I've only been playing Magic for a year, and exclusively MTGO Pauper with physical cards. So arguments like, "Blue and Black shouldn't have aggro creatures" or conversely, "Blue has always been OP since the start of the game, that's just how it is and it should remain as such, the only reason I play is to break the game with Gush." kind of fall on deaf ears to me. My favorite deck is MBC, I've top foured a Pauper 1k with it. One of my favorite cards for constructed Pauper is Oubliette, which is a black Oblivion Ring. I go out of my way to put cards like Utopia Vow into my cube.
So cards that do things out of their color don't really bother me. I feel that I have an an outsider's perspective on MtG since I never grew up with it.
You're misunderstanding me due to an understandable lack of perspective. I'm not complaining about the color pie. I grew up with magic, played it for 20 years, seen it all. Delver of Secrets isn't a problem because of fluff. He's not doing something Blue isn't meant to do by being an evasive early threat. Blue has a million of those. Delver is broken because he's not just a random blue cheap evasive threat, but because he's also the strongest one-drop on top of that, and by a margin. The masques block constructed package (Daze, Foil, Gush, Brainstorm) was meant to be used to protect what was called "blue skies" - it was meant to let you play cheap evasive dudes and still have ways to play some countermagic. But it wasn't meant to protect a 3/2 flier for 1 mana. If you take Delver out of that equation, blue will still have a huge number of evasive early threats, but not the most powerful one in the game. The back-up suite of carddraw and counters blue has is powerful enough that also giving it such a beater is too much.
My favorite block is Time Spiral, and I love Planar Chaos. And Planar Chaos was a set full of cards traditionally associated with one color literally printed as-is in another color. I've got 0 problems with various effects being shuffled among colors, and it's necessary to do it every so often because various effects get phased out of the game, and colors end up lacking options. This happened to White multiple times. Banding, for example, used to be it's signature ability, and losing access to it left white with a mechanical hole. Folks these days think banding is novel, like you do, but back in the day banding was white's thing, and it was always a powerful combat ability, probably the most powerful. They got rid of it not just because it was confusing, but because it did too many things for one keyword.
Reprinting Oubliette wouldn't be a problem. It's a creature kill spell, and it used to be anomalous once upon a time when black had hardly any way to deal with other black creatures. They moved away from giving black conditional creature kill, anyway. And what's more, they did an "effect shuffle" when Masques Block rotated out, and took away Dark Ritual from Black. What they gave black in excange in Torment, the second set of the Odyssey block was multiple Oubliette effects (Faceless Butcher to name one) and also decided that "edicts" were going to be a regular thing, helping black deal with other black stuff. Those effects later ended up in White en-mass, but not because there's something particularly White about them, but because white's always shedding abilities and they felt it needed something. These days juniors think "EtB exile X, return if leaves play" is a white thing, but it was a black thing for a long time before anything of the sort showed up in white.
What I view as degenerate isn't swinging in for lethal with a 3 power flier, it's breaking the game with combos, abusing Ghostly Flicker, land destruction, hex proof, etc. I also don't particularly care that someone trying to cheat things onto the table with Exhume is equaled or exceeded by someone with a less cheaty version of the deck. I see that as a good thing.
Gurmag Angler dies to edicts. It dies to to numerous targeted removal spells. It's somewhat more vulnerable to bounce than the average creature. It just doesn't die to a handful of marquee black removal spells that people won't give up for whatever reason. Soul Reap is a fine spell, just play it. Oubliette, Journey, and O-Ring gobble it up. There are some new spells in Ravnica Allegiance that kill Gurmag.
Again, lack of perspective. Angler dies to some things - but the things he dies to are also things everything else dies to. He does not die to a lot of things which would be playable if he wasn't everywhere because there wouldn't be that one guy this thing doesn't kill.
Stats might not look flashy, but if you give enough of them for little enough investment, and especially around certain thresholds, they become a superpower. And when you make something big and cheap easy to splash, it warps the metagame. Again this might sound like color pie nitpicking to a newbie, but it's rather relevant - if green doesn't have the most cost-efficient dudes when it comes to stats, something is seriously wrong with the format. If you're green, the last thing you're supposed to be worrying about is dudes on the other side being flat out bigger than yours for the price. Green cards are made with this assumption in mind, that they will have the raw stat, or p/t-to-cost-ratio advantage, or that it'll take the least amount of effort to get bigger dudes onto the board. This is why green can't do certain things, the tradeoff is "biggest dudes". With blue the assumption is that your spell suite is universaly powerful enough, and that your guys are evasive, so that you don't need mad stats-for-cost.
But if you have a huge splashable guy outside of green, like Angler, and he's bigger than green's signature over the top cards in terms of p/t-to-cost/effort, and he is, this makes a lot of cards unplayable. If everybody can easily play something that's bigger, cheaper and less hassle than what green can play, then you've ruined a whole color. Not due to fluff, but because you broke the assumption under which green cards are made. And what's more, you push the requirements for removal so high that you take away green's ability to shrug some of it off due to the size of it's dudes - removal that kills Angler overkills creatures that were supposed to be moderately resistant to removal due to their size. If Angler is everywhere, then only the removal that can kill it is truly playable, and any removal that kills it overkills everything else.
And on top of that - decks that play colors other than green are not all meant to always have dude size disadvantages. Just when they're playing vs. green. Having Angler everywhere means that everybody is always supposed to be playing at a p/t-to-cost/effort disadvantage even if without Angler in the pool they wouldn't. Of course you can always play your own Angler, to beat up their Angler, and also put some Dragon enchantments in so you Angler can beat up or fly over their Angler, but since we're there, why not also use that single best evasive dude so if you don't draw you Angler you can still fly across theirs? So let's play Delver and Angler in every deck, and since Blue has the best answers, and black has the best removal, and you'd put those two dudes into any deck anyway because they're the strongest dudes, so what's the point of playing anything else? See how this works? And what's going on with the Online meta?
At this point you really can just slap Angler into any deck. You can put him in Affinity and make is waaaay stronger than it is. Put Krark-Clan Shaman mainboard to always have a wipe vs. go-wide and chump blocks, and profit off your wipe by dropping something that's bigger than Myr Enforcer and dies to way fewer things. BAM. Affinity Tier 1. Or at least closer to Tier 1 than it would be any other way.
Not to even get into the whole "just play X". "Just play these 10 card out of an eternal format cardpool because of this one guy" is completely ridiculous when it's obvious that without that one guy you could play hundreds of them. Some cards are anomalously powerful. They're design mistakes, or random peaks of power creep. They get used as watermarks for "we went too far" and then for half a decade you don't see anything that can replicate what they do. Sometimes never. There's removal out there which is not good enough to kill Delver but is powerful enough that nothing like it is likely to ever be printed at common. There are creatures out there that can't measure up to Angler, but are more-or-less at mythic power level themselves. Angler has to go because there's never going to be any reasonable ammount of cards printed, especially at common, that would not make him the biggest, cheapest guy.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
So let's play Delver and Angler in every deck, and since Blue has the best answers, and black has the best removal, and you'd put those two dudes into any deck anyway because they're the strongest dudes, so what's the point of playing anything else? See how this works? And what's going on with the Online meta?
I wanted to highlight this because this is the crux of the problem right here.
if green doesn't have the most cost-efficient dudes when it comes to stats, something is seriously wrong with the format.
I also wanted to highlight this because this is a related problem.
When Crimson Merchant of Rath enters the battlefield it does X times two damage for your devotion to red to target opponent.
Verdant Merchant of Fyndhorn 3GG
When VMoF ETB you gain X times two life for your devotion to green.
Our format lacks these balances, the color pie is skewed to blue and black, with red and white close behind and green wallowing in the dirt with nothing but Elves and Fog effects.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
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It's not Gurmag or Delver that are the problems. It's not being able to kill them through Gush & Foil + the preexisting countermagic suite that pushes them over the top. These creatures were just fine pre-Foil.
I'd also like to put forth the argument that before Foil was downshifted with UMA, Delver decks were on par with other fair, midrange type decks.
The core of the issue is that I don't care how unbalanced certain colors are that much, or how diverse the viable lists are. What I care about is how fun the format is. I recognize that something is always going to be The Best, so as long as The Best is fun, fair, interactive vanilla Magic then I'm happy.
So the real reason I hate Foil isn't because of how dominant it is, it's because free spells break the game's rules and are unfun.
The real reason I hate Izzet Blitz isn't because of how good it is. I hate it because losing on turn 3 before you can do anything isn't fun.
The real reason I hate Ghostly Flicker based Tron decks isn't because Tron is in reality the best deck in the format and it's underrepresented on MTGO because of the tedious clicking involved and nothing actually beats the deck. The reason I hate Flicker Tron is because I literally can't play the game at all past turn 4-5.
Etc.
Gurmag and Delver are just vanilla Magic. They're the best vanilla Magic creatures sure, but since they're vanilla Magic I have no problem with them.
It's not Gurmag or Delver that are the problems. It's not being able to kill them through Gush & Foil + the preexisting countermagic suite that pushes them over the top. These creatures were just fine pre-Foil.
Blue will always be able to protect it's dudes, that's what blue does. You'll never be able to kill anything blue plays easily, but the inherent asumption is that what blue will be playing will not also be the fastest clock in the game. Delver and Angler were always over the top, Daze was fine enough at protecting them, as were a million one-mana counters to whatever you could play. Foil's not even all that good, as it's still a 3-for-1 which ever way you slice it. The problem is that what blue (and blue/black) have at their disposal is broken dudes, so the loss of card advantage or tempo doesn't matter.
The core of the issue is that I don't care how unbalanced certain colors are that much, or how diverse the viable lists are. What I care about is how fun the format is. I recognize that something is always going to be The Best, so as long as The Best is fun, fair, interactive vanilla Magic then I'm happy.
The core of the issue with us arguing here is that you don't care about actually important things and sources of problems. The format was a flood of Delvers and Anglers before Foil was around, as blue was the best possible color to tangle with all the fogs, and they were occasionally getting slapped around by fast enough go-wide. That wasn't fun, and if you were somehow having fun - other people don't care about you or how you personally feel. They care about facts more, and the fact is that they're tired of seeing an endless flood of Delver decks in all stripes and colors, and all the other bulls**t we've listed here.
So the real reason I hate Foil isn't because of how dominant it is, it's because free spells break the game's rules and are unfun.
And yet I see folks having a blast playing them, and the only one that's causing actual legit grief is Prismatic Strands. None of the Masques block "free" spells are really free, they do cost you stuff. All the blue ones cost either tempo or card advantage. The very unfun problem is that what it, or any counterspell at all, buys them is more hits from a 3/2 guy & frends.
The real reason I hate Izzet Blitz isn't because of how good it is. I hate it because losing on turn 3 before you can do anything isn't fun.
You can do plenty by turn 3. Noone's got anywhere with Izzet Blitz in our meta. And if they're using Foil, they get even fewer cards to use to fuel their shennanigans.
The real reason I hate Ghostly Flicker based Tron decks isn't because Tron is in reality the best deck in the format and it's underrepresented on MTGO because of the tedious clicking involved and nothing actually beats the deck. The reason I hate Flicker Tron is because I literally can't play the game at all past turn 4-5.
It's nowhere near the best deck, and all it has going for it is the fog loop - and you're right, that's complete bull***** because it nullifies way to many potential strategies. Your personal fun is completely irrelevant to the universe at large. You, me, the OP - we're unimportant mammals wacking away at plastic boxes someone run electricity through and we're irrelevant. Unless we can bring up some facts. It's a fact that entire colors have no plays vs. a fog/flicker loop and that something ought to be done about that, regardless of whether some psychotic monkey descendands find that fun, or that other psychotic monkey descentands find it miserable.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
As for Foil, its got to go. Looks like your free to play your creature on the draw turn one or even on the play turn 2? Heck no, this piece of cheat counters your creature for free then feeds the Anglers out there. If Angler goes people will just switch to Hooting Mandrills or Sultai Scavenger to keep the degeneracy going. Foil is rotten and blue has far more than enough counter to deal with creatures in this format.
Here's the thing - Foil is really not as disgusting as folks make it out to be. 3-for-1 is no joke and Foil has never been a constructed staple outside of block. Daze was, and with some perspective you can reach the point where you realize how silly all the raving about Foil is while noone mentions Daze ever. If there's a problem with Foil, it's Gush, because as opposed to most "free" stuff, Gush easily ends up not costing you tempo, card advantage or anything. It will even net you a free untapped land if you didn't play one that turn. Without Angler to fuel, Foil isn't nearly as problematic as folks make it out to be, and having a free counter in an eternal format is a good thing because it does help keep really degenerate non-interactive stuff from happening. It's a complete blessing to have a Force of Will with a fairer cost in a format, and I wouldn't rush torches and pitchforks at it.
What's more, a sensible person would always sign blue giving up card advantage to counter things, rather then have cheap efficient counters that require them to have mana up. Because if all blue counters require them not to tap, things devolve into immensly boring draw-go where it takes blue ages to play a threat while also being able to protect it. But if blue has sensible sized threats, so that they can play them but not clock you the quickest in the format, and protection for them that costs card advantage, it makes for a dynamic experience and playable matchups.
And folks switching to Hooting Mandrils or Sultai Scavenger is really not a problem, because those things have stats which make them vulnerable to all sorts of things. Neither are zombies, Mandrils is of the standard size for a typical pushed green common beater, and the Scavenger dies to all sorts of things. Angler is huge enough that he does break, let's call them "vanilla margins rules", those two actually aren't.
As for Tangle, it would be picked up by players the second Moments Peace was banned as a replacement and there wouldn't be much lost. They need to look to Fog and its variants. Locking down a full board of creatures for 2 full turns is ridiculously unfair and unfun at such a ridiculously low mana investment. There are other less powerful options for the turbo fog people out there. And yes, I need to add Spore Frog to my restricted list.
The thing with Tangle specifically is that Tangle is orders of magnitude weaker than Moment's Peace or Prismatic Strands. The thing about those two is that you can pre-discard them (often to draw something) and still play them, and that Moment's Peace in particular can't be played around. Tangle can be played around in much the same way you'd play vs. a wrath - keep some dudes in hand, bait it out, then play the other dudes. And this does work. This mitigates some of it's impact without requiring specific cards or sideboards, just crafty play. Without fog loops, Tangle wouldn't be a problem. If it's widely used, and it likely will be, untap effects (tacked onto a pump spell, say, or an on-color on-theme dude) become an interesting option.
So as strong as Tangle is (and it is, take it from a guy who did a backflip when they printed it because I knew how good Spore Cloud , the original Tangle, was for a decade) it's nowhere near Moment's Peace.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
If Foil sent the cards into exile I would agree. But being able to pitch cards to delve or fuel graveyard shenanigans at no real loss of tempo (in fact a gain of tempo) AND it counters a spell is just too much. A loss of Angler would help somewhat as you say.
Tangle of course isn't as bad but it would slot in where Moment's Peace is in the decks that like to recur the fog effects. It would be better but still a problem. Strands needs to go, period.
Again I think we agree in principal, its just the "how" of how we get there.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
...So the real reason I hate Foil isn't because of how dominant it is, it's because free spells break the game's rules and are unfun...
Just wanna say, I think this is an absurd metric. In a CCG, all cards break the game's rules to some extent. I mean, it's Magic's Golden Rule:
101. The Magic Golden Rules
101.1. Whenever a card's text directly contradicts these rules, the card takes precedence. The card overrides only the rule that applies to that specific situation.
Haste breaks the game rule of summoning sickness. Flash breaks the game rule of only playing creatures on your turn. Card draw breaks the rule of only drawing one card per turn. Etc, etc.
I respect the opinions of y'all ban-happy folks, but man, am I glad that y'all don't actually have any influence on the actual ban list of Pauper. The idea of banning so many cards you get to Mulldrifter and Spore Frog reads like a parody.
Also note: the most recent T8 of the Pauper Challenge had 3 Burn decks, 1 Boros Bully, 1 Boros Monarch, 1 Bogles, 1 UB Delver, and 1 UR Delver. So if you wanted to use a database approach based on the actual results of what's dominating vs. just whatever you don't like or don't think fits some vague, personal conception of what's "fair" or "fun" Magic, maybe Lightning Bolt should be banned before any blue cards.
Also note: the most recent T8 of the Pauper Challenge had 3 Burn decks, 1 Boros Bully, 1 Boros Monarch, 1 Bogles, 1 UB Delver, and 1 UR Delver. So if you wanted to use a database approach based on the actual results
One top 8 is a SINGLE datapoint, not a database.
I have posted elsewhere in the thread what cards are the most played in the format. It is data driven and it shows BLUE as the culprit. Also when entire strategies can be blanked by a few ultra low casting cost cards (repeatedly) and there are no answers for these in some colors, that is a broken strategy in the format. We need all these strategies, don't get me wrong. But when the entire format devolves into Delver control, BX control, Boros control, Burn and Tron (control), it gets a little old for the aggro/creature mage (and I would guess the combo mage as well). Not everyone wants to play Elves or Bogles in order to run creatures competitively.
I agree with you that we shouldn't be rash to ban, but we don't need to take the slow, lets see what shakes out, slow, do-nothing approach. It will chase new players out in the long run.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Yeah, I'm not for banning a million cards, just ones that are obviously constricting what's playable and what's not.
- Delver is way too large for its cost, and it's also in a color which is naturally good against things that shut down creatures strats.
- Angler's simply too big for how easy it is to get him into play, and slots effortlessly into just about any deck, but particularly into ones which are inherently strong.
Those two don't break the rules of the game, but they do break rules of design by with the vast majority of everything else abides. They're vanilla, but just plain too strong, and this has quite an impact in the vanilla heavy world of pauper.
- Moment's Peace and Prismatic Strands are easy to chain, completely shut down 99% of the creature based plans in puaper, they're rather abusable with both loops and card filtering (Cantrip Time Walk!) etc. etc. These two are about as guilty for Blue being so popular in the last year, if not moreso, than anything blue actually does. They're also a large part of why Burn is so strong (I can attest from multiple paper tourneys in my meta lately - Burn won 2 out of the three last ones, and placed 2nd two days ago).
- Ghostly Flicker and that other one enable Fog loops. Availability of those reduces incentive for playing creature based strats, apart from the select few that can deal with a fog loop. They've also been key players in degenerate strats in the past. Chaining too many quality fogs is strong enough that ti warrants a ban or two to the more busted ones, but the ability of multi-flickers to loop anything will still let players break fogs and probably loop other things that weren't meant to be looped.
- Gush is a card draw spell which costs nothing apart from bouncing one tapped island and effectively untapping another one. It's pretty much as if Rite of Flame or Lotus Petal also said "Draw two cards" in its textbox. It's not hard to see why this is excessive and unnecessary. I don't think alternate-casting cost spells are a problem by default, but Gush is an anomaly even among them.
- Fireblast gives too much reach to Burn, and lets Burn clock people out way faster than is necessary. Burn is popular because it lets you sidestep the problem of having to play non-broken creatures into Delvers and Anglers, while also sidestepping fogs. The fact that it's doing well now isn't a sign that the meta is open, but that the meta is cemented as Burn is one of the niche strats which sidesteps issues. But even if the meta was open, Fireblast would be excessive in the deck.
And that's, off the top of my head, all that's really degenerate and tangibly constricting the format that could use a ban. I'm not sure there's an objective defense for any of those, or that the game would in any way be hurt by saying "Alright, we've had our fun, let's play with less insane cards now." Blue would have a slower clock, still fine, no Angler would mean 4/4's for 0-1-2 would actually mean something on the board again, pure win for the metagame, no busted fogs or fog-loops would mean that way more creature strats would actually be viable and that there'd be way less pressure to be blue if you want to play dudes, Gush ban would mean even decks with Islands need to invest something into carddraw instead of getting a mana boost out of it (and Fathom Seer would easily find it's way into decks which play it for the land bounce), and banning Fireblast would take away some speed from a largely non-interactive deck that's too full of legacy staples as-is and half a turn to fast for everyone's good.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Yeah, I'm not for banning a million cards, just ones that are obviously constricting what's playable and what's not.
- Delver is way too large for its cost, and it's also in a color which is naturally good against things that shut down creatures strats.
- Angler's simply too big for how easy it is to get him into play, and slots effortlessly into just about any deck, but particularly into ones which are inherently strong.
Those two don't break the rules of the game, but they do break rules of design by with the vast majority of everything else abides. They're vanilla, but just plain too strong, and this has quite an impact in the vanilla heavy world of pauper.
- Moment's Peace and Prismatic Strands are easy to chain, completely shut down 99% of the creature based plans in puaper, they're rather abusable with both loops and card filtering (Cantrip Time Walk!) etc. etc. These two are about as guilty for Blue being so popular in the last year, if not moreso, than anything blue actually does. They're also a large part of why Burn is so strong (I can attest from multiple paper tourneys in my meta lately - Burn won 2 out of the three last ones, and placed 2nd two days ago).
- Ghostly Flicker and that other one enable Fog loops. Availability of those reduces incentive for playing creature based strats, apart from the select few that can deal with a fog loop. They've also been key players in degenerate strats in the past. Chaining too many quality fogs is strong enough that ti warrants a ban or two to the more busted ones, but the ability of multi-flickers to loop anything will still let players break fogs and probably loop other things that weren't meant to be looped.
- Gush is a card draw spell which costs nothing apart from bouncing one tapped island and effectively untapping another one. It's pretty much as if Rite of Flame or Lotus Petal also said "Draw two cards" in its textbox. It's not hard to see why this is excessive and unnecessary. I don't think alternate-casting cost spells are a problem by default, but Gush is an anomaly even among them.
- Fireblast gives too much reach to Burn, and lets Burn clock people out way faster than is necessary. Burn is popular because it lets you sidestep the problem of having to play non-broken creatures into Delvers and Anglers, while also sidestepping fogs. The fact that it's doing well now isn't a sign that the meta is open, but that the meta is cemented as Burn is one of the niche strats which sidesteps issues. But even if the meta was open, Fireblast would be excessive in the deck.
And that's, off the top of my head, all that's really degenerate and tangibly constricting the format that could use a ban. I'm not sure there's an objective defense for any of those, or that the game would in any way be hurt by saying "Alright, we've had our fun, let's play with less insane cards now." Blue would have a slower clock, still fine, no Angler would mean 4/4's for 0-1-2 would actually mean something on the board again, pure win for the metagame, no busted fogs or fog-loops would mean that way more creature strats would actually be viable and that there'd be way less pressure to be blue if you want to play dudes, Gush ban would mean even decks with Islands need to invest something into carddraw instead of getting a mana boost out of it (and Fathom Seer would easily find it's way into decks which play it for the land bounce), and banning Fireblast would take away some speed from a largely non-interactive deck that's too full of legacy staples as-is and half a turn to fast for everyone's good.
Well said and I agree with every point you've made.
Just more anecdotal evidence I played a UBX control deck today that stabilized at 1 life against my mono G creature based deck and with the Ghostly Flicker/Archaeomancer Loop did not have to worry about a creature attack from that point on. I just conceded.
And excellent point on Burn, it dodges a lot of the control/removal problems so why not play it? It will become more prevalent and the meta will become less diverse.
Lastly, every and I mean every deck I played against today (6 opponents) was a control deck with all but one not playing blue.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Not a lot of diversity here at all. And other than a single Bogles list and a single Elves, NO creature based decks whatsoever. What a boring environment.
Basically Boros control, Burn or UBX Delver control. Others need not apply.
Oh and another non-diverse list from the week before...
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
The entire purpose of a game is to enjoy it, therefore the only metric of any value that's relevant for balancing the game is how fun certain things are.
You can go on and on about tournament data, but tournament data means jack ***** for multiple reasons.
1.) I've seen tournaments for games where a full 40% of the field will be running the same xeroxed thing that's degenerate and OP. Is this data given any weight despite it being an accurate representation of what the average players faces? No, of course not, only the top 8 is given any weight. From the small sample size of the top 8, idiots will then declare that the game is balanced despite 40% of the field running identical lists.
So 95% of the game's competitive playerbase has to deal with this broken nonsense every other game, and that's not a blatant problem because the 8 people in the cut had decent games?
Tournament data means jack *****. The, "Nothing ever needs to be banned git gud" side of the argument will always bend over backwards to selectively view the data in a certain light to avoid having to admit that their laissez-faire view on game balance is wrong.
Even when the top 8 is dominated by the degenerate thing in question, what will end up winning will happen to be something else or the thing that hates on the dominant thing and people will exclaim, "See, X isn't overpowered! Y won Worlds and X has never won Worlds, it never needs to be nerfed!"
2.) Claiming to value tournament data is just an excuse to have an unbalanced game.
Whatever meta percentage overpowered thing X is at is somehow magically never above the threshold at which it's too dominant (because it's an arbitrary number as opposed to the entire reason we're playing the game in first place: Fun)
"Thing X isn't OP, it's only 15% of the meta!"
Thing X isn't OP, it's only 20% of the meta!"
"Thing X isn't OP, it's only 25% of the meta!"
When it finally reaches about 30% or so, then it changes to, "Thing X isn't OP, there are multiple different versions of thing X that are distinct lists that should be counted separately!" (you see this with Tron and Delver, for example. A Delver deck will cut Delver for a second tier faerie or whatever or a Tron deck will abuse Flicker with Stonehorn Dignitary instead of Dinrova Horror and people will claim that they're different lists)
I come from X-Wing Miniatures. Trust me when I say that I have seen upwards of 80% meta dominance by certain things and the community's, "The sky isn't falling guys the game is fine" guys still don't change their opinion.
I love constructed Pauper and want to have players to play it with. That's why I complain and want things banned. The opinion opposite mine, that, "nothing ever needs to be banned git gud" ultimately results in a field that's >=60% one unfun, degenerate list.
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Foil is a good card. It's not card disadvantage to discard cards that are not providing you any advantage. It's incredibly worth it to discard an extra island and a Faerie Miscreant or whatever in order to not lose the game by say, protecting your Gurmag from the last removal spell in your opponent's hand.
Having 3 cards of actual value + 4 extra islands isn't better than a 4 card hard that's all gas.
I know that this is just basics, but I've heard plenty of people that like to say Foil is a bad card. They're all wrong and they're ignoring reality because they're beholden to some vague doctrine someone wrote about in an article 17 years ago on The Dojo.
The entire purpose of a game is to enjoy it, therefore the only metric of any value that's relevant for balancing the game is how fun certain things are.
Maybe this one wasn't aimed at me but I want to address it. I hope it doesn't sound too aggressive but here it goes.
Maybe it can be fun to you. But if it is unfun for 99 other people your happiness does not overrule their annoyance. They quit and you are sitting there with cards and no one to play with.
Your fun isn't necessarily someone elses fun. I understand the "fun factor". Its fun if you win more than you lose in general or even if you can win 50% of the time. Losing to unfun/unfair/broken cards strategies game after game isn't fun. Balance is needed. Balance makes the game more fun. At least maybe we can agree that some cards in the format need to go. That WILL bring balance. I will look on the bright side.
What cards would you like to see banned? How about top 4 bans?
Here is what I propose for a start: One ban from each color.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Speaking about Foil - noone said it was a bad card, just that isn't as brutal as folks make it out to be. Yes, discarding 2 cards that don't do much for you to skip paying for a counterspell isn't bad at all and it can be used as a discard outlet, too, of course. But it still means that the person discarding the cards drew two cards which don't do much for them and used three of them to deal with one of yours. If it's early game, they could've done it with just one mana open and one card in a number of ways, with a Counterspell it takes only two mana, and with Daze it doesn't take any mana open. So unless they drew those cards too easily (with, say, Gush) what they did was a lot like muliganing themselves to 5 in order to be able to secure a counterspell.
Foil can only really get out of hand if it's used to protect overly fast combos, or overly powerful early threats. And Gush obviously breaks it. But otherwise the only deck in Pauper where it's potentially a problem is reanimator, and currently UB Delver because UB Delver has insane early threats. If the other guy draws 10 cards by turn 3 and can kill you with 7 of those, some of which have to be lands, so let's say 4 cards (excluding lands, Foil itself, and whatever they pitch to it), then whatever those 4 cards are is very likely too strong.
It's even more telling how strong UB Delver threats are when you consider that so many cards in their deck don't affect the board at all, but are only used to dig for the cards that do. And then those are enough to win matches. Foil might be broken in a reanimation strategy, it could be protecting a rapidly reanimated 8/8 with annihilator 2 and possibly haste on top of it. That's an obvious way to pitch 3 cards to deal with an answer and be able to win with the cards you have left. If folks were complaining about that it'd be pretty obvious what the problem was. But that's not what's going on, and if UB Delver is beating Reanimator for threat efficiency then we've got bigger problems than Foil.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
I've had it played against a Dark Ritual which I would have cast 2 spells off of on turn one. I've had it played off a Burning-Tree Emissary in which I would have chained another BTE into a third creature on turn two on the play. It can hose Elves from chaining turn one, It can hose Affinity from chaining turn one. It hits these aggro decks so hard that the tempo loss from that point may be hard to come back from on turn one or two!
I'm with you on Gush being worse. Snap is up there too. I don't mind blue having tools to deal with aggro but SO many tools with SO many fog effects and SO many cheap 1/3 card draw creatures and SO many cheap 0/4 walls, and SO much removal just makes it a hostile environment for creature aggro.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
This discussion was on my mind going into last week, and I ran two Pauper tourneys, one on Tuesday and one on Saturday. Some young Spikes got into pauper due to some local buzz, and they naturally went for all they heard about online, which is Delver (and since we also have Inside Out for rent and it uses a lot of the blue staple stuff, they went for that, too).
So what happened at the Tuesday tourney was the first Delver tourney win we've had happen in a while. The thing, though, was, that after round 3 the UB Delver in question, a mono-black Zombies deck and a mono-white Metalcraft deck each had 7 points. Any one of them could take it, and what ended up happening was that the Delver got downpaired against Mono G Infect, while the other two played each other. So Metalcraft kicked Zombies out of the running, and Infect lost 1-2 to Delver, and in the end Delver won on tie-breakers while never actually facing the white Metalcraft deck which is a pretty bad matchup for Delver because of so many beefy fliers and ways to attack into Augur of Bolas Metalcraft has. And Infect could've won if the player playing it didn't punt in the final game.
Then what happened on Tuesday was that some of the Spikes came around, nice young dudes just a bit funny how stoked for sucess they are, and the most experienced of them picked up Inside Out. Now, we had some Inside Out tourney wins recently and he did beat up two of his opponents, but he lost to - Rebels. Handily. Because some of us old farts who've been around for a while simply went "Ok, if blue's gonna play Masques Block Constructed, let's play Masques Block Constructed" and put together a Rebels list which has a reaaaaaly good matchup vs. delver and most other Foil-Gush-Daze-Brainstorm-Counterspell neo-Blue-Skies stuff. I piloted it and had no isses with blue, but I barely drew with a Boros Bully and a small kid took the tourney with Mono G Infect.
I played those Rebels in the Tuesday tourney, too, except all the Delvers dodged me in the pairings, so I don't have enough data, but Rebels seem to do very well vs. that sort of thing for obvious reasons. A lot of what Delver is is Masques Block Blue with some busted threats, and Rebels are Masques Block White with with some Time Spiral additions. And it's not just Blue that's silly in Masques Block, that block was hella strong, it's just criminally underrated historically because it was measured against the ludicrously broken Urza's Block. So most opinion on it you can find online is echo-chamber baseless memes. Take the rares out of the equation, and Masques block is a solid contender for the top all-time spot of all Magic blocks in terms of power, with a spot in top 3-5 guaranteed. It's no joke with rares included, either. Rebels are a nightmare matchup for Masques Block Blue. They used to rule standard back in the day, because most of what's called delver today was all there in standard and it was equally as strong, but couldn't do anything to Rebels (which is why everyone ended up playing Counter-Rebel, half-Delver, half-Rebel). They're quite unique, but it's good to have them in the pool to give wannabe grinders a ding behind the ears.
The good thing about Rebels, though, is that they don't actually hose everything, they're just really good vs. some thing, counterspells most of all. The meta which they ruled in standard wasn't defined by them being the strongest dudes, but by crazy-ass counterspells hosing everything else, and those were as stong as they were to try to keep down silly combo nonsense from Urza's Block. And people remember that meta as "Rebels was the best deck", instead of "Combo was so insane that you had to be blue to have a shot, and then only Rebels worked against blue". So was a convoluted mess that lead to the dominance of one deck, just like the situation with fogs leading to everyone playing Delver in Pauper today.
What's more, Zombies seem to have game against all of the big three gameplans - they have threat and removal recursion vs. Delver (because of their much higher threat density), boardwipes vs. go-wide and lifeloss-burn vs. fogs (also good vs. blue counters as some of it can't be countered). The internet seems to treat them as a tier 2 deck but they don't seem to be one, they seem ridiculously powerful. Another thing to keep in mind.
And seeing how much weight recurring Nameless Inversion with Ghoulcaller's Chant pulls in Zombies, we've decided to see if we can brew up a screwy RB Pirates list which ought to have a pretty good game against the main contenders in the field, too. Simply because Fanatical Firebrand and Goblin Trailblazer are quite playable, Nameless Inversion can be recurred with March of the Drowned and you can run Sparksmith in a deck with just the right amount of goblins to ping off most of what Delver puts down while not destroying your life total. Oh, and it seems like a good home for Reckless Abandon and that 2R 5-dmg-if-morbid thing from Innistrad for some reach. Initial testing is sorta promising, and feels like we just need to hit the right numbers for various cards in the list. Pirates are not nearly as well supported as most major tribes or themes, but if a solid build could be put together it'd be really nice to have a goofy tier 2 thing in the rent pool that randomly beats popular netdecks up.
I'd like to thank everyone participating in this discussion as it really helped us wrap our heads around the meta and find the right mechanics and decks to add to our pool. I'm still pro-ban on some things, ofc, but it's still fun to take down the online meta kings and this sort of discussion helps
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
I've experienced the same thing at my local meta...top tier decks like Delver being stomped by stuff like Naya Slivers, which went 4-0.
I think part of it is that most people are analyzing the Pauper meta purely based on the MTGO Challenges/Leagues, which is in some way an extremely insular meta. If the top players are only going to play Delver/Boros, then of course that's the only thing that's going to win.
I've experienced the same thing at my local meta...top tier decks like Delver being stomped by stuff like Naya Slivers, which went 4-0.
I think part of it is that most people are analyzing the Pauper meta purely based on the MTGO Challenges/Leagues, which is in some way an extremely insular meta. If the top players are only going to play Delver/Boros, then of course that's the only thing that's going to win.
This thread is actually a good read on why there's a flood of Delvers Online. It's not (just) because of the inherently busted threats the UB Delver has at it's disposal, but because everything else has a very lousy matchup against fogs. Delver (and Tribe Combo, due to also being mostly Masques Block Blue) have game vs. fogs, so even if they didn't have Delver and Angler at their disposal, blue decks would still crowd the metagame. Quite a bunch of other decks have game vs. Delver - Rebels, Zombies, Burn, Goblins, White/Boros flier decks, probably other things - but all that good stuff including most creature strats gets hosed by fog spam / loops. Then it looks like Delver is the "best deck", and it is really powerful and could tank nerfs like a champ, but it's not as great as numbers seem to suggest. Do away with availability of fogs, let other dude strats have a shot, and Delver won't be as dominant. The way things are now decks which do slap Delver around brick against fog loops wholesale.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Do away with availability of fogs, let other dude strats have a shot, and Delver won't be as dominant. The way things are now decks which do slap Delver around have an incredibly lousy game vs. Tron and Turbo-Fog.
Quoted for truth!!!
Played another game today and got fogged out by Tron, knocked them down to one point, winning 20 to 1 with lethal on turn 6. Locked out by Moment's Peace with my aggro creature deck. Get that crap crutch of a card out of the meta, as well as Prismatic Strands another playing-not-to-lose crutch of a card. Get rid of this fog lock nonsense and all of a sudden Delver becomes less prevalent due to its game vs. fog-crutch strategies.
Then blue won't need that many bans as I suggested, maybe just one or two.
At this point if either of those 2 cards would be banned I'd weep with joy.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Another insight from another local tourney. We held one this evening, and the field was so even that the guy in the lead was downpaired for the finals. He played W Metalcraft and handily beat up a UB Delver in the first round, and I was playing GB Dredge/Madness/Tortured Existance to playtest it as I put it together for rent. If I'd have won that game, the winner would've been decided on tiebreakers between W Metalcraft, GB Dredge, Affinity and UB Delver.
Now here's the key bit: The guy playing Metalcraft was packing Nihil Spellbomb main. It was a rent deck, and I made it, and I put that thing in there (with Vault of Whispers instead of Darksteel Citadel for the second affinity/metalcraft enabling artifact land) because that deck is so strong, linear and pushed that it's a perfect deck to rent to newbies. Playing it gets them wins and breaks their fear that they need to play Delver to even have a shot at winning anything. The problem is that regardless of how strong it is, and Scars Block is one of the all-time peaks of pushed everything and this pairs it up with Mirrodin, too, anyhow, as insanely pushed as the stuff in the deck is it's completely unplayable because it brick against fog loops. So you abo****ely have to play Nihil Spellbomb (or Relic, obv) to even have a reason to sleeve it up. And in the mainboard, too, because giving up game 1 just sets you up to not draw the necessary card in games 2-3, and without some means to punch through a fog loop you might as well not show up.
Where it gets disasterous for the meta is that it hoses non-broken graveyard stuff as collateral. I was playing a deck which could've lost any number of matches against various opponents. I got to the finals with it on luck and skill. But the guy I was playing in the finals had to run brutal mainboard hate against me simply because otherwise they'd be sitting ducks against Tron's. The omnipresence of Angler doesn't help this, either, as it reinforces the need to have overpowered graveyard hate everywhere. Things that draw you a card to hose the essence of non-dominant strats are just backbreaking, and strats which take that kind of an answer are flat out ridiculous.
So as to what I'd ban - it's still the same list, except that if Angler and fog loops are out of the picture then cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus only serve the purpose to brutally hose anything related to the graveyard so much that it might as well not exist. So they should go, too.
In case anyone's interested here's how the rather small tourney panned out:
1: W Metalcraft 12
2: UB Delver 9
3: Affinity 9
4: Mono B Ponza 6
5: Domain Zoo 6
6: BG Dredge 6
7: G Infect 6
8: Boros Bully 3
9: Rakdos Control 3
10: Turbo Fog 0
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
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You're misunderstanding me due to an understandable lack of perspective. I'm not complaining about the color pie. I grew up with magic, played it for 20 years, seen it all. Delver of Secrets isn't a problem because of fluff. He's not doing something Blue isn't meant to do by being an evasive early threat. Blue has a million of those. Delver is broken because he's not just a random blue cheap evasive threat, but because he's also the strongest one-drop on top of that, and by a margin. The masques block constructed package (Daze, Foil, Gush, Brainstorm) was meant to be used to protect what was called "blue skies" - it was meant to let you play cheap evasive dudes and still have ways to play some countermagic. But it wasn't meant to protect a 3/2 flier for 1 mana. If you take Delver out of that equation, blue will still have a huge number of evasive early threats, but not the most powerful one in the game. The back-up suite of carddraw and counters blue has is powerful enough that also giving it such a beater is too much.
My favorite block is Time Spiral, and I love Planar Chaos. And Planar Chaos was a set full of cards traditionally associated with one color literally printed as-is in another color. I've got 0 problems with various effects being shuffled among colors, and it's necessary to do it every so often because various effects get phased out of the game, and colors end up lacking options. This happened to White multiple times. Banding, for example, used to be it's signature ability, and losing access to it left white with a mechanical hole. Folks these days think banding is novel, like you do, but back in the day banding was white's thing, and it was always a powerful combat ability, probably the most powerful. They got rid of it not just because it was confusing, but because it did too many things for one keyword.
Reprinting Oubliette wouldn't be a problem. It's a creature kill spell, and it used to be anomalous once upon a time when black had hardly any way to deal with other black creatures. They moved away from giving black conditional creature kill, anyway. And what's more, they did an "effect shuffle" when Masques Block rotated out, and took away Dark Ritual from Black. What they gave black in excange in Torment, the second set of the Odyssey block was multiple Oubliette effects (Faceless Butcher to name one) and also decided that "edicts" were going to be a regular thing, helping black deal with other black stuff. Those effects later ended up in White en-mass, but not because there's something particularly White about them, but because white's always shedding abilities and they felt it needed something. These days juniors think "EtB exile X, return if leaves play" is a white thing, but it was a black thing for a long time before anything of the sort showed up in white.
Again, lack of perspective. Angler dies to some things - but the things he dies to are also things everything else dies to. He does not die to a lot of things which would be playable if he wasn't everywhere because there wouldn't be that one guy this thing doesn't kill.
Stats might not look flashy, but if you give enough of them for little enough investment, and especially around certain thresholds, they become a superpower. And when you make something big and cheap easy to splash, it warps the metagame. Again this might sound like color pie nitpicking to a newbie, but it's rather relevant - if green doesn't have the most cost-efficient dudes when it comes to stats, something is seriously wrong with the format. If you're green, the last thing you're supposed to be worrying about is dudes on the other side being flat out bigger than yours for the price. Green cards are made with this assumption in mind, that they will have the raw stat, or p/t-to-cost-ratio advantage, or that it'll take the least amount of effort to get bigger dudes onto the board. This is why green can't do certain things, the tradeoff is "biggest dudes". With blue the assumption is that your spell suite is universaly powerful enough, and that your guys are evasive, so that you don't need mad stats-for-cost.
But if you have a huge splashable guy outside of green, like Angler, and he's bigger than green's signature over the top cards in terms of p/t-to-cost/effort, and he is, this makes a lot of cards unplayable. If everybody can easily play something that's bigger, cheaper and less hassle than what green can play, then you've ruined a whole color. Not due to fluff, but because you broke the assumption under which green cards are made. And what's more, you push the requirements for removal so high that you take away green's ability to shrug some of it off due to the size of it's dudes - removal that kills Angler overkills creatures that were supposed to be moderately resistant to removal due to their size. If Angler is everywhere, then only the removal that can kill it is truly playable, and any removal that kills it overkills everything else.
And on top of that - decks that play colors other than green are not all meant to always have dude size disadvantages. Just when they're playing vs. green. Having Angler everywhere means that everybody is always supposed to be playing at a p/t-to-cost/effort disadvantage even if without Angler in the pool they wouldn't. Of course you can always play your own Angler, to beat up their Angler, and also put some Dragon enchantments in so you Angler can beat up or fly over their Angler, but since we're there, why not also use that single best evasive dude so if you don't draw you Angler you can still fly across theirs? So let's play Delver and Angler in every deck, and since Blue has the best answers, and black has the best removal, and you'd put those two dudes into any deck anyway because they're the strongest dudes, so what's the point of playing anything else? See how this works? And what's going on with the Online meta?
At this point you really can just slap Angler into any deck. You can put him in Affinity and make is waaaay stronger than it is. Put Krark-Clan Shaman mainboard to always have a wipe vs. go-wide and chump blocks, and profit off your wipe by dropping something that's bigger than Myr Enforcer and dies to way fewer things. BAM. Affinity Tier 1. Or at least closer to Tier 1 than it would be any other way.
Not to even get into the whole "just play X". "Just play these 10 card out of an eternal format cardpool because of this one guy" is completely ridiculous when it's obvious that without that one guy you could play hundreds of them. Some cards are anomalously powerful. They're design mistakes, or random peaks of power creep. They get used as watermarks for "we went too far" and then for half a decade you don't see anything that can replicate what they do. Sometimes never. There's removal out there which is not good enough to kill Delver but is powerful enough that nothing like it is likely to ever be printed at common. There are creatures out there that can't measure up to Angler, but are more-or-less at mythic power level themselves. Angler has to go because there's never going to be any reasonable ammount of cards printed, especially at common, that would not make him the biggest, cheapest guy.
I wanted to highlight this because this is the crux of the problem right here.
I also wanted to highlight this because this is a related problem.
For every Gray Merchant of Asphodel out there, there needs to be a
Crimson Merchant of Rath 3RR
When Crimson Merchant of Rath enters the battlefield it does X times two damage for your devotion to red to target opponent.
Verdant Merchant of Fyndhorn 3GG
When VMoF ETB you gain X times two life for your devotion to green.
Our format lacks these balances, the color pie is skewed to blue and black, with red and white close behind and green wallowing in the dirt with nothing but Elves and Fog effects.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I'd also like to put forth the argument that before Foil was downshifted with UMA, Delver decks were on par with other fair, midrange type decks.
The core of the issue is that I don't care how unbalanced certain colors are that much, or how diverse the viable lists are. What I care about is how fun the format is. I recognize that something is always going to be The Best, so as long as The Best is fun, fair, interactive vanilla Magic then I'm happy.
So the real reason I hate Foil isn't because of how dominant it is, it's because free spells break the game's rules and are unfun.
The real reason I hate Izzet Blitz isn't because of how good it is. I hate it because losing on turn 3 before you can do anything isn't fun.
The real reason I hate Ghostly Flicker based Tron decks isn't because Tron is in reality the best deck in the format and it's underrepresented on MTGO because of the tedious clicking involved and nothing actually beats the deck. The reason I hate Flicker Tron is because I literally can't play the game at all past turn 4-5.
Etc.
Gurmag and Delver are just vanilla Magic. They're the best vanilla Magic creatures sure, but since they're vanilla Magic I have no problem with them.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Blue will always be able to protect it's dudes, that's what blue does. You'll never be able to kill anything blue plays easily, but the inherent asumption is that what blue will be playing will not also be the fastest clock in the game. Delver and Angler were always over the top, Daze was fine enough at protecting them, as were a million one-mana counters to whatever you could play. Foil's not even all that good, as it's still a 3-for-1 which ever way you slice it. The problem is that what blue (and blue/black) have at their disposal is broken dudes, so the loss of card advantage or tempo doesn't matter.
They weren't, it's just that everyone overreacted to Foil drawing attention to what was already obvious.
The core of the issue with us arguing here is that you don't care about actually important things and sources of problems. The format was a flood of Delvers and Anglers before Foil was around, as blue was the best possible color to tangle with all the fogs, and they were occasionally getting slapped around by fast enough go-wide. That wasn't fun, and if you were somehow having fun - other people don't care about you or how you personally feel. They care about facts more, and the fact is that they're tired of seeing an endless flood of Delver decks in all stripes and colors, and all the other bulls**t we've listed here.
And yet I see folks having a blast playing them, and the only one that's causing actual legit grief is Prismatic Strands. None of the Masques block "free" spells are really free, they do cost you stuff. All the blue ones cost either tempo or card advantage. The very unfun problem is that what it, or any counterspell at all, buys them is more hits from a 3/2 guy & frends.
You can do plenty by turn 3. Noone's got anywhere with Izzet Blitz in our meta. And if they're using Foil, they get even fewer cards to use to fuel their shennanigans.
It's nowhere near the best deck, and all it has going for it is the fog loop - and you're right, that's complete bull***** because it nullifies way to many potential strategies. Your personal fun is completely irrelevant to the universe at large. You, me, the OP - we're unimportant mammals wacking away at plastic boxes someone run electricity through and we're irrelevant. Unless we can bring up some facts. It's a fact that entire colors have no plays vs. a fog/flicker loop and that something ought to be done about that, regardless of whether some psychotic monkey descendands find that fun, or that other psychotic monkey descentands find it miserable.
Vanilla magic has it's rules, whether you understand them or not. And Delver and Angler break those, and we've explained at length how and why.
Here's the thing - Foil is really not as disgusting as folks make it out to be. 3-for-1 is no joke and Foil has never been a constructed staple outside of block. Daze was, and with some perspective you can reach the point where you realize how silly all the raving about Foil is while noone mentions Daze ever. If there's a problem with Foil, it's Gush, because as opposed to most "free" stuff, Gush easily ends up not costing you tempo, card advantage or anything. It will even net you a free untapped land if you didn't play one that turn. Without Angler to fuel, Foil isn't nearly as problematic as folks make it out to be, and having a free counter in an eternal format is a good thing because it does help keep really degenerate non-interactive stuff from happening. It's a complete blessing to have a Force of Will with a fairer cost in a format, and I wouldn't rush torches and pitchforks at it.
What's more, a sensible person would always sign blue giving up card advantage to counter things, rather then have cheap efficient counters that require them to have mana up. Because if all blue counters require them not to tap, things devolve into immensly boring draw-go where it takes blue ages to play a threat while also being able to protect it. But if blue has sensible sized threats, so that they can play them but not clock you the quickest in the format, and protection for them that costs card advantage, it makes for a dynamic experience and playable matchups.
And folks switching to Hooting Mandrils or Sultai Scavenger is really not a problem, because those things have stats which make them vulnerable to all sorts of things. Neither are zombies, Mandrils is of the standard size for a typical pushed green common beater, and the Scavenger dies to all sorts of things. Angler is huge enough that he does break, let's call them "vanilla margins rules", those two actually aren't.
The thing with Tangle specifically is that Tangle is orders of magnitude weaker than Moment's Peace or Prismatic Strands. The thing about those two is that you can pre-discard them (often to draw something) and still play them, and that Moment's Peace in particular can't be played around. Tangle can be played around in much the same way you'd play vs. a wrath - keep some dudes in hand, bait it out, then play the other dudes. And this does work. This mitigates some of it's impact without requiring specific cards or sideboards, just crafty play. Without fog loops, Tangle wouldn't be a problem. If it's widely used, and it likely will be, untap effects (tacked onto a pump spell, say, or an on-color on-theme dude) become an interesting option.
So as strong as Tangle is (and it is, take it from a guy who did a backflip when they printed it because I knew how good Spore Cloud , the original Tangle, was for a decade) it's nowhere near Moment's Peace.
Tangle of course isn't as bad but it would slot in where Moment's Peace is in the decks that like to recur the fog effects. It would be better but still a problem. Strands needs to go, period.
Again I think we agree in principal, its just the "how" of how we get there.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Just wanna say, I think this is an absurd metric. In a CCG, all cards break the game's rules to some extent. I mean, it's Magic's Golden Rule:
Haste breaks the game rule of summoning sickness. Flash breaks the game rule of only playing creatures on your turn. Card draw breaks the rule of only drawing one card per turn. Etc, etc.
What is "vanilla Magic," really? Nothing but Grizzly Bears and Volcanic Hammer? That sounds super boring.
I respect the opinions of y'all ban-happy folks, but man, am I glad that y'all don't actually have any influence on the actual ban list of Pauper. The idea of banning so many cards you get to Mulldrifter and Spore Frog reads like a parody.
Also note: the most recent T8 of the Pauper Challenge had 3 Burn decks, 1 Boros Bully, 1 Boros Monarch, 1 Bogles, 1 UB Delver, and 1 UR Delver. So if you wanted to use a database approach based on the actual results of what's dominating vs. just whatever you don't like or don't think fits some vague, personal conception of what's "fair" or "fun" Magic, maybe Lightning Bolt should be banned before any blue cards.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
One top 8 is a SINGLE datapoint, not a database.
I have posted elsewhere in the thread what cards are the most played in the format. It is data driven and it shows BLUE as the culprit. Also when entire strategies can be blanked by a few ultra low casting cost cards (repeatedly) and there are no answers for these in some colors, that is a broken strategy in the format. We need all these strategies, don't get me wrong. But when the entire format devolves into Delver control, BX control, Boros control, Burn and Tron (control), it gets a little old for the aggro/creature mage (and I would guess the combo mage as well). Not everyone wants to play Elves or Bogles in order to run creatures competitively.
I agree with you that we shouldn't be rash to ban, but we don't need to take the slow, lets see what shakes out, slow, do-nothing approach. It will chase new players out in the long run.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
- Delver is way too large for its cost, and it's also in a color which is naturally good against things that shut down creatures strats.
- Angler's simply too big for how easy it is to get him into play, and slots effortlessly into just about any deck, but particularly into ones which are inherently strong.
Those two don't break the rules of the game, but they do break rules of design by with the vast majority of everything else abides. They're vanilla, but just plain too strong, and this has quite an impact in the vanilla heavy world of pauper.
- Moment's Peace and Prismatic Strands are easy to chain, completely shut down 99% of the creature based plans in puaper, they're rather abusable with both loops and card filtering (Cantrip Time Walk!) etc. etc. These two are about as guilty for Blue being so popular in the last year, if not moreso, than anything blue actually does. They're also a large part of why Burn is so strong (I can attest from multiple paper tourneys in my meta lately - Burn won 2 out of the three last ones, and placed 2nd two days ago).
- Ghostly Flicker and that other one enable Fog loops. Availability of those reduces incentive for playing creature based strats, apart from the select few that can deal with a fog loop. They've also been key players in degenerate strats in the past. Chaining too many quality fogs is strong enough that ti warrants a ban or two to the more busted ones, but the ability of multi-flickers to loop anything will still let players break fogs and probably loop other things that weren't meant to be looped.
- Gush is a card draw spell which costs nothing apart from bouncing one tapped island and effectively untapping another one. It's pretty much as if Rite of Flame or Lotus Petal also said "Draw two cards" in its textbox. It's not hard to see why this is excessive and unnecessary. I don't think alternate-casting cost spells are a problem by default, but Gush is an anomaly even among them.
- Fireblast gives too much reach to Burn, and lets Burn clock people out way faster than is necessary. Burn is popular because it lets you sidestep the problem of having to play non-broken creatures into Delvers and Anglers, while also sidestepping fogs. The fact that it's doing well now isn't a sign that the meta is open, but that the meta is cemented as Burn is one of the niche strats which sidesteps issues. But even if the meta was open, Fireblast would be excessive in the deck.
And that's, off the top of my head, all that's really degenerate and tangibly constricting the format that could use a ban. I'm not sure there's an objective defense for any of those, or that the game would in any way be hurt by saying "Alright, we've had our fun, let's play with less insane cards now." Blue would have a slower clock, still fine, no Angler would mean 4/4's for 0-1-2 would actually mean something on the board again, pure win for the metagame, no busted fogs or fog-loops would mean that way more creature strats would actually be viable and that there'd be way less pressure to be blue if you want to play dudes, Gush ban would mean even decks with Islands need to invest something into carddraw instead of getting a mana boost out of it (and Fathom Seer would easily find it's way into decks which play it for the land bounce), and banning Fireblast would take away some speed from a largely non-interactive deck that's too full of legacy staples as-is and half a turn to fast for everyone's good.
Well said and I agree with every point you've made.
Just more anecdotal evidence I played a UBX control deck today that stabilized at 1 life against my mono G creature based deck and with the Ghostly Flicker/Archaeomancer Loop did not have to worry about a creature attack from that point on. I just conceded.
And excellent point on Burn, it dodges a lot of the control/removal problems so why not play it? It will become more prevalent and the meta will become less diverse.
Lastly, every and I mean every deck I played against today (6 opponents) was a control deck with all but one not playing blue.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/pauper-challenge-11787272#paper
Not a lot of diversity here at all. And other than a single Bogles list and a single Elves, NO creature based decks whatsoever. What a boring environment.
Basically Boros control, Burn or UBX Delver control. Others need not apply.
Oh and another non-diverse list from the week before...
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/pauper-challenge-11780208#paper
8 of the top 10 cards played were blue. Who woulda thunk?
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
You can go on and on about tournament data, but tournament data means jack ***** for multiple reasons.
1.) I've seen tournaments for games where a full 40% of the field will be running the same xeroxed thing that's degenerate and OP. Is this data given any weight despite it being an accurate representation of what the average players faces? No, of course not, only the top 8 is given any weight. From the small sample size of the top 8, idiots will then declare that the game is balanced despite 40% of the field running identical lists.
So 95% of the game's competitive playerbase has to deal with this broken nonsense every other game, and that's not a blatant problem because the 8 people in the cut had decent games?
Tournament data means jack *****. The, "Nothing ever needs to be banned git gud" side of the argument will always bend over backwards to selectively view the data in a certain light to avoid having to admit that their laissez-faire view on game balance is wrong.
Even when the top 8 is dominated by the degenerate thing in question, what will end up winning will happen to be something else or the thing that hates on the dominant thing and people will exclaim, "See, X isn't overpowered! Y won Worlds and X has never won Worlds, it never needs to be nerfed!"
2.) Claiming to value tournament data is just an excuse to have an unbalanced game.
Whatever meta percentage overpowered thing X is at is somehow magically never above the threshold at which it's too dominant (because it's an arbitrary number as opposed to the entire reason we're playing the game in first place: Fun)
"Thing X isn't OP, it's only 15% of the meta!"
Thing X isn't OP, it's only 20% of the meta!"
"Thing X isn't OP, it's only 25% of the meta!"
When it finally reaches about 30% or so, then it changes to, "Thing X isn't OP, there are multiple different versions of thing X that are distinct lists that should be counted separately!" (you see this with Tron and Delver, for example. A Delver deck will cut Delver for a second tier faerie or whatever or a Tron deck will abuse Flicker with Stonehorn Dignitary instead of Dinrova Horror and people will claim that they're different lists)
I come from X-Wing Miniatures. Trust me when I say that I have seen upwards of 80% meta dominance by certain things and the community's, "The sky isn't falling guys the game is fine" guys still don't change their opinion.
I love constructed Pauper and want to have players to play it with. That's why I complain and want things banned. The opinion opposite mine, that, "nothing ever needs to be banned git gud" ultimately results in a field that's >=60% one unfun, degenerate list.
________________________
Foil is a good card. It's not card disadvantage to discard cards that are not providing you any advantage. It's incredibly worth it to discard an extra island and a Faerie Miscreant or whatever in order to not lose the game by say, protecting your Gurmag from the last removal spell in your opponent's hand.
Having 3 cards of actual value + 4 extra islands isn't better than a 4 card hard that's all gas.
I know that this is just basics, but I've heard plenty of people that like to say Foil is a bad card. They're all wrong and they're ignoring reality because they're beholden to some vague doctrine someone wrote about in an article 17 years ago on The Dojo.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
Maybe this one wasn't aimed at me but I want to address it. I hope it doesn't sound too aggressive but here it goes.
Maybe it can be fun to you. But if it is unfun for 99 other people your happiness does not overrule their annoyance. They quit and you are sitting there with cards and no one to play with.
Your fun isn't necessarily someone elses fun. I understand the "fun factor". Its fun if you win more than you lose in general or even if you can win 50% of the time. Losing to unfun/unfair/broken cards strategies game after game isn't fun. Balance is needed. Balance makes the game more fun. At least maybe we can agree that some cards in the format need to go. That WILL bring balance. I will look on the bright side.
What cards would you like to see banned? How about top 4 bans?
Here is what I propose for a start: One ban from each color.
Prismatic Strands
Delver of Secrets
Gurmag Angler
Firebolt or Fireblast
Moment's Peace
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Foil can only really get out of hand if it's used to protect overly fast combos, or overly powerful early threats. And Gush obviously breaks it. But otherwise the only deck in Pauper where it's potentially a problem is reanimator, and currently UB Delver because UB Delver has insane early threats. If the other guy draws 10 cards by turn 3 and can kill you with 7 of those, some of which have to be lands, so let's say 4 cards (excluding lands, Foil itself, and whatever they pitch to it), then whatever those 4 cards are is very likely too strong.
It's even more telling how strong UB Delver threats are when you consider that so many cards in their deck don't affect the board at all, but are only used to dig for the cards that do. And then those are enough to win matches. Foil might be broken in a reanimation strategy, it could be protecting a rapidly reanimated 8/8 with annihilator 2 and possibly haste on top of it. That's an obvious way to pitch 3 cards to deal with an answer and be able to win with the cards you have left. If folks were complaining about that it'd be pretty obvious what the problem was. But that's not what's going on, and if UB Delver is beating Reanimator for threat efficiency then we've got bigger problems than Foil.
I've had it played against a Dark Ritual which I would have cast 2 spells off of on turn one. I've had it played off a Burning-Tree Emissary in which I would have chained another BTE into a third creature on turn two on the play. It can hose Elves from chaining turn one, It can hose Affinity from chaining turn one. It hits these aggro decks so hard that the tempo loss from that point may be hard to come back from on turn one or two!
I'm with you on Gush being worse. Snap is up there too. I don't mind blue having tools to deal with aggro but SO many tools with SO many fog effects and SO many cheap 1/3 card draw creatures and SO many cheap 0/4 walls, and SO much removal just makes it a hostile environment for creature aggro.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
So what happened at the Tuesday tourney was the first Delver tourney win we've had happen in a while. The thing, though, was, that after round 3 the UB Delver in question, a mono-black Zombies deck and a mono-white Metalcraft deck each had 7 points. Any one of them could take it, and what ended up happening was that the Delver got downpaired against Mono G Infect, while the other two played each other. So Metalcraft kicked Zombies out of the running, and Infect lost 1-2 to Delver, and in the end Delver won on tie-breakers while never actually facing the white Metalcraft deck which is a pretty bad matchup for Delver because of so many beefy fliers and ways to attack into Augur of Bolas Metalcraft has. And Infect could've won if the player playing it didn't punt in the final game.
Then what happened on Tuesday was that some of the Spikes came around, nice young dudes just a bit funny how stoked for sucess they are, and the most experienced of them picked up Inside Out. Now, we had some Inside Out tourney wins recently and he did beat up two of his opponents, but he lost to - Rebels. Handily. Because some of us old farts who've been around for a while simply went "Ok, if blue's gonna play Masques Block Constructed, let's play Masques Block Constructed" and put together a Rebels list which has a reaaaaaly good matchup vs. delver and most other Foil-Gush-Daze-Brainstorm-Counterspell neo-Blue-Skies stuff. I piloted it and had no isses with blue, but I barely drew with a Boros Bully and a small kid took the tourney with Mono G Infect.
I played those Rebels in the Tuesday tourney, too, except all the Delvers dodged me in the pairings, so I don't have enough data, but Rebels seem to do very well vs. that sort of thing for obvious reasons. A lot of what Delver is is Masques Block Blue with some busted threats, and Rebels are Masques Block White with with some Time Spiral additions. And it's not just Blue that's silly in Masques Block, that block was hella strong, it's just criminally underrated historically because it was measured against the ludicrously broken Urza's Block. So most opinion on it you can find online is echo-chamber baseless memes. Take the rares out of the equation, and Masques block is a solid contender for the top all-time spot of all Magic blocks in terms of power, with a spot in top 3-5 guaranteed. It's no joke with rares included, either. Rebels are a nightmare matchup for Masques Block Blue. They used to rule standard back in the day, because most of what's called delver today was all there in standard and it was equally as strong, but couldn't do anything to Rebels (which is why everyone ended up playing Counter-Rebel, half-Delver, half-Rebel). They're quite unique, but it's good to have them in the pool to give wannabe grinders a ding behind the ears.
The good thing about Rebels, though, is that they don't actually hose everything, they're just really good vs. some thing, counterspells most of all. The meta which they ruled in standard wasn't defined by them being the strongest dudes, but by crazy-ass counterspells hosing everything else, and those were as stong as they were to try to keep down silly combo nonsense from Urza's Block. And people remember that meta as "Rebels was the best deck", instead of "Combo was so insane that you had to be blue to have a shot, and then only Rebels worked against blue". So was a convoluted mess that lead to the dominance of one deck, just like the situation with fogs leading to everyone playing Delver in Pauper today.
What's more, Zombies seem to have game against all of the big three gameplans - they have threat and removal recursion vs. Delver (because of their much higher threat density), boardwipes vs. go-wide and lifeloss-burn vs. fogs (also good vs. blue counters as some of it can't be countered). The internet seems to treat them as a tier 2 deck but they don't seem to be one, they seem ridiculously powerful. Another thing to keep in mind.
And seeing how much weight recurring Nameless Inversion with Ghoulcaller's Chant pulls in Zombies, we've decided to see if we can brew up a screwy RB Pirates list which ought to have a pretty good game against the main contenders in the field, too. Simply because Fanatical Firebrand and Goblin Trailblazer are quite playable, Nameless Inversion can be recurred with March of the Drowned and you can run Sparksmith in a deck with just the right amount of goblins to ping off most of what Delver puts down while not destroying your life total. Oh, and it seems like a good home for Reckless Abandon and that 2R 5-dmg-if-morbid thing from Innistrad for some reach. Initial testing is sorta promising, and feels like we just need to hit the right numbers for various cards in the list. Pirates are not nearly as well supported as most major tribes or themes, but if a solid build could be put together it'd be really nice to have a goofy tier 2 thing in the rent pool that randomly beats popular netdecks up.
I'd like to thank everyone participating in this discussion as it really helped us wrap our heads around the meta and find the right mechanics and decks to add to our pool. I'm still pro-ban on some things, ofc, but it's still fun to take down the online meta kings and this sort of discussion helps
I think part of it is that most people are analyzing the Pauper meta purely based on the MTGO Challenges/Leagues, which is in some way an extremely insular meta. If the top players are only going to play Delver/Boros, then of course that's the only thing that's going to win.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
This thread is actually a good read on why there's a flood of Delvers Online. It's not (just) because of the inherently busted threats the UB Delver has at it's disposal, but because everything else has a very lousy matchup against fogs. Delver (and Tribe Combo, due to also being mostly Masques Block Blue) have game vs. fogs, so even if they didn't have Delver and Angler at their disposal, blue decks would still crowd the metagame. Quite a bunch of other decks have game vs. Delver - Rebels, Zombies, Burn, Goblins, White/Boros flier decks, probably other things - but all that good stuff including most creature strats gets hosed by fog spam / loops. Then it looks like Delver is the "best deck", and it is really powerful and could tank nerfs like a champ, but it's not as great as numbers seem to suggest. Do away with availability of fogs, let other dude strats have a shot, and Delver won't be as dominant. The way things are now decks which do slap Delver around brick against fog loops wholesale.
Quoted for truth!!!
Played another game today and got fogged out by Tron, knocked them down to one point, winning 20 to 1 with lethal on turn 6. Locked out by Moment's Peace with my aggro creature deck. Get that crap crutch of a card out of the meta, as well as Prismatic Strands another playing-not-to-lose crutch of a card. Get rid of this fog lock nonsense and all of a sudden Delver becomes less prevalent due to its game vs. fog-crutch strategies.
Then blue won't need that many bans as I suggested, maybe just one or two.
At this point if either of those 2 cards would be banned I'd weep with joy.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Now here's the key bit: The guy playing Metalcraft was packing Nihil Spellbomb main. It was a rent deck, and I made it, and I put that thing in there (with Vault of Whispers instead of Darksteel Citadel for the second affinity/metalcraft enabling artifact land) because that deck is so strong, linear and pushed that it's a perfect deck to rent to newbies. Playing it gets them wins and breaks their fear that they need to play Delver to even have a shot at winning anything. The problem is that regardless of how strong it is, and Scars Block is one of the all-time peaks of pushed everything and this pairs it up with Mirrodin, too, anyhow, as insanely pushed as the stuff in the deck is it's completely unplayable because it brick against fog loops. So you abo****ely have to play Nihil Spellbomb (or Relic, obv) to even have a reason to sleeve it up. And in the mainboard, too, because giving up game 1 just sets you up to not draw the necessary card in games 2-3, and without some means to punch through a fog loop you might as well not show up.
Where it gets disasterous for the meta is that it hoses non-broken graveyard stuff as collateral. I was playing a deck which could've lost any number of matches against various opponents. I got to the finals with it on luck and skill. But the guy I was playing in the finals had to run brutal mainboard hate against me simply because otherwise they'd be sitting ducks against Tron's. The omnipresence of Angler doesn't help this, either, as it reinforces the need to have overpowered graveyard hate everywhere. Things that draw you a card to hose the essence of non-dominant strats are just backbreaking, and strats which take that kind of an answer are flat out ridiculous.
So as to what I'd ban - it's still the same list, except that if Angler and fog loops are out of the picture then cards like Nihil Spellbomb and Relic of Progenitus only serve the purpose to brutally hose anything related to the graveyard so much that it might as well not exist. So they should go, too.
In case anyone's interested here's how the rather small tourney panned out:
1: W Metalcraft 12
2: UB Delver 9
3: Affinity 9
4: Mono B Ponza 6
5: Domain Zoo 6
6: BG Dredge 6
7: G Infect 6
8: Boros Bully 3
9: Rakdos Control 3
10: Turbo Fog 0