Originally Posted by
Fox
I'd take a real close look at that graph on the previous page and look at the Abrupt Decay graph; there's no way a Survival unban results in more diverse fair decks, and every Survival deck is going to run Decay. This card isn't an effective policeman of the format, nor does it lead to intellectually interesting matchups. I wonder if the OP could create a graph highlighting decks which lack Brainstorm but have Decay vs no BS and no Decay?
Removal-based magic is fine, but you can generally scratch that itch by playing Modern/Standard/Limited, so it's always a bit hard to understand why people want legacy (or vintage) to feel like those. Board removal is small-minded/narrow and by itself pretty much an admission that you're not willing to compete on the stack. Legacy is incredibly varied and the cantrip cartel decks generally point their removal stack-ward letting them interact with both fair and unfair approaches. Sure you have to be in blue to have the most diverse interactive scope (i.e. countermagic)...and that warps color representation of the format but still you hear all this outrage from the crowd that conveniently forgets that they gave up on multi-dimensional interaction. I don't really hear discard enthusiasts (like Pox) going around claiming that their one-dimensional hand attack should be without inherent weakness. Imperfect, unconventional solutions are what make legacy/vintage fun, and [for instance] I'd rather watch or play these formats with/against solutions like Tabernacle than a mindless piece of spot removal.
I voted for the current state of legacy being okay, and a large part of that is this more represented mindset that players only want to play 'their' type of magic - and many new border cards are absolving such [fair] mindsets from needing to have holistic approaches to interaction.
