Yes, I always thought strategic diversity is a poor man's diversity, you illustrate it well.
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Yes, I always thought strategic diversity is a poor man's diversity, you illustrate it well.
My predictions:
Legacy - Oko banned, due to format homogenization
Legacy will be discussed with a 'watchlist', probably emphasizing Arcum's Astrolabe and Uro.
All formats - cascade mechanic 'fixed'
So they axed Oko, Astrolabe and DHA. Too bad Uro stayed in (and also Delver but what was I thinking), but maybe the format is playable again
New bans
Apparently people have found a workaround to access the article. Looks like Oko, DHA and Astrolabe are gone and Cascade gets a rule change. If that's the case, that's a pretty satisfying ban round. We'll definitely see more Uro bullshit due to this in the future, but oh well.
http://https://magic.wizards.com/en/...t?x=iazoidrnet
They actually fucking did it. Oko, DHA, cascade, and even labe.
If they fucked this up I was quitting for good. I might actually buy a paper deck now. Anyone got cheap cities?
I think uro will remain very strong (see stryfo pile) but I don’t think it will be bannable.
If you either have to give up pyroblast or wasteland immunity to play it then I think it’s cost comes at a sufficient downside.
My guess at top decks is Bant snow without red, Grixis Delver and doomsday for top dogs. Naya lands (Pfire back baby), and chalice decks seem quite strengthened. D&t and Mavericks blue matchups become really good but current combo mus (doomsday/omni/oops) seem real bad still.
Delver will still run outs to chalice (borrower/kcommand) but that makes them weaker vs combo, fair non-blue and control than oko.
My guess is that the new meta is probably going to coalesce into Delver on the aggressive side and Uro on the control side. Narset and Teferi are also going to see a resurgence when everyone realizes they're dumb cmc3 planeswalkers as well
They actually banned Snowko, UGH Delver, and Turbo Tibalt all at once. What will people even play in tournaments? Fair decks? Doomsday?
Delver never gets banned until they dismantle the core, aka banning Delver and some of the cantrip base (not going to happen). Just wait for the next card that slots into UX Delver for the whole bullshit to repeat again.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
I gotta think True-Name is going to be a big winner. Hard to picture what the metagame is going to look like tho, a lot of fringe strategies have gotten a lot more powerful over the years but were being held down by Oko and the like... Ruby Storm, Merfolk w/ Paradigm Shift, Curses and other some such. Probably a more combo intensive format.
Must say I love this ban, all of it, exactly what I wished for. Thanks Wizards! Good to see they listen to the community.
They could ban Delver and TNN. Force blue to splash to get good creatures. It stays the best color (because of cantrips and the monopoly on countermagic) but it doesn't eat up the whole color pie, so that's fair in a way. The issue is that people really like their delvers so the tactic of 'bitching until wotc relents' won't work no matter how ridiculous the card is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
Yes, when blue decks splashed for DRS everyone was happy.Quote:
Originally Posted by chunderbucket
They didn't ban RUG Delver or UR Delver or RUB Delver.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
They banned UGH Delver = Delver overpowered with Oko and DHA. Now it's just regular RUG Delver again, which was a 50/50 deck but not overpowered.
But legacy was a thing before DRS and it isn't in the format anymore? What's your point?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
So you just want to play pre-Innistrad, just do that then.Quote:
Originally Posted by chunderbucket
You're missing my point. Some Delver variant WILL be overpowered again in the future due a new card that tips the scale. They're merely treating the symptoms with each ban, not the cause. Similiar how they restrict pretty much everything in Vintage Workshop because they don't want to ban the root of the problem, Workshop.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Can they just . . . NOT ban three cards at a time and go back to the old mulligan rule? That would fix a lot of things.
This was a good set of decisions, if only to promote an intense shakeup that will make diversity increase. I think a card that gets a fairly big boost is Stoneforge Mystic. With DHA being the premier 2-drop threat Stoneforge was really squashed out of the format. I think we'll see more Batterskulls in the near future. Narset and Teferi will see more play, I'm not sure about big daddy Jace.
I think Wizards has long given up on whether some Xerox variant will be overpowered again. This is the format for players who want to play Xerox, so it can be safely cut out of all the other formats. Banning the new offenders is easier to justify on the secondary market because those cards get banned from Modern and Pioneer too, so they're expected to tank in price as part of Wizards new business model.
Snow-Covered Forest should see about 90% less play, which is good, because I am sick of seeing that card.
Veil of Summer numbers should go down (blue decks have REB and Mystical and Fluster without splashing), at least until players remember that Hymn to Tourach is a magic card.
Some cards that benefit:
Chalice
Blood moon
Choke
Auriok salvagers
Aether vial
Stoneforge mystic + equipment
Bitterblossom
Liliana otv & otlh
Misthollow griffin?
Knight of the reliquary
Wasteland
Basics
Palace Jailer
Thought-Knot Seer
Reality Smasher
Thopter Foundry
Mystic Forge
Late edit:
Jace, the Mindsculptor
Urza, Lord High Artificer
Snapcaster Mage
I guess the good news is that we'll all get to keep losing to Delvers.
Good bans all around. Personally I will miss the astro lab in 3-4 color controls, maybe they could give it some more time to see if the card was really that busted. But hey, at least wasteland is a thing again.. everyone rejoice :really:
I'm strongly in the "rejoice!" camp. Great bans, each and every one. The mistakes of 2019 continue to be undone! Also, can we take snow-covered lands out of our non-Snow decks now? With labe around we had to play them to represent snoko to be playing optimally, but I think that may be behind us now.
i think you mean every single creature that didn't have a come into play effect, and some that did. also every useful artifact that didn't end the game on the spot.Quote:
Originally Posted by pettdan
SFM mainly benefits because now equipments have a chance to live for more than one turn again without becoming an Elk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Safety
No oko & no labe probably mean less coatls and no hasty elks. Is it possible the courts should be a major beneficiary?
Tough to say. Courts looked appealing partly because Oko nullified fair nonenchantment strategies (creatures, artifacts, PWs). Court both got around that and benefited from the fewer fair creatures to steal Monarch. I expect the fringe enchantment-based control decks to weaken a bit as regular good stuff becomes playable again, they were sort of capitalizing on a quirk of the meta. I'm taking apart UW RipHelm for now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reeplcheep
You can still play Court in UWx control, but those decks now want to be running more cards like Teferi, Narset, Jace, Monastery Mentor, Snapcaster Mage, Stoneforge Mystic, Hullbreacher... Meanwhile there will be more random Mavericks, D&T, Stoneblade, Goblins, Merfolk, etc to take your Monarch token.
Yeah, pretty much.Quote:
Originally Posted by mistercakes
I would rather have seen an Uro/Oko ban than this. But yeah, so long Oko!
No, the optimal play was to run regular basics so that your opponent thought you were Bad at Maygick.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wanderlust
Shuffling your deck, letting it fall to the floor face-down, letting a Sacred Foundry fall out of your sleeve face-up, then saying sorry and picking up your deck and palming the Sacred Foundry back into your sleeve, never to be used again in that match --- legal or illegal?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce
Tech is accidentally revealing Stomping Ground, shuffling back up, presenting deck to opponent, then saying "oh no.... is that my Modern deck? I should stop using the same sleeves for all my decks". Opponent scoffs, expecting an easy win. Then you turn 1 Goblin Charbelcher. (there is practically 0 risk to running 1 Stomping Ground over 1 Taiga in Belcher, so you don't give up win% to maximize troll%)Quote:
Originally Posted by BirdsOfParadise
Anyway, aren't bans supposed to be the worst thing that can happen to a game? All the rejoicing around here over mediocre three-drops' and alternative-to-thousand-dollar-lands one-drops' getting the axe feels pretty contemptible in all sincerity.
In my experience, bans are closer to the best thing that can happen to a game.
If we want to sort this out, the reason that a ban is needed is the bad thing, but once it's needed, the ban rids us of the problem. It could be likened to a punishment. Going to jail seems like a very bad thing, but the really bad thing was the crime that led to the punishment and for the rest of the world, the criminal being locked away is a good thing. Now I have a forgiving view on humans that commit crimes, depending on the crimes, but that's a different story and not so relevant for this analogy.
After so many fuckups in the last 2 years, this is the biggest thing WOTC has done to improve play patterns, increase meta diversity, and lower power levels. People should sincerely be happy.
These are the direct results of those fuckupsQuote:
Originally Posted by Reeplcheep
Assuming retributive justice is good (your equation of it with the prison system, which was created [for better or, probably, worse] for the sake of rehabilitating criminals, notwithstanding), who's getting punished?Quote:
Originally Posted by pettdan
Players are getting punished, not the people who designed the "problematic" cards.
Wizards will make design mistakes, it's inevitable, they can't test properly for Legacy, as long as they act swiftly damage is minimised. In my view, the only problem here is that they take too long to act.
In the analogue with crime, I was actually considering Oko to be the criminal, being out in the society (=format) committing crimes and being locked up with the ban announcement. It could be interpreted that WotC were committing the crime when designing the cards, I didn't intend that as the analogue though because I think, like described just above, that Wizards actually don't intend to design for older formats, not to 100%, they probably try to but can't justify spending resources on it that would be needed, so I don't really blame wizards for that personally. Edit: that analogue needed some further tweaking. It's ironic because I'm just reading about how to use analogues for scientific purposes.
basics are back baby! glad astrolabe is gone and contamination is playable again!