatory

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It's what they do though, and once you start printing linear uninteractive effects (like Vial and TNN in recent conversation), you need fairly perfect answers. You don't have much time to draw imperfect cards, and in the case of UW there is pretty much no wrath effect (other than Terminus) that you can cast against DnT before you'd be dead. Just from a design/balance standpoint, there's kind of a problem when the Wrath of God color can't wrath a creature deck - Aether Vial is the reason for this. There are 3rd color answers to DnT, but there is no playable answer to DnT in UW without Terminus - you're getting into Planar Collapse territory.

You talk about diversity of imperfect tools, which is an agreeable point, but you'd probably need to roll back a number of cards (things like Vial, Terminus, Thoughtseize, TNN, and probably also Snapcaster & Goyf & maybe even Griselbrand). Without a sweeping amount of bans, you'd start losing 2c viability; so as dumb as a 3 mana instant unconditional white wrath would be it would have to exist to keep playing strict-UW. I don't think fixing the problem is a positive move if it just means more deck similarity with heavier reliance on Fetchlands to add a 3rd color tool that everyone ends up sharing.

Edit: add Surgical to that list as well.

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Originally Posted by Fox

It's what they do though, and once you start printing linear uninteractive effects (like Vial and TNN in recent conversation), you need fairly perfect answers. You don't have much time to draw imperfect cards, and in the case of UW there is pretty much no wrath effect (other than Terminus) that you can cast against DnT before you'd be dead. Just from a design/balance standpoint, there's kind of a problem when the Wrath of God color can't wrath a creature deck - Aether Vial is the reason for this. There are 3rd color answers to DnT, but there is no playable answer to DnT in UW without Terminus - you're getting into Planar Collapse territory.

You talk about diversity of imperfect tools, which is an agreeable point, but you'd probably need to roll back a number of cards (things like Vial, Terminus, Thoughtseize, TNN, and probably also Snapcaster & Goyf & maybe even Griselbrand). Without a sweeping amount of bans, you'd start losing 2c viability; so as dumb as a 3 mana instant unconditional white wrath would be it would have to exist to keep playing strict-UW. I don't think fixing the problem is a positive move if it just means more deck similarity with heavier reliance on Fetchlands to add a 3rd color tool that everyone ends up sharing.

Edit: add Surgical to that list as well.

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Banning Terminus will not make D&T unbeatable. I don't think that it is kept in check by this card. It has a harder time vs grixis control and all the answers that are available to black and red mages (Deluge and Kolaghan's command. Dread of night in the sideboard).
Also D&T doesn't have any built in CA. Aether vial does nothing alone and it has no Library manipulation. That's the doom of the deck (I still play it because it's fun) and that is the main reason why it's not the top dog. It's a meta deck, that is hard to pilot well (you have to know perfectly what your opponent wants to do). Banning terminus will make it better vs UW control for sure. However, it will not asses any of the problems D&T has vs other decks. And banning terminus will free some decks from the tier 2 zone as an added bonus.

Also, I don't think it is more miserable to play vs D&T and being unable to cast a spell than for example a blue tempo deck that drops a delver on T1 and counters every spell you play or play vs mono red prison and have all of your spells cost 3 on first turn of the game.

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Originally Posted by Tylert

Also D&T doesn't have any built in CA.

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SFM, Flickerwisp + Recruiter, Palace Jailer. This accounts for at least 1 in 6 cards of their deck.

To finish your thoughts on strict-UW:
-That color will become unplayable without Terminus
-It will die specifically to DnT because of Vial making every attempt to wrath cost 6 land drops.
-DnT will be the best creature deck in the format.
-DnT will be the only played creature deck b/c it’s the only one that can stop any attempt to wrath out of team Tundra.
-DnT also has Mother of Runes which goes from Duress target counterspell -> Duress target spot removal -> transforms into Chalice x=spot removal.

There is nothing healthy about Grixis “control.” That deck is an absolute diversity killer because no matter what you’re doing in fair magic (other than Delver), you’re just playing something that loses to Hymn/SCM/Kcomm. Take away any need to play around Snapcaster/Plow (aka team Tundra) and DnT will find itself with plenty of space to beat Grixis Jammy Jams - space that no other creature deck will have, because they still have to play around team Tundra.

Touch Terminus and Vial has to get banned immediately. You don’t screw around with unchecked free mana in legacy, that’s even more concerning than Fetchlands.

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Originally Posted by Tylert

Also, I don't think it is more miserable to play vs D&T and being unable to cast a spell than for example a blue tempo deck that drops a delver on T1 and counters every spell you play or play vs mono red prison and have all of your spells cost 3 on first turn of the game.

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I find tempo much more fun to play against than DnT personally, but yes, Red Prison has many similar qualities to DnT that make them both miserable. I would say that DnT is more like stubbing all ten of your toes at once every time you try to do something, whereas Red Stompy/Spaghetti Stompy is more like Russian Roulette.

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Originally Posted by Fox

SFM, Flickerwisp + Recruiter, Palace Jailer. This accounts for at least 1 in 6 cards of their deck.

To finish your thoughts on strict-UW:
-That color will become unplayable without Terminus
-It will die specifically to DnT because of Vial making every attempt to wrath cost 6 land drops.
-DnT will be the best creature deck in the format.
-DnT will be the only played creature deck b/c it’s the only one that can stop any attempt to wrath out of team Tundra.
-DnT also has Mother of Runes which goes from Duress target counterspell -> Duress target spot removal -> transforms into Chalice x=spot removal.

There is nothing healthy about Grixis “control.” That deck is an absolute diversity killer because no matter what you’re doing in fair magic (other than Delver), you’re just playing something that loses to Hymn/SCM/Kcomm. Take away any need to play around Snapcaster/Plow (aka team Tundra) and DnT will find itself with plenty of space to beat Grixis Jammy Jams - space that no other creature deck will have, because they still have to play around team Tundra.

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One point for you about CA in D&T :) Maybe it's now just missing the fetch + brainstorm Library manipulation that the blue shell offers :)

About terminus, isn't it specifically this card that has made other creature decks tier 3?
I don't think that goblins for example really feared wraths before terminus. Remember that terminus is a one mana wrath that denies death triggers and graveyard manipulations... this is way powerfull than for example a 4 mana color intensive supreme verdict or a 4 mana counterable wrath of god :)

D&T was there before Terminus and it has never been a top dog before...

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Originally Posted by Tylert

D&T was there before Terminus and it has never been a top dog before...

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They also didn’t have Recruiter back then. The key card at work is Snapcaster Mage turning every spot removal into a mini-wrath (this happened Sep. 2011 vs Terminus in 2012). People like to focus on Terminus, but the Plow recursion is the real killer of Zoo/Maverick/Goyf. On the non-white side you have 1-2 mana kill spells, the same SCM recursion, and also 1/1 cantrip flying removal (Strix).

These obstacles are good enough by themselves to defeat an aggro deck (particularly if SCM also trades in combat), but more importantly they buy time on turns 1-3 such that the aggro deck is going to get locked out. After SCM/kill spell does its damage, there is little functional difference between Strix and Terminus - both should pretty much kill you as they allow safe resolution of JTMS vs hellbent topdecking.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the value-Vial dude plan is far better positioned to combat Strix and Terminus than tap out and jam no-value, dies top StP/Snap-StP dude plan. Take Terminus out of the format and UW is still going to have all the time in the world with SCM/Plow to build up to a Supreme Verdict vs the latter dude plan; but that wrath will never be castable vs DnT specifically. It wouldn’t take DnT that long to figure out a way to beat SCM/kill spell by itself (UW), nor would it be too hard to find cards to beat SCM/kill spell + Strix since that style of magic has exactly one best presentation - and Grixis can’t touch resolved, not-blue enchantments.

So you don’t care about UW, Grixis Jammy Jams is solveable, you already smash Delver, you troll decks like SnS & Depths & Reanimator, and have insta-win bears [and their tutors] against other combo. Other than Elves! there isn’t much left over for DnT to care about, so why play any other creature deck?