And if everyone's cards are too efficient you end up with highly problematic games
So don't make them "too" efficient...
Great idea. How does one do that if we're operating on the power level of things like Memory Jar? Because that's what you were saying, that Memory Jar and cards like it are only overpowered/broken if nothing else is at their power level. But how do you put everything else at that power level without making them too efficient?
Somehow, I doubt many people would be interested in the game if that were around
So make more than one strategy...
Sure, okay, let's have a diversity of strategies that all have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. That's not something people like. Again, that was the problem with Expanded circa 2003. You had "diversity" in a bunch of different decks but because all of the decks were just aiming to win or do something all but unbeatable on the third turn you had a format people didn't like (granted, third is slower than first, but the general principle applies).
You're being completely silly here. People hated the format because it was way too high powered. No, it wasn't because they "couldn't afford it" or they "lost to it by surprise." People went into tournaments knowing about these decks, and that's exactly why people were losing interest, because it wasn't at all interesting to play in that kind of environment. You're engaging in this weird revisionist history that just makes you look silly.
Some people knew about the cards, not everyone played the deck that utilized them, but if the problem is environment, the issue is montonoy. So if the problem is power in only a few cards, then two exceptionally obvious solutions are simply to make every card as powerful or bring the broken cards down to a power of the rest of the cards.
It wasn't just a few cards, though. There were a bunch of different cards that were powerful.
And the original discussion of Dark Ritual was Standard, not Legacy. The claim was that it would be too powerful for Standard now but wasn't too powerful in its original environment, and I made the contention that, no, it was kind of too good even in its original environment.
And I made the contention that, no, if the efficiency of the cards was simply leveled, DR wouldn't have been considered op, which is true in any format. DR itself wasn't broken, it was the limited array of cards it was used for at the time. Again, the issue was monotony. One or two strategies become too powerful, so people get frustrated and bored. This only supports my points.
So here you are, arguing that in a past that didn't exist, Dark Ritual wouldn't have been a problem. Guess what? I was referring to a past that did exist, to argue against the claim that Dark Ritual wasn't overpowered in its original environment.
Uh, no, they were kinda OP back in their original environment too. That's why they discontinued them (or in the case of Dark Ritual or Memory Jar, banned them outright).
I would say a card being overpowered for standard is somewhat different than a card being overpowered compared to every card. If they're really that over powered, how come so few established legacy decks use them? Unless uh, no, cards aren't overpowered when there's lots of other powerful cards to choose from.
Few established Legacy decks use Memory Jar because the card is banned. As for Dark Ritual, yes, it's not as overpowered in Legacy, but we were talking largely about Standard (and to a lesser extent Expanded), were we not?
I mentioned Dark Ritual right there! What "dodge" existed?
So don't you dodge it this time. Your claim was that Memory Jar not seeing play in Legacy was somehow proof that it was A-OK in that environment, then I pointed out the obvious fact that Memory Jar wasn't even legal so that makes little sense. Are you trying to argue that Memory Jar would be of an acceptable power level in Legacy as Legacy currently stands? And if so, what is your argument for this, considering it's been rejected in pretty much every Legacy unbanning discussion I've seen? Because if that's not your claim, then your argument regarding Memory Jar falls apart.
Although it's a bit amusing you say "you can easily see they are making a much greater effort to make diverse." In what way? By the fact Standard clearly isn't and hasn't been diverse for quite a while? Granted, you said "effort" rather than saying they actually did it, but even there I'm not sure how someone is supposed to "clearly see" that.
How about you go to the thread in the mtgsalvation forums and look at the established standard decks...and then read the wide variety of cards in current sets. They clearly avoided the mistakes of the darksteel block where everything revolved around affinity when they made another artifact block too. It's just as many as you'd get for a style of legacy deck.
Oh please, the current Standard is not "diverse" when Metalworks combo is sitting on about 30% of the metagame. When was the last time we didn't have a deck sitting on a percentage of the metagame about that level? It wasn't before Amonkhet, as CopyCat and Mardu Vehicles both cleared that. It wasn't before Aether Revolt, because UW Flash had almost 30%. It wasn't before Kaladesh, because Collected Company ruled that format so hard WOTC has said in retrospect they probably should have banned something. And we had Abzan at about 30% of the metagame for about 2 years prior to that (thanks, Siege Rhino!). For the year before that, Monoblack Devotion maintained 30+% for almost its entire tenure in Standard. And before that... actually, Innistrad-RTR Standard was pretty darn diverse, with no clear best deck. But that was back in 2012!
How has it possibly not been shown already? Have you ever heard of sneak attack? Or show and tell? Or natural order? Or reanimate? Or even tendrils of agony and force of will and ad nauseam? Those are all exceptionally powerful cards that decide the fate of the game well beyond what an average card does, allowing players to win potentially as fast as turn 3, even faster if they're lucky. You can easily see from the history of established legacy decks that players have clearly demonstrated comfort and open advocacy of extremely efficient, game-ending tactics over the entire history of magic that can even rival cards that are banned. The only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies.
You claim "How has it possibly not been shown already?" as if my very next paragraph that you neglected to quote didn't answer the question. Here you go again:
If you wish to point to Legacy and Vintage, I should point out that the reason people are "comfortable" is because a lot of the problematic cards have gotten banned or restricted rather than following your idea of just trying to raise the power level high enough that things like Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall are of reasonable power level.
Maybe that's what your claim of "the only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies" which doesn't really rebut the point because, even ignoring the fact there's definitely been more than one period where bannings were required (even if we don't count anything from before Legacy was split from Vintage), that's still not answering the point that the environment requires certain cards, a number of them from the Urza's Saga block (or from other sets that were simultaneously legal with Urza's Saga block) that you've claimed could have been okay if only everything else was on the same level as its problematic cards, to be banned. So the format you point to as proof is actually demonstrating the opposite, because even in that format Memory Jar (along with Tolarian Academy, Windfall, and others) has to be banned.
It bears repeating, yet again, how little your arguments actually relate to my original points.
FWIW EMA is lurking on the shelves of my LGSes, nobody is buying it and that is in LGS with very strong Legacy events.
MM17 sold better, despite the Modern scene being poor in both LGS.
I think its the card quality that causes the disparity, EMA was full of chaff at most commonalities, and had a couple of money cards (FOW) and a few high value rares. MM17 was better in terms of its rares and mythics, but had some decent pickups over all commonalities.
What kills EMA is the fact that the format it supports has the reserved list holding a number of needed cards and the fact the boxes are overpriced. Making products that cost over 200 usd or even over 100 usd severely limits who is going to come around and buy them. Standard booster boxes are about the highest they really should be going on cost.
I largely agree, but in the case of EMA a lot of obvious reprints seemed to be diverted to conspiracy II
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People with belligerent signatures are trying to compensate for something....
FWIW EMA is lurking on the shelves of my LGSes, nobody is buying it and that is in LGS with very strong Legacy events.
MM17 sold better, despite the Modern scene being poor in both LGS.
I think its the card quality that causes the disparity, EMA was full of chaff at most commonalities, and had a couple of money cards (FOW) and a few high value rares. MM17 was better in terms of its rares and mythics, but had some decent pickups over all commonalities.
What kills EMA is the fact that the format it supports has the reserved list holding a number of needed cards and the fact the boxes are overpriced. Making products that cost over 200 usd or even over 100 usd severely limits who is going to come around and buy them. Standard booster boxes are about the highest they really should be going on cost.
I largely agree, but in the case of EMA a lot of obvious reprints seemed to be diverted to conspiracy II
Now that you mention it, a lot of people do feel that Conspiracy II was a mistake set because of all the draft specific cards it had. That alone makes that set not age very well, since most people who want reprints like Birds of Paradise probably don't draft a whole lot.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Now that you mention it, a lot of people do feel that Conspiracy II was a mistake set because of all the draft specific cards it had. That alone makes that set not age very well, since most people who want reprints like Birds of Paradise probably don't draft a whole lot.
I'm not sure about that, some of the players love the draft specific cards because they can incorporate them into cube. And Archdemon of Paliano is a million times better than the 500 dollar Juzám Djinn... I would also believe Archdemon could make a decent replacement for Abyssal Persecutor in Legacy's Gate. Sure competitive legacy can say the card sucks, but a 5/4 flier with 4 mana and no drawbacks is not bad. And you can get the playset for a dollar is a good buy too.
Seriously, I prefer more sets like conspiracy over unglued (if Wizards done anything that was wrong it was making Unglued with the intent of pushing causal play and following it with a harder to play Unhinged set... I really hate that 1/2 crap!).
How does one do that if we're operating on the power level of things like Memory Jar? Because that's what you were saying, that Memory Jar and cards like it are only overpowered/broken if nothing else is at their power level. But how do you put everything else at that power level without making them too efficient?
Firstly, simply by testing testing them. Secondly, you're still making the careless assumption that everything has to be at jar's power level, when in fact I stated that it doesn't on multiple occasions.
Sure, okay, let's have a diversity of strategies that all have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn.
This clearly demonstrates you have no understanding of the issue at all. It is mathematically impossible for equal level decks to all have a 95% win rate. The only reason a deck could have a win rate that high is if it had exceptionally disproportionately powerful cards compared to the rest of the cards.
It wasn't just a few cards, though. There were a bunch of different cards that were powerful.
Uh, no, the majority of cards definitely for sure with 100% certainty were not as powerful as the broken cards from that block. You can easily confirm this by simply looking at the set, and also by the fact that a majority of cards from that set are not in fact banned.
So here you are, arguing that in a past that didn't exist, Dark Ritual wouldn't have been a problem. Guess what? I was referring to a past that did exist, to argue against the claim that Dark Ritual wasn't overpowered in its original environment.
So here you are, strawmanning instead of explaining the past. Guess what? I already explained it and its possible solutions. Whether or not you want to go into denial about it is up to you. Dark ritual itself wasn't broken, it was the broken cards DR was used for that were broken, that's why those cards were banned and not DR.
Oh please, the current Standard is not "diverse" when Metalworks combo is sitting on about 30% of the metagame.
Oh please, every deck snowballs to a time in the spotlight when it's played by some famous player or gets first place once. Doesn't change the fact that you can clearly see a wide variety of successful decks over the course of the last few blocks and all of standard in general.
You claim "How has it possibly not been shown already?" as if my very next paragraph that you neglected to quote didn't answer the question. Here you go again:
You claim it's answered as if that paragraph actually counts as any kind of answer. A card can only be banned if people play too much of it, and the fact that such cards got banned means people were a lot more than interested in playing them which supports my point that people did in fact want to play those tactics. However, a disproportionate number of successful high win-rate decks had *only* those select few, certain broken cards, which is how WoTC was able to tell there was a lack in diversity of the game, and only banned those cards *after* they became too popular and not before. You still haven't circumvented the fact that I can reference many powerful decks that have efficient game-ending tactics of a similar nature. But, those urza cards are banned because they're disproportionately more powerful than the majority of cards, shifting focus from a variety of strategies to only a few strategies utilizing those few cards, which as I said is an issue with diversity. People want to be able to build any deck they can imagine, they don't want to be forced to only buy certain cards to keep up with only certain specific strategies that overshadow everything else.
Natural Order is just a green version of Tinker, yet its legal and an elf deck could use it on turn 3 or even 2, and that's because it's really only an elf deck that can take proper advantage of it and it has to give up a lot of things like removal and counterspells or an army of +2/+2 to do it, not every deck is forced to run natural order to compete. WoTC chose one of a few options that I laid out where they decided to bring down the power level of allowed cards rather than raise everything else. When the game comes down to people only buying a few cards, Wizards loses money, they want a game that encourages many different cards in order to make money which in no way excludes many cards from being powerful and efficient.
Maybe that's what your claim of "the only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies" which doesn't really rebut the point because, even ignoring the fact there's definitely been more than one period where bannings were required (even if we don't count anything from before Legacy was split from Vintage), that's still not answering the point that the environment requires certain cards, a number of them from the Urza's Saga block (or from other sets that were simultaneously legal with Urza's Saga block) that you've claimed could have been okay if only everything else was on the same level as its problematic cards, to be banned. So the format you point to as proof is actually demonstrating the opposite, because even in that format Memory Jar (along with Tolarian Academy, Windfall, and others) has to be banned. The only actual problem with banned cards ever is that they soak up the attention of most of the other cards in competitive play, that's why they only ever get banned *after* they're released and not before.
It bears repeating, yet again, how little your arguments actually relate to my original points.
Still wrong. Not only do they not actually "have" to be banned, because WoTC could still chose to go in the other direction I described at any point in time, but a few cards ideally being banned so that the company is more likely to maintain profit doesn't in any way say that the environment requires certain cards, there's all kinds of new abilities released every single set, not of them are required for anything, they're simply a way to expand possible strategies as I was advocating. Memory jar being banned is just a relative problem. Relative to the cards already in the game and the cards they decided they wanted to print in the future, it seemed disproportionately powerful and was going to overshadow all those cards and a lot of previous cards, which didn't have to be the case obviously. Money is the issue, almost always. It seemed more of a risk to go in one direction than the other, so instead of shifting a lot of production to compensate for people choosing to fixate on a select few cards, they instead took the more efficient rout of banning then.
I mentioned Dark Ritual right there! What "dodge" existed?
So don't you dodge it this time. Your claim was that Memory Jar not seeing play in Legacy was somehow proof that it was A-OK in that environment
Uh, you chose to immediately fixate on memory jar when I in fact mentioned both cards at once, because you think it supports your argument which demonstrates a lack of integrity in your reasoning. Dark ritual being banned and jar not only shows what I said about cards being broken vs op among many cards. Dark ritual was strong in standard, but still in the culmination of cards like in Legacy, it wasn't the problem by a long shot, it was cards like necropotenence that were disproportionately strong, hence why they got banned but DR didn't and why most established decks don't actually use DR.
How does one do that if we're operating on the power level of things like Memory Jar? Because that's what you were saying, that Memory Jar and cards like it are only overpowered/broken if nothing else is at their power level. But how do you put everything else at that power level without making them too efficient?
Firstly, simply by testing testing them. Secondly, you're still making the careless assumption that everything has to be at jar's power level, when in fact I stated that it doesn't on multiple occasions.
It's not a careless assumption because Memory Jar being overpowered (broken, in fact) was a major part of my original message, the one you decided to argue against. If your argument is that we just have to get the power level high enough that something isn't seen as overpowered, then logically we must raise everything to Memory Jar's power level.
Sure, okay, let's have a diversity of strategies that all have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn.
This clearly demonstrates you have no understanding of the issue at all. It is mathematically impossible for equal level decks to all have a 95% win rate. The only reason a deck could have a win rate that high is if it had exceptionally disproportionately powerful cards compared to the rest of the cards.
You misunderstand. My mention was that each deck would have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn... meaning that, if you went first, you would be 95% favored to win the game, effectively turning the game into little more than a coin flip. However, everyone has an equal chance to win, and you could have strategic diversity if there's a number of decks that fit the description. So it totally fills your requirements despite clearly being something that few people would have any interest in playing.
It wasn't just a few cards, though. There were a bunch of different cards that were powerful.
Uh, no, the majority of cards definitely for sure with 100% certainty were not as powerful as the broken cards from that block. You can easily confirm this by simply looking at the set, and also by the fact that a majority of cards from that set are not in fact banned.
My point was that in that degenerate Standard, there actually were a good number of different decks (if it was just one, there wouldn't have needed to be as many bannings as there were). That doesn't change the problems.
Of course, if the goal was to make everything as efficient as Tolarian Academy and Memory Jar and all the rest... well, that would technically raise diversity but that wouldn't really fix the problems of the format that people disliked.
So here you are, arguing that in a past that didn't exist, Dark Ritual wouldn't have been a problem. Guess what? I was referring to a past that did exist, to argue against the claim that Dark Ritual wasn't overpowered in its original environment.
So here you are, strawmanning instead of explaining the past. Guess what? I already explained it and its possible solutions. Whether or not you want to go into denial about it is up to you. Dark ritual itself wasn't broken, it was the broken cards DR was used for that were broken, that's why those cards were banned and not DR.
I'm not strawmanning. The original claim was that Dark Ritual was not overpowered originally but would be overpowered in Standard today. I made the argument that Dark Ritual was overpowered in its original environment. Whether or not that was due to the other cards in its environment is besides the point.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say all your arguments are incidental to my original point. You're not actually arguing against the things I said. Granted, I don't think you're doing all that great a job with the arguments you are making, but even if your arguments were accurate it still doesn't actually disprove my statements that you apparently took issue with.
Oh please, the current Standard is not "diverse" when Metalworks combo is sitting on about 30% of the metagame.
Oh please, every deck snowballs to a time in the spotlight when it's played by some famous player or gets first place once.
That's why the dominant deck of Eldritch Moon Standard was Orzhov Control, right? Because it got first place at the Pro Tour.
Innistrad-RTR Standard also disproves this, because no deck "snowballed" in that environment as has occurred in every Standard since. Fact is, Wizards of the Coast has done a pretty poor job of making Standard diverse for the last 4-5 years.
Doesn't change the fact that you can clearly see a wide variety of successful decks over the course of the last few blocks and all of standard in general.
So could you during Caw-Blade Standard, in fact. It wasn't the only deck that was capable of Top 8's.
Perhaps subsequent Standards haven't had a deck that quite hit the heights of Caw-Blade, but pulling the "but there are other decks!" doesn't work because someone could make that argument even back then.
You claim "How has it possibly not been shown already?" as if my very next paragraph that you neglected to quote didn't answer the question. Here you go again:
You claim it's answered as if that paragraph actually counts as any kind of answer. A card can only be banned if people play too much of it, and the fact that such cards got banned means people were a lot more than interested in playing them which supports my point that people did in fact want to play those tactics.
Because those tactics were how you won games. People, it turns out, are frequently interested in doing things that will win them games.
However, a disproportionate number of successful high win-rate decks had *only* those select few, certain broken cards, which is how WoTC was able to tell there was a lack in diversity of the game, and only banned those cards *after* they became too popular and not before. You still haven't circumvented the fact that I can reference many powerful decks that have efficient game-ending tactics of a similar nature. But, those urza cards are banned because they're disproportionately more powerful than the majority of cards, shifting focus from a variety of strategies to only a few strategies utilizing those few cards, which as I said is an issue with diversity. People want to be able to build any deck they can imagine, they don't want to be forced to only buy certain cards to keep up with only certain specific strategies that overshadow everything else.
Um... duh. But again, my point was that those cards were way too good and not something to really want to return to. Then you came along and started talking about how the real problem was that cards were only overpowered because the other cards weren't as good.
Natural Order is just a green version of Tinker, yet its legal and an elf deck could use it on turn 3 or even 2, and that's because it's really only an elf deck that can take proper advantage of it and it has to give up a lot of things like removal and counterspells or an army of +2/+2 to do it, not every deck is forced to run natural order to compete. WoTC chose one of a few options that I laid out where they decided to bring down the power level of allowed cards rather than raise everything else. When the game comes down to people only buying a few cards, Wizards loses money, they want a game that encourages many different cards in order to make money which in no way excludes many cards from being powerful and efficient.
And where did you lay this out? I don't remember seeing it.
If you did consider that an adequate idea, then it seems odd you left no response to this comment of mine:
And your argument has another problem with it: Even if we grant it as correct, one can just as easily turn it around and say that the answer is not to bring everything up to the level of the overpowered cards, but bring the overpowered cards down to the power of the rest of the game, which is what they did (or at least attempted to do) with such cards.
It would have been quite easy to say "yep, that would also be an answer" but you didn't.
Maybe that's what your claim of "the only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies" which doesn't really rebut the point because, even ignoring the fact there's definitely been more than one period where bannings were required (even if we don't count anything from before Legacy was split from Vintage), that's still not answering the point that the environment requires certain cards, a number of them from the Urza's Saga block (or from other sets that were simultaneously legal with Urza's Saga block) that you've claimed could have been okay if only everything else was on the same level as its problematic cards, to be banned. So the format you point to as proof is actually demonstrating the opposite, because even in that format Memory Jar (along with Tolarian Academy, Windfall, and others) has to be banned. The only actual problem with banned cards ever is that they soak up the attention of most of the other cards in competitive play, that's why they only ever get banned *after* they're released and not before.
It bears repeating, yet again, how little your arguments actually relate to my original points.
Still wrong. Not only do they not actually "have" to be banned, because WoTC could still chose to go in the other direction I described at any point in time,
To make all the cards as powerful as Tolarian Academy, Memory Jar, et al? That would just result in the exact same problems as we had back then, just that there would technically be a few more decks following that strategy. Again, the problem of 2003 Extended, where you technically had diversity but all of the decks had the same general play style of just doing a degenerate game winning thing as quickly as possible while hoping the opponent's degenerate game winning thing isn't faster.
I mentioned Dark Ritual right there! What "dodge" existed?
So don't you dodge it this time. Your claim was that Memory Jar not seeing play in Legacy was somehow proof that it was A-OK in that environment
Uh, you chose to immediately fixate on memory jar when I in fact mentioned both cards at once, because you think it supports your argument which demonstrates a lack of integrity in your reasoning. Dark ritual being banned and jar not only shows what I said about cards being broken vs op among many cards. Dark ritual was strong in standard, but still in the culmination of cards like in Legacy, it wasn't the problem by a long shot, it was cards like necropotenence that were disproportionately strong, hence why they got banned but DR didn't and why most established decks don't actually use DR.
I fixated more on Memory Jar because, outside of me having stronger feelings about it, there was an even more obvious reason: The problem with you citing it was much more obvious, because it was completely nonsensical to try to argue it not seeing play meant it wasn't good in Legacy. Have you retracted that argument, then? Or are you going to try to argue that Memory Jar is actually not too powerful for Legacy and should be unbanned?
Memory Jar is fine in commander, not sure I'd unban it for play in anything involving prizes because of the fact it's very overpowering and the last thing we need is WoW syndrome efficiency grinding turning what is a fun card into a completely oppressive piece of garbage. That's what I dislike about tournaments: They go from being fun casual events with some bonus loot at the end to people going hardcore dark souls madness on their decks with rules lawyering, cheating, and goodness knows what else getting thrown into the mix.
Still not sure where this tangent relates to the subject of the thread, though.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It is on an incredible level. You argue in favor of absolute standards, I argue in favor of relative standards. The reality is that I can be even more liberal to say that no card is op or broken if only so few people play it. Like I said, the issue isn't some petty and inaccurate assumption about absolute power level, it's the diversity of gameplay. People like to win, and they were winning with those broken cards right? So, why were some people unhappy? Because those cards were the only way to compete when people started using them, they overshadowed everything else, the game didn't become about adapting and thinking and being creative, it became about "who's the first person to get this broken card out..."
You misunderstand. My mention was that each deck would have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn
Oh no I understood just fine, and my statement still stands. If there's one strategy that's relatively that broken, then fix it by acknowledging the diversity of gameplay as a factor, you still arrive at my point which is that it still wouldn't have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. Why, there'd have to be counterspells even more powerful than force of will that could break any alleged first-turn combo that you could imagine, which means no, decks would still be on equal footing throughout multiple turns, just as they are in today's decks despite the fact that some of them can still potentially win on turn 1 and some can't.
My point was that in that degenerate Standard, there actually were a good number of different decks (if it was just one, there wouldn't have needed to be as many bannings as there were). That doesn't change the problems.
But they didn't, not every card was relatively broken. There were some that were, and those cards overshadowed all other cards, forcing people to conform to only those cards to have a fair chance of winning, that's what the problem was. The same cards being used in slightly different decks still puts the emphasis just on those select few cards. If there's a problem with cards making broken combos, then like I said, that's an issue with diversity. Don't only make infinite turn draw 15 cards per turn combos and you won't have the urza problem, it's nothing more than a problem of diversity. Whether WoTC makes more cards as strong but in different ways or removes the cards that are broken to bring the remaining diverse culmination of cards closer to a similar power level, the end result is the same. You're never going to get around this, yet you refuse to acknowledge it no matter how many times I repeat it, it's simply pointless to attempt a reasonable discussion with you.
You can, literally, and very very very easily, which is exactly what writers get paid a salary to do. You think every single card WoTC comes up with is the only idea they ever had for that set? There's thousands of more ideas behind the scenes backlogged, but they choose the ones that are most likely to maximize their profit with the current state of the game.
When you have a Lightning Bolt, it isn't really possible to make all of the direct damage spells as good. You can try making variations, like one that deals 4 damage to a creature but 2 to a player, but then one still tops it all.
1
I disagree with you its not hard at all, Here let me provide you with some
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player
New Bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player, Gain 1 energy
New Bolt
R
Deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to target walker
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player Scry 1
New bolt
R
Deals 1 damage to all creatures OR deals 3 damaged to each opponent.
New Bolt
R
Deals 2 damaged to each player for each nonbasic land they have in play
New Bolt
R
Deals X damaged to target permanent where X is its total converted casting cost. or 2 damaged to all players
New bolt
R
Deals 6 damaged to target creature, new bolt can target creatures with hexproof or shroud.
You can, literally, and very very very easily, which is exactly what writers get paid a salary to do. You think every single card WoTC comes up with is the only idea they ever had for that set? There's thousands of more ideas behind the scenes backlogged, but they choose the ones that are most likely to maximize their profit with the current state of the game.
When you have a Lightning Bolt, it isn't really possible to make all of the direct damage spells as good. You can try making variations, like one that deals 4 damage to a creature but 2 to a player, but then one still tops it all.
1
I disagree with you its not hard at all, Here let me provide you with some
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player
New Bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player, Gain 1 energy
New Bolt
R
Deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to target walker
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player Scry 1
New bolt
R
Deals 1 damage to all creatures OR deals 3 damaged to each opponent.
New Bolt
R
Deals 2 damaged to each player for each nonbasic land they have in play
New Bolt
R
Deals X damaged to target permanent where X is its total converted casting cost. or 2 damaged to all players
New bolt
R
Deals 6 damaged to target creature, new bolt can target creatures with hexproof or shroud.
New bolt
R
Deals 4 damage to target player.
New bolts all playable alongside original bolt.
Nope. New Bolts most of which completely outclass the one true bolt to an almost laughable extent. If some those got printed there would be no point in using the original lightning bolt which very eloquantly proves the point that Lord Soth has been making.
If the baseline spells like terror, wrath of god and lightning bolt are to efficient any new version of them needs to do something rather shiny for the new cards to get a look in. It is far better to have a lower base line so variants don't have to be so rediculous yet still provide a reason to use them instead of the baseline version of the spell.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Nope. New Bolts most of which completely outclass the one true bolt to an almost laughable extent. If some those got printed there would be no point in using the original lightning bolt
That's under the sole assumption that every deck would always and only replace lightning bolt. The list definitely has some potential though, the problem is they made the spells more powerful rather than as powerful in different ways. But the truth is a burn deck would use a wide variety of burn spells including both lightning bolt and some less broken versions of these cards, and a jund or grixis control would continue to use the original in addition to other bolts, when other decks like nic fit or company would likely keep the original bolt, and some decks replacing bolt wouldn't be a bad thing as it would allow them to excel in their strategy more precisely anyway. I think a couple of the bolts from the list inherently relatively broken, but the rest have their own place. People do still play chain lightning and rift bolt despite that that lightning bolt is "better."
But, even despite all of what I just said, it is still certainly within the realm of possibility that WoTC could make the strength of their cards relative to something more powerful and let lightning bolt fade away when the next and all future blocks would come out. It is only that at this point in the game, it seems like a much bigger financial risk as those new cards would likely overshadow many older cards that seemed good, and WoTC has these unofficial contracts with players that they won't willfully tank the prices of the super expensive cards, not to mention they'd lose money from their economic shortage.
If you made a spell that said "R: deals 2 damage to target creature or player, each player may scry 1" or "RR: Deals 6 damage to target creature. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost," that's more reasonable. Some decks would prefer the 1-mana lightning bolt, some more focused decks would be willing to go to 2 red mana for the speed or control and deal with the life loss because they'd have either enough defense or speed. To be honest, the imagined RR spell here wouldn't be a bad answer to an eldrazi deck. You'd be able to get rid of a big creature that took you by surprise, but you'd still have to actually pay something for it, and it costs 2 mana instead of one, so a first turn chalice of the void wouldn't shut it down. As for the multi-target spells, we still easily have pyroclasm and arc trail which are sometimes mained or sideboarded as well, yet they're not banned.
If the baseline spells like terror, wrath of god and lightning bolt are to efficient any new version of them needs to do something rather shiny for the new cards to get a look in. It is far better to have a lower base line so variants don't have to be so rediculous yet still provide a reason to use them instead of the baseline version of the spell.
Again, this is an issue with constantly changing relative standards rather than keeping them the same. You don't have to make perpetually better and better cards, you can make cards that are, on the average, as effective but in different ways by choosing one relative standard, and in no way are we limited to talking about burn spells, this discussion can be moved to literally any possible strategy imaginable.
Well, on topic what I want to see from wizards is them doing something like the following for Masters sets instead of what they have been doing with booster boxes:
Something Masters Box
1x Promotional Mythic foil (one of the big hit cards from the set chosen at random, such as Tarmogoyf)
2x of each land in a high demand enemy or allied land cycle such as Filter lands.
12x booster packs of the set.
Good quality collectable spin down life counter
One pack of 30 card sleeves to protect the rares and mythics from the box set because for the name of all that is holy no one wants to open a Liliana of the Veil and then have someone stupid accidently spill ketchup over an unprotected card.
One Card box sized to fit the contents of the box.
One promotional "Making of" or short story involving the current planes that are in the masters set (seriously, the old novels were great in the original fat packs. Bring those back!)
MSRP 99.99 usd, or as I like to say 100 dollars.
There you go, problem solved with masters sets and eternal / non-rotating format costs as long as they don't make them WPN only. If it's WPN only stores will hike the prices up. Sure, prices will hike up on the non-land cards since people now have more money to spend and will likely spend it on those non-land cards, but doing enough of these sets and those should go down in price. This also brings prices closer together on the high and low end as there are fewer booster packs per box, thus less commons and uncommons and more of the high demand mythics thanks to the promotional mythic. This also lets them devote all the rare slots to non-land cards since the boxes come with the land cycle separately from the packs. They can even include specialty lands like Horizon Canopy or Cavern of Souls in the set while still having the main dual land cycle.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Memory Jar is fine in commander, not sure I'd unban it for play in anything involving prizes because of the fact it's very overpowering and the last thing we need is WoW syndrome efficiency grinding turning what is a fun card into a completely oppressive piece of garbage. That's what I dislike about tournaments: They go from being fun casual events with some bonus loot at the end to people going hardcore dark souls madness on their decks with rules lawyering, cheating, and goodness knows what else getting thrown into the mix.
Still not sure where this tangent relates to the subject of the thread, though.
Commander is a dramatically different format, though. It has specific rules that no other format does (every other constructed format has the same rules as the others with the only difference being which cards are legal in it, except for Vintage because it restricts cards but even there it's only those specific cards that are affected). Commander changes everything; the number of cards in your deck is different, the number you can have of each card is different, and your starting life total is different. Having to change the very rules of the game for a card to be okay isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
It is on an incredible level. You argue in favor of absolute standards, I argue in favor of relative standards. The reality is that I can be even more liberal to say that no card is op or broken if only so few people play it.
You mean like when you claimed Memory Jar wasn't overpowered or broken in Legacy because it saw so little play, then when I pointed out the fact that was because it was banned, you dodged the point, then continued to dodge it every time I pointed it out afterwards? Still waiting for a response on that!
Like I said, the issue isn't some petty and inaccurate assumption about absolute power level, it's the diversity of gameplay. People like to win, and they were winning with those broken cards right? So, why were some people unhappy? Because those cards were the only way to compete when people started using them, they overshadowed everything else, the game didn't become about adapting and thinking and being creative, it became about "who's the first person to get this broken card out..."
So again, your argument is that the problem with Urza's Saga Standard (or really, the game in general at that point, not just Standard) was that Memory Jar and friends were only broken because the power level of the rest wasn't high enough for things to compete. So the solution would be to get everything else up to that power level, which itself causes all kinds of problems and still keeps it at that "who's the first person to get this broken card out..." because that's what happens when the power level is that high. Force of Will being around in Legacy doesn't mean some cards don't need to be banned.
Perhaps the counterargument is that an even better Force of Will would solve it, but that ironically further narrows the format into the decks that can use it, because it'd be so critical in dealing with the combo decks, as well as turning games into a question of "do you have it?". Granted, some have complained about that already being true in Legacy, but this would make it significantly more of a problem.
You misunderstand. My mention was that each deck would have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn
Oh no I understood just fine, and my statement still stands. If there's one strategy that's relatively that broken, then fix it by acknowledging the diversity of gameplay as a factor, you still arrive at my point which is that it still wouldn't have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. Why, there'd have to be counterspells even more powerful than force of will that could break any alleged first-turn combo that you could imagine, which means no, decks would still be on equal footing throughout multiple turns, just as they are in today's decks despite the fact that some of them can still potentially win on turn 1 and some can't.
I was referring to winning 95% of the time regardless of disruption. My point was how such a scenario would fit your apparent requirements but people wouldn't like it.
But sure, let's discuss disruption. As for the fact decks can already win on turn 1 in Legacy, they can't win to that extent, and the ones that have the highest chance of winning on the first turn are not only extraordinarily fragile, they also can easily just plain lose to themselves in a way the slower combo decks don't. That's because, despite the high power of Legacy, the power level is still kept low enough that various particularly powerful cards aren't allowed in the format. Them entering the format throws all of that out of whack. As for the possibility of making counterspells even better, see above.
My point was that in that degenerate Standard, there actually were a good number of different decks (if it was just one, there wouldn't have needed to be as many bannings as there were). That doesn't change the problems.
But they didn't, not every card was relatively broken. There were some that were, and those cards overshadowed all other cards, forcing people to conform to only those cards to have a fair chance of winning, that's what the problem was. The same cards being used in slightly different decks still puts the emphasis just on those select few cards.
Look at the cards that got banned (Dream Halls, Earthcraft, Fluctuator, Lotus Petal, Recurring Nightmare, Time Spiral, Memory Jar) in the first 1999 announcement. Except for Lotus Petal (which was seeing a lot of play all over), it wasn't the "same cards being used in slightly different decks." There's actually not that much overlap. Fluctuator hardly goes in the same deck as Recurring Nightmare, for example, and Memory Jar decks had no interest in any of those other cards (again, except for Lotus Petal).
If there's a problem with cards making broken combos, then like I said, that's an issue with diversity. Don't only make infinite turn draw 15 cards per turn combos and you won't have the urza problem, it's nothing more than a problem of diversity. Whether WoTC makes more cards as strong but in different ways or removes the cards that are broken to bring the remaining diverse culmination of cards closer to a similar power level, the end result is the same. You're never going to get around this, yet you refuse to acknowledge it no matter how many times I repeat it, it's simply pointless to attempt a reasonable discussion with you.
Well, you've spent this whole time not really doing much to address the points I originally brought up, so I suppose the discussion is a bit pointless insofar as even if your points are correct, it still doesn't actually address my original claims.
The focus on tournament play over what the game was originally for is becoming a major issue in itself, though, and this ties into the entire argument about card legality. Wizards has not been doing a good job keeping up with the times on technology and in regards to that, more and more players are moving away from paper games for casual play to digital ones like Hearthstone. This is making it so the only thing holding anything together in paper magic at the LGS level is tournament magic because of a complete lack of promoting non-competitive play, or at least less competitive play than what people are starting to expect and prepare for. Eventually, it wont even matter if they print commander or not because there wont be any easy way for casual players to play paper magic at a casual level. If the only known organized play happens at FNM or scheduled tournaments, without any kind of support to just "bring your deck and have fun" style events, it will kill paper casual.
You can already see this trend in the pricing of cards and especially after the last year when the focus went away from pure competitive modern cards to games like commander. The value stacked onto the top net decked cards comes from the competitive tournament demand. Anything else that is not top tier, but could fit into casual commander decks is valued far less outside of the mythic slot.
What the heck is wizards going to do if the only people opening packs of magic cards are singles sellers and competitive drafters? It's already gotten to the point that limited basically only fires off at around pre-release and maybe two weeks afterwards, and Saturday showdown attendance is still no where near what it needs to be. That and what is the point of giving good promos (which I'm thankful wizards actually did right and are showing they are listening) if that promo and maybe a prize becomes the only motivation to stepping into an LGS?
The spirit of the game is to throw a deck together and be that wizard in the non-committal, sometimes ironic way playing a character in D&D works. Competitive play doesn't encourage that and turns the game into a fight by numbers alone.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
While the theory would make for interesting discussion, this thread is absolutely moot because you're unfortunately not ever going to organize any kind of band-together strike that would actually make WOTC take notice
Maybe a petition would be easier to corral together but it'd get completely ignored as well
The focus on tournament play over what the game was originally for is becoming a major issue in itself, though, and this ties into the entire argument about card legality. Wizards has not been doing a good job keeping up with the times on technology and in regards to that, more and more players are moving away from paper games for casual play to digital ones like Hearthstone.
Sorry but I have a hard time in believing this because the value of the older cards seemed to suggest that people want paper over digital.
The problem with digital magic is that the cards and packs are almost the same cost as paper magic. In Pokemon the booster packs has a digital link. I strongly think if magic wants to push the digital game they should include a digital link to the booster pack. I think I'll play digital magic.
This is making it so the only thing holding anything together in paper magic at the LGS level is tournament magic because of a complete lack of promoting non-competitive play, or at least less competitive play than what people are starting to expect and prepare for.
Im not sure. A bata black lotus is 12,000 dollars. Somebody is buying/selling for some reason.
Eventually, it wont even matter if they print commander or not because there wont be any easy way for casual players to play paper magic at a casual level. If the only known organized play happens at FNM or scheduled tournaments, without any kind of support to just "bring your deck and have fun" style events, it will kill paper casual.
I think there is a healthy/strong casual magic, mostly are played on the kitchen table, and we don't hear about them. There has to be because magic wouldn't be selling booster packs in walmart/target/walgreens/etc.
The focus on tournament play over what the game was originally for is becoming a major issue in itself, though, and this ties into the entire argument about card legality. Wizards has not been doing a good job keeping up with the times on technology and in regards to that, more and more players are moving away from paper games for casual play to digital ones like Hearthstone.
Sorry but I have a hard time in believing this because the value of the older cards seemed to suggest that people want paper over digital.
The problem with digital magic is that the cards and packs are almost the same cost as paper magic. In Pokemon the booster packs has a digital link. I strongly think if magic wants to push the digital game they should include a digital link to the booster pack. I think I'll play digital magic.
This is making it so the only thing holding anything together in paper magic at the LGS level is tournament magic because of a complete lack of promoting non-competitive play, or at least less competitive play than what people are starting to expect and prepare for.
Im not sure. A bata black lotus is 12,000 dollars. Somebody is buying/selling for some reason.
Eventually, it wont even matter if they print commander or not because there wont be any easy way for casual players to play paper magic at a casual level. If the only known organized play happens at FNM or scheduled tournaments, without any kind of support to just "bring your deck and have fun" style events, it will kill paper casual.
I think there is a healthy/strong casual magic, mostly are played on the kitchen table, and we don't hear about them. There has to be because magic wouldn't be selling booster packs in walmart/target/walgreens/etc.
No, the value of older cards isn't from demand as much as it is from supply issues and market scalping. A lot of it is mind games these days because of the internet, but there aren't a lot of cards floating around from the great Recession years as people tend to think, which is why you have things like Devoted Druid costing an arm and a leg for a common when people suddenly found synergy with Vizier of Remedies. Even older cards in legacy are not the best examples because those go from massive stockpiles like the Urza's Saga and Ice Age commons to things on the RL like the dual lands. You have to look at the times those sets came out and make a judgement based on the number of cards one can see up for sale.
Let me put it this way, if they reprinted all the Lorwyn Elwynn filter lands those prices would drop way harder than the zendikar fetches, which actually need a lot more reprints and in lower MSRP products than modern masters 2017.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
No, the value of older cards isn't from demand as much as it is from supply issues and market scalping. A lot of it is mind games these days because of the internet, but there aren't a lot of cards floating around from the great Recession years as people tend to think, which is why you have things like Devoted Druid costing an arm and a leg for a common when people suddenly found synergy with Vizier of Remedies. Even older cards in legacy are not the best examples because those go from massive stockpiles like the Urza's Saga and Ice Age commons to things on the RL like the dual lands. You have to look at the times those sets came out and make a judgement based on the number of cards one can see up for sale.
Let me put it this way, if they reprinted all the Lorwyn Elwynn filter lands those prices would drop way harder than the zendikar fetches, which actually need a lot more reprints and in lower MSRP products than modern masters 2017.
I still don't see how people are moving away from paper magic...
As for Devoted Druid... I'll have to look in my boxes of green stuff (I should have a playset of them)... but seriously, some commons do jump in value because the set was out of print for years and players already discarded most of those commons as bulk junk. If card shops didn't buy back the bulk junk, these cards were given away or discarded in trash. I remember in 2001ish, that I had a giant box of bulk junk that I'd tossed away because I didn't have any room, only to find out later that some of the cards were Priest of Titania...
After leaning from my mistake with the priest, well, I'm not discarding any bulk magic cards.
After leaning from my mistake with the priest, well, I'm not discarding any bulk magic cards.
Eh, sometimes bulk is exactly that. Devoted Druid having an infinite mana combo was more a matter of time than anything else because it's a mana dork that untaps itself. Heck, it already had an in-block combo with Quillspike.
No, the value of older cards isn't from demand as much as it is from supply issues and market scalping. A lot of it is mind games these days because of the internet, but there aren't a lot of cards floating around from the great Recession years as people tend to think, which is why you have things like Devoted Druid costing an arm and a leg for a common when people suddenly found synergy with Vizier of Remedies. Even older cards in legacy are not the best examples because those go from massive stockpiles like the Urza's Saga and Ice Age commons to things on the RL like the dual lands. You have to look at the times those sets came out and make a judgement based on the number of cards one can see up for sale.
Let me put it this way, if they reprinted all the Lorwyn Elwynn filter lands those prices would drop way harder than the zendikar fetches, which actually need a lot more reprints and in lower MSRP products than modern masters 2017.
I still don't see how people are moving away from paper magic...
As for Devoted Druid... I'll have to look in my boxes of green stuff (I should have a playset of them)... but seriously, some commons do jump in value because the set was out of print for years and players already discarded most of those commons as bulk junk. If card shops didn't buy back the bulk junk, these cards were given away or discarded in trash. I remember in 2001ish, that I had a giant box of bulk junk that I'd tossed away because I didn't have any room, only to find out later that some of the cards were Priest of Titania...
After leaning from my mistake with the priest, well, I'm not discarding any bulk magic cards.
Not sure you'd even notice them gone, really. The people that move to hearthstone are the 80% of the 80/20 split. These are the people that show up to play the pre-release and do the early drafts, then leave just about everything on the table when they are done that they don't care about and keep choice picks for commander if even that. They aren't MtG regulars and core fans that make up the bigger spenders.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Magic's obsession with maintaining high prices for cards from the past is something I have always found to be frustrating. One thing I loved about YuGiOh was how often they released good cards from the past in special edition tins and in starter sets. Pretty much every valuable card was reprinted at least once, which dropped the price of the card significantly.
Magic's obsession with maintaining high prices for cards from the past is something I have always found to be frustrating. One thing I loved about YuGiOh was how often they released good cards from the past in special edition tins and in starter sets. Pretty much every valuable card was reprinted at least once, which dropped the price of the card significantly.
That is something I dislike about Magic also. Wizards is basically doing it to force people to buy into standard cards as they figure people will want to spend their money where they can get the most cardboard for the buck, but they really don't need to do it that way.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
While i like tb idea of forcing reprints cheaper sets... itbwould never come to fruition. Even if the people in this thread all did it. Not enough impact.
While i like tb idea of forcing reprints cheaper sets... itbwould never come to fruition. Even if the people in this thread all did it. Not enough impact.
I commented in the other thread on what is wrong with magic, but I think the real solution is to push wizards to build a format that has value to them as well as the players, because right now modern is a negative format for them even under the best of scenarios and they roped themselves into supporting it directly.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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Sure, okay, let's have a diversity of strategies that all have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. That's not something people like. Again, that was the problem with Expanded circa 2003. You had "diversity" in a bunch of different decks but because all of the decks were just aiming to win or do something all but unbeatable on the third turn you had a format people didn't like (granted, third is slower than first, but the general principle applies).
It wasn't just a few cards, though. There were a bunch of different cards that were powerful.
So here you are, arguing that in a past that didn't exist, Dark Ritual wouldn't have been a problem. Guess what? I was referring to a past that did exist, to argue against the claim that Dark Ritual wasn't overpowered in its original environment.
No I didn't. Let's look back:
I mentioned Dark Ritual right there! What "dodge" existed?
So don't you dodge it this time. Your claim was that Memory Jar not seeing play in Legacy was somehow proof that it was A-OK in that environment, then I pointed out the obvious fact that Memory Jar wasn't even legal so that makes little sense. Are you trying to argue that Memory Jar would be of an acceptable power level in Legacy as Legacy currently stands? And if so, what is your argument for this, considering it's been rejected in pretty much every Legacy unbanning discussion I've seen? Because if that's not your claim, then your argument regarding Memory Jar falls apart.
Oh please, the current Standard is not "diverse" when Metalworks combo is sitting on about 30% of the metagame. When was the last time we didn't have a deck sitting on a percentage of the metagame about that level? It wasn't before Amonkhet, as CopyCat and Mardu Vehicles both cleared that. It wasn't before Aether Revolt, because UW Flash had almost 30%. It wasn't before Kaladesh, because Collected Company ruled that format so hard WOTC has said in retrospect they probably should have banned something. And we had Abzan at about 30% of the metagame for about 2 years prior to that (thanks, Siege Rhino!). For the year before that, Monoblack Devotion maintained 30+% for almost its entire tenure in Standard. And before that... actually, Innistrad-RTR Standard was pretty darn diverse, with no clear best deck. But that was back in 2012!
You claim "How has it possibly not been shown already?" as if my very next paragraph that you neglected to quote didn't answer the question. Here you go again:
Maybe that's what your claim of "the only problem you reference is one period where one or two tactics happened to be a little too strong and disrupt the diversity of winning strategies" which doesn't really rebut the point because, even ignoring the fact there's definitely been more than one period where bannings were required (even if we don't count anything from before Legacy was split from Vintage), that's still not answering the point that the environment requires certain cards, a number of them from the Urza's Saga block (or from other sets that were simultaneously legal with Urza's Saga block) that you've claimed could have been okay if only everything else was on the same level as its problematic cards, to be banned. So the format you point to as proof is actually demonstrating the opposite, because even in that format Memory Jar (along with Tolarian Academy, Windfall, and others) has to be banned.
It bears repeating, yet again, how little your arguments actually relate to my original points.
I largely agree, but in the case of EMA a lot of obvious reprints seemed to be diverted to conspiracy II
Now that you mention it, a lot of people do feel that Conspiracy II was a mistake set because of all the draft specific cards it had. That alone makes that set not age very well, since most people who want reprints like Birds of Paradise probably don't draft a whole lot.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'm not sure about that, some of the players love the draft specific cards because they can incorporate them into cube. And Archdemon of Paliano is a million times better than the 500 dollar Juzám Djinn... I would also believe Archdemon could make a decent replacement for Abyssal Persecutor in Legacy's Gate. Sure competitive legacy can say the card sucks, but a 5/4 flier with 4 mana and no drawbacks is not bad. And you can get the playset for a dollar is a good buy too.
Seriously, I prefer more sets like conspiracy over unglued (if Wizards done anything that was wrong it was making Unglued with the intent of pushing causal play and following it with a harder to play Unhinged set... I really hate that 1/2 crap!).
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
Firstly, simply by testing testing them. Secondly, you're still making the careless assumption that everything has to be at jar's power level, when in fact I stated that it doesn't on multiple occasions.
This clearly demonstrates you have no understanding of the issue at all. It is mathematically impossible for equal level decks to all have a 95% win rate. The only reason a deck could have a win rate that high is if it had exceptionally disproportionately powerful cards compared to the rest of the cards.
Uh, no, the majority of cards definitely for sure with 100% certainty were not as powerful as the broken cards from that block. You can easily confirm this by simply looking at the set, and also by the fact that a majority of cards from that set are not in fact banned.
So here you are, strawmanning instead of explaining the past. Guess what? I already explained it and its possible solutions. Whether or not you want to go into denial about it is up to you. Dark ritual itself wasn't broken, it was the broken cards DR was used for that were broken, that's why those cards were banned and not DR.
Oh please, every deck snowballs to a time in the spotlight when it's played by some famous player or gets first place once. Doesn't change the fact that you can clearly see a wide variety of successful decks over the course of the last few blocks and all of standard in general.
You claim it's answered as if that paragraph actually counts as any kind of answer. A card can only be banned if people play too much of it, and the fact that such cards got banned means people were a lot more than interested in playing them which supports my point that people did in fact want to play those tactics. However, a disproportionate number of successful high win-rate decks had *only* those select few, certain broken cards, which is how WoTC was able to tell there was a lack in diversity of the game, and only banned those cards *after* they became too popular and not before. You still haven't circumvented the fact that I can reference many powerful decks that have efficient game-ending tactics of a similar nature. But, those urza cards are banned because they're disproportionately more powerful than the majority of cards, shifting focus from a variety of strategies to only a few strategies utilizing those few cards, which as I said is an issue with diversity. People want to be able to build any deck they can imagine, they don't want to be forced to only buy certain cards to keep up with only certain specific strategies that overshadow everything else.
Natural Order is just a green version of Tinker, yet its legal and an elf deck could use it on turn 3 or even 2, and that's because it's really only an elf deck that can take proper advantage of it and it has to give up a lot of things like removal and counterspells or an army of +2/+2 to do it, not every deck is forced to run natural order to compete. WoTC chose one of a few options that I laid out where they decided to bring down the power level of allowed cards rather than raise everything else. When the game comes down to people only buying a few cards, Wizards loses money, they want a game that encourages many different cards in order to make money which in no way excludes many cards from being powerful and efficient.
Still wrong. Not only do they not actually "have" to be banned, because WoTC could still chose to go in the other direction I described at any point in time, but a few cards ideally being banned so that the company is more likely to maintain profit doesn't in any way say that the environment requires certain cards, there's all kinds of new abilities released every single set, not of them are required for anything, they're simply a way to expand possible strategies as I was advocating. Memory jar being banned is just a relative problem. Relative to the cards already in the game and the cards they decided they wanted to print in the future, it seemed disproportionately powerful and was going to overshadow all those cards and a lot of previous cards, which didn't have to be the case obviously. Money is the issue, almost always. It seemed more of a risk to go in one direction than the other, so instead of shifting a lot of production to compensate for people choosing to fixate on a select few cards, they instead took the more efficient rout of banning then.
Uh, you chose to immediately fixate on memory jar when I in fact mentioned both cards at once, because you think it supports your argument which demonstrates a lack of integrity in your reasoning. Dark ritual being banned and jar not only shows what I said about cards being broken vs op among many cards. Dark ritual was strong in standard, but still in the culmination of cards like in Legacy, it wasn't the problem by a long shot, it was cards like necropotenence that were disproportionately strong, hence why they got banned but DR didn't and why most established decks don't actually use DR.
You misunderstand. My mention was that each deck would have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn... meaning that, if you went first, you would be 95% favored to win the game, effectively turning the game into little more than a coin flip. However, everyone has an equal chance to win, and you could have strategic diversity if there's a number of decks that fit the description. So it totally fills your requirements despite clearly being something that few people would have any interest in playing.
My point was that in that degenerate Standard, there actually were a good number of different decks (if it was just one, there wouldn't have needed to be as many bannings as there were). That doesn't change the problems.
Of course, if the goal was to make everything as efficient as Tolarian Academy and Memory Jar and all the rest... well, that would technically raise diversity but that wouldn't really fix the problems of the format that people disliked.
I'm not strawmanning. The original claim was that Dark Ritual was not overpowered originally but would be overpowered in Standard today. I made the argument that Dark Ritual was overpowered in its original environment. Whether or not that was due to the other cards in its environment is besides the point.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say all your arguments are incidental to my original point. You're not actually arguing against the things I said. Granted, I don't think you're doing all that great a job with the arguments you are making, but even if your arguments were accurate it still doesn't actually disprove my statements that you apparently took issue with.
That's why the dominant deck of Eldritch Moon Standard was Orzhov Control, right? Because it got first place at the Pro Tour.
Innistrad-RTR Standard also disproves this, because no deck "snowballed" in that environment as has occurred in every Standard since. Fact is, Wizards of the Coast has done a pretty poor job of making Standard diverse for the last 4-5 years.
So could you during Caw-Blade Standard, in fact. It wasn't the only deck that was capable of Top 8's.
Perhaps subsequent Standards haven't had a deck that quite hit the heights of Caw-Blade, but pulling the "but there are other decks!" doesn't work because someone could make that argument even back then.
Because those tactics were how you won games. People, it turns out, are frequently interested in doing things that will win them games.
Um... duh. But again, my point was that those cards were way too good and not something to really want to return to. Then you came along and started talking about how the real problem was that cards were only overpowered because the other cards weren't as good.
And where did you lay this out? I don't remember seeing it.
If you did consider that an adequate idea, then it seems odd you left no response to this comment of mine: It would have been quite easy to say "yep, that would also be an answer" but you didn't.
To make all the cards as powerful as Tolarian Academy, Memory Jar, et al? That would just result in the exact same problems as we had back then, just that there would technically be a few more decks following that strategy. Again, the problem of 2003 Extended, where you technically had diversity but all of the decks had the same general play style of just doing a degenerate game winning thing as quickly as possible while hoping the opponent's degenerate game winning thing isn't faster.
I fixated more on Memory Jar because, outside of me having stronger feelings about it, there was an even more obvious reason: The problem with you citing it was much more obvious, because it was completely nonsensical to try to argue it not seeing play meant it wasn't good in Legacy. Have you retracted that argument, then? Or are you going to try to argue that Memory Jar is actually not too powerful for Legacy and should be unbanned?
Still not sure where this tangent relates to the subject of the thread, though.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It is on an incredible level. You argue in favor of absolute standards, I argue in favor of relative standards. The reality is that I can be even more liberal to say that no card is op or broken if only so few people play it. Like I said, the issue isn't some petty and inaccurate assumption about absolute power level, it's the diversity of gameplay. People like to win, and they were winning with those broken cards right? So, why were some people unhappy? Because those cards were the only way to compete when people started using them, they overshadowed everything else, the game didn't become about adapting and thinking and being creative, it became about "who's the first person to get this broken card out..."
Oh no I understood just fine, and my statement still stands. If there's one strategy that's relatively that broken, then fix it by acknowledging the diversity of gameplay as a factor, you still arrive at my point which is that it still wouldn't have a 95% chance of winning on the first turn. Why, there'd have to be counterspells even more powerful than force of will that could break any alleged first-turn combo that you could imagine, which means no, decks would still be on equal footing throughout multiple turns, just as they are in today's decks despite the fact that some of them can still potentially win on turn 1 and some can't.
But they didn't, not every card was relatively broken. There were some that were, and those cards overshadowed all other cards, forcing people to conform to only those cards to have a fair chance of winning, that's what the problem was. The same cards being used in slightly different decks still puts the emphasis just on those select few cards. If there's a problem with cards making broken combos, then like I said, that's an issue with diversity. Don't only make infinite turn draw 15 cards per turn combos and you won't have the urza problem, it's nothing more than a problem of diversity. Whether WoTC makes more cards as strong but in different ways or removes the cards that are broken to bring the remaining diverse culmination of cards closer to a similar power level, the end result is the same. You're never going to get around this, yet you refuse to acknowledge it no matter how many times I repeat it, it's simply pointless to attempt a reasonable discussion with you.
I disagree with you its not hard at all, Here let me provide you with some
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player, Deals 1 damaged to target creature or player
New Bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player, Gain 1 energy
New Bolt
R
Deals 3 damage to target creature and 3 damage to target walker
New bolt
R
Sorcery
Deals 3 damaged to target creature or player Scry 1
New bolt
R
Deals 1 damage to all creatures OR deals 3 damaged to each opponent.
New Bolt
R
Deals 2 damaged to each player for each nonbasic land they have in play
New Bolt
R
Deals X damaged to target permanent where X is its total converted casting cost. or 2 damaged to all players
New bolt
R
Deals 6 damaged to target creature, new bolt can target creatures with hexproof or shroud.
New bolt
R
Deals 4 damage to target player.
New bolts all playable alongside original bolt.
Nope. New Bolts most of which completely outclass the one true bolt to an almost laughable extent. If some those got printed there would be no point in using the original lightning bolt which very eloquantly proves the point that Lord Soth has been making.
If the baseline spells like terror, wrath of god and lightning bolt are to efficient any new version of them needs to do something rather shiny for the new cards to get a look in. It is far better to have a lower base line so variants don't have to be so rediculous yet still provide a reason to use them instead of the baseline version of the spell.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
That's under the sole assumption that every deck would always and only replace lightning bolt. The list definitely has some potential though, the problem is they made the spells more powerful rather than as powerful in different ways. But the truth is a burn deck would use a wide variety of burn spells including both lightning bolt and some less broken versions of these cards, and a jund or grixis control would continue to use the original in addition to other bolts, when other decks like nic fit or company would likely keep the original bolt, and some decks replacing bolt wouldn't be a bad thing as it would allow them to excel in their strategy more precisely anyway. I think a couple of the bolts from the list inherently relatively broken, but the rest have their own place. People do still play chain lightning and rift bolt despite that that lightning bolt is "better."
But, even despite all of what I just said, it is still certainly within the realm of possibility that WoTC could make the strength of their cards relative to something more powerful and let lightning bolt fade away when the next and all future blocks would come out. It is only that at this point in the game, it seems like a much bigger financial risk as those new cards would likely overshadow many older cards that seemed good, and WoTC has these unofficial contracts with players that they won't willfully tank the prices of the super expensive cards, not to mention they'd lose money from their economic shortage.
If you made a spell that said "R: deals 2 damage to target creature or player, each player may scry 1" or "RR: Deals 6 damage to target creature. You lose life equal to its converted mana cost," that's more reasonable. Some decks would prefer the 1-mana lightning bolt, some more focused decks would be willing to go to 2 red mana for the speed or control and deal with the life loss because they'd have either enough defense or speed. To be honest, the imagined RR spell here wouldn't be a bad answer to an eldrazi deck. You'd be able to get rid of a big creature that took you by surprise, but you'd still have to actually pay something for it, and it costs 2 mana instead of one, so a first turn chalice of the void wouldn't shut it down. As for the multi-target spells, we still easily have pyroclasm and arc trail which are sometimes mained or sideboarded as well, yet they're not banned.
Again, this is an issue with constantly changing relative standards rather than keeping them the same. You don't have to make perpetually better and better cards, you can make cards that are, on the average, as effective but in different ways by choosing one relative standard, and in no way are we limited to talking about burn spells, this discussion can be moved to literally any possible strategy imaginable.
Something Masters Box
1x Promotional Mythic foil (one of the big hit cards from the set chosen at random, such as Tarmogoyf)
2x of each land in a high demand enemy or allied land cycle such as Filter lands.
12x booster packs of the set.
Good quality collectable spin down life counter
One pack of 30 card sleeves to protect the rares and mythics from the box set because for the name of all that is holy no one wants to open a Liliana of the Veil and then have someone stupid accidently spill ketchup over an unprotected card.
One Card box sized to fit the contents of the box.
One promotional "Making of" or short story involving the current planes that are in the masters set (seriously, the old novels were great in the original fat packs. Bring those back!)
MSRP 99.99 usd, or as I like to say 100 dollars.
There you go, problem solved with masters sets and eternal / non-rotating format costs as long as they don't make them WPN only. If it's WPN only stores will hike the prices up. Sure, prices will hike up on the non-land cards since people now have more money to spend and will likely spend it on those non-land cards, but doing enough of these sets and those should go down in price. This also brings prices closer together on the high and low end as there are fewer booster packs per box, thus less commons and uncommons and more of the high demand mythics thanks to the promotional mythic. This also lets them devote all the rare slots to non-land cards since the boxes come with the land cycle separately from the packs. They can even include specialty lands like Horizon Canopy or Cavern of Souls in the set while still having the main dual land cycle.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
So again, your argument is that the problem with Urza's Saga Standard (or really, the game in general at that point, not just Standard) was that Memory Jar and friends were only broken because the power level of the rest wasn't high enough for things to compete. So the solution would be to get everything else up to that power level, which itself causes all kinds of problems and still keeps it at that "who's the first person to get this broken card out..." because that's what happens when the power level is that high. Force of Will being around in Legacy doesn't mean some cards don't need to be banned.
Perhaps the counterargument is that an even better Force of Will would solve it, but that ironically further narrows the format into the decks that can use it, because it'd be so critical in dealing with the combo decks, as well as turning games into a question of "do you have it?". Granted, some have complained about that already being true in Legacy, but this would make it significantly more of a problem.
I was referring to winning 95% of the time regardless of disruption. My point was how such a scenario would fit your apparent requirements but people wouldn't like it.
But sure, let's discuss disruption. As for the fact decks can already win on turn 1 in Legacy, they can't win to that extent, and the ones that have the highest chance of winning on the first turn are not only extraordinarily fragile, they also can easily just plain lose to themselves in a way the slower combo decks don't. That's because, despite the high power of Legacy, the power level is still kept low enough that various particularly powerful cards aren't allowed in the format. Them entering the format throws all of that out of whack. As for the possibility of making counterspells even better, see above.
Look at the cards that got banned (Dream Halls, Earthcraft, Fluctuator, Lotus Petal, Recurring Nightmare, Time Spiral, Memory Jar) in the first 1999 announcement. Except for Lotus Petal (which was seeing a lot of play all over), it wasn't the "same cards being used in slightly different decks." There's actually not that much overlap. Fluctuator hardly goes in the same deck as Recurring Nightmare, for example, and Memory Jar decks had no interest in any of those other cards (again, except for Lotus Petal).
Well, you've spent this whole time not really doing much to address the points I originally brought up, so I suppose the discussion is a bit pointless insofar as even if your points are correct, it still doesn't actually address my original claims.
You can already see this trend in the pricing of cards and especially after the last year when the focus went away from pure competitive modern cards to games like commander. The value stacked onto the top net decked cards comes from the competitive tournament demand. Anything else that is not top tier, but could fit into casual commander decks is valued far less outside of the mythic slot.
What the heck is wizards going to do if the only people opening packs of magic cards are singles sellers and competitive drafters? It's already gotten to the point that limited basically only fires off at around pre-release and maybe two weeks afterwards, and Saturday showdown attendance is still no where near what it needs to be. That and what is the point of giving good promos (which I'm thankful wizards actually did right and are showing they are listening) if that promo and maybe a prize becomes the only motivation to stepping into an LGS?
The spirit of the game is to throw a deck together and be that wizard in the non-committal, sometimes ironic way playing a character in D&D works. Competitive play doesn't encourage that and turns the game into a fight by numbers alone.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Maybe a petition would be easier to corral together but it'd get completely ignored as well
Sorry but I have a hard time in believing this because the value of the older cards seemed to suggest that people want paper over digital.
The problem with digital magic is that the cards and packs are almost the same cost as paper magic. In Pokemon the booster packs has a digital link. I strongly think if magic wants to push the digital game they should include a digital link to the booster pack. I think I'll play digital magic.
Im not sure. A bata black lotus is 12,000 dollars. Somebody is buying/selling for some reason.
I think there is a healthy/strong casual magic, mostly are played on the kitchen table, and we don't hear about them. There has to be because magic wouldn't be selling booster packs in walmart/target/walgreens/etc.
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
No, the value of older cards isn't from demand as much as it is from supply issues and market scalping. A lot of it is mind games these days because of the internet, but there aren't a lot of cards floating around from the great Recession years as people tend to think, which is why you have things like Devoted Druid costing an arm and a leg for a common when people suddenly found synergy with Vizier of Remedies. Even older cards in legacy are not the best examples because those go from massive stockpiles like the Urza's Saga and Ice Age commons to things on the RL like the dual lands. You have to look at the times those sets came out and make a judgement based on the number of cards one can see up for sale.
Let me put it this way, if they reprinted all the Lorwyn Elwynn filter lands those prices would drop way harder than the zendikar fetches, which actually need a lot more reprints and in lower MSRP products than modern masters 2017.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I still don't see how people are moving away from paper magic...
As for Devoted Druid... I'll have to look in my boxes of green stuff (I should have a playset of them)... but seriously, some commons do jump in value because the set was out of print for years and players already discarded most of those commons as bulk junk. If card shops didn't buy back the bulk junk, these cards were given away or discarded in trash. I remember in 2001ish, that I had a giant box of bulk junk that I'd tossed away because I didn't have any room, only to find out later that some of the cards were Priest of Titania...
After leaning from my mistake with the priest, well, I'm not discarding any bulk magic cards.
In his Second 100 days - Yawgmoth's Bargain is unrestricted in Vintage.
What is going to happen in the Next 100 days!!!
Eh, sometimes bulk is exactly that. Devoted Druid having an infinite mana combo was more a matter of time than anything else because it's a mana dork that untaps itself. Heck, it already had an in-block combo with Quillspike.
Not sure you'd even notice them gone, really. The people that move to hearthstone are the 80% of the 80/20 split. These are the people that show up to play the pre-release and do the early drafts, then leave just about everything on the table when they are done that they don't care about and keep choice picks for commander if even that. They aren't MtG regulars and core fans that make up the bigger spenders.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Magic's obsession with maintaining high prices for cards from the past is something I have always found to be frustrating. One thing I loved about YuGiOh was how often they released good cards from the past in special edition tins and in starter sets. Pretty much every valuable card was reprinted at least once, which dropped the price of the card significantly.
That is something I dislike about Magic also. Wizards is basically doing it to force people to buy into standard cards as they figure people will want to spend their money where they can get the most cardboard for the buck, but they really don't need to do it that way.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
UB Vela the Night-Clad BUDecklist
WBG Ghave, Guru of Spores GBW
WUBRGThe Ur-DragonWUBRGDecklist
I commented in the other thread on what is wrong with magic, but I think the real solution is to push wizards to build a format that has value to them as well as the players, because right now modern is a negative format for them even under the best of scenarios and they roped themselves into supporting it directly.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!