There's probably a line between "best color" and "ruining the format".Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbiddian
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There's probably a line between "best color" and "ruining the format".Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbiddian
what they need to hose blue is a card like
phyrexian mana 2 colorless.
enchantment
when a blue spell is played, put a 1/1 flying creature into play under your control
this enchantment cannot be the target of blue spells and cannot be countered
LSV telling it like it is (not that anyone with their eyes open didn't know this)
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Non-blue decks may not be playing Misstep, but that doesn’t mean the card isn’t as good as predicted; it just means non-blue decks suck. Despite the fact that you can play anything you want, if you really want to win the tournament I don’t see how you can start your decklist with anything other than 4 Force of Will 4 Mental Misstep. I mean, I’ll always play Brainstorm and Jace too, but as long as you have Forces and Missteps I’ll allow it.
Uhhhh.
I mean he may not be able to see it, but as the winning deck did start without 4 Force of Will this seems like an admission of shortcoming.
I mean he can say that that was just a bad decision that lucked out and the winning list should have run Force, definitely. But then that applies the other way; maybe people like playing blue in this new format more than it actually deserves.
I mean Brainstorm is definitely the best card in the format, and it's nice that it counters Brainstorm and that playing it means that you can also hardcast Misstep sometimes, I guess.
But if no one's actually playing Misstep-Zoo or Misstep-Goblins, it's hard to say that those decks are bad.
No one's playing Misstep-Zoo for a reason. Just because a card can be cast in a deck doesn't mean it belongs. Zoo is a deck with a pretty clear laser like focus, so let's drop some of that focus to run a set of situational counters but with no critical mass of them? This is even more obvious with Goblins, come on- this is a deck that tried really hard and failed to fit Tarmogoyf in it. Throwing Misstep into Goblins sounds like trying to keep a pet deck alive. Does that really sound like a deck someone would choose if they were aiming for the best?
It's pretty obvious that pairing Misstep with Force vastly increases its power. Or at the least, pair it with some other counters like Daze. Like most of the good blue cards, it synergizes with other blue cards.
Also, the deck that happened to win doesn't tell us that Force+Misstep isn't the best place to start. Sometimes decks just win, Magic is about more than just who took the trophy itself.
Brainstorm is just like survival, getting better with new cards printed. Except brainstorm doesnt "combo" with creatures but with every cards. Nowadays most of the decks play only goods cards and brainstorming 2 lands away for 3 OP cards is just ridiculous.
But people are playing Zoo, which you also just said was bad. So do people know what they're doing or not? You seem to be arbitrarily making bullshit up to justify your initial assumptions.Quote:
Originally Posted by FieryBalrog
This is a meaningless paragraph so I don't even really know how to address it.Quote:
Just because a card can be cast in a deck doesn't mean it belongs. Zoo is a deck with a pretty clear laser like focus, so let's drop some of that focus to run a set of situational counters but with no critical mass of them? This is even more obvious with Goblins, come on- this is a deck that tried really hard and failed to fit Tarmogoyf in it. Throwing Misstep into Goblins sounds like trying to keep a pet deck alive. Does that really sound like a deck someone would choose if they were aiming for the best?
Yes, clearly I do think Goblins with Mental Misstep is something someone can play to try to win, since that's what I just fucking said.
Unless you're just splashing blue for Brainstorm and Clique and then I guess it's nice to be able to hardcast it once in a while, and, you know, win a Legacy GP.Quote:
It's pretty obvious that pairing Misstep with Force vastly increases its power. Or at the least, pair it with some other counters like Daze. Like most of the good blue cards, it synergizes with other blue cards.
Unless the results support your conclusion and then obvi duh obviously people aren't playing Misstep Zoo QED it sucks.Quote:
Also, the deck that happened to win doesn't tell us that Force+Misstep isn't the best place to start. Sometimes decks just win, Magic is about more than just who took the trophy itself.
Obv obv obv.
It isn't as simple as this though. Aggro decks, especially sligh need a high threat density which includes a enough burn to end the game. This is because we need to win the game before Jace/moat/Elspeth/whatever bomb said blue deck is going to slap on the table. Mental misstep is a horrible topdeck, not usefull all the time and unlike blue aggro decks don't have access to good card selection to get rid of un-needed crap in our hands.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Non-blue decks have to live and die by the cards they have and whatever they can rip off the top (Black has not as good but at least something for card draw).
I replaced rift bolt with mental misstep in my boros sligh and honestly, if its not in my opening hand or the first two cards I draw then I really hope I never see it. Otherwise its fantastic, seeing at its a free counterspell. Having more free counterspells would make it even more powerful but since I can't run any other ones its pretty iffy at times. I am fairly sure its still better than the rift bolts that were in there but still I would replace it with this:
Theoritic better than rift bolt burn spell (R)
Instant
Theoretic better than rift bolt burn spell can't be countered by spells or abilities
TBTRBBS does three damage to target creature or player.
Its only the fact that there isn't a burn spell that I find more useful than a rift bolt that I find room for mental misstep. Red hasn't got a good spell maindeck worthy spell printed in years (Volcanic fallout is potentially good enough, but only because merfolk is everywhere). Hell if things keep going the way they are Boil will be maindeck worthy :P
I do find it sad that R&D will print good counterspells but won't print other "unfun" cards in other colors. Where is our playable land destruction, burn spells, card advantage generating discard, any playable white cards (Yea there is about 1 playable white card printed a year), playable free spells in any color other than blue, none easily splashable creatures and you know cards that aren't blue but are good enough for legacy in general. What I really think needs to happen for the health of the format is the printing of really good land destruction and none basic land hate. It would make it harder for blue to splash 2-4 colors so easily for their bombs and make aggro control in other colors more feasible. The best land hate right now is blue FFS :(
Something like Eyes of the Wisent or Seedtime? Eyes basically reads: If someone EOT brainstorms, FOF's, or counters any of your shit, you get a free 4/4. With the prevalence of blue in the format I wonder like, absolutely--there may not be a place for cards like this, but Seedtime is literally an instant speed not that hard to conditionally meet time walk. Aside from the fact that Legacy is a fast-ish environment (people genuinely overextend this concept), Seedtiming means you need to both have it in your hand and play something that got countered or something, which is probably hard, but I do find it odd that it is rarely if ever brought up when looking at decks that run green. I'm under the impression that cards like Seedtime were dismissed long ago because conditional free turns are bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by bracer028
I mean, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to try it, and I'm a total newbie here I've only been visiting this site for a few months at most, maybe those cards are in some kind of dark age--but Eyes of the Wisent looks like a brick-shittingly solid card to sideboard in against a deck that plays blue, maybe even run them mainboard if you anticipate (rightfully so) a heavy blue meta. The number of decks that run Blue relative to those that don't are kind of overwhelming.
I just find it somewhat entertaining that -- outside of the card having some pseudo trollshroud and being uncounterable (which would quite frankly just be broken) -- the card you're asking for exists. And I'm sure those are only two of the many that people overlook. I mean, in general your card suggestion is grossly overpowered--it would only strengthen the already prominent blue decks (2 phyrexian colorless? Ok so, I'm solidarity, whenever I or my opponent plays a blue spell, I get a creature. I go first, pay 4 life, whatever. It's uncounterable and they can't remove it for at -least- 3 turns after I win game 1 because they obviously won't have K-Grips mainboarded. I do my whole "Deck you thing" it somehow fails I'm left with ~42 1/1's and now it's my turn. Swing with 42 1/1 fliers, game).
A better choice of wording would be: "Whenever an opponent plays a blue spell that targets a spell you control, put a 1/1 whatever flying thing into play." and it should certainly not be able to be free-casted turn 1. At the earliest...it should be...say, 2 mana? And being uncounterable would be a tad bit broken you want to be able to legitimately fight against it. Kind of see where that goes?
I play blue and blue only. I am a casual player of EDH and Highlander which both are strong connected with legacy, however cards in singleton have completely different power level. First I would like to write about some cards:
1. Best Planeswalker:
Jace do all what blue cantrips do + one killer effect, however I believe that this card is bit overrated. Surely has decent power level.
3 Best tutor:
My vote is for Gifts Ungiven in blue (combo potential for reanimation)
4. Best filtering
Besides colorless, hated totally splashable and allmighty Sensei's Divining top there is blue Brainstorm. Brainstorm is powerful indeed (some calculations shows its more powerful than Ancestrall Recall), but repeatabality by the SDT is also very useful.
What about anti-control like Vexing Shusher? its all in one response against plain counterspelling. Well known card, high rating at gatherer. did someone mention it here?
I believe that the blue is not strongest color at all... I just think that people who decided to play blue have to build up decks with deeper idea - not only plain calculation how many turns do I need to deal 20 dmg to player.
Local meta shows me players with goblins, zoo and so on. Really fast decks able to kill in 4th turn. But they all look the same. Creatures, creatures, creatures... nothing else. and common response is Counterspell of course. Usual response is "ok, my creature is dead, but you spent mana and card and did no damage to me". Same for cantriping with Brainstorm.
People here are wrong about counterspelling and cantrips, but this leads them towards creature decks which are fast enough to survive against common control strategy here. There is but one exceptional player (not me) who uses Mishra's Helix to lock down the game via land controlling. I believe he had found control which works both against aggro and control decks here...
I don't buy this blue needs a nerf business at least if it means banning stuff.
First off, sure blue is putting up great results, but probably 50% or more of the format right now is playing blue and more entries = more top 8's. If 80% of the best players are playing blue it's pretty much a given it's going to get lots of strong finishes. I mean if you took the top 8 of the GP and told them you can't play blue and replayed the event tomorrow I'd guess at least 1 or 2 of them would have still made top 16 as there are no weak players in that group.
Second, if Force of Will is so broken why did a deck without them win a GP? If Brainstorm needs to be banned then what about Top? Any color can run Top which is in many cases better than Brainstorm, Green has Sylvan Library and Mirri's Guile, Black has Dark Confidant, every color has Mental Misstep, I don't see the problem here...
Is it Blue's fault for winning, or is it our faults for not playing decks that hose blue?
We've been here before. Ban Lackey, ban Goyf, ban CounterTop, ban Lion's Eye Diamond... Fact of the matter though only Flash and Survival have put up broken results for a sustained period. Gobs was a tier deck for years and now everyone acts like it's unplayable same with CounterBalance... I say give the format time to settle and let other colors keep getting stronger as they have over the past several blocks and we'll end up back where we started with the any deck can win format we're used to.
Seedtime is EXTREMELY conditional... Aggro decks don't want to leave 2 open at EoT. The only time they do that is because they didn't play threat that turn. Or they play only instant-speed threat, aka burn. In fact, Seedtime could be a decent card in burn, but since you have no creatures in burn, timewalk is just a draw 1. Seedtime was believed to be new come of jesus when it came out, people playtested it and found it bad. Something like carpet of flower is way, way stronger, giving you a one-sided vineyard. Eyes of the Wisent seems good but you can play around it. Again, not a thing you want from an hate card. You want a card that have to be answered or lose, not a conditional 4/4 for 2. Something like Chill. A 2 mana spell that effectively end the game against red decks. Or Karma, a 4 mana spell that end the game in 2-3 turn if unanswered against black decks. Or something like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kich867
are we really going to ruin legacy like this? The blue restrictions (and proxies) ruined Vintage. Go whine somewhere else before your whining destroys the format
I totally agree with this, especially the point about the "ban something" whining. It has happened before and it happens every time some new and powerful card shakes up the metagame. People just hate to change their decks and adapt. Before continuing this kind of discussion, at least wait a few months to give the format at least a semblance of a chance to adapt. MM is the new "IT-kid", almost everybody wants to play with it and there are definite benefits to being able to hardcast it. That's where all the blue comes from.Quote:
Originally Posted by dontbiteitholmes
I said it before but I think people don't realize how important it is: the Hatfields, two of the absolute best Legacy players in the world, decided to play Zoo at the GP. No blue, nothing. I would take pretty high odds that either of the Hatfields is much much better than anybody complaining about blue's powerlevel, so in all likelihood they knew what they were doing much better than anybody whining and are probably months ahead of the format's general public as far as adapting to a Mental Misstep metagame is concerned.
It isn't like they failed. One of them managed to 9:0 day one. A different Zoo-player made Top8. Goblins also went 9:0 day one. These results mean something: Mental Misstep is NOT unbeatable. Actually, as the format gets slowed down, Goblins becomes better. I generally use Goblins as one of the first decks I test against because it has so many angles of attack, so I have some testing experience with the new blue decks against it. Goblins still has a favorable matchup against the Misstep decks people play. If you know what you're doing, winning against a slightly updated Goblins list (4 Instigators) is extremely difficult for all of the Standstill decks in my experience.
Honestly people, stop this "oh no, I have to adjust to a changed metagame - ban something!" attitude. It's the same crap that happened when combo had its two weeks in the sun a month ago. A strategy can't be beaten by playing a bigger creature or killing one the opponent has and the whining begins.
When I started playing Legacy regularly, most of what I saw was Goblins, Zoo and other aggro-decks that just crushed every control-deck I was trying out. I hate playing aggro, I just don't enjoy dropping creatures and turning them sideways, so I wasn't happy with a format that seemed so hostile to it. Did I start crying about how aggro was so so unfair, how they needed to ban Vial/Lackey/Nacatl/...? No, I tried to build something that dealt with them and after trying long enough and hard enough I managed.
This is an eternal format, not Limited/Kitchen Table Magic. If you don't interact with your opponent other than by being able to kill their creatures, it's your own fault you're in trouble (and less so than I'd expect, after all Zoo has been doing pretty well at the GP imo). There is more to Magic than creature combat and that is a good thing! Just do the same thing you should have been doing already, try to interact with your opponents on levels other than putting a clock on them and hoping you get there before they do something powerful. Newsflash: this is Eternal, powerful plays will be made. Ignoring this fact is failing at Legacy.
The big difference now is that this time it isn't combo, we're talking about control being powerful. This makes it even easier to adapt. You don't need dedicated stack/handdisruption to compete and you don't need it turn one or two. These decks give you the time to claw back into the game if you have the tools at your disposal even if those tools are expensive or more general in application. So play more Sylvan Libraries and Divining Tops (in non-blue decks), try decks that have Armageddon, Cataclysm (this one is ridiculous against almost any blue deck from my experience), Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds in them. Try a Pox-deck. Use Sinkhole, Bitterblossom, Phyrexian Arena (maybe), Genesis, Weathered Wayfarer and Cabal Therapy (now new and improved with a free Peek for any color). Play some actual bombs you can use when they've exhausted their countermagic on your lesser threats. You know how Deedstill beats a resolved Ajani Vengeant? It doesn't. Heck, Pithing Needle on Deed is a huge beating against the deck. Do what Durward did and play Chrome Mox in your aggressive non-blue decks and rely more on two-drops. Innovate for god's sake! In general, play more disruption. Play cards that actually do something other than turn sideways to deal damage.
On a different note, the "I want to play blue" phenomenon is also exacerbated by the fact that many good players (and especially pro-players that don't know Legacy all that well) generally love ways to reduce variance (because without variance, they'll win more, being good players and all) and will flock to decks that have library manipulation as a result.
/edit: Yeah, learn from what happened to Vintage. It has been said a lot of times but it needs repeating until you actually look at history. Don't whine to make Legacy go the way of Vintage. One ruined format is more than enough.
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Originally Posted by Mon,Goblin Chief
What happened to Vintage for it to be "ruined"?
No, what ruined Vintage was the WotC purposely broke the format in half to force people into Legacy. It's likely WotC will try to break legacy the same way to force people into Modern.Quote:
Originally Posted by bruizar
Force of Will is strip mine. People defend it as a way to defend against imaginary Tabernacle at the Pendrell Vale decks, but the hard fact is that it has always been used to prevent the opponent from playing cards that would otherwise interact with your strategy. Actually, the people defending it have an agenda because they enjoy its ability to steal games at random regardless of playskill, and that there's no answer to it.
Mental Misstep is wasteland.
The format is unplayable right now because it allows some decks to run 4 strip mines and 4 wastelands. And you can't play around that strategy unless you play a deck with too many (or no) lands. You can't "adapt" to it because you are not really playing in the same league.
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Originally Posted by DrJones
Yeah, because you can't get into the top 8 without Force of Will. Hell, there's no way in hell someone can win the grand pix without Force of Will!
I completely agree. I was sickened when yet another Force of Will deck won the Grand Pr... oh, wait.Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJones
Also, is it just me or is this thread some kind of time warp into the 1990s? Every time blue gets a good card, everyone's like, "OMG BLUE IS TOO GOOD! LET'S BAN ISLAND!"
But then when blue actually gets nerfed, people go, "STOP PICKING ON BLUE, YOU'RE RUINING IT!"
Here's the deal - blue's slice of the pie, the things it does, are the best abilities in magic. It will either be the best color, or it won't be worth playing at all. That's just how it has to be. It's a flaw in the game's design, and there is absolutely no way to fix it.
Banning Brainstorm won't help anything. It will just make control suck again (I mean seriously, Landstill is a good deck again. Let it have its moment in the sun) while also randomly hosing some combo decks that aren't winning anyway. The most popular blue deck, Merfolk, will lose absolutely nothing, and people will still bitch, since it is now harder for other blue decks to find enough removal to ever win that match.
Banning Force of Will won't help anything, because it's not like that card is keeping aggro down. It usually gets sided out against those decks as well as stuff with lots of discard (ie, a huge chunk of the format). It will just bolster some of the more degenerate combo decks, which will then play Mental Misstep to take out the opponent's now-shittier countermagic.
Banning Mental Misstep might do something. Free things without a drawback (and let's face it, loss of life is not a drawback) are usually nuts busted, and WotC have admitted this time and time again, so it's probably true that this is, in fact, an unhealthy card to have around.
Or we could do nothing, wait a few months, and actually let the meta adjust for once.
What you are not realizing, is that the Hive Mind player pacted. :tongue:Quote:
Originally Posted by majikal
EDIT: On a serious note, the good part about being right is that reality works regardless of opinion, and that theories are as useful as their predictive power is. Time always proves who is right, so I don't give a damn if I get mocked now as much as I didn't give a damn when I got mocked in 2007.
Now, I can't play Vintage (no scene) so it's very possible the format is still a lot of fun to those playing it, though people seem rather unhappy with it reading TMD. But essentially what happened was that Brainstorm (as well Gush, Merchant Scroll and Ponder - all cards Vintage had been thriving without before the Gush era* and therefore clearly not the reason for the drop off) was restricted and tournament-attendance began to crumble (as in, half-size tournaments). This was, admittedly, made worse by the Time Vault unerrata fiasco and as a result organizers stopped preparing large Vintage tournaments and now you're lucky to find a reasonably sized tournament every six months.Quote:
Originally Posted by DragoFireheart
*similarly to what people claim about Legacy right now, blue was the clear undisputed top dog in Vintage during the Gush era. Much more so than it is in Legacy. That didn't keep Vintage from being more popular than it had ever been other than maybe during the Gifts era preceding Gush, another time of clear blue dominance.
The ruin isn't so much in it not being fun any more (as I said, I'm not really in a position to judge that, as mentioned nobody here plays Vintage so I don't get to play) but that half the players stopped showing up to tournaments once they didn't get to play with Brainstorm any more.
You can call that an overreaction, biased, stupid, whatever. The truth of the matter is, nothing is worth alienating such a large part of the player-base if what you're interested in is having a fun format to actually play.
/edit: note that I'm talking about this from a European perspective. Not sure how much proxy-troubles influenced this whole thing in the US.