So there are cards out there that destroy a lot of land. Or destroy land cheaply. Whether it is Boil or Armageddon. Around 8th edition the converted mana cost for single land destruction goes up by 1 to 3. Since then it's gone higher. There's a 10th edition land destruction card that 3 CMC. I don't think anything like Boil has been printed in a long time though.
Anyone know the exact release when they decided "no more of this" and stopped with the land destruction as anything other than an expensive corner case? In RtR block, for example, all the single land destruction is 5 CMC and is a far cry from the 4 CMC "Destroy all islands" type cards of the past.
It's a series of things happening over the years, not a sudden thing.
1st instance -- when the 2cc sinkhole stopped being printed and the 3cc icequake and when ice storm was stopped reprinted (it was easy to accelerate into) and thermokarst was printed.
2st instance -- when strip mine was restricted
3rd -- when strip mine was stopped being reprinted and when with wasteland being printed
4th -- dustbowl and rishadan port
4.5 -- a soft change, the printing of fetchlands made land destruction even more difficult, but this wasn't a direct "we must nerf land destruction!" event
5th -- when pillage was no longer reprinted; cards like ghost quarter and ark were printed.
6th -- when stone rain was replaced by craterize
The most jarring was the restriction of strip mine. Ever since then, there has never been a deck with land destruction as the main theme. Back then, we were already discussing the decline of land destruction -- the dominant deck of the time was counterpost, and there was no real solution to kjeldoran outpost except armageddon. The general consensus was that if you couldn't reliably use a land destruction spell/effect by turn 2, it was unplayable as a main strategy (especially given that counterspell existed in the format).
Actually, the increase from 2 to 3 cmc happened "all the way through ABU". That is, from B to R: Sinkhole vs. Stone Rain. Revised was the first time Sinkhole was not reprinted.
Beyond that, 9th edition still had Stone Rain, in fact. So 10th edition was the beginning of the end, I suppose.
edit: Strip Mine was last in Anthologies (er, fwiw). Wasteland, only in Tempest.
So there are cards out there that destroy a lot of land. Or destroy land cheaply. Whether it is Boil or Armageddon. Around 8th edition the converted mana cost for single land destruction goes up by 1 to 3. Since then it's gone higher. There's a 10th edition land destruction card that 3 CMC. I don't think anything like Boil has been printed in a long time though.
Anyone know the exact release when they decided "no more of this" and stopped with the land destruction as anything other than an expensive corner case? In RtR block, for example, all the single land destruction is 5 CMC and is a far cry from the 4 CMC "Destroy all islands" type cards of the past.
So when did the shift happen?
This is actually two different questions:
A) Single target land destruction - Happened twice. First time was around 4th Edition: Sinkhole was last reprinted in Revised Unlimited, and then Strip Mine stopped being reprinted after 4th Edition. Second time was around Magic 2010, when they stopped printing 3-mana land destruction spells.
B) Mass land destruction - Actually a type of really strong color hoser. Stopped being printed after 9th Edition, along with stuff like Circles of Protection, when they decided "Let's not print cards that are really good against one color but useless against everything else".
WotC has been slowly toning down land destruction for years, and it's only recently that they've gotten to the point where they're generally happy with its place in the game. It seems they want LD to be a kind of utility effect that players use to deal with troublesome non-basics. It's not meant to be a core strategy that locks the opponent out of the game.
I thought Boil and spells like it were pretty ridiculous in that they essentially tell the opponent not to play the game, but to sit it out. I dislike lockout strategies in general, but colour specific mass land destruction in just too much.
I play quite a bit of commander and there's always this back and forth where you're trying to figure out what is good to play, but doesn't piss people off. I've become suspect of the game design of a lot of older cards and my group tends to prefer cards made from original Ravnica block to today. I consider the colour specific mass land destruction a vote of no confidence in the set and it makes me wary, so I was wondering if there was an easy cut off point where I could worry about not accidentally introducing something so lopsided into a game.
I wish they would make some slightly better LD destruction for modern. I don't like having to play ghost quarter and tec edge. I mean, unless you have search hate out, Ghost quarter guarantees that your opponent wont get cut off a color, and you minus yourself pretty hard.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy
Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
It's a series of things happening over the years, not a sudden thing.
1st instance -- when the 2cc sinkhole stopped being printed and the 3cc icequake and when ice storm was stopped reprinted (it was easy to accelerate into) and thermokarst was printed.
2st instance -- when strip mine was restricted
3rd -- when strip mine was stopped being reprinted and when with wasteland being printed
4th -- dustbowl and rishadan port
4.5 -- a soft change, the printing of fetchlands made land destruction even more difficult, but this wasn't a direct "we must nerf land destruction!" event
5th -- when pillage was no longer reprinted; cards like ghost quarter and ark were printed.
6th -- when stone rain was replaced by craterize
The most jarring was the restriction of strip mine. Ever since then, there has never been a deck with land destruction as the main theme. Back then, we were already discussing the decline of land destruction -- the dominant deck of the time was counterpost, and there was no real solution to kjeldoran outpost except armageddon. The general consensus was that if you couldn't reliably use a land destruction spell/effect by turn 2, it was unplayable as a main strategy (especially given that counterspell existed in the format).
Kjeldoran Outpost mirror matches wee all about a card called Political Trickery or prickery if you drew it and resolved it first, lol.
The gradual decline of land destruction was inevitable, but sped up around or after the Urza/Mercadian standard. Ponza Rotta Red was the last LD dedicated deck that did well still main decking Stone Rain and Pillage etc that I remember. That was 2000/2001(?)
There's nothing fun or engaging about being locked out of the game because your land is being picked off turn after turn by your opponent. LD is a necessary evil in formats where it's allowed. Cards like Wasteland help keep cards like Maze of Ith in check. If you look at Legacy decklists you will rarely see something as powerful as Sinkhole being played because LD strategies in a high powered environment are generally very weak. But, reprint Sinkhole in standard, a much lower powered format and the card would be insane. In general it's just not fun for new players and that hurts profit. And tbh most players could care less. LD sucks to play against.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
Personally, I think that a little targeted LD is OK to have. Keeping powerful lands in check is always good, and if your opponent has a super-greedy mana base, you can cause some serious issues by taking out (say) their only Blue source, but a monocolored/2-color deck is going to have enough redundancy in their mana base to just shrug it off.
In theory, that's OK, but I suspect that there's no middle ground between:
- LD is useful against powerful nonbasics but only if it's on a card that can do other stuff as well (something like Bramblecrush).
- Critical mass of good LD spells is reached, dedicated LD decks start shutting their opponents out of the game, things turn boring really fast.
I play quite a bit of commander and there's always this back and forth where you're trying to figure out what is good to play, but doesn't piss people off.
This wouldn't be a problem if the banned list wasn't a complete joke. I've said it once and I'll say it a million times. I play a ton of formats and the EDH is the single one I play where the community relishes in endless whining about people playing cards not on the banned list, combined with a staunch refusal to put on the big boy pants and actually fight to get those undesirable cards banned for real.
On Topic: This is just speculation on my part, but I think it's possible that WotC might print a better nonbasic destroyer soon. Strip Mine was too good. Wasteland was still too good. Tectonic Edge was still too good. Encroaching Wastes was unplayable. They might go for something between Tec Edge and Wastes next. They could go for it in the third Khans set, after printing Zendikar Fetches. That way Standard manabases would be resilient to it because fetches get basics anyway.
A lot of errors in the specifics of the responses here, but the general ideas are mostly true.
Basically, the best land destruction cards of all time (sinkhole and strip mine) were printed in alpha and antiquities, respectively. Sinkhole got as far as unlimited, which means it never made it past 1993 (promos/special printings aside), and strip mine was only reprinted once, in 4th edition. From experience, I can tell you that strip mine is too powerful. I personally don't find sinkhole to be too powerful, but ONLY because it is literally the only no-strings-attached 2cc LD spell in the game. If there were a functional reprint it would be too much.
wasteland was the first attempt to make a playable but not overbearing strip mine, and goes all the way back to tempest in 1997. I can tell you that at the time it was not HALF as good as it is today. People simply did not play as many non-basics because there weren't that many to play (basically just the ice age pain lands and ABUR duals). Nobody was excited about it at the time. It was an excellent move, however. I think it is very important to the health of legacy, but I don't think it should be in modern. This isn't because I think it's "too powerful" per se, but rather because of the life-draining nature of the fetch->shock manabase. Wasteland in modern would make burn and other hyper-aggro decks even more powerful, and their power level is high enough right now. Tectonic edge and ghost quarter are the right power level for modern. We probably won't get anything more powerful than or playable alongside tec edge going forward. I say that not so much because something more powerful would itself be broken, but by the same reasoning as I gave for sinkhole above... 4 tec edges is fine; 8 would be too much.
Stone rain was the standard for a LONG time (made it all the way to 9th edition in 2003), and to be honest I believe it should still be the standard for LD. Again from experience, 3cc LD by itself is not good enough to make a good deck, even if you have enough functional reprints to run 20+ copies. Too many decks can just run on 1-2 lands and a deck running that much LD has trouble doing anything else... that was true in 1995 and it's even more true today with limited, standard, and non-rotating formats being vastly faster than they were in the early stages of the game (although "vintage" was always crazy-fast). For awhile they made the standard 3cc with 2 colored mana (pillage, thermokarst, icequake, rain of tears, ect)... that started in 1995 with ice age. I'm not sure exactly when craterize and it's ilk became the standard, but it annoys me because they're totally unplayable, where stone rain is at least fringe playable.
So there are cards out there that destroy a lot of land. Or destroy land cheaply. Whether it is Boil or Armageddon. Around 8th edition the converted mana cost for single land destruction goes up by 1 to 3. Since then it's gone higher. There's a 10th edition land destruction card that 3 CMC. I don't think anything like Boil has been printed in a long time though.
Anyone know the exact release when they decided "no more of this" and stopped with the land destruction as anything other than an expensive corner case? In RtR block, for example, all the single land destruction is 5 CMC and is a far cry from the 4 CMC "Destroy all islands" type cards of the past.
So when did the shift happen?
This is actually two different questions:
A) Single target land destruction - Happened twice. First time was around 4th Edition: Sinkhole was last reprinted in Revised Unlimited, and then Strip Mine stopped being reprinted after 4th Edition. Second time was around Magic 2010, when they stopped printing 3-mana land destruction spells.
B) Mass land destruction - Actually a type of really strong color hoser. Stopped being printed after 9th Edition, along with stuff like Circles of Protection, when they decided "Let's not print cards that are really good against one color but useless against everything else".
Ponza Rotta Red was the last LD dedicated deck that did well still main decking Stone Rain and Pillage etc that I remember. That was 2000/2001(?)
Yes, at Worlds 2000 Chris Benafel managed to go 6-0 in the Standard portion with Ponza (I think 4x Stone Rain is missing from the linked deck list because it doesn't add up). You could argue that Ponza wasn't tier one, but 6-0 at Worlds Standard and 2nd-place at U.S. Nationals seems fairly tier-one to me.
Urza's rotation hurt, but various land-destruction deck remained solid in the 2000-2001 season. For example, Bridge Wildfire packing 4x Stone Rain and 4x Pillage made the top eight at the 2001 U.S. Nationals. I think it was the loss of Masques and thus Rishadan Port and Dust Bowl that really sunk land destruction as a competitive strategy (metagame changes too).
I'd say Eminent Domain (Kamigawa/Ravnica Standard) was the last time a real LD deck was viable. There was a Spreading Seas/Convincing Mirage deck during Jund's heyday, but that was more fringe. I'd say the last playable LD effects in Standard were Zendikar block, with Tec Edge and Goblin Ruinblaster.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
The only good thing about this post is the edible chocolate roaches they gave out! Mmm mmm!
*crawl crawl*
Wait a minute, edible roaches don't crawl! EDIBLE ROACHES DON'T CRAWL!
WotC has been slowly toning down land destruction for years, and it's only recently that they've gotten to the point where they're generally happy with its place in the game. It seems they want LD to be a kind of utility effect that players use to deal with troublesome non-basics. It's not meant to be a core strategy that locks the opponent out of the game.
I've noticed that regarding cards that enable straight up land destruction this exact trend is present... when talking about LD as an overall strategy, though, I feel like in analyzing it a lot of people look at just the straight up LD cards, and not the means - like using straight up LD cards vs turning permanents into artifacts and using artifact hate cards for example. (hello, Mycosynth Lattice + Vandalblast combo, I refer to you dearly :P)
The last decent land destruction deck I recall was around Ravnica and featured Magnivore and Wildfire. I also remeber Braids, Cabal Minion being nasty. In a way lack of ld puts higher value on skill of play and less on matcups and winning the die roll. In another way it's absence takes away from the mystique of the game, brutal decks that can eat your face. I despise how they nerfed combo, but ld Im ok with since it was often more interactionless than anything.
It's a series of things happening over the years, not a sudden thing.
1st instance -- when the 2cc sinkhole stopped being printed and the 3cc icequake and when ice storm was stopped reprinted (it was easy to accelerate into) and thermokarst was printed.
2st instance -- when strip mine was restricted
3rd -- when strip mine was stopped being reprinted and when with wasteland being printed
4th -- dustbowl and rishadan port
4.5 -- a soft change, the printing of fetchlands made land destruction even more difficult, but this wasn't a direct "we must nerf land destruction!" event
5th -- when pillage was no longer reprinted; cards like ghost quarter and ark were printed.
6th -- when stone rain was replaced by craterize
This is pretty good, but a bit off in places, and not complete.
You missed seventh edition, where Armeageddon was first cut.
Ghost Quarter was not printed till years after the last Pillage was printed.
Red used to get things like Raze, and Turf Wound - that dried up.
After Mirrodin, WotC decided that having two 3cc LD spells was too many (Stone Rain plus Molten Rain).
6cc Armageddon effects (Boom//Bust, Obliterate) disapeared after Time Spiral (I think).
And don't forget the latest blow - the changing of tyhe Legendary rule so that players can run legendary lands without the former risk and bad feels. Thespian Stage was fantastic in EDH before the rules change.
The killing off of Stone Rain was an overreaction to Mirrodin standard.
Once Affinity was banhammered, there were two land suppression strategies that became tier 1 for a time. One was mono-red with Stone Rain AND Molten Rain, the other was green acceleration ramping into Plow Under.
It turns out that losing one land early is a nuisance, but losing two usually decides the game.
The problem, in hindsight, wasn't Stone Rain on its own, it was the combination of Stone Rain, a redundant effect in Molten Rain, and Chrome Mox providing semi-reliable acceleration to cast those spells ahead of curve.
Standard would not notice a single 3cc LD card, but have two of them and reliable acceleration and you'll have a repeat of the Mirrodin era LD decks (which weren't oppressively dominant but were legitimately tier 1 decks, on par with Jeskai Tempo today)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Anyone know the exact release when they decided "no more of this" and stopped with the land destruction as anything other than an expensive corner case? In RtR block, for example, all the single land destruction is 5 CMC and is a far cry from the 4 CMC "Destroy all islands" type cards of the past.
So when did the shift happen?
1st instance -- when the 2cc sinkhole stopped being printed and the 3cc icequake and when ice storm was stopped reprinted (it was easy to accelerate into) and thermokarst was printed.
2st instance -- when strip mine was restricted
3rd -- when strip mine was stopped being reprinted and when with wasteland being printed
4th -- dustbowl and rishadan port
4.5 -- a soft change, the printing of fetchlands made land destruction even more difficult, but this wasn't a direct "we must nerf land destruction!" event
5th -- when pillage was no longer reprinted; cards like ghost quarter and ark were printed.
6th -- when stone rain was replaced by craterize
The most jarring was the restriction of strip mine. Ever since then, there has never been a deck with land destruction as the main theme. Back then, we were already discussing the decline of land destruction -- the dominant deck of the time was counterpost, and there was no real solution to kjeldoran outpost except armageddon. The general consensus was that if you couldn't reliably use a land destruction spell/effect by turn 2, it was unplayable as a main strategy (especially given that counterspell existed in the format).
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Beyond that, 9th edition still had Stone Rain, in fact. So 10th edition was the beginning of the end, I suppose.
edit: Strip Mine was last in Anthologies (er, fwiw). Wasteland, only in Tempest.
This is actually two different questions:
A) Single target land destruction - Happened twice. First time was around 4th Edition: Sinkhole was last reprinted in
RevisedUnlimited, and then Strip Mine stopped being reprinted after 4th Edition. Second time was around Magic 2010, when they stopped printing 3-mana land destruction spells.B) Mass land destruction - Actually a type of really strong color hoser. Stopped being printed after 9th Edition, along with stuff like Circles of Protection, when they decided "Let's not print cards that are really good against one color but useless against everything else".
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=517520
I play quite a bit of commander and there's always this back and forth where you're trying to figure out what is good to play, but doesn't piss people off. I've become suspect of the game design of a lot of older cards and my group tends to prefer cards made from original Ravnica block to today. I consider the colour specific mass land destruction a vote of no confidence in the set and it makes me wary, so I was wondering if there was an easy cut off point where I could worry about not accidentally introducing something so lopsided into a game.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Kjeldoran Outpost mirror matches wee all about a card called Political Trickery or prickery if you drew it and resolved it first, lol.
The gradual decline of land destruction was inevitable, but sped up around or after the Urza/Mercadian standard. Ponza Rotta Red was the last LD dedicated deck that did well still main decking Stone Rain and Pillage etc that I remember. That was 2000/2001(?)
Big Thanks to Xeno for sig art <3.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
In theory, that's OK, but I suspect that there's no middle ground between:
- LD is useful against powerful nonbasics but only if it's on a card that can do other stuff as well (something like Bramblecrush).
- Critical mass of good LD spells is reached, dedicated LD decks start shutting their opponents out of the game, things turn boring really fast.
This wouldn't be a problem if the banned list wasn't a complete joke. I've said it once and I'll say it a million times. I play a ton of formats and the EDH is the single one I play where the community relishes in endless whining about people playing cards not on the banned list, combined with a staunch refusal to put on the big boy pants and actually fight to get those undesirable cards banned for real.
On Topic: This is just speculation on my part, but I think it's possible that WotC might print a better nonbasic destroyer soon. Strip Mine was too good. Wasteland was still too good. Tectonic Edge was still too good. Encroaching Wastes was unplayable. They might go for something between Tec Edge and Wastes next. They could go for it in the third Khans set, after printing Zendikar Fetches. That way Standard manabases would be resilient to it because fetches get basics anyway.
Basically, the best land destruction cards of all time (sinkhole and strip mine) were printed in alpha and antiquities, respectively. Sinkhole got as far as unlimited, which means it never made it past 1993 (promos/special printings aside), and strip mine was only reprinted once, in 4th edition. From experience, I can tell you that strip mine is too powerful. I personally don't find sinkhole to be too powerful, but ONLY because it is literally the only no-strings-attached 2cc LD spell in the game. If there were a functional reprint it would be too much.
wasteland was the first attempt to make a playable but not overbearing strip mine, and goes all the way back to tempest in 1997. I can tell you that at the time it was not HALF as good as it is today. People simply did not play as many non-basics because there weren't that many to play (basically just the ice age pain lands and ABUR duals). Nobody was excited about it at the time. It was an excellent move, however. I think it is very important to the health of legacy, but I don't think it should be in modern. This isn't because I think it's "too powerful" per se, but rather because of the life-draining nature of the fetch->shock manabase. Wasteland in modern would make burn and other hyper-aggro decks even more powerful, and their power level is high enough right now. Tectonic edge and ghost quarter are the right power level for modern. We probably won't get anything more powerful than or playable alongside tec edge going forward. I say that not so much because something more powerful would itself be broken, but by the same reasoning as I gave for sinkhole above... 4 tec edges is fine; 8 would be too much.
Stone rain was the standard for a LONG time (made it all the way to 9th edition in 2003), and to be honest I believe it should still be the standard for LD. Again from experience, 3cc LD by itself is not good enough to make a good deck, even if you have enough functional reprints to run 20+ copies. Too many decks can just run on 1-2 lands and a deck running that much LD has trouble doing anything else... that was true in 1995 and it's even more true today with limited, standard, and non-rotating formats being vastly faster than they were in the early stages of the game (although "vintage" was always crazy-fast). For awhile they made the standard 3cc with 2 colored mana (pillage, thermokarst, icequake, rain of tears, ect)... that started in 1995 with ice age. I'm not sure exactly when craterize and it's ilk became the standard, but it annoys me because they're totally unplayable, where stone rain is at least fringe playable.
Armageddon made it to 6th edition in 1999. I really miss that card, but I can't decide if I wish it were in modern or not. I remember playing ernhamgeddon in 1996, and it was pretty powerful... a similar deck built today, but running thalia, guardian of thraben, tarmogoyf, knight of the reliquary, noble hierarch, leonin arbiter, aether vial... it might be broken.
Boom // Bust was printed in 2007.
Yes, at Worlds 2000 Chris Benafel managed to go 6-0 in the Standard portion with Ponza (I think 4x Stone Rain is missing from the linked deck list because it doesn't add up). You could argue that Ponza wasn't tier one, but 6-0 at Worlds Standard and 2nd-place at U.S. Nationals seems fairly tier-one to me.
Urza's rotation hurt, but various land-destruction deck remained solid in the 2000-2001 season. For example, Bridge Wildfire packing 4x Stone Rain and 4x Pillage made the top eight at the 2001 U.S. Nationals. I think it was the loss of Masques and thus Rishadan Port and Dust Bowl that really sunk land destruction as a competitive strategy (metagame changes too).
*crawl crawl*
Wait a minute, edible roaches don't crawl! EDIBLE ROACHES DON'T CRAWL!
I've noticed that regarding cards that enable straight up land destruction this exact trend is present... when talking about LD as an overall strategy, though, I feel like in analyzing it a lot of people look at just the straight up LD cards, and not the means - like using straight up LD cards vs turning permanents into artifacts and using artifact hate cards for example. (hello, Mycosynth Lattice + Vandalblast combo, I refer to you dearly :P)
Peak rating 1832
Brain Freeze is the coolest card ever printed.
Time Spiral was a weird block. Ajani Vengeant is actually the most recent standard-legal Armageddon effect, but he doesn't really count.
I mean to refer to cards that destroy one type of land (like Boil). I probably should've actually said that.
This is pretty good, but a bit off in places, and not complete.
You missed seventh edition, where Armeageddon was first cut.
Ghost Quarter was not printed till years after the last Pillage was printed.
Red used to get things like Raze, and Turf Wound - that dried up.
After Mirrodin, WotC decided that having two 3cc LD spells was too many (Stone Rain plus Molten Rain).
6cc Armageddon effects (Boom//Bust, Obliterate) disapeared after Time Spiral (I think).
And don't forget the latest blow - the changing of tyhe Legendary rule so that players can run legendary lands without the former risk and bad feels. Thespian Stage was fantastic in EDH before the rules change.
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com/
RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
Once Affinity was banhammered, there were two land suppression strategies that became tier 1 for a time. One was mono-red with Stone Rain AND Molten Rain, the other was green acceleration ramping into Plow Under.
It turns out that losing one land early is a nuisance, but losing two usually decides the game.
The problem, in hindsight, wasn't Stone Rain on its own, it was the combination of Stone Rain, a redundant effect in Molten Rain, and Chrome Mox providing semi-reliable acceleration to cast those spells ahead of curve.
Standard would not notice a single 3cc LD card, but have two of them and reliable acceleration and you'll have a repeat of the Mirrodin era LD decks (which weren't oppressively dominant but were legitimately tier 1 decks, on par with Jeskai Tempo today)