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Regardless of what they do or might want to do with the format in terms of encouraged playstyles and desired power level, the format will never look like Modern as long as Wizards keeps pumping out pushed EDH cards that are legal in eternal formats and not in others, even if they banned all the fast mana and cheap cantrips and fetchlands and duals or whatever else tomorrow.
The next Commanderesque side-set is gonna be Modern legal :laugh:
Lotr this summerQuote:
Originally Posted by Purple Blood
First Eldrazi winter now, <insert-random-crossover-theme> summer.Quote:
Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit
Did you ever consider playing 1x Nacatl instead of 4x Nacatl? Maybe the problem with Zoo is the card quality is TOO good and it needs to be Highlander instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by morgan_coke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYemZZAOJ9Q
They really need to ban Murktide next, but there I'm not so confident of them actually making the correct decision.
Don't worry, we just have to wait for the next modern horizons in which they print even more mental cards to outclass the current ban candidates ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Wilder Nacatl [G]Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
When Wilder Nacatl enters the battlefield, you may choose to have it fight target creature you don't control.
Wilder Nacatl gets +1/+1 for each basic land type among lands you control.
0/1
Blue Ragavan [U]
Whenever Blue Ragavan deals combat damage to a player, create a Clue Token and Surveil 1.
Dash 1[U].
2/1
+some new pitch cycle
Am I doing this right?
I got Storm+Bushido
But I rerolled into Epic and cascade.
I think they're changing the rules. Again
I mean touching on this; they really should just ban everything that's never been Type 2 legal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
I think that might also functionally ban Tabernacle and Reset but I can live with the exchange.
That would still leave us with such gems as blue delve spells, companions, Underworld Breach, Oko, Dreadhorde Arcanist on a regular basis.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Does anyone know if they still have their meme balancing council or whatever that they made to prevent balancing mistakes years ago.
In case that still exists they probably only use it to identify cards that aren't broken to push further.
Current balancing priorities are:
1) Commander
2)
3)
4) Standard
5)
6) Who even cares anymore.
As long as commander players continue to give money to WotC like they are Nigerian princes, this is what we'll get.
Not happening BUT, some years ago, right before MTGA became a thing, there was a discussion making some headways about the possibility of giving players a way to 'define a format' in MTGO and being able to organize their own competitions for it, all done inside the software not using funny websites and all sorts of hacks. Which would allow all of these ideas and would certainly start to show how popular or not they are. Then MTGA came and it all went the way of the dodo.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Stuff like DHA, Delve, and Oko just feels like normal "occasionally there's a card that's too good in type 2" stuff, like normal MagicQuote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
It doesn't feel like a constant churn of pushed pure joke bullshit that's bad enough in casual formats like EDH but in no way a sane addition to fucking duel formats, like the Initiative bullshit amply demonstrates. Or stuff that's just designed to be Legacy playable levels of normal broken and then wildly overshoots the mark like Murktide
It's a brand new world in the first week post-bans:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles...and-new-legacy
In case this got missed.
While the strategy seems fine, the better fix would be better balancing but can't have that.
Can't wait for them to change their policy again in a few months time.
It's dumb, and so is WOTC but it's ok.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
I'll keep buying that garbage in playing in those events.
Site crashed, but I would guess it will be back up soon: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/an...d-announcement
The important part:
https://i.imgur.com/U4DTngR.jpeg
It feels like there are less obvious ways to kill Legacy if that’s all you want to do
There's more degenerate shit than mind's desire.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Yes, but that does not mean that unbanning desire is not a very risky move.Quote:
Originally Posted by KobeBryan
Especially with how many players hate the storm mechanic with a passion.
I'm excited to see your Tier Zero Mind's Desire deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Not sarcasm, I really want to see a modern day Mind's Desire deck
There is one really silly thing about Mind's Desire that doesn't come into play in Vintage (the only place I've played Desire before) but MD into flipping another MD is pretty bonkers. Can't do that in Vintage because it is restricted.Quote:
Originally Posted by PirateKing
Honestly, I hate Storm, as I think it is probably the worst keyword in the history of the game, but I am curious to see what can really be done with it nowadays.
That's what I want to see! MD > MD > MD > MD ...and my whole deck has been castQuote:
Originally Posted by H
Like, Sure milling yourself in response to Thassa's Oracle is cool and all, but what about putting your whole deck on the stack!
Some sort of High Tide deck seems the most likely place due the UU cost?
Orcish Bowmasters and Hullbreacher/Narset aside, Mind's Desire seems worse than Peer into the Abyss for Storm, and they already have jukes to draw hate with Ad Naseum, Galvanic Relay, Past in Flames, etc. I'm 100% sure it finds its way into Storm regardless, but I'm not sure it makes the deck suddenly format warping.
However, I'm surprised to see Mind's Desire unbanned over Mystical Tutor.
I think it makes sense though, I have my doubts that Mystical Tutor is realistically alright when Doomsday will take to playing Personal Tutor since Mystical is not available.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
Understandable, but is the difference between Mystical Tutor and Personal Tutor really that dramatic that it's going to make Doomsday that much better than it already is? Yeah you get to tutor for Force of Will or Daze instead of Thoughtseize for protection, but is that going to break the format? I doubt it.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
I don't think it is that exactly, but Instant speed makes it more versatile for combo because of how it can be used with Lions Eye Diamond, for example. Also, Mystical can find Ad Nauseum where Personal Tutor can't. Granted, it likely doesn't break the format, but I think it is a significant upgrade and is likely much more powerful compared to Mind's Desire. Of course, maybe I'm wrong and we're about to find out though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
There’s also more degenerate shit than Library of Alexandria or Wheel of Fortune, but they’re still not real obvious top unban picksQuote:
Originally Posted by KobeBryan
Yeah, that Preordain unban in Modern is really going to kill LegacyQuote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Yeah man it seems a lot worse to pay less mana that’s on color to just cast your spells uncounterably with no drawbacks instead of drawing and not casting them for free and also losing life while pretending extremely popular cards don’t exist and also needing to play around countersQuote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
I find it very funny that Legacy players have this massive hardon for wheel effects and will jump through any conceivable hoop to make them kinda work, but apparently the concept that you can just cast a half dozen cards from the top of your deck without having to pay any more mana or give your opponent any cards, that’s humdrum apparently
Like I do get that it’s hard to gauge because the card has never been Legacy or even 1.5 legal but uhhh maybe people should think about why that is
I don’t know if I want to put the energy into trying, not least because of an obvious problem I think people itt are nonetheless missing:Quote:
Originally Posted by PirateKing
Mind’s Desire is insanely powerful but also insanely flexible and it’s kind of hard to predict what the best shell for actually breaking it is
You can pretty much pick any combo deck and there’s a reasonable argument that Mind’s Desire is the card needed to break it. That’s true for basically any prior form of storm combo sure but also High Tide, Sneak and Show, that dumb Cascade deck, even Reanimator or something. “Cast a bunch of your spells for free in a way that’s hard to interact with” is something a lot of decks want to do, it turns out
Christ it even goes to the yard so you can flash it back
In what way is Mind's Desire insanely flexible? Mind's Desire can work only in a deck that can (1) produce the mana to play it, and (2) create the Storm count necessary for it to be decent. There's not many decks that fit that build; Sneak and Show and Reanimator don't fit those criteria.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
So what decks can produce the mana to play it and create a high enough Storm count? Storm is one, but by the time you build up enough Storm that Mind's Desire can reliably do strong things, you might as well just cast Tendrils of Agony for less mana (and more on-color with Dark Ritual) and win on the spot.
Then there's High Tide. That deck can produce a lot of mana, and mana on-color for that matter, and build up a big Storm count. However, Mind's Desire seems a poor choice for that deck.
Now, as a disclaimer, it's been something like a decade since I played High Tide. But I did play it for a fairly long time before that, and looking at the decklists of the handful of players who still play it, the deck hasn't changed too much. And that's where we run into the problem: Mind's Desire is not a good fit for the deck. Reset Tide obviously has no use for it, but it's not that great in Spiral Tide either. It's too much of a "win more" card.
For a point of comparison, how do you go off on turn 3? You cast your High Tide, tap your remaining two Islands for four mana, cast Turnabout (or use a previously played Candelabra) to untap your lands, then cast Time Spiral to refill your hand and draw you into more High Tides or cantrips to get yourself more High Tides. If you were to cast Mind's Desire, you'd get a grand total of three cards to cast for free, and if none of them are a Turnabout or a Time Spiral, then you're not tapped out and your turn has been wasted, plus you've wasted your cards on a failed setup.
Except for Time Spiral, every card in High Tide is good to play even before you start going off, and every maindeck card in Spiral Tide (Time Spiral included) is good in the early stages of going off. Mind's Desire is dead before going off and is unreliable in the early stages of going off; you have to go off for a while before it becomes useful. That isn't a good choice for High Tide, which wants its maindeck cards to be useful as early and as often as possible. The later game cards, like the finishers, are relegated to the sideboard. Unfortunately for Mind's Desire, it isn't an Instant that Cunning Wish can get.
I could see running a copy of Mind's Desire in the sideboard along side a Fae of Wishes or Invasion of Arcavios maindeck. Then you would make sure to only fetch it out of your sideboard when your Storm count is high enough that you can be sure it'll win you the game. But such a thing would only be a small boost at most to High Tide, and certainly not enough to turn a fringe deck into a tier 1 deck, let alone one that's an actual problem in the metagame.
Storm and High Tide are the only ones that seem to fit into the ability to produce the mana to play it (six mana is a lot, and you need two of it to be Blue so Elves isn't exactly useful) while also building up the Storm count. But neither seems a good fit for Mind's Desire. Is there another deck I'm forgetting about that fits the criteria necessary?
What do you think the necessary storm count is for starters? I could use a laughQuote:
Originally Posted by Lord Seth
Also like what scenario are you imagining where Time Spiral is a better cast than Mind’s Desire?
Blue isn't on color for current Storm decks. Black, and to a lesser extent red, are. Sure, LED can get cracked for UUU and you have Petal and Opal, but the rituals don't make blue, so getting 4UU is definitely possible, but it's in not on color.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
I'm not denying that the card is powerful. If you can get to 4UU with a decent Storm count, you probably win the game. I'm sure we are going to see a new Storm variation with 4 Mind's Desire, and I'm sure it will do well against the same decks Storm does well against. The question is whether it makes Storm better against the decks it struggles against, and I'm just not so sure it changes much, given how good all of the existing engines already are. Does it fix any problems Storm currently has? You're still going to be soft to stuff like Archon of Emeria, Deafening Silence, Chalice of the Void, Null Rod, Stifle, etc, and now cards like Lavinia and Boromir can shut you down, too.
No doubt we're going to be seeing Mind's Desire being played in Legacy. Is it going to warp the format, especially in an unhealthy way? I just don't think so.
That's fair, I wasn't thinking about the instant speed for some reason. You'd still need a draw effect to use LED to cast the Doomsday, but that certainly would increase the consistency of turn 1 Doomsday with Street Wraith or Edge of Autumn as free draw effects to enable turn 1 Tutor + LED into Doomsday.Quote:
Originally Posted by H
I still don't think it breaks the format, though. Legacy has changed a lot since that card got banned, and I didn't even think it needed banned when it got banned originally.
In High Tide? You're definitely going to have a high fizzle rate if you're only popping off with 3-4 Storm, which was what Lord Seth was referring to.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Aw I wanted to see another IBA brew.
Mind's Desire is activity bad in the Mississippi River deck, the deck has 40 lands so your whiff rate is tremendous and if your storm count is high enough to matter, you've already won. That deck doesn't need a new (old) enabler.
I think you'd want a Storm count of 8 to be comfortable casting it without too much fear of whiffing. Sure, you can draw some great stuff at a lower rate, but it's much more chancy.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
That said, the bigger issue to me seems it being a bit off color. Getting two black mana for Ad Nauseam and Tendrils of Agony isn't so hard because Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual provide it, but getting double Blue seems not so dependable. One could try to use it in place of Ad Nauseam, but it does cost one extra mana and has the problem that you need a decent Storm count to get something out of it, whereas Ad Nauseam doesn't require it.
To be fair, I'm not much of a Storm player, so maybe I'm totally wrong on this. However, I have played a good amount of High Tide, so I think what I have to say next comes from a place of better knowledge:
The instances where Mind's Desire is better than Time Spiral are the instances in which you're already very likely to win the game anyway. It's a win more card.Quote:
Also like what scenario are you imagining where Time Spiral is a better cast than Mind’s Desire?
First, let's go over how High Tide typically plays out. Your first few turns are spent trying to sculpt your hand, and maybe putting down a Candelabra of Tawnos. Then, ideally on turn 3 or 4, you cast your High Tide or two, untap your lands with a Turnabout or a Candelabra, then fire off your Time Spiral to draw seven new cards and untap your lands to get a minimum of six mana back (you can do it without an untap effect if you go High Tide into Time Spiral with four or more lands in play). With that mana, you continue to cast more High Tides, untap your lands with more untap effects (possibly more Time Spirals) and draw cards to keep going, and you gradually build up your mana and Storm while your opponent sits there thinking "well, at least it's not Eggs."
Now, when you cast your first Time Spiral, your Storm count is going to be fairly low, probably in the 2-4 range, sometimes even just 1 if you were forced into casting (with four lands or more) a single High Tide and then a Time Spiral, or in a few cases even 0 if the game manages to somehow go so long you end up with 6 lands in play. That means the Mind's Desire is going to draw you fewer cards than the Time Spiral will. Time Spiral guarantees seven cards, Mind's Desire at this point in the game will almost always draw you fewer than that. Even worse for Mind's Desire, you absolutely need to have those cards you get off of it include an untap effect or another Mind's Desire, because you normally have to tap out to cast your Time Spiral (or Mind's Desire in this hypothetical case), and if you don't have those cards you're out of mana and your turn is over, and all you probably got for it is maybe casting a free cantrip or two. With Time Spiral, you don't immediately need an untap effect, you can draw for it with cantrips.
So Mind's Desire offers you less cards and with less margin for error. It does admittedly dodge counterspells better, but I don't think that's enough to make up for how much less reliable it is than a Time Spiral.
Now, after you've spent some time going off, typically after casting a Time Spiral, your Storm count can get large enough that Mind's Desire becomes better than Time Spiral. But at that point in the game, you're already doing great and Mind's Desire becomes "win more."
If you have the mana to cast it, Time Spiral is virtually always a good play. Mind's Desire only becomes good at the point when you're most likely going to win the game anyway.