All B/R update speculation.

[tescrin]

Speaking of the Top ban, I'm interested to hear what people who used to run it are up to these days—not just that people are setting old decks on fire, but what people are doing to modify lists that used to run the card. Is this the appropriate thread?

I used it in Nic Fit when I was new, took awhile before my playing sped up because it's a huge amount of information, and getting the stack the way you want it can be difficult (hence my sig has had the stack for drawing one of your top 3 cards while fetching it away for awhile, while also organizing your next top-3.)
[used to i guess. Spin, Fetch, Spin, Draw all on the stack]

I was a lot faster by the time I was using it in DGA, and now I think I can evaluate most brainstorms, ponders, and top spins in a couple seconds at most. The problem with Top is mostly that doing that, deciding whether or not to draw, etc.. is usually thinking about mana curves, differences in playlines, and normally 2-3 of them, and whether it's viable to draw in a single go; depending.

That said, Miracles had it easy for top because it's big plays were usually 1 mana and the lockout presented by top meant you only drew when necessary. It could even run 4 with BS, meaning that duplicates didn't have the odd "Play a top, search with top, draw with top, shuffle" nonsense as often, and drawing a bad card with top is much more managable in a Jace/BS where you have to evaluate fetching in a non-blue deck each turn. What's more, Miracles has no unintended shuffles from GSZ, Explorer, Stoneforge, or similar.

I know someone will argue how Miracles was only run by 1338 experts and is the hardest to play and everything is the deepest playline and makes DDFT look like child's play and stephen hawking couldn't play miracles; but "Nanner nanner Top's banned nanner!" is what I have to say to such elitism. It's like the "Brainstorm is hard" crowd.

Let's be honest people, just one time.

[Megadeus]

I'm pretty sure I'd still play all of those cards even if Brainstorm was banned. I think what you meant to say was fetchlands. Fetchlands are the reason those cards are as strong as they are/were.

Miracles would be bad if you couldn't brainstorm them back. Delve spells would be a lot worse when you couldn't get rid of excess copies

[Barook]

If DRS/BUG really becomes a problem, then people should just run more Great Sable Stag - and it even hoses Dredge to boot!

[Mr Miagi]

If DRS/BUG really becomes a problem, then people should just run more Great Sable Stag - and it even hoses Dredge to boot!

wow, that's actually a legit sb card vs bug grind decks :)

[Lord Seth]

This is true, but it may be that people seeing that one Standard was basically Siege Rhino everywhere and another standard before that was mostly mono-black and before that it was Sphinx Rev (i think?), etc.. was maybe chipping away at they're willingness to commit to "let's let people rot in this forsaken world" for awhile.

I don't think one deck being the clear deck to beat in Standard is what drives people away from Standard (unless it's really out of hate like Caw-Blade or Affinity) because most Standards seem to have such a deck. Though, I should mention that the Standard before Monoblack Devotion was actually an incredibly diverse Standard with viable decks from all of the major archetypes (aggro, midrange, control, combo... well, not so much the last one but there were still okay combo decks). It wasn't without some problems (Supreme Verdict was frustratingly hard to interact with and Bonfire of the Damned was way too swingy) but there was practically nothing to complain about in regards to diversity. Yes, Sphinx's Revelation decks were a big part of the format, but they didn't dominate, nor did anything really.

Eh. Cruise, Dig, and Top are all paying for Brainstorms sins. All of those things would be in the format if brainstorm weren't around.

Because Treasure Cruise and Sensei's Divining Top never caused any problems in the Brainstorm-less Modern or Extended formats, right?

[LOLWut]

edit: I think these results might show what I mean- http://series.magiccardmarket.eu/cov...acy/#top8decks
Top 8 at the MKM. 3 combo decks that obviously won't play Deathrite Shaman as they are combo, and the other 5 decks all play Deathrite. Grixis Delver, Stoneblade, Elves, Punishing Loam, and Food Chain. None of those decks resemble one another in the slightest, from mana-bases to play style they are all wildy different. What do they have in common though? You guessed it, they play the best creature in the format, even if they have to splash an extra color for him.

Look, I can extrapolate statements from one event too:

This is the top 16 from the other big event this weekend (137 players):

1st - Eldrazi
2nd - 4c Control
3rd - Grixis Delver
4th - RUG Delver
5th - UWr Stoneblade
6th - BUG Delver
7th - DnT
8th - BR Reanimator
9th - D&T
10th - Junk
11th - Infect
12th (DQ) - Burn
13th - Grixis Delver
14th - Bant Blade w/ Leovold
15th - Show n Tell
16th - Show n Tell

The 3 combo decks that don't play DRS.
Of the other 13, 6 play DRS, and 7 do not.

The Eldrazi, RUG Delver, UWr Stoneblade, DnT, Burn, and Infect pilots should have splashed to keep up, eh.

[Kanti]

Why are people so ban-happy to begin with? I was glad to see Miracles take a dive, but I still didn't like the idea of banning stuff from it at all—much less a card that had utility in other decks. Bans are a necessary evil, not a tool for building a metagame.

Also, I'm equally surprised/unimpressed that eight days after a really major ban, it's already back to "ban X or Y because it's too good." And awaaay we goooo!

I'm still curious as to whether people thought Top was causing slow-play problems in other decks, or whether it was just Miracles.

Speaking of the Top ban, I'm interested to hear what people who used to run it are up to these days—not just that people are setting old decks on fire, but what people are doing to modify lists that used to run the card. Is this the appropriate thread?

[EDIT: Realizing that the "new metagame" thread is probably a better place.]

I'm honestly gutted to see Top go, as much as I hated CB-Top. Posted this on another thread, but I basically started playing "real" Magic in Extended 2007 when CB-Top Goyf/Confidant BUG deck won the Pro Tour. CB-Top has been in my life ever since, format to format, and I honestly have never picked it up. So for one, I will in a way miss playing against it.

But really, I am just sad to see Top go as it was not the problem in my eyes, the ban made so many t1.5-2 strategy in Legacy worse. I think banning Terminus could have solved some things, and if you really wanted to cut the head off the dragon ban Terminus and Counterbalance. I am as bummed to see it go as I was bummed to see Survival go. This whole "limiting design space" blah blah blah. So what? Ban old cards so you can release new cards? Ew. They took away two great cards and left the format with three shit cards in Vengevine, and Terminus+Counterbalance.

[Lemnear]

Because 87.5% of a top 32 at a GP is completely absurd and basically invalidates the deck building process and is a completely broken card.

God, this argument has been besten to death. If 100% of decks in a GP T8 run 4-9 Fetchlands, no one is questioning that with the metric of "invalidates deck building process" but circlejerks on the 4-color-goodstuff decks enabled by the Fetchlands

[MorphBerlin]

Eh. Cruise, Dig, and Top are all paying for Brainstorms sins. All of those things would be in the format if brainstorm weren't around.

Totally, in modern, where BS is not around, Dig and especially cruise were super safe

[Gheizen64]

Let's be frank, cruise and dig would've been OP even in a non-bs meta, while much worse since you couldn't shuffle multiples back, especially dig, which probably would've lasted longer in the format. After all, best dig decks were Omnitell/Miracles which both get hit hard by a BS ban. But top would absolutely not have been banned because of a BS-less miracle deck.

[frafen]

Julian Knab‏
@itsJulian23

One guy still played Miracles at #mkmsfrankfurt including Sensei's Diving Top. Had to replace Top with 4 Basics when it was discovered.
https://twitter.com/itsJulian23/stat...99202761306112

The judges must have felt like people bringing news of a death. Can't imagine the sudden change in the look on the guy's face.

Couldn't he add some real cards instead of lands? Maybe some portents?

[Hopo]

Couldn't he add some real cards instead of lands? Maybe some portents?

That's not how decklist errors are handled in this game.

[Ace/Homebrew]

Couldn't he add some real cards instead of lands?

Well... assuming he added Islands, he replaced Top with 4 of the most powerful cards in the game.

[LeoCop 90]

This thing that you replace decklist errors with basic lands hurts me as a blood moon player XD

[Claymore]

Greetings MTGO Commanders,

We’ve heard your reaction to the Magic Online Commander update and will be adjusting our plan to accommodate. It was never our intent to disrupt the paper multiplayer Commander community and the format you play at your local game store or at home with friends. We fully support the Rules Committee’s work to make multiplayer Commander the best it can be and will do our best to support their effort.

http://wizardsmtgo.tumblr.com/post/1...mtgo-commander

I mean...listening to customer feedback, great. But holy shit we cannot take them at their word anymore. Need to have a ban list update followed by a ban list announcement revision watch.

[Dice_Box]

What happened to trigger this?

[Barook]

What happened to trigger this?

Wizards being lazy, incompetent fucks, as always.

They couldn't be bothered to maintain two banned lists for single & multiplayer Commander on MTGO, so they made up their own unified banned list which applies to both formats with additional changes like banning Sol Ring etc. - people were really pissed, and this announcement is the result.

There's also other questionable stuff up in the air, like e.g. the Commander league being only one game per round instead of a match.

[s&s]

We really need more seperate lists of banned and restricted cards.

Game was too consistent across platforms, maybe we can have MTGO adapt the heartstone mechanic for mana also, its a lot of fun obviously.

[UseLess]

Game was too consistent across platforms, maybe we can have MTGO adapt the heartstone mechanic for mana also, its a lot of fun obviously.

Wow this is a dumb suggestion. Then just play Hearthstone. The whole interaction between lands/other cards, deck building, etc. is what makes magic unique. Take that away and you'll have an awkward mix of no fun probably.

[tescrin]

Wow this is a dumb suggestion. Then just play Hearthstone. The whole interaction between lands/other cards, deck building, etc. is what makes magic unique. Take that away and you'll have an awkward mix of no fun probably.

He was being sarcastic.
His point [probably] has to do with the success of Hearthstone causing Wizards to rethink dumb things