Would you like to see True-Name Nemesis gone?

[Feaor]

Trying to say that cards that deal with equipment, REBs, or additional Edict effects are purely because of TNN when those cards were played before is a real stretch. Sure, many of those cards got better with more people playing Equipment and Blue decks, but those cards were already good before. And really? You really think LFTL is really against TNN? Jund's game plan against a resolved TNN is more often going to be "kill all their other guys and make him sacrifice it with Liliana" or the "Abrupt Decay Jitte and race it", not relying on the 1-of LFTL to try and somehow Wasteland off of 3 mana.

You're trying to make it sound like Jund has had to change a bunch to adapt to TNN when it really hasn't. Jund is already naturally good against TNN decks due to all the built in hand disruption and Lilianas on top of the sideboard cards it already played. It doesn't have to change much to get even better against them.

Holy crap did you actually read my post? I never said that they were all to deal with TNN, I was merely refuting your statement that Jund Forgot that it Autoloses to TNN by stating that any matchup can be won if you can bring in up to 11 cards that are good in that matchup. I bet I could build Jund to be strong against any deck if I had that many cards to bring in. Plus it still lost in the finals to a deck its supposed to be good at, and the last open it didn't break top 16, I'd hardly say that Jund is well positioned in the current meta without a lot of hate for TNN as TNN is certainly a nightmare for them if they can't deal with it quickly.

[Arsenal]

The way you squirm and wiggle trying to make it seem like you didn't fall for the obvious trolling is hilarious. Keep up the faith though, maybe someone will believe you! Maybe one day, our new TNN overlords will sweep across the format like a watery blue plague and then you can go out onto the street holding up the cardboard sign you have ready to announce the apocalypse is upon us... and SYLVAN BASILISK is our Savior!

If it's legit, the reasoning behind it is fairly sound. Not dying to Deathblade's Abrupt Decay and Patriot's Lightning Bolt, while forcing through damage through the TNN wall seems decent-ish. However, probably not for 5 mana and when you only get 2 points across, but eat at least 3 on the backswing. Can you get more information from the Jund player as to how relevant/good/bad it was throughout his tourney?

Wanting to play a creature that doesn't die to Abrupt Decay, Lightning Bolt and that can swing through a TNN wall is decent. But once you find out it costs 5 mana and you're only pushing 2 points across, it doesn't sound as good. But if it's played (which it wasn't, but at the time I was under the impression it was actually played), I wanted to know how relevant/good/bad it was for the player. What are you not understanding?

[Esper3k]

Oh, and welcome to my ignore list.

You thought asking you to back up where your "unfun" reasoning came from is trolling? Rofl. Time to pick up your ball and go home, huh? Game, set, match.

Holy crap did you actually read my post? I never said that they were all to deal with TNN, I was merely refuting your statement that Jund Forgot that it Autoloses to TNN by stating that any matchup can be won if you can bring in up to 11 cards that are good in that matchup. I bet I could build Jund to be strong against any deck if I had that many cards to bring in. Plus it still lost in the finals to a deck its supposed to be good at, and the last open it didn't break top 16, I'd hardly say that Jund is well positioned in the current meta without a lot of hate for TNN as TNN is certainly a nightmare for them if they can't deal with it quickly.

I really need more [sarcasm] tags again then. That statement about Jund auto-losing to TNN was directed at all you TNN whiners about how all the creature based decks can't beat TNN, which they clearly can and as has been shown, without much change to them.

I wouldn't say Jund is well positioned in the meta, but that's not because of TNN, that would be because of combo being ever present in the format. Jund hasn't been popular since the spring/summer of this year, so saying it hasn't done well recently isn't saying much. The fact that it's actually been making more of a comeback recently (look at what the T8 players of the Invitationals chose to play, for example) is more of an argument that Jund likes its TNN matchup.

If you want to talk about Jund losing in the finals, didn't someone here earlier mention some mulls to 5 (the coverage on the website is spotty)? Also, consider the UWR player was Jacob Wilson playing against a relative unknown?

Wanting to play a creature that doesn't die to Abrupt Decay, Lightning Bolt and that can swing through a TNN wall is decent. But once you find out it costs 5 mana and you're only pushing 2 points across, it doesn't sound as good. But if it's played (which it wasn't, but at the time I was under the impression it was actually played), I wanted to know how relevant/good/bad it was for the player. What are you not understanding?

"If it's legit, the reasoning behind it is fairly sound." Uh huh, you totally didn't believe that this wasn't a typo or trolling. Gotcha.

[Arsenal]

Also, that is 99.9% a typo.

Yeah Esper, you really got me.

[danyul]

You guys were having a discussion like...7 pages ago. A legitimate discussion. But now you are just being dicks to each other.

At this point I don't know how constructive it is for the rest of us to read. You should take it to PM and wordfight there.

[Higgs]

"unfun" reasoning

Unfun reasoning? Dude I think you need to chill, you're not making sense.

This card is the most unfun thing I've seen in Magic in my life and I sure don't need a reasoning to feel a particular way. I'm fine with uninteractive combo decks because it's a strategy in itself. When a whole deck is designed to dodge interaction (say like dredge) it can get annoying but then the deck is built around that whole strategy. There are narrow answers for that sort of thing which deal with the core strategy of such decks and a lot of players don't enjoy (read don't have fun) playing against such decks with narrow hate cards. When you apply this to TNN, it is a single card which requires such narrow hate cards to be answered and it creates combo-like uninteractivity within interactive strategies. It's not a strategy itself, you just slap it into existing strategies. It feels ham-fisted, unbalanced and out of place. When it lands I start wondering why am I playing this stupid game of back and forth instead of Tendrils'ing their face on turn 2 and calling it a day.

I don't think I or anybody else needs to convince you or anyone else for how unfun this card feels to them. I've always been a blue player and since this card got printed I lost the appetite for Legacy and all sorts of blue aggo-control. At this point I don't think this card adds anything to the format as much as it takes from the format.

[Esper3k]

EDIT: lol danyul, thanks for the information. If that is 100% legit, then it'll be funny to see how quickly the "it's rediculous!" crowd changes their tune to "see! i told you there were TNN answers and that the format will adapt!"

And here's another post of yours after Danyul posts about the FB response on it. You really expect people to believe you didn't think Basilisk was legit? Danyul manned up and admitted he got trolled (don't worry man, it happens to everyone!). Too bad you can't do the same...

[Feaor]

And here's another post of yours after Danyul posts about the FB response on it. You really expect people to believe you didn't think Basilisk was legit? Danyul manned up and admitted he got trolled (don't worry man, it happens to everyone!). Too bad you can't do the same...

Does this actually add anything to the discussion? Maybe this thread needs to be locked for a bit for everyone to cool off, I think at this point pretty everything has been said for now.

[Esper3k]

You guys were having a discussion like...7 pages ago. A legitimate discussion. But now you are just being dicks to each other.

At this point I don't know how constructive it is for the rest of us to read. You should take it to PM and wordfight there.

Dude, it's the internet. If there weren't people being assholes to each other, I'm pretty sure all the tubes would crash

Unfun reasoning? Dude I think you need to chill, you're not making sense.

This card is the most unfun thing I've seen in Magic in my life and I sure don't need a reasoning to feel a particular way. I'm fine with uninteractive combo decks because it's a strategy in itself. When a whole deck is designed to dodge interaction (say like dredge) it can get annoying but then the deck is built around that whole strategy. There are narrow answers for that sort of thing which deal with the core strategy of such decks and a lot of players don't enjoy (read don't have fun) playing against such decks with narrow hate cards. When you apply this to TNN, it is a single card which requires such narrow hate cards to be answered and it creates combo-like uninteractivity within interactive strategies. It's not a strategy itself, you just slap it into existing strategies. It feels ham-fisted, unbalanced and out of place. When it lands I start wondering why am I playing this stupid game of back and forth instead of Tendrils'ing their face on turn 2 and calling it a day.

I don't think I or anybody else needs to convince you or anyone else for how unfun this card feels to them. I've always been a blue player and since this card got printed I lost the appetite for Legacy and all sorts of blue aggo-control. At this point I don't think this card adds anything to the format as much as it takes from the format.

My statement was about him saying that Trinisphere was restricted because it was "unfun", which the quoted text from Forsythe didn't say anything about (just that it was ridiculous in Vintage).

Now for your own particular sentiments:

It's fine that you personally feel that it's unfun - to each their own. You don't need to convince me that you feel that it's unfun. However, if you're using that as a reason to argue for a ban on TNN, I do take issue with that. I believe "unfun" is such a nebulous and subjective criteria that using it as a reason to ban cards in Legacy is a bad path for the format to go down. Second, if you're going to also argue that because it's unfun, it should be banned, you then do need to convince others of why it's unfun if you're going to get them to agree with you.

[Esper3k]

Does this actually add anything to the discussion? Maybe this thread needs to be locked for a bit for everyone to cool off, I think at this point pretty everything has been said for now.

Until 4 months later and a new poll starts up

[Arsenal]

Esper, this is the last post from me to you on this subject; I clearly stated "if that's 100% legit". At no point in time did I state that I was 100% sure that it was true, only if it was true would it be funny. I'm not quite sure what you're reading, but it's fairly obvious that I had major doubts that it truly was played. Again, if it was played (it wasn't, but I didn't know for certain one way or the other at the time), then I wanted to know how relevant/good/bad it was for the player; on one hand, a creature not dying to Abrupt Decay + Lightning Bolt while pushing through a TNN wall is good, but on the other hand, it costing 5 mana and only coming across for 2 is bad.

________________________________________________


Dedicated TNN decks have won the GP DC, SCG Dallas, SCG Oakland, a 186-player East Coast tourney featuring many top players, and has littered virtually every top 8 worth noting. Currently, the top 5 Legacy decks have 3 dedicated TNN decks sitting among them. I suppose time will tell if this is only the beginning of things to come or if the meta will get back to pre-TNN variety. I've been a Stoneblade player since the days of Cawblade, so while my deck is top tier again, Magic is simply less enjoyable for me.

This post by danyul sums up my feelings on the matter quite well:

People play combo because they want to interact as little as possible. People play fair because they want to interact as much as possible. Let's just assume these to be true for the sake of argument.

Now, people's troubles with TNN occur when, while playing a fair deck, they resolve a TNN and suddenly they feel like they are playing a combo deck in the sense that now they don't have to interact if they don't want to. Now you have forced a "fair" player into a gamestate where they feel like a "combo" player, and this weird feeling makes them uncomfortable because this is not how they intended to play the game. (I'm making a lot of assumptions here) This forced perspective shift feels to them, somewhat broken and wrong. If they had signed up to play broken shit ala combo from the start, then they would have perhaps gotten over this feeling from the moment they sleeved up their decks. But they didn't sign up for this combo mumbo jumbo. They wanted to play fair. And now that they are slamming TNNs, they just feel gross about it.

[Higgs]

Second, if you're going to also argue that because it's unfun, it should be banned, you then do need to convince others of why it's unfun if you're going to get them to agree with you.

Nobody can convince anyone that anything is or should be fun, I think it would be a dead-end. What we can discuss however is, whether this card is adding anything new and exciting to the format and what it's taking away from the format. This is being argued for pages and not really going anywhere so I won't go there. We can also discuss whether this is a healthy 2-player constructed Magic card. For the second one, I think this card makes sense in a 2-player constructed format as much as ante and dexterity cards.

[Star|Scream]

Esper, this is the last post from me to you on this subject; I clearly stated "if that's 100% legit". At no point in time did I state that I was 100% sure that it was true, only if it was true would it be funny. I'm not quite sure what you're reading, but it's fairly obvious that I had major doubts that it truly was played. Again, if it was played (it wasn't, but I didn't know for certain one way or the other at the time), then I wanted to know how relevant/good/bad it was for the player; on one hand, a creature not dying to Abrupt Decay + Lightning Bolt while pushing through a TNN wall is good, but on the other hand, it costing 5 mana and only coming across for 2 is bad.

________________________________________________


Dedicated TNN decks have won the GP DC, SCG Dallas, SCG Oakland, a 186-player East Coast tourney featuring many top players, and has littered virtually every top 8 worth noting. Currently, the top 5 Legacy decks have 3 dedicated TNN decks sitting among them. I suppose time will tell if this is only the beginning of things to come or if the meta will get back to pre-TNN variety. I've been a Stoneblade player since the days of Cawblade, so while my deck is top tier again, Magic is simply less enjoyable for me.

This post by danyul sums up my feelings on the matter quite well:

First off, a deck that has 2 copies of the card is hardly "dedicated," and secondly all you're really saying is you don't like the card and you are upset that the card is good enough to make it into top decks. So you've made your point. Let's move on.

[Esper3k]

First off, a deck that has 2 copies of the card is hardly "dedicated," and secondly all you're really saying is you don't like the card and you are upset that the card is good enough to make it into top decks. So you've made your point. Let's move on.

^^ This. Even looking at Oakland, Jacob Wilson's deck ran only 2 TNN in the main, 1 in the board. It's a -Delver- deck first, SFM second, and a TNN deck third.

Again, when people are starting to classify RUG as a "TNN deck" because they might run 1-2 in the sideboard, you know they're really stretching.

[Zombie]

Please, people. This is a forum. Not the toilet. Diarrhea belongs elsewhere, as do dickhead contests.

Also, Esper, please read what people write. It feels like you've decided the opposition is a bunch of unthinking buffoons and therefore anything at all that comes out of their mouths must be absurd and not worth reading so you whip up some strawman of what you imagine they're saying. Please stop it. Reading your anti-strawman replies is painful.

Also, most of the TNN argument isn't about how it is the next Black Lotus, yet you constantly act as if that has been the claim all along. It's not.

It's about how the card is strong enough to see widespread play and just makes the games it is in less fun, and some matches an outright farce. It doesn't add anything interesting to the format.

Maybe the problem is not TNN and it's Jitte?

No one likes Jitte, even less with the rules change. I think Jitte is oppresive, unfun, and yes, VERY interactive. But I can't be the one who prefers an uninteractive 3/1 for 3, than a really interactive card for 2 that makes you lay down in your sit and wait for a miracle.
Am I the only want how thinks Jitte is the problem? I read this thread often but I haven't checked every post.

Jitte is a shit. But it's a shit card that can be blown up trivially, the carriers-to-be can be killed and decks have more esoteric ways of mitigating it like block-and-sac or block-and-bounce shenanigans with Gobs and Elves. The most important part is that it just dies to targeted removal. If I wanted to kill TNN, I'd have to basically kill my own deck or splash two colours for a narrow hate card that isn't worth it against most anything else. It's a world of difference from being able to play targeted removal.

Unfun reasoning? Dude I think you need to chill, you're not making sense.

This card is the most unfun thing I've seen in Magic in my life and I sure don't need a reasoning to feel a particular way. I'm fine with uninteractive combo decks because it's a strategy in itself. When a whole deck is designed to dodge interaction (say like dredge) it can get annoying but then the deck is built around that whole strategy. There are narrow answers for that sort of thing which deal with the core strategy of such decks and a lot of players don't enjoy (read don't have fun) playing against such decks with narrow hate cards. When you apply this to TNN, it is a single card which requires such narrow hate cards to be answered and it creates combo-like uninteractivity within interactive strategies. It's not a strategy itself, you just slap it into existing strategies. It feels ham-fisted, unbalanced and out of place. When it lands I start wondering why am I playing this stupid game of back and forth instead of Tendrils'ing their face on turn 2 and calling it a day.

I don't think I or anybody else needs to convince you or anyone else for how unfun this card feels to them. I've always been a blue player and since this card got printed I lost the appetite for Legacy and all sorts of blue aggo-control. At this point I don't think this card adds anything to the format as much as it takes from the format.

Worth adding that in cases like Storm and whatever, you usually don't have to worry about beating a whole different, strong strategy. Against Storm you can happily side out most of your not-anti-Warrens creature removal and bring in all manner of nastiness. Not quite so against Trueblade type decks.
You just play already good strategies and slap TNN in there as additional power and boredom.

Dedicated TNN decks have won the GP DC, SCG Dallas, SCG Oakland, a 186-player East Coast tourney featuring many top players, and has littered virtually every top 8 worth noting. Currently, the top 5 Legacy decks have 3 dedicated TNN decks sitting among them. I suppose time will tell if this is only the beginning of things to come or if the meta will get back to pre-TNN variety. I've been a Stoneblade player since the days of Cawblade, so while my deck is top tier again, Magic is simply less enjoyable for me.

Canadian is not a dedicated TNN deck. If any pack TNN, they typically do it in the side, not the main.

[Higgs]

By playing removal, you reduce your opponent's interaction with you.

By playing countermagic, you reduce your opponent's interaction with you.

By playing evasive creatures, you reduce your opponent's interaction with you.

I'm not saying reducing your opponent's interaction with you is a bad thing - how much you want to allow your opponent to interact with you is up to each player to decide. However, if you think you're somehow allowing maximum interaction with your opponent, you're deluding yourself.

Yes calling RUG a TNN deck because of 2 SB slots is nonsense but this above post is also really stretching.. This thread def. needs more clear headed and calmer posts for the rest of us.

[Esper3k]

Nobody can convince anyone that anything is or should be fun, I think it would be a dead-end. What we can discuss however is, whether this card is adding anything new and exciting to the format and what it's taking away from the format. This is being argued for pages and not really going anywhere so I won't go there. We can also discuss whether this is a healthy 2-player constructed Magic card. For the second one, I think this card makes sense in a 2-player constructed format as much as ante and dexterity cards.

I agree trying to argue fun / unfun is a dead end, which is why I believe it's a poor criteria to base bannings upon.

As for the rest, I don't think many new arguments will be spawning and we're mostly just going around in circles now.

For me, I think we can see that from the numbers, it's taken two decks (Stoneblade, Deathblade) that were in a slump and brought them back into the limelight. I believe we may also be starting to see a trend where BG/x decks such as Jund, which naturally have good answers to TNN start to see more play again.

To me, the decks that TNN supposedly killed were already seeing less play anyways, so I don't see any problems there either.

TNN is powerful, no doubt. However, I'm actually happy that WoTC has given us a very playable 3 drop creature for Legacy that's a pure combat creature, not a combo creature.

[Higgs]

I agree trying to argue fun / unfun is a dead end, which is why I believe it's a poor criteria to base bannings upon.

That's a leap of logic there. I'm saying convincing people why something is unfun is not practical. Banning a card because people feel it is unfun is quite doable, and has been apparently done in the past (based on the Sphere example).

[Zombie]

I agree trying to argue fun / unfun is a dead end, which is why I believe it's a poor criteria to base bannings upon.

As for the rest, I don't think many new arguments will be spawning and we're mostly just going around in circles now.

For me, I think we can see that from the numbers, it's taken two decks (Stoneblade, Deathblade) that were in a slump and brought them back into the limelight. I believe we may also be starting to see a trend where BG/x decks such as Jund, which naturally have good answers to TNN start to see more play again.

To me, the decks that TNN supposedly killed were already seeing less play anyways, so I don't see any problems there either.

TNN is powerful, no doubt. However, I'm actually happy that WoTC has given us a very playable 3 drop creature for Legacy that's a pure combat creature, not a combo creature.

TNN doesn't do combat. It's a clock and a planeswalker assassination device. Could as well read "{T}: TNN deals damage equal to it's power to target player or Planeswalker). Play this ability only as a sorcery." and not much would be different. It doesn't swing in the red zone as far as most cards are concerned.

[Esper3k]

It's about how the card is strong enough to see widespread play and just makes the games it is in less fun, and some matches an outright farce. It doesn't add anything interesting to the format.

Ahh, the "unfun" argument. See, the discussion with Higgs on why I (and many others) believe that's a poor criteria for banning. It's fine to think a card isn't fun. It's not ok to ban it for that reason.

Overly dominating the format or being too powerful are reasons for a banning.

If I wanted to kill TNN, I'd have to basically kill my own deck or splash two colours for a narrow hate card that isn't worth it against most anything else. It's a world of difference from being able to play targeted removal.

Unthinking baffoons, huh?