[Legacy Lessons] A Word On Force of Will

[Einherjer]

Check out my new short article on Force of Will! :)

Greetings

[Echelon]

Even though I loathe Force of Will and its ability to foil my beautiful and evil plans I think your article is a very necessary one for people new to eternal formats in general. It does a wonderful job of explaining the necessity of this card in the format, which is an important thing to understand.

Good job!

[Zombie]

DrJones' old adage holds: Force is the rug under which you hide the filth until you can't hide it anymore. His mistake was in thinking that was a bad thing. It's not, it allows for an entertainingly broken format.

[Julian23]

DrJones never really hated Force. He hated his unwillingness to play drastic answers to insane threats, which lead to his eventual demise.

[Infinitium]

Not even mentioning its ability to protect your own plays? Right.

[Finn]

DrJones' old adage holds: Force is the rug under which you hide the filth until you can't hide it anymore. His mistake was in thinking that was a bad thing. It's not, it allows for an entertainingly broken format.

I completely agree with what you have said here. Legacy is at its best when 8 different decks top 8 with more than half of them being weird shit like Lands, Imperial Painter, D+T, Dredge, storm, etc. But they can not all stick around without Force of Will being present in large numbers in the rest of the field. I feel strongly that the banned list would explode if we did not have that rug. That is, I think FoW fosters diversity.

[nedleeds]

Force of Will is balanced enough for Legacy certainly. Try playing it against a deck with 36 Grizzly Bears and it's quite bad.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Force of Will is balanced enough for Legacy certainly. Try playing it against a deck with 36 Grizzly Bears and it's quite bad.

Yeah I board it out against Death and Taxes too.

[Einherjer]

Good job!

Thank you very much! :)

That is, I think FoW fosters diversity.

Agreed. We cannot have a Legacy that resembles the current or most past ones without Force of Will. I don't think anybody can actually try to blame Force of Will for anything bad right now. :)

Yeah I board it out against Death and Taxes too.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. It surely depends on the match-up you're talking about but DnT has a fair number of heavy hitters for several match-ups that break the symmetry of the match pretty harshly. Rest in Peace for GY-decks, Cataclysm for Control decks, Batterskull for aggressive decks... the list goes on.

Greetings

[iatee]

I completely agree with what you have said here. Legacy is at its best when 8 different decks top 8 with more than half of them being weird shit like Lands, Imperial Painter, D+T, Dredge, storm, etc. But they can not all stick around without Force of Will being present in large numbers in the rest of the field. I feel strongly that the banned list would explode if we did not have that rug. That is, I think FoW fosters diversity.

While I think this is true I also don't think you can remove it from the brainstorm discussion as they come in a package. Force is, in a vacuum, a very fair and well designed magic card. But its unique effect also requires that people play a sufficient quantity of cheap blue cards to pitch to it. So it allows for a large wild west but puts some real design limits on the on the 67% of decks that play it.

[Ace/Homebrew]

But its unique effect also requires that people play a sufficient quantity of cheap blue cards to pitch to it.

Force of Will makes no such requirement. You can pitch Leviathan to it just as effectively as Pact of Negation.

I don't think you can remove it from the brainstorm discussion as they come in a package.

See Merfolk.

[iatee]

Interesting point. I wonder why I have never seen that happen.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Interesting point. I wonder why I have never seen that happen.

Hey man, you're the one saying stupid shit. I'm just pointing it out.

Legacy has a very large card pool so only the most efficiently costed cards make the cut in competitive deck lists unless the strategy dictates otherwise (Stompy).
The reason RUG runs Brainstorm and Ponder has only a little to do with Force of Will.

[Admiral_Arzar]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. It surely depends on the match-up you're talking about but DnT has a fair number of heavy hitters for several match-ups that break the symmetry of the match pretty harshly. Rest in Peace for GY-decks, Cataclysm for Control decks, Batterskull for aggressive decks... the list goes on.

Greetings

I agree with you, that line was intended as a joke/dig at DnT (36bears.dec) rather than actual strategic advice.

[jrsthethird]

I tell the ten year olds at my LGS that Islands are blue so I don't have to run as many blue cards with FOW.

[Jamaican Zombie Legend]

I can't disagree with the article's contents, but I'm not exactly in love with Force of Will being the only viable, maindeck option to stop fast combo/prison.

You'd think in a format as "deep" as Legacy, there would be more than one way to effectively police degenerate combo, but nope, only Force exists and pushes the player heavily into one color. It's shitty that "diversity" translates into "play Blue or get rolled by fast combo". Hardcore Spike-types will just see this as part of the (meta) game, but as someone who mostly plays for fun, the idea of sleeving up a pet deck for a tourney and being wholly dependent on the matchup lottery to be able to actually play Magic is a real drag.

It all comes down to Wizard's obstinacy regarding instant-speed stack interaction being solely relegated to Blue. Yeah, yeah, the color pie matters (except for all the times Blue receives all the goodies), but the Stack is such a fundamental part of the game that more than 20% of the colors should be able to interact with it somehow.

[bakofried]

I play shitty bear decks and never feel like a dog to combo. Sure I don't have Force, but Thalia, Teeg, Chalice, Thoughtseize, Deathrite, Eidolon....you have a shot.

[Whippoorwill]

Not even mentioning its ability to protect your own plays? Right.

From point #2:

It’s sometimes very hard to contain the happiness I feel every single time as this means that I’m not only more likely to win any counter war in the future but also that I will most likely not have to worry about a lot of additional disruption, enabling me to resolve the spells that make sure I don’t die, like Terminus or Swords to Plowshares. This counter baiting is a very delicate game of skill but keep in mind, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

[Humphrey]

Yeah, yeah, the color pie matters (except for all the times Blue receives all the goodies)

well, being OP is part of blues pie since alpha

[Zombie]

I completely agree with what you have said here. Legacy is at its best when 8 different decks top 8 with more than half of them being weird shit like Lands, Imperial Painter, D+T, Dredge, storm, etc. But they can not all stick around without Force of Will being present in large numbers in the rest of the field. I feel strongly that the banned list would explode if we did not have that rug. That is, I think FoW fosters diversity.

Force of Will is balanced enough for Legacy certainly. Try playing it against a deck with 36 Grizzly Bears and it's quite bad.

Force is a fine card. There are interesting play decisions with it and most tellingly: For such a ubiquitously useful card it's numbers get cut in 75's and it actually gets sided out often. I think that combination of usefulness and numbers adjusting behavior is a good sign of a card that has a healthy place in the format.

While I think this is true I also don't think you can remove it from the brainstorm discussion as they come in a package. Force is, in a vacuum, a very fair and well designed magic card. But its unique effect also requires that people play a sufficient quantity of cheap blue cards to pitch to it. So it allows for a large wild west but puts some real design limits on the on the 67% of decks that play it.

There used to be a time when people stressed about including enough blue cards to fuel Force. You don't see those kinds of posts at all anymore. You mostly see those kinds of concerns from Delver and Goblins pilots and sometimes the occasional attempt at reconfiguring Elves.