Well I'm quite happy. As a blue player I was getting tired of reading about the lack of creativity in blue decks. Now we'll hopefully see some interesting new decks pop up.
Admittedly, the bans don't do anything to me since I'm a casual player and refuse to step foot into tournaments outside of limited events like prereleases but I think this was a necessary evil. Coming from Yugioh where things are often much worse this was getting out of hand.
I will also say that I originally had some sympathy for all of you who spent ridiculous amounts of money on Jace but after reading a lot of the whining comments I don't anymore. Pilots win games not Jaces.
As a casual FMN player where no one runs Jace (Suprising, I know right?) I can't say I'm too affected by this but I know some people will be a little bitter that their $100 fallbacks now will drop to $50ish.
I think that the bans were called for, just like others said before; what do we see in every single deck that has made it to top 8?
Jace and in almost every one of those decks, SFM as well.
In my honest opinion I don't think JTMS should not have been printed in the first place. By making him stand out from the rest of the walkers he became too powerful, it was simple math when players looked at him.
Do I want a 4 drop with 3 or 4 abilities. Well you instantly go for 4.
Then when you look at individual abilities he becomes even an easier pick to take.
I'm glad and upset somewhat at the same time because I know Valakut will be coming back strong, I've had to deal with Vamps for a while now (since that seems to be what people like at my FMN), It was easy to deal with them since game 1 they would not know what I have and have all those Go for the Throats sitting there until they see I'm playing artifacts.
Now with Valakut I feel like it will be oh...he has tons of mana and I'm dead. Cool.
Just hoping none of the guys will start running it because it will be a pain in the arse.
You choose to pay your rent playing a game, that entails accepting the risk that the game may change and afect you in a negative way. You are not entitled to anything
Well said - as was most everything else in that post. I love people who can see the big picture. And (mostly) trust WoTC who see the biggest picture of Magic - simply because they own it and are so heavily invested in it. (And I bet they talk to other heavily invested people like Ben Bleiweiss etc. much more than we officially know).
I still am worried about the next big deck soaring up to 400-500 USD. With the current model of rarities, this is almost inevitable to happen. What could combat that situation in the future? I can see a couple of approaches:
- more powerful mythics (balanced among themselves) creating several competitive decks. This will spread the demand - until someone finds the way to combine all of them in one deck (the problem of multicolored sets with their mana fixers and dual/triple/etc. lands).
- more powerful themes among commons and uncommons, not present on rares and mythics. This will create more supply of tournament-worthy cards. However, if one theme proves significantly better than others (affinity + modular, anyone?) and there is a good supporting rare for it, the format might become degenerate once again.
When you think about all this, you really begin to appreciate their R&D's efforts...
I've officially lost all respect for WotC now. Really?? Ban cards in standard that are rotating anyways in a few months? Do they really think this is going to solve the problem? There will always be some Tier 1 deck that will be dominating the format in standard. In a few weeks everyone will be complaining about losing to Valukut or Splinter Twin decks so what's next BAN those too? Where does it stop?
So what? You know the risks of invesitng a lot in a particular card. Bannings have happened before, they happened now, and they will happen again. You decided to invest that $$ into cards for a reason, because they helped you win. You can't have the upside and remove the downside. Any investment is a risk, even if they weren't banned, WoTC could have printed an efficient card to shut down Jace and SFM and push Cawblade down to T2 status and you wouldhave lost value.
This is a big reason I resent the grinders: The act like just because they play in a lot of big tourneys they deserve to win and they deserve to have thier cards gain and should hold thier value. I'm a casual player and I'm not bitter I sold my 5 Entombs for $2 a piece about a month before they were unbanned.
Newsflash: MTG is not made for just you. It is made for a very large audience, and in this case, you werein the minority. Dela with it. Once again, just because you are a competitive player, you do not deserve to get your way or deserve WoTC to bow to your every whim.
Notice what happend to your tournament attendeance when you were getting your way. People stopped coming, the game was losing players, and losing money, and was being threatened. And your response is basically "So what, as long as I'm winning, I don't care about the health of the game" . And you wonder why no one is shedding a tear for you?
And I could have been unloading my Citibank stock at $25 before it went to $3. Ce lest vie.
You choose to pay your rent playing a game, that entails accepting the risk that the game may change and afect you in a negative way. You are not entitled to anything
I'm happy I can pick up a copy of Jace for cheap for my EDH deck now.
As for everyone complainaing about Valakut, it's super easy to hate against. You kill thier Lotus Cobra and thier Oracle and thier ramp stalls and you win the game. You can hate out the titan with Despise and SE. Valakut is nowhere near as resilient or dominat as Cawblade was.
the "efficient card" to shut down jace would literally have to have been zero for "target opponent must remove jace from his deck." because, you're delusional if you think there was any way to print any answer to him. Heck, wizards thought hex parasite was good, with is probably what's wrong with them - they're not smart enough to realize what cards work and which don't sometimes.
besides the fact that valakut doesn't even need to play either lotus cobra or oracle, hating out valakut is about as easy as printing an answer to jace. I guess, to you, both of those are easy?
Wow, I kinda regret selling my splinter twins now, I'll be POed if they shoot up to 20 bucks and the deck becomes dominant.
Here's hoping valakut whoops that combo's butt. Valakut and whatever else can take it down.
As for jace & mystic, I hope this lowers their value enough for poor folk to snag some!
EDIT: Jeebus, you can already see the hit, jace at 60, stoneforge at 8!
I feel bad for all you who still have playsets bought at 80
I'm sad to see Jace being banned, 4 months before he gets unplayable!
That just feel kind of wrong to me
Was it over-uber-creepilyhigh-powered? I don't think so.
Was it really strong? Without a doubt.
Jace was such a strong card that you can freely dump 4 of him in ANY blue deck and he would never fail you!
Saying, that Jace was monopolizing the tournament is mainly saying the Blue was monopolizing the tournament.
In the same way, if I play mono red, I would probably dump 4 koth in it.
--
On the other hand: SFM was broken in the current Meta.
For two casting cost, you get:
1 - a 1/2 body
2 - a tutor
3 - a way to drop any equipment at instant speed
4 - potentially: a mana accelerator if the equipment cost was over 2 mana!!!
Without the sword or the batterskull, if wouldn't be so broken.
In that matter, I do think it made sense to ban SFM.
Granted, having SFM printed just before the forthcoming mirrodin set, I wonder if they really thought about the implication of such move!
--
To every who are happy to see a $80 card leaving std, be sure that the money is just gonna shift... The overall price of the tier1 deck is not gonna change!
--
Finally:
I agree with other people on this thread;
=> Valakut will most likely be back in force (wonder why this land didn't get banned either ;-P)
--
As a blue/control type player, today is a sad day which will have to be remembered
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Valakut should've been banned if SFM was broken. Caw-Blade made is possible for me to run Fauna shaman and have fairly good results. Valakut doesn't promote interactivity and isn't fun. I would've stopped going to tournaments if Valakut had remained the dominant deck in standard.
Here's the long and short of it folks. You guys beat us. You couldn't beat us on the court. You couldn't beat us playing the game we love. No... You cried to your momma long enough and loud enough to have them take away our toys. Then, instead of acting with a sense of decorum and having a shred of the sportsmanship grinders like myself have had every time we've beaten you... you celebrate and talk smack. As I said. This both amuses and disappoints me.
Bitter much guy, the world dosen't owe you anything. Just because you spent around a grand to make a deck to turn out to be a bad investment your fault, although feel a little bad about your bad investment. As far as sportmanship you most likely talk the most smack when you beat someone the part is you do it behind their back to your little friends instead to their face.
I fully anticipated Stoneforge or Batterskull bans as they are simply degenerate. I'm a college student. I pay my rent by playing this game.
I know this is a concept that foriegn do to the economy, but get a job to pay your rent, like the rest of America. You are entitled to anything, so stop thinking like you do.
You'll still be priced out of the format. Standard has a sort of equilibrium. With Jace gone, other mythics will all increase in value as they see more play. If you want to play RDW for instance, you better have your playset of koths, because he'll probably hit 35-40. Tezzeret will inflate to 40-50, and so on. I can guarantee that the best deck in the next month will be going for 400-500.
I feel dirty for typing this, but I have to agree with you. Personally I don't care either way about the bannings, expect for the fact WOTC was a little late to the party.
...Really?? Ban cards in standard that are rotating anyways in a few months?...
If they were about to rotate, then why are you so upset that you only get one more week with them?
You can't say you weren't warned... the top 8 results of the past what, 2 years? have been indication enough that the card was broken beyond repair. When cards from NPH were spoiled, we saw lots of "answers" to jace that weren't answers. we all knew they weren't going to work. If you bought stock in Jace after NPH came out, you were stupid.
Even the most vicious netdeckers out of the FLGS have been playtesting decks live against others without Jace - but they're going to be really upset at the loss of SFM. Can't say I feel sorry for them.
I'm going to be participating in the standard tournaments again now when the ban kicks in, until then our store is running commander tourneys, which will be far more fun than jacefest would.
It's about time. SFM and Jace dominated; for people who are whining that caw-blade was a fair deck that could be beaten, sure it could be beaten if the pilot of said caw-blade was bad at magic/piloting caw-blade. And the mirror came down to playskill, just like any mirror whoever knew the mirror inside out would likely win.
@Kelldroth: Right, players not playing caw blade couldn't beat caw blade. How surprising is this considering jace see's play in EVERY format he's legal in and SFM is looking more like tarmogoyf every day in legacy. You can ***** and moan about the banning but caw blade had it coming; read Aaron Forsythe's article on the bannings and you will see that both merited banning since caw blade was even more dominant than affinity in standard in '05 and may have been the most dominant constructed deck of all time. Sure, standard is fine with SFM and Jace (except not).
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kinda happy but kinda upset about this. kinda upset about my stoneforge, i didnt think it needed to get banned. sure is fetches up swords and batterskull, but jace could shut down ENTIRE ARCHTYPES. his ability to unsummon stopped alot of your threat creatures that would kill jace. the fact that if you wanted to make a deck better all you had to do was "splash jace" was terrible. the fact that fnm decks started at 400$ is terrible too.
upside, swords and batterskull will get cheaper, i could see batterskull dropping in half, and the return of valakut and eldrazi green, elves and something similar to the old U/W control deck with venser and all that.
in anycase, this is clearly why limited is superior to standard.
Congratz wizards you have proven that you care about the $$ over balance. You just loved selling those boosters more than balancing your own formats.
Um, Wizards is a for-profit company. Their only goal is to make money. I know that harshes your buzz and goes against the righteous virtues of some members of Wizards, but in the end the only cold hard fact is that they are a for-profit company and the only goal of a for-profit company is to make money.
But to argue in another way, M11 had Lightning Bolt. Scars block had Koth, Thrun, Despise, Phyrexian Revoker, Hex Parasite, on and on and on to battle Jace. It's not too little, too late for him. It's the final straw, yes, but you can't say they weren't providing the tools.
Sweet. Magic might actually be playable again outside the kitchen table.
...and this is coming from someone with a set of SFMs in the house. I'm just glad to see Jace gone. I'd basically stopped playing because I was so sick of playing against it.
Legacy/Vintage GWREnchanted Eve (building) ~ BPoxy Pox
Standard WUMeow-Go~BU Infection
Casual BWAngel Doom ~ GRWWarpride ~ WGUStoic Control (ARG)
EDH BRGWUScion of the Ur-Dragon ~ BSiezan, The Perverter of Truth ~ W 8.5 Tails (needs work) All my Decks.
the "efficient card" to shut down jace would literally have to have been zero for "target opponent must remove jace from his deck." because, you're delusional if you think there was any way to print any answer to him. Heck, wizards thought hex parasite was good, with is probably what's wrong with them - they're not smart enough to realize what cards work and which don't sometimes.
besides the fact that valakut doesn't even need to play either lotus cobra or oracle, hating out valakut is about as easy as printing an answer to jace. I guess, to you, both of those are easy?
Pithing Needle. Done. 1 mana, you're Jace can't do jack. Hex Parasite is and always was an incredible lame attempt to combat planeswalkers, he's not a testamanet to how good Jace is, he's a testamanet to how bad hex parasite is. It's a TERRIBLE card.
And show me a Valakut build that doesn't play Lotus Cobra and Oracle. They're pretty much the backbone of Ramp, without those the deck slows down about 3 turns, which pushes you into midgame territory, which allows other decks to play thier answers. Not to mention T1 Despise, Surgical Extraction, sorry, you have no Primeval Titans in you deck anymore. It's like people forget what sideboards are these days.
The power of Caw Blade was that it was a control deck, an aggro deck, and a CA deck, all wrapped into one. If you fought it's aggro angle, you lost to it's control angle, if you fought it's control angle, you lost to it's aggro angle, if you fought it's control and aggro angle you lost to it's CA engine. It's ability to hit you from several angles, and how easily it switched between modes, is what made it so tough.
Valakut has almost none of that flexability. It ramps into a big creature and kill you with land drops that creature gives you. Disrupt it's ramp, and it can't recover the way Cawblade could recover from disruption.
Cawblade: Get rid of Jace? I'll kill you with the Batterskull SFM fetchs. Disrupt SFM? I'll kill you with Jace. Disrupt the Batterskull? I'll kill you with bird carrying swords.
Valakut: Disrupt my ramp? You got about 3-4 turns to execute your game plan against it. It's still a fearsome deck, but in no way is it anywhere near as flexible as Cawblade was. Not even close. Crayy Kiln Fiend / Assault strobe decks were a 50/50 match up against it, if you bolted the Cobra, you probably win
Wow, I kinda regret selling my splinter twins now, I'll be POed if they shoot up to 20 bucks and the deck becomes dominant.
Exarch Twin is a red herring. The deck is easily disrupted by pretty much any color. The only thing that put Exarch Twin into top contention was, you guessed it, Jace. Without Jace brainstorming into combo pieces and the fatesealing the turn before you go off to garauntee no answers, the deck is far from "dominant"
All that time when I devoutly avoided playing CawBlade .... selling my Mystics on eBay at their peak .... and I was the noob for "not practicing by piloting the best deck in standard" ....... HAHAHA
I've just never felt it much of a challenge to use those OP cards.
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Admittedly, the bans don't do anything to me since I'm a casual player and refuse to step foot into tournaments outside of limited events like prereleases but I think this was a necessary evil. Coming from Yugioh where things are often much worse this was getting out of hand.
I will also say that I originally had some sympathy for all of you who spent ridiculous amounts of money on Jace but after reading a lot of the whining comments I don't anymore. Pilots win games not Jaces.
You can check out my artwork here and here
When did Garfield say that? Why couldn't he veto mythic rarity thing which is the worst extortion ever invented by Hasbro.
In my opinion caw-blade felt less offensive deck than Faeries or Jund ever were.. but it probably was played by bigger percentage of players.
UWControlUW
I think that the bans were called for, just like others said before; what do we see in every single deck that has made it to top 8?
Jace and in almost every one of those decks, SFM as well.
In my honest opinion I don't think JTMS should not have been printed in the first place. By making him stand out from the rest of the walkers he became too powerful, it was simple math when players looked at him.
Do I want a 4 drop with 3 or 4 abilities. Well you instantly go for 4.
Then when you look at individual abilities he becomes even an easier pick to take.
I'm glad and upset somewhat at the same time because I know Valakut will be coming back strong, I've had to deal with Vamps for a while now (since that seems to be what people like at my FMN), It was easy to deal with them since game 1 they would not know what I have and have all those Go for the Throats sitting there until they see I'm playing artifacts.
Now with Valakut I feel like it will be oh...he has tons of mana and I'm dead. Cool.
Just hoping none of the guys will start running it because it will be a pain in the arse.
Well said - as was most everything else in that post. I love people who can see the big picture. And (mostly) trust WoTC who see the biggest picture of Magic - simply because they own it and are so heavily invested in it. (And I bet they talk to other heavily invested people like Ben Bleiweiss etc. much more than we officially know).
I still am worried about the next big deck soaring up to 400-500 USD. With the current model of rarities, this is almost inevitable to happen. What could combat that situation in the future? I can see a couple of approaches:
- more powerful mythics (balanced among themselves) creating several competitive decks. This will spread the demand - until someone finds the way to combine all of them in one deck (the problem of multicolored sets with their mana fixers and dual/triple/etc. lands).
- more powerful themes among commons and uncommons, not present on rares and mythics. This will create more supply of tournament-worthy cards. However, if one theme proves significantly better than others (affinity + modular, anyone?) and there is a good supporting rare for it, the format might become degenerate once again.
When you think about all this, you really begin to appreciate their R&D's efforts...
"If you can't beat him, ban him"
lol
UWControlUW
I'll find more information and edit this post, but here is something to start.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gtqv5vYANI&feature=player_embedded#at=23
I know I read it somewhere BEFORE this was released.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=6722402#post6722402
Congratz wizards you have proven that you care about the $$ over balance. You just loved selling those boosters more than balancing your own formats.
because he sold his soul to them a long time ago and gave up any REAL control he used to have.
UWControlUW
This is pure and utter BullS*%T.
the "efficient card" to shut down jace would literally have to have been zero for "target opponent must remove jace from his deck." because, you're delusional if you think there was any way to print any answer to him. Heck, wizards thought hex parasite was good, with is probably what's wrong with them - they're not smart enough to realize what cards work and which don't sometimes.
besides the fact that valakut doesn't even need to play either lotus cobra or oracle, hating out valakut is about as easy as printing an answer to jace. I guess, to you, both of those are easy?
*DCI Rules Advisor*
Here's hoping valakut whoops that combo's butt. Valakut and whatever else can take it down.
As for jace & mystic, I hope this lowers their value enough for poor folk to snag some!
EDIT: Jeebus, you can already see the hit, jace at 60, stoneforge at 8!
I feel bad for all you who still have playsets bought at 80
UWBSharuum the HegemonBWU
UAzami, Lady of ScrollsU
UGMomir Vig, Simic VisionaryGU
GAzusa, Lost but SeekingG
GUEdric, Spymaster of TrestGU
UWControlUW
That just feel kind of wrong to me
Was it over-uber-creepilyhigh-powered? I don't think so.
Was it really strong? Without a doubt.
Jace was such a strong card that you can freely dump 4 of him in ANY blue deck and he would never fail you!
Saying, that Jace was monopolizing the tournament is mainly saying the Blue was monopolizing the tournament.
In the same way, if I play mono red, I would probably dump 4 koth in it.
--
On the other hand: SFM was broken in the current Meta.
For two casting cost, you get:
1 - a 1/2 body
2 - a tutor
3 - a way to drop any equipment at instant speed
4 - potentially: a mana accelerator if the equipment cost was over 2 mana!!!
Without the sword or the batterskull, if wouldn't be so broken.
In that matter, I do think it made sense to ban SFM.
Granted, having SFM printed just before the forthcoming mirrodin set, I wonder if they really thought about the implication of such move!
--
To every who are happy to see a $80 card leaving std, be sure that the money is just gonna shift... The overall price of the tier1 deck is not gonna change!
--
Finally:
I agree with other people on this thread;
=> Valakut will most likely be back in force (wonder why this land didn't get banned either ;-P)
--
As a blue/control type player, today is a sad day which will have to be remembered
UB Lazavm Dimir Mastermind BU
GW Rhys the RedeemedWG
WUG Derevi, Epyrial Tactitian GUW
WUG Roon of the Hidden RealmGUW
WBR Kaliaa of the VastRBW
WUB Sydri, Galvanic Genius BUW
Casual decks:
UB Ninja v2.1 BU
GU Simic's Fathom v0.9 UG
RGW Sarkhan's Seasoning v0.80 WGR
WR Chandra's Rebirth v0.3 RW
Bitter much guy, the world dosen't owe you anything. Just because you spent around a grand to make a deck to turn out to be a bad investment your fault, although feel a little bad about your bad investment. As far as sportmanship you most likely talk the most smack when you beat someone the part is you do it behind their back to your little friends instead to their face.
I know this is a concept that foriegn do to the economy, but get a job to pay your rent, like the rest of America. You are entitled to anything, so stop thinking like you do.
I feel dirty for typing this, but I have to agree with you. Personally I don't care either way about the bannings, expect for the fact WOTC was a little late to the party.
SFM was a bit unexpected, but almost as degenerate.
If they were about to rotate, then why are you so upset that you only get one more week with them?
You can't say you weren't warned... the top 8 results of the past what, 2 years? have been indication enough that the card was broken beyond repair. When cards from NPH were spoiled, we saw lots of "answers" to jace that weren't answers. we all knew they weren't going to work. If you bought stock in Jace after NPH came out, you were stupid.
Even the most vicious netdeckers out of the FLGS have been playtesting decks live against others without Jace - but they're going to be really upset at the loss of SFM. Can't say I feel sorry for them.
I'm going to be participating in the standard tournaments again now when the ban kicks in, until then our store is running commander tourneys, which will be far more fun than jacefest would.
@Kelldroth: Right, players not playing caw blade couldn't beat caw blade. How surprising is this considering jace see's play in EVERY format he's legal in and SFM is looking more like tarmogoyf every day in legacy. You can ***** and moan about the banning but caw blade had it coming; read Aaron Forsythe's article on the bannings and you will see that both merited banning since caw blade was even more dominant than affinity in standard in '05 and may have been the most dominant constructed deck of all time. Sure, standard is fine with SFM and Jace (except not).
Currently Playing:
Retired
upside, swords and batterskull will get cheaper, i could see batterskull dropping in half, and the return of valakut and eldrazi green, elves and something similar to the old U/W control deck with venser and all that.
in anycase, this is clearly why limited is superior to standard.
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Playing:
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Played:
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Um, Wizards is a for-profit company. Their only goal is to make money. I know that harshes your buzz and goes against the righteous virtues of some members of Wizards, but in the end the only cold hard fact is that they are a for-profit company and the only goal of a for-profit company is to make money.
But to argue in another way, M11 had Lightning Bolt. Scars block had Koth, Thrun, Despise, Phyrexian Revoker, Hex Parasite, on and on and on to battle Jace. It's not too little, too late for him. It's the final straw, yes, but you can't say they weren't providing the tools.
...and this is coming from someone with a set of SFMs in the house. I'm just glad to see Jace gone. I'd basically stopped playing because I was so sick of playing against it.
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Pithing Needle. Done. 1 mana, you're Jace can't do jack. Hex Parasite is and always was an incredible lame attempt to combat planeswalkers, he's not a testamanet to how good Jace is, he's a testamanet to how bad hex parasite is. It's a TERRIBLE card.
And show me a Valakut build that doesn't play Lotus Cobra and Oracle. They're pretty much the backbone of Ramp, without those the deck slows down about 3 turns, which pushes you into midgame territory, which allows other decks to play thier answers. Not to mention T1 Despise, Surgical Extraction, sorry, you have no Primeval Titans in you deck anymore. It's like people forget what sideboards are these days.
The power of Caw Blade was that it was a control deck, an aggro deck, and a CA deck, all wrapped into one. If you fought it's aggro angle, you lost to it's control angle, if you fought it's control angle, you lost to it's aggro angle, if you fought it's control and aggro angle you lost to it's CA engine. It's ability to hit you from several angles, and how easily it switched between modes, is what made it so tough.
Valakut has almost none of that flexability. It ramps into a big creature and kill you with land drops that creature gives you. Disrupt it's ramp, and it can't recover the way Cawblade could recover from disruption.
Cawblade: Get rid of Jace? I'll kill you with the Batterskull SFM fetchs. Disrupt SFM? I'll kill you with Jace. Disrupt the Batterskull? I'll kill you with bird carrying swords.
Valakut: Disrupt my ramp? You got about 3-4 turns to execute your game plan against it. It's still a fearsome deck, but in no way is it anywhere near as flexible as Cawblade was. Not even close. Crayy Kiln Fiend / Assault strobe decks were a 50/50 match up against it, if you bolted the Cobra, you probably win
Exarch Twin is a red herring. The deck is easily disrupted by pretty much any color. The only thing that put Exarch Twin into top contention was, you guessed it, Jace. Without Jace brainstorming into combo pieces and the fatesealing the turn before you go off to garauntee no answers, the deck is far from "dominant"
I mean, seriously. Fog.
All that time when I devoutly avoided playing CawBlade .... selling my Mystics on eBay at their peak .... and I was the noob for "not practicing by piloting the best deck in standard" ....... HAHAHA
I've just never felt it much of a challenge to use those OP cards.