Quote Originally Posted by Zilla View Post
He's not, but if he was it would be a shitty comparison, because Brainstorm and FoW have no bearing whatsoever on an aggro player's choice to play 1cc spells. Misstep alone is what impacted that choice, and not by very much. Zoo is rife with 1cc spells and remained the top aggro deck in the format while Misstep was legal.
Thank you. Just to clarify, I'm not comparing Misstep to Mana Drain. As Tammit pointed out, I was just trying to give an example of a card that did warp the format without putting up huge numbers. It'd be closer to say I was comparing Vial and Mana Drain, but even that's not really correct; I'm not prepared to make claims one way or the other as to what Vial does to the format. I just wanted to point out that it could be a warping factor without being found in more than 19% of the T8's.

Honestly, I'm not even entirely certain I like the term "warp the format" as there is a very negative implication there. You could say that the loss of Moxen in Legacy vs. Vintage warps the format towards creature decks and makes Swords to Plowshares more powerful than Mystic Remora. And you'd be absolutely correct, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, for those of us that gave up on T1 around Mirrodin because we got really sick of losing on turn 1 with regularity, the difference between Vintage and Legacy is one is fun and exciting and the other is even more ridiculously expensive and kind of lame. I happen to like that particular warp. So yeah, we need to come up with a better term than warping. Forcing the format to adapt, perhaps?



Quote Originally Posted by Draener View Post
I don't agree with the above with the above mentality that since we have so many broken 1 drops in Legacy, a free way to counter 1 drops should be banned. It would seem to be that decks would, over time, naturally gravitate to playing more powerful 2+ cost casting spells. I think this would be a good thing, as there is a much larger variety of playable cards once you don't have to worry about dying on turn 3. Spell snare, however, does throw a kink in this plan.
You already saw it. As I've said a couple of times in various places, the reason that NO RUG and Stoneblade did so well in comparison to the rest of the field is that they got mileage out of Mental Misstep while being cold to it. NO RUG doesn't really care if you counter their Brainstorm or their Grim Lavamancer. As long as they can chain Tarmogoyfs with GSZ and cast Natural Order, they're happy. Stoneblade is happy as long as they can resolve Stoneforge Mystic and Jace. Blue decks that weren't either of those two would've been better served by running Spell Pierce instead of Mental Misstep. But the fact that Misstep was "ZOMG SO GOOD" blinded people to the fact that it wasn't necessarily the best card for their deck. I mean, Wild Nacatl is leagues better than Nimble Mongoose, but you wouldn't try and shove it into a Canadian Thresh shell when 'goose fits the deck better.

I do believe that given time, the metagame would've adjusted to the card. Not necessarily to where it was pre-Misstep, it was strong enough to have a lasting impact. But as I said in the 'banner' thread, I think Green Sun's Zenith has actually had a bigger impact on the format than Misstep. But it's not blue, so people don't look at it as hard. But if you look at the format since Zenith was released, it's managed to kill Counterbalance decks, single handedly bring Iona/Retainers back (Maverick), changed the flavor of NO decks from Bant to RUG, vaulted big Zoo into supremacy over Cat Sligh and improved Elves by leaps and freaking bounds (Elves is still underplayed, but that might change with Misstep going away, the deck is better than people give it credit for). Talk about a card that's changed the face of the format.