View Poll Results: Most bannable card in Legacy? (not that they will touch it)

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  • Brainstorm

    16 8.33%
  • Force of Will

    4 2.08%
  • Lion's Eye Diamond

    35 18.23%
  • Counterbalance

    34 17.71%
  • Sensei's Divining Top

    103 53.65%
  • Tarmogoyf

    46 23.96%
  • Phyrexian Dreadnaught

    2 1.04%
  • Goblin Lackey

    4 2.08%
  • Standstill

    6 3.13%
  • Natural Order

    8 4.17%
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Thread: All B/R update speculation.

  1. #14361

    Re: All B/R update speculation.



    That's all I have to say.
    "You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"

  2. #14362

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    I would be on shitty vengevine/bloodghast decks so fast :drool:

  3. #14363

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Hypothetically speaking, IF (and that's a BIG if) Miracles gets a card banned to where it's no longer playable, what deck becomes the new pure control DTB? Playing against Miracles can be miserable, but it is skill intensive. I'd rather play against Miracles than some durdling deck like Landstill. Terminus and Top/CB may be "anti-fun", but so is Standstill+Crucible+Manlands.

    Anyways, I play Elves. I think miracle is a great deck, but not unbeatable. I just tuned my SB and I feel fine. People need to adapt as opposed to cry for bans IMO.

  4. #14364

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    I don't know how many 3-4x Abrupt Decays you need to see before you can't make the claim that people aren't boarding for miracles, or that diversity in the format is suffering.

    The fact of the matter is that you need between 8-12 cards to effectively stop Counterbalance directly
    People playing spells that remove permanents is a sign that Miracles is too much? WTF? I'm appalled people don't build decks with removal in their main deck. Counterbalance is awful without top which gets hammered by dozens of cards. You can go over the top of Counterbalance, you can ignore it with Cavern, you can remove it with decay / grip, you can fight it on the stack, you can play 16 point discard spells that all remove it and cost 1.

  5. #14365
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    @AznSeal discussed recently; there are good posts by Crimhead and btm10 a page or so back where non-midrange control is discussed from differing perspectives concerning a Counterbalance ban and predictions about that hypothetical.

    @nedleeds people having maindeck removal or a 1-for-1 mentality is a fine and valid way to play the game, but that mindset is antithetical to combo decks. It has been pointed out that one can play with the fair mentality or arbitrarily choose to upshift cmcs to questionable levels. You are reinforcing the point that not playing magic (Boseju/Caverns) is a better strategy than trying to directly answer a card, and that's a problem. Moreover there is no successful archetype that wins matches* [sideboarded games included] in legacy with game actions alone, whereas you can play a top-tier deck (Storm) which is totally immune to Terminus. If someone resorts to game actions you need 2-3 sideboard cards to auto-win, if someone uses Counterbalance you need an entire deck and sideboard slots dedicated to winning that match from its inception. Since you seem to be a fair deck pilot, I'd encourage you to rethink boarding in discard as if it is somehow a viable answer to an SDT deck.

    Most of the points your post makes have been covered in the past 2-3 pages. The point of the debate is that miracles is either fine or it isn't, and if you don't think everything is fine without a ban, the card Terminus shouldn't even be in the discussion. Saying CB is ok because you can remove it [i.e. Abrupt Decay], is on par with cheekily telling every fair deck pilot that Terminus is ok b/c you can play blue too - both arguments would advocate decreased deck diversity in legacy (and decreasing diversity is very ban-worthy).

  6. #14366
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    Most of the points your post makes have been covered in the past 2-3 pages. The point of the debate is that miracles is either fine or it isn't, and if you don't think everything is fine without a ban, the card Terminus shouldn't even be in the discussion. Saying CB is ok because you can remove it [i.e. Abrupt Decay], is on par with cheekily telling every fair deck pilot that Terminus is ok b/c you can play blue too - both arguments would advocate decreased deck diversity in legacy (and decreasing diversity is very ban-worthy).
    To return to the broader discussion, are you concerned at all that removing Miracles (and more specifically, Counterbalance) from the meta just leads back to a situation where the best Delver deck is simply the best deck? I understand that there's a line of thinking that says that higher-order effects of a ban shouldn't be considered because we don't know how the meta will shift without a banworthy card, but it's also difficult to hold that opinion while also being against a Brainstorm ban.

  7. #14367

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Miracles is a strong deck, no question. The interesting thing about it is that there are multiple cards that exist within the framework of the deck (i.e. Sensei's Divining Top, Counterbalance, Terminus) that people seem to be pointing fingers at, and for good reason: they're very powerful cards. If you go back a number of years - long before Miracles was even a printed mechanic - you'll see old Counter-Top lists circa 2008 that just floundered as popular control variants people were having success with. It wasn't as though these decks were unbeatable, in fact, it was just the opposite. Fast aggro decks were always a bona fide strategy to knock said control deck from its high horse. It's always been that way, ever since the beginning. Control has always had issues with fast, aggressive strategies that aimed to kill the control player before they were able to stabilize.

    During that time period, you had cards like Wrath, Firespout and later Verdict - all which aimed to act as board sweepers to stabilize the Counter-Top player's board. All of the aforementioned cards used from a historical perspective in CB/SDT decks had reasonable costs with dual-mana investments. Right now, we live in a world where the norm is a one-mana, instant-speed Wrath of God that doesn't even allow cards like Tarmogoyf to have a chance to get bigger or accommodate reanimated creature targets to become reanimated again. The fact is aggro decks these days are having such a hard time getting ahead against Miracles and holding back their creatures because of one card: Terminus.

    The card Terminus is broken in conjunction with Sensei's Divining Top. And Brainstorm nudges the card to egregious levels. You can sugarcoat it all you want, but no person running a fierce aggro strategy should have to push as much as they can into the face of this deck and either get setup like a Mob hit (with Brainstorm or Top) or incidentally (Miracle) screwed over by a card that sweeps the board for a single mana. I really want to believe in my heart that Terminus isn't broken because it's such a bad card when it's in your hand. But in a format where SDT, Jace and Brainstorm are ubiquitous, it's hard for me to concede to the latter. People could argue forever their point based on a number of factors, but I think we're at a point now where Miracles isn't becoming just the deck in the format where people are saying, "I need to beat decks X, Y and Z to do well," they're saying, "Can I beat Miracles and Miracles alone to get me into the elimination rounds, and am I prepared to do so?" That's not normal, it just isn't.

    Does this equate to simple metagaming in order to beat Miracles? It's hard to say. But there comes a point where we have to look at what's happening where people are boarding Grips, Decays, Boils, Koths, Ajanis, Null Rods, etc. to beat this deck - and still can't have a positive match-up against it, no matter what erroneous statements they try to sell. I personally have no beef with Miracles (and why I stay away from this particular thread at all costs), but I know a bully when I see one. And this deck - with Terminus - is just that: a bully.

  8. #14368

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by btm10 View Post
    To return to the broader discussion, are you concerned at all that removing Miracles (and more specifically, Counterbalance) from the meta just leads back to a situation where the best Delver deck is simply the best deck? I understand that there's a line of thinking that says that higher-order effects of a ban shouldn't be considered because we don't know how the meta will shift without a banworthy card, but it's also difficult to hold that opinion while also being against a Brainstorm ban.
    I really struggle to follow that argument.
    Most midrange deck (that dont have to play 12 sideboard cards for miracles) could handle delver fairly well in my opinion, MUs like Jund or Maverik can easily be troublesome for delver decks.

    Also lands, aggro loam and nic fit decks can punish delver or at least have a fight.

    The current state of the meta is dictated mainly by miracles.
    Non blue creature decks are kept in check (in my opinion too heavily) by terminus
    Most combo decks are kept in check by both countertop and delver

    Fair non blue deck are forced to rely on chalice or to play a prisonish game plan in order to beat both combos and miracles, so they likely have to renounce a really good delver MU for a more balanced one.
    I do think Miracles is being way too oppressing for the format, and its not about the obscene top 32 the last USA GP had, miracles kept being the top dog for at least 2 years now, it was in like 80% of GP's finals, it was consistently able to have mostly positive MU's (it only struggled during the dig era, but we ended up with the ridicolous dig ban with mentor untouched witch pushed the deck even further) and now we are reaching the end.

    Im confidant that a "perfect" miracles player would have a positive MU against something like 95% of the metagame, mentor fixed most bad MUs, you can now win against any single deck, having as bad mu only some chalice/vial deck (mainly loam and eldrazi) known for their inconsistency and (rightfully) unplayed/underplayed decks such as dredge and post ramp and all of those "bad" MU are nowhere close to what a bad MU should be.

    A bad MU is punishing jund for elves, you dont expect to win unless they lose by themselves, you can pull out some miracolous wins but you lose most of the time crushed by their superior strategy in that MU, you can try to fix the mu postboard but you tend to lose it anyway.
    Miracles can rush a mentor and destroy a post ramp.
    A terminus topdeck can instawin against eldrazi, you can also pack planty of hate post board and have a rather fair battle
    You can outpace aggro loam not getting their engine working, a turn 1 top usually gives miracle a good shot in the MU
    A lucky terminus can win game 1 against DREDGE, you have the best hate post board

    It may be me being unreasonable, but in my opinion no tier 1 deck shoul be that good
    "You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"

  9. #14369
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noctalor View Post
    Most midrange deck (that dont have to play 12 sideboard cards for miracles) could handle delver fairly well in my opinion, MUs like Jund or Maverik can easily be troublesome for delver decks.
    Look at it this way, why play BG/x midrange (Jund or Shardless) or Maverick when you could just play BUG Delver, you still have Land>DRS>Hymn>waste you, and you have daze + FOW. Sure you can beat delver decks but without daze and Force, but over the course of a 15 round tournament, you have to be very lucky not to see them at least 1-2. Delver (like miracles) has the benefit of having few genuinely unwinnable MUs across it's many variants, with even the rough ones (Lands and D&T for example) being very winnable once prepared.

    No terminus means that ACTUAL midrange decks (such as Nic Fit and Maverick) can exist and it's possible we will see more of them, and as you stated, it's hard to say as we don't know what that meta looks like.
    Quote Originally Posted by iatee View Post
    I still have a strong suspicion that if 'Thalia, Heretic Cathar' had been named 'Frank, Heretic Cathar', people would be a lot more skeptical of it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Goin Aggro View Post
    Ugh, there he goes again, talking about the girlfriend. We get it dude.

  10. #14370
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Terminus isn't the thing non-blue midrange players should be most scared of, combo is. You can build a Nic Fit or Maverick deck to have a good Miracles matchup, they will always be soft to fast combo.

  11. #14371
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by iatee View Post
    Terminus isn't the thing non-blue midrange players should be most scared of, combo is. You can build a Nic Fit or Maverick deck to have a good Miracles matchup, they will always be soft to fast combo.
    Maverick and Nic Fit are both decks that want to play to the board and generate advantages that way, Terminus means they cannot execute their plan, not without severely changing how they are suppose to execute their plan.

    Also, while you could do that, Jund and Shardless naturally have better MUs against Miracles without having to bend over backwards doing so.
    Quote Originally Posted by iatee View Post
    I still have a strong suspicion that if 'Thalia, Heretic Cathar' had been named 'Frank, Heretic Cathar', people would be a lot more skeptical of it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Goin Aggro View Post
    Ugh, there he goes again, talking about the girlfriend. We get it dude.

  12. #14372

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    I don't think miracles is the problem, I think decks not using new ideas because people say this is how its supposed to be because this says it's best.

    Also experience plays a huge role in how you play "your deck" against such a thing.

    Many decks run MB cards that can answer CB and top.
    Someone said using something like 12 cards to fight against 2 cards(CB+top as that's the boogieman of the deck because it makes it the deck).

    Starting to sound like pauper opponents for teps,
    For some reason every deck had to dedicate 12-15 cards to beat it when maybe main deck something is wrong because the community is not working on the decks and just seeing the next list to top8.

  13. #14373

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sidneyious View Post
    I don't think miracles is the problem, I think decks not using new ideas because people say this is how its supposed to be because this says it's best.

    Also experience plays a huge role in how you play "your deck" against such a thing.

    Many decks run MB cards that can answer CB and top.
    Someone said using something like 12 cards to fight against 2 cards(CB+top as that's the boogieman of the deck because it makes it the deck).

    Starting to sound like pauper opponents for teps,
    For some reason every deck had to dedicate 12-15 cards to beat it when maybe main deck something is wrong because the community is not working on the decks and just seeing the next list to top8.
    Saying that the community isn't trying sounds rude to me.

    Maverik fanatics tryed their best since Terminus happened, they are still doing it actually, but a 20 creature deck with no vials or chalice isn't going to work.
    I've seen list packing insane amount of good cards against miracles, multiple library, plainswalkers, krosan grip, multiple gaddock paired with sylvan safekeeper, those lists still were unable to win even half the times, and had way worse mu all around.
    The answer green based deck had to this metagame was maindeck a playset of chalice, hoping to deal with both combo and miracles locking them out of the game.

    Also there arent many brand new decks possible in legacy, the base power level is so high that from a 16k card pool the only real playable ones are less than 500 most likely, gimmick decks such as sylvan plug can spawn, but there is no way that a non hate deck is going to rise without any new print/ban/unban involved.

    And i guess its not unreasonable to have no non-blue midrange deck at all in the format, but i would rather have some, i find pretty boring to have just chalice decks as the non-blue side of the format

    Having to play MD answers to even have a chance is in fact format warping, sure there are plenty of main deckable answers to top and cb, but the only answer to terminus is to not play creature based decks or you're going to have troubles
    "You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"

  14. #14374
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    If you want to play a competitive Knight of the Reliquary deck, you can play Aggro Loam. If you want to play a competitive Mother of Runes / Thalia deck, you can play Death and Taxes. Those decks do have game against Miracles. Maverick was a combination of magic cards that was very strong for a particular time period, and it's not as strong now, that's just part of a format evolving. If you're a Maverick fanatic, you're not owed anything by the world that a Pros-Bloom fanatic isn't also owed.

    There are a million theoretical decks that aren't playable in legacy due to Wasteland+Daze punishing you for playing anything but a tight curve or due to the fact that they're not blue and thus forever soft to combo. Terminus is far from the only card silently pushing things out of the format.

  15. #14375
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Unban Goblin Recruiter.

  16. #14376

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Unban Recruiter Make Goblins Great Again!

    Unban Survival of the Fittest Make Toolbox great again!!!

    Unban Earthcraft Make Enchantress great Again!!!

    (Notice how all three decks have good Miracles matchups...)

    Unban Mind Twist, make the banlist make sense again!!!

  17. #14377
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by btm10 View Post
    To return to the broader discussion, are you concerned at all that removing Miracles (and more specifically, Counterbalance) from the meta just leads back to a situation where the best Delver deck is simply the best deck? I understand that there's a line of thinking that says that higher-order effects of a ban shouldn't be considered because we don't know how the meta will shift without a banworthy card, but it's also difficult to hold that opinion while also being against a Brainstorm ban.
    I think a Counterbalance ban most immediately leads to UWR Stoneblade [maybe with some miracles cards still] as the control deck which costs very little money to rotate into and has to play fair (losing a card to counter a card). Delver has never been great at handling equipment decks, so I don't know this move really helps them; certainly RUG Delver comes back a bit with CB out, which perhaps takes Grixis Delver down some.

    I don't think Brainstorm ban is realistic because decks would have to be significantly more blue to be able to run FoW, which kills diversity (losing off-color cards to run the same new blue cards). Gitaxian Probe though, yes - this is a card that should have been banned in legacy and restricted in vintage a long time ago. Even though I'd rank Git. Probe as more ban-worthy than DTT, Cruise, and CB, the high power level isn't drastically warping the format like the other three did/are currently. Let's take a moment to point out that while Brainstorm warps the format, it warps it towards FoW and away from hyper-combo like Belcher; this actually increases diversity. Counterbalance has always been a problem card and left unbanned, it will always scour the card pool for SDT effects. What we're seeing now is a critical mass of good cards (not banworthy ones, Mentor and Terminus) and access to the best slot unintensive 'I win post-board game' cards resulting in a deck that's drastically warping the meta-game in statistically significant ways. Right now, it's probably safe to say that miracles is shifting the format in more profound ways than DTT Omnitell could have ever hoped to. I don't think going down the modern path and banning good card after good card to keep a problem card in the format is a recipe for success.

  18. #14378
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by btm10 View Post
    To return to the broader discussion, are you concerned at all that removing Miracles (and more specifically, Counterbalance) from the meta just leads back to a situation where the best Delver deck is simply the best deck? I understand that there's a line of thinking that says that higher-order effects of a ban shouldn't be considered because we don't know how the meta will shift without a banworthy card, but it's also difficult to hold that opinion while also being against a Brainstorm ban.
    With Miracles out of the picture, I assume Elves would get alot better. Whether or not it could rise to problematic levels is a different topic.

    In the end, it would come down to either weaken Miracles by banning either Terminus or CB, or take down the real enabler in form of SDT while hitting a small number of Tier 2/3 decks for the greater good.

    I believe Legacy deserves a break in one form or the other. Miracles has been the top dog of the format for three years straight in Legacy. It's one of the few archetypes that got constant upgrades to stay the cream of the crop (e.g. Wear/Tear, Council's Judgment, Monastery Mentor, Dig through Time) and is probably going to do so in future as it can easily absorb good control cards into its shell.

  19. #14379

    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Barook View Post
    With Miracles out of the picture, I assume Elves would get alot better. Whether or not it could rise to problematic levels is a different topic.

    In the end, it would come down to either weaken Miracles by banning either Terminus or CB, or take down the real enabler in form of SDT while hitting a small number of Tier 2/3 decks for the greater good.

    I believe Legacy deserves a break in one form or the other. Miracles has been the top dog of the format for three years straight in Legacy. It's one of the few archetypes that got constant upgrades to stay the cream of the crop (e.g. Wear/Tear, Council's Judgment, Monastery Mentor, Dig through Time) and is probably going to do so in future as it can easily absorb good control cards into its shell.
    Elves can easily be hated out... From chalice on 1 to Engineered Explosives to Engineered Plague, so many cards just kill the deck... The deck cant be the best deck in the format because people just shift their sb or decks(combo) and it goes away.

  20. #14380
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    Re: All B/R update speculation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    I think a Counterbalance ban most immediately leads to UWR Stoneblade [maybe with some miracles cards still] as the control deck which costs very little money to rotate into and has to play fair (losing a card to counter a card). Delver has never been great at handling equipment decks, so I don't know this move really helps them; certainly RUG Delver comes back a bit with CB out, which perhaps takes Grixis Delver down some.

    I don't think Brainstorm ban is realistic because decks would have to be significantly more blue to be able to run FoW, which kills diversity (losing off-color cards to run the same new blue cards). Gitaxian Probe though, yes - this is a card that should have been banned in legacy and restricted in vintage a long time ago. Even though I'd rank Git. Probe as more ban-worthy than DTT, Cruise, and CB, the high power level isn't drastically warping the format like the other three did/are currently. Let's take a moment to point out that while Brainstorm warps the format, it warps it towards FoW and away from hyper-combo like Belcher; this actually increases diversity. Counterbalance has always been a problem card and left unbanned, it will always scour the card pool for SDT effects. What we're seeing now is a critical mass of good cards (not banworthy ones, Mentor and Terminus) and access to the best slot unintensive 'I win post-board game' cards resulting in a deck that's drastically warping the meta-game in statistically significant ways. Right now, it's probably safe to say that miracles is shifting the format in more profound ways than DTT Omnitell could have ever hoped to. I don't think going down the modern path and banning good card after good card to keep a problem card in the format is a recipe for success.
    The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that I don't think that a Stoneblade variant can be tier 1 and have the meta at equilibrium since its BGx and Lands matchups are so miserable while it doesn't gain much against combo relative to those decks. On top of that, its Delver matchups, while favorable, aren't as good as Miracles' Delver matchups. I actually think Grixis Delver is softer to Blade than it is to Miracles, but Blade's matchup against BUG Delver leaves a lot to be desired.

    Just to clarify, I don't think that Brainstorm should be banned, but I do think we need to firmly rule out lines of reasoning that would include it rather than argue for a position and then retroactively look for ways to exempt Brainstorm from the discussion.

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