Looking over the list of bans in MTG history, I couldn't find a single example of an engine piece banning that needed to be followed up with another banning in order to kill a deck. The closest example is in Modern, with Preordain/Ponder getting banned and then Seething Song getting banned down the road to fully "kill" storm. Skullclamp is another (bad) example, with the card seeing play in Affinity, getting banned, and then with Affinity eating more bans later. But that's not a good comparison at all, because Clamp got banned for its omnipresence, not its use in just Affinity. The historical example just doesn't exist.
First off in the entire history of Magic, Wizards has never banned a card so that they can unban a card so swapping Batterskull for SFM will not happen.
This is the most important point when considering an SFM unban. There is zero historical precedent for unbanning a card and swapping it with a newly banned card. In all the simultaneous bans/unbans in MTG history, this has never happened with two related cards. At least going on this precedent, it is extremely unlikely that Wizards will ban Batterskull and unban SFM in one move. Although Wizards is not a slave to its own history of bannings and unbannings, its policy and pattern of bans has been fairly consistent since late 2004.
a karn on turn 3 or a liliana on turn 2 is more back breaking than half the "safe" unbans on the list. and this happens more than people would like to admit.
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I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
Thyoreticly we have seen Entomb being unbanned to enable Reanimator and Mystical Tutor banned for making it too consistent.
The problem with that comparison is that it wasn't planned. It was damage control. Entomb got unbanned to help Reanimator and then Reanimator got out of hand. Wizards added Tutor to the list to mitigate the effect of the Entomb unban (and to rein in other Tutor-enabled strategies). Moreover, the two announcements were separated by basically 9 months. It wasn't a grand scheme by Wizards to unban one and then ban the other. It was a necessary consequence of the beast they unleashed in unbanning Entomb. In the case of SFM and Skull, the implication is that Wizards would unban one (SFM) and immediately replace it with the other (Skull). There is no historical precedent for that. True, it could still happen, but it is just a lot less likely.
The first case, Dredge, is a good comparison. I am hesitant to extrapolate from it because it was part of the bizarre bans oriented around the Community Cup (GGT is arbitrary, Hypergenesis and Jace aren't even on the list, the Cup generally was a weird way to test bans, etc.) but it is still an example of a deck's engine card being banned in advance of another related banning. LaPille even says in the Dread Return banning that "While Golgari Grave-Troll was banned, we found that Dredge was still very capable of turn-three kills."
At first glance, the SFM/Jitte comparison also appears to be on point. After all the justification for banning Jitte was explicitly to avoid banning SFM: "Unfortunately, Stoneforge Mystic gives decks that want to fight against creature decks consistent access to Jitte and a creature to put it on. We think that Stoneforge Mystic is the more fun of the two cards, so rather than allow such a strong anti-creature-deck pressure to remain in the format, we chose to ban the real offender: Umezawa's Jitte."
Once the banlist got expanded in August, Wizards changed its tune. The "real offender" was no longer Jitte, but SFM. SFM was dominant across the board in every format, and Modern was going to also fall prey to him without a banning. So why not unban Jitte now? There was another factor at play, and that's where the engine comparison falls apart. There is another point that got Jitte banned that is still true even with SFM gone: "Historically, Umezawa's Jitte has been an extremely powerful card against creature decks, with mirror matches between creature decks often degenerating into battles over Jitte." Jitte may have initially been banned mostly for its relationship to SFM, but it will remain banned because of its interaction in creature-based matchups (even though its most broken enabler is also gone). Its unclear if the Legendary rules changes in M14 will hypothetically make that Jitte battle more or less annoying, but it is unlikely that we will see this card around.
The 2011 Community Cup was a weird way to preview Modern...it was Unified Team Constructed, which essentially prevented any analysis of whether or not a certain card would get splashed and jammed into every archetype (e.g. SFM as the one people regularly cite as a danger).
Both teams had a UW Stoneforge deck, both were randomly paired with Elves! (with Glimpse of Nature), and both lost 0-2. The WotC team only had a single win in Modern, and it was over Marshall Sutcliffe's UW Stoneforge. Not sure what you can take away from that, but there was commentary about how good Elves! was, but nothing about UW Mystic being overpowered - even with JTMS, AV, P&P, etc.
The question is, would those decks be broken in Modern without JtMS, Preordain, or Mental Misstep?
It's easy to envision SFM dominating without Misstep and Preordain. Misstep is banned in Legacy and SFM is awesome there. Preordain helps out blue-based SFM strategies, but Serum Visions is a passable replacement. The real question is, can we see SFM dominating without his buddy Jace? The most egregious SFM metagame-warping came during Standard, when SFM was banned right alongside Jace. So at least in the blue-based department, we don't have any place to analyze SFM independent of Jace.
Trying to compare Legacy Maverick to a hypothetical Modern Maverick list is a tricky exercise. You can't map the deck perfectly because of different metagame demands. But SFM would easily slot into Hatebears, potentially making that deck a Modern version of the SCG Philly winner. Seriously, just take a look at that Maverick list. Modern loses Mother of Runes (a huge loss, to be sure), but otherwise can replace most of those cards with Modern equivalents. Path for Swords, Jitte for Batterskull, and Zenith for Chord. Again, it's not a perfect mapping, but the similarities would be inescapable for Wizards. And all of that ignores SFM's home in tons of other decks.
The bottom line is that SFM would absolutely be powerful in this format, even without Jace. That doesn't necessarily mean that SFM would warp the metagame, but she would definitely empower some decks and hurt others. Heck, an argument could be made that SFM would help a bunch of tier 2/3 strategies move up the ladder. But the counterargument could also be made. It probably comes down to a matter of testing.
The bottom line is that SFM would absolutely be powerful in this format, even without Jace. That doesn't necessarily mean that SFM would warp the metagame, but she would definitely empower some decks and hurt others. Heck, an argument could be made that SFM would help a bunch of tier 2/3 strategies move up the ladder. But the counterargument could also be made. It probably comes down to a matter of testing.
How do you think the metagame will change. I know that it will, but which decks will get better and which will get worse?
How do you people see Stoneforge Mystic in comparison to Dark Confidant? Being on the draw and facing any of them both on the other side of the table T2 seems similar in many ways. The only differences I see is confidant nets a card one turn later and drains life, but is a continuous source of cards at the same time. Mystic gets very obsolete once you tutored your 2 equipments as well. Is attacking with a batterskull un t4 (blocking a ground attacker on t3) so backbreaking? Is that maybe a problem with aggro not being solid enough in the early game to offset this? Maybe we need something like Goblin Lackey in the format...
Just thoughts, beeing playing with sfm in legacy for a long time and I know her power but I've also encountered similar power level situations in modern (t2 Liliana of the Veil, t3 Karn Liberated...).
SFM vs. Dark Confidant is an interesting comparison, but they don't line up well because the roles they play are very different. I'd probably throw 'goyf and maybe Snappy in there because of the pseudo 'cycle' they form as power 2-drops
Similarities:
2-Drops costing 1C
Low power/Toughness makes them easy to remove
Considered to be 'worth playing' in many archetypes
Confidant vs. Mystic is basically how aggressive do you want to be vs. how grindy do you want to be. Mystic is a card that wants you to grind hard as it's automatic +1 and the equipment is giving you lifelink. Confidant is a card that wants you to be beating down as your racing your opponent and the lifeloss. The true nightmare is a deck that plays both.
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
People forget that Mystic is so good because it tutors, not simply because of the CA. With confidant you can still draw a bunch of cards that you dont need, all the while it slowly kills you.
Mystic advances your gameplan and adds the inevitability of executing it.
Tutoring once is not better than probably getting multiple cards.
I completely agree. It takes two turns, two cards, and 2WW to get a 4/4 lifelink creature that dies to Disenchant. And in between those two turns you have to dodge Bolt, PtE, Dismember and Electrolyze, which are four of the 10 most played spells in the format. You also have to dodge t1 Thoughtseize (3rd most played spell). In a format with no JTMS or free counters, SFM is powerful but not broken.
Tarmogoyf being legal while SFM and Nacatl are on the banlist is a total joke. It either has to be banned, reprinted at a decent rate, or given some competition in the slot that doesn't synergize. (Scavenging Ooze is a good start. What I'd love is 2cmc */*, exile any number of cards from graveyards when cast, ~ gets that many +1/+1 counters. Not sure that would kill graveyard strategies any worse than Rest in Peace)
Anyway, it skews the format because almost every deck benefits from splash green for 4x Goyf. That isn't true of SFM or Nacatl. And if we're going to be forced to build our decks around that reality, shouldn't we be able to handle those other cards? They both, at least, die to Bolt.
Tutoring once is not better than probably getting multiple cards.
Totally depends, if that tutoring is for a card that will win you the game because the opponent can't deal with it, tutoring is better than all those cards.
But the point expressed is tutoring for Batterskull does not win you the game any more so than does goyf, karn, liliana, geist, etc. That assuming you tutor a Batterskull which is the best case scenario anyway, tutoring a sword t2 is far from even a good move these days.
Honestly I don't even know why Batterskull has the "3: return to hand." clause, it seems what causes the most problems for its inevitability and design-wise I don't really understand it. Battering rams should be picked up by others once its living half dealt with.
It was originally 8: Make a new Germ. Someone changed it to the bounce clause (due to the CC being 5) and wound up with the disaster we have now.
Having the card you need every time is better than taking more shots at having a card that is relevant.
That's highly subjective:
Who's to say you have the exact card you need to absolutely crush your opponent in your MD that SFM can tutor?
Something they can't easily answer?
etc.
I'll make it highly objective for you.
A tutor effect has a 100% chance of being what you need.
An extra draw effect has an X/Y chance of being what you need where X is the number of needed cards in your deck and Y is the number of cards remaining in your deck. Only in situations where X=Y, a thing that doesn't happen in competitive magic, would extra draws be better.
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What's the big deal? You could have played multiple Righteous Avengers for years now.
I'll make it highly objective for you.
A tutor effect has a 100% chance of being what you need.
An extra draw effect has an X/Y chance of being what you need where X is the number of needed cards in your deck and Y is the number of cards remaining in your deck. Only in situations where X=Y, a thing that doesn't happen in competitive magic, would extra draws be better.
A tutor effect only has a 100% chance of being what you need if it lets you search out any card. Any restrictions on the card you search out (e.g. only equipment) negates that.
Another thing to consider if we are comparing Dark Confidant to Stoneforge Mystic, assuming both enter the battlefield (are not countered), Confidant will only generate the first extra draw the turn AFTER it hits play, while Stoneforge gives you that one card immediately.
Why does this matter? Confidant can be hit with any manner of removal spells, and the opposing player get another full turn to find that card.
With that said, they are both extremely powerful cards, and you bet I would put both into an Esper shell if Stoneforge ever got unbanned.
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You can't always win, and just because you lose doesn't mean you played badly.
Even if you lose, it is important to remain confident in your ability to make good plays and decisions. Lose that and you are truly lost.
Testing is great, and the better the testing is, the better off you'll be.
It is impossible to tilt and play well.
It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose.
SFM Will never be unbanned. As said, it's everything and more in a single card. Advantage, Tutoring, Anti-Countermagic and a Threat in it's own right.
Stoneforge Mystic is not "everything and more in a single card". It searches once for a single card that has to be in a narrow group. That is not broken. It allows you to play an equipment for 2 mana at instant spped and that can't be countered, but with the exception of Batterskull, the other powerful equipment don't do anything until you pay the equip cost. Even with Batterskull, having to pay 2WW and use two cards, dodge creature removal, hand disruption, search hate, artifact removal, and counterspells is powerful, but not broken. And what you said about Stoneforge Mystic being a threat in its own right is not true. Once it enters the battlefield and uses its second ability on the equipment it searched for, it is a 1/2. That is not what most players would consider a threat.
I'll make it highly objective for you.
A tutor effect has a 100% chance of being what you need.
An extra draw effect has an X/Y chance of being what you need where X is the number of needed cards in your deck and Y is the number of cards remaining in your deck. Only in situations where X=Y, a thing that doesn't happen in competitive magic, would extra draws be better.
I was pretty sure we were talking about Stoneforge Mystic, not Demonic Tutor;
You're speaking under the impression that you have an equipment package that can and will answer every question that may be presented to your deck; Firstly, this won't happen, secondly i'm 99% sure the general consensus of why SFM is too strong is because of the T3 Batterskull interaction; if swords were good to drop on T3 in Modern to swing with on T4 in Modern you'd likely see more people with specific swords that answer their worst MUs in the board; because hey, if you can 100% crush your worst MU with 2-3 cards in your deck, why not play them without a tutor?
Burying your opponent in CA is always good, no matter the situation; no matter if you're playing competitively or casually.
Games aren't strictly Question?=>Answer or Die
There are ways to gain incremental advantage over people; this isn't a game of hay-makers. Especially Modern.
Bob is always good.
T3 Batterskull isn't always good.
Another thing to consider if we are comparing Dark Confidant to Stoneforge Mystic, assuming both enter the battlefield (are not countered), Confidant will only generate the first extra draw the turn AFTER it hits play, while Stoneforge gives you that one card immediately.
Why does this matter? Confidant can be hit with any manner of removal spells, and the opposing player get another full turn to find that card.
With that said, they are both extremely powerful cards, and you bet I would put both into an Esper shell if Stoneforge ever got unbanned.
It bears noting that this hypothetical removal spell that's hitting DC before he can draw you a card is also hitting SFM before she's dropping your Batterskull early.
Here are two examples. Golgari Grave-Troll being banned to kill dredge, and then Dread Return being banned anyways. Umezawa's Jitte banned to stop Stoneforge Mystic, and then SFM being banned anyways.
Fine. Let's assume that you are right and that they won't do that. Modern is the format of Lightning Bolt. It is the format where Aven Mindcensor and Ancient Grudge are key sideboard cards. It is the format that is filled with Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. It is the format that has powerful creatures like Geist of Saint Traft coming down on turn 3 and that has decks that can get Karn Liberated out on turn 3. If Modern can handle Arcbound Ravager, Geist of Saint Traft, Tarmogoyf, and Knight of the Reliquary, it can handle Batterskull.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
The problem with that comparison is that it wasn't planned. It was damage control. Entomb got unbanned to help Reanimator and then Reanimator got out of hand. Wizards added Tutor to the list to mitigate the effect of the Entomb unban (and to rein in other Tutor-enabled strategies). Moreover, the two announcements were separated by basically 9 months. It wasn't a grand scheme by Wizards to unban one and then ban the other. It was a necessary consequence of the beast they unleashed in unbanning Entomb. In the case of SFM and Skull, the implication is that Wizards would unban one (SFM) and immediately replace it with the other (Skull). There is no historical precedent for that. True, it could still happen, but it is just a lot less likely.
The first case, Dredge, is a good comparison. I am hesitant to extrapolate from it because it was part of the bizarre bans oriented around the Community Cup (GGT is arbitrary, Hypergenesis and Jace aren't even on the list, the Cup generally was a weird way to test bans, etc.) but it is still an example of a deck's engine card being banned in advance of another related banning. LaPille even says in the Dread Return banning that "While Golgari Grave-Troll was banned, we found that Dredge was still very capable of turn-three kills."
At first glance, the SFM/Jitte comparison also appears to be on point. After all the justification for banning Jitte was explicitly to avoid banning SFM: "Unfortunately, Stoneforge Mystic gives decks that want to fight against creature decks consistent access to Jitte and a creature to put it on. We think that Stoneforge Mystic is the more fun of the two cards, so rather than allow such a strong anti-creature-deck pressure to remain in the format, we chose to ban the real offender: Umezawa's Jitte."
Once the banlist got expanded in August, Wizards changed its tune. The "real offender" was no longer Jitte, but SFM. SFM was dominant across the board in every format, and Modern was going to also fall prey to him without a banning. So why not unban Jitte now? There was another factor at play, and that's where the engine comparison falls apart. There is another point that got Jitte banned that is still true even with SFM gone: "Historically, Umezawa's Jitte has been an extremely powerful card against creature decks, with mirror matches between creature decks often degenerating into battles over Jitte." Jitte may have initially been banned mostly for its relationship to SFM, but it will remain banned because of its interaction in creature-based matchups (even though its most broken enabler is also gone). Its unclear if the Legendary rules changes in M14 will hypothetically make that Jitte battle more or less annoying, but it is unlikely that we will see this card around.
Speculate less. Test more.
Both teams had a UW Stoneforge deck, both were randomly paired with Elves! (with Glimpse of Nature), and both lost 0-2. The WotC team only had a single win in Modern, and it was over Marshall Sutcliffe's UW Stoneforge. Not sure what you can take away from that, but there was commentary about how good Elves! was, but nothing about UW Mystic being overpowered - even with JTMS, AV, P&P, etc.
2 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
6 Island
4 Mutavault
2 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Tectonic Edge
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Batterskull
4 Cryptic Command
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Mana Leak
3 Mental Misstep
3 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1 Manriki-Gusari
2 Meddling Mage
1 Mental Misstep
1 Path to Exile
2 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Wrath of God
4 Blinkmoth Nexus
2 Celestial Colonnade
4 Hallowed Fountain
5 Island
2 Mystic Gate
2 Plains
2 Tectonic Edge
2 Kitchen Finks
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Vendilion Clique
1 Batterskull
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Path to Exile
4 Preordain
4 Rune Snag
2 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Wrath of God
1 Batterskull
1 Gideon Jura
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Meddling Mage
1 Negate
1 Silence
2 Sower of Temptation
1 Spell Snare
2 War Priest of Thune
1 Wrath of God
Speculate less. Test more.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Personally, I doubt it. Jund still tears these decks apart. I'd rather face a turn 3 Batterskull over a turn 2/3 Liliana or Karn any day.
Footsteps Hulk
Ascendency Combo
Restore Balance
Ad Nauseam
EDH:
Ghave Lands
Narset Combo
It's easy to envision SFM dominating without Misstep and Preordain. Misstep is banned in Legacy and SFM is awesome there. Preordain helps out blue-based SFM strategies, but Serum Visions is a passable replacement. The real question is, can we see SFM dominating without his buddy Jace? The most egregious SFM metagame-warping came during Standard, when SFM was banned right alongside Jace. So at least in the blue-based department, we don't have any place to analyze SFM independent of Jace.
But as any Legacy player knows, SFM has a ton of success in non-blue-based decks. In fact, it is arguable that he is even more successful in decks that don't use Jace. As recently as this weekend, //sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1">=3&start_date=2013-06-23&end_date=2013-06-23&start=1&finish=16&exp=43&city=Philadelphia&state=PA&country=US"]SCG Open Philadelphia showcased how powerful SFM was in decks not using blue. Junk Maverick, piloted by Jack Wang, took top honors at the event, and a core piece of his deck was the invaluable SFM. Death and Taxes and Maverick strategies have been using SFM for years; she doesn't need Jace, or even blue, to make a huge format impact.
Trying to compare Legacy Maverick to a hypothetical Modern Maverick list is a tricky exercise. You can't map the deck perfectly because of different metagame demands. But SFM would easily slot into Hatebears, potentially making that deck a Modern version of the SCG Philly winner. Seriously, just take a look at that Maverick list. Modern loses Mother of Runes (a huge loss, to be sure), but otherwise can replace most of those cards with Modern equivalents. Path for Swords, Jitte for Batterskull, and Zenith for Chord. Again, it's not a perfect mapping, but the similarities would be inescapable for Wizards. And all of that ignores SFM's home in tons of other decks.
The bottom line is that SFM would absolutely be powerful in this format, even without Jace. That doesn't necessarily mean that SFM would warp the metagame, but she would definitely empower some decks and hurt others. Heck, an argument could be made that SFM would help a bunch of tier 2/3 strategies move up the ladder. But the counterargument could also be made. It probably comes down to a matter of testing.
How do you think the metagame will change. I know that it will, but which decks will get better and which will get worse?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
The midrange decks get better, in the form of disruptive decks such as W/x deadguy, and more "goodstuff" decks such as Junk.
There will also be a blue based tempo or control deck that uses Stoneforge.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Stoneforge Mystic only searches for one equipment not two.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
SFM vs. Dark Confidant is an interesting comparison, but they don't line up well because the roles they play are very different. I'd probably throw 'goyf and maybe Snappy in there because of the pseudo 'cycle' they form as power 2-drops
Similarities:
SFM only:
Bob only:
Speculate less. Test more.
Tutoring once is not better than probably getting multiple cards.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I completely agree. It takes two turns, two cards, and 2WW to get a 4/4 lifelink creature that dies to Disenchant. And in between those two turns you have to dodge Bolt, PtE, Dismember and Electrolyze, which are four of the 10 most played spells in the format. You also have to dodge t1 Thoughtseize (3rd most played spell). In a format with no JTMS or free counters, SFM is powerful but not broken.
Tarmogoyf being legal while SFM and Nacatl are on the banlist is a total joke. It either has to be banned, reprinted at a decent rate, or given some competition in the slot that doesn't synergize. (Scavenging Ooze is a good start. What I'd love is 2cmc */*, exile any number of cards from graveyards when cast, ~ gets that many +1/+1 counters. Not sure that would kill graveyard strategies any worse than Rest in Peace)
Anyway, it skews the format because almost every deck benefits from splash green for 4x Goyf. That isn't true of SFM or Nacatl. And if we're going to be forced to build our decks around that reality, shouldn't we be able to handle those other cards? They both, at least, die to Bolt.
Totally depends, if that tutoring is for a card that will win you the game because the opponent can't deal with it, tutoring is better than all those cards.
It was originally 8: Make a new Germ. Someone changed it to the bounce clause (due to the CC being 5) and wound up with the disaster we have now.
Current post- Grand Prix KC Modern Postmortem (7/7/13)
Having the card you need every time is better than taking more shots at having a card that is relevant.
It's consistent in what sense?
What's wrong with consistency?
Do people really want to play RNG:The Gathering?
That's highly subjective:
Who's to say you have the exact card you need to absolutely crush your opponent in your MD that SFM can tutor?
Something they can't easily answer?
etc.
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I'll make it highly objective for you.
A tutor effect has a 100% chance of being what you need.
An extra draw effect has an X/Y chance of being what you need where X is the number of needed cards in your deck and Y is the number of cards remaining in your deck. Only in situations where X=Y, a thing that doesn't happen in competitive magic, would extra draws be better.
A tutor effect only has a 100% chance of being what you need if it lets you search out any card. Any restrictions on the card you search out (e.g. only equipment) negates that.
Why does this matter? Confidant can be hit with any manner of removal spells, and the opposing player get another full turn to find that card.
With that said, they are both extremely powerful cards, and you bet I would put both into an Esper shell if Stoneforge ever got unbanned.
~ Brian DeMars
Stoneforge Mystic is not "everything and more in a single card". It searches once for a single card that has to be in a narrow group. That is not broken. It allows you to play an equipment for 2 mana at instant spped and that can't be countered, but with the exception of Batterskull, the other powerful equipment don't do anything until you pay the equip cost. Even with Batterskull, having to pay 2WW and use two cards, dodge creature removal, hand disruption, search hate, artifact removal, and counterspells is powerful, but not broken. And what you said about Stoneforge Mystic being a threat in its own right is not true. Once it enters the battlefield and uses its second ability on the equipment it searched for, it is a 1/2. That is not what most players would consider a threat.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I was pretty sure we were talking about Stoneforge Mystic, not Demonic Tutor;
You're speaking under the impression that you have an equipment package that can and will answer every question that may be presented to your deck; Firstly, this won't happen, secondly i'm 99% sure the general consensus of why SFM is too strong is because of the T3 Batterskull interaction; if swords were good to drop on T3 in Modern to swing with on T4 in Modern you'd likely see more people with specific swords that answer their worst MUs in the board; because hey, if you can 100% crush your worst MU with 2-3 cards in your deck, why not play them without a tutor?
Burying your opponent in CA is always good, no matter the situation; no matter if you're playing competitively or casually.
Games aren't strictly Question?=>Answer or Die
There are ways to gain incremental advantage over people; this isn't a game of hay-makers. Especially Modern.
Bob is always good.
T3 Batterskull isn't always good.
Try again.
It bears noting that this hypothetical removal spell that's hitting DC before he can draw you a card is also hitting SFM before she's dropping your Batterskull early.
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