Banned List October 2014 feedback

[Tiggupiru]

So, let me get this straight: We need to contact Wizards to get them to reprint Imperial Seal so that we can unban it while we also ban Price of Progress and Oath of Druids? Am I the only one who doesn't think any of that is a good idea?

Anyways, my personal opinions about the current watchlist:

Stoneforge Mystic and Natural Order are unneeded bans in my opinion, but these can be annoying in the German metagame so I can see why, but it just baffles me everytime.

Gifts Ungiven - I can see this card becoming a fair card at some point in the future. Effective cheap/midrange creatures makes Gifts weaker. While I agree the time is not now, it's good to revisit it once in a while. Also the fact that it takes years to resolve is a good reason to keep it banned even if there would be time for it to see play.

Fastbond - Would not unban it personally, I think it is too powerful, but I would love to brew a deck for this, so there is that. I am for the unban, I guess.

Entomb - Sure, there is a possible turn two Griselbrand associated with this card, but there are so few two mana reanimation spells in the format that it is far from likely. Besides, if you switch Entomb with Careful Study or Faithless Looting in that scenario, you still get the turn two animation. With the current targets, it really doesn't matter a whole lot what creature is coming to the party on turn two for it to be unbeatable. Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging Ooze have already made playing Reanimator very annoying, so I rather unban it. Also would enable some niche strategies across the board, never a bad thing.

Mystical Tutor - I think this is fine as it is, but I was one of the guys who were very vocal about unbanning it in the first place, so I might be biased.

Tolarian Academy - Would not have removed it from the watchlist yet, but at the same time I am very happy that I can keep playing it for six more months at the very least. I also feel like there are lot of untapped potential we've still yet to uncover. New potentially broken combo enablers like Jeskai Ascendancy have a ton of players working to see if they are viable since they are legal in standard and modern. Academy (and Fastbond) are cards that nobody has put any serious work into as they are banned in just about every conceivable format known to man, meaning that the work hours for Academy is next to nothing compared to the discussion and playtesting that Ascendancy has had in the couple of weeks it has been legal.

True-Name Nemesis - It's not as oppressive as Jitte, but the lack of interaction is the real problem. You do have many more answers to Jitte than to TNN. O-Rings, Reclamation Sages and creature removal all work, but against TNN you need to have specific cards most of the time. Cards like that aren't usually even good enough unless you really need to deal with the TNN, so playing them is kinda like shooting yourself to foot. I am also not saying Jitte should be unbanned, the card can burn in hell for all I care, but comparing the two is misleading IMO.

Imperial Seal - I am more than okay with this being banned due to the high market price. Workshop is something that I personally feel that it should fall into the same category. The card isn't even that good in the format to begin with. Tabernacle is only rarely played, so that is not a card I personally am worried about. Imperial Seal would be nigh automatic slam to any black deck.

Vampiric Tutor & Demonic Tutor - I probably sound like a broken record, but the power level of these cards are through the roof. I really can't understand other one being allowed and the other one not. I would ban both, but unbanning Vampiric would at least bring some consistency.

I also feel that Chain of Vapor should not be banned.

[ChristophO]

Eventhough price is important it is even more important to talk about card avaiability. As far as I know those are the sizes:
Alpha: ~1100 of each Rare
Beta: ~3 * Alpha
Portal Three Kingdoms (en): slightly lower than Beta (was released only in Australia, New Zealand region)
Portal Three Kingodms (several asian releases): havent found numbers for this, but on MKm it is 50% engl. 50% asian offers.

I believe it is plausible that less than 10.000 copies of each Three Kingdoms rare has been printed.
Dual lands have a print size of several 100.000 and Power I believe of several 10.000 copies each.


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tiggupiru:
Entomb - Entomb tutors best fatty avaiable out of the library, Loot effects have to work with the selection in your hand strongly decreasing the power of the effect. T2 reanimation is also not a autowin if your fatty is Sphinx of the steel wind for example. Scavenging Ooze is no out to T2 renaimation and Deathrite is only an out when the DRS player is on the play. There are also quite a few reanimation spells for 2cmc or less with Reanimate, Life//Death, Dance of the Dead, Reanimate Dead, Exhume, (Goyo's vengeance, Shallow Grave) avaiable. The biggest problem for Reanimtor is getting the most game braking fatty into the yard  - at least according to my (limited) reanimator playing experience.
Vampiric vs. Demonic - Vampiric is much more powerful to enable broken things on T2 because the card costs only one mana and is instant. I agree that Demonic is extremely powerful. But for tutoring I almost completely look at the mana cost and wether the tutor is an instant. There will always be game ending/braking Spells like Wildfire, Armageddon, Back to Basics, Price of Progress, Winter Orb, Blood Moon, Back to bascis, Humility, Yawgmoth's Will etc. in the format and that is the way I like it! But it should always be viable to at least survive the first two turns...

[Tiggupiru]

tiggupiru:
Entomb - Entomb tutors best fatty avaiable out of the library, Loot effects have to work with the selection in your hand strongly decreasing the power of the effect. T2 reanimation is also not a autowin if your fatty is Sphinx of the steel wind for example. Scavenging Ooze is no out to T2 renaimation and Deathrite is only an out when the DRS player is on the play. There are also quite a few reanimation spells for 2cmc or less with Reanimate, Life//Death, Dance of the Dead, Reanimate Dead, Exhume, (Goyo's vengeance, Shallow Grave) avaiable. The biggest problem for Reanimtor is getting the most game braking fatty into the yard  - at least according to my (limited) reanimator playing experience.

Yea, Entomb would obviously be the best card in the deck. I am not arguing that.

Sphinx of the Steel Wind is one of the few targets that doesn't win the game immediately. Right now I am playing these targets in my reanimator list:

Elesh Norn, Grave Titan, Wurmcoil, Rune-Scarred Demon, Drogskol Reaver, Jin-Gitaxias, Sun Titan, Griselbrand, Woodfall Primus, Consecrated Sphinx, Sphinx of Uthuun, Ashen Rider, Damia, Terastodon, Primeval Titan and the Steel Wind.

Out of that list, there are few creatures that might do nothing: Steel Wind, Wurmcoil and Elesh Norn. Some require immediate answer: Consecrated Sphinx, Jin-Gitaxias and Damia, Sage of Stone. Rest of the targets do something immediately and most of that is really backbreaking to see on the second turn especially when they come with a big body attached. I honestly think that if there is going to be something reanimated of the second turn of the game, it is more often than not really bad for you even if you can immediately kill it.

We also get potential new targets about every other set released. I fondly remember the time when Akroma, Angel of Wrath was the best possible target for animation and now that is so laughably bad card it isn't even funny.

Vampiric vs. Demonic - Vampiric is much more powerful to enable broken things on T2 because the card costs only one mana and is instant. I agree that Demonic is extremely powerful. But for tutoring I almost completely look at the mana cost and wether the tutor is an instant.

Sure. Vampiric enables more broken things on the 2nd turn, but what are these broken things? I mean, most of them require a bunch of other stuff to actually do backbreaking stuff, or if you have few really broken examples that are consistent, maybe we should ban the cards that enable those things. I get the idea behind your argument, but if you need several cards to work together in order to produce that broken turn two play, you could argue that Demonic Tutor is just as bad because it allows broken stuff to happen of turn two if you have Chrome Mox in your starting hand.

[ZeSword]

Just a few thoughts from a Duel Commander player (I'm currently writing an article - in french sorry - about the differences in Highlander / Duel Commander banlists).


1. Fastbond is legal in Duel Commander since a lot of time now. Fastbond is really better when you have 30 life and a high-casting cost commander to cast (Maelstrom Wanderer for example). But even with that, it's not broken. Sure it wins games on turn 1 (Land, Fastbond, Land, Land, Lotus Cobra, Bounceland, Cast Commander, gg) but this can't be done in Highlander (no commander !). And if you really fear Zuran Orb + Fastbond + Crucible, just add some Naturalize-like effects to your deck, it's a 3 card combo with only enchantments / artifacts !

So I really think you should unban it (but maybe I miss something)


2. Natural Order : no, don't unban it ! Winning T3 just because you sac'ed an elf to get Titan or Terastodon isn't really interesting... (plus you could fetch Protean Hulk too and get this combo deck a really powerful outlet)


3. Entomb : we have it legal in Duel Commander, and yes sometimes it wins too early... but wait, we have that "spoils mulligan" rule which allows to keep "land + entomb" and see 4 other cards to get a reanimate-like. So with the normal mulligan you have, maybe it's worth testing. I really don't know, you should test a reanimator build with Entomb. Even with a spoils mulligan, it's under 10% of having Entomb + Reanimator on turn 2/3. So yes, it will make some free wins, but Back to Basics or Wasteland + Sinkhole too, and it's not easy to have it early with normal mulligan


4. Mystical Tutor : I don't see why you would ban it :
* if you lose to Price of Progress and don't want to see two copies of it in your opponent's deck it's your problem, not the banlist's one
* if you fear Miracles, ban Sensei's Divining Top instead ! :p [ok, I'm a bit exaggerating, but not that much]


5. On Stoneforge Mystic I really don't know. But a similar question that comes to my mind is : why do you have Skullclamp banned ? As far as I understand your format :
* Weenie White would be very much improved. Well, the weakest deck being improved, not a problem
* Other aggro deck usually don't play many elves, they prefer having many 4-mana silver bullets
* Combo and Control don't care.

So I don't know but maybe at least one of those two cards could be unbanned in my opinion, unless I miss something.

[tonytahiti]

this is not meant as a deep analysis, just trying to get a feel: i was wondering what peoples experiences with tolarian academy are?

in berlin, eggs is a deck that is VERY hard to beat when piloted right and when you play against it a few times you really wonder why academy was ever unbanned, since the powerlevel is OFF THE CHARTS, its actually disturbing. It can kill turn 2, often turn 3, likely turn 4 or 5 and as an opponent you sit there when it goes off and ýou find it unbelievable that this card is legal and a card like stoneforge is not. the powerlevel of this card is three times as high as stoneforge (a guess/a feeling), its just not close (if it was close i could live with the argument "stoneforge goes in every deck and academy is a very narrow/niche card that needs building around"). i am all for deck diversity, i really am, and i know eggs and academy hasnt been a problem anywhere else (at least i havent seen anything) but what this deck does with academy is not healthy for the format, i am convinced of that.

also (and it needs to be mentioned since "fun" and "play experience" are very important arguments): it takes forever to win, is not interactive at all and is overall a frustrating deck to play against.

[Maqi]

Played some games vs. eggs some months ago. Mainly with 4c Blood and UR Control.

4c Blood MU seemed 50/50-ish (on the back of discard, 187-Artifact-killers and good pressure).

UR Control seemed very much in favor of UR. Therefore the Eggs player discarded the project because why would you run a deck that has something like 30/70 against one of the most played decks? The MU was really hard for eggs mainly because of cheap tax counters and mild flash pressure (Aggro-Control route). Furthermore the deck had insane bombs against eggs: Moon-effects and Dack Fayden (!).

Overall the combo player felt that High Tide was the more robust and overall better deck because it cannot be hated that easily. I tend to agree.

Regarding Tolarian Academy: That card is sure bonkers in eggs. It is so crucial to the deck whatsoever, that without it winning becomes very hard. Wasn't that the reason why we introduced TA in the first place (enabling new deck archetypes)?

EDIT:

The fun/play experience argument is very important to me. Personally, in the games I had vs. eggs I didn't find it too boring. When they "have it" things go relatively fast (like ramping to a certain amount of mana and going infi with Rings of Brighthearth. From there on it is over on the spot or the eggs player cracks some of his namesake eggs and tries to find missing business which seals the game, like SDT or Intution or whatever.) High tide, in contrast, takes much longer to actually kill you when going off because it goes off more often without already having infinite mana available and just kind of gets there while digging and untapping and doing its thing.

That being said, I can certainly relate to the feeling of "not being able to interact at all" and that it is not very fun when the combo player gets going and you stare at your hand of Thrun, Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt or something along those lines.

If Eggs should get somewhat dominant we surely need to reconsider TA. But I don't see this dominance at the moment.

[ChristophO]

I have played almost all HL matches in 2014 with a 5c creatureless artifact deck. Core of the deck are lockpieces such as Winter Orb, Tabernacle (and the enchantment copies of those cards), Wildfire effects and other assorted sweepers with just a few PW and Thopter Foundry and Assemble the legion as kill options. In that deck Academy also is one of the most important cards to really break Winter Orb.

Academy allows the deck to just overpower control decks mana wise in a single turn, increase the speed against aggro decks and makes it easier to play through soft counters or "jump" the mana curve when the aggro control player does not expect it. The deck is really awesome for online play because the matches there are always untimed and shuffling and searching effects take less time. In Real life the clock can be problem when you have really long games. For Example, during the HL GP I drew two matches because of time issues. That said if your are not playing aggro yourself which typically has a bad Blood MU you can alwasy get into time problems against the controlish and even slower midrangey decks anyway - at least when people start to slow down in playing speed because the tournament is bigger than a weekly thing for a couple of boosters.
That said I believe that playing an Academy deck agaists a field with lots of control MU was still the proper choice because the Mana advantage is just that huge and the Land search spells are both cheap and plentiful. I would advise to play Adacemy with Candelabra and Maze of Ith. Keep in Mind that Candelabra is also awesome to fix color demands, escape Back to Basics lock (with some Signets) and breaks Winter Orb symetry (with some Signets) besides the insane Academy Interaction. 

 

[Silberhase]

In Berlin, we allowed 10 Proxies for the weekly tournament. That was the reason, why many players tend to build artifact decks (including me). And Eggs is not the only working artifact deck, we got different builds and all seem to perform very well. Also in cockatrice many players are running artifact decks. The reason, why players else don't play much artifacts not because of the power level, its more the cost of the deck imo. And I also think 4c blood has a worse MU against eggs then 50/50. Many removals can be useless, cause the most keycards are only played in that turn, where that deck is comboing out.

And another problematic card is Oath, which is also played in eggs. This card is really unfair and decide games on its own.

[tonytahiti]

there is too much 4cblood talk + glorification. it absolutely has no 50/50 matchup vs eggs, it has very little hate (ooze) and little disruption (discard), here in berlin we joke how eggs (skilled eggs pilot like thoralf severin or jonny from berlin) would slice through a field of goodstuff. i think its something like 60/40 maybe even better. and UR is not 30/70, thats also crazy. watching good pilots with this deck over weeks slicing through different kind of aggrocontrol control and especially goodstuff decks those percentages are very far off in my opinion. also "eggs is not a problem deck yet" seems to be the wrong approach when we are talking about incredibly fast mana starts and absolutely bonkers turn2 and turn3 plays. it doesnt always have academy and thats why it doesnt ALWAYS win, but how healthy is a card that when you draw it it straight wins you the game and your whole plan the first turns revolves around getting that card? that is an argument i believe for a card being unhealthy for a format.

[SirGalahad]

Sure i'm not as good a player as Toffel is, but having tested the Eggs-Deck myself for quite some time, i had the impression that it is much more importent that your opponent knows what to do. If your opp is experienced with this matchup, they don't need much disruption. Sure, you have the oops-i-win-draws, but the other games got so much harder for me as i played more matches.
Of coure there are some decks never beating Eggs, but often times Eggs can't beat a single counterspell acompanied with some pressure. And the deck doens't always win when having academy. That's exaggerating as much as the 70/30 matchups people talk about.

[Tabris]

Some remarks:

As I stated in the past I was not sure how good TA would be and what things could be achieved by it so I was eager to see what will happen if we unban it and let people eventually break the card (which is not that hard in hindsight). I think we reached that point and I am not talking about some random 3/4/5c Artifact decks which can abuse the card the most but specifically about eggs, which is a deck I love. Its a beautiful piece of art, its a puzzle which challenges the pilot in every game and you will explore so many new routes every time. But there lies the problem its mainly a solitaire game and the deck can easily win on T1-3 (which is a fact we consider for bannings since most hate-cards cannot be deployed in that time).

But that is not the only problem. To win with the deck you need to repeat a lot of actions in one turn which takes a lot of time simply because you cant physically do it faster. That was one of the reasons for WotC to ban it in modern. The player had to shuffle, sac, keep track of mana, draw a card and repeat it multiple times a turn. The HL version is even worse since there are so many different ways to win. Last week (and that is just an example but it will occur very often in different iterations) my egg opponent drew 21 cards in turn one and he took the first 10 minutes of the game doing that (which was not his fault but thanks to the way the deck works). I ve played the deck many many times and had always the feeling to understand the mechanics to a certain amount (like 63% or something) but giving it to Toffel I was able to see what the deck is capable of if you add another 20% of understanding and the possibilties are endless and most of those routes take at least 10-15 minutes and that is most of the time not the fault of the pilot.

And to adress some of the points here: UR is not a 70-30 MU like not even close, if a 5cdeck can easily break out of a B2B lock or even outplay a Moon effect its eggs (and the UR player has usually no tutorspells for those 2/3 cards + PoP (which I outplayed with Zuran Orb many times). Sure you have your cantrips and stuff but at the same time you need threats and counter. But even if it would be 70-30 we dont want a meta which allows only Eggs and its counter-decks. And the fact there are maybe 1-2 decks in the format which can beat eggs doesnt make TA fair. Its good to know there are predators out there which will punish greed builds but they cant be the excuse to allow broken cards. Same is true for 4cBlood (which I dont see beating eggs in any universe) its a good midrange deck with a lot of answers and threats but its not built to beat eggs. But again thats not the point, maybe there are decks out there which have a good MU against it but that doenst make the other 99 MU any better since we dont want a meta were you have to run eggs or the counter to it.  And again its not just the TA itself but the combination of the deck mechanics + TA which makes a ban necessary.

[Maqi]

Would be nice to see the latest eggs build so we all can test it a bit more in our respective playgroups.

[ChristophO]

I really liked tonytahitis starting post in that he formulated what he experiences in Berlin and where he is seeing problems. What I feel is not helpful is berating other posters about their experiences afterwards. I especially feel that claiming MU x vs. y is aa:bb% is not helping anybody. Those percentages are already tough to narrow down for 60 card decks with lots of 4 offs. Highlander MU are far more volatile due to the singleton format. Helpful comments (I feel) are posts pointing out typical situations where cards show how powerful they are or where problems in game play.

This is what I have gathered so far:
- Solitaire games of the Eggs deck are too boring/frustrating
(I get that)
- The deck has a too many T1 and T2 wins
(How many different cards are needed for this? I imagine one would need quite a few. How is TA involed in T1 and T2 wins?)  

Questions I would like to know the answer for and apreciate the impact of the Toffel and other sucessful Eggs pilots:
- How would the removal of Second Sunraise and Faiths reward impact the deck (lets say they were banned)
- How would TA banning impact the deck/would there be a deck left?
- could Tabris or Toffel do a deck tech explaing and justifying card choices and omissions and maybe even do a couple of games to show the deck?

And the fact there are maybe 1-2 decks in the format which can beat eggs doesnt make TA fair. ....And again its not just the TA itself but the combination of the deck mechanics + TA which makes a ban necessary.

I had a good laugh 

[Tiggupiru]

- The deck has a too many T1 and T2 wins
(How many different cards are needed for this? I imagine one would need quite a few. How is TA involed in T1 and T2 wins?)  

I've never gotten neither turn one or turn two kill. Theoretically it is not insanely hard to produce turn two kill with Oath (Forchard + Oath + Accelerant and hit Salvagers and LED from Oath), but I don't like Oath in that deck anyway and Oath is capable of doing turn two kills in other shells as well. Not to mention in most cases getting to activate Oath early is basically game over, despite the actual life total reduction to zero happening few turns later.

How would TA banning impact the deck/would there be a deck left?

There would not be a deck anymore. I made this deck well before TA was even a possibility and there were way too many problems back then. Either you ran out of cards or mana even if you had generous amounts of time to set the turn up.

[Vazdru]

as much I appreciate such theoretical discussions I would appreciate to see some more impressive performances of Egg-decks in different local metas even more
in fact the deck had no mayor influence in any other playgroup than Berlin, it wasn't the deck-choice of any player at recent HL Cup which is quite untypically for a dominating archetype
It would be great to have some Egg's pilots at one of the next HL Cups, but even the ladder tournament or the hll league would grant the opportunity to show how strong this deck could perform outside Berlin and how devasting it could be against the "dominator" 4C Blood
personally i would love to play against it even if I had to suffer a 10-min opponent's turn! maybe i will change my mind when there are more Eggs player and I have to suffer more of such solitaire-turns...