All B/R update speculation.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I’ve been consistent, actually.

Look, you got Time Spiral’s effect totally wrong. Either (a) it was an honest oversight — at first I thought this was possible, so I chimed in with what Time Spiral does — or (b) you deliberately made up a useless card just so that you could pretend that a fellow forum-goer had expressed a positive opinion on your useless card and then you could mock them for the opinion you were pretending they held. I do recognize at this point that it was probably not (a).

I'm sorry, you think wheel effects are useless?

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

[Lord Seth]

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.

[FTW]

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.

[Zoid]

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.

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?

[Barook]

Gush and Memory Jar seems like cards that have since been replaced by better cards ore are irrelevant.

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.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

Someone beat me to yavimaya submerge!?

[Zoid]

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.

I'm willing to concede that.
Forgot Clowns of the Coast beaned the game.

[FTW]

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.

[Zoid]

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.
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.

[FTW]

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.

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.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

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

[adrieng]

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

[Zoid]

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.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

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?

Even if not it doesn’t seem better than existing infinite life combos

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

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

Academy Rector only costs 4 and Show and Tell only costs 3

[Zoid]

Doesn’t it break its own chain when the dude gets 20 power?

Even if not it doesn’t seem better than existing infinite life combos

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.

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.

[Reeplcheep]

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.

[PirateKing]

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.

[FTW]

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.

[FourDogsinaHorseSuit]

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 moot