So how do people feel about this card at the moment? I saw that there was some discussion about it, but it's pretty old.
As far as the five criteria the RC uses, at least among the people I consistently play with at my LGS(which is a generally decently casual group of over 20 people), the following two are true:
Problematic Casual Omnipresence - Almost all decks that can run it, do.
Creates Undesirable Game States - The most base interaction that DEN has is using it as a psuedo-hexproof, and it's just downhill from there. Even innocent things like Farhaven Elf become two mana reusable Rampant Growth.
While the card itself doesn't have a lot of raw power, since paying two mana (maybe four since people are probably not going to target whatever is already soulbounded) for pseudo-hexproof is a decent inversion, the nature of the format lends it to spiral out of control. Most decklists run a lot of creatures with ETB effects, all with different levels of power, but when combined with DEN, now you're getting to reuse your effects for the mere cost of two mana and no drawbacks and the stronger the effect you're reusing, the better those two mana become.
Answering DEN isn't particularly difficult, since you can respond to the soulbound trigger to kill off either creature, but it has been my experience that a lot of "casual" or new players aren't aware of this. This lack of awareness seems to stem from a general misunderstanding on how the stack works among this subgroup of players.
It feels to me, and a decent amount of people in my group (since house banning it has come up quite often), that this card is not only problematic in terms of power and that casual/normal/new players can accidentally break it, but that it's also these people who might be the worst equipped to deal with it.
How does everyone else feel about it, does the format really gain anything from keeping it or is its strength just an artifact created by my playgroup?
I haven't seen one in my group for several months. It's a powerfull card but doesn't seem that you could jam in every blue deck IMO. It needs another creature to abuse and you can bait it or respond atleast.
Deadeye Navigator is at it's cheapest 5UUU: Blink a creature. And that alone makes it not banworthy to me. People tend to focus on the 1U: Blink a creature, but it still has a rather steep initial cost. To really make it worthwhile, you have to pump 12 mana into it in my experience - and that's not even counting the cost of whatever creature you're going to soulbond with it. In my personal opinion, if you get to make that much use of Deadeye, perhaps you're already at a stage in the game where it's about time someone wins.
As for the "New players do not grasp the way the triggers work" argument - isn't this something the more experienced players should teach them? Every time I've seen this happen with Player A Deadeyeing and player B mis-timing his removal, players C and D usually were quick enough to point out how those triggers stacked - and oftentimes player A was helpful enough too. Quite frankly if someone takes advantage of such a little hole in a player's knowledge of the game, that's rather scummy and is NOT the metric a ban should be measured at.
As a result, I just don't think it fits the "Creates undesireable board states" metric. It takes a fair bit of effort for it to do so. It's literally useless on it's own, it usually requires something to at least survive a turn before it becomes dangerous, it's sorcery speed...and yes I know you can all speed that up, but at that point we're talking about a multitude of cards combining to create such a state. Deadeye is in that case not the cause, but rather the most "obvious" target.
Which leaves you with casual omnipresence. While something could be said for this, I do think that it's not as bad anymore. EDHRec lists Deadeye as being in roughly 8.5K decks. Seems like a lot? Here are a few other cards around that level or around Deadeye's slot in a deck: Mulldrifter (8.6K) Terastodon (9.1K) Consecrated Sphinx (8.1K) Clever Impersonator (9.4K) Rune-Scarred Demon (8.9K) Sheoldred, Whispering One (10.2K) Sun Titan (19K) Avenger of Zendikar (13.8K)
That in mind, can you really go as far as saying Deadeye is omnipresent? As far as BLUE creatures go it's one of the best but truth be told, Blue doesn't have that many great creatures anyway and it's generally not mono-blue it's found in unless in concert with the likes of Palinchron - in which case I'd go as far as calling Palinchron the problematic card.
In fact, when you look at a list of "Staples" Per colour - Deadeye doesn't appear in Mono Blue, Dimir, Izzet, Simic, Esper, Grixis, Jeskai and all 4/5 colour lists - And it's listed as being in 20% of Azorius, 29% of Bant, 21% of Sultai and 34% of the Temur decks.
Not so omnipresent.
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Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
I haven't seen one in my group for several months. It's a powerfull card but doesn't seem that you could jam in every blue deck IMO. It needs another creature to abuse and you can bait it or respond atleast.
Same situation for me. Outside Roon decks, I also rarely run into this card anymore - it's good, but requires a really specific type of deck to be abusable imo.
It's one of the best blue creatures in the format, and can be a bit annoying when it gets going, but cards don't get banned just for being good, or even good and annoying.
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Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
When it was new, everyone was running Deadeye everywhere they could, and it got pretty old and boring pretty quick. With time, I've seen it (and run it) less and less often. It's a strong card, but nothing approaching omnipresent in the local metagame, and I doubt I'd rank it even in the top 100 format-legal cards in terms of creating undesirable game states.
Metagames where the Navigator is a problem ought to be running more Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.
When it was new, everyone was running Deadeye everywhere they could, and it got pretty old and boring pretty quick. With time, I've seen it (and run it) less and less often. It's a strong card, but nothing approaching omnipresent in the local metagame, and I doubt I'd rank it even in the top 100 format-legal cards in terms of creating undesirable game states.
Metagames where the Navigator is a problem ought to be running more Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.
Which are solid cards anyway due to how rampant ETB effects are in the format.
I don't particularly have a problem with it. It's an expensive card with clear windows of vulnerability. Even with combo potential, I don't see a reason it would deserve a ban.
Deadeye Navigator is at it's cheapest 5UUU: Blink a creature. And that alone makes it not banworthy to me. People tend to focus on the 1U: Blink a creature, but it still has a rather steep initial cost.
As for the "New players do not grasp the way the triggers work" argument - isn't this something the more experienced players should teach them?
This is quite true. When it flat out ends the game it's usually in the context of it being paired with Palinchron or Peregrine Drake, so it would in fact be an investment of 5UUU and not too far from an Omniscience or an entwined Tooth and Nail. Seeing it like that I suppose it's not as strong as just thinking about the 1U: Blink, much less now that we only have Seedborn Muse instead of also having Prophet of Kruphix.
Metagames where the Navigator is a problem ought to be running more Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.
Which are solid cards anyway due to how rampant ETB effects are in the format.
My issue with those cards is that they generally hose my own decks, hahaha.
As for the rest of the posts, yeah DEN had fallen off the map for a while in our group too, but around a year a go when the newer players joined it came back and flooded a nice bit. I thought it might be something that had happened in general, but at least now I know it's more of a local situation.
So how do people feel about this card at the moment? I saw that there was some discussion about it, but it's pretty old.
As far as the five criteria the RC uses, at least among the people I consistently play with at my LGS(which is a generally decently casual group of over 20 people), the following two are true:
Problematic Casual Omnipresence - Almost all decks that can run it, do.
Creates Undesirable Game States - The most base interaction that DEN has is using it as a psuedo-hexproof, and it's just downhill from there. Even innocent things like Farhaven Elf become two mana reusable Rampant Growth.
While the card itself doesn't have a lot of raw power, since paying two mana (maybe four since people are probably not going to target whatever is already soulbounded) for pseudo-hexproof is a decent inversion, the nature of the format lends it to spiral out of control. Most decklists run a lot of creatures with ETB effects, all with different levels of power, but when combined with DEN, now you're getting to reuse your effects for the mere cost of two mana and no drawbacks and the stronger the effect you're reusing, the better those two mana become.
Answering DEN isn't particularly difficult, since you can respond to the soulbound trigger to kill off either creature, but it has been my experience that a lot of "casual" or new players aren't aware of this. This lack of awareness seems to stem from a general misunderstanding on how the stack works among this subgroup of players.
It feels to me, and a decent amount of people in my group (since house banning it has come up quite often), that this card is not only problematic in terms of power and that casual/normal/new players can accidentally break it, but that it's also these people who might be the worst equipped to deal with it.
How does everyone else feel about it, does the format really gain anything from keeping it or is its strength just an artifact created by my playgroup?
As for the "New players do not grasp the way the triggers work" argument - isn't this something the more experienced players should teach them? Every time I've seen this happen with Player A Deadeyeing and player B mis-timing his removal, players C and D usually were quick enough to point out how those triggers stacked - and oftentimes player A was helpful enough too. Quite frankly if someone takes advantage of such a little hole in a player's knowledge of the game, that's rather scummy and is NOT the metric a ban should be measured at.
As a result, I just don't think it fits the "Creates undesireable board states" metric. It takes a fair bit of effort for it to do so. It's literally useless on it's own, it usually requires something to at least survive a turn before it becomes dangerous, it's sorcery speed...and yes I know you can all speed that up, but at that point we're talking about a multitude of cards combining to create such a state. Deadeye is in that case not the cause, but rather the most "obvious" target.
Which leaves you with casual omnipresence. While something could be said for this, I do think that it's not as bad anymore. EDHRec lists Deadeye as being in roughly 8.5K decks. Seems like a lot? Here are a few other cards around that level or around Deadeye's slot in a deck:
Mulldrifter (8.6K)
Terastodon (9.1K)
Consecrated Sphinx (8.1K)
Clever Impersonator (9.4K)
Rune-Scarred Demon (8.9K)
Sheoldred, Whispering One (10.2K)
Sun Titan (19K)
Avenger of Zendikar (13.8K)
That in mind, can you really go as far as saying Deadeye is omnipresent? As far as BLUE creatures go it's one of the best but truth be told, Blue doesn't have that many great creatures anyway and it's generally not mono-blue it's found in unless in concert with the likes of Palinchron - in which case I'd go as far as calling Palinchron the problematic card.
In fact, when you look at a list of "Staples" Per colour - Deadeye doesn't appear in Mono Blue, Dimir, Izzet, Simic, Esper, Grixis, Jeskai and all 4/5 colour lists - And it's listed as being in 20% of Azorius, 29% of Bant, 21% of Sultai and 34% of the Temur decks.
Not so omnipresent.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
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Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Metagames where the Navigator is a problem ought to be running more Torpor Orb and Hushwing Gryff.
Which are solid cards anyway due to how rampant ETB effects are in the format.
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This is quite true. When it flat out ends the game it's usually in the context of it being paired with Palinchron or Peregrine Drake, so it would in fact be an investment of 5UUU and not too far from an Omniscience or an entwined Tooth and Nail. Seeing it like that I suppose it's not as strong as just thinking about the 1U: Blink, much less now that we only have Seedborn Muse instead of also having Prophet of Kruphix.
My issue with those cards is that they generally hose my own decks, hahaha.
As for the rest of the posts, yeah DEN had fallen off the map for a while in our group too, but around a year a go when the newer players joined it came back and flooded a nice bit. I thought it might be something that had happened in general, but at least now I know it's more of a local situation.
I hated this card a lot more when I started playing and despised combo decks.
Still a strong card. I wish there were more Torpor Orb effects. There is so much more graveyard hate than ETB hate.
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