Changes to the planeswalker uniqueness rule

[Rizso]

They probly wanted to print more legendary lands in the future without them stripmining each other. Land destruction is boring afterall XD

Probly gonna be some more legendary lands that will start to see play like volrath stronghold, kor haven, ruins just a few of them.

[catmint]

Esperbalde is uniquely situated within the meta as a Jace deck which is capable of playing a legitimate creature game. The other two Jace decks, BUGStill and Miracles, are neither one truly capable of applying pressure to opposing Jaces. BUGStill has a few manlands and Snapcasters -- Miracles doesn't even have that. Shardless BUG is also capable of pressuring opposing Jaces, but I would hesitate to call Shardless a "Jace deck," so much as it is a deck that happens to play Jace.

Another thing that is worth keeping in mind about Esperblade is that it is capable of playing a large number of the cards that I'm talking about here. Jitte, Jace, Geist of St. Traft, Karakas and Ruins, and Clique are all powerful legends that are capable of taking over the game, and to some extent I feel that Esperblade has actually been held back by the fact that it's trying to play all of them in a world where mirror matches frequently mean that at least some of these options are not going to be able to live up to their full potential in every match-up.

I don't agree with this conclusion.

Shardless does play a legitimate creature game and is also a Jace deck. Is is more proactive, but no idea what you consider a "jace deck". It is also an ancestral visions deck which makes it pretty tough for Esperblade. Esper has a really good anti Planeswalker card with lingering souls, but cascade and punishing fire are tough for them to beat. Especially the jund matchup does not really get better. Considering that there is no improvement on the esper side versus jund, while junds liliana's get better the matchup might even get worse.

On the other side Dark Depths is a combo that can be handled by Esper rather easily - jumping, swording, bouncing so the lack of wasteland does not hurt. However a good Maverick player does have an edge over esper imo and a possible uprise of knight of the reliquary variants would also challenge esper to focus on beating that making them automatically more vulnerable to combo. In my opinion Esper is the best deck if you can tune it against an expected meta. With less diversity Esper tunes better and finishes better. Trying to beat all kinds of combo, punishing fire, knight of the reliquary, delver, shardless agent,... is not easy.

Esper will stay top tier deck, but I see no reason why they would be a big winner of the new ruling.

The Jace issue favours the Jace deck which can handle opposing Jaces more effectively and each color combination has their own tools (red the best ones). Tough to make a call.

The jitte issue favours the faster player and the player with more jitte removal. Deahtrite and Abrupt Decay come to mind.

The liliana issue helps every deck running her. Jund beeing the best obviously.

Vendilion clique is not an issue.

Karaks is a minor issue for everyone weak to Karakas since it is more playable and cannot be removed by my own Karakas.

The Sneak Attack mirror issue is not really relevant. Playing show in the mirror was always a bad idea.

The cradle issue makes elves stronger. Instead of a dead card you get more mana. The deck has still the same problems.

Mox Opal gives all artifact based decks a small boost and they frankly need it.

Dark Depths brings new life to lands, loam & knight decks and has potential to create new archetypes. More diversity - love it.

Overall I am not sure if this ruling is good for the game or not. What I love is that things will completely change and there will very likely be significant shifts in the meta. Times to brew and uncertainty are the most exciting ones.

[Final Fortune]

How are there 2 Jaces and then both die when they see each other? Arguing with story never gets very far.

From a gameplay perspective I think it is an improvement. More choices, more interaction are good in general. And in the Jace war specifically it gives you a better chance to catch up.

The Thespian thing is an issue, though.

Clearly you didn't watch Back to the Future as a child.

[Lord Seth]

Geist of St. Traft, Thun, and Sigarda -- These creatures all get incredible power boosts, because they are now virtually impossible to kill (Thrun in particular). The Hexproof legends now are no longer susceptible to being Cloned out, nor can you answer their legend with your own copy. Of these, Geist is far and away the scariest option for legacy play, as Thrun is too small of a body to be meaningful in a Tarmogoyf world and Sigarda is too expensive outside of Nic Fit and Cradle-powered Maverick decks.

The problem is, you kind of can. If you have a Sigarda and your opponent has a Sigarda, you can block their Sigarda with your own. Ditto with Thrun. Heck, even if the Geist can't block the angel, it can still block the other Geist, and your opponent will have a tricky time getting rid of it (can't burn it!) to stop you from doing that.

Phantasmal Image -- This little guy is now unplayable outside of Pod and Merfolk. Its use as an offensive weapon is gone.

I've barely seen it played outside of Pod and Merfolk anyway. Being able to kill Legends via a Clone always felt to me more like an occasional bonus to the clone card, not a reason you'd actually play it.

[TsumiBand]

Clearly you didn't watch Back to the Future as a child.

Bahahaha amazing imagery of Old Jace and Young Jace bumping into each other and shouting "....IM BROKEN" and passing out.

This is a weird weird weird change. All this to prevent Clone from killing Legendary creatures? Why not just make some rule about how card's original card name matters, or some junk. It IS stupid to kill Legendary creatures with a Phantasmal Image, it's a big flavor fail and it operates strictly on knowing the rules of the game instead of RTFC. That's generally not very good, or at least it's a layer of abstraction that doesn't help anybody.

But yeah this multiple Jace/multiple Cradle/Opal/etc thing just makes it seem really not very well thought out. Ironically this makes Notion Thief a much better answer to Jace The Mind Sculptor than it was a couple of days ago; can't Legend Rule JTMS anymore, guess I better just play a 3/1 for 4 that punches it in the breakfast.

[Final Fortune]

Chaining Cradles and Opals arent that gamebreaking. It's just a minor improvement. If an Elf deck is tapping a cradle for a ton of mana and chaining into another cradle with Glimpse, you've already lost. It just makes Elves easier to kill on the turn they go off, so they don't lose to a sudden sweeper the next turn. Chaining cradles doesn't make Elves suddenly unbeatable since most of the fight goes into preventing Glimpse from resolving.

As for opals, a storm deck has to go to alot of effort to turn on Opals, and may not even be worth it. So I don't see the big problem here.

The main thing is Dark Depths-Stage. It's ridiculously strong, but can be hated out by things common things like Wasteland and Swords. It's great that the combo gives half-dead decks like Mav a new breath of life, but it's far from bannable.

Chaining Mox Opal isn't game breaking but it is deck defining, the original Spanish Inquisition list with Shield Sphere, Phyrexian Walker and now Vault of Whispers and Mox Opal gets an extremely consistent source of on color mana acceleration as it casts Draw 4s or Draw 7s etc.

[dontbiteitholmes]

You can't believe it, even when I told you about it a year ago? Such a low faith is depressing.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post636465

Yeah thanks for linking to that thread, they pretty much still sums up my feelings on your claims.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

I'm not at all happy with the update to the Legend rule, for many reasons already mentioned:

*What's still legendary about these permanents? Are there really two identical Progenituses in the MTG world? Two Teferis? Identity of indiscernibles, damn it!

*Getting twice the mileage out of my own legends strikes me as potentially quite powerful and generally unfun (e.g. two Jace activations, two Cradle activations (Cradle is actually much better now, since you actually want to run multiples), etc.).

*I'm not particularly thrilled at the prospect of Progenitus vs. Progenitus races (or Emrakul vs. Emrakul, or whatever). Previously, the legend rule helped to equalize things. Now, for similar/mirror matches, it's even more of a race than before.


I also don't like the SB changes. I'm ok with the "up to 15" change, which doesn't seem problematic (although I don't see why you'd ever start with fewer than 15 cards in the SB), but I'm really unhappy about the fact that SBing is no longer done on a one-to-one basis. That's a pretty fundamental change, and I just don't see any reason for it.

As for indestructible/unblockable... they should just demote most of the keywords they introduced a couple years ago. They're unnecessary, and having cards with keywords that aren't keywords is just confusing.

[Adryan]

I would say the big winner is BUGstill because we are the best Jace deck.(4 Jace&Standstill & Life from the Loam &manlands) Once the engine is active, even Swords to Plowshares can't stop Manlands.
Sadly i can't test this change on Mtgo.

[Gheizen64]

Yeah thanks for linking to that thread, they pretty much still sums up my feelings on your claims.

Holy shit i've missed this, this is awesome ahahah

[Richard Cheese]

I want to see something with two Griselbrands on both side of the field now.

Yeah I mean who wouldn't want to see that guy making out with himself right?

Right?

[Higgs]

You can't believe it, even when I told you about it a year ago? Such a low faith is depressing.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post636465

DrJones, you are officially like The Man From Earth :)

[ankharlyn]

I like the SB-Rule! It occured to me sometimes that i didn't really want to board stuff out but wanted to add 1-2 cards from the SB. Thats possible now.

I like the SB change as well. Pretty much the only good thing about this.

[ivanpei]

Chaining Mox Opal isn't game breaking but it is deck defining, the original Spanish Inquisition list with Shield Sphere, Phyrexian Walker and now Vault of Whispers and Mox Opal gets an extremely consistent source of on color mana acceleration as it casts Draw 4s or Draw 7s etc.

I was referring to the usual Ad Nauseum/TES decks with a lower artifact count. In the case of SI, yes the rules change definitely gave that deck a power bump. SI is a glass cannon with a reasonably high % of fizzling, so any help for that deck is great.

[ankharlyn]

If anything the game gets more interactive with this. And how in the world would this rules change promote "turn guys sideways lolz"? Or playing on Auto-Pilot? And why wouldn't you have to look on your opponent's board anymore?

It's not hard to understand why this promotes less interaction. Before, you needed to pay attention to whether or not your opp had any legends down. Now you don't. Now you care about one less thing about the opponent's board state. Who cares if he has legends down? Just toss yours down without even looking because due to the new legend rule, it *doesn't matter at all what legends your opponent has played*. That's what I'm saying.

PLZ BE LEGENDARY DUALS PLZ PLZ.

No but seriously with the new rule Legendary duals would just be perfect with Fetches. Run 2 of them, loads of fetches and maybe 1 or 2 normal duals et voilà, Legacy is largely affordable once again, attendance growth, world hunger ends, war ends, we discover the Alcubierre drive and get to explore the galaxy.

I have the duals I need, but that would probably be the only redemption for this otherwise terrible rules change. That said, I don't see them doing it because I imagine they'd consider Legendary duals to be "functional reprints" and thus against the RL.

[swoop]

Holy shit now i can play more than one imperial recruiter in my aluren

[Barook]

You can't believe it, even when I told you about it a year ago? Such a low faith is depressing.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post636465

Any other changes you have "in store" for us?

[ankharlyn]

The problem is, you kind of can. If you have a Sigarda and your opponent has a Sigarda, you can block their Sigarda with your own. Ditto with Thrun. Heck, even if the Geist can't block the angel, it can still block the other Geist, and your opponent will have a tricky time getting rid of it (can't burn it!) to stop you from doing that.

I've barely seen it played outside of Pod and Merfolk anyway. Being able to kill Legends via a Clone always felt to me more like an occasional bonus to the clone card, not a reason you'd actually play it.

Blocking is a pretty meh way to kill creatures. Also, I imagine the first thing the Sigarda player will do is put Darksteel Plate on so that won't work anymore, and you're left with mass sweepers or exile effects. Yay, so fun having 100% non interactive cards because WotC doesn't want new players to have to pay attention to their opponent's board state, and instead just blindly auto-pilot through the game slapping down whatever without any thought.

DrJones: I hope you get crabs for suggesting this garbage to WotC. I mean, not seriously (that's mean), but it's a terribly stupid and crap change, so if your suggestion actually influenced it, I blame you in part. This change is bad and you should feel bad.

[Julian23]

Any other changes you have "in store" for us?

Not since R&D decided to print Misthollow Griffin at a different mana costs than DrJones suggested.

[Arsenal]

the first thing the Sigarda player will do is put Darksteel Plate on

lolwut? That card doesn't see play in Legacy.