Not to be a jerk but isn't this kind of what we wanted? A format that wasn't expensive, was still eternal, diverse, and slow enough for decks do something other than belching out damage by turn 2 and 3 for a win?
I know it sucks that people bought a bunch of pricey cards only to have them get banned but if they hadn't this format would just continue to degenerate. Maybe places should stop jacking prices up so high that people have to sell kidneys to play. 30 dollar cards aren't 30 times more useful than 1 dollar cards.
Because the guy that just spend $125 on a playset of Vesuvas based on the Modern PT results just got bent over a barrel. If you were that guy, you're pretty PO'ed right now, and the last thing you are going to do is gamble on building another modern deck.
Here's the thing. It was pretty obvious that some format warping bans were going to happen after that pro tour. Really? The first major event for a brand new format and this is "out of nowhere"?... Anyone who spent money based on those results deserves to be bent over a barrel.
I'm pretty sure you've spent as much time possible since the announcement of Modern praying for its death and in general just raging about the fact it exists like it killed your favorite team.
If you're smart enough to invest then you're smart enough to know when bannings are coming, if not then you shouldn't be investing.
I'm not talking about "investing". PT results come out. Some kid wants to build a T1 Modern deck. He spends, what, $200 to put together 12 post? He;s not inmvesting, he just wants to have a T1 modern deck. He went to bed last night happy, woke up today and realized he just pais a lot of money for what amounts to useless cardboard. How do you think he feels? Do you think he's going to say "Well, it's a new format, I should have known better, I'll kiss that $$ goodbye and go build some other Modern deck?"
No, he's going to be rightly angry, and abandon the format cause he just got burned, HARD. To pretend otherwise is silly.
So now you're left with a format that everyone is scared to buy cards for cause as soon as a deck gets good, it could get banned, and there goes thier hard earned $$ out the window. Not a recipe for a health format.
Anyone who spent money based on those results deserves to be bent over a barrel.
Thats just an arrogant, dismissive attitude, and if you were in his shoes, you'd feel pretty bad if someone gave you that "advice"
A format that wasn't expensive, was still eternal, diverse, and slow enough for decks do something other than belching out damage by turn 2 and 3 for a win?
Modern was still PLENTY expensive. The only difference in buuying Modern vs Legacy was at least in Legacy you can have a reasonabe expectation of overzealous banning not destroying the value of your cards overnight. I forget who said it in the initial Modern thread, "I'm not paying $1200 for a manabase in Legacy, and I'm not paying $600 for a manabase in Modern"
Because the guy that just spend $125 on a playset of Vesuvas based on the Modern PT results just got bent over a barrel. If you were that guy, you're pretty PO'ed right now, and the last thing you are going to do is gamble on building another modern deck. To pretend that players shouldn;t care about spending a lot of money and then having that value evaporate overnight is unrealistic.
That's the risk you take. "That's not fair, I spent a lot on those" is not a valid reason for not banning something. Besides, if you didn't see Shoal and 12-post getting banned into oblivion from the outset, you weren't paying enough attention. The phrase "a fool and his money are soon parted" comes to mind.
I completely approve of the banning of MM in Legacy. Legacy was much more diverse before it, I'm glad to see it gone.
And honestly, I could really care less about Modern, I think the format is a dumb idea to begin with and if thier hanfisted approach to running kills it off, all the better. My worry if they start setting a precedent and they start screwing with Legacy more.
Right, because Legacy is perfect just the way it is, right? There's absolutely no card that could ever be good enough to shift the meta, right? Mental Misstep would like a word with you.
C'mon, just by virtue of being an eternal format, it has to be understood it's a dynamic and shifting meta, and will occasionally require moves to either tighten it back up, or open it up further to prevent it from becoming stale. It's the nature of the beast, you can't expect to keep your same 60 sleeved up forever.
There's more whining in this thread than in Napa valley.
WotC does not care about the secondary market in regards to bans and restrictions. Period.
Modern is brand new and they are using the results of the one Pro Tour as the basis of their bannings. If you seriously did not foresee most of those bannings than you are not following the same events and game that the rest of us are. Combine this with the fact that when the format was created it was clearly stated to be against turn 2-3 combo decks as they are not good for a format.
Also, any investment in modern is a waste. The whole idea of modern is so that they can reprint anything that begins to be in short supply which is something they cannot do for legacy. If you invest serious money into modern expect to lose it.
There sure seem to be a lot of unwarranted Modern complaints.
The Modern designers specifically and explicitly stated that Modern was not supposed to have any turn 1, 2, or 3 kills. Here we have a major tournament, and despite the initial bannings, there were combo decks that proceeded to regularly and consistently (all the way through the finals) get sub-T4 kills. The designers also said that they would ban cards as needed as opposed to a load of preemptive bans. Now we get a ban update, and lo and behold, the cards that were vital to those turn 1/2/3 kill strategies have been banned. Why on earth is anyone surprised or angered by this? It would have been surprising if the bans didn't happen.
This just isn't true. A company can still make lots of money despite being run poorly. Consider Microsoft during the Windows Vista period.
This is precisely why company performance is measured based on relative success rather than absolute profitability.
Microsoft was a wildly successful company up until around 2000; their sales, revenue, and profitability were constantly increasing year-over-year, which meant that investing in the company was always a good choice. Since 2000, Microsoft has stagnated: their revenue, profits, and stock value have stayed steady, meaning the company has failed to expand beyond the success it already had.
The issue with claiming that the Magic brand is poorly run is that the game has not simply been performing steadily; it's grown in leaps and bounds over the past three years, reaching unprecedented heights and growing in almost every measurable metric (sales, tournament attendance, web traffic, etc.) There are no inherent or underlying factors that would have caused such an explosion entirely independent of WotC's decisions; that increase in success can only be fairly laid at their feet.
I'm not claiming that there's nothing to criticize with WotC's performance lately -- for the same reasons as above, the temporary tournament dropoff from Caw-Blade can also be laid entirely at WotC's feet -- but you can't reasonably claim that the current state might be bad compared to some mythical even more wildly successful version of Magic. The revitalization of a flagging brand (Magic circa Alara) into a ragingly successful one is a huge accomplishment.
I'm not talking about "investing". PT results come out. Some kid wants to build a T1 Modern deck. He spends, what, $200 to put together 12 post? He;s not inmvesting, he just wants to have a T1 modern deck. He went to bed last night happy, woke up today and realized he just pais a lot of money for what amounts to useless cardboard.
Much like trademark law doesn't (and shouldn't) consider the impressions of the so-called "moron in a hurry" in determining if two products are excessively similar, the DCI doesn't (and shouldn't) consider the acts of a person who's done no research and overpaid for a useless deck out of ignorance of the format (and, worse, ignorance of B/R announcement dates.)
FoF unrestricted in T1 is most curious. Will do good to keep Stax in check.
Isn't that kind of the opposite? Stax decks (Actual Stax, not MW or slash panther), make FoF extremely hard to cast, even wasting a whole turns mana (even in later turns) for 1-4 cards. I really like that its unbanned and will try and test it out but Vintage at the moment seems not be a friendly environment for FoF. Especially when you can chain gushes a turn earlier.
What is with the hate for Vintage guys? I read the first 20 pages or so and all but one comment were along the lines of "Vintage = LOL". Vintage is an insanely fun format, don't dis it until you try it.
As far as investment goes, anyone with any knowledge of how successful investing generally works and good knowledge of when a format is due for a massive change up would've stayed FAR away from buying into modern staples for profit since the format's announcement. If anyone lost money because of stockpiling modern staples after the format it is due to the stupidity tax, not because of some unfair, arbitrary crushing blow on behalf of WOTC to magic players
Aw, there goes the value of my seven copies of Rite of Flame...
I'm also kinda sad, because I had just finished working on a Past in Flames storm deck for Modern, and it's a lot worse without Rite.
I can't say I blame Wizards for the bannings, though. And I laughed at the belated banning of Jace and Stoneforge in Extended. It's like they remembered, "Oh yeah, Extended is still a format, and it still has Caw-Blade..."
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
People love to rage quit in this game, then a week later they forget they were even mad because they are used the changes.
I've had my share of angry reactions as well, but every time I got over them.
This. I've had my fair share of rants over WotC banning/changing the rules out from under my pet decks, but I've always gotten over. This actually seems to be mostly reasonable as far as bannings are concerned. I just want to see what FoF does in vintage now that you can run a set. Seems like Manadrain decks just got a big shot in the arm.
P.S. Actually I'm still kinda annoyed with how they handled the wishes/Research//Development with the exile zone, as well as token ownership. But I got over combat damage not using the stack, so whatever.
What is with the hate for Vintage guys? I read the first 20 pages or so and all but one comment were along the lines of "Vintage = LOL". Vintage is an insanely fun format, don't dis it until you try it.
People hate what they dont understand, or in some cases what they cant afford. I kinda feel the same way about standard.
People hate what they dont understand, or in some cases what they cant afford. I kinda feel the same way about standard.
Well... I've seen enough complaint about standard prices. I don't really have a problem with those ones. The cards are available and I don't have much problem getting what I need, but we have to remember that people aren't doing as well with their $$ as they used to be. Things are kinda tight. Legacy is expensive enough to keep a ton of people out, and it doesn't even begin to approach Vintage prices. Single cards in vintage are worth more than whole legacy decks, even the most expensive ones. Not everyone can afford to drop $7,000+ into a deck to even try the format. I understand there's proxy tournaments and that there's less expensive decks, but even then you tend to look at a $2,500-$3,500 as the bare minimum with maybe 1-2 budget replacements. There's not a lot of magic players who can really get into that. If you were around from the start and have the stuff, more power to ya, but for most people that's really just not practical or for some, possible.
I think it's safe to say that's why Vintage isn't a part of the seasonal rotation. It's also why the format isn't very widely played. I have nothing against the format, but I don't see a lot of people getting too concerned about changes in vintage when it's just that far out of reach for the common player.
Well... I've seen enough complaint about standard prices. I don't really have a problem with those ones. The cards are available and I don't have much problem getting what I need, but we have to remember that people aren't doing as well with their $$ as they used to be. Things are kinda tight. Legacy is expensive enough to keep a ton of people out, and it doesn't even begin to approach Vintage prices. Single cards in vintage are worth more than whole legacy decks, even the most expensive ones. Not everyone can afford to drop $7,000+ into a deck to even try the format. I understand there's proxy tournaments and that there's less expensive decks, but even then you tend to look at a $2,500-$3,500 as the bare minimum with maybe 1-2 budget replacements. There's not a lot of magic players who can really get into that. If you were around from the start and have the stuff, more power to ya, but for most people that's really just not practical or for some, possible.
Most guys I know who play vintage are either the $10000 types or the $100. Both are equally competitive at the proxy tourneys I go to. At least its refreshing in that regard.
They changed it from costing 3, costing 2 to equip, and giving +1/+2 to costing 1, costing 1 to equip, and giving +1/-1.
I thought it was a simple change from +1/+1 to +1/-1. The rest of the stats were the same, they just didn't realize how broken being able to kill your guys on a whim was.
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Indianapolis Regionals 2009 (Standard)
Worldwake Gameday (Limited)
Let me make this #$^% real #$^^ simple for everyone.
MODERN IS IN A STATE OF FLUX RIGHT NOW!!!
When they make a brand new format there are TONS of bannings and it will piss people off.
That is what happens... that is why they don't make formats all willy nilly.
If modern is not fun for you right now then don't get involved.
As people continue to break the format they will BAN stuff they have to.
We are dealing with the largest format in the game barring the ridiculousness of Legacy/Vintage tons of combos that no one thought of since they weren't even close to good enough for Vintage or Legacy are viable in modern.
Modern - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Extended - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Vintage - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Legacy - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Standard - Want to play the format, and waiting for the single-greatest threat to any strategy to get banned, and....
Scars of Mirrodin Block Constructed, Standard
No changes
Really?
I want to get back into constructed Magic, but knowing that any deck that I build will have to contend with Dismember, when Pros are calling it a mistake, and MaRo, who was the lead designer of the set it was in, has virtually apologized for its existence (as well as a certain misstep that's ruined Legacy), and it's not getting a banhammer?
Let's be honest here, this is the biggest boondoggle of the announcement. Dismember had to go from Standard. Now, if not sooner. There is currently no excuse for a deck, any deck, to not run four of them, if for no other reason than to maximize its ability to draw into them. The life loss is a pittance at this point. Hell, any deck that I build, regardless of color, is going to have to run four of the card, simply because it's that good, and to not do so is just plain ignorant.
Many in my group simply chide that "It's only a removal spell, and not that powerful". While I'll admit, it is only a removal spell, it is one that is warping the environment, one in which that any creature that you want to play must be checked against a Dismember metric, because if it dies to Dismember, it ain't worth playing. Sounds like a fun format to me.
Uh, no.
I sure has hell hope they get it right in December, when no doubt they'll be seeing countless tournament results, and decklists where Dismember is being played about as often (by percentage) as Skullclamp.
That's saying something, and makes it worthy for banning.
Most of the bannings that they've instituted essentially came down to the fact that the format wasn't diverse and it was unfun. They don't usually ban cards because they are good. Especially in standard.
In Legacy and Vintage... they might ban a deck's strong card to weaken it if it gets out of hand, but in standard it's usually not an issue because they could in theory print hosers in the next set to help even the playing field. They rarely ban a card in standard unless it gets to the point where it's warped the format so much that people don't want to play tournaments. That's pretty much what happened with Jace and SFM. People stopped playing... and at the end of the day they have to make money.
The only other two times to my knowledge that they've banned a card in standard is when the banned the Affinity deck back in Mirrodin (Ravager, Disciple, artifact lands etc), and the few months before when they banned Skullclamp. Now... you might have an argument comparing Skullclamp to Dismember. Because it was basically just a good card that got banned. Same with Dismember. However... read the article that talks about why it got banned. And it becomes obvious how the card is clearly different from Dismember.
Case in point was Elf and Nail. Elf and Nail was a Tooth and Nail variant that used a bunch of crappy elf creatures like Wirewood Herald and Wirewood Symbiote along with Skullclamp. Now, the Tooth and Nail decks that existed before Skullclamp were basically what you would think. It ramped up to 9 mana... played it's money spell and then won the game. It played a lot like Valakut played basically. Clearly Skullclamp and Tooth and Nail are anti-synergistic cards. They don't really help each other out. Yet... adding in Skullclamp and random weenies actually made the deck better.
Dismember is a good card. It allows you to play creature destruction off color (and damn good creature destruction). It's a powerful card in fact. Easily the best uncommon in the block as far as standard is concerned. But it's not so good it's going to make a control deck like CawBlade play like a weenie deck. That's what Skullclamp could do.
I dont mind bannings and stuff but please what are we supposed to have no combo at all really besides Twin decks . Now Modern will be 90% to 95% Zoo man that will be sooooo much fun attack i block your turn yep sounds like a real blast to me.
Hey, I remember this post. It happened the day they announced they announced Modern as a format with the large banned list. Turns out Zoo was a deck, but not the best deck. People figured out that there were decks they could build that beat Zoo, and played those. Just like now, people will find decks that beat Zoo, and play those.
Also, lets not forget, Zoo had a card banned as well.
I know it sucks that people bought a bunch of pricey cards only to have them get banned but if they hadn't this format would just continue to degenerate. Maybe places should stop jacking prices up so high that people have to sell kidneys to play. 30 dollar cards aren't 30 times more useful than 1 dollar cards.
Here's the thing. It was pretty obvious that some format warping bans were going to happen after that pro tour. Really? The first major event for a brand new format and this is "out of nowhere"?... Anyone who spent money based on those results deserves to be bent over a barrel.
I'm not talking about "investing". PT results come out. Some kid wants to build a T1 Modern deck. He spends, what, $200 to put together 12 post? He;s not inmvesting, he just wants to have a T1 modern deck. He went to bed last night happy, woke up today and realized he just pais a lot of money for what amounts to useless cardboard. How do you think he feels? Do you think he's going to say "Well, it's a new format, I should have known better, I'll kiss that $$ goodbye and go build some other Modern deck?"
No, he's going to be rightly angry, and abandon the format cause he just got burned, HARD. To pretend otherwise is silly.
So now you're left with a format that everyone is scared to buy cards for cause as soon as a deck gets good, it could get banned, and there goes thier hard earned $$ out the window. Not a recipe for a health format.
Thats just an arrogant, dismissive attitude, and if you were in his shoes, you'd feel pretty bad if someone gave you that "advice"
Modern was still PLENTY expensive. The only difference in buuying Modern vs Legacy was at least in Legacy you can have a reasonabe expectation of overzealous banning not destroying the value of your cards overnight. I forget who said it in the initial Modern thread, "I'm not paying $1200 for a manabase in Legacy, and I'm not paying $600 for a manabase in Modern"
That's the risk you take. "That's not fair, I spent a lot on those" is not a valid reason for not banning something. Besides, if you didn't see Shoal and 12-post getting banned into oblivion from the outset, you weren't paying enough attention. The phrase "a fool and his money are soon parted" comes to mind.
Right, because Legacy is perfect just the way it is, right? There's absolutely no card that could ever be good enough to shift the meta, right? Mental Misstep would like a word with you.
C'mon, just by virtue of being an eternal format, it has to be understood it's a dynamic and shifting meta, and will occasionally require moves to either tighten it back up, or open it up further to prevent it from becoming stale. It's the nature of the beast, you can't expect to keep your same 60 sleeved up forever.
And degenerate decks are?
WotC does not care about the secondary market in regards to bans and restrictions. Period.
Modern is brand new and they are using the results of the one Pro Tour as the basis of their bannings. If you seriously did not foresee most of those bannings than you are not following the same events and game that the rest of us are. Combine this with the fact that when the format was created it was clearly stated to be against turn 2-3 combo decks as they are not good for a format.
Also, any investment in modern is a waste. The whole idea of modern is so that they can reprint anything that begins to be in short supply which is something they cannot do for legacy. If you invest serious money into modern expect to lose it.
The Modern designers specifically and explicitly stated that Modern was not supposed to have any turn 1, 2, or 3 kills. Here we have a major tournament, and despite the initial bannings, there were combo decks that proceeded to regularly and consistently (all the way through the finals) get sub-T4 kills. The designers also said that they would ban cards as needed as opposed to a load of preemptive bans. Now we get a ban update, and lo and behold, the cards that were vital to those turn 1/2/3 kill strategies have been banned. Why on earth is anyone surprised or angered by this? It would have been surprising if the bans didn't happen.
This is precisely why company performance is measured based on relative success rather than absolute profitability.
Microsoft was a wildly successful company up until around 2000; their sales, revenue, and profitability were constantly increasing year-over-year, which meant that investing in the company was always a good choice. Since 2000, Microsoft has stagnated: their revenue, profits, and stock value have stayed steady, meaning the company has failed to expand beyond the success it already had.
The issue with claiming that the Magic brand is poorly run is that the game has not simply been performing steadily; it's grown in leaps and bounds over the past three years, reaching unprecedented heights and growing in almost every measurable metric (sales, tournament attendance, web traffic, etc.) There are no inherent or underlying factors that would have caused such an explosion entirely independent of WotC's decisions; that increase in success can only be fairly laid at their feet.
I'm not claiming that there's nothing to criticize with WotC's performance lately -- for the same reasons as above, the temporary tournament dropoff from Caw-Blade can also be laid entirely at WotC's feet -- but you can't reasonably claim that the current state might be bad compared to some mythical even more wildly successful version of Magic. The revitalization of a flagging brand (Magic circa Alara) into a ragingly successful one is a huge accomplishment.
Much like trademark law doesn't (and shouldn't) consider the impressions of the so-called "moron in a hurry" in determining if two products are excessively similar, the DCI doesn't (and shouldn't) consider the acts of a person who's done no research and overpaid for a useless deck out of ignorance of the format (and, worse, ignorance of B/R announcement dates.)
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Isn't that kind of the opposite? Stax decks (Actual Stax, not MW or slash panther), make FoF extremely hard to cast, even wasting a whole turns mana (even in later turns) for 1-4 cards. I really like that its unbanned and will try and test it out but Vintage at the moment seems not be a friendly environment for FoF. Especially when you can chain gushes a turn earlier.
What is with the hate for Vintage guys? I read the first 20 pages or so and all but one comment were along the lines of "Vintage = LOL". Vintage is an insanely fun format, don't dis it until you try it.
Gwendlyn Di Corci
The Mimeoplasm
Rhys the Exiled
Type 1/Vintage
Dark Times
Gush Storm(dismantled)
I'm also kinda sad, because I had just finished working on a Past in Flames storm deck for Modern, and it's a lot worse without Rite.
I can't say I blame Wizards for the bannings, though. And I laughed at the belated banning of Jace and Stoneforge in Extended. It's like they remembered, "Oh yeah, Extended is still a format, and it still has Caw-Blade..."
This. I've had my fair share of rants over WotC banning/changing the rules out from under my pet decks, but I've always gotten over. This actually seems to be mostly reasonable as far as bannings are concerned. I just want to see what FoF does in vintage now that you can run a set. Seems like Manadrain decks just got a big shot in the arm.
P.S. Actually I'm still kinda annoyed with how they handled the wishes/Research//Development with the exile zone, as well as token ownership. But I got over combat damage not using the stack, so whatever.
What was the late change to Skullclamp they made?
People hate what they dont understand, or in some cases what they cant afford. I kinda feel the same way about standard.
Goddamn. That seems more like a complete reworking than a last minute change!
Well... I've seen enough complaint about standard prices. I don't really have a problem with those ones. The cards are available and I don't have much problem getting what I need, but we have to remember that people aren't doing as well with their $$ as they used to be. Things are kinda tight. Legacy is expensive enough to keep a ton of people out, and it doesn't even begin to approach Vintage prices. Single cards in vintage are worth more than whole legacy decks, even the most expensive ones. Not everyone can afford to drop $7,000+ into a deck to even try the format. I understand there's proxy tournaments and that there's less expensive decks, but even then you tend to look at a $2,500-$3,500 as the bare minimum with maybe 1-2 budget replacements. There's not a lot of magic players who can really get into that. If you were around from the start and have the stuff, more power to ya, but for most people that's really just not practical or for some, possible.
I think it's safe to say that's why Vintage isn't a part of the seasonal rotation. It's also why the format isn't very widely played. I have nothing against the format, but I don't see a lot of people getting too concerned about changes in vintage when it's just that far out of reach for the common player.
If you hate the deck, I'm probably playing it!
Most guys I know who play vintage are either the $10000 types or the $100. Both are equally competitive at the proxy tourneys I go to. At least its refreshing in that regard.
Theres no way I could afford standard.
I thought it was a simple change from +1/+1 to +1/-1. The rest of the stats were the same, they just didn't realize how broken being able to kill your guys on a whim was.
Indianapolis Regionals 2009 (Standard)
Worldwake Gameday (Limited)
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MODERN IS IN A STATE OF FLUX RIGHT NOW!!!
When they make a brand new format there are TONS of bannings and it will piss people off.
That is what happens... that is why they don't make formats all willy nilly.
If modern is not fun for you right now then don't get involved.
As people continue to break the format they will BAN stuff they have to.
We are dealing with the largest format in the game barring the ridiculousness of Legacy/Vintage tons of combos that no one thought of since they weren't even close to good enough for Vintage or Legacy are viable in modern.
Feel free to bid on my cards here!
Modern - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Extended - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Vintage - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Legacy - Don't play the format, and thus, don't care.
Standard - Want to play the format, and waiting for the single-greatest threat to any strategy to get banned, and....
Scars of Mirrodin Block Constructed, Standard
No changes
Really?
I want to get back into constructed Magic, but knowing that any deck that I build will have to contend with Dismember, when Pros are calling it a mistake, and MaRo, who was the lead designer of the set it was in, has virtually apologized for its existence (as well as a certain misstep that's ruined Legacy), and it's not getting a banhammer?
Let's be honest here, this is the biggest boondoggle of the announcement. Dismember had to go from Standard. Now, if not sooner. There is currently no excuse for a deck, any deck, to not run four of them, if for no other reason than to maximize its ability to draw into them. The life loss is a pittance at this point. Hell, any deck that I build, regardless of color, is going to have to run four of the card, simply because it's that good, and to not do so is just plain ignorant.
Many in my group simply chide that "It's only a removal spell, and not that powerful". While I'll admit, it is only a removal spell, it is one that is warping the environment, one in which that any creature that you want to play must be checked against a Dismember metric, because if it dies to Dismember, it ain't worth playing. Sounds like a fun format to me.
Uh, no.
I sure has hell hope they get it right in December, when no doubt they'll be seeing countless tournament results, and decklists where Dismember is being played about as often (by percentage) as Skullclamp.
That's saying something, and makes it worthy for banning.
A creature removal spell can never be too OP unless its like Wrath of Leknif.
Feel free to bid on my cards here!
Most of the bannings that they've instituted essentially came down to the fact that the format wasn't diverse and it was unfun. They don't usually ban cards because they are good. Especially in standard.
In Legacy and Vintage... they might ban a deck's strong card to weaken it if it gets out of hand, but in standard it's usually not an issue because they could in theory print hosers in the next set to help even the playing field. They rarely ban a card in standard unless it gets to the point where it's warped the format so much that people don't want to play tournaments. That's pretty much what happened with Jace and SFM. People stopped playing... and at the end of the day they have to make money.
The only other two times to my knowledge that they've banned a card in standard is when the banned the Affinity deck back in Mirrodin (Ravager, Disciple, artifact lands etc), and the few months before when they banned Skullclamp. Now... you might have an argument comparing Skullclamp to Dismember. Because it was basically just a good card that got banned. Same with Dismember. However... read the article that talks about why it got banned. And it becomes obvious how the card is clearly different from Dismember.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/af47
Case in point was Elf and Nail. Elf and Nail was a Tooth and Nail variant that used a bunch of crappy elf creatures like Wirewood Herald and Wirewood Symbiote along with Skullclamp. Now, the Tooth and Nail decks that existed before Skullclamp were basically what you would think. It ramped up to 9 mana... played it's money spell and then won the game. It played a lot like Valakut played basically. Clearly Skullclamp and Tooth and Nail are anti-synergistic cards. They don't really help each other out. Yet... adding in Skullclamp and random weenies actually made the deck better.
Dismember is a good card. It allows you to play creature destruction off color (and damn good creature destruction). It's a powerful card in fact. Easily the best uncommon in the block as far as standard is concerned. But it's not so good it's going to make a control deck like CawBlade play like a weenie deck. That's what Skullclamp could do.
Hey, I remember this post. It happened the day they announced they announced Modern as a format with the large banned list. Turns out Zoo was a deck, but not the best deck. People figured out that there were decks they could build that beat Zoo, and played those. Just like now, people will find decks that beat Zoo, and play those.
Also, lets not forget, Zoo had a card banned as well.
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