Quote Originally Posted by jrw1985 View Post
Mental Misstep needed to be banned. Here's why:

It was by far the best card in the format. We all knew it the moment we saw New Phyrexia spoiled.
This is just false. If you were to ask veteran Legacy players what the objectively strongest card in the format was before Misstep's ban, I promise you the majority wouldn't give Misstep as their answer. Misstep was a very very strong card, but objectively speaking, it's pretty widely agreed that Brainstorm is the strongest card in the format. Even more so without Misstep in the picture to stop it.


Quote Originally Posted by jjjoness'
Is an environment with ~5 playable decks more skill rewarding than a diverse field of (semi)competitive decks, where there's always the fear of losing to Randomness.dec? I sure don't think so. Innovation and homebrewed decks have always been the thing that made Legacy a unique format. Playing legacy is not only about playing perfectly in matchups you've tested a billion times, if I wanted that I could just play standard. It is also deckbuilding skills, developing new strategies against unknown archetypes and also a lot of metagaming.
I agree that homebrewed innovative decks are one of the defining traits of Legacy. But here's the deal: the more predictable the metagame, the more successfully you can build a homebrewed innovative deck that exploits weaknesses in that metagame. With a totally wide open field, it's pretty much dumb luck if you do well with your homebrewed deck.

In that sense, a highly stable, predictable metagame is actually very good for homebrewers and innovators. It also rewards skill much more highly in that regard.