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Can we please stop using unintelligent use of self gratification and words that don't exist to point out you are angry because you think blue is the problem when it's wotc who doesn't want standard or modern to be a mess with powerlevel and as such you have to wait longer to get a good card for your pet deck than we do for an unban.
Decay as a poor policeman precludes its ability to warp the meta game around it. Its overuse is entirely due to Counterbalance; so in this hypothetical where cantrip cartel isn't getting things done your "diversity" of non-:u: decks pretty much all started with DRS+Decay or the other uninteractives (Chalice, Cavern, Vial, Boseju). Following the next part of @Gheizen64's hypothetical, even more diversity is lost as DRS+Decay team up with Survival. Casting/resolving Decay does nothing in the grand scheme of things, but casting/resolving CB pretty much ends every game unless an uninteractive plan is/has been discovered...being anti-cantrip cartel here translates to actively wanting to lose diversity in the form of fighting [mostly] CB on the stack. Sure it feels bad to lose to two cards in hand (i.e. SnT + target), but for the same 2 card total and 3 cmc total you could just run out SDT into CB; it's less of an over-the-top win out of nowhere, but it's also safer (both cards are individually castable, built in discard protection, invalidates as many cards in hand/possible topdecks as emmy annihilating all your lands).Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
A card whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the battlefield is simplistic, making legacy less enjoyable to watch or play. Removal based magic is fine, it's effective, and some players actually find this kind of magic to be fun...but they generally proceed from a point of having given up on the stack to whining about getting smashed by strategies their narrow definition of interaction (removal from board) can't affect. Stack-based interaction is mostly countermagic and discard (i.e. stopping things before they've happened), and many strategies will largely require you to combat them off the battlefield. Stack-based interaction is broader than Decay type cards can hope to be, but they are also less perfect (i.e. less simplistic, requiring correct usage at different points in a game and generally not reversing a situation already on board). A stack-based approach is also more likely to present a coordinated plan to win a game given its ability to out-position an opponent on the stack. I would also include prison pieces (Chalice, Thorn, mana denial) under stack-based interaction.
I find hatebears to be generally negative influences on game design as the best ones are generally used to force opponents to compete on a fair axis without any real build-around. These types of cards also lead to non-games after boarding where their strategy is often little better than mull to Leyline/discard/white card that says "can't lose to strategy x." Imagine their outrage if they were ever subject to a post-board 4+ cmc card like: Leyline of any nontoken creature with cmc 3 or less trying to enter the battlefield from the hand goes to exile instead...or just Leyine of cannot use mana to cast creature spells.
Can you just not quote me at all please? All of the times you've brought me up you brought out arguments that had nothing at all to do with what i said at best and were just nonsene at worst like here. Survival wouldn't even be T1 if it were to be unbanned tomorrow, i can't see how a slightly better maverick deck could "ruin" the format. Seriously what the fuck is this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
How's that more simplistic than a Counterspell, whose only purpose is to sit in your hand waiting for an opponent to play a thing it can remove from the stack?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Both are reactive, only discard/hatebears are proactive and try to do stuff before your opponent has played anything these cards would affect.
Which is why you pair it often times with a way to win, that wins b/c you can also protect it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fjaulnir
@Gheizen64 sure man. Just keep going on about how cantrip cartel is bad for diversity, when the moment they diminish Decay spikes to Misstep levels of play. More diversity = more enjoyable legacy; hitting cantrips kills diversity...you just get the same deck strats using different colors. :tongue:
I am over arguing about what should and should not be banned. On the flip side, if your going to ask me about my views on if the format is fun I will answer.
As for my Pet Deck, Lands is in a fine place right now.
Blue is a problem. If you were to build a deck right now I would ask what set of cards are you playing besides Brainstorm, Ponder and Force. You have three options: Top and CB, SnT and Petal or DRS and Decay. If you choose something else your hamstringing yourself. That I feel is a problem with the format. What should be done about it? What the fuck do I care anymore. I am playing on and off at a FNM style event. I am not bothering about the top tier decks anymore. It's not like I can watch them being played anymore.
As for Blue. I do not hate Blue, I dislike the hybridisation of Blue bases. I remember being in my teens and opening a box of old cards. I pulled out a High Tide and, eyes of wonder, saying to myself "That's a combo card". It would be a few years before I saw what the card did, and that amazement never went away. The deck was so sweet, and I enjoyed watching it.
The issue with the modern metagame is one of changing development goals. It's not one I blame the players for. I mean, why would I? If you want to win, why not play Miracles or BUG? That's not the fault of guy who hopes to win a GP. But I don't have to like it. I don't have to agree with things as they are. I can wish that Wizards would take some action. But they won't. So fuck it.
But hey, if you want to look at the modern meta and tell me it's ok but what we need to do is get rid of Chalice and Thorn I will argue. Because what's not fun is watching those players who do masturbate with Brainstorm, Ponder and Top take up so much time and bitch about answers. So if I can play a turn one Chalice, turn two Trinisphere that's a good time for me. You can say that's not fun, but you also enjoyed your ability to stomp on the metagame unapologetically and unopposed until Eldrazi came along. Meh.
On the bright side, at lest when I do finally get jack of this shit I can have a month long cruise or something.
Just to get this right: T2 S&T into Emrakul is a no go, but T2 Marit Lage is "fine"? Why? Because "blue"? I see two low-investment, highly-overpowered wincons. That shit is ehat I hinted at lately labeling it "Vintage-esque blowouts".Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
In regards to your earlier post, I think that cantrip-hate like Leovold is a much more elegant solution to the omnipresent of these cards than Chalice, which denies spells of all kind and color and ergo does not present a "fix" non-blue decks profit from in general either directly or via metagame shifts. However, Leopold offers the same facepalm-factor like Snapcaster Mage by being printed with BLUE mana cost. Printing a metagame hatebear in BUG colors is a total fail as it's just a natural fit with the usual Decay+DRS cores. It was too much to request a non-white, non-blue anti-cantrip hatebear to break open the stale viable colorcombos
For the record, I play Lands because I can Loam back Wasteland, how the deck wins past that is a non issue for me. I was building it (Purchased my first Tabernacle) before the rules change.
The decks are very different though. If someone is planing to play balls to the wall Marit Lage, there is a Deck for that. It's not Lands. Lands is a Prison deck with a combo finish, SnT and Depths are combo decks alone. I would rather play the Prison deck.
There are a ton of White hatebears that stop you drawing or limit your ability to cast spells, most don't see a lick of play because they have no external use outside of "Hate Piece". The thing Leo has in his favour is he becomes a Card Advantage engine. I think he would still see limited play if his anti draw clause was removed.
Actually, I think these days the attraction of the deck is paying GhostQuarter and Loam and combining a Prison.dec with a combo.dec within 60 card, from my perspective. I have no problem with lands.dec due to it having natural weaknesses and isn't locking out players within two turn without any chance for a comeback.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
I agree that Spirit of the Labyrinth was shit due to being so limited. Leovold is however a different tier as he brings combat stats, cantrips if getting killed by a spell, unsymetrical, fucks over opponsing cantrips and invalidates targeted discard. Leovold is so much ahead
I don't think 'hamstring' is the word you want. Either that or you are contradicting yourself. What (I think) you mean is that people have to pigeon-hole themselves; aka, by playing one of the five relevant non-blue decks you have mentioned (though I think Elves is struggling these days). You only have to hamstring yourself if you are not willing to play blue or any of the relevant non-blue decks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
Of course there are also blue decks which are not relevant, and you have to hamstring yourself if you want to play one of those. Rdal,y you have to hamstring yourself if anf only if you want to play a deck that's not relevant, which is hardly profound. The actual "issue" is thst there are more relevant decks with blue than without, and also more flexibility for brewing.
I like to imagine a world where csrd availability is not an issue (also one where players are skilled in every deck and are completely competitive in their choice of deck).Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
But if you think about this it becomes very obvious (to anyone with a passing familiarity of game theory) that you won't get a meta of 100% cantrip decks! That meta would be too easily exploited by a Chalice deck like Loam. There is a limit to how saturated the format can be with cantrip decks before a threshold is hit where an exploitive deck is clearly a better choice.
This could actually be a game theory problem, where the correct meta call would be to randomly chose a deck from a set list. You might want to play the "best" cantrip deck more often than any other deck, but certainly not 100% of the time! Playing, eg, Miracles every time is only sound because you know the majority of people will be playing something else (or possibly playing Miracles but badly).
Actually, the main advantage of leovold is that he is not symmetrical. But then, it does not push cantrips decks out, it gives an edge to the cantrip decks which plays leovold.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Spirit has advantages on its own, mainly costing 1W compared to tricolor.
But if Spirit of the Labyrinth was not symmetrical, I am sure it would see play. It's actual problem is that it is less good than Thalia, which is also symmetrical.
So either you dont play cantrips and go for Thalia, or you do and cannot go for spirit. But you may go for leovold.
Things Leovold did right: Being powerful enough to be a maindeckable card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Things Leovold did wrong: Being one-sided. He doesn't discourage the use of cantrips since he can be played alongside them. We're currently seeing an uptick in cantrips instead of a downtick, despite Leovold being the new hotness. Color is also an issue, although a minor one, given how easy it is to splash colors in Legacy.
That's why I like Chalice. It puts restrictions on your deckbuilding due to being symmetrical. Sure, it isn't fun to play against, but I see it as a necessary evil like FoW preventing the format being overrun by glasscannon combo.
A cheap hatebear which jams cantrips on both sides with a usable body (bonus points for intercepting Delvers) and a :wg: hybrid mana cost could probably do wonders for the format.
This might be the most asinine thing I've ever read on here. Implying hate bears have no build around is completely baffling to me. Also the implication that a ban of cantrips means a rise in decay to "mental misstep levels" (of which brainstorm has surpassed already) is a complete guess and has no basis. You're either trolling at this point or have never actually built a deck without a pile of cantripsQuote:
Originally Posted by Fox
I don't know what you mean by 'privledged'. I only mean that I'm happy that this is still viable in Legacy - not only as a tool for fair decks, but also as a primary strategy.Quote:
Originally Posted by btm10
I don't mind hatebears, but I'm concerned that WotC pushes these so much and gives little love to any other strategies besides fair value decks. I think Legacy is fine right now - fantastic. But I'd hate for us to get go the point where these hatebears are so powerful and omnipresent that there are just no tier one decks running unfair strategies or hard control.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Most hatebears are about as awkward go build around as Treasure Cruise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
DRS? You'd better run fetchlands!
Thalia and Prelate? You'd better run a creature deck!
Containment Priest? You'd better run a fair non-Vial deck!
Leotard? You'd better run... permanents?
A lot of games in legacy are won b/c a deck's removal package was stack-based but an opponent managed to resolve a wincon that reads 'can't lose to your deck.' The opponent has an entire deck with deliberate design, while the hatebear player tapped 2 lands and deployed their creature. Certainly that hatebear deck needs deliberate construction to be competitive (otherwise it can't overcome the dies to Goyf issue, as an example of a primary flaw), but there's not much build-around in tap 2 lands -> put creature into play. What you have in such a case is now a non-game, because the hatebear effectively says you can only keep playing this game by reducing yourself to removal based magic. The opposite is not true, there are no Leylines (or other no build-around cards) that preclude the use of creatures in a game of magic; a hatebear player will never be forced to win through a single card that directs them to win off board or otherwise ameliorate the situation with a non-creature response.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
If you don't have cantrip cartel, you don't have countermagic. If you don't have countermagic, you have to be able to ignore or kill a resolved Counterbalance. Cavern/Vial/Boseju are all options, but even with cantrip cartel doing well right now just look at those Abrupt Decay numbers: 45-50%. Misstep only got up to ~65%. Complete guess? No, because as it turns out most choose to confront the CB menace with Decay as their uninteractive of choice (currently about 5:1 ratio). Now certainly cantrips allow some of those Decay numbers, but the real mana fixer there is DRS and fetchlands.
So again, cantrip cartel down means you're not coping with Counterbalance using countermagic; your ~5x more likely to revert to killing it over ignoring it (conversely you're sleeving up your own copies). Throw around talk of Survival of the Fittest into that mix and we're talking even more Decay spam. This is the issue with the anti-cantrip mentality: if they got their way, you'd only really be able to play removal based magic or mindless, hyper-linear combos for the most part. Sure losing Brainstorm to set up Terminus hurts Counterbalance, but you're still not playing a better deck by reverting to a Blade control variant or Standstill. If you don't like cantrips, you don't like diversity of strategies.
If your deck folds to a single 2 mana creature resolving, then you should reevaluate your deck. Are we actually saying Gaddock Teeg is uninteractive because it single-handidly beats storm? And sure you can just throw in creatures into your thalia deck. Every Thalia deck is just 22 lands and 38 creatures. Figured it out.
And what is the card the storm player gets to play which helps him/her win which says creature combat (or perhaps the ability for a creature to enter play) is no longer a valid wincon? Mind you, we're looking for an instant or sorcery - i.e. something a hatebear deck isn't really capable of interacting with, if we want to pose a perfect counter-scenario.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers...2650&type=cardQuote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Creature decks cannot interact on the stack so they cannot defeat an instant or sorcery.
I know you are being facetious, but you're almost spot on! Thalia.dec runs 8 1cc non creature spells, and 3 more spells which it doesn't usually cast because it cheats them into play with a creature.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
And maverick runs 4 1 CMC spells, 4-of an X spell (really bad with Thalia and Teeg in your deck), a couple 2 CMC 2 color spells, a 2 CMC enchantment, and 2-3 artifacts that are varying CMC's of 2,3, and 5. But you're right. Building a creature deck is pretty mindless and takes 0 build around while playing 8-12 cantrips and fetch lands and simply inserting different countermagic and win conditions is far more skill intensive.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead