Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Lol vise after trinket? Gj you fetched an useless artifact on T3...Originally Posted by five
Vise is barely playable as of now even if it came out unbanned. Steppe Lynx and Goblin Guide are much better anti-control card nowadays, especially with FoW empting your hand the instant you play another spell after Vise.
EDIT: i'd love to break standstills with vise however :D
Not to mention that vise fails the misstep test i.e. control will misstep it on the spot or force it or not care and just dump their hand somehow to avoid the damage. Black vise could come off and the biggest use would be in the control mirror out of the board.
Bread Connoisseur on MTGSalvation Forums
Currently Playing:
All flavors of storm combo
trinisphere
chalice of the void
thorn of amethyst
pyrostatic pillar
ethersworn canonist
and for non storm decks:
disenchant
krosan grip
lightning bolt
Of course, free counters don't really stop storm decks anyway.
Free counters probably help combo decks more than they hurt them. For example, with force of will, the combo deck can tap out to play their pieces and still have a counter available. As for the card disadvantage inherent in fow, it doesn't matter because the combo deck is going to win immediately anyway. The same is true in general for any free counter that has a disadvantage later.
Meanwhile, the opponent who didn't have to tap out can freely play normal counterspells to stop the combo player, so having free counters doesn't help them as much. It becomes a game of "how much mana do they have open?" instead of "how many cards in their hand are free counters?"
That said, I think that less cards should be on the ban list rather than more, and free counters are perfectly fair.
I get the feeling he would also prefer Chalice to be banned, as it's another source of manaless counter.
My point is that many combo decks can generate enough mana and cards in hand and free counters are all that can really deal with the potential of things like not going first. If you're on the draw and ANT duresses your only counter, you're kind of SOL. Disenchant / Krosan Grip can't stop a Candelabra from untapping lands (it resolves, you have priority to use it's ability before they have priority to Grip it) and to an extent, yeah, mass creature kill can stop elves if you hit the right ones.
It would come down to basically just hoping you can get enough land drops for the ~2 counters you might be able to play before you die, like I get that you agree they shouldn't be removed, I just don't see combo not dominating if they ban all of the free counters / the format not devolving into a Combo VS Deck designed to stop counter battles.
Why play those decks, they are slow, Belcher would be the nuts.
Imagine how open the format would be without Mental Misstep. SFM decks, Vial decks, Easily hated combo (Storm), etc. It would be very interesting.
This has to be one of the funniest reinterpretations of reality so that it fits someones personal convictions I've read in a long time. Are you even aware what you're writing? Extended was made a rotational format to avoid banning FoW? Legacy was created to avoid banning Drain? Modern is being tried out because of Force of Will? Your WotC blue-player conspiracy theories are actually much more hilarious than I thought. Thanks for the laugh!
I don't have low self-esteem, I have low esteem for everyone else. -Daria
Proud member of Team CAB
High Priest of the Church of BLA
CAB JaceTM
My articles
I think the problem is that you are looking at the problem from a blind alley, so any solution to get out of it looks like a step back from the current situation. Fact is, nobody wants a format where the only option is to play combo decks that kill in one turn, because that is stupid.
The problem is that the presence of free counterspells has created a syndrome of "dust under the rug" in which the designers have allowed these crazy combo decks to run rampant because they could always be stopped by Force of Will. As the time passes, the "dust under the rug" gets bigger until there are so many broken combo decks around that if you don't play Force of Will you can't win. At one moment in time, Force of Will starts running short and you need more free counters. Following this strategy severely unbalances the game towards blue and towards even more broken combos, and the game designers can't print proper hate against blue because it will go automatically into the combo decks. A real trainwreck of a format, also known as vintage.
Take free counters out of equation. A deck appears that kills you on turn 0. Everyone agrees that it's stupid, a piece of it is banned, and the format is fixed without having to argue with morons that claim it's okay because they play blue and will just counter it with FoW. This strategy requires more bannings, but is far better in the long run, and cards can get unbanned as answers get printed.
And yet, I believe the game can do okay with a small amount of free "soft counters" that are metagame dependant and can be fought by using "counterintelligence" at deckbuilding. It's not an effect that you want at such quantity and redundancy levels that "having to cast spells to win" is a losing strategy unless you play blue, though. And that's what we got now. The best choice would be to ban the "hard counter" that originated this situation on the first hand.
Please stop talking about whether Force of Will is broken or not. It obviously is, and rather than "the glue that holds vintage together" it would be better to call it "the rug under which you hide the filth until there's so much that you can no longer conceal it".
So what you envision for the format is the banning of FoW, followed by banning everything that enables fast (as in goldfishing between turn 1 and 3) combo decks to be played? Did I understand that correctly?
I don't have low self-esteem, I have low esteem for everyone else. -Daria
Proud member of Team CAB
High Priest of the Church of BLA
CAB JaceTM
My articles
Yes. However Wizards has printed lately a lot of answers to fast combo, so it would be a matter to see if combo can fight through it. Combo also has a problem in that it can't be too fast because it loses to itself due to inconsistency, and even cards that only slows the combo down open the door for better answers. And if all this fails, Wizards can still print more cards against combo that are bad in combo decks.
For example, let's say wizards prints a card like this one:
Daring Ichneumon G
Creature - Mongoose
Players can only spend mana produced by basic lands to cast instant and sorcery spells.
1/1
I think that would really hurt most combo decks. What if it's not enough? Maybe that would prove LED to be too strong and deserve a ban. Would that situation be so bad that you would leave the format?
Please stop talking about whether Force of Will is broken or not. It obviously is, and rather than "the glue that holds vintage together" it would be better to call it "the rug under which you hide the filth until there's so much that you can no longer conceal it".
Actually what I was really interested in was having proof that your goal was to turn Legacy into a totally different format. Mission accomplished.
What you don't seem to understand is that there is a large part of the magic-playing populace that enjoys playing with and against "broken" combo-decks. Legacy is, among other things, the format where they can still do that without needing access to the P9 (and a large group of other players that also do).
Removing that element from Legacy makes it not Legacy any more. Different formats exist in a large part so that all the different player demographics can have a place to enjoy themselves. So if changing the format to a totally different one that's closer to what you consider playing "real" Magic is what you're going for, you're probably just not playing the correct format. May I suggest trying out overextended? The way it's set up, it sounds like exactly the theoretical version of Legacy you're supporting. Note that FoW is banned in Overextended already by simple necessity.
Please don't take this as a flame, an attack, or anything like it. With the position you're supporting I genuinely believe you might be happier just playing a format more suited to your tastes while leaving those of us that don't share them to enjoy Legacy the way it is.
And, as you asked, yeah, I might well quit Legacy at that point as it would likely devolve into nothing but the same creature on creature battles you see in smaller formats. Strategic variety is what makes Legacy so awesome. I just love having to play a long, drawn out control mirror round one, face the threat of fast annihilation by quick threats Zoo provides in round two and get the adrenaline-kick of being constantly threatened with a win out of nowhere from facing combo round three, repeated again and again in different forms and even mixed versions throughout the tournament.
Removing that to replace it with another only fair decks environment kills the format for me. We just have totally different visions of what a good format looks like and I have the impression the majority of Legacy players is closer to my way of seeing it than yours, considering how ban FoW debates usually end and how Ari Lax's (old) article on the Starkington Post detailing how to make Legacy fair was received.
I don't have low self-esteem, I have low esteem for everyone else. -Daria
Proud member of Team CAB
High Priest of the Church of BLA
CAB JaceTM
My articles
This is Legacy. If you don't like broken shit, play something else. I'm sorry Dr. Jones, but from what you said, you don't want to play Legacy.
Blue has always been unbalanced. It is not something that just began to occur at this moment in time. Besides artifacts blue has the MOST Banned cards(and Restricted in Vintage) of any other color. It has always been this way.
Ugh!.. And your whole description of Vintage is off. Totaly, couldn't be more wrong."WotC Can't print Proper blue hate for fear of it going into combo decks to balance out against blue"....?? Wtf?
Go play some eternal formats, top 8 anywhere, just go play eternal before you speak. This is Hurting my eyes and my head simultaneously.
Purely for the sake of argument:
Combo decks don't spontaneously generate extra mana or card advantage compared to a control deck. Dark Ritual - for example - can be countered.
You can always make up situations where the opponent has an extra swamp untapped and a Duress in hand, and it will always blow out whatever the opponent is doing. On a purely theoretical level, trading Duress for Counterspell is perfectly fair. However, it's not fair to then assume that one person has an Ad Nauseam and enough mana to cast it while the opponent has nothing.
Anyway, my point is that any card which generates an absurd amount of extra mana or card drawing can always just be countered by normal counterspells. They tap five for Ad Nauseam, I tap two for counterspell. I win. If they tap one for duress, I lose an extra counterspell, but it hasn't cost me any mana. If they're investing one mana for a dark ritual or two before playing ad nauseam, then bring out the Disrupts! Sure, sometimes you won't find enough counterspells in time, but sometimes the combo deck won't be able to assemble their pieces either.
That wouldn't hurt combo decks, it would kill them, and it would also basically ruin every deck. Every single deck that exists would lose to that card. Literally the entire format would have to change given the existence of it. (To clarify: In order to remove that creature, the most efficient spell would be Swords to Plowshares. That would require a single plains--if your deck even runs a basic plains, you probably only run 1, maybe 2. In that case you need a white fetch which there may be 2-4 of. The likelihood of seeing a plains or the 2-4 fetches you run that can hit white before you die to Tarmogoyf is low.)
Most decks are ~3 colors and almost exclusively run nonbasic lands, the only playable spells would be creatures.
If that card existed, I would not play Legacy or any format it's legal in as it would immediately dominate unless you built your deck around the potential of your opponent having it--which means your deck is horrible and inconsistent with a terrible mana-base.
If you don't mind me asking Dr. Jones what would your ideal Legacy format actually look like? This post gives the impression (apologies if this is off base) that you don't like non-basic lands, combo, countermagic, and non-creature spells in general, as the idea to create a card like that would imply we should all be playing mono-green creature-only decks.
unbanning blackvise isnt going to happen, every deck will run them as 4ofs
...sry, whut?
Vise sucks. Format isn't defined by keeper mirrors anymore, it's a tempo-driven format where Vise wouldn't do shit, especially after MM. Also, just for information's sake, Vise was banned/restricted everywhere before FoW was ever printed. With FoW in the format, this card isn't good even against control.
I don't know if it sucks, but there's dozens of stronger cards in Legacy that aren't played in every deck.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I dont see how that would change the face of legacy. Ban FOW, ban LED. Combo is slowed down (and you still have leyline, mindbreak trap and MM as turn 0 answers if you really need them). On the play you have access to many good 1cc counters and discards.
You don't see how making storm combo unplayable and removing the best answer to the 2 card combo decks would change the face of legacy?
Matt Bevenour in real life
yeah if that happened I would play painter in a heartbeat.
There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)
Reply With Quote