I am pretty sure if you cast Necropotence turn 1 unless your opponent has some way to remove it or prevent it from resolving then you have effectively won the game
Hermit Druid isn't a one card combo, you still somehow have to get the card into play before you win
Uuuuh... Cast Hermit Druid... Untap... Win game?
Sounds like a one card combo to me, unless you are counting lands as part of your combo, but it's kind of assumed that a properly built deck hits its landrops. A hand with two mana and a Hermit Druid can just win the game if they can't remove him. Oh you want to counter my Hermit Druid? Cavern of Souls
Uuuuh... Cast Hermit Druid... Untap... Win game?
Sounds like a one card combo to me, unless you are counting lands as part of your combo, but it's kind of assumed that a properly built deck hits its landrops. A hand with two mana and a Hermit Druid can just win the game if they can't remove him. Oh you want to counter my Hermit Druid? Cavern of Souls
Essentially yeah I meant lands (or Vial, or any way to drop him into play) because Hermit does need to enter the battlefield somehow so you can win the game
With Lightning Grieves you can win the turn he is played, so why not skip the whole "untap" part of your plan
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Essentially yeah I meant lands (or Vial, or any way to drop him into play) because Hermit does need to enter the battlefield somehow so you can win the game
With Lightning Grieves you can win the turn he is played, so why not skip the whole "untap" part of your plan
This may be the first time "Tropical Island" has been a part of any combo. Just saying.
MM was not banned because it beat Goblins. It was banned because it was in nearly every deck, even if only to counter MM. Goblins was often the example of this.
This may be the first time "Tropical Island" has been a part of any combo. Just saying.
Blasphemy! The combo doesn't use Tropical Island as its manabase it uses Taiga for mainboard Red Elemental Blasts and Pyroblasts, you always suspect the Tropical Island, but never the Taiga
MM was not banned because it beat Goblins. It was banned because it was in nearly every deck, even if only to counter MM. Goblins was often the example of this.
I didn't play Legacy back in the Misstep days, but correct me if I am wrong didn't every deck have to mainboard 4 Missteps?
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Blasphemy! The combo doesn't use Tropical Island as its manabase it uses Taiga for mainboard Red Elemental Blasts and Pyroblasts, you always suspect the Tropical Island, but never the Taiga
I didn't play Legacy back in the Misstep days, but correct me if I am wrong didn't every deck have to mainboard 4 Missteps?
Affinity didn't. Neither did any Chalice of the Void deck. Burn (because Burn just ran more Burn spells). Zoo. But besides that.... yea.
I actually think Land Tax is fairly subpar. Tithe seems to me to be a better card most of the time and it is criminally underused. It's faster, you can tutor up nonbasics, and you don't need to have less lands to use it.
I actually think Land Tax is fairly subpar. Tithe seems to me to be a better card most of the time and it is criminally underused. It's faster, you can tutor up nonbasics, and you don't need to have less lands to use it.
1) Land Tax is not banned any more.
2) Land Tax happens every turn.
3) Tithe is criminally underused the same way Mana Leak is.
3b) Actually, Mana Leak might be decent in a midrange deck that doesn't want to have to commit UU to cast Counterspell.
Sooo... Mind Twist. Anyone thing this card would be fine to unban? I guess the worry is that you play sol lands and Dark Ritual and cast it for like x=4 on turn 3?
I have been praying for Mind Twist to come back daily for months, so much so that I bought a playset just for the glorious day when Wizards grants my prayers.
That said, it might be a little outrageous. Hymn to Tourach is already a reason to play black. I don't think Legacy combo is resilient enough to deal with a format with both of these cards. I know I'd get nervous when I saw a Swamp come down. Almost as nervous as I get now when an Island comes down.
The tendency seems to be for things to gradually leave the banned list. Mind Twist is a natural question once Tax returns.
1) Land Tax is not banned any more.
2) Land Tax happens every turn.
3) Tithe is criminally underused the same way Mana Leak is.
3b) Actually, Mana Leak might be decent in a midrange deck that doesn't want to have to commit UU to cast Counterspell.
Yeah Mana Leak is basically just as good as Counterspell in legacy. The only reason it isn't used is because neither is counterspell.
Tithe seems to be a card any deck with plains can throw in and gain value. Land Tax can generate much more advantage over the long run, but requires you to build around it somewhat. I predict 0 copies of Land Tax in the next Starcity tournament top 8.
Landtax and tithe are totally different things. I mean you may as well compare brainstorm to gitixian probe, both are cantrips after all.
Landtax's power lies not in the land fishing but in brainstorm jace abuse. Tithe is more so an incremental advantage card while tax is more a combo piece.
My hope is that Wotc will take care to unban a new card every 3 months. It seems they probably want to do one at a time to see if the meta can deal with it, and then when it is safe get another one off the list. At least this is my hope. I imagine they will do cards with unique effects first, so hopefully earthcraft is next.
Legacy isn't modern. We don't ban cantrips here, we ban the card that actually wins the game i.e. griselbrand and show and tell are the two cards that everyone is talking about. Show and tell because only more ridiculous permanents will get printed (see: omniscience) and griselbrand because it's the closest relative to yawg's bargain, which is banned.
Entomb is an instant speed demonic tutor for B in the right deck i.e. reanimator or other gravebased strategies. Try to tell me it isn't, I've played against the card several times and I have to tell you it sure feels like demonic tutor to me when it resolves and gets reanimator's 1 of reanimation target like iona, inkwell leviathan, etc. etc. Why? Because they just got a specific card out of their deck for one mana. I wouldn't be opposed to a rebanning of entomb currently, the card has proven to be very degenerate in terms of powerlevel. If reanimator draws it, they are usually favored to win the game as they get the card that is the most powerful against your deck and cheat it into play. And the point is Hinotama, entomb is far above mind twist in terms of powerlevel. So then why should mind twist remain banned while entomb is legacy legal if one is superior in power level to the other? Answer: There is no reason other than the DCI being lazy and not even bothering to reintroduce crappy cards like mind twist back into legacy for fear of said card warping the format, which mind twist will not do.
You don't need lightning greaves to immediately win with hermit druid, anger does the job quite well. Hermit druid is a 1 card combo, and I would very much prefer to see it not enter legacy. Especially when trash like mind twist is banned.
Also Troll Grimness, are you saying spiral tide should be banhammered out of the format? Because their fundamental turn is turn 4 and they have countermagic. Turn 4 wins are perfectly reasonable in legacy. Also of note, when you ban one cantrip, another cantrip magically takes it place because guess what there are A LOT of blue cantrips for U because that's what wizards prints generally.
Misstep warps the format around it, and is the actual nuts with snapcaster mage. Good luck ever resolving a 1 drop if snapcaster/misstep are legal simultaneously. Cavern doesn't solve the problem at all, as misstep decks play wasteland to keep you low on mana/only able to play 1 mana spells. Pretty much every deck has to run mental misstep if misstep becomes legal, and it isn't going to be pretty if they unban misstep. Misstep mirrors forever or wait no I would rather not play that format thank you.
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Does anyone actually think decks like vise age would even crop up nowadays ? Yes it would get played by some agro decks as effectively a colourless lightning bolt. It's powerful don't get me wrong (One of my 1st true non casual decks involved trying to get 3+ vises out by turn 2), but it isn't the bogeyman it once was.
Vice would see play. Its great in burn for obvious reasons but also for the not so obvious reason that burn now has Goblin guide which combos with it nicely.
It would also see play in affinity, as it can drop turn one and is never a dead card for them.
And it would be good in those decks. But good well within reason. Decks simply dont hold a grip of cards like they used to when vice was a scary scary card. Curves are super low and plenty of decks just throw hands away early on.
It is also the PERFECT card to unban to keep landtax in order should it get out of hand.
I have said it before, ill say it again, The Rack is probably a better card in the long run because you want your opponent to have less cards and it is something you can effect. Obviously different cards for different decks but if the rack is not banned as a 1 mana artifact that can win the game outright with unblockable damage, i see no reason for vice to stay banned.
I feel like Misstep would have been perfectly fine at 2 phyrexian mana, because then it couldn't counter itself.
I would also still like wizards to try again and print a new "free" counterspell, and not be afraid to do so because of past mistakes. Force of Will I would not consider a mistake, while Misstep probably was.
So here is the problem with any free counterspells, at least now:
Force of will exists. Because Force exists other cards came into existence because of force of will, because force keeps them in check. Decks like beltcher come into existence, decks which would have had bannings if force didn't exist because they warp the game, coinflip style whoever goes first wins decks, that are kept out of the top slots because of the risk associated with playing them against force based decks.
Now force can't be banned because to do so would require you to ban quite a few other cards (Most likely LED, Tendrils, Beltcher, maybe even lotus petal, who knows), but powercreep keeps happening because of force keeping cards in check on an individual basis. Now you need more free counters just to keep up, and since counters are blue and almost only blue, the meta starts to lean more towards the one color with answers (and force is the only answer a lot of times). So in order to make it so that color is not dominant, you make counters that are blue but can be played in other colors (Mindbreak trap, Mental misstep), and then everyone poops there britches and is shocked that mental misstep is good.
The problem all along was honestly Force of will, but it is too late to go back and fix that problem. I still don't think that MM was that bad. I play vintage and the card, while it is in a great many decks, is simply not over represented and fun to play against. Even in legacy you could play it or not. If you played a bunch of one drops you were already an aggressive deck in all honesty and not only did people need a tool against that but you should absolutely have a tool to fight it as well, it just happened to be the same card.
We now have many tools to deal with MM, like cavern of souls, and it would not be unreasonable to think a playable 1 drop creature with a cant be countered clause could be printed.
I would love to see MM come back, but I know I'm in the minority, till then I am hoping for Vice.
There is one possibility that I am sure they have looked at a few times, unban mental misstep, and unban other stuff that costs 1 like mystical tutor or w/e else, allow people to push but allow answers to it too, I'm guessing in the end though it's better the way it is, or else they would have not done it the way they have. As well, mystical tutor has been banned, unbanned, then banned again! lol
Force of Will is not a problem card, it is a format defining card. Yes I get your example about combo and all, but let's all be honest here, without FoW the format becomes 2-3 combo decks or Extended. It's honestly that simple. The card pool for eternal formats is simply too large ie: there are far too many interactions and interactions to come that are abusive to NOT have catch-all type answers available and still have a fun, diverse, healthy meta; without having a ban list 5 miles long.
MM won't come back because it is so completely degenerate - it sees play in EVERY DECK. It was a neat idea, it was tried, and it flopped. And it wasn't abusive because it countered nacatl's, lackys and goblin guides, it was abusive because it narrowed the format by countering a large chunk of viable spells, in addition to catching neat 1cc critters.
Personally I'd rather black vise stay banned, as it's inherently an anti-control/sculpt combo card and neither of these strategies is anywhere near prevalent much less dominating.
The next best to come off the list is mind twist. As it:
1). Doesn't "combo" (blow people out of the game before they have a chance to answer/stabalize)
2). Have infinite/insta-gib win routes
3). Promotes color equality (personally I don't care about it but I know a lot do).
4). Gives control a bone (even with recent miracles I feel like this would help control find a stronger place in 1.5)
Force of Will was a crutch that WOTC leaned on for such a long time that the muscles in there leg atrophied and now they can't walk on their own.
It is only format defining by virtue of the format collapsing without it, and it only collapses because that balanced a great many things around it to begin with.
Reverse things, lets say MM was the card that came out in alliances and FOW came out in New Phyrexia. I am willing to bet that force would have gotten banned and MM would have been grandfathered in because the format would collapse without MM.
I highly believe its powerlevel and format warping-ness is highly subjective. I happened to like the MM era because I got to play some decks I would not have been able to otherwise. I also believe it was not around long enough for everyone to know if it would remain as warping as they perceived. When new cards come out they always get a ton of play, people like trying new toys. I fully suspect that if the card was given 3 more months it would have subsided a good amount.
Force of Will was a crutch that WOTC leaned on for such a long time that the muscles in there leg atrophied and now they can't walk on their own.
It is only format defining by virtue of the format collapsing without it, and it only collapses because that balanced a great many things around it to begin with.
Reverse things, lets say MM was the card that came out in alliances and FOW came out in New Phyrexia. I am willing to bet that force would have gotten banned and MM would have been grandfathered in because the format would collapse without MM.
I highly believe its powerlevel and format warping-ness is highly subjective. I happened to like the MM era because I got to play some decks I would not have been able to otherwise. I also believe it was not around long enough for everyone to know if it would remain as warping as they perceived. When new cards come out they always get a ton of play, people like trying new toys. I fully suspect that if the card was given 3 more months it would have subsided a good amount.
You may well be right, and if <insert obligatory metaphor here> then <punch line in here>. Personally, I doubt I could care less about if this, that, or the other happened because it didn't. What happened, happened and that's what I base my analysis and opinions on and how I will continue to observe things; but hey, kudo's to you then for the MM era.
I fully suspect that if the card was given 3 more months it would have subsided a good amount.
Might be some legitimate merit to this statement but I doubt it will ever see legacy legality again. It's a proverbial bee-hive and no one wants to poke it on the off chance that they don't get stung but can dig out some honey. Until the format stops being dominated by hyper-efficient 1/2cc cards (extremely doubtful that will happen though, because they are hyper-efficient) I don't think MM is going anywhere.
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You can debate FoW all day, but it doesn't change that it is necessary.
What is better for WotC's goals?
Keep FoW and all the broken strategies kept in check by its presence in the format.
Ban FoW, and then ban the broken cards that can now run rampant without its presence.
They want a small banlist, and by banning FoW they have to add several other cards along with it just to keep the format in check.
Given 3 more months snapcaster and misstep would have been slapping everyone in the face who even thought about casting 1 drops. I would have taken a hiatus from magic in general if misstep hadn't been banned on sept. 20 last year, as I wouldn't want to be playing snapcaster mirrors all day long. And to every that says "well stax and chalice decks can fight the misstep menace," you're wrong. Why? Because artifacts suck against energy flux I hear. And I guarantee that the moment artifact based decks started winning the misstep snapcaster deck would have adapted, destroyed said chalice decks, and moved on to continue destroying legacy.
What if mental misstep had been printed in alliances? What if force of will had been printed in champions of kamigawa originally? What if means nothing, there's a reason I never use that phrase. There's no reason to live in a fantasy world of rainbows and unicorns where force of will was printed in new phyrexia, because that reality does not exist. What happened, happened and none of us can change that. If you can change that, I doubt you would be thinking about MTG.
Force of will has never been a problem. 2 for 1's are good against one archetype: combo. If combo didn't exist, force of will would be sitting in the 25 cent bin right now just like pygmy hippo and serra angel. The reason force of will is so heavily played is because if you don't play force of will, good luck against belcher. They will annihilate you and you'll think "what just happened? Oh wait, my wild nacatl can't beat 12 goblin tokens or a charbelcher activation for 50 damage."
Even if you legalize mental misstep and mystical tutor simultaneously, I'm pretty sure misstep would still dominate the format in conjunction with snapcaster and other control cards. As countering 2 of combo's one drops is typically devastating, especially if it's a 1 for 2 trade.
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I'm not sure how Force of Will has absolutely anything to do with power creep, but whatever. The few of you even talking about a card that will never be banned in occurrence with a completely broken free counter spell in a format defined by one drops is one thing. But comparing FoW to any kind of cards printed recently, free counters or not, is absurd since FoW is not equivalent with power creep what so ever.
I'd also like to state for the record that I think FoW is a fairly weak card in Legacy right now. The only reason I main it in my blue decks is fear of SnT decks, which are absolutely busted and bonkers. SnT needs the axe. Wtf is taking WotC?
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Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
I think that was the point. FoW enables these powerful cards to stay in longer, because without FoW the format would degenerate and WotC would have to ban a bunch of other broken cards. You said it yourself: you're packing FoW to stop the degenerate combo decks.
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Uuuuh... Cast Hermit Druid... Untap... Win game?
Sounds like a one card combo to me, unless you are counting lands as part of your combo, but it's kind of assumed that a properly built deck hits its landrops. A hand with two mana and a Hermit Druid can just win the game if they can't remove him. Oh you want to counter my Hermit Druid? Cavern of Souls
Essentially yeah I meant lands (or Vial, or any way to drop him into play) because Hermit does need to enter the battlefield somehow so you can win the game
With Lightning Grieves you can win the turn he is played, so why not skip the whole "untap" part of your plan
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Hermit Druid Combo:
This may be the first time "Tropical Island" has been a part of any combo. Just saying.
MM was not banned because it beat Goblins. It was banned because it was in nearly every deck, even if only to counter MM. Goblins was often the example of this.
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Blasphemy! The combo doesn't use Tropical Island as its manabase it uses Taiga for mainboard Red Elemental Blasts and Pyroblasts, you always suspect the Tropical Island, but never the Taiga
I didn't play Legacy back in the Misstep days, but correct me if I am wrong didn't every deck have to mainboard 4 Missteps?
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Hermit Druid Combo:
Affinity didn't. Neither did any Chalice of the Void deck. Burn (because Burn just ran more Burn spells). Zoo. But besides that.... yea.
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Well Chalice Decks could lock MM anyway, Affinity plays 0 drops so it is unaffected and Burn is well Burn
Basically Misstep should remain banned, with Misstep and Spell Snare
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1) Land Tax is not banned any more.
2) Land Tax happens every turn.
3) Tithe is criminally underused the same way Mana Leak is.
3b) Actually, Mana Leak might be decent in a midrange deck that doesn't want to have to commit UU to cast Counterspell.
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I have been praying for Mind Twist to come back daily for months, so much so that I bought a playset just for the glorious day when Wizards grants my prayers.
That said, it might be a little outrageous. Hymn to Tourach is already a reason to play black. I don't think Legacy combo is resilient enough to deal with a format with both of these cards. I know I'd get nervous when I saw a Swamp come down. Almost as nervous as I get now when an Island comes down.
The tendency seems to be for things to gradually leave the banned list. Mind Twist is a natural question once Tax returns.
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Yeah Mana Leak is basically just as good as Counterspell in legacy. The only reason it isn't used is because neither is counterspell.
Tithe seems to be a card any deck with plains can throw in and gain value. Land Tax can generate much more advantage over the long run, but requires you to build around it somewhat. I predict 0 copies of Land Tax in the next Starcity tournament top 8.
Landtax's power lies not in the land fishing but in brainstorm jace abuse. Tithe is more so an incremental advantage card while tax is more a combo piece.
My hope is that Wotc will take care to unban a new card every 3 months. It seems they probably want to do one at a time to see if the meta can deal with it, and then when it is safe get another one off the list. At least this is my hope. I imagine they will do cards with unique effects first, so hopefully earthcraft is next.
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It was able to Brainstorm, Preordain, Sensei's Divining Top, Ponder etc.. while counterspelling me for free
One of those Look//Draw 3 cards needs to be banned. Or a couple of them.
A deck that can counterspell you and win by turn 4 shouldn't be possible
Now that Land Tax is unbanned especially there will be bannings of those other cards
What is the point of playing any other deck
Entomb is an instant speed demonic tutor for B in the right deck i.e. reanimator or other gravebased strategies. Try to tell me it isn't, I've played against the card several times and I have to tell you it sure feels like demonic tutor to me when it resolves and gets reanimator's 1 of reanimation target like iona, inkwell leviathan, etc. etc. Why? Because they just got a specific card out of their deck for one mana. I wouldn't be opposed to a rebanning of entomb currently, the card has proven to be very degenerate in terms of powerlevel. If reanimator draws it, they are usually favored to win the game as they get the card that is the most powerful against your deck and cheat it into play. And the point is Hinotama, entomb is far above mind twist in terms of powerlevel. So then why should mind twist remain banned while entomb is legacy legal if one is superior in power level to the other? Answer: There is no reason other than the DCI being lazy and not even bothering to reintroduce crappy cards like mind twist back into legacy for fear of said card warping the format, which mind twist will not do.
You don't need lightning greaves to immediately win with hermit druid, anger does the job quite well. Hermit druid is a 1 card combo, and I would very much prefer to see it not enter legacy. Especially when trash like mind twist is banned.
Also Troll Grimness, are you saying spiral tide should be banhammered out of the format? Because their fundamental turn is turn 4 and they have countermagic. Turn 4 wins are perfectly reasonable in legacy. Also of note, when you ban one cantrip, another cantrip magically takes it place because guess what there are A LOT of blue cantrips for U because that's what wizards prints generally.
Misstep warps the format around it, and is the actual nuts with snapcaster mage. Good luck ever resolving a 1 drop if snapcaster/misstep are legal simultaneously. Cavern doesn't solve the problem at all, as misstep decks play wasteland to keep you low on mana/only able to play 1 mana spells. Pretty much every deck has to run mental misstep if misstep becomes legal, and it isn't going to be pretty if they unban misstep. Misstep mirrors forever or wait no I would rather not play that format thank you.
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Vice would see play. Its great in burn for obvious reasons but also for the not so obvious reason that burn now has Goblin guide which combos with it nicely.
It would also see play in affinity, as it can drop turn one and is never a dead card for them.
And it would be good in those decks. But good well within reason. Decks simply dont hold a grip of cards like they used to when vice was a scary scary card. Curves are super low and plenty of decks just throw hands away early on.
It is also the PERFECT card to unban to keep landtax in order should it get out of hand.
I have said it before, ill say it again, The Rack is probably a better card in the long run because you want your opponent to have less cards and it is something you can effect. Obviously different cards for different decks but if the rack is not banned as a 1 mana artifact that can win the game outright with unblockable damage, i see no reason for vice to stay banned.
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I would also still like wizards to try again and print a new "free" counterspell, and not be afraid to do so because of past mistakes. Force of Will I would not consider a mistake, while Misstep probably was.
Force of will exists. Because Force exists other cards came into existence because of force of will, because force keeps them in check. Decks like beltcher come into existence, decks which would have had bannings if force didn't exist because they warp the game, coinflip style whoever goes first wins decks, that are kept out of the top slots because of the risk associated with playing them against force based decks.
Now force can't be banned because to do so would require you to ban quite a few other cards (Most likely LED, Tendrils, Beltcher, maybe even lotus petal, who knows), but powercreep keeps happening because of force keeping cards in check on an individual basis. Now you need more free counters just to keep up, and since counters are blue and almost only blue, the meta starts to lean more towards the one color with answers (and force is the only answer a lot of times). So in order to make it so that color is not dominant, you make counters that are blue but can be played in other colors (Mindbreak trap, Mental misstep), and then everyone poops there britches and is shocked that mental misstep is good.
The problem all along was honestly Force of will, but it is too late to go back and fix that problem. I still don't think that MM was that bad. I play vintage and the card, while it is in a great many decks, is simply not over represented and fun to play against. Even in legacy you could play it or not. If you played a bunch of one drops you were already an aggressive deck in all honesty and not only did people need a tool against that but you should absolutely have a tool to fight it as well, it just happened to be the same card.
We now have many tools to deal with MM, like cavern of souls, and it would not be unreasonable to think a playable 1 drop creature with a cant be countered clause could be printed.
I would love to see MM come back, but I know I'm in the minority, till then I am hoping for Vice.
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Force of Will is not a problem card, it is a format defining card. Yes I get your example about combo and all, but let's all be honest here, without FoW the format becomes 2-3 combo decks or Extended. It's honestly that simple. The card pool for eternal formats is simply too large ie: there are far too many interactions and interactions to come that are abusive to NOT have catch-all type answers available and still have a fun, diverse, healthy meta; without having a ban list 5 miles long.
MM won't come back because it is so completely degenerate - it sees play in EVERY DECK. It was a neat idea, it was tried, and it flopped. And it wasn't abusive because it countered nacatl's, lackys and goblin guides, it was abusive because it narrowed the format by countering a large chunk of viable spells, in addition to catching neat 1cc critters.
Personally I'd rather black vise stay banned, as it's inherently an anti-control/sculpt combo card and neither of these strategies is anywhere near prevalent much less dominating.
The next best to come off the list is mind twist. As it:
1). Doesn't "combo" (blow people out of the game before they have a chance to answer/stabalize)
2). Have infinite/insta-gib win routes
3). Promotes color equality (personally I don't care about it but I know a lot do).
4). Gives control a bone (even with recent miracles I feel like this would help control find a stronger place in 1.5)
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Because you can't spell slaughter without laughter.
It is only format defining by virtue of the format collapsing without it, and it only collapses because that balanced a great many things around it to begin with.
Reverse things, lets say MM was the card that came out in alliances and FOW came out in New Phyrexia. I am willing to bet that force would have gotten banned and MM would have been grandfathered in because the format would collapse without MM.
I highly believe its powerlevel and format warping-ness is highly subjective. I happened to like the MM era because I got to play some decks I would not have been able to otherwise. I also believe it was not around long enough for everyone to know if it would remain as warping as they perceived. When new cards come out they always get a ton of play, people like trying new toys. I fully suspect that if the card was given 3 more months it would have subsided a good amount.
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You may well be right, and if <insert obligatory metaphor here> then <punch line in here>. Personally, I doubt I could care less about if this, that, or the other happened because it didn't. What happened, happened and that's what I base my analysis and opinions on and how I will continue to observe things; but hey, kudo's to you then for the MM era.
Might be some legitimate merit to this statement but I doubt it will ever see legacy legality again. It's a proverbial bee-hive and no one wants to poke it on the off chance that they don't get stung but can dig out some honey. Until the format stops being dominated by hyper-efficient 1/2cc cards (extremely doubtful that will happen though, because they are hyper-efficient) I don't think MM is going anywhere.
Maverick -- Storm
Click here for trade threadTrade thread under reconstruction.
Because you can't spell slaughter without laughter.
What is better for WotC's goals?
Keep FoW and all the broken strategies kept in check by its presence in the format.
Ban FoW, and then ban the broken cards that can now run rampant without its presence.
They want a small banlist, and by banning FoW they have to add several other cards along with it just to keep the format in check.
What if mental misstep had been printed in alliances? What if force of will had been printed in champions of kamigawa originally? What if means nothing, there's a reason I never use that phrase. There's no reason to live in a fantasy world of rainbows and unicorns where force of will was printed in new phyrexia, because that reality does not exist. What happened, happened and none of us can change that. If you can change that, I doubt you would be thinking about MTG.
Force of will has never been a problem. 2 for 1's are good against one archetype: combo. If combo didn't exist, force of will would be sitting in the 25 cent bin right now just like pygmy hippo and serra angel. The reason force of will is so heavily played is because if you don't play force of will, good luck against belcher. They will annihilate you and you'll think "what just happened? Oh wait, my wild nacatl can't beat 12 goblin tokens or a charbelcher activation for 50 damage."
Even if you legalize mental misstep and mystical tutor simultaneously, I'm pretty sure misstep would still dominate the format in conjunction with snapcaster and other control cards. As countering 2 of combo's one drops is typically devastating, especially if it's a 1 for 2 trade.
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I'd also like to state for the record that I think FoW is a fairly weak card in Legacy right now. The only reason I main it in my blue decks is fear of SnT decks, which are absolutely busted and bonkers. SnT needs the axe. Wtf is taking WotC?
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