All B/R update speculation.

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Originally Posted by Reeplcheep

Kill me immediately or die creatures have always existed in legacy..

But oko must go. It’s the common link and the most played card.

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(@Fox, too) good to read some sense over here. I've already been yelling into the void about it on reddit: I mean fuck DHA from a design- and flavor perspective, but there's just no real case for banning him at this point. Fact is, no deck that plays DHA but not Oko is a problem. A 2-drop that gets answered by every conceivable piece of removal AND GY hate in the format, or just gets blocked dead, should be manageable in a post-Oko world. Card's is obviously very powerful, but at this point there's a bit of hysteria about him I think.

Given that the new set just came out, I guess my hopes are in vain but I would really like some bans in historic and brawl.

I've long given up on standard but historic has been fairly enjoyable until it fully turned into the Uro+Nissa+Krasis and baking with kittens show.
It's so boring.
If it's not a variation of these 2 decks, you get shit gobos which can win from hellbent with Muxus.lol or some stupid combo deck.

Brawl has been actually fun since you don't have to play against 4x of the most aids cards in the format.
However there are some commanders which just provide too much value which you can't do anything about.
Kennrith is the prime example, but there are a few others like Kinnan.

Considering how long people have been stuck at home, I'm surprised that they haven't made any qol bans just to make arena a bit fun to play.

I'm playing lots of historic; went to mythic in 3 weeks and spent about $10.
The one card that is nuts against Uro is Valki, God of Lies. It is so sweet to just take their Uro and then "be" their Uro.

I'll have to check out brawl since I'm only doing draft and historic, right now.

https://i.imgur.com/BIyQIqF.png

Hidden in this article.

So, maybe Uro for us as well? Or, Valki too? Or, might they just change the rules to address that?

Hard to imagine Uro gets banned without an Oko ban. As long as Dreadhorde doesn't get banned, RUG will be a clear winner regardless of what they do.

I don't think that they're going to ban Valki. If they do anything about, they'll just change how Cascade works (because casting a 7 mana walker from a cmc 2 cascasde is fucking stupid to begin with). Not that they would do it right away, as there's still money to be made from Valki.

As for Legacy, I would love to see Uro and Oko getting banhammered. Astrolabe and DHA are also on my list, but with lower priority.

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Originally Posted by Barook

I don't think that they're going to ban Valki. If they do anything about, they'll just change how Cascade works (because casting a 7 mana walker from a cmc 2 cascasde is fucking stupid to begin with). Not that they would do it right away, as there's still money to be made from Valki.

As for Legacy, I would love to see Uro and Oko getting banhammered. Astrolabe and DHA are also on my list, but with lower priority.

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Fair points, in fact, we don't know if the meta can adjust for Valki, since it's only been one weekend.

As for Uro/Oko, it is hard to argue, since both are stupidly powerful cards. I am fine if either go and it would not surprise me if both did. They've had their time, honestly. As for Astrolabe, I am still on the fence. Again, it is a powerful card, but I am not against it out of hand. Dreadhorde Arcanist I think is just a really powerful card, but I don't really think it is all that busted.

Does it really make sense to ban astrolabe before taking Oko behind the shed and shooting it a million times?
Enabling Wasteland-proof rainbow mana bases is stupid but if you can't turn it into a wincon I'd imagine it to be less annoying.

Also if they ban Uro they also have to ban other things in Arena as well.
Something from the sacrifice deck has to go too because that deck is so stupid that people maindeck hate against it.
I would enjoy a Muxus ban as well because that card is just stupid.

I sounds to me like they are banning oko and considering other things in legacy.

Banning labe in a format with ancient tomb, fetches, and daze makes no sense at all. If you can give up colours for +1 mana and get 3 colours for no cost, getting all the colours for -1 mana is totally fine. The problem is oko gives your lost tempo back for free almost immediately. Labe in 3feri decks or painter is not killing anyone.

So maverick is a pretty good proxy for any fair deck that uses Fetchlands without cantrips over Loam/Mox or Cavern/Vial. This entire way of playing will never be able to stop auto-losing Valki Cannon, and this is now you know they will fix the cascade glitch that results in a 2-drop that is immune to Snare, unkicked Bloodchief's, Eliminate, Decay, EE for 2 etc...

This problem is as profound as Breach was for them.

I believe Uro should belong with a format, and that format has to be Legacy (while Oko has a nice place in Vintage).

I think the ban of Oko is happening, I'm with Reelcheep on this one. It would seem fairly precautious to ban Oko first then take time to see whether Uro needs to go as well. The Note seems to imply they might want to ban Uro right away though... oh well.

Pioneer has many balance & variety issues, I doubt Uro's ban will be enough to give the format a second breath.

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Originally Posted by Zoid

Does it really make sense to ban astrolabe before taking Oko behind the shed and shooting it a million times?
Enabling Wasteland-proof rainbow mana bases is stupid but if you can't turn it into a wincon I'd imagine it to be less annoying.

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I think it could make sense. I do not see the 'default best cards wasteland-proof rainbow mana base' deck becoming less annoying or ubiquitous while killing multiple other decks. Unlock all the different 3 color control/mid range decks, basic lands, and make non-basic hate relevant ffs. Starting with Astrolabe lets weirdos who enjoy playing Oko/Uro/Dreadhorde continue to use those cards and not ragequit Legacy (but by all means ban them anyway). Does anyone really LOVE their Astrolabes? Please... Also I hope everyone is off the weak argument that it makes Legacy more affordable - the 3 color control decks should all be playing basics with minimal duals anyway or get risk getting punished. We even have prismatic vista now.

I'm happy to see any 2019+ cards go. If we have to balance it out between Snowko/Rug then ban Astrolabe and Dreadhorde. Wouldn't miss Oko/Uro one bit either.

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Originally Posted by Fox

This problem is as profound as Breach was for them.

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It's even more profound, so I expect a rules nerf even sooner.

Underworld Breach was very powerful but at least interactive and complex to pilot. There were dozens of ways to disrupt or interact with the combo that led to complex decision trees for both the Breach pilot and the opponent. Breach's design opened up entire metagames over how it tried to fight predicted hate and how to hate it out around that board plan. Hallmark fair decks like Maverick and D&T did very well against it, once they adapted their hatebear suite. So did other random fair decks like Lands and EldraziPost. If fair decks are highly favored against a combo deck, the format can't be THAT unhealthy.

Breach was still unfair because it was a Vintage deck in Legacy with Oath/Will-like "oops I win", but at least there were games of Magic happening and next-level boarding tricks.

In contrast, Valki is a turn 1 planeswalker cannon that's very linear to pilot and allows for much less interaction. Fair decks like Maverick don't stand a chance.

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Originally Posted by Gruul

It would seem fairly precautious to ban Oko first then take time to see whether Uro needs to go as well.

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I think one of the biggest problems Legacy has is that it often takes too long to ban obviously problematic cards to the point where they stay around for years. DTT comes into mind, being legal for an entire year. Or SDT's reign of terror for several years straight. DRS is a bit more complex, as it also had the benefit of policing the format.

A card that's fighting with Oko for deck slots is just as problematic as Oko itself and has to go.

If you still don't realize that Oko is the clear and obvious ban,, then it's time you listened to Bruce Springsteen: you can't start a FIRE without a spark. In this song he is clearly talking about Astrolabe being mostly unplayable with Oko losing his spark, and the cascading decline of decks' abilities to use Uro, DHA, Veil, Ice Fang.
#DesparkOko

What problem are we trying to address? What are we optimizing for?

What problems are mitigated by banning Card X or Card Y that aren't mitigated more by banning Brainstorm? ("WotC won't ban Brainstorm": What makes you think they read this thread in the first place?)

What problem?

You shouldn't be able to cascade into a "2 cmc" card that doesn't have 2 cmc for cards like Decay, Bloodchief's Thirst, Spell Snare, EE, etc. Either the card has just one CMC that applies to both faces or only the front face is seen. It's just a dumb loophole.

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Originally Posted by FTW

What problem?

You shouldn't be able to cascade into a "2 cmc" card that doesn't have 2 cmc for cards like Decay, Bloodchief's Thirst, Spell Snare, EE, etc. Either the card has just one CMC that applies to both faces or only the front face is seen. It's just a dumb loophole.

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Oh --- hopefully my comment didn't sound like I was calling you out, since I wan't intending to. I was more trying to understand the mindset of banning Oko/Uro/Astrolabe/Dreadhorde. I honestly can't think of any reasonable criterion for banning any of those that doesn't apply twice as much to Brainstorm.

The loophole you're complaining about is nonsense, of course, and I wouldn't shed a tear if they closed it. But to some extent Legacy is about finding nonsense interactions to abuse; if the way of abusing them involves enough hoops to jump through and constraints on deck building, then it's seen as fun and fair.

As long as we're talking about it, though, what would be wrong with Cascade + Valki being the best deck? What are we worried about, format diversity? It's Legacy. Great players would still be able to good results with medium decks if they wanted to prove a point.

The main issue with Tibalt is that it's a broken non-blue card and that's absolutely haram to legacy players. It should join SDT and DRS in the banlist so people can enjoy their skillful plays with Delver/Oko/Uro/8 cantrips/8 forces in peace.

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Originally Posted by chunderbucket

The main issue with Tibalt is that it's a broken non-blue card and that's absolutely haram to legacy players. It should join SDT and DRS in the banlist so people can enjoy their skillful plays with Delver/Oko/Uro/8 cantrips/8 forces in peace.

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You do understand that Valki Cannon is devastating anything non-blue and fair right? Blue decks don't actually give a crap about Valki; it's not that hard to add Stifle and SB BEB +/- upping copies of FoN. There is zero difference between Valki Cannon and Oops for us blue mages - but I guarantee you that there's one helluva difference between Valki Cannon and Oops if your deck is anything remotely resembling Maverick.

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Originally Posted by Fox

You do understand that Valki Cannon is devastating anything non-blue and fair right? Blue decks don't actually give a crap about Valki; it's not that hard to add Stifle and SB BEB +/- upping copies of FoN. There is zero difference between Valki Cannon and Oops for us blue mages - but I guarantee you that there's one helluva difference between Valki Cannon and Oops if your deck is anything remotely resembling Maverick.

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That's their fault for not playing blue to begin with. What are they? Peasants? Just roll up a random blue stew and get to playing legacy!

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Originally Posted by Fox

If you still don't realize that Oko is the clear and obvious ban,, then it's time you listened to Bruce Springsteen: you can't start a FIRE without a spark. In this song he is clearly talking about Astrolabe being mostly unplayable with Oko losing his spark, and the cascading decline of decks' abilities to use Uro, DHA, Veil, Ice Fang.
#DesparkOko

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I agree with you about Astrolabe. Having a bullet-proof mana-base is perfectly reasonable in Legacy; Wasteland doesn't absolutely have to be good against every deck. There might be a fringe deck that still plays Labe if Oko gets banned, but that should be perfectly fine. I honestly think there are applications that haven't been explored with it because just jamming it with Oko is better than any jank synergy you could come up with. I look at cards like Reshape and Transmute Artifact, Mox Opal, Lotus Bloom, Urza and Second Sunrise. Astrolabe making the mana-base strong while being a sacrifice target in artifact shenanigans seems like a good time.

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Originally Posted by Fox

You do understand that Valki Cannon is devastating anything non-blue and fair right? Blue decks don't actually give a crap about Valki; it's not that hard to add Stifle and SB BEB +/- upping copies of FoN. There is zero difference between Valki Cannon and Oops for us blue mages - but I guarantee you that there's one helluva difference between Valki Cannon and Oops if your deck is anything remotely resembling Maverick.

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Fine then. Let's ban Valki so Maverick players can pretend they have a standing chance against Blue Stew + whetever broken blue cards Wizard will print this year. On the other hand, touching Oko, Uro, Force of Negation, Delver, TNN, Ponder or any of the bullshit printed in the last 10 years that makes blue the best color at basically every aspect of the game is basically unthinkable because it would force blue players to *gasp* adapt to the metagame or even *the horror* switch to a strategy that's not 3-4c goodstuff. What a nightmare this would be, adapting a deck to a metagame beyond 5 flex slots.

Oko should go.

Astrolabe is fine. The card is balanced when it isn't a haste 3/3.

TNN hasn't seen play in ages. Can it even make Elks? What a waste of 3 mana.

Anyway here is my Objectively Superior™ banlist proposal that preserves Fun&Diversity As Garfield Intended®

Banned: True-Name Nemesis, Oko, Uro (just obvious and unfun mistakes), Delver (who the hell thought it was a good idea to give blue the best aggressive creature) Ponder, Preordain (we'll let you keep brainstorm because we know you can't get an erection without it but the other cantrips absolutely have to go), Daze, Force of Negation (we let you keep Force of Will, that's it. pay for your spells like everyone else) Volcanic Island, Underground Sea, Tundra, Tropical Island (that's right blue your manabase sucks now. we'll let you keep Basic Island so Merfolk can still thrive)

Don't worry, you still have Brainstorm, Jace, Snapcaster, Force of Will, Brazen Borrower, all the cheap countermagic, 8 strixes, and so on; I'm sure you can cook up some 3-4c goodstuff stew if the mere thought of a deck with actual flavor repels you.

Maybe banned: Emrakul, Griselbrand (just dumb cards that don't care about gamestate. on the other hand combo might be too nerfed), Leovold, Hullbreacher, Narset (absolutely dumb and miserable to play against, but enable interesting combos with the draw 7s so w/e)

Show and Tell is dumb but dropping big things is fun so it stays in. Astrolabe and DHA stay good but probably won't be problematic once all the blue stew gets drained.

Unbanned: Top, DRS (now that blue is nerfed they can regain their rightful place in the format), Earthcraft, Survival, Frantic Search, Mind Twist, Yawgmoth's Bargain (none of them will see more than niche play), Zirda, Lurrus (with the new companion rules they're more than safe), Goblin Recruiter (give me a break with that lame 'tournament time' argument, first it's not that big a concern and second who the hell plays big tournaments nowadays)

Maybe unbanned: Library of Alexandria, Memory Jar, Wheel of Fortune, Time Twister, Fastbond (they're not as good as you thought they were 15 years ago), Mox Pearl (who the fuck plays white anyway lmao), Bazaar of Bagdad (absolutely broken but fun as hell. if you get to keep brainstorm I want my Bazaar)

While we're at it, and since this is all pure fantasy we might just keep on dreaming, there will be new printings that punish people for being so damn greedy all the time:

Duosphere (like Trinisphere but costs 2 and makes everything costs at least 2)
Unisphere (ditto but with 1)
Magus of the Trinisphere (same exact text as trinisphere but also a 3/3 for 2W)
Magus of the Duosphere (you guessed it)
Magus of the Unisphere (ditto)
Magus of the Chalice (a 0/1 for XX with X counters on it, whenever a player casts a spell blah blah blah)

Also, and this should go without saying, the reserve list gets thoroughly abolished and reprinted to hell, even the non-competitive cards like Pyramids. Use Robinhood or Kraken like a normal person for your nerd speculation purposes.

That's pretty much it. Fuck Legacy and fuck WotC.

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Originally Posted by chunderbucket

Fine then. Let's ban Valki so

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You don't need to ban Valki, they just need to update the rules in line with what they already did with Cascade.
You used to be able to cascade a Shardless Agent into Bust because Boom is CMC 2.

The design space is the same, for all they talk up about streamlining rules to coincide with players expectations, this is just flagrant.
Either that, or go back to letting me Imprint Research onto my Isochron Scepter and casting Development every turn.
If one is okay, then both should be. Saying one is unintuitive might have merit, but be consistent for fuck's sake.

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Originally Posted by chunderbucket

Duosphere (like Trinisphere but costs 2 and makes everything costs at least 2)
Unisphere (ditto but with 1)
Magus of the Trinisphere (same exact text as trinisphere but also a 3/3 for 2W)
Magus of the Duosphere (you guessed it)
Magus of the Unisphere (ditto)
Magus of the Chalice (a 0/1 for XX with X counters on it, whenever a player casts a spell blah blah blah)

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Your bias is showing.

If you want to beat up on blue, just play Dredge.

"BUT IT FLODS TO HAET!" I don't care. That hate has a specific function and it serves a specific purpose admirably. You just want Legacy to be a one-deck format, only it's gotta be YOUR deck.

EDIT: Also, most of those cards wouldn't even do anything. What's the point in changing things around if it doesn't matter?

That is quite the suggested banlist. Since you play a deck that doesn't have its origins in entirely old-bordered cards let me help you understand the only things that have ever mattered in legacy for any length of time:
1- Tarmogoyf until the printing of SCM
2- total hand destruction (Hymn with Shardless or SCM, Counterbalance, and Grixis Delver with Probe/Therapy)
3- Oko

^this is the comprehensive story of legacy, with short interruptions from cards like Misstep, Cruise, Dig, Wrenn, Breach, Lurrus. Once Oko is banned, we will be adding Echo to the list of total hand destruction.

SnT and its dudes don't matter. They are combo control, and the more of them you see, the less likely you are to get Belcher'd to oblivion. No matter how much you hate losing to the sheer stupidity of SnT, they are your allies. If you ever want to play grindy magic, you need combo control to lay down the law, more than any other archetype.

You have correctly identified Oko as a card that needs to be banned. The one and only job the AggroLoamers & Chalice bros of the world need to perform is to troll Delver decks, and be able to Chalice-troll design mistakes like Dreadhorde for the rest of us. Also you guys are allowed to try and derp wins off of SB Leyline spam.

The job of the Maverick-types is again to spam the Leyline cheese and try and derp people out with hatebears. Unfortunately they banned DRS instead of Hymn, ensuring you would never stand a chance against Grixis control which is now called 4c SnowOko, so the rest of the format can't count on you guys to police GYs effectively.

Now to all the Maverick and Loamers out there, just so you're aware, your deck is just a cheap knock-off of RG Lands b/c of your insufferable need to play KotR. Shut the eff up about TNN, you're playing a KNIGHT WITHOUT FLANKING.

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Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce

Your bias is showing.

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I can see you're quite the astute detective, detecting my bias despite my best attempts to be absolutely impartial and dispassionate.

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If you want to beat up on blue, just play Dredge.

"BUT IT FLODS TO HAET!" I don't care. That hate has a specific function and it serves a specific purpose admirably. You just want Legacy to be a one-deck format, only it's gotta be YOUR deck.

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I don't see how it transpires that I want to play only one deck, let alone what deck I play. On the contrary, I deplore the wealth and diversity of competitive decks that existed prior to WotC giving the already-best color of magic a bunch of broken printings.

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EDIT: Also, most of those cards wouldn't even do anything. What's the point in changing things around if it doesn't matter?

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I'm not sure how you can readily conclude how a meta might shake out with a bunch of hypothetical bannings and imaginary printings. If you think you're this good at predicting things you should save yourself the trouble of arguing on a nerd forum and buy out the next Gamestop stock or whatever.

To Fox: I have no idea how you got the idea that I play Maverick, or even what deck I play at all. It's not really about the deck I play but the decks I encounter. Seeing Delver all the damn time for 10 years, like a giant and enduring middle finger to the color pie was already tiring enough, but Oko and Uro are just too much even after 1 year. I don't care what decks are playable so long as I don't have to see the same goodstuff piles round after round.

I also don't get why you're telling me about the history of Legacy since I'm not trying to extrapolate the future from the past, I'm indulging in my fantasy on a dying forum as a therapeutic device to cope with the fact that the format is ruined, WotC keeps screwing up and paper magic is dead anyway. Instead of having improductive debates that lead to nowhere you should indulge yourself as well and post your ideal banlist/format, I'm curious to see it.

You can't go off on cards like Grisel and Emmy and TNN and also be mostly concerned by goodstuff piles. Let's take on TNN really quickly - this card is made to stop people from goodstuff durdling. The issue is that TNN deals 3 and Oko/Uro gain 3 per turn. If you don't like goodstuff, you don't actually have any problems with TNN - it's on your side.

My premise in thinking about the banned list is that it's a bad thing when the questions "What's the best card?" and "What's the best color?" have obvious answers.

I don't think this premise is shared by nearly as many players as I once thought.

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Originally Posted by chunderbucket

Ponder, Preordain (we'll let you keep brainstorm because we know you can't get an erection without it but the other cantrips absolutely have to go)

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You missed Serum Visions and Portent.

Talking about what should and shouldn't be banned doesn't really matter when the design paradigm of legacy essentially forces any new cards to be borderline bannable if they want to see any real play, since at least half the meta is already playing with "cards that should be banned". When there is such an advantage in interaction it makes sense that the only other axis decks can compete with is less-interactive in either solitaire or prison styles, with most new "playables" emphasizing this distinction or just getting banned outright for pushing it too far.

You see, what I liked in Legacy was the quirky interactions whereby two or more bad-to-middling cards suddenly became broken when taken together. Infernal Tutor + LED, Dredge cards + Ichorid and Narcomoeba, Aluren + Parasitic Strix, Painter + Grindstone, etc. Hell, even the dumb Eldrazi + a fragile sol land manabase qualify. It didn't really matter to me whether the quirky deck is interactive or prison or solitaire or aggro, as long as it was unique. It also meant each deck had a specific angle of attack and specific weaknesses, which meant in turn that you could attempt to disrupt a number of those strategies by coming up with your own. Eventually, on the eve of a tournament, a large number of people would attempt to second-guess each other on the many possible strategies and the means to disrupt them in a myriad of different ways, an intellectually and psychologically interesting thought process also known as metagaming.

But repeatedly Wizards has shown that they dislike this approach to 'quirky' game design because it's often combo-ish and 'combo feels bad'. It's also much harder to design cards such that they are balanced alone but very strong when paired with another balanced card. It also sells less, because it's not always obvious which interactions go well together and how strong it is. So instead they design cards that just do value on their own, one card combos. And more and more, the quirky and original cards give way to the goodstuff. Why go to such lengths to do some contrived synergies when you can just slam value card after value card until your opponent concedes?

So yes, the current paradigm is that Wizards will keep pushing dumb card after dumb card so the meta becomes obsolete every year or so. The previous paradigm, when the cards that made it into Legacy occupied a sort of niche that competed with the others instead of taking over, this is what I miss.

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You missed Serum Visions and Portent.

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Nah it's ok, I want to imagine a blue mage's face contort into disgust under their N95 mask as they resort to flashing back Serum Visions with DHA.

In a format with brainstorm and force of will, banning things purely on power level has already been thrown out the window.

Effects on the meta and gameplay have to be considerations as well.

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Originally Posted by chunderbucket

Nah it's ok, I want to imagine a blue mage's face contort into disgust under their N95 mask as they resort to flashing back Serum Visions with DHA.

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I have bad news for you.

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Originally Posted by chunderbucket

I can see you're quite the astute detective, detecting my bias despite my best attempts to be absolutely impartial and dispassionate.

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Then don't waste our time. Chalice of the Void does enough of that without you.

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Originally Posted by Barook

I don't think that they're going to ban Valki. If they do anything about, they'll just change how Cascade works (because casting a 7 mana walker from a cmc 2 cascasde is fucking stupid to begin with). Not that they would do it right away, as there's still money to be made from Valki.

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To be honest I'm kind of surprised they didn't have Cascade only cast the side with the lower mana cost to begin with. They changed the way the split cards worked so you couldn't pull off that cascade trick anymore, so it's really odd to me they didn't have that as the way these worked from the get-go.

Been waiting for this since about January last year, finally! Hopefully. There's a b&r announcement planned for Monday. https://twitter.com/mtgoverhaul/stat...068907525?s=21

https://twitter.com/itsJulian23/stat...659268/photo/1

Let's just remember that RUG Delver and Turbo Tibalt and Snowko are all completely different decks. It wouldn't be valid to just lump them together and then compute the percentage of "Oko decks." Even if the best Legacy deck always happens to be some kind of deck containing Oko, it's all right because the second-best and third-best Legacy decks will be different decks containing Oko.

Don't even get me started on how Oko is doing us a favor by policing the format.