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I'm sorry, you think wheel effects are useless?Quote:
Originally Posted by BirdsOfParadise
Do you have an actual purpose besides trying to make yourself look as stupid as possible?
"Durrr how dishonest you said Time Spiral wheels"
Like do you not have two brain cells to rub together or do you just think no one else does, because I have about zero patience left for your absolutely gob-smackingly pathetic and dishonest prevaricating
Well, after two and a half months of legality, it looks like Mind's Desire... is pretty meh in Legacy. It's become a staple in High Tide to basically serve as extra copies of Time Spiral, but High Tide still isn't that big of a deck. Outside of that, you can see a handful of Storm or Mississippi River decks running it, but most versions of those decks don't. MTG Top 8 puts it in 0.3% of Legacy decks over the last two months.
So while it did turn out a little better than I expected, it's definitely not close to anything overpowered for the format, unless someone stumbles upon a new archetype or use for it that we haven't seen yet.
So what's the next card to be unbanned in Legacy? My guess is either Earthcraft or Mind Twist. The Squirrel's Next+Earthcraft combo hardly seems overpowered, though maybe there's some way to break it in Elves because it lets you bypass summoning sickness? Mind Twist seems worse than other things you could be doing with that mana.
Earthcraft seems safe to unban. Twin sees almost no play in Legacy and is a better color set for infinite token combos.
I doubt they'll unban Mind Twist. It's not unbeatable, but like T1 Ragavan it leads to non-games determined by a die roll, so it doesn't really add anything needed in the format.
Mind's Desire at least threw a bone to Johnny Storm pilots.
Desire also adds nothing of value but here we are.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Gush and Memory Jar seems like cards that have since been replaced by better cards ore are irrelevant.
Goblin Recruiter would probably be save as well.
Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain might be fine because they are so slow but add nothing good so they can stay where they are.
What about Balance?
Let's see what we get in the prisoner exchange for the Ring and Bowmasters.
When's the next Modern Horizons due?
I don't think you want Gush and Beans in the same format when some people are already running maindeck Submerge to get Bean value.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
Someone beat me to yavimaya submerge!?
I'm willing to concede that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
Forgot Clowns of the Coast beaned the game.
Desire threw a bone to Johnny storm brewers. While not changing the final competitive metagame much, a lot of players had fun brewing with Desire for a while. It led to attempts to innovate in Storm, which has otherwise not changed much in a long time. So that was player value from unbanning, even if not much impact to the format. It promoted creativity and innovative brewing.
Mind Twist brews would be unfun. It's a high variance play that's either a dud draw or plays towards total hand annihilation on turn 1. That's not a fun design space to give players. It's either underwhelming or unfun.
Balance is one of the most busted cards in the game. Aside from the usual synergies with artifact/enchantment-based control, anyone who mulligans into Chrome Mox, white card, Balance, Flagstones is just laughing. There are so many ways to abuse Balance. You could use Baubles, Solitude, March, Zuran Orb, & Moxen to either dump your hand early or play fair control. 2-mana wrath is good enough without the LD and mass discard.
Edit: You don't even get penalized for Personal Tutor into Balance, because a resolved Balance rewards the -1 card. Balance protected by Teferi & Force would be pretty nasty.
If Desire had found a viable shell that wouldn't have made a positive impact and would have just added another degenerate combo deck.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
All it did was distract people for a while but that's it.
Agreed on Twist.
Since the advent of good planeswalkers Balance seems un-unbannable that is true.
4x Balance is just too easy to break, even before Planeswalkers. If you haven't played much with it (most players haven't unless you play in custom casual formats), it's not a fair Smallpox card like it appears. Balance doesn't get played "fairly". Players cast Balance to break the symmetry sideways and get 6-for-1s or better, all for the dumb cost of 1W.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
I see it fitting easily into some Jeskai Superfriends shell
4 FoW
2-3 FoN
4 Balance
3 Teferi
3 Narset
1 Comet
1 Jace
Currency Converter
Sevinne's Reclamation
Good stuff (Brainstorm, Ponder, Swords, PEnding)
Counterbalance?
With 4x Balance, opponent is never keeping enough resources to fight off those walkers.
You can add Baubles to "cheat" on hand size for turbo-Balances (Bauble = -1 hand size without actually costing you a card). You can get greedy with Forces too.
If your hand size ever is bigger than theirs, Currency Converter gives you 2/2s and then you Sevinne's flashback 2 PWs. If Day's Undoing ever seemed unfair, this is really a tough slog to come back from.
Then there's other degenerate stuff you could build around like:
Zuran Orb + Flagstones of Trokair + Cosmic Intervention/Court of Ardenvale/Karn->Crucible of Worlds (opponent loses all creatures & lands, you gain life and get lands back losing nothing)
The Rack + Currency Converter + free discard outlet/Baubles/pitch cards (opponent loses creatures & hand, you get 2/2s and lock them under Rack)
It's a 2-mana Wrath that can also combo to mass-LD and/or mass-discard.
I wouldn't write off Mind's Desire still getting broken as I don't think it's been brewed in sufficient shells, and it's just always going to be a lurking danger; as noted it's just a binary where it's going to either be a minor footnote or oppressive, because it's not a good card on a meta level and doesn't lead to good games, it's kind of the True-Name Nemesis of spells. But I will acknowledge that so far it's definitely, thankfully, had way less of an impact than I was afraid of
So acknowledging that, I do not think anyone that has actually played with the card would ever even think about asking for Balance to be unbanned. It legitimately would be less harmful to the format to just pick a random Mox to unban, I think, at least in terms of play (obviously Balance at least doesn't cost thousands of dollars a copy)
There's a very short list of cards where you can't actually unban them no matter how high you think the default power level should be because they just fundamentally break the game if they're played. Mostly that consists of fast mana, but that's also a cumulative effect; a single fast mana card can be dumb and stupid but a 4x by itself doesn't break the game.
Balance is one of the few non-mana cards that does just break the game by itself. It doesn't lead to high power levels, it just leads to the game fundamentally not working.
Earthcraft is fine though, that could've been unbanned ten years ago honestly. I don't know if it even does that much to fix the problems with Enchantress but it certainly isn't the case that that deck's in any danger of ruining the format.
Mind Twist should be unbanned for sure and is fine. Like it would be a back-breaking play sometimes in black initiative decks, which are already pretty good right now, but I don't even know if it would make the cut at this point between all the bombs they have available.
Blue doesn't really need anymore cards; Frantic Search would make High Tide oppressively consistent and fast, and should not be seriously discussed. Gush is more oppressive that Expressive Iteration and I don't see people arguing that that was an unfair ban that should be reversed.
Necropotence can't be unbanned under new mulligan rules because you can mull to infinity to find Dark Ritual + Necropotence and just win from there. Conversely it would actually be completely fine if Dark Ritual was banned. Probably.
Skullclamp is another card that either does nothing or ruins games, with no in between.
Zirda would probably see zero actual play since they nerfed Companion, honestly. That could be unbanned with little loss of face. But who would get excited for that?
Speaking of prisoner exchanges, I still think they should just ban fetchlands and that would actually make a ton of cards safe to unban, including but not limited to Astrolabe, Deathrite Shaman, Dig Through Time, Treasure Cruise, Wrenn and Six, Sensei's Divining Top, and arguably Survival of the Fittest, the most busted variants of which really required going 3-4 colors while consistently churning out green mana.
Goblin Recruiter can't be unbanned for time reasons although otherwise it would be fine probably.
So yeah my bet for next unban would be between Zirda, Mind Twist, and Earthcraft
i think also yawgmoth's bargain is fine for 6 mana drawing one card for one life is too expensive and wouldn' t break the format
peer into the abyss is just one more mana and win right there
https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/fro...jpg?1699044516https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/fro...jpg?1562555416
I've seen this popping up on Arena and I suspect one part of this will get the hammer soon in other formats.
Does this have potential in legacy?
You need an additional life gain to start the chain and "diestoremoval.maymay" but that is pretty strong.
Doesn’t it break its own chain when the dude gets 20 power?Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
Even if not it doesn’t seem better than existing infinite life combos
Academy Rector only costs 4 and Show and Tell only costs 3Quote:
Originally Posted by adrieng
It breaks itself but then you still have a dude with 20 power, +60 life, a hand full of lands and potentially a GY full of stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
The problem is that both pieces are shit on their own but considering that it's just 2 2mana shitters that's not so bad.
If both halves were green perhaps their would be potential.
But chain of smog combo is a 2 card combo that actually wins the game, is semi decent by itself and doesn’t require a third piece.
There are lots of creature combo alternatives that are resistant to removal too between aluren/food chain/breakfast.
Zirda and Lurrus are the two companions that I thought would just be maindeck inclusions.
Zirda counts itself, so I guess that's a win/win, but for decks looking to maximize the effect, losing your single copy to Force or Swords when it's a legitimate engine piece always seemed odd. Like Lurrus is so good you'd want the second copy after the first is gone, even if it meant not playing it in the companion space.
Is Lurrus that good as a regular card?
Lurrus Delver mainly played it to have +1 free card. Then other decks had to play it, otherwise you're playing a blue mirror at -1 card (i.e. loss). Maindeck you don't get that advantage. 3-mana 3/2 vs 1-mana 3/3 flying and 2-mana 8/8? Sure you can combo it with Bauble to draw cards, but stuff like Emry can already do that and doesn't justify inclusion in Delver. Lurrus doesn't return enough in a spell-heavy deck.
Lurrus was also played in Storm to loop LED and Petal. Maybe it's maindeckable in something like Bomberman, but Storm is too tight on slots to afford the maindeck space. It was just free for TES to add.
MB lurrus is fringe playable but the word companion makes it mootQuote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Sure you lose the free +1 card in hand, but you can play Murktide.
I was never brewing the UR Delver+Lurrus in that time anyways, I was trying UWx Stoneblade, still playing Batterskull and Kaldra and stuff with 2-3 Lurrus as the followup to a countered SFM.
Not sure a Delver deck even would want a 3 turn do nothing play of putting a non-blue card into hand, so that might be moot.
At the time companion cost 0. Delver absolutely wants "0: draw a nonland card" in a fair 1-for-1 mirror, to the point where it defined and broke the format.
At cost 3, yeah, maybe Lurrus is unbannable. Tempo and Storm may not want to take a turn off to draw a 3/2. I think Wizards just acted with excess caution because everyone was sick of Lurrus and they didn't want to risk under-banning the problem.
Zirda is fair as a maindeck card. It's just unbalanced as a companion. There are many other 2-card infinite combos, but Zirda companion effectively made Grim Monolith a 1-card infinite mana combo (Zirda always in hand). That turned out to be way too consistent. You could go all-in as a turn 1 deck, but the grindier Bant Zirda had a much higher win rate with low variance and low investment for high reward. I brewed a lot with it and ended up on the Bant build at the end, which was less problematic than Lurrus but still landed on the radar as enough to ban with Lurrus. As a maindeck card it's not even good - Power Artifact combo is cheaper, blue, and sees 0 play. The problem was having it as a 1-card combo instead of a 2-card combo (much higher variance).
As for worrying about the 1-of Zirda dying, StP is a non-issue. With proper stack management you make infinite mana in response. Mana abilties can't be responded to, so you just need to float enough to activate the untap a 2nd time. Basalt Monolith does that naturally. So you can beat removal on Zirda. They can't let Zirda enter. Daze does nothing (tap Monolith to pay). Spell Pierce/Fluster/REB/FoN/Spell Snare/Minor Misstep all miss. Discard misses the companion zone. The main threat is Force on Zirda. There are plenty of ways to build to protect your combo piece against just Force. E.g. Bant Zirda had FoW, Veil of Summer, Teferi main and then more protection in the side.
Zirda didn't "turn out" to be way too consistent, it was anticipated to be way too consistent. It never actually was remotely dominant in the brief time it was around; it honestly didn't even have an impact.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Turned out in testing.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
It didn't have an impact on the format, but it was underplayed and really could have after a Lurrus ban. Once others discovered the Bant build, it was showing up in Legacy Challenge results despite being played a small fraction as often as Lurrus.
I can confirm its consistency as I tested hundreds of goldfishes across different builds and at least 100 games against real decks. The combo was very consistent to assemble, took up little deck space due to 1-card combo (plenty of room for acceleration, protection, or fair backup plan), and had a high win rate unless you built to beat it. Maybe Wizards tested it and found the same? It was much more consistent than typical A+B combo. Perhaps not banworthy, but much more consistent. Whereas maindeck Zirda is worse than Power Artifact, unplayed. Zirda was only even interesting as a 0-mana companion.
Edit: The Bant build was so good partly because you were still allowed to play 4 Oko then. They hadn't banned the real problem. Slip in a low-investment infinite combo and +1 card into a dominant control shell, and it's dangerous. The fair plan is strong and you have an "I win" button protected by Force, Veil, Teferi, Oko (which doubles as hatebear protection). When your combo is too easy to assemble, you get to play combo control, like Breach or Oath.
Well Zirda satisfies it's own deckbuilding so it's not like you'd have to choose, even if you wanted 4 of, you just run 3/1 split and are good to go.
Lurrus may well still be too good to unban, but none of the gameplay that got it banned is still relevant to the current ruleset.
I think current Delver would still prefer a big Murktide to close out the game in 1-2 hits than try and nickel & dime small threats and card draw.
In the 4C Beanstalk matchup I think they'd be very happy to see the opponent tap 3 to put Lurrus in hand.
If Lurrus is still too good, it'd be in a different deck than what it was before
Storm can still add Lurrus at no cost. It combos well with LED and is an alternate wincon with lifegain. With Lurrus it should be easier to hit nig mana for Peer & Mind's Desire, or recover from disruption.
In tempo Lurrus conflicts with Murktide and Scam but still works with these tempo threats:
Dragon's Rage Channeler
Delver of Secrets
Orcish Bowmasters
Faerie Mastermind
Dauthi Voidwalker
Questing Druid
Tarmogoyf
Death's Shadow
Phyrexian Dreadnought
Kroxa
Perhaps there's a Grixis Delver deck that just plays the smaller threats and no Murktide.
Or a BUG list cutting DRC but gaining Goyf.
Grixis Dreadnought could play Lurrus too (Dreadnought, DRC, Dress Down, Kroxa).
Maybe Grixis Shadow (DRC, Shadow, Bowmasters) or UB Shadow (Delver, Shadow, Bowmasters) without the scam package?
There is a real cost to not having high CMCs in a format with Murktide, Troll, Grief as tier 1 tempo cards. Lurrus would see play but might be fair with companion costing 3 and some deck construction limitations.
"Turned out in testing" is just "turned out in theory" with extra hoops. It's still speculation. It could be correct speculation, people have made correct metagame predictions before, but it's still just a theory until it actually dominates tournaments.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
Turned out to be consistent: observation, not speculation. You can accurately test consistency. How often and easily you can assemble the combo, protection, variance, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Turned out to be dominant or banworthy: that would be speculation, without tournament results.
All I said was it turned out to be too consistent. That was knowable from testing.
"turned out to be way too consistent"
"I can confirm its consistency as I tested..."
"It was much more consistent than typical A+B combo. Perhaps not banworthy, but much more consistent"
Did it deserve a ban? Don't know. It was much more consistent than Power Artifact though. Getting 1 piece guaranteed from the companion zone was strong. I was surprised by the ban and had hoped to play it in the post-Lurrus meta, but they killed the deck.
Edit: Maybe the ban was not about the combo but that control decks like Bant could add it as a free card without any deckbuilding restriction, like Lurrus (Yorion at least forces 80 cards and is slow). Fair blue starting with 8 cards vs 7 cards is unfair.
Why would I put Yawgmoth's Bargain into play with Show and Tell when I can just use Griselbrand which is better in every way? Bargain has been outclassed by Griselbrand for years and while Griselbrand is super dumb it is not breaking the format. Bargain is clearly fine to unban. Academy Rector hasn't been playable for at least a decade, so I'm not worried about any deck trying to go Rector into Bargain (and in such a deck you'd probably search for something like Omniscience instead).Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Bargain costs 2U or 3W while Griselbrand costs B or 1B, and Tin Fins isn't even a tier deck.
At fair cost it could slide into those Mind's Desire storm shells (ie Storm that doesnt care about cmc), with 4BB a little easier to cast than 4UU. But it depends on life total, loses to Force, and needs to hit mana, so it might be worse than Mind's Desire overall.
Bargain might see play as an ad nauseum that plays better with beseech the mirror and force of Will. However peer into the abyss is only 1 more mana.
I agree with others that it doesn’t get cheated in. Omniscience is just a better I win enchantment, especially in a format with Lorien revealed.
Maybe, but there's a lot to be said for being both cheatable and castableQuote:
Originally Posted by Gunseng
Griselbrand's existence is a fair counterpoint, but Griselbrand has non-negligible drawbacks in having to mass commit to bulk of cards; it's noticeable worse against decks packing Bowmaster or Dress Down.
That being said I'd agree this isn't an immensely compelling argument for Bargain being particularly better than Griselbrand, even if it's a sufficient argument for it being marginally better, which is also dubious.
On an emotional level it does feel pretty dumb to say something like "Yawgmoth's Bargain has been outclassed" though, even if intellectually that might be the case.
So Wizards of the Coast released their new ban announcement:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/an...d-announcement
Although there were changes in other formats, there were no changes for Legacy. However, they did comment on Legacy, and as people might not have looked at the announcement due to the lack of any changes, I thought it might be useful to show what they stated, as they at least comment on their current thoughts on Legacy:
When making changes to Legacy, we often look at data through the lens of community sentiment. The community is passionate, and we believe the pillars of Legacy that players have enjoyed for many years are very important. Players want to play with Brainstorm, Force of Will, and Wasteland, and thus they remain even though they would have been removed from other formats long ago due to their ubiquity. Legacy is also powerful enough to absorb cards that would otherwise need to be banned in other formats, hence we seldom take action.
Since the introduction of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth™, and with the releases of Wilds of Eldraine and recently The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, the Legacy metagame has incorporated several new cards and strategies have been evolving.
To name a few: Orcish Bowmasters, Lórien Revealed, Troll of Khazad-dûm, Forth Eorlingas!, Up the Beanstalk, Questing Druid, Beseech the Mirror, and Molten Collapse have all impacted the format in various ways. Bowmasters, being the most impactful of the bunch, has been adopted by various tempo, control, and midrange decks. Even so, the metagame has ample representation from each macro-archetype. With new cards making an impact, strategies adapting, and the metagame shifts taking place, we've decided to move forward with no changes at this time.
They also talk about Vintage (despite there being no changes), if someone wants to look at that.
If Bowmasters can be played in tempo (Delver, scam) or midrange/control (Beans) or combo (Reanimator) then at least it's not skewing the format towards one archetype. Brainstorm and Force are also played in all 3. Legacy's needed a nonblue splashable Brainstorm-hate mechanic for a long time. Adding a nonblue pillar that isn't Chalice is not a bad thing.
The last non-blue "pillar" was DRS and that got banned too.Quote:
Originally Posted by FTW
While arguing against BS is fair, Force is the Batman of the format which is required for it to hold together.
I'd prefer a non-basic/fetch hater.
They've printed a lot of ways to hate on fetches, they're just not as astrong as just playing the fetches anyways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
I'm not arguing for a Brainstorm or Force ban, just that Bowmasters shouldn't be banned either. Legacy is the designated format for Brainstorm+fetch, so it's good to have a mechanic to balance that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoid
DRS was banned because it didn't balance or disrupt Xerox, it just made 4c blue piles even better, so it failed as a nonblue pillar.
Soldier Stompy can play T1 Suppression Field or Leonin Arbiter yet that deck and those cards see no play.
Edit: You could even play RW Initiative Stompy with
4 Mox
4 SSG
4 Petal
8 sol land
4 Dungeoneer
4 Chaos Adventurer
4 Fable
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Leonin Arbiter/Suppression Field
But those decks still rather play other threats than fetch hate.
The closest that does see play would be like Archon of Emeria. But that's just another 3-drop example that forces you into a stompy shell or other sort of high resource three for one like Dark Ritual into Opposition Agent.
They keep trying though, maybe the next Horizons or Universes Beyond set will get a Grafdigger's Cage for lands or something.
1Quote:
Originally Posted by PirateKing
Artifact
If a land would enter opponent's graveyard, instead exile it and gain 3 life.
T, sacrifice: Target noncreature land gains hexproof until end of turn if it has no abilities other than mana abilities.
Is that niche enough to be jank in most Magic but Cage-level hate vs Delver or Lands?
A Wasteland with "split second" would probably do the trick :wink:. As a more serious suggestion, I'd love a Suppression Field on a 2/2 blue Merfolk body for :1::u:.Quote:
Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit