Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Why do you think player opinion has 0 effect?
"I have a dream that my children will one day play in a tournament where they will not be judged by the color of their cards but by the execution of their play."
Player opinion has anything other than zero effect. It is measured by the amount of people going to events and is a metric that is watched very closely. It is one of the reasons that Jace/Stoneforge happened to find themselves banned just before rotation, one of the reasons that Affinity bit the dust (thank fuck) and one of the reasons that MM died as a card. It's not the be all and end all, but it has a very real effect and a very visible impact that can be measured.
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
Originally Posted by Spam
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Otoh, is this proportional to the increased promotion? Considering the obvious DiabloIIIization of game and all the other changes in the last decade that made MtG much more mainstream, is it even possible to tell if there'd be more or less ppl entering the tournaments due to the game design and B&R managment only?
I mean, yes, MM is stupid card and wutnot, but can we even tell what's going on on tournament scene without even looking at the massive promo and w/e the else that affects the sells, social acceptance of MtG as a hobby, or the will to share time and money on it. I'm not saying that any number of Liliana posters in my lgs will outweight the bad experience and I doubt that any sane mature man will start playing MtG and visiting tournaments solely due to promo, but these things tend to completely fall out of the picture, while they clearly have their role. As long as there are tournaments in the particular format where the people may play for prizes and play to emulate their particular pop-culture stars insert whatever-the-name-of-the-recent-pro, they'd be visiting the lgs, unless we're talking about Mir-Kami Type2 or The Jace's Standard, right?
Let's be honest, how many Legacy players do you know who give a shit about the poster on the wall? I travel eight hours a week to play and that is because I am going to locations that offer the formats I want, not because of a coloured tarpolon hanging on the wall. There is more than one place less than half an hour from my home, some guys travel twice the distance I do and I would bet they are not there due to a cardboard cut-out with a plastic axe.
So no, I would argue that is not proportional because we are not talking about Standard here, we are not talking about people that are pooling over the new spoilers looking to build a whole new deck out of it and we are not looking at people who care about the latest Walker who is in the promo art. We are talking about people who have come to the game on the back of things like having older cards, seeking more complex game play or Star City Games and other streaming media and not pretty pictures hanging on a wall.
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?
Did Mental Misstep actually affect tournament attendance in any impactful way?
Let's rephrase it then: They don't really care what Eternal players (or Modern players, to a certain extend) think.
I have read in some accounts that yes, it did. I am willing to admit I may be wrong in this matter though.
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?
Could you please quote me correctly instead of chopping and glueing together parts of several phrases, if you want to setup a discussion?
Oh really? You may want to read back in thks thread more than one or two pages? I just reentered this thread because of "colors" popping up again.
Drawing direct parallels for Restrictions in Vintage and Bannings in Legacy was dismissed by WotC in 2004 because it was considered stupid by them and you still want to argue based in that? Read the B&R announcement for Brainstorm, Ponder, Merchant Scroll and Gush in regards to their restriction. Point me to the passage where something was written about "power reasons". Seriously, I'm waiting. I can only remember them talking about Brainstorm and Ponder making it too easy to access restricted bombs. That's NOT the same thing and I hope I don't have to explain that in an extended post just because you opt to miss the point by intent.
Has Legacy ANY one-card gamechanger like Vintage has in Will, Necro, Bargain, etc.? Once more, BS + Ponder got restricted in Vintage because they make accessing those stupid powerful gamechangers easy. We don't have anything like that in Legacy and the powerlevel in Legacy is no way near Vintages. Apples and Oranges all over if you compare brainstorming into Werbear->Tarmogoyf->SFM with brainstorming into Tinker in Vintage.
The whole parallels with Vintage in terms of powerlevels are ridiculous. The only similarity is that both formats have a certain number of fundamental cards atm which are required to perform well in tournaments (mana-artifacts vs. Pinder+Brainstorm+Fetches)
Yeah, WotC printed Fauna Shaman and Infernal as fixed versions of Survival and Demonic. Your point was? Comparing a cantrip to a tutor?
And people splash blue for Brainstorm and Ponder because Mirris Guile and Sylvan Library are less convenient
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Except they obviously do. People were calling for Birthing Pod's head for months prior to the ban, and basically everyone in Modern thought Cruise was too powerful. Chapin has argued pretty convincingly that the aggressive policy toward banning in Modern is a direct result of it being a Pro Tour/ PTQ format and the need to keep it from being stagnant as a result of incentivizing Pros to break it for a week each year.
But perhaps the strongest evidence for Wizards caring about Legacy players' enjoyment of the format is that Brainstorm remains unbanned. It's an incredibly polarizing topic, and I think it's telling that when Jeff Hoogland raised the issue the response from most of the Legacy community was to mock him and say'good riddance'. As much as some people really hate Brainstorm, I think that Wizards' analysis definitely tilts toward the idea that a ban would hurt the format's popularity which is why it hasn't happened. It might also be why they have a very conservative approach towards unbanning cards that might actually spawn new decks rather than cards whose time has clearly come and gone. No one loses when Dragon isn't a tier 1 deck, but some people gain a little bit of fun brewing or nostalgia from jamming WGD/Animate Dead for the first time in years. If Vengevival or Griselbrand/Retainers turns out to be as good as Treasure Cruise, a lot of people might quit playing.
Also you know, Sorcery speed things that don't make an impact until your next upkeep and can be disrupted by things like Decay and such.
And, you know, a couple hundred miles behind blue's options in power level, which was kind of the whole fucking point. This doesn't happen nearly to the same degree with other key tools.
Reinforcing the point, not rebutting you
Unless somebody has saved the exact wording of the banned announcement, it's pretty hard to find since Wizards archive is empty. Good job, Wizards.
Power levels are different between Legacy and Vintage, but just restricting the impact of digging to 1-card combos is ridiculous. Legacy does have A+B combos they dig for and are just as stupid, like S&T + wincon, which do become 1-card bombs if you have the other (redundant) combo piece in hand. You don't dig for broken 1-ofs, you dig for copies of redundant combo pieces that are 4-8-ofs in the deck.
Also, are you denying that the power level of the format hasn't increased alot? Why did the use of Brainstorm jump from ~50% in 2011 to the 70-75% we have to today? "Fun" can't be the sole reason.
As for the Alpha thing, you brought it up. Just because blue had it since Alpha doesn't mean it isn't broken. I could very well live with Brainstorm gone and being replaced by the "fixed" Anticipate.
If the announcement isn't to dig up, we skip on that, agree? S&T + X is still miles less stupid than all the random blowouts I have witnessed and executed in Vintage over my time playing the format and that is that I was hinting at. We have to set things into relation if we throw Legacy and Vintage into the same ring and it makes one hell of a difference if you have your cantrips used for getting hands on TNN, SFM, Tarmogoyf or Counterbalance compared to nasty things on Vintage's restricted list.Unless somebody has saved the exact wording of the banned announcement, it's pretty hard to find since Wizards archive is empty. Good job, Wizards.
Power levels are different between Legacy and Vintage, but just restricting the impact of digging to 1-card combos is ridiculous. Legacy does have A+B combos they dig for and are just as stupid, like S&T + wincon, which do become 1-card bombs if you have the other (redundant) combo piece in hand. You don't dig for broken 1-ofs, you dig for copies of redundant combo pieces that are 4-8-ofs in the deck.
Also, are you denying that the power level of the format hasn't increased alot? Why did the use of Brainstorm jump from ~50% in 2011 to the 70-75% we have to today? "Fun" can't be the sole reason.
As for the Alpha thing, you brought it up. Just because blue had it since Alpha doesn't mean it isn't broken. I could very well live with Brainstorm gone and being replaced by the "fixed" Anticipate.
Why the format jumped from 53% to 70% in these years? Delver, SFM, TNN, Terminus, Omniscience, TC, DTT, etc. aka all that easily splashable/playable nonsense WotC printed making decks without blue less appealing even if other colors also got drastic prowerlevel-jumps. That's the games business-model after all for Gods sake! I can't believe I have to point it out that it's normal that formats empower. Just look at Vintage now compared to in 2008.
You and others in this thread simply do not understand that in the hyper-effective triangle of Ponder+Brainstorm+ Fetchland, Brainstorm isn't the potential ban that solves the problem. I don't defend Brainstorm in this thread, I fight stupidity of only shifting the omnipresence of one cantrip to another like some smartasses in this thread did with Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. Believe me: If you ban Brainstorm, Preordain or SDT just take it's place and decks adjust to that change (Miracles players move to UW Blade 4 example) but the surpremacy of Fetchlands + cantrips remains. Learn from TC and don't shift problems.
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Not trying to kill the messenger here, but every time I hear this, I get angrier. People like non-rotating formats because there is a certain amount of predictability. Seeing people grow into experts with certain decks and how they change for expected metagames or identify new interactions is what we like. Modern's staleness was entirely because of the length of the banlist. With so little card movement or choice outside Pod, BGx goodstuff is just set up to dominate.
That wasn't exactly our finest hour, but that's partially Jeff's fault for himself being temperamental (to put it kindly). What was funny is that I agreed with everything he had to say about Legacy but said that I didn't think modern was any better (because it basically had dueling dominating shells instead of one "flexible" one) and he belittled that argument. Modern is somewhat more tolerable now, but its power level is much lower than it was at its outset, which doesn't necessarily make for scintillating viewing.
I don't hate Brainstorm. I don't think anyone really does. Some people -- a growing but vocal minority of course -- dislike that in order to be seriously competitive in Legacy, you have to play Brainstorm and its buddies. Ponder has crossed the 65% mark, and I definitely feel that since I've bought into blue, I've found little reason not to play Ponder (let alone brainstorm and force).
Not true. If that was the case, people would quit every time they play against Show & Tell. This is the best-case scenario I can think of:
Turn 1: Land, Lotus Petal or some sort of Spirit Guide/Mox, resolve Survival.
Turn 2: LED, tap land to activate Survival, discarding Griselbrand, respond by cracking LED for WWW, search for Retainers, resolve retainers, activate retainers targeting Griselbrand.
That Christmas present is not something Legacy is set up to handle? It's not that different than what Tin Fins does now. And of course you don't have to whip out Griz t2 to use Survival in a fun way.
Would you--and anyone else who's in favor of a BS ban--have been in favor of banning BS in 2011 when it was at ~50% (trusting the number so I don't have to check; it sounds right), and would you have been in favor of banning it when/if (I can't remember when/if it was) at 40% or less? Honest question, and my response depends on what the answer is.
if i'm reading the article in question correctly the ban conditions are a lot less clear than you make it seem. firstly he says that the card got banned because "there are more blue decks than ever". in the article he never sets up an upper limit of what percentage of the format can be blue. without this condition the reasoning is just a general platitude that logically is vague and very odd. on this point I disagree with your description of his philosophy.Still, how does player opinion matter? Wizards doesn't give two shits about that. People love Survival. Is it unbanned? Nope.
Erik Lauer sits on his ass for years doing nothing (until the recent TC ban) and people applaud how well he manages the format.The same guy who set up clear conditions for a card ban (Mental Misstep) and doesn't follow through when exactly the same reasons apply (Brainstorm) because he doesn't give a fuck. Just as he's the same guy who assrapes Modern for years now with stupid bans despite being the head developer of Magic, thus being capable of printing card to fix the goddamn format for good.
Edit: How much he cares about Legacy is also shown in said ban announcement:
- Modern: Wall of text explaining the reasoning behind the bans
- Legacy: 2.5 lines which can be summed up as "Too much UR Delver. Fuck that."
Has there been any statement of him regarding Legacy since the MM ban and the TC ban?
we need to come to grips with the fact that non blue decks have been becoming less viable in the format for a long time. so saying X is the reason Y isnt doing well seems to be intellectually disingenuous.
That's not necessarily true, and anyway, WotC tried to address this issue by dropping Modern as a PTQ/Pro Tour format. But community outcry stopped that, so a banhammer was needed to make sure that the decks at the pro tour looked different from the format pre-Khans.
Just to clarify, I think that Survival is worth a trial unban. I'm not sold on it being safe, but it's not crazy to think that it might be fine. And if you stop say, Survival into Loyal Retainers shenanigans and those shenanigans get stopped, you've still got Survival and a library of guys to find and win with, which is something that Show and Tell decks generally can't do. But my point is that unbanning Survival or Frantic Search is a lot different from unbanning Worldgorger Dragon. You know that Dragon isn't going to rock the world. But Survival? Frantic Search? You're less sure because both have proven too good by pretty standard mechanisms (in-hand tutorimg and mana acceleration). And the price of being wrong and unbanning something damaging is high, especially in a small format. I agree that a more active approach to unbannings would improve the format, but I definitely understand why WotC is very conservative about reintroducing potentially broken cards back into the format.Not true. If that was the case, people would quit every time they play against Show & Tell. This is the best-case scenario I can think of:
Turn 1: Land, Lotus Petal or some sort of Spirit Guide/Mox, resolve Survival.
Turn 2: LED, tap land to activate Survival, discarding Griselbrand, respond by cracking LED for WWW, search for Retainers, resolve retainers, activate retainers targeting Griselbrand.
That Christmas present is not something Legacy is set up to handle? It's not that different than what Tin Fins does now. And of course you don't have to whip out Griz t2 to use Survival in a fun way.
I agree with being Brainstorm banned, people would likely just shift to Ponder and Preordain and switching stuff like Miracles to UW Blade (whether or not Miracles being gone is a good or bad thing is a different topic). I don't think that the majority of people who want Brainstorm banned also want the blue shell completely gone (you would need to kill any remotely playable cantrip for that), but knocking it down to a more reasonable level. Brainstorm is an easy target for that since it has a bunch of unique properties the other playable cantrips don't:
a) Instant speed, b) being able to trade chaff for fresh cards and c) discard protection.
If you banned Ponder, people would just run Brainstorm + Preordain and literally nothing would change.
If you banned Brainstorm, people would just run Ponder + Preordain, but:
a) People now need to plan ahead their turns more instead of sitting on their ass withuntil anything bad happens,
b) more mulligan decisions because you can't get rid of your chaff (which brings down blue to the level of other decks regarding that, leveling the playing field; yes, blue decks would lose consistency because of that, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, since other colors don't have the ability to semi-mulligan for 1 mana, either; being able to get rid of unwanted chaff makes deckbuildung less rewarding, too, since there's much less risk compared to the reward when running very narrow cards. E.g. Sylvan Plug runs narrow cards like Choke in the MD, but there's a trade-off between raw power and being stuck with one or multiple dead card(s).)
c) discard becomes better
As for the TC vs DTT thing, while looking different on the surface (raw CA vs CA + selection, sorcery speed vs instant speed), they share the same core problems that make them stupid, unlike Brainstorm vs other cantrips (as explained above):
- being undercosted for what they do in Legacy because they can be easily fed with free fetches + Probes and other cheaps spells, especially cantrips
- your opponent is punished for interacting with you at all - it doesn't matter if it's removal, discard or counters, you inevitably feed the next Delve spell, putting you then at a disadvantage.
Hard to say - BS power level depends on the rest of the deck, and they've printed alot of stupid cards since then that either directly interact well Brainstorm (e.g. Miracles, Delver, Shardless Agent) or feed A+B combo which Brainstorm makes more consistent (Griselbee, Omniderp). While the unique properties mentioned above stay the same, I'd say its relative power has increased, thus being more bannable before. Survival was also okay before they printed Vengevine (and Ooze), with the danger of more stupid things to come on the horizon. We can never know when the next stupid mechanic comes around that rewards you for top cards on your library, either (Manifest luckily hasn't been broken - yet).
How would you interpret it then?
- first ban card because it makes the format too blue
- other card hits the same percentage or even succeeds it, but this time nothing happens
The reasoning becomes flawed and inconsequent with that.
Frantic Search with Dig Through Time around seems very dangerous. Otherwise, it might be okay.
If you can have a solid shot (to the point it shows up in actual results and not just people saying a deck is okay) with nonblue decks and other varied selection/draw engines, I'm fine with keeping them. I do think Brainstorm is a dumb card and eg. Ponder, Preordain are better skill testers because there's an actual commitment to playing them especially in the early turns, and they leave tools like discard stronger for it and encourage thinking if cards are castable (because they don't allow you to throw clunk back at a trivial cost). I have to pay attention to what dumb clunkers I play in nonblue decks because I can't get rid of them. I'm fine with blue having the ability, but I'd like it to be an investment to do so, not a matter of course of playing the best no-investment card selection spell in the game anyway.
I've never, ever wanted blue cantrips out of the format completely - I just want enough of them axed that you have to think what card selection engine you want and in what colors. I just don't want to see the cantrip cartel in every damn deck all the damn time. I want to see some people cantrip, others use some 2cc options because they need specialized functionality, some people use graveyard recursion engines or Elves/Shardless style mass draw, and so on. I think something needs to be axed to get to that, but as little as possible should be axed to get to that. Barring stupid S&T targets, those I want to go postal on.
It's potentially (but not obviously) broken in other ways too. That was my point.
Elves and Lands (Combo build) are two non Blue decks with powerful draw engine that win. I would agree that they rotate in and out of the Meta, but they win. Also if there was not a card that cost a grand that you needed for Lands I would bet good money it would see a ton more play.
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?
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