[Article] TCRF: Griselbanned?

[Michael Keller]

New article is up.

[wcm8]

Reanimating a creature, even if the creature literally said 'at end of turn, win the game', is not ban-worthy. It requires a minimum of two steps:

1. Get creature to graveyard
2. Cast reanimation spell

The first step can be achieved most easily via Entomb, but often the reanimator deck will be forced into using a more difficult method: Careful Study or Hapless Researcher (and similar cards), which require the creature to be either in hand or in the next draw or or two; self-targeting with something like Thoughtseize; or burning an entire turn by keeping a hand of 8 cards to go to the end discard step.

And of course once that's achieved, you still need to follow it up with a reanimation spell. This generally isn't occuring on the same turn, at least for conventional reanimator decks or until the game has already proceeded to the mid-game.

All of these steps are easily disruptable, and every color and deck archetype has access to the appropriate disruption. Your garden variety of counterspells or discard can stop the chain, the creatures themselves can be destroyed (least effective, but potential option), and every color has access to good graveyard hate options (Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Faerie Macabre, Surgical Extraction, Rest in Peace, Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, the list goes on and on). Heck, theres' even a land (Karakas) that deals with most troublesome reanimator targets, not to mention how a timely Wasteland can give the Reanimator player fits.

I think we can stop calling for the banning of Griselbrand, because there's really nothing about the Reanimator archetype that pushes it beyond the realm of acceptably powerful in Legacy. The other tier 1 and tier 1.5 decks in Legacy all have the tools available to them to supress this strategy if it ever became an actual worry.

I enjoyed the article though, nice overview of the Tin Fins deck!

[DLifshitz]

I think we can stop calling for the banning of Griselbrand, because there's really nothing about the Reanimator archetype that pushes it beyond the realm of acceptably powerful in Legacy. The other tier 1 and tier 1.5 decks in Legacy all have the tools available to them to supress this strategy if it ever became an actual worry.

Yeah, if it didn't need a banning before Deathrite Shaman and RIP arrived, why ban anything from Reanimator now!? It's even more of a glass cannon than it used to be.

[.dk]

For those that think Deathrite takes care of reanimator, I suggest testing Tin Fins against any of those decks. Deathrite really isn't very hard to win through.

Thanks for the article - provided a good overview of the deck and I think a good picture in to the "cheating" of permanents into play in Legacy. I'm actually not sure if banning Entomb, however would be enough to make Tin Fins go away. Honestly, the deck is pretty good off of a Show and Tell as well as the reanimation plan.

Also glad you mentioned the parallels with Lich...

Makes me want to get with Richard Cheese and actually finish off the Tin Fins primer...

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Reanimating a creature, even if the creature literally said 'at end of turn, win the game', is not ban-worthy. It requires a minimum of two steps:

1. Get creature to graveyard
2. Cast reanimation spell

The first step can be achieved most easily via Entomb, but often the reanimator deck will be forced into using a more difficult method: Careful Study or Hapless Researcher (and similar cards), which require the creature to be either in hand or in the next draw or or two; self-targeting with something like Thoughtseize; or burning an entire turn by keeping a hand of 8 cards to go to the end discard step.

And of course once that's achieved, you still need to follow it up with a reanimation spell. This generally isn't occuring on the same turn, at least for conventional reanimator decks or until the game has already proceeded to the mid-game.

All of these steps are easily disruptable, and every color and deck archetype has access to the appropriate disruption. Your garden variety of counterspells or discard can stop the chain, the creatures themselves can be destroyed (least effective, but potential option), and every color has access to good graveyard hate options (Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Faerie Macabre, Surgical Extraction, Rest in Peace, Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, the list goes on and on). Heck, theres' even a land (Karakas) that deals with most troublesome reanimator targets, not to mention how a timely Wasteland can give the Reanimator player fits.

I think we can stop calling for the banning of Griselbrand, because there's really nothing about the Reanimator archetype that pushes it beyond the realm of acceptably powerful in Legacy. The other tier 1 and tier 1.5 decks in Legacy all have the tools available to them to supress this strategy if it ever became an actual worry.

I enjoyed the article though, nice overview of the Tin Fins deck!

This all is true of Hermit Druid. But why have a stupid easy combo in the format? What does it add to the game?

[dontbiteitholmes]

This all is true of Hermit Druid. But why have a stupid easy combo in the format? What does it add to the game?

Hermit Druid is effectively a one-card combo though. That alone makes it unfair to compare it to other cards.

[nitewolf9]

It's a 1 card combo that dies to any creature removal spell and graveyard hate as well. And you need to untap with it. I think Hermit Druid would be fine.

[Dark Ritual]

I think that if something were to be banned it would inevitably be griselbrand honestly. To me, entomb is the card to ban as it grants a level of consistency that might be 'too good' in the eyes of the DCI. But griselbrand would still be abused in legacy a lot if left unbanned not to mention it IS the most powerful creature in the game. Paying life to draw cards has never been fair outside of bad cards like greed and such but greed costs 2 life and a black mana. Paying 1 life to draw 1 card is inherently unfair, and griselbrand will ALWAYS be abused in legacy unless WotC bans all of the enablers (show and tell, all the cheap reanimation spells in the game, all fast mana like dark ritual, etc. etc.)

Hermit druid is a 1 card combo, just like survival. Like survival it loses to all the same hate. Was survival fine? Not at all. Not to mention, people would hate losing to that deck. Oh, so my opponent just had zero answers for my turn 1 hermit? Guess I win. Sounds like a fun game.

[nedleeds]

Survival is fine. You have to cast what you get with it, or attack (eventually), with non-evasive 4/3's subject to all the grave hate that's been printed in the last 1.5 years. It's no worse than Entomb which was banned for years.

[dontbiteitholmes]

It's a 1 card combo...

You can stop there though.

A one card combo shouldn't be compared to a 2 card combo ever, especially when the one card costs 2 mana.

Apples and Oranges so find another comparison.

[Fatal]

I also agree that Griselband should get an axe, there are too many options to abuse Griselband into play - don't ban them all - most of them aren't scarry before Griselband - for example S&T decks, but now a day it's just pure evil.

As I mention i other thread Griselband can't be answered by 1-on-1 card if he is cheated (in some way) to play. That's why its so overpowered. Its 1 card: engine and wincon. How many times you win the game when on opposite site it hit the table ?

[Zombie]

Power level aside, Griselbrand (and Emrakul and Omniscience and so on) are an affront to thinking. Like, absurdly powerful critters are fine. Anything NO-able is fine. Sphinx of the Steel Wind is fine, as is Inkwell Leviathan. The Darksteel Colossi. Blazing Archon, Angel of Despair, all a-ok. But they're all awkward in their own way - either they solve specific problems or need setup. Griselbrand and it's ilk don't. They just win, basically regardless of anything. They are, in short, dreadfully dull. As Carsten said in one of his articles, they take away the magic from Magic. Why do an elaborate loop to draw a ton of cards or concocts some kind of winning game state when one retardedly powerful card can shortcut all that and just win? Nevermind that the shell will always be the same sort. A Hulk deck and a Craterhoof deck need to be pretty drastically different. Griselbrand and Emrakul? Not so much. Just insert cheaters and protection.

[catmint]

Neither Show&Tell, Reanimator or TinFins are a problem. Their popularity and success comes in waves which is fine. They have all significant weaknesses and can be hated out very effectively. TinFins does not really add anything to the issue. It is a bit faster than reanimator, easier to play than storm and surely got some people by surprise. But at the end of the day it trades consistency and resiliency for speed (as seen in other combo archetypes) and cannot be seen as a strictly better Griselbrand deck than Reanimator or Show&tell variants.

I am in the camp of thinking the format has so many powerful tools & archetypes it is able to handle a lot more stuff from the banned list. Also I want as many different viable decks as possible and banning Griselbrand would significantly hurt the mentioned combo decks. You should not be allowed to prepare optimally for combo because there are only a couple of viable archetypes out there.

Edit:

...Griselbrand and it's ilk don't. They just win, basically regardless of anything....

You obviously haven't played (enough) with Griselbrand decks to experience the "level of regardlessness" of your win. Life total is something that is attacked pretty hard in legacy right?

[Maximus]

I think any deck with Griselbrand offers way more methods of interaction than say Deathrite Shaman does. Griselbrand.dec can lose to hand disruption, graveyard disruption, on the stack, to removal, to variance, to a good clock, etc. Deathrite Shaman offers no punishable deck design characteristics, no good methods to gain tempo or advantage on removing it, no desirable methods to counter it, its utility only increases as the game progresses on many fronts, and it has a much more centralizing effect on the format. I would ban DRS before Griselbrand.

I know that the article only really addressed Griselbrand and its implications. I just don't think it's the most obnoxious card in the format. Not even close.

[Azdraël]

I'd like Legacy players for once to stop whining over combo and actually play the deck, or do the endeavour to side against it and see that it's really beatable by many different means. As Survival was, but oh wait, nobody took the pain to side properly against it. More seriously, it takes every single hate combo can take, that is to say, discard, counter, hatebear and grave removals. Isn't that enough?

Good article though.

[Rune]

(This is probably more of a general rant than an actual response to the article)

It's almost comical how TinFins receives so much attention when it's quite easily the worst Griselbrand deck. It's like people are asking LED to be banned because Belcher is too strong. I've had a hard time figuring out why anyone would choose to play a less resilient and more inconsistent version of Reanimator, but then I remembered how important doing flashy shit is for many Magic players. With TinFins I'm guesing people (re)discovered how broken Entomb + Griselbrand + reanimation effect is, but the deck is just using a very bad shell to play those cards in.

In any case, I think Griselbrand decks (even TinFins) are infinitely better than anything else you can be doing in Legacy. It's truly mind-boggling just how criminally underplayed the card is. Griselbrand is not actually a beatable Magic: the Gathering card. I wrote the exact same thing a year ago, and nothing about this has really changed. Part of the reason is that people refuse to pile on the hate in sufficient amounts, but the other problem is that the most effective hate cards are both limited in number and also pretty narrow (Humility, Gilded Drake, etc.). They aren't guaranteed to actually do anything either, because Reanimator and Sneak & Show can attack from different angles. This is why I think TinFins is a completely fair deck in comparison. If it ever became dominant, you would simply need to adjust with appropriate amounts of Leylines/RiP and Counterbalances.

Both Griselbrand and Show and Tell are very banworthy, but I'm not really a fan of banning anymore (probably because I made the mistake of buying into Modern), so I'd rather see them change things up in a different way. Unbanning Survival would be cool since tutoring up Faerie Macabres and Mind Control creatures is going to be an effective way of fighting the Griselbrand decks. Survival itself is also much more beatable now than it was when it got banned. The other option would be to print more good hosers. An example could be an O-ring with split second on the EtB ability.

[DLifshitz]

I've had a hard time figuring out why anyone would choose to play a less resilient and more inconsistent version of Reanimator

DRS and RIP. Tin Fins is quite obviously better than traditional Reanimator in a metagame full of those cards. But if maindecked graveyard hate falls out of favour, then traditional Reanimator will probably be better again...

It's truly mind-boggling just how criminally underplayed the card is.

It can't be played more. When its presence and visibility increases, people start packing more graveyard and SnT hate. It's a self-regulating process, essentially.

[slave]

Nice article Hollywood - cheers.
I agree with your sentiment that Grisel is pretty overpowered, but you still have to cheat him into play, opening yourself to so many forms of hate.
So I doubt the ban-hammer is close.

... entomb is the card to ban. ....Oh, so my opponent just had zero answers for my turn 1 hermit? Guess I win. Sounds like a fun game.

Disagree that entomb needs to be banned.
The sheer amount of hate available to counter entomb's effectiveness says that Entomb won't be be banned again.
And I also think Hermit is a line-ball call. Yes it's powerful, but it's 2cmc with summing sickness. With cards like Abrupt Decay and the usual suspect of counter, discard and creature removal, I don't think it's power will be what it once was.

But to the point, because DRS is so popular, some seem to be thinking it prevents grave shenanigan's being strong anymore.
As a fella who plays Dredge regularly, should any player out there wish to play 4xDRS as their only gravehate, they're requesting a lesson.

Neither Show&Tell, Reanimator or TinFins ......have all significant weaknesses and can be hated out very effectively.
You obviously haven't played (enough) with Griselbrand decks to experience the "level of regardlessness" of your win. Life total is something that is attacked pretty hard in legacy right?

Agreed - very true.
I play Grisel myself, and quite often against a whole myriad of decks, by the time I've gotten him into play I can't pay the 7life. So I have to wait a turn and hope like hell I get to swing....
Grisel IS overpowered, but not unbeatable. Same deal as Emrakul.

[alderon666]

Grisel IS overpowered, but not unbeatable. Same deal as Emrakul.

Name an unbeatable card. Just one.

Every card can be answered. If there was a card:

All I Do is Win 1
Instant
All I Do is Win can't be countered.
All I Do is Win can't be target of spells or abilities while on the stack.
Remove all permanents from the game. You win the game.

Now that's unbeatable. The problem with banning creature like Griselbrand is that every time they print a huge monster that wins the game when it hits the table, people are going to want it to be banned.

[morgan_coke]

actually alderon, Time Stop would answer that.