Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
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.
Originally Posted by GreatWhale
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.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Turned out in testing.
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.
Last edited by FTW; 11-19-2023 at 09:57 PM.
"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.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
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.
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.
Last edited by FTW; 11-21-2023 at 02:26 PM.
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).
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 castable
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.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
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.
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.
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.
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.
1
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. As a more serious suggestion, I'd love a Suppression Field on a 2/2 blue Merfolk body for
.
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