All B/R update speculation.

[Lemnear]

Did WoG or Damnation see play before Terminus was printed? No. Legacy is too fast of a format for a 4 mana sorcery-speed spell that doesn't have some iteration of "win the game" on it to be of any significant use.

I am 100% sure that Verdict saw play before Avacyn Restored flipped everything over and made UR Landstill and BUG control obsolete as classic blue control archetypes.

[Megadeus]

Did WoG or Damnation see play before Terminus was printed? No. Legacy is too fast of a format for a 4 mana sorcery-speed spell that doesn't have some iteration of "win the game" on it to be of any significant use.

Just casually decided to check it out. I did legacy archive of TCdecks from February 2009 (kind of an arbitrary date) to May 4, 2012 (Avacyn Restored release date) and looked for any deck containing the card Wrath of God

http://www.tcdecks.net/results.php?t...ide=&strict=on

[Dice_Box]

If they ban something out of Miracles and then Thopters becomes a thing again, I will lose about 10kg thanks to the dancing I would do. I would still be fat, but I would feel no shame as I humiliate myself.

[Megadeus]

Between the pure blade decks, thopter sword control decks, and landstill, I think that link petty much shows how Miracles has stifled the diversity of control in the format. And that's not even counting the BUG decks that had Deed as the sweeper of choice.

[CutthroatCasual]

Color me surprised. That said, I still don't think the speed of the format today would allow for WoG to come back into use. DnT has infinite taxes now compared to before, Eldrazi will kill you before you reach 4 mana, Delver will kill you before you reach 4 mana.

[Dice_Box]

Thinking on it, an Esper build of Thopter, with Deluge, Fatal Push and Swords could likely do decently well if built right. Moat would be a bitch of a card to find though, the price would jump like Tabernacle if that was a deck.

[Megadeus]

You have plenty of excellent spot removal to buy time to the big payoff wrath. Swords, Snapcaster, Stoneforge for Batterskull. There's penty of options for control decks to buy plenty of time. They just are all currently worse than the option available which is Terminus.

[Julian23]

Color me surprised. That said, I still don't think the speed of the format today would allow for WoG to come back into use. DnT has infinite taxes now compared to before, Eldrazi will kill you before you reach 4 mana, Delver will kill you before you reach 4 mana.

That's the part that always gets me. Such sense of entitlement. Classic Legacy has always been to interact with the Control player's wrath through attacking their manabase, their hand or to have graveyard recursion. This is literally where people want to go back to. If this means that UWx control is just one of many playable tier2 strategies is fine. The subtext you get from these "we can't beat" argument is that people think that for whatever reason they should be supposed to beat them.

[Lemnear]

Color me surprised. That said, I still don't think the speed of the format today would allow for WoG to come back into use. DnT has infinite taxes now compared to before, Eldrazi will kill you before you reach 4 mana, Delver will kill you before you reach 4 mana.

Oh my god! UWx control would need to consider running Pyroclasm! How dare, to not have a free roll against any deck with creatures!?

[Megadeus]

Agreed with Julian and Lemnear. I think it is a good thing that control decks may have to supplement weaker and cheaper sweepers like pyroclasm and deluge or firespout. It gives them many options that alternatively give creature based decks ways to fight back via diversification of mana costs, toughness levels, and varying types of protection which add an extra element to metagaming and helping to diversify legacy rather than forcing it into the spot currently where the mass removal is so efficient and powerful and has no way to actually fight it that it has a Xerox effect on legacy which in turn leads to less interesting metas due to people feeling like they are playing the same game over and over again which leads to less interest and eventually dwindling tournament attendance numbers.

It forces you to instead of simply saying well I run 4 terminus as my sweeper because it's by far the best, to looking at your deck and saying, all right I want pyroclasm or Kozileks return to clear out the DnT style decks so that's a 2-of, then I have EE to hit the non creatures that can also sweep away thalia's nicely as a 1 of, and then as a top end I can run 2 Wrath of God or Supreme Verdict as my big payoff sweeper.

[Barook]

I am 100% sure that Verdict saw play before Avacyn Restored flipped everything over and made UR Landstill and BUG control obsolete as classic blue control archetypes.

Verdict never had a chance to shine in the first place. Avacyn Restored was released before RtR.

So all arguments that Verdict is unplayable are nonsense anyway since it was outclassed by Terminus from Day 1.

[btm10]

Color me surprised. That said, I still don't think the speed of the format today would allow for WoG to come back into use. DnT has infinite taxes now compared to before, Eldrazi will kill you before you reach 4 mana, Delver will kill you before you reach 4 mana.

While I think a nerf to Miracles is necessar at this point, I'm not a big fan of a Terminus ban (removing a win condtion is a minor but probably sufficient nerf, and killing Counterbalance gets rid of the most noxious aspect of the deck). I still think you'd still see some amount of 'true' UWx control without Terminus. It would need to run an extra spot removal spell or 2 to bridge into its sweeper (and probably wouldn't have 4 maindeck board wipes as a result), but there's precedent for control being viable, even in the current meta, without the full CounterTop+Terminus suite.

EDIT:

Verdict never had a chance to shine in the first place. Avacyn Restored was released before RtR.

So all arguments that Verdict is unplayable are nonsense anyway since it was outclassed by Terminus from Day 1.

Verdict saw significant play at the end of Esper Stoneblade's life as a serious deck especially (iirc) in the US before Sneak and Show had seen significant retrenchmemt at the hands of D&T.

[Lemnear]

What irks me in this discussion is that people argue that Control (in form of miracles) is supposted to beat Aggro AND Combo. That blows my mind. The classic triangle works like...

Aggro beats control
Control beats combo
Combo beats aggro

...just to remind you of that.

Edit:

Verdict never had a chance to shine in the first place. Avacyn Restored was released before RtR.

So all arguments that Verdict is unplayable are nonsense anyway since it was outclassed by Terminus from Day 1.

Yeah, it saw some play in stoneblade variants, but in general it indeed never had a chance to make an impact

Edit2:

While I think a nerf to Miracles is necessar at this point, I'm not a big fan of a Terminus ban (removing a win condtion is a minor but probably sufficient nerf, and killing Counterbalance gets rid of the most noxious aspect of the deck). I still think you'd still see some amount of 'true' UWx control without Terminus. It would need to run an extra spot removal spell or 2 to bridge into its sweeper (and probably wouldn't have 4 maindeck board wipes as a result), but there's precedent for control being viable, even in the current meta, without the full CounterTop+Terminus suite.

I don't have an issue with Countertop to punish the various combo decks. I just can't accept that the deck not only beats combo on the back of that softlock, but has NO NATURAL PREDATOR in the metagame in the form of Aggro/Aggro-Control/Aggro-Midrange/etc in regards to the classic triangle.

[UnderwaterGuy]

Color me surprised. That said, I still don't think the speed of the format today would allow for WoG to come back into use. DnT has infinite taxes now compared to before, Eldrazi will kill you before you reach 4 mana, Delver will kill you before you reach 4 mana.

This. The control decks we're getting nostalgic over aren't just going to magically come back to the forefront if wotc kills Miracles. Other things have changed over the past years and the weaker control strategies can't keep up.

I've got my fingers crossed for no bannings or restrictions tomorrow. An unban and maybe an unrestriction could be nice though. The blue-haters will be unhappy unless Brainstorm is banned and the format is killed so it's not reasonable to satisfy them.

[Megadeus]

Why not? The meta would completely shift. We have no way of actually knowing what would happen. We can only theorize. I think that the decks like Maverick and others that prey on Delver and Eldrazi would be playable again. While control decks would still probably prey on Maverick.

[Barook]

My prediction for tomorrow:

Legacy: No changes

[Megadeus]

I wonder if they even notice how completely unplayable the last like 4 things they let off the ban list have been. All we heard was bitching about how unfun Vise and Dragon would be and how Powerful Land Tax was back in the day. All completely unplayable. Time for Earthcraft to come off and be probably near unplayable as well.

[btm10]

Why not? The meta would completely shift. We have no way of actually knowing what would happen. We can only theorize. I think that the decks like Maverick and others that prey on Delver and Eldrazi would be playable again. While control decks would still probably prey on Maverick.

That's possible. What ultimately becomes good depends in large part on what sort of combo deck ends up as the best and in what sort of numbers. We probably don't end up with a ton of Eldrazi in the meta for Maverick to prey on, for example, if Sneak and Show floats to the top of the combo heap. It might become a thing again if Storm is the best combo deck, though.

I don't have an issue with Countertop to punish the various combo decks. I just can't accept that the deck not only beats combo on the back of that softlock, but has NO NATURAL PREDATOR in the metagame in the form of Aggro/Aggro-Control/Aggro-Midrange/etc in regards to the classic triangle.

That's a reasonable position, and why I think that an Entreat ban is sufficient to rein the deck in by making it more vulnerable to both control and really grindy midrange decks. I'd guess the matchup spreads are shifted ~5-7 points toward Miracles specifically because Entreat is a card that is commonly played in Miracles and lets Miracles operate as a combo deck whenever it needs to with essentially no deckbuilding concessions. If Miracles had to win with Mentor, or Jace, or Gideon/Elspeth/Baneslayer (or even Decree of Justice, which can't generate anywhere near the power Entreat can for a comparable cost), then the raw card advantage/attrition decks could actually implement their postboard game plan without having to kill before Entreat became an issue (thereby allowing Terminus to recoup more card advantage) or bring/leave in cards like Force of Will that detract from their primary gameplan but are ultimately necessary to not lose to even small, early game Entreats for 2-3 Angels that can be easily followed up with other must-answer threats like Jace in the same turn cycle.

I'd like to see Counterbalance banned because it does a lot to warp how non-combo decks are constructed (whether correctly or not) since people playing non-combo decks probably have a stronger bias toward wanting to 'play Magic' than those who play combo decks. I'd honestly rather see more Chalice/Thorn/Sphere decks to keep combo in check since they're much colder to individual cards like Knight, Daze, Hymn, Tarmogoyf, and opposing Wastelands or basics than Miracles is. I don't love the idea of the format being highly rock-paper-scissors, but letting Ancient Tomb and Delver decks be the combo police is more attractive to me than letting a blue control deck have all the tools to beat everything.

My prediction for tomorrow:

Legacy: No changes

I'd guess we're at even money for something happening. We've finally seen Miracles win something like 4 of the last 6 major events while dominating all 6 top 16-32s. That's not Caw Blade dominance by the numbers, but it's got to be close once you consider the frictions associated with many Legacy players changing decks. Bob Huang's recent article probably also helped.

[gh0st_b1rd]

If there's a card I wouldn't mind seeing banned from Miracles it would be Counterbalance. Truth be told Counterbalance is the card that shuts out most of the diversity out there and let's be frank, there is a lot of degenerate stuff out there that I would never want to see thanks to Counterbalance being in the meta. I was always of the opinion that if the best deck in the meta is a UW Control deck i.e. Landstill, we are in a fantastic place. Unfortunately I can't time travel back to 2002.

As for Terminus, it's just numbers. Remember when we bitched about Tarmogoyf? Terminus is the control card equivalent. It is fine where it is I think.

And then there was Vial Goblins being the best deck and how we all bitched about how Turn 1 Lackey killed off a lot of deck playability space. People built decks to compete vs Goblins but what truly destroyed all of those dinosaur tier 1 decks was power creep.

If you want to see Miracles destroyed wait five years.

[Julian23]

If you want to see Miracles destroyed wait five years.

It's not like we've already waited over 3 years. The problem with Miracles is that it requires super specific hate to even fight. As per the nature of Legacy, the most +EV play it to instead just hope you're either not paired against Miracles, or completly switch decks ("format-wrapping") to something like Eldrazi. This leads to Miracles players often mistaking the rest of the format as "unwilling to adapt" and mention stuff like "just give it time and adapt."