All B/R update speculation.

[Dice_Box]

There are much better things you can do with Loam then use it is a discard engine. Plus why not run Squee?

[Deckerator]

Do you think ban Terminus would weaken miracles but doesnt destroy it?
I think a boardwipe for 1 is a way too strong.

[GundamGuy]

Do you think ban Terminus would weaken miracles but doesnt destroy it?
I think a boardwipe for 1 is a way too strong.

Yes, CounterTop is a deck that existed long before Terminus was printed. The way I see it, Miracles is just the evolution of CounterTop with added Miracles Cards.

If Terminus did not exist CoutnterTop would still be a deck, would likely still run Entreat or Monastery Mentor (instead of Thoper Foundry / Sword, which was the the kill of choice back in the old days), and look 90% the same. I would imagine it would still be viable if they had to pay 4 mana for there uncounterable wrath of gods instead of 1 mana for their hallowed burials.

It would totally lose ground to some match-ups though.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

There are much better things you can do with Loam then use it is a discard engine. Plus why not run Squee?

Becasue Squee can't return fetches/Wasteland, it cannot be used with cycling lands, etc. I'm not saying that Loam-Forbid combination is extremely powerful, but in case CB/Top ceases to be a factor, this might be used IF the deck would be designed to abuse Loam in another ways. I think that UBG Control was a played deck, someone from Source had a great success with it and the Loam package was used.

[iatee]

If judges enforced slow play at events, the time issue would mostly go away. It would still come up occasionally, but a lot of the players piling up draws would be the inexperienced ones. People more accustomed to the deck would learn to play it faster when they were finally forced to do so. I am not a counterexample here, since while I have more experience than anybody I still frequently play slowly. On numerous occasions I have told judges that I deserve a slow play warning and they still will not penalize me. But if forced to play faster, I would.

For the record - I like Miracles as a deck, and enjoy watching you stream it, I don't think Miracles is overpowered relative to other blue decks. But I do think that Top is a terrible card for competitive paper tournaments and there's no easy way to fix that, absent chess clocks or something. Realistically there is no way to enforce slow play uniformly across a large tournament. There aren't enough judges to ensure that every Top activation is being monitored, there isn't an accepted amount of time for a Top activation. If judges were more actively calling people on slow play, players on both sides of the table would be just as frustrated as they are now because the calls will feel too arbitrary. One Miracles player gets called for a 25 second Top activation, the guy next to him doesn't get called for a 30 second Top activation that nobody saw etc. etc.

[death]

Format needs a reboot.

Take out Delver, Counterbalance and Terminus.

It took years for Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void to get restricted, there is hope.

[Lysandros]

I'm not a fan of banning cards, I'd rather see stuff unbanned...but Terminus...c'mon WOTC. CounterTop is fine. Terminus, however, invalidates decks almost single-handedly.

[Dice_Box]

It took years for Trinisphere and Chalice of the Void to get restricted, there is hope.

Took 13 months for 3sphere to eat it's restriction. Not exactly "Years". Chalice I have my own views on, but if you want those talk to me on TMD.

While I would agree the format needs a kick, uncaging Survival I feel is more of an option then booting something many people have sunk a ton of money into out of the format.

[Stevestamopz]

While I would agree the format needs a kick, uncaging Survival I feel is more of an option then booting something many people have sunk a ton of money into out of the format.

If they won't ban the uber-bullshit Show and Tell, then I agree with you Dice, they should up the power level across the board- unban all the dreck (mind twist) and while they're at it give us some game-changers. Let's have Survival and Goblin Recruiter back. Hell give us Balance, I want to see what a deck making the most of 4x Balance looks like.

Just change something in a meaningful way.

[Dice_Box]

Balance... Yea... No. Let's keep this sane. I agree with the rest though.

[sjmcc13]

I'm not a fan of banning cards, I'd rather see stuff unbanned...but Terminus...c'mon WOTC. CounterTop is fine. Terminus, however, invalidates decks almost single-handedly.

Terminus is just a sweeper. If it invalidates your deck, you probably need to learn how to play around sweepers...

[Bed Decks Palyer]

If I'd have a power to swing the banhammer, these would be the cards that should fear the might of my bicepses:

In no particular order. I'd alphabeticized the list, but fokk.)

1) Terminus
My problem with Terminus is that it completely invalidates aggro which in many people's opinion is not a legitimate strategy for Legacy/Eternal. I'm not even sure if an all-out aggro shouldn't be kicked out of the format, but I'd say it shouldn't be due to a mere one card. If the format as a whole is hostile towards aggro, than so be it, but the fact that the traditional deck of choice against control doesn't stand any chance anymore due to a one-mana WoG is imho wrong
Terminus is quite hard to hate, as it can be flown on the top of library and drawn instantenously, it doesn't even trigger the put to gy triggers (although one may argue that the creatures remaining in library are reusable and thus it's less of a blowout than WoG).
Terminus' miracles cost seems is too cheap. If it wouldn't be costed a bit more expensive, then maybe I wouldn't feel that cheated, but the seems like a nonsense.
Terminus is holding the part of a metagame by the throat and I'm not sure I like it.

2) Insectile Abberation
First things first: if the Wizards would rather print a one-mana 3/2 flying dude, I'd be much more happy than with this DFC abomination of a design.
While Delver is surely a best threat that tempo decks could ever dream of, I'm pretty sure that it's a design mistake and that it led us to an evolutionary dead end speking of beaters. It's extreme efficiency does to the 2/3 of format the same thing that Terminus does to the aggro part.
I wouldn't cry if they'd ban this crap, although it would mean that I need to either find a substitution for it or simply quit my last real deck.

3) Counterbalance
While the Chalice/Trini locks or Statis or w/e else forces you to design the deck in a very outstanding way (the self-limits of Chalice decks are obvious, I guess), Counterbalance doesn't need anything of that and it may be simply jammed into a usual Brainstorm deck and work fine. I'm not sure if the lock decks should be that efficient and stupid-proof.

4) Sensei's Divining Top
I don't really care of the slow play aspect, but I'm afraid that Top is too efficient at what it does and the fact that it's hard to get rid of and that it feeds Terminus and CB makes it one of the most powerful cards in Legacy.

5) Jace TMS
I think that Jace is overdone and he should have been designed with one less ability. But as a cmc4 card it might be fine. However I wouldn't cry if I've never seen another one.

6) Tarmogoyf
Similarly to Delver, this guy shows a finger to all other cheap efficient threats and is a go-to vanilla beater. It's definitely NOT a candidate for ban - certainly due to the price tag and the outcry following the ban would be unheard before. But I' pretty sure that this card have done ugly things to the creature dpt. of Legacy.

7) Brainstorm
One of the main trouble of Magic is that the most important cards are lands, yet they do nothing. It's sd that 1/3 of deck space is limited to a support card that's got no real use. (43 Lands, Manaless dredge or Oops all Dicks anecdotes aside). So it' nice to have a tool like BS, yet the power of the card is/may be a bit too high for Legacy. We're in a 56 cards format, and I'm not sure if i like it.

8) Ponder
See above. Ponder at least doesn't unmulligan, moreover it's a sorcery, so maybe...

9) Wasteland
If there's a reason (need of lands) why part of a deck space is wasted, than this very card is a reason why part of deck design space is wasted. (Bad puns intended.)
There are so many amazing lands in MtG (and especially Eternal), but the mere pressence of this card makes their usage questionable at least if not outright idiotic. When was the last time you've seen any interesting land in play? Ice Age - Alliances Type II?
I know that Waste (as an effect) is necessary lest the format would go absurd, but I'm not sure if Waste (the land) is what we really need. I'm not even against LD as a strategy (a shitty one, btw, unless it's Pox, LftL or Geddon.dec), but the ease with which the ppl are locked out of games, and the fact that an immense design space and card pool is strangled by this card makes me wanna experience a differently shaped format.

10) Force of Will
A card that holds the format together, but also a card that holds back any idea of Dark Ritual Hyppie deck. I guess that the big Ritual/Monolith/we plays might be fun and competitive and played, if not for the FoW.
Clearly, banning FoW is out of question and the fact that it's a self-Hymn 90 % of times make it a balanced card, but once again: I sometimes wonder how the format would look like withut it.

11) Lion's Eye Diamond
I'm not sure if in my craving for Magic I really love to plan about and play through turn1 wins.
LED is a broken card and I wouldn't shed a tear if Storm/Ichorid/Belcher decks would be nerfed. Storm would survive on DRits and CQ, Dredge would work like in Extended (and still threaten a turn2 kill) and Belcher... w/e, i don't care of piles of dirt.

12) Show and Tell
The ultimate ritual that will only get better as the time passes on. Idk why this card is legal.

13) Griselbrand
Flying, lifelink, bargain 7/7. If you're in a need for cheatyface, look no further. Back when there were actually diverse creatures to choose from, the Cehat Fatty decks were much more interesting.

14) Emrakul, TAT
This is Pokemon card. We don't play Pokemon cards.

15) Masticore
This undoubtedly will be a controversial pick for the most bannable card of all time but seriously it's a discard outlet with body attached! It's also an artifact making it invulnerable to "target non-artifact" kill spells like Terror.

So that's the list of cards that I find the most offensive/oppressive/powerful/wutnot in Legacy. I don't thin that they should be banned (definitely not all of them), but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them would leave the format.




Scroll down to read people's opinions on mid-2010's Magic: the Gathering.

[death]

Terminus is just a sweeper. If it invalidates your deck, you probably need to learn how to play around sweepers...

But how do you play around a deck with 4x Terminus/4x Plow and 3x Snapcaster/3x Jace TMS?

And Counter-Top lock on top of all that?

[death]

12) Show and Tell
The ultimate ritual that will only get better as the time passes on. Idk why this card is legal.

Because right now, the deck isn't well represented. Sneak Attack is not even a deck to beat. Same with Omni-Tell.

[sjmcc13]

But how do you play around a deck with 4x Terminus/4x Plow and 3x Snapcaster/3x Jace TMS?

And Counter-Top lock on top of all that?

Nice moving the goal posts there and proving my point.
The comment was Terminus on its own, you just expanded that to more then half a deck :
4 Terminus
4 StP
3 Snapcaster
2-3 JtMS
4 Counterbalance
4 SDT
= 21-22 cards out of the what 35-37 non land cards...

There are numerous ways Wizards has made to break the counter top "Lock" already, If you are spewing creatures you should already be playing Vial, which comes down before the lock is active, and well played is a pain to deal with. You can also run Cavern of Souls if there is any level of creature type consistency in your deck. Spot removal and Card advantage engines are things you need to be prepared to fight anyway.

Decks that just spew creatures are not losing to or invalidated by Terminus, they are losing to the meta game that has moved on, and they no longer hold up like they use to, because if you can not interact meaningfully outside of "The Red Zone" you will lose to combo, as you are slower then any of the combo decks, and they gave Tempo too much, which is what is really invalidating those decks.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

The best way how to play around Terminus is to not play creatures based deck.

[Stevestamopz]

Balance... Yea... No. Let's keep this sane. I agree with the rest though.

I'm not good enough at magic nor imaginative enough to work out what a balance deck would look like. The last time i played balance i comboed it with zuran orb and like... Big deal. It was essentially a 2 mana cataclysm that required 2 cards. Idk, maybe some enchantment deck could use it effectively, but at least then we would have something totally new. As far as I can see, it's a pretty meh card that was oppressive in 1993 or something.

I'm 100% srs, if anyone has a balance decklist that would be good, pm it to me, I'm genuinely curious.


Edit: Yeah yeah yeah, i get it, mind twist/wrath/geddon for 2 mana, but how often do you want all 3 modes? It seems like you have to build very very much around it which is why I'd be for a balance unbanning, if only a test-unban.

[Zombie]

I'm not good enough at magic nor imaginative enough to work out what a balance deck would look like. The last time i played balance i comboed it with zuran orb and like... Big deal. It was essentially a 2 mana cataclysm that required 2 cards. Idk, maybe some enchantment deck could use it effectively, but at least then we would have something totally new. As far as I can see, it's a pretty meh card that was oppressive in 1993 or something.

I'm 100% srs, if anyone has a balance decklist that would be good, pm it to me, I'm genuinely curious.

Storm.

[iatee]

No matter what situation you're in, if your opponent has built up some advantage, Balance is a get out of jail free card. Merfolk player curved into a strong board - nope, no more board. Miracles player built a mana advantage over 10 turns - nope, geddeon. Shardless player has stripped your hand and Ancestral Recalled - nope, back to square zero.

Building around Balance lets you construct situations where your opponent will have zero permanents and zero cards in hand, but you really don't need to build around it for it to be an insanely broken card. Any deck that plays it doesn't have to be afraid of falling behind and any deck that's playing against it gets randomly punished for playing Magic.

[Crimhead]

But how do you play around a deck with 4x Terminus/4x Plow and 3x Snapcaster/3x Jace TMS?

And Counter-Top lock on top of all that?

If you really need to ask, I suggest you watch footage of Miracles MUs. Miracles is very beatable and all kinds of decks are able to successfully play around its answers.