It is pretty easy to see for yourself how that fits into my examination. I leave room for disruption but show how that affects the execution of the Land Tax strategy.Originally Posted by Finn
I don't think the article was at all "ridiculous." I think you are just offended because I don't believe your build is so amazing. At this point you need to actually show the design of the deck.
If a card is overpowered in even one deck, any number of decks that the card is not overpowered in are irrelevant to the card's brokenness. Therefore, no amount of decks that are not broken are evidence that the card itself should come off the banned list. An overpowered Land Tax deck is evidence that Land Tax should be banned. An underpowered Land Tax deck is evidence of nothing.
This means that an analysis such as the one in this article is the best way to show that a card should come off the banned list. It obviously isn't any sort of conclusive proof, but I think it's a decent examination. A good counterargument to the article would be to present a Land Tax deck that was too good. However, if the article was just Chris making bad Land Tax decks and attempting to use the fact that they were bad to justify unbanning, it would have been poor.
This has been my point all along. The article's assumptions force a deck to be built a certain way. If you do not follow those assumptions, you can still build a very strong deck. The game has evolved past the deck being forced to play all basics and activate every turn. 1-3 activations may be all a deck needs to overpower an opponent.
If you look at the most powerful situations where Land Tax is played, it may give you a different perspective. The strongest opening I have come up with...
On the play -
Turn 1 - Mox Diamond, discard land, Land Tax, Crystal Vein, Sacrifice Vein, Sphere of Resistance.
[Note: The following is a very basic analysis - I'm not going to assume what the opponent is playing, possible counters, etc. etc.]
Your opponent now has 2 options. (A) Play a land. or (B) Not to play a land and discard during the cleanup phase.
In situation (A), your opponent plays land and now has very limited options. He can play a 0cc spell or play a spell with an alternate casting cost or pass the turn and play an instant with an alternate casting cost. Of course, the deck could also use Spirit Guides to be able to cast 1cc spells. Whichever he chooses, when he passes the turn, you will get 3 basic land cards which replace the Mox discard, the Vein sacrifice, and net you 1 Land. It will also thin your deck and increase your chances of not drawing an additional land by 3+% which unlike most Fetch activations is significant.
In situation (B), your opponent does nothing and discards. You can draw for the turn and pass it back until they give you a Land Tax activation (you are down 4 cards from your opening). Since the Sphere protects you from them ever developing until they reach 2 mana, you can play a very oppressive game. I am not assuming anything about the rest of this deck, but there are a number of strategies (depending on exact builds and hands) where you could forfeit the initial Land Tax activation and continue to develop just to lock down an opponent further when they try to play (i.e. 2-mana land, Chalice for 1).
I'm not saying it's unanswerable. I'm not saying it's broken. I do think the play demonstrates clear power (maybe no more than Standstill, though). Is it likely to overwhelm our format? I don't know. I believe analyzing more plays like this, though, is what leads to being able to say that Land Tax is unbannable.
Fred Bear...
I don't know if someone already mentioned any of this but here's what I learned
Some of the things I've heard in this thread really changed my mind about land tax. The idea that you could use something on the order of firestorm/sickening dreams to keep up with an aggressive creature onslaught really makes its goblins and to a lesser extent thresh matchup look better. Then someone else said daze/force/orim's chant could also be added for a better combo matchup which makes land tax look light years better than it has appeared to me and how it appeared in this article. I think it would be strong, stronger than some people think or realize but not broken as already stated. The only way to know for sure though is to unban it and see what happens.
To not thirst for power is to be at the mercy of those that do
I am curious as to where that percentage is coming from.
If you assume the land pitched to the Mox and the Vein were the only 2 lands in your opener, if you play 25 lands your chance of drawing land next turn in 23/53 (43.4%) which reduces to 20/50 (40%) after Land Tax activation - a 3.4% improvement. If you drop to 23 lands, your chances are 21/53 (39.6%) which drops to 18/50 (36%) - a 3.6% improvement.
That's where the percentage comes from.
Fred Bear...
You intentionally misunderstand. The argument goes:
"I can't break card X or think of a way to do so. Can anyone?"
"Well, I can't. And it did suck in the old format and saw no play."
"Well, then we can conclude that it's not broken until someone actually proves that it is."
"But wait! There might be a mysterious secret deck no one can conceive of! Therefore it's still broken!"
The burden of proof has to be on whomever's trying to prove that Land Tax is powerful, because it's impossible to demonstrate by throwing out instances and decks in which Land Tax sucks that it's bad, as you yourself indicate. Do you have any such proof?
Here's the thing. The Land Tax engine takes time and mana to set up. Chris's article demonstrates clearly why going for Land Tax straight off is going to be a mistake. Can we agree on that? Aggro-LandTax-Scrollrack is a bad strategy.
This reduces people to the argument that they can build a deck with good control elements that will stop the opponent's strategy and then start playing Land Tax. But the thing is, you have to be able to do so while skipping several land drops along the way, reducing the mana you have access to, and you'll still be short on mana for several turns after you get Land Tax up and running- if you do at all.
At this point, why is Land Tax any better than Fact or Fiction, or, Hell, Sensei's Divining Top + Scrying Sheets, the latter of which lets MWC draw extra lands without missing the crucial land drops you need to get to Wrath/Wing Shards mana in order to not die, and which puts far less constraints on the deck?
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I didn't like the article, either. Is it really too much to ask for the SCG writers to actually write something relevant?
Yup! I've said it before and I'll say it again, the SCG Legacy Writers should at the very least email each other and say "I'm writing about 'X', what do you think?"
You are misunderstanding what he is saying, and why there is no deficiency in the assumptions I have made. I look at the early game execution of every possible build of Land Tax by leaving the design options open.
I think you need to read the article again. I have assumed only the most necessary and basic things about the build of the deck. If you don't follow my assumptions, you're not playing a Land Tax deck.
You know, I can answer all of your hypothetical scenarios with other hypothetical scenarios. I can come up some crazy busted plays that involve terrible cards, and it doesn't mean that decks with those cards in them are worth anything. Your examples are again fine design possibilties, but the consistency of such a deck would be awful, and it would be completely wrecked by disruption, bad draws, or simply being full of reactive cards. That's not enough to be competitive, and certainly doesn't warrant banning.
You are absolutely right! But you seem to have missed the forest for the trees. My point is that you are right, Land Tax is not broken. But that's not your conclusion in your article. Your conclusion, as outlined in section 5 of the article (which I have read several times), says "Land Tax is weak enough..." and "...there has been no reason to suspect that one (a good deck using Land Tax) exists, and many to suspect that it doesn’t, such as the comparisons I have outlined above." This is simply not true based on what you presented.
You inherently don't look at the opening of every possible build as I have given three different openings over the course of this thread, none of which would necessarily follow any of your assumptions. None of my hypothetical openings use more than 2-3 colors which is common practice in many Legacy (and even extended with less color-fixing) decks - none of which are criticized for inconsistency. I think the point you seem to be missing is that it doesn't have to be used in a Land Tax deck. If Land Tax isn't broken, then why build solely around it and/or the Scroll Rack engine? It should be an 'obvious' continuation of the deck building exercise that if the 'broken' interaction doesn't exist, why not look for powerful synergies that can be exploited? And the question then becomes - Are these synergies too powerful for the format? If the answer to that question is yes, then the card should remain banned. You have not addressed this at all in my opinion.
Your last paragraph seems like a clear troll, but I really don't see how what I presented was any different than what you published. I don't believe I suggested any 'crazy busted' plays utilizing 'terrible' cards (short of suggesting using Lotus Vale in what would most likely be a Loam deck). Daze is played in several decks now and Sphere of Resistance is an underplayed foil for combo and an entirely reasonable (in my opinion) inclusion for a deck that generates a land advantage. Each of the openings presented were best case scenarios, but that's exactly what you claimed to be testing in the article!
I believe to declare Land Tax completely safe for the format, you have to look at scenarios where it is oppressive (the criticism against it). If the decks that can do that can't do it consistently (which I never said they could), then it's probably not a problem. But to simply declare that a deck that plays Land (including Crystal Vein and basics), Land Tax, Mox Diamond, and Sphere of Resistance or a deck that plays Land (including Tundra and basics), Land Tax, and Daze are inconsistent and non-competitive seems a little short sighted to me.
Fred Bear...
Of course those decks aren't criticized for playing 3 colors - they rely heavily on fetchlands, draw spells, and high quality mana fixing cards. The Land Tax manabase is necessarily inconsistent and weak because it relies on card disadvantage artifacs that are conditionally useful and without which Land Tax is unplayable. Land Tax makes your manabase worse by forcing you not to use lands.
All of the situations you presented are extremely narrow, reactive plays that are very bad when you are on the draw, and which are necessarily very inconsistent. Like I said, I can come up with tons of scenarios with mediocre cards that seem broken, but what do you do when you aren't on the play, and have the perfect draw, and they have no disruption? Cards like Crop Rotation and Sphere of Resistance turn to garbage. They are not good cards in most situations and it isn't very significant that we can find times when they are relevant
Tundra, drop Land Tax, Daze opponent's first spell in the following turn picking up the Tundra, use Land Tax. That would be a fairly common opening.
Instantly effective plus the opponent loses his first spell.
Not going to get into what would constitute an effective followup to that but the opening itself is pretty powerful in any control scenario.
There's no reason the Land Tax manabase in a U/W deck couldn't look like this:
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
6 Island
5 Plains
4 specialty lands depending on deck theme
It doesn't have to be artifact mana that brings Land Tax into play, just an amount of land that the Land Tax deck can play off of that it's hard for the opponent to match and play effectively.
To what point and purpose, Took? In all things one must consider the end. What are we achieving here? We have three lands extra in the hand, but none on the board. How are we going to capitalize on this? What advantage does it bring us? +2 CA, but no palpable advantage towards actually winning.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Well, let's look at what we actually have as a result of the play:
1. Zero lands on the board.
2. Land Tax active, meaning whatever effect we are trying to create is now partially active headed into turn 2.
3. Our opponent's first spell countered, almost always a good thing in terms of tempo.
4. Enough mana to power our effect likely in hand after we tax on turn 2, albeit it will take a couple of turns to put it down. We'll still be in fend mode till that point but fend mode is where most control decks live for a few turns. Swords to Plowshares and Force of Will don't need any more mana than what we'll have available.
5. Brainstorm is now Ancestral Recall or close to it.
I don't see this as a negative scenario in a well constructed deck. Legacy decks are supposed to be able to cope for a turn or two on zero or one mana, in this situation we're there with enough mana in hand to move forward.
So your argument basically seems to boil down to:
Step 1: Get Land Tax active
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
Most control decks fend things off turn 3-4 with something like Wrath of God, Damnation, or Pernicious Deed. You don't have that luxury. And need I mention that you're also having to discard down to 7 each turn, which means that activating Land Tax repeatedly to no end becomes especially pointless.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
You do not have to pull 3 lands out of your deck every time you use Land Tax. You can pull 0, 1, 2 or 3. That makes an active Land Tax a permanent reshuffling mechanism.
The turn 4 fend here would be Stasis with Forsaken City or Tabernacle at Pendrall Vale. You might well have 2 Tabernacles in the sideboard for use against aggro. That would certainly take all of the teeth out of Empty the Warrens.
Are you serious?
Read what I've been writing. You still assume that Land Tax must be broken and that you must build around it. Don't! I can easily construct a mana base using even 9-12 basics that can still take advantage of Land Tax and/or fetches and/or duals and/or 2-mana lands. Land Tax can get more than basic Plains, so it's a pretty good color fixer on it's own. Not to mention the fact that Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds both exist now (they didn't when Land Tax was last legal) to get discarded lands back into play or hand where they could be of use. It does not take more than a couple Land Tax activations to create a significant advantage. Building a deck that utilizes this advantage may not be broken, but that does not make it automatically weak or unplayable.
Again, how is this different than what you present in your published article? Each of the scenarios you presented led with Turn 1 Land Tax off a Mox Diamond - a 40-44% proposition of having just Land Tax (24-30% chance of Land Tax + Artifact Mana assuming 8 sources including Chrome Mox). Is this your definition of consistent? Why are my scenarios held to a different standard? I fully understand what you were testing, but you chose not to test situations where it could be exploited.
The excercise as I see it would be to examine the situations where Land Tax is oppressive (as I have previously stated) and determine from those situations if Land Tax or the decks using it would be too powerful for Legacy (which, as I have previously stated, it may not be). I showed a clear instance of Land Tax being oppressive (Diamond, Tax, Sphere), using cards that could be in a deck that could see play (is it really hard to believe that a powerful card could make previously mediocre-to-bad cards playable?). Yes, it's a low percentage play, but that does not make the deck inconsistent, just the play (Vintage Stax builds still play the 1 allowed Trinisphere, right?). I would further like to assume the deck isn't a 'one-trick pony' unless it is built solely around Land Tax which I would not do since I believe Land Tax is not broken. So I would further assume that without this opening - the deck would have other plays available to it.
That Land Tax is only very good in narrow unachievable situations is actually the most important information to gather in my opinion. By coming up with situations where it is the nuts, you can then build decklists that attempt to utilize those situations and optimize those lists to determine the actual power level of the card/deck. Looking at scenarios where Land Tax is ineffective, cumbersome, and useless does nothing for me (which was my biggest problem with the article). I can come up with numerous situations where other powerful cards are ineffective (probably as many situations where you can show crap cards to be broken), but it doesn't reduce their power level because you would never use them like that. The goal of the deckbuilding exercise should be to come up with the decklist that best utilizes the card.
If all you wanted to do was prove that turn 1 Land Tax isn't as bad as Forsythe made it out to be, you probably accomplished that goal (as I've said before), but that was not were you left your published conclusion (which is what I take exception to). In my opinion, you need to look more closely at the situations where it is good to be able to make those claims.
Fred Bear...
At this point my explanation becomes "it's just how you build good decks." You raise good points about design possibilities and I see you have the talent to find them, but I haven't seen or heard anything that would actually be good in Legacy. The reasons I argue that Land Tax isn't good are fundamental rules of deck design such as drawing the same amount of mana every game, deploying the same disruption and threats when you need them, and being able to handle a diversity of other strategies. Every situation presented about Land Tax has been narrow, situational, and grossly insufficient for a legitimate tournament Legacy deck.
Activating Land Tax by making fewer land drops than your opponent is not a good strategy, and I'm not going to address that in this thread. There are plenty of White Control discussions on this website for everyone to see and realize why this is unviable. I alraedy discussed this anyway as the late-game scenario where you compete with cards like Fact or Fiction, which is really difficult.
I accept logical reasoning as an argument, but there are only two ways to refute the points I made in my article:
1) Provide an actual Land Tax list that is good in the format. This would void my design assumptions.
2) Show how it's possible that a Land Tax deck could solve ALL of the problems I pointed out:
- Weak manabase (inconsistent amount of early mana, lots of dead cards in the mid and late game,1-for-2ing yourself)
- Slow draw engine (pay for Land Tax, wait for activation, pay for engine card, pay/wait for activation, then enjoy card advantage)
- Little room for disruption, restricting the decks ability to handle different strategies (more mana to support basics and artifacts, 4 land tax, ~8 engine cards, perhaps tutors/draw spells, plus you need actual win conditions)
- Vulnerable to the disruption and threats which are very common in the format: Force of Will, Daze, Pithing Needle, Tin-Street Hooligan, Duress, Cabal Therapy (These cards don't just stop the engine, they shut down the deck since it is dependent on the engine combo to work. You can't just stick 4 Land Tax in your deck and expect it to do anything).
- Irrelevant against Combo, which is now a large part of the format.
Doing either of these things is not impossible, but you can see how difficult it is, and I have just explained in detail in my article why it is very unlikely.
Seconded. Mucking about with Land Tax may or may not be an interesting thought excercise, but it seems to me like an ultimately pointless one. It seems fairly obvious that the DCI is going to unban things when they feel like it, and making arguments about some theoretical future format is probably a lot less useful than actually discussing the real Legacy that we all play in.
I feel like, for a player at any level, whether wide-eyed beginner or seasoned Legacy veteran, sitting down and playing a game of, say, Thresh vs. Belcher would have been a much better use of the time it takes to read such an article.
The best, most constructive criticism I feel I can give would go something like: "Start writing about things that matter."
TEAM DRAGONFORCIA-
Ghost ridin' the whip like we invented that shit.
TEAM UNICORN
We're going for number four!
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