Should Wizards specifically protect iconic cards in Legacy?

[Pastorofmuppets]

Snappy and Delver don't combine with old engine cards. In fact, it should be obvious that they'd be busted.

I don't see how someone who designs cards for a living can't just take a look at the card and realise how retardedly good it is.

You mean a company that wants money is completely blind to the fact that if they break and take away our old toys with their good new ones, the new ones will still be good, and we'll have to buy them?
I know it's crazy. Call me a tinfoiled bastard if you'd like. I honestly believe that this is exactly what is happening.

[Mr Miagi]

Really? Yet another thread from a bunch of brainstorm haters to get it axed? This time with a more classy approach.

Mods, this is really spinning out of control. Will you allow for any good card in legacy to have it's own subset of threads and quasi discussion, where bunch of provokers and inexpirienced players make statements that this card is "just to good" and needs to be banned.. and then we'll have a whole community outraged and all of a sudden we'll have a 10+ page thread of 80% arguing against the 20% of provokers..

[snappingbowls | ಠ_ಠ]

This is the Brainstorm thread... it's only 3 pages long.

Soon to be 10+ pages long due to the situation you describe. People complain, no one likes the idea that there is a best strategy. This isn't some warm and fuzzy miracle land where every strategy can compete and all our favourite decks from 5+ years ago are still competitive.

Stop crying about Legacy having good cards and go play casual with your friends...

[Zilla]

Really? Yet another thread from a bunch of brainstorm haters to get it axed? This time with a more classy approach.

Mods, this is really spinning out of control. Will you allow for any good card in legacy to have it's own subset of threads and quasi discussion, where bunch of provokers and inexpirienced players make statements that this card is "just to good" and needs to be banned.. and then we'll have a whole community outraged and all of a sudden we'll have a 10+ page thread of 80% arguing against the 20% of provokers..

Couple things:

1. If you want to appeal to the mod staff, please do so in a PM or using the Report Post function.

2. The point of this thread is to discuss the protection of iconic cards in general, not just Brainstorm. That means dual lands, fetchlands, Force of Will, LED, etc. It is not specifically about Brainstorm. It is about whether or not it's good policy for Wizards to protect these cards from banning in order to preserve the flavor of the format.

Incidentally, I feel that they should, so long as the format is relatively diverse, skill-testing, and fun to play. None of Legacy's iconic cards are preventing that at this time, including Brainstorm.

[Zilla]

Get this shit back on track.

[Mr. Safety]

Back on track...what are the iconic cards of legacy that would need preserving other than Brainstorm? I have assembled a short list, pick it apart if you will:

1) Dual lands - allows for color combinations and power levels unattainable otherwise

2) Fetch lands - go right alongside #1

3) Force of Will - keeps the combo decks honest (for the most part) and keeps the format from degenerating into a gelatinous mass of 'wtf'

4) Library Manipulation (Brainstorm/Sensei's Divining Top/Sylvan Library) - allows you to 'get your game on' in a more consistent manner than you would otherwise, fueling all deck archetypes.

5) Aether Vial/Natural Order/Show and Tell/Sneak Attack - cards that cheat stuff into play are printed so rarely it seems that these should be icons to protect

6) All-Star Dudes (Wild Nacatl, Knight of the Reliquary, Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Stoneforge Mystic, Tombstalker, etc.) - all provide a level of game play that would be significantly reduced in power level should they be removed from the format. There are a ton of them to list...I'm not sure if Snapcaster and Delver belong on this list, they are still just so damn new.

7) Mana Boosters (Lion's Eye Diamond, Rite of Flame, Dark Ritual, etc.) - these allow for explosive and unfair decks that make legacy what it is (awesome, btw) Just watching TES or Spiral Tide being played makes me grin...even if I'm losing to it. How cool is this game that you can play awesome creatures, counter any spell, or just win on the spot with an absurd combination of draw, mana acceleration, tutors, and then Tendrils for 22?

8) Tutors (Burning Wish, Green Sun's Zenith, Cunning Wish, Enlightened Tutor, etc.) - get what you need, play it, profit. These need to stay part of legacy or it will lose too much blood to recover. They fuel everything from Maverick to TES.

Those are the ones that I can rattle off the top of my head...all of them have a significant impact on what makes the format 'legacy.' I clumped them together for the sake of discussion and I listed them in the order they came to me, not in order of preference or priority.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

To be blunt, I think you're missing the point. Any card that's legal in Modern can hardly be an iconic Legacy card. If we're describing Legacy's iconic cards, the format's unique brand, we're describing a narrow and non-expanding subset of cards. It should be more like;

- Brainstorm
- Force of Will
- LED
- Wasteland


But even then the question arises of why other classic Magic cards that might be made legal if given the same consideration aren't, the prime example being the banning of Survival over Vengevine.

[Gui]

To be blunt, I think you're missing the point. Any card that's legal in Modern can hardly be an iconic Legacy card. If we're describing Legacy's iconic cards, the format's unique brand, we're describing a narrow and non-expanding subset of cards. It should be more like;

- Brainstorm
- Force of Will
- LED
- Wasteland


But even then the question arises of why other classic Magic cards that might be made legal if given the same consideration aren't, the prime example being the banning of Survival over Vengevine.

Well, FoW and Waste are both playable 4-of in vintage, so I guess the list is more like:

Brainstorm
Lion Eye's Diamond

Kidding, but anyhow, I don't think this argument should be taken into account. If any should, then the "the format will always have a best card, and something performing better than whatever else" argument is the best I know so far.

[DrJones]

Wizards shouldn't protect iconic cards, because the reason behind the creation of the legacy format was for the DCI to be able to ban problem cards in the first place, so they could finally have an eternal environment they could properly balance, and making up a list of "unbannables" completely kills that purpose.

Asking for "unbannable" cards is the most stupid idea I've ever read about Magic, and to make things clear, that list includes the people that asked for "unreprintable" cards fifteen years ago and got their wish.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

It's not really the same. Cards like Brainstorm and Survival of the Fittest existed for years and years in the format without warping it. If they suddenly combine with new cards to create problems, sorry kids, but the new cards should be the ones to go. Even if that means they end up banning 2 or 3 cards over a period, if that keeps a card that creates a decktype alive, that actually means a larger effective pool of playable cards, which is, after all, the goal of the format.

Not to mention simple numbers. People played the format just for Survival. There are people who would stop playing because of Brainstorm being banned. Who the hell would play if duals were banned? The format being "fair" is irrelevant if no one is playing it.

[Zilla]

To be blunt, I think you're missing the point. Any card that's legal in Modern can hardly be an iconic Legacy card. If we're describing Legacy's iconic cards, the format's unique brand, we're describing a narrow and non-expanding subset of cards. It should be more like;

- Brainstorm
- Force of Will
- LED
- Wasteland

Add duals and fetchlands and I agree that's a comprehensive list.

It's not really the same. Cards like Brainstorm and Survival of the Fittest existed for years and years in the format without warping it. If they suddenly combine with new cards to create problems, sorry kids, but the new cards should be the ones to go. Even if that means they end up banning 2 or 3 cards over a period, if that keeps a card that creates a decktype alive, that actually means a larger effective pool of playable cards, which is, after all, the goal of the format.

Not to mention simple numbers. People played the format just for Survival. There are people who would stop playing because of Brainstorm being banned. Who the hell would play if duals were banned? The format being "fair" is irrelevant if no one is playing it.

I'm not gay, you're not gay, but gun to my head? Absolutely.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

You should be able to "Like" posts.

Although re: iconic cards, not that these are necessarily in danger of banning, but there are other iconic cards, like Aether Vial, StP, Hymn, Goblin Welder, Burning Wish.

Again, to repeat the point, I think it's fair to assume that if

A) Suddenly old cards become a problem because of their interaction with new cards
B) Said old cards enable a deck type, while the new card only is playable in that deck type

The new card should be banned.

Obvious counter-example: Hulk-Flash; here, technically my argument would suggest banning Hulk, but since Flash was errata'd, it was effectively a new card as well.

[Aggro_zombies]

It's not really the same. Cards like Brainstorm and Survival of the Fittest existed for years and years in the format without warping it. If they suddenly combine with new cards to create problems, sorry kids, but the new cards should be the ones to go. Even if that means they end up banning 2 or 3 cards over a period, if that keeps a card that creates a decktype alive, that actually means a larger effective pool of playable cards, which is, after all, the goal of the format.

I'm not so sure about this. Banning Survival effectively "banned" Vengevine as well; we have yet to see that card do anything relevant despite vows from Survival apologists to prove that WotC banned the wrong thing. Banning Vengevine would simply have allowed Survival to re-offend any time there was a Vengevine-like effect, or any other creature that was good when you could tutor repeatedly off of one card. Ultimately, you would have kept a problematic enabler in the format for...what? Nostalgia purposes? I mean, yes, you keep some cards that aren't useful outside of Survival decks (like Loyal Retainers) in the format, but if Survival is crushingly dominant you also effectively "ban" other cards by making the decks that run them actively bad.

If there's a clear best deck, there's no reason not to play that deck, except for crappy ones like "personal preference." Ultimately, you increase format diversity by banning cards that have the potential to dominate the format any time a known set of conditions are filled.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I'm not so sure about this. Banning Survival effectively "banned" Vengevine as well; we have yet to see that card do anything relevant despite vows from Survival apologists to prove that WotC banned the wrong thing. Banning Vengevine would simply have allowed Survival to re-offend any time there was a Vengevine-like effect, or any other creature that was good when you could tutor repeatedly off of one card. Ultimately, you would have kept a problematic enabler in the format for...what? Nostalgia purposes? I mean, yes, you keep some cards that aren't useful outside of Survival decks (like Loyal Retainers) in the format, but if Survival is crushingly dominant you also effectively "ban" other cards by making the decks that run them actively bad.

If there's a clear best deck, there's no reason not to play that deck, except for crappy ones like "personal preference." Ultimately, you increase format diversity by banning cards that have the potential to dominate the format any time a known set of conditions are filled.

What you're suggesting is a sweeping ban on ALL combo cards. I can give you a hypothetical card, under your arguments, that would requite the banning of Lion's Eye Diamond, Ad Nauseum, Burning Wish, Auriok Salvagers, Entomb, Brainstorm, Tendrils of Agony, Enduring Renewal, Aluren, Argothian Enchantress, etc.

Survival wasn't this bogeyman in the format, waiting in the wings for Vengevine to come along. Vengevine was a mistake. Not one single person thought to themselves before Vengevine came out; "it's only a matter of time before Survival becomes the dominant deck". Much less "only a matter of time before Survival becomes a format-warping deck", even if assume that it was in fact format warping.

A short and non-comprehensive list of cards that were effectively banned along with Survival:

Anger
Big Game Hunter
Masticore
Genesis
Rofellos
Squee
Faerie Macabre
Wonder
Wild Mongrel
Basking Rootwalla
Gilded Drake
Vengevine

The format is weaker now for the absence of Survival. Banning Vengevine would only have banned Vengevine. Even if they print another card that could break Survival and require its banning, that's still fewer cards lost to the format.

And this, again, is without even getting into the argument of WHY people play the format, which often comes down to specific cards and deck types. Maybe those aren't the people that break top 8, but they're a significant part of the format being as popular as it is, and keeping them happy is not a non-factor.

[Aggro_zombies]

What you're suggesting is a sweeping ban on ALL combo cards. I can give you a hypothetical card, under your arguments, that would requite the banning of Lion's Eye Diamond, Ad Nauseum, Burning Wish, Auriok Salvagers, Entomb, Brainstorm, Tendrils of Agony, Enduring Renewal, Aluren, Argothian Enchantress, etc.

Survival wasn't this bogeyman in the format, waiting in the wings for Vengevine to come along. Vengevine was a mistake. Not one single person thought to themselves before Vengevine came out; "it's only a matter of time before Survival becomes the dominant deck". Much less "only a matter of time before Survival becomes a format-warping deck", even if assume that it was in fact format warping.

I don't buy this argument for two reasons. First, the "it could be broken at any time" argument is applicable to pretty much any deck in Legacy to some degree, as well as a number of cards and interactions that don't see play in Legacy or may not even exist yet. Acting on it would necessitate the banning of vast swaths of the format for no reason other than the possibility of future domination. Second, and more importantly, Survival was a dominant deck, one whose win streak was ended by the banned list rather than new printings or metagame shifts. If a card has already shown the potential to become an unsolvable juggernaut, do you really want to leave to chance Wizards not reawakening it with a future printing? The difference between Survival and, say, Argothian Enchantress is one of track record and not raw potential.

Similarly, if we assume Vengevine is a mistake, what is stopping Wizards from printing another mistake that re-enables a known offender (Survival)? In Standard, Vengevine was only good in a few decks that never really panned out and it spent most of its time in the format in trade binders. In Limited, it was far from a bomb but still a card you took because it was decent and worth money. By those standards, it wasn't a mistake at all; it was only a mistake in the context of a format for which Wizards has stated it doesn't test. But because it was fine in the two formats that Wizards does test, what's to stop them from printing something similar in the future? Or perhaps printing some other creature that accidentally works with some creatures in Legacy to do something stupid (like Ooze)? We know that Dark Depths wasn't really on Wizards' radar when they printed Hexmage, and I'm fairly certain that no one said, "Let's make a card that combos with Trike and Phyrexian Devourer (of all things) to shoot people for lots of damage!" Again, leaving a card that is known to create broken interactions with 'mistakes' in the format in the name of diversity seems loose to me.

In short, there's no evidence to support the banning of other combo cards over Survival in a hypothetical world were Vengevine got the axe instead. They all have equal potential for being broken, but Survival actually was broken at one point and is now on peoples' radars as a card to try to break whenever a new set comes out.

The format is weaker now for the absence of Survival. Banning Vengevine would only have banned Vengevine. Even if they print another card that could break Survival and require its banning, that's still fewer cards lost to the format.

Not really, because if you were to ban Survival at a later date, your effective banned list would still be:

Anger
Big Game Hunter
Masticore
Genesis
Rofellos
Squee
Faerie Macabre
Wonder
Wild Mongrel
Basking Rootwalla
Gilded Drake

Along with any cards printed in the interim that were only good in Survival decks and Vengevine now being actually banned as opposed to soft-banned.

Again, I'm not sure why we need to keep certain cards in the format, or why we should target certain archetypes for saving over others. Rifter and Astral Slide were fun decks to play and I'm sure they had their fans, but they're effectively banned by a combination of power creep and metagame shifts. Why not argue for saving them? Because they're not iconic enough? Because there aren't (or weren't) enough people who liked them? How do you even gauge that?

More generally, is it worth basing your ban policy on the happiness of the pilots of specific decks or archetypes? Can't we invert that principle to argue that Goblin Lackey, LED, Top, Standstill, High Tide, Brainstorm, Tarmogoyf, and many other cards should now be banned because they upset people at one point in time? And if we shouldn't look at the reverse situation, then why not?

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Add duals and fetchlands and I agree that's a comprehensive list.

I would actually include a few others like StP and Hymn to Tourach, but those were the ones someone might potentially want banned but shouldn't be for, if nothing else, the reasons mentioned; they're classical and iconic cards that represent a lot of the history of the game and by association, Legacy's core brand.


For the same reason cards that fit that criteria that could come off the banned list should, even if that necessitates banning something else.

I mean if I had my druthers this would be the next update, all told;

Banned:

- Delver of Secrets
- Vengevine
- Tarmogoyf
- Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
- Forbidden Orchard
- Tendrils of Agony

Unbanned:

- Survival of the Fittest
- Oath of Druid
- Necropotence
- Black Vise
- Mind Twist
- Worldgorger Dragon
- Goblin Recruiter
- Mystical Tutor
- Earthcraft
- Land Tax
- Shahrazad

People have complained about Legacy changing too much with each new set, but taking a look at the way bannings were handled before and after, it's obvious that a lot of that is just because Legacy has gotten a lot more conservative with bannings than they used to be; in the furthest extreme, the criteria between what's too good for a new creature is far higher than what's too good for an old combo piece.

[Nonex]

Are you sure you want to unban Oath of Druids? Don't get me wrong, I love the card, but Legacy is so creature-heavy that I doubt you'd actually need Orchard.

Would Worldgorger Dragon come with a new rule saying whoever starts an unstoppable loop loses the game rather than drawing it?

Finally, what are your thoughts on Mental Misstep from those changes? I mean, you heavily shake the format, but Misstep stays banned.

[Mr. Safety]

To be blunt, I think you're missing the point. Any card that's legal in Modern can hardly be an iconic Legacy card. If we're describing Legacy's iconic cards, the format's unique brand, we're describing a narrow and non-expanding subset of cards. It should be more like;

- Brainstorm
- Force of Will
- LED
- Wasteland


But even then the question arises of why other classic Magic cards that might be made legal if given the same consideration aren't, the prime example being the banning of Survival over Vengevine.

How did I miss the point? The name of the thread is 'Should Wizards specifically protect iconic cards in Legacy?' I took a stab at defining what those iconic cards are. While Wild Nacatl is legal in modern, that doesn't mean it *isn't* an iconic legacy card. Modern is what, 6 months old? It doesn't even have a gender yet, let alone an identity...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Oath might be very good, but it would be a lot worse without control over when it triggers and without the ability to put Emrakul into play. Actually a lot of things are just worse without Emrakul. Emrakul is the very definition of a ticking timebomb; it's far more powerful than any other creature in the game, and anything that lets you somehow circumvent mana costs (or just generate tons of mana) threatens to break him.

My attitude towards people drawing with Dragon is the same as my attitude towards people drawing with Shahrazad; who cares? I guess it sucks to go up against the guy who's playing a deck that inclines towards draws, but I don't see anyone clamoring to ban Stasis or Humility.

I would have no problem unbanning Mental Misstep either. I think it was a mistake to ban it in the first place. I just forgot about it honestly.

[nedleeds]

The SCG clones didnt even try to adapt to the emergence of SotF. The collective blue ego was hurt so badly by the possibility that a G/w deck without islands was competitive that they cried loud enough to get it banned. Go look at the lists, no effort to adapt (spell snares, pithing needle, extirpate, (gasp) maindeck disenchant spells). Pathetic, yet the ubiquitous brainstorm remains.