Legacy, Summer 2010: Most Bannable Card?

[Eddy Wally]

Show and Tell can be beaten, easily. Last time I played against it I had a Knight of the Reliquary in hand and a Karakas in the library. If you play Bant and the other guy isn't using hideaway shenanigans, just mulligan until you have KotR in hand and you should be fine.

That being said, how exactly does one race a turn three Emrakul without such tricks? The only creatures that will allow you to do that are either a massive amount of Empty the Warrens tokens, or the Marit Lage token. Progenitus or Iona don't deal enough damage to end the game in one attack, and even if you are above fifteen life that annihalator 6 means you'll never attack twice against Emrakul. It will block everything else.

[ScatmanX]

That being said, how exactly does one race a turn three Emrakul without such tricks?

Mountain, Lackey, go.
That usually do it.

[ummon]

Personally, I don't think Show and Tell should be banned. I think Emrakul should be banned instead. I'm tired of WoTC printing ever more powerful high cc cards that practically say "sneak me into play." It has gone way too far.

[Eddy Wally]

Mountain, Lackey, go.
That usually do it.

Even then your success is anything but guaranteed. Unless you have Stingscourger in hand though, I guess.

[(nameless one)]

That being said, how exactly does one race a turn three Emrakul without such tricks?

You know that you can cheat something too onto the field via SnT. I truly believe that Humility should see more play. I might pick up my Quinn deck again.

Although for the most part, SnT strategy has become idiot-proof. Its more idiot-proof than Dredge. SnT is actually more broken than Mystical Tutor.

[jrsthethird]

I voted LED because cards with the text "add three mana of any color to your mana pool" are pretty broken. I don't expect anything to get banned, though.

Ban Gilded Lotus!!!

[Phoenix Ignition]

Although for the most part, SnT strategy has become idiot-proof. Its more idiot-proof than Dredge. SnT is actually more broken than Mystical Tutor.

Mystical Tutor allowed for silver bullet cards to fetch for against dedicated hate for your deck. If I drop counterbalance you could respond by Tutoring up a K grip. I run 4 Counterbalance, you run 1 K grip but have access to it through 4 spells. This is unfair in almost every single way. Reanimator could run 1 show and tell to get around all the graveyard hate in the world. The card was too good, it let you run 5 maindeck answers to your biggest fear while the opponent could only run 4 of your most feared card.

Show and Tell isn't nearly that broken, although I agree it is stupid. There are plenty of ways to beat it, and there are other cards that are similar we'd have to look out for (Sneak Attack, Into the Breach, etc.).

[lordofthepit]

I'd rather they unban Mystical Tutor than touch anything on that list.

[Rico Suave]

I was judging on power level and voted LED. Top and LED are the leading candidates by a mile.

[rleader]

I voted for Brainstorm. I do not believe that it a card that will be banned. I would much rather see fetchlands get banned than anything on this list. .

I have to agree with this. Fetches change the nature of duals and make something relavent (land type) that is not normally relevant in most situations, meaning there's seldom any other interactions of that kind going on (and Wizards doesn't want things like Boil to be printed in future sets).

And I'll also vote for Brainstorm by process of elimination: nothing on the list really jumps out at me and I dislike blue trumping black (discard) by default in the format.

[caiomarcos]

I have to agree with this. Fetches change the nature of duals and make something relavent (land type) that is not normally relevant in most situations, meaning there's seldom any other interactions of that kind going on (and Wizards doesn't want things like Boil to be printed in future sets).

I don't get it. What is the true nature of the Duals? Land type is fairly relevant and has always been, from Gaea's Liege to Wild Nacatl, through whole mechanics around it like Domain and landwalk. For me, having all those kind of interactions related to basic land types while producing more than one color is the nature of the Duals. It's the first thing wirtten on them - "Counts as both type and type and is affected by spells that affect either." Beautiful.

I voted for Top not because of power level, since every other card in the list is as powerful or more poweful than it. I voter for Top on annoyingness factor alone. Tarmogoyf comes a very close second for its omnipresence and for how much more variety we would have if it was gone. Also because it is extremely overpowered. Thinking again, l'm sure I should've voted Tarmogoyf.

[ktkenshinx]

Show and Tell isn't nearly that broken, although I agree it is stupid. There are plenty of ways to beat it, and there are other cards that are similar we'd have to look out for (Sneak Attack, Into the Breach, etc.).

I disagree with the statement that we have to watch out for these other cards like Sneak Attack and Through the Breach. The difference is in the casting cost. At 3 mana, SnT is a guaranteed turn 3 play, and a probably turn 2 play in the right deck. At 5 mana, SA and TtB are significantly slower.

If you (the general "you", not you personally) doubt this, take a look at a few other Legacy legal cards and compare them to Legacy illegal cards. Diabolic Tutor is Demonic Tutor plus 2 mana. The latter is broken. The former hasn't seen play since 2004, and that was in Standard. Demonic may be gone, but no one is scrambling to play Diabolic in its stead. Similarly, look at Cruel Tutor and compare it to Imperial Seal (or Vampiric Tutor, albeit not as an instant). The 1 cmc Tutors are just so much better than the 3 cmc one. Cruel Tutor is highly legal in Legacy, but next to no one plays it. If Imperial Seal were legal, every combo deck would be using 4.

SnT, and Natural Order to a lesser extent, represent unique cases in their comboing with big and powerful creatures. One has a low cmc. The other doesn't require the beast to be in your hand.

Oh, and as to SnT's "reciprocal" effect, that's a load of bunk. The vast, vast majority of matchups will see an Emrakul dropped across from a Goyf, Reejery, Knight, or something else an order of creature-magnitude smaller.

-ktkenshinx-

[(nameless one)]

I saw screw this....

Summer is going to be done in 2 weeks and I would rather see Land Tax getting the Legacy Visa

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yeah, ban nothing obviously. Why do people have such a hard-on to ban something in such a wide open format, it's like the only thing some people talk about on here. A different deck wins like every week, format is so not broken. Unban Land Tax, because it sucks and I want people to play it against me.

[rleader]

through whole mechanics around it like Domain and landwalk. For me, having all those kind of interactions related to basic land types while producing more than one color is the nature of the Duals.

Yeah, but none of those interactions, beyond nacatl, actually make a difference in legacy. The only thing land types on duals do in legacy, outside of a few minor exceptions, is make the original duals better than anything else Wizards can print in the future. Without fetches, stuff like filter lands might be better in some ways than duals.I don't find that beautiful, just boring, until they can find a way to have separate interactions between basics with types and non basics with types (imperiosaur, etc.).

I think it's similar to the goyf effect: more interesting options are pushed to the wayside. The only thing I really don't like about goyf is the graveyard counting though. It doesn't exactly make things more fun. Imagine if two or three different popular cards in the format cared about so many conditions being met or not.

[frolll]

TOP, as in Extended, for it makes far too many games go to time.

[cjva]

Voted SDT for no other reason than the time issue. I'v seen to many players taking to much time when they use their top. Power level wise I would probably say Brainstorm for many of the same reasons it was restricted in vintage.

[jrsthethird]

I thought it would be nice to see the data in graph form, so people can look at it from a different angle.

Pie chart for 2009 poll:



Pie chart for 2010 poll:



Anything that had less than 5% of the total vote was grouped into Other, and can be safely disregarded as a threat. This includes safe options such as:

Wasteland
Survival of the Fittest
Natural Order
Standstill
Goblin Lackey
Phyrexian Dreadnought
Tendrils of Agony

and of course, Force of Will, both years, underperformed as a real threat to the format. This is a sign that, despite a few zealous individuals, Force of Will is commonly thought as non-threatening.

On the other hand, the same 5 offenders accrued more than 5% of the total vote this year as last year, with the notable inclusion of Show and Tell.

Just some observations from the graphs, I'm not going to infer what they mean about the format:
Sensei's Divining Top has the biggest slice of the pie both years, but it dropped 9% in 2010.
Tarmogoyf went from the second most popular hated card in 2009 to just avoiding the cutoff for Other in 2010.
Lion's Eye Diamond jumped by 5%, and with the Tarmogoyf hit, becomes the 2nd-most-'hated' card.
Brainstorm doubled from 6% to 12%.
Counterbalance dropped by 4%.
Show and Tell burst into 3rd place with 14% this year. Obviously this wasn't a factor last year since Reanimator was still a viable deck, there were no Eldrazi to cheat into play, and Hive Mind/Dream Halls strategies were too slow.

[Vacrix]

Instead of discussing power levels... maybe we should discuss the effects of one card's banning on the frequency of the others.

If LED was banned I believe we would see a reduction in the amount of Top in the format. Would this actually happen though?
Well, when we lost Mystical Tutor, we saw a huge reduction in LED/Dark Ritual based combo. Counterbalance's best matchup went down the shitter. Sure plenty of players switched to TES, but the number of ANT players has dropped from a 1/3 of the metagame back to a more reasonable level.

By the same logic, banning LED would reduce the population of combo players even further. A format with fewer combo players provides an incentive for aggro players to beat up on Counterbalance.. which would mean we see fewer SDT's floating around.

Then again, I'm against banning LED simply because I enjoy playing in the format's current dynamic state.

Discuss.

[Rico Suave]

Voted SDT for no other reason than the time issue. I'v seen to many players taking to much time when they use their top. Power level wise I would probably say Brainstorm for many of the same reasons it was restricted in vintage.

Brainstorm was not restricted in Vintage for power level reasons.