Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Why are you so smug about bad ideas?Originally Posted by FoolofaTook
You wouldn't lose T1 "occasionally", you'd lose T1 *all the time.* Even if Oops, Belcher, and Dredge aren't the most consistent decks; doing something like having A spell Pierce or A discard isn't going to be enough. Legacy is in a fine spot without Cruise IMO; we'll find out soon; but it was fine before (and even in the initial steps) of Cruise. The problem was that you had "Burn" with FoW backup and Recall. Without such a linear, boring, universally average deck the format has very strong chance of being interesting again.
I'd be interested if it's usable in vintage. Some kind of Hatebears+CA+graveyard deck comes to mind.
It's been brewed with here and there, but Oath just takes all the spotlight in Vintage.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I actually think that the Cruise meta was fine and that we hadn't worked it out fully yet, but I suppose I'll be one of those "it was gone too soon to let us adapt" people that everyone else looks sideways at in five years.
Anyway, any suggestion to ban Force is crazy, and everyone but you knows it, Fool. It's not that you'd be giving nut draw+ die roll odds to getting turn 1'ed by Oops and Belcher, you'd be giving something like 60% to them just off the bat. And Storm and Reanimator would cut interaction in favor of linearity and power. You'd still have Sneak and Omni as the combo-control decks because they can survive the other decks' early attacks, but they'd be just as vulnerable to Oops and Belcher as every other deck. And the day Wizards' announces "Legacy: Laboratory Maniac is banned. Lion's Eye Diamond is banned." is the day I quit Magic.
If you are fine to stretch your manabase to full 3 colors, you need a damn good reason to not include some variance-reducing tools in blue somewhere in your 60.
It's plain stupid to asume mono-green should be a viable option simply because NO deck in Legacy is viable without access to permanent-removal and anti-combo-tools. This pretty much disqualifies quite some color combinations itself.
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Dredge loses to Grafdigger's Cage, on the draw or the play. It loses to Tormod's Crypt on the draw or the play. Well, every now and then they go off on turn 1 but rarely. I play against Dredge ALL the time in my meta with blue and without blue and the only difference between the two is that I win game 1 now and then on the play with blue. I win games 2 and 3 pretty regularly once I am mulling for the hate.
In a meta in which it was actually profitable to play mono-black I wouldn't be worried about any of those lists at all. Yes, I'd lose to them occasionally on turn zero but black has answers for all of them with Leylines of the Void being the simplest for Oops and Dredge and targeted discard making Belcher into a very unhappy puppy a lot of the time. That meta doesn't exist because there's nothing that black can do that is all that relevant in a cantrip + free counters environment.
And you guys who talk about losing turn 1 *ALL* the time are living in fantasy land. I've been playing Magic in competition for 20+ years now and in all that time there was only about 5 weeks when I lost on turn 1 all the time. The culprit was a blue shell combo list. I'm sure you can remember it if you think hard enough.
Since when does Dredge "lose" to Tormods Crypt? Every Dredge player should be able to beat that one.
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It's spelled capiche, and force will never be banned. Get over it, as you suggest.
Do you mean "capisce"?
So, Force of Will is essential to a healthy format. Are there any other cards that are as important, and what does that say about color balance?
Of course they are. Wasteland for example is THE card to keep tool-lands in check
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There should be a list at the top of this thread, instead of a poll, titled "Cards that will never get banned so stop wasting your time". The list would include FoW, Brainstorm, Ponder, any non-combo creature and lands that aren't library, tolarian or bazaar.
Although, if they did that this thread would probably just die.
I guess it's reassuring that you put Brainstorm,Ponder and Strip Mine on the same side of the 'never ban' list. I can understand how Force of Will is important to the metagame, but it's not so clear to me how brainstorm or ponder are.
ah, forgot strip mine!
I'm just saying they will never ban them, not that they are, or are not, important to the meta game. I don't think the data for a BS ban will ever be stronger than it was last month and they passed.
Wonder what Workshop would cost if that scenario came to be.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
I don't believe that for a second.
Look at modern and vintage. Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm are all banned/restricted in other formats. To think Wotc is unwilling to ban these cards makes zero sense considering they are in fact banned/restricted in other formats. Legacy isn't some special snowflake. Formats aren't just about one card (or even ten) as much as some people would like them to be.
I also think wotc's thought process might have been that TC was the problem and there for people were incentiveized to play even more BS's, so get rid of TC and re-evaluate. Haven't they even said BS is on the watch list in the past (like years and years ago)? To say it will never possibly be banned is nonsense.
Alright, in what scenario can you see it getting banned over a newly printed card?
The problem with Force of Will being the check against combo is that it is also the check against everything else that would be good against combo. It's the check against any spell that you might want to resolve early on that would have enough of a lingering impact on the game that it would likely be countered. It's the check against any mid-range win-con that you might work to resolve after doing whatever you do for several turns to get to that point. It's the check against the format beng anything but blue dominated with Force of Will and Brainstorm at the center of the circle jerk.
I was thinking about it after I did the post above and I realized that there's a good non-blue list in the format right now that points out exactly what the effect of Force of Will is and that's Death and Taxes. I have a terrible record against Death and Taxes when they resolve a turn 1 Aether Vial on the play. I win probably 20% of the games I play in which a turn 1 vial hits the board in that circumstance. They don't have it all the time (although it seems like they do at times) and I do win many of the games they don't resolve it in but I'm close to hopeless once it lands before I've had a chance to play a land. At that point the game is going to be decided by their draw not mine. That's not a turn 1 win that can be prevented by Force of Will but it's pretty close since they resolve the spell on turn 1 and then they win most of the time thereafter. Even when I Force a vial I'm at parity at best because of the card disadvantage involved. If they're on the play and they have a vial I'm somewhat screwed, with not having Force making that very screwed.
Now, there are solid coherent lists that I could play that would make that not the case, except that they're invalidated by the blue shell's consistency and by the fact that the blue shell will usually prevent me from resolving the key spell I need to resolve in the mid-game to win. The Rock is a perfect example. The Rock would eat Death and Taxes alive because it has a large number of ways to make a turn 1 vial just another 1cc permanent for a turn or two. In fact, D&T would probably tune their vials out against a BGw attrition strategy to make my sweepers less valuable. No point in giving me Mother of Runes and Aether Vial for 1 Engineered Explosives as an example. No point in letting me trigger Pernicious Deed at 1 either for a one-sided profit, saving my Qasali Pridemage or Goyf in the process.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. What Force of Will does is to sit on everything in the meta that can be countered and it does two things in the process of performing this role. First, it greatly ups the representation of blue in the format since you have to have 18+ blue spells to play it. Second, it greatly ups the representation of blue in the format because the blue spells that you play with Force of Will tend to increase the consistency level of lists until it becomes bad not to play them.
There are many ways to keep combo and aggro and mid-range in check that are not blue. Very few of those ways can handle doing that and also sitting down opposite a list that is very consistent and that says no as well as the blue lists do. That's why we have this blue meta. It's why having Force of Will and Brainstorm in the format is limiting on the competition not enhancing.
I'll go back and do the analogy above in a different way. If you setup a martial arts competition in which people are free to bring whatever style they want to the competition and say that it will be all about these differences and then you introduce snub-nose .38's as an allowable weapon you're going to change the competition into a gunfight pretty quickly. A few people will have some wild-ass funky style that can get to you and your .38 before you get a shot off but the odds are pretty good most guys can't and so a large part of the competition is going to become guns at ten paces instead of martial arts. Force of Will and Brainstorm are a pair of .38's in a martial arts competition. People who don't play them are bringing their fists to a gun fight.
Ok, so I can see you are putting a lot of effort into this one. There is a reason that no one agrees with you though.
Were you around when Modern was just starting as a format? I think it was the first GP where turn 1 combo decks were wrecking everything. The format was absolutely awful. And modern didn't even have LED , BS, Ponder, preordain, burning wish, or Dark Rit. They did have spell pierce, thalia, meddling mage, duress and thoughtsieze. It didn't matter.
You realize that FoW isn't very good against a lot of decks, right? I board FoW out a lot, including against D&T.
It's good against combo, mid-range and especially in the mirror. It's directly effects what people see as viable to play in the meta more than any other single factor. Right now the meta is 70%+ blue. Force of Will is in ~68% of all lists.
The top 5 cards from the Lincoln Grand Prix were Birthing Pod, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Cranial Plating, Dark Confidant and Life from the Loam. The Grand Prix was won by Aggro Loam. The win-con was Seismic Assault. Dark Confidant had 12 copies in the top 8. Tron was a big player all day. Hardly a turn 1 combo slaughterfest.
They did say it was on the watch list, but I think it was pre-Delver. I won't say a Brainstorm ban is never going to happen, but I will say that the bar appears ro be very, very high.
I think you're doing it wrong if you think that Force is squeezing out anything but TinFins, Belcher, and Oops. Midrange - especially BGx midrange - is the texbook example of the kind of deck that you board Force out against because those matchups are about card advantage and board position rather than any particular threat.
This basically confirms what I said above. Forcing turn 1 Vial against D&T is something you have to do, but still doesn't win you the game. Force is not a great card in that matchup, which is why it's usually boarded out in favor of sweepers or spot removal.I was thinking about it after I did the post above and I realized that there's a good non-blue list in the format right now that points out exactly what the effect of Force of Will is and that's Death and Taxes. I have a terrible record against Death and Taxes when they resolve a turn 1 Aether Vial on the play. I win probably 20% of the games I play in which a turn 1 vial hits the board in that circumstance. They don't have it all the time (although it seems like they do at times) and I do win many of the games they don't resolve it in but I'm close to hopeless once it lands before I've had a chance to play a land. At that point the game is going to be decided by their draw not mine. That's not a turn 1 win that can be prevented by Force of Will but it's pretty close since they resolve the spell on turn 1 and then they win most of the time thereafter. Even when I Force a vial I'm at parity at best because of the card disadvantage involved. If they're on the play and they have a vial I'm somewhat screwed, with not having Force making that very screwed.
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