All B/R update speculation.

[Gheizen64]

I'm dead certain jar would be broken in MUD decks utilizing metalworker and other such fast mana enablers. When you draw 7 cards with a metalworker in play or mana floating + lightning greaves, crazy things tend to happen.

Memory jar would be a shoe in for PSI, I know I would instantly run it over slithermuse if it were unbanned so I didn't have to jump through hoops to get blue mana and memory jar when naturally drawn isn't terrible like slithermuse, where you can actually cast it.

Yeah, WotC misspelled Bryant's name when he top 8'ed and it made me die a little inside when I saw that.

Also, stifle is a card.

Is it that better than Forgemaster or staff of domination? I mean, those two are pretty much game, and domination sometimes win the same turn.

[heroicraptor]

There has to be an emergency ban on Temporal Mastery.

[Namida]

So...I don't want to be that guy, but if it happens to be the case that Temporal Mastery puts the format in a stranglehold, I'm concerned that we might see cards like Brainstorm, Sensei's Divining Top, and Ponder getting the axe before Temporal Mastery. The situation seems analogous to what happened to Survival--the aforementioned library manipulation cards are all extremely powerful, and only grow stronger as more cards see print, much like Survival. In addition, the existence of a card like Temporal Mastery implies that efficient library manipulation cards are limiting design space by breaking-in-half any good cards they could print with draw triggers...and the article previewing Temporal Mastery implies that people at Wizards are trying their hardest to make(fix) some other mechanic utilizing draw triggers. And finally, all of the cards I mentioned are banned/restricted across multiple formats for being too good, so it seems folly to just assume that they won't eventually ban them here too--especially since it seems like the arguments I've heard up to this point amount to keeping the library manipulation legal because Brainstorm is ubiquitous and keeping it legal is the only way to keep players in the format/avoid a shitstorm. At the very least, if Temporal Mastery proves to be a format-dominating card, the precedent set by Survival makes me feel we shouldn't be expecting Temporal Mastery to be banned just so we can play Brainstorm and friends.

All that being said, I hope I'm wrong and Temporal Mastery either sucks ass or gets banned.

[Dzra]

Their policy is usually ban the fewest number of cards. They can't ban Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Sensei's Divining Top, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Sylvan Library, Mirri's Guile, and Personal Tutor just because of one card (that is likely broken by itself regardless).

Is there precedent for the DCI banning a card before the normal B/R updates?

[Gheizen64]

Their policy is usually ban the fewest number of cards. They can't ban Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, Sensei's Divining Top, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Sylvan Library, Mirri's Guile, and Personal Tutor just because of one card (that is likely broken by itself regardless).

Is there precedent for the DCI banning a card before the normal B/R updates?

Memory Jar is the only card that was banned in an emergency B&R announcement iirc.

[luckme10]

So did anyone else notice that we've come full circle since the creation of this thread? Look SDT is back in the B/R Speculative Crosshairs!

I for one hope that personal tutor gets the axe. That card is one of the more inelastic cards available and I for one would rather not like to see it skyrocket in price.

[Zinch]

Memory Jar is the only card that was banned in an emergency B&R announcement iirc.

No, Mind's Desire was also

[DragoFireheart]

Mind's Desire
Memory Jar


These cards got an emergency ban.

Here are some tutors I know that could enable Temporal Mastery:

Personal Tutor
Lim-Dul's Vault

[caiomarcos]

Mind's Desire
Memory Jar


These cards got an emergency ban.

Here are some tutors I know that could enable Temporal Mastery:

Personal Tutor
Lim-Dul's Vault

Desire was actually a preemptive ban, it was banned before being released. Jar was indeed an emergency ban, ie, a ban out of the regular schedule of updates to the ban list.

[Vacrix]

I tried playing Mind's Desire this whole week in various High Tide builds. It was inferior to Time Spiral in every way.

I also tried it in a few different storm combo builds. I try building new versions of storm combo variants all the time and I could not find a build that would get me above 8 storm consistently and you need at least that much for it to be effective.

I vote at this point that its inferior to AdN as a storm engine. Please just try to play with it for a week or two and you'll see what I mean. AdN doesn't require initial storm to get to a lethal tendrils and it produces more storm than any of the other engines can. Its also cheaper than Mind's Desire and its on color with Dark Ritual.

Like Dark Ritual was saying a few pages back. It would be busted with Tolarian Academy... until then Mind's Desire is a safe unban IMO.

[DragoFireheart]

Does anyone else feel that the old poll for what should be banned looks extremely ridiculous right now? SDT? Tarmogoyf? Phyrexian Dreadnaught? FFS, Counterbalance is a dead deck. Also, when was the last time someone PLAYED Phyrexian Dreadnaught?

Can we get a discussion going on changing that old list? Maybe put in a new poll or just get rid of the poll results altogether?

[overseer1234]

It is indeed funny how more than half of the cards listed in the pol are nowhere near as strong as they were a small 3 years ago :D

Ban Goblin Lacky? or Standstil? LOL

[Zilla]

Personally, I like having the old poll up there, because it's a constant reminder of how fucking absurd most of the ban discussions we have actually are. Given enough time, the vast majority of the cards people seem to think are going to ruin the format become totally irrelevant on their own.

[DrJones]

It isn't totally fair to call these old discussions absurd. WotC has since then printed a lot of answers to these cards that weren't available at the time, which have weakened their effect on the meta.

Let's imagine dredge had become format-ruining and WotC was forced to print Grafdigger's Cage to stop it on its tracks; that wouldn't turn all the previous discussions about dredge's power absurd, in fact, it would mean they were right.

[DragoFireheart]

Personally, I like having the old poll up there, because it's a constant reminder of how fucking absurd most of the ban discussions we have actually are. Given enough time, the vast majority of the cards people seem to think are going to ruin the format become totally irrelevant on their own.

How about adding more cards to the list then for more absurdity?

[Vacrix]

If its not too much work, we really should have a new poll. It clearly defines the most powerful cards in Legacy, which changes from set to set.

[luckme10]

How about adding more cards to the list then for more absurdity?

That's like saying, "if you voted for Ronald Reagan in the 80s, your voting privileges have been revoked..." Hmm actually, I'm ok with that.

[Vacrix]

I've been thinking... we really need to have Mind's Desire unbanned. Storm combo hasn't been doing all that well compared to the sheer number of Maverick and RUG Tempo decks. If TES gets another storm engine, obviously it will just get played as a 1'of in the Wish board, then I think it will make TES slightly more competitive.

I've tested it extensively since the discussion came back up on the B/R thread. Its not dangerous at all. TS and Meditate are far better as business spells in High Tide, and in Dark Ritual storm combo, you can't reliably hit a high enough number to get a kill. Also.. even in glass house builds, you have to play bad cards like Manamorphose and color fix for UU which isn't a consistent process. You can't play it along side Ad Nauseam and it sure as hell isn't even on par with Ad Nauseam costing 1 less, requiring no initial storm, and being on color with Dark Ritual.

Further, people are saying that there will be some new build of storm combo that plays Mind's Desire. Please, enlighten me. I've tried it in existing decks, glass houses like Belcher, and even played alongside Doomsday. Storm combo is comprised of staples so its not like people will discover something that hasn't been tried. The non-existent deck people speak of is exactly that; it cannot be built. Wait til they unban academy, and then complain about a new build of storm combo. Til the, Mind's Desire is a safe unban.

[dontbiteitholmes]

It isn't totally fair to call these old discussions absurd. WotC has since then printed a lot of answers to these cards that weren't available at the time, which have weakened their effect on the meta.

Let's imagine dredge had become format-ruining and WotC was forced to print Grafdigger's Cage to stop it on its tracks; that wouldn't turn all the previous discussions about dredge's power absurd, in fact, it would mean they were right.

It's completely fair to call these old discussions absurd. These cards weren't brought up like, "Oh hey Sensie Top is pretty good." They were brought up like, "Sensie Top is broken and needs to be placed on a banned list." Literally probably every signature card that's had more than 5 top 8's within a 2 month span has been brought up in this way. Not only does it show the discussions were absurd, it shows the people making the argument were short sighted and basically didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. It shows that if WotC listened to these people instead of the people who said, "Yeah, that card is pretty good, but give it a couple months and see what happens, it's not like it's dominating every event," The format would be ruined and we would all be playing Modern with duals right now and calling it Legacy.

SurvivalVine was dominant, they ended up banning the wrong card, but whatever, it pretty much proved itself to make the format unfun through sheer dominance over the course of several months. Mental Misstep was just in every deck of every color, which was excessive. Other than that any banning discussion within the past 2 years was pretty absurd. I swear at one point people were talking about "ban Corralhelm Commander" and being 100% serious. IMO any discussion of banning outside this thread should be deleted by mods. 99% of the time it's just a bunch of whining. There will always be tier decks. If a deck proves to be dominant after the format has time to adjust we can start talking about bannings (at least 2 months unless it's like Flash obvious that it's broken). If a deck has 2 good weeks in a row (more like 1 week now a days) and you start taking about bannings prepare to be wrong.

[DragoFireheart]

Per your post in the other topic before it got locked...

dontbiteitholmes, I can't quite grasp the mental gymnastics you perform that lets you say:

- Temporal Mastery is fine in Legacy.
- Time Walk is not (I'm assuming so since it's banned...)

Could you explain to me why you don't feel that Temporal Mastery won't be abusive and will only be "just a great card"? This is me asking you to "prove a negative" though it really isn't a negative since this card is very similar to Time Walk so it's only a pseudo-negative if we are going to pretend that TM exists in a vacuum.

I'm willing to concede that I'm wrong, but I've yet to read an argument stating why TM is fine while TW isn't when, from my perspective and in the context of Legacy (Jace, BS, Top), TM == TW.