It's not SCG and Channel Fireball that are doing this or the MTG community. It is Wizards themselves that are forcing the use of the Clan names in everything. That's why Legacy decks are now Shardless SULTAI or JESKAI Stoneblade. Go to any SCG Open and talk to their staff and to a man they'll say "we hate using the new names for decks". Then ask why they use the new names and they'll answer that it is a "directive from Wizards of the Coast". It was part of Wizards "branding strategy" to force the names on everyone and to stop using RUG and BUG or 'Patriot'.
This started with Khans pre-release where Wizards told the major retailers not to call the clans "BUG" or "RUG" but use the names from the storylines and products.
These are the same "Pros" that almost always net deck into tournaments and rarely build their own decks. Often overloading tournaments with the same decks and breeding an incestuous metagame. The same "Pros" that don't even pay for cards and have to constantly borrow them from sponsors. Ever been to a Pro Tour? There are literally dozens of "Pro" players running around like chickens-with-their-heads-cut-off.....looking for the last few cards that they didn't bother to get in the weeks leading up to the Pro Tour. They care so much about the sanctity of the game that they don't even own any Magic cards.
The same "Pros" that are splitting the prizes? Or drawing into the Top 8?
Given how many players have been caught cheating I'd not be surprised if some of these outraged "Pros" are even cheaters. Like MTG is so sacred.
I don't recall, in a very long time, such a vocal majority being ticked about Magic product. It almost seems like they should say something, for damage control purposes, don't you think? With such an extreme backlash to the spoiler for this set, do you think Wizards is going to address it at all?
They'll do nothing. Hasbro has Wizards plan literally EVERYTHING years in advance. This Modern Masters set with Serum Visions as an FNM promo decision was likely made nearly two years ago. They have no idea how things will shape up years in advance of a product being created, and can't really adjust on the fly because they are in the stranglehold of Hasbro's shareholders and board. They are making movies and board games. The cards will be secondary to toys and movies and TV shows if Hasbro has their way.
Wizards will just watch prices of certain cards skyrocket and other cards become nearly impossible to afford for the average player who wants to play Eternal formats. They want you to play Standard. The people who run Wizards are actually Hasbro. Just look at Wizard's Glassdoor reviews. People hate Wizard's current CEO and see him as a corporate stooge who doesn't even play Magic. And they don't like being under so much control by Hasbro. But Hasbro is way too powerful for anyone to buy Wizards out and take the company independent.
What do you expect? Reserve List cancellation? From the Vault: Tarmogoyf? Modern Masters MSRP lowering? Wizards needs at least ten lawyers and stockbrokers to run that by Hasbro before it would meet approval.
Not really. That spoiler is dishonest. To call a set 'Modern Masters' and then blatantly ignore the commons/uncommons desperately in need of a reprint, and fill the set with so much limited fodder and 2/3 junk rares that see absolutely no play in the format the set is named for, that's dishonest.
Exactly. But idiots will dump money into this set and praise Wizards forever. They can do no wrong.
Modern is a Constructed Format and not a Limited Format. When cards are printed for a Modern themed set.....shouldn't they be playable in Modern Constructed? And if the set is about a "Master" level of play or card power shouldn't most of the cards be Modern staples?
At the retail price of these packs....how many people will come close to breaking even? How many piles of garbage draft leftovers will be sitting in boxes so that someone could maul a box of packs to try to find a Tarmogoyf? If this is the direction of the new Modern Masters series then I shudder to see what the next set looks like.
I'm seriously reconsidering buying a box. It's a mythic lottery and doesn't even look that fun to draft. Why the hell would i want to try and shoehorn Ant Queen or Battlegrace Angel in? Those are my bombs? Really?
Draft with your friends and then keep all of the cards. At least if you got a good deal on a box. Anyone paying a premium for these boxes is getting hosed.
My comments on this pro tour (and pro tours in general):
1) About the chapin incident, i am torn. My bottom line is that the game loss was ok because if it's the rule, then it's the rule. BUT: (a) not all people awarded game losses are cheaters (I've heard in twitter some people call him a cheater... this is not the case, i think he made an honest mistake); (b) it's not true that using footage to rewind a call is "special treatment". Think about it this way: players not filmed can cheat with less risk of getting caught. So sure, if you are filmed, being able to replay a controversial call can benefit you, but it can equally well be used to catch you cheating; but most importantly (c) what is indignant is that his opponent, rather than trying to have justice be served, was extremely passionate about getting chapin a game loss (the whole "i don't know your hand" business is ridiculous... of course you knew it! We all did! Even FNM players learn to track courser reveals!) I was disgusted by Ancona's reaction.
This should be no surprise. This is not the first time we've seen a player make a minor mistake on camera and have his opponent refuse to let him play on without getting judges involved. Ari Lax famously called a judge on an opponent not revealing his morphs, during a Grand Prix, at the end of a game that Ari supposedly had no chance of winning otherwise. Players hated that call so much that Wizards modified the morph reveal rules in response to community anger. People already hated the morph rules and this incident forced Wizards to have to at least address the issue.
Bottom line is that MTG isn't a popularity contest. "Pro" player simply means that they do this for a living. Not that they are respectable people or even decent human beings. For every LSV or Reid Duke you have someone like Jared Boettcher or Alex Bertoncini. MTG at the "Pro" level is as dishonest and unsportsmanlike as it is honest and sportsmanlike. I expect honest players, scum, and downright cheaters to be playing at Pro Tours.
Last year's Rookie of the Year, Jared Boettcher, was banned for repeatedly cheating. Last year's Player of the Year, Jeremy Dezani, was DQ'd from this Pro Tour. And Dezani has a terrible reputation amongst high level MTG players. Of course Wizards will never learn. They don't care. Alex Bertoncini will likely be on the Pro Tour in a few years. People will keep cheating at MTG forever. Forever. You think Wizards can stop cheating and unsportsmanlike conduct when the billion dollar NFL/MLB/Olympics/Cycling events can't catch their cheaters with the most sophisticated drug labs and the FBI/CIA helping them? Wizards has to know that the more money is at stake the more someone will try to cheat.
And cheating at cards......is as old as playing cards.
After the mess of cheating last year why would anyone take MTG seriously as a "Pro" competition? Take a step back and objectively look at who wins the Pro Tours and SCG events. Many of them are cheaters. Wizards has revealed themselves to be amateurish with all of their competitive coverage and events running. Yet people keep watching Major League Baseball despite the steroid scandals. MTG is a fun game. But "Pro Tours" are becoming more and more pathetic and hard to watch.
While it may seem stupid to ignore evidence that proves he didn't mess up that turn, there is also evidence that he played two lands earlier in the match that is ignored if missed initially as well. In any competitive REL event this is a game loss for failing to reveal the card. Playing at this high of level on a PTQ there shouldn't be this many mistakes in a match and expect not to be punished for it.
It just shows how poor the judges really are and how bad coverage really is. They miss a player playing two lands on a single turn. The judges and commentators miss one of the most basic rules being violated. Chapin and his opponent have the excuse of missing it in that they are rushing through extra turns in an on-camera Pro Tour match. You could see that the players were literally rushing their plays physically. So there is great pressure on both of them to play hurriedly and makes mistakes. The commentators and judges have the luxury of not being in a high pressure playing situation. But keep in mind that this is Wizards commentary, where the commentators often aren't even familiar with format staple cards. So expecting them to pay attention to the match is probably unrealistic.
As for the whole Chapin thing, I understand how he made the mistake, i.e., the board was pretty full, he was putting the other cards off the Ajani to the bottom and just misplaced the Tasigur on top of his hand, but the real problem is how coverage handled it. Between not cutting out and having Buehler say that Chapin is trying to wiggle out of it, total buffoonery, which I guess is what you expect from WOTC coverage.
It's not just the commentators' fault it is also Wizards idiot producers who refused to cut to literally anything else. A Deck Tech, an interview, standings, behind the scenes? They literally could have cut to anything and it would have been better than seeing a Pro Tour Hall-of-Fame player arguing rules semantics and information with an obviously flustered judge. The announcers didn't go into the Pro Tour thinking that they'd be doing ten minutes on a judge ruling. But the producers essentially forced their hands by putting ten minutes of a Hall of Fame player and a top Judge on camera arguing over rules.
Should the NFL not be allowed to use goal line technology because that would be unfair to the college that doesn't have video coverage?
Fact is, the coverage area IS different, it has more judges, is viewed by more people and the technology is available to be used in the interests of those competing and us as viewers.
It's astounding that we can use video replays to punish cheaters but not to recreate boardstates to help those players who are in turn being punished for otherwise clumsy wordings and rules implementations.
It makes ZERO sense. And Wizards HAS used video coverage to rewind games to a legal board state or clear up play issues before on Pro Tours. They did it in 2012 for a Pro Tour because they had video coverage and overrode their own rules. And they've done it other times as well. Listen to the Judge's explanation and then imagine he was trying to explain why video wasn't used in this case with Chapin.
Coverage attempts to build storylines throughout an event. It is much easier to build a storyline with faces that viewers recognize.
I think the problem is that Ascendancy interactions would surpass their coverage capabilities and that they wouldn't be able to recognize the cards that a mono-red deck plays, making it very difficult for them to justify putting those decks on camera.
The coverage should focus on the cards and the decks. Not the players. Top players play boring awful decks. They are there to WIN and not there to entertain anyone. They team up and swarm a Pro Tour with the same exact deck. 25 players all on Abzan Midrange or Ascendancy Combo. Day one should feature rogue and unusual decks. Day two can have the undefeated players and famous players.
Looks like this is true. Gideon is from Theros and was a legendary creature who is famous on the plane. His Magic: Origins story is him as a child on Theros.
Brainstorm and FoW are never getting banned. They hold together Legacy too much. Honestly I feel Legacy would be fine without Brainstorm, people would just run Ponder and Preordain instead. Its not a powerful card, its only good when you can shuffle dead cards away like with fetches.
Wrong. Brainstorm has many uses other than the combined setup with a Fetchland. It's likely one of the most powerful cards in Legacy by a long shot. The value you can get out of the card is immeasurable by even the most seasoned players. You can:
- hide cards on top of your library from Thoughtseize or Hymn to Tourach to protect against discard
- hide information from your opponent's Gitaxian Probe or second guess what they take with Vendillion Clique
- set up a miracle from your hand right onto the top of your deck
- place the best cards from your hand to your library to float with a Counter-Top lock in place
- place a Natural Order or Tinker target or some other library target into your library from your hand
- Brainstorm and then shuffle without a Fetchland, like say with Stoneforge Mystic or even Ponder
- reorder and re-sequence your draws even if you are without a Fetchland or another shuffling card
- Thoughtscour away cards from the top of your library instead of shuffling them
- place cards on your library then mill them with Tasigur's ability, either milling good spells or only lands to force your opponent's choice
- hold open other spells because Brainstorm is an instant
- dig three cards into your library in response to something like Show and Tell to try to hit something better than what's in your hand
Do people just speculate on Brainstorm's power without playing the card? I've been playing Magic and Legacy for a long time. Brainstorm is easily one of the most ridiculous cards to ever have been printed. It's utility and power level is nearly unmatched. One of the best Magic cards ever printed. Period. Ponder and Preordain are closer to Serum Visions than Brainstorm.
I've said this before many times and I'll say it again. The high representation of Brainstorm and Ponder are not the problem; they are a symptom of the problem. They have been around for years (Ponder less so), but their representation has only reached this level recently. It isn't "I want to play Brainstorm/Ponder -> I'll play blue." The reality of the situation is "I'm playing blue -> Brainstorm/Ponder seem like good inclusions." The problem is that in recent years, Wizards has printed a bunch of really stupid cards like Delver, True-Name, Griselbrand (I know, not blue), and the good delve spells. If you made a list of blue Legacy cards and non-blue Legacy cards since Innistrad and compared them, you would facepalm. With a blue core, you can make top tier control with Countertop/Jace, top tier combo with Show and Tell, top tier tempo with Delver, and top tier midrange with Shardless Agent/Ancestral Visions. All of these engines (or whatever they are) have pushed the number of viable blue strategies far beyond any other color in sheer quantity. It isn't any one (or any two) cards that are pushing blue to these levels. It is all of the stupidity of the last few years.
Exactly, the problem is that blue does too much overall. Blue has the best card drawing abilities. The best card selection (for example, Brainstorm with Fetchlands). The best counterspells. The best Planeswalker in Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Some of the best creatures in the format such as Delver, Snapcaster, Clique, and True-Name Nemesis. And some of the best explosive spells in the game like Show and Tell or supremely powerful Enchantments like Counterbalance or Dream Halls.
You're always going to cheat a creature or enchantment in with Show and Tell, until something more powerful than Show and Tell is printed. So things like Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Omniscience will be played in Show and Tell decks. And the next Emrakul style creature will be in a Show and Tell deck. That deck will be Blue based....forever. Unless Wizards bans Show and Tell (something many Pros and SCG Open grinders were screaming for in 2003-2004), prints something even better and makes Show and Tell worthless (good god), or keeps printing hate cards like Containment Priest. It's the hate cards that seem the most preferable. Containment Priest is a great card. It hits Reanimation, Show and Tell, Natural Order, Kuldotha Forgemaster, and all those style effects.
That being said, sometimes Wizards just prints dumb Blue cards like True-Name without thinking. Or Treasure Cruise. But they printed Council's Judgement in response to True-Name (not fast enough) and we've seen that True-Name was ultimately contained within the format. And Wizards banned Treasure Cruise before the card had a chance to either be solved by the Legacy community and contained, or to get out of control and heavily warp and ruin the format. So Wizards isn't quite so deathly afraid of throwing some Blue draw spells in the abyss. And they've shown that powerful cards can be given specific Hate Cards or Banned.
But ultimately, banning one or two cards is not really addressing the issue of Blue's dominance in Legacy. And if Wizards starts banning Delver, Counterbalance, or Brainstorm then they are redefining Legacy as a format in an extreme lazy way. Banning cards is knee-jerk and sometimes just pure laziness. Or Wizards having no clue about how people actually play their game. The current Legacy Banned List is pathetic as it has a handful of weak cards that have no business being on the list. I'd rather see them take Legacy more seriously and start printing Legacy specific cards like Containment Priest and Council's Judgement. Than to freak out like they do with Modern every year and just ruin a bunch of decks and cards by banning the most powerful cards in the two or three most played decks.
Sometimes Wizards does an alright job. Like making Abrupt Decay to smash Counterbalance. Other times they print failures like Notion Thief and Spirit of the Labyrinth as over-hyped "Brainstorm killers" that are often so slow that they are useless. If Spirit of the Labyrinth cost just {W} and had Flash then you'd be talking. Or if Notion Thief didn't cost a ridiculous four mana and didn't die to almost every possible removal spell in Legacy. But Wizards has yet to actually print an Abrupt Decay or Council's Judgement style card to really attack the Blue canrtip and card draw spells. We know that Wizards won't ban Brainstorm in Legacy. So my guess is that they are hesitant to print a specific Containment Priest like hate card for the Blue card draw spells.
Where is the Council's Judgement level card for Brainstorm?
Dualcaster Mage? Spirit of the Labyrinth? Notion Thief? These cards aren't that good. We need something better. A Brainstorm Hate Card that is disgustingly effective.
I've said it a hundred times before and I'll say it again. The problem is the game of Magic in general and how it was designed as far as what each color is "supposed" to be for. Blue is essentially card draw and counter magic. Those just happen to be, in hindsight, the most powerful things in this game. It's the reason why WotC has had to make cards like Abrupt Decay (immune to counter magic) and Spirit of the Labyrinth card draw. No other effects in this game are as powerful as these two thing (draw and counters). It just so happens that blue is loaded with both. Blue's shortcoming was supposed to be weak creatures. And this worked fine until WotC screwed the pooch with Delver and TNN. But mostly Delver. So now you take the best of blue, mix it in with a creature that, most of the time is a 3/2 for one blue mana, and then combine with the best of the other colors (depending on what you want) and you have what I call the "Blue Mage's Goodstuff's Menu".
Yes and no. I've been playing MTG for a long time. Especially Legacy. Why Delver decks are so powerful is their low curve. They stick you in the first few turns and then Wasteland/Counterspell you and ride just one creature like Delver, Mongoose, or Goyf to victory. It's the low curve that makes that deck, and essentially most Legacy decks, so powerful. They only need one or two mana at any time to win the game. That's what Blue-Red Delver had become....a deck almost entirely, and sometimes literally just, one and two drops with four copies of Treasure Cruise thrown in to push things over the top. Blue-Red Delver had 16-17 lands and then nothing but the best of the best spells and creatures printed in the each of their respective sets. Delver, Young Pyromancer, Treasure Cruise, Lightning Bolt, and so on. The greatest hits of one and two drops in Red and Blue with a painfully low curve. The deck was so absurdly low to the ground that someone beat a Stax/Prison Deck with Chalice of the Void on {1} by playing their one cost spells right into the Chalice just to create more Pyromancer tokens at Eternal Weekend.
And while Abrupt Decay can't be countered....they can Wasteland or Stifle your ability to actually cast that spell. So turn one Delver that can start disrupting your Lands before you hit Land number two can actually avoid being hit by a spell that can't be countered. So even Abrupt Decay can actually be too slow to stop someone riding a Delver all the way to victory.
It's taken years to get Legacy where it is at where you have an abundance of insanely powerful low curve decks. Each set you see one or two insane low curve spells. Thoughtseize, Ponder, Abrupt Decay, Dark Confidant, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Deathrite Shaman, Thalia, Delver, Noble Hierarch, Hymn to Tourach, Inquisition, V-Clique, Oppressive Rays, Snapcaster, Liliana, True-Name, Stoneforge, Goyf, Goblin Guide, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Gitaxian Probe and so on.
With a low curve you have less need for so many Lands. That means even more spells. Even more consistency and power. And Legacy never rotates out the best spells from Magic's history unless they are actively banned. The way for Wizards to stop this is to print more midrange and higher curve and expensive spells that have insane power. More cards like Grave Titan or Baneslayer Angel. Or Planeswalkers that are far more powerful than Jace ability wise, but cost five or six to play.
Until then Legacy will be the format where you want to curve out at three or less unless you're playing Control, have a way to generate huge mana (High Tide, Food Chain, Combo Elves, etc.), or relying on things like Sol Lands, Simian Spirit Guide, Gemstone Cavern, and Lotus Petal to have explosive but less consistent draws and lines. I've played a lot of the "Veteran Walkers" deck recently for fun, and I've found that getting good ramp in Legacy is brutally difficult compared to Standard and even Modern. I'm trying to chuck lands on the board to hardcast Karn and Nicol Bolas but my opponent just Show and Tells a Worldspine Wurm into play on turn one. Or I die to Goblin Guide hits before I can reach five or six mana to start going off with Karn.
The only way to fix this mess is to ban Delver. That will force blue into lackluster choices in comparison. Problem is, all those Delver players will just pick up Miracles. Then we'll have to ban Counterbalance as Top is used in too many other decks. Then after you've killed Miracles, I'm not sure what will take over. Probably Omni-Tell though I really don't know.
Wizards just needs to print something to deal with Delver and other one drop creatures. Like a removal spell that kills Delver/Goblin Guide and then Surgical Extracts the creature as well. The Banned List is the wrong way to solve things. Better design, hiring Legacy experts, and printing Legacy specific Hate Cards and problem solving cards is more preferable in my opinion.
Miracles is an overrated deck. I think that it is the most overrated deck in Legacy. I pilot it frequently and watch Joe Lossett play it and I just don't see it being that amazing. The deck also has some matches that are just vicious to play against like MUD/12 Post that can be nauseating to try to beat. Counter/Top is played in a lot of Decks other than Miracles but many only play two and two copies respectively. I've seen BUG Control, Jeskai Stoneblade, High Tide, and UW Stoneblade use some sort of Counterbalance/Top package in the last year to varying degrees of success. Counter/Top is annoying to play against....but it's not really that oppressive. Needle, Revoker, Krosan Grip, Abrupt Decay, and lots of other cards can disrupt the Counter/Top plan just fine. The real secret of Miracles is Terminus....now that card is insane. I think that it is the best sweeper in all of Legacy. Better than Pyroclasm and Supreme Verdict or Toxic Deluge level cards.
The key difference is that the bigot can change their mind and stop being a bigot. The person of different gender/ethnicity/sexuality cannot. We absolutely should judge others by their actions and beliefs; if not, what do we judge one by?
Define "bigot"? You may see someone as bigoted but they might simply be proud of who they are. Are you offended by the Puerto Rican Day Parade? Or someone with a "Proud to be Irish!" shirt? Are they racist? Are you okay with someone mutilating their genitals in the name of "transgenderism"? Or are you happy that they can realize who they feel they are on the inside? How about forcing someone to pay $150,000 for not making a cake? There's no difference in "proud to be white" than "proud to be black" or "proud to be gay". Saying any of those things is going to anger and upset people that are sensitive and whiny.
Everything is now ultra-politicized. You can't watch a TV show without some agenda thrown in your face. MTG now has transgender characters. In a land of demons, wizards, orcs, dragons, and goblins....Wizards has chosen to politicize its lore with a transgender...a concept that has only been around in the last few decades....yet somehow found its way to Tarkir thousands of years in the past. Ridiculous. People play this game to escape the garbage media and politics that plagues society. Not have it thrown into our faces.
You "judge" transgenderism and you get called a "bigot" and "homophobic" if you don't immediately accept genital mutilation as a "lifestyle choice". There are easily as many people who play Magic that are offended about genital mutilation and transgenderism as there are that are offended by "white pride". Is there a right answer? No. The real answer is to not politicize the cards and the game. Leave the transgender and homosexual activism off of the cards. And not have KKK figures featured in the art. Unfortunately Wizards has made mistakes on both ends.
What's funny is that JRR Tolkien was fiercely anti-immigration and was a silent British Nationalist (basically the UK version of a white supremacist). People will lie through their teeth to deny it. But the truth is that if JRR Tolkien were alive today most people on this site would slam him as a bigot and a racist. He was supporter of a whites-only political party. And was against minority immigration into England because he felt that they didn't assimilate to Europe's superior culture.
But most people don't care and love to watch LOTR and The Hobbit films without knowing that their author clearly felt that European values were superior to all other political and social systems. His works aren't politicized. Most people read GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series and don't take away anything divisive on modern politics. But the idiots at HBO decided to put a dead George W Bush head in the show, angering a huge portion of their audience, without even asking GRRM if he wanted his art politicized like that.
I don't care if the person making the art is a hardcore liberal or conservative. I don't care. As long as their ignorant politics don't bleed into the actual game or into the lore or the art. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death? Invoke Prejudice? Two equally appalling and pathetic cards.
... and then, there's Hearthstone -- the first actual direct competition to Magic the Gathering Online -- which has seen 70 000 000 users, despite not being a very good game that got kicked off more in the competition with Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon than Magic the Gathering, with it's 12-14 year old appeal... and still it is massively successful.
Because it's got a modern user interface worth using in 2015 -- and doesn't look like it was made in 2006, like Wide.
Hearthstone has 20 million registered accounts. How many people play once and then never again? How many are dead accounts? How many are duplicate or robot accounts? How many are counted as being someone who plays Battle.net and tried a Hearthstone trial but then went back to only playing Diablo? How many accounts have had no one log into the account for at least ten weeks? I'd love to see those stats.
believe it or not i played with fake goyfs and 2 Liliana of the veil this last PT, on my junk deck.
total price you ask? $4 for a playset of goyfs and lillys costed me like $1.5, extremely hard to spot a difference and i saved money.
so **** wizards for not reprinting more and **** everyone how wants to sell their cards like their selling cars.
let the fakes roll in with open arms
You're not the first person and won't be the last. The newest batch of fake cards is highly difficult to spot when the cards are sleeved. Even the best players won't notice. Everyone should know by now that Pro Tours and SCG Invitationals have had players that used counterfeit cards.
It's hilarious that Pro Tour competitors can't afford the cards. It's been known for years now that many Pro Tour competitors need to borrow cards from major stores because they simply cannot afford a Modern deck for a Pro Tour or a Legacy deck for an SCG Invitational.
The fact that Tarmogoyf wasn't mass printed as an uncommon in something like Modern Masters or a Duel Deck is laughably stupid. "We want Modern to be more accessible". Sure, sure.
you expected commentators to have a clue about what's going on? Zac Hill (I think) is the voice on the feature match coverage spewing incorrect statement after incorrect statement.
This Pro Tour is easily the worst commentary I've ever seen. A new low for Wizards. I suspect that they disabled their Twitch stream chat because all the chat would be is an endless bashing of the commentators' mistakes. If things don't pick up then I'm done watching PT coverage and going exclusively to SCG's events. Wizards can't find two or three top MTG players that aren't qualified for this PT to do some commentary? They have people who clearly don't even play Modern cover a Modern event? What a pathetic decision.
I don't think any one is as bad as Rashad Miller. I'd rather just have Randy commentate everything and do the deck techs. Fire the rest of the commentating staff and just pay Randy 5x.
They can't fire anyone for at least this year because they are all under contract. But they should instead just hire new commentators and pay the current ones their fee but NEVER put them near a camera or microphone. This coverage makes Modern look like a horrible and not interesting format. It is painful to watch this PT.
I'm still struggling to understand how Treasure Cruise can be ban-worthy when Brainstorm isn't.
People are more invested in Brainstorm as a card. It's a defining Legacy card and a format staple that has evaded a banning every time people have asked for it to be removed from the format. Treasure Cruise just entered into Legacy and it's much less of a card that people are used to seeing and playing. They aren't as attached to the card. Wizards knows that if they ban a card that has been legal for years that it could upset a sizable portion of its player base.
Treasure Cruise was banned before the next expansion even came out. Lots of people are rightfully complaining that the card was never given a chance in Legacy. And that there was more potential for the format to adjust to its presence and adapt. Compensating for the new most powerful card over the course of a few more weeks or months. We saw this with True-Name Nemesis. Where people screamed for it to be banned and eventually Legacy's resilience was realized and True-Name Nemesis remains a powerful, yet not dominant card. But if True-Name had been banned last year how many players would be fiercely calling for it to be legal again right now?
I think the REAL reason for banning Treasure Cruise was simply that Wizards got caught up in their Modern banned list. And decided to ban Treasure Cruise across two formats once they evaluated its power in Modern. If Legacy and Modern had months separated between ban announcements I highly doubt you'd see Treasure Cruise banned in Legacy.
Remember, the North American Legacy scene is very attached to Brainstorm, while Cruise is just another value card. Politics eventually has to come into ban list decisions, so even though Brainstorm has a huge level of format dominance and many arguments can be made both for and against banning it, it's essentially bulletproof.
Exactly. Wizards has tried twice now to print anti-Brainstorm cards in Notion Thief and Spirit of the Labyrinth rather than look at a Brainstorm ban. Of course Notion Thief and Spirit are generally horrible cards that take much more time to hit the board compared to Brainstorm. But you see that Wizards in the last few years has gone after draw spells though without much success. Maybe one day they'll make a good anti-Brainstorm card without it being ridiculous like Mental Misstep.
Brainstorm actually requires a little bit of thinking when you play it. Cruise required none. I'm pretty happy they did what they did, and theres always Dig if you want a delve option
That shouldn't matter at all. Cards should only be banned based on their power in the hands of tournament winning players. Not beginners. Most beginners have no idea how to evaluate power level of competitive cards. If someone who is inexperienced plays Brainstorm 'improperly' it doesn't mean that Brainstorm isn't an incredibly powerful card. The banned list should be about maximum potential of a card in the hands of elite players only. Not about its average power as played by every player, good and bad.
I don't really think we'll ever know the real reason for TC's ban. I no longer believe the WotC propaganda machine. Maybe enough people complained. Maybe they banned it in Legacy because they had to ban it in Modern and now they can say, "See, we even banned it in Legacy."
This is the most likely explanation. It was to appease Modern players. Which means that the absurdity and insane decision making regarding the Modern banned list is now spilling over into Legacy. Wizards had to likely ban Pod or Delver/Treasure Cruise in Modern to open up the format before their Modern Pro Tour. It was either that or produce Fate Reforged so that it had an immediate and heavy impact on Modern to shake the format up (not a chance of that of course). A fresh Modern Pro Tour demanded some changes. So while they were 'balancing' Modern again they just arbitrarily picked two cards to ban and unban in Legacy to say "see we are paying attention to Legacy as well". I doubt anyone would have minded if they left Legacy alone rather than forced changes just to pretend like they were paying attention.
Nobody's saying Legacy is being managed to the obscene degree that Modern is! What I'm saying is that WotC banned a card when the meta was actually diverse, and it seems to me like their intention was to pick and chose which play-styles they wanted to support. That is akin to how modern is handled, just not to the same extreme.
Hopefully Wizards isn't taking a new attitude in Legacy. With every couple of months just randomly banning whatever makes a Top8 two or three weeks in a row. "Hey Miracles won again...let's ban Divining Top. Burn one again...let's ban Eidolon of the Great Revel. Hey Delver won again...let's ban...uh...Ponder!".
This started with Khans pre-release where Wizards told the major retailers not to call the clans "BUG" or "RUG" but use the names from the storylines and products.
The same "Pros" that are splitting the prizes? Or drawing into the Top 8?
Given how many players have been caught cheating I'd not be surprised if some of these outraged "Pros" are even cheaters. Like MTG is so sacred.
They'll do nothing. Hasbro has Wizards plan literally EVERYTHING years in advance. This Modern Masters set with Serum Visions as an FNM promo decision was likely made nearly two years ago. They have no idea how things will shape up years in advance of a product being created, and can't really adjust on the fly because they are in the stranglehold of Hasbro's shareholders and board. They are making movies and board games. The cards will be secondary to toys and movies and TV shows if Hasbro has their way.
Wizards will just watch prices of certain cards skyrocket and other cards become nearly impossible to afford for the average player who wants to play Eternal formats. They want you to play Standard. The people who run Wizards are actually Hasbro. Just look at Wizard's Glassdoor reviews. People hate Wizard's current CEO and see him as a corporate stooge who doesn't even play Magic. And they don't like being under so much control by Hasbro. But Hasbro is way too powerful for anyone to buy Wizards out and take the company independent.
What do you expect? Reserve List cancellation? From the Vault: Tarmogoyf? Modern Masters MSRP lowering? Wizards needs at least ten lawyers and stockbrokers to run that by Hasbro before it would meet approval.
Exactly. But idiots will dump money into this set and praise Wizards forever. They can do no wrong.
Modern is a Constructed Format and not a Limited Format. When cards are printed for a Modern themed set.....shouldn't they be playable in Modern Constructed? And if the set is about a "Master" level of play or card power shouldn't most of the cards be Modern staples?
At the retail price of these packs....how many people will come close to breaking even? How many piles of garbage draft leftovers will be sitting in boxes so that someone could maul a box of packs to try to find a Tarmogoyf? If this is the direction of the new Modern Masters series then I shudder to see what the next set looks like.
Draft with your friends and then keep all of the cards. At least if you got a good deal on a box. Anyone paying a premium for these boxes is getting hosed.
This should be no surprise. This is not the first time we've seen a player make a minor mistake on camera and have his opponent refuse to let him play on without getting judges involved. Ari Lax famously called a judge on an opponent not revealing his morphs, during a Grand Prix, at the end of a game that Ari supposedly had no chance of winning otherwise. Players hated that call so much that Wizards modified the morph reveal rules in response to community anger. People already hated the morph rules and this incident forced Wizards to have to at least address the issue.
Bottom line is that MTG isn't a popularity contest. "Pro" player simply means that they do this for a living. Not that they are respectable people or even decent human beings. For every LSV or Reid Duke you have someone like Jared Boettcher or Alex Bertoncini. MTG at the "Pro" level is as dishonest and unsportsmanlike as it is honest and sportsmanlike. I expect honest players, scum, and downright cheaters to be playing at Pro Tours.
Last year's Rookie of the Year, Jared Boettcher, was banned for repeatedly cheating. Last year's Player of the Year, Jeremy Dezani, was DQ'd from this Pro Tour. And Dezani has a terrible reputation amongst high level MTG players. Of course Wizards will never learn. They don't care. Alex Bertoncini will likely be on the Pro Tour in a few years. People will keep cheating at MTG forever. Forever. You think Wizards can stop cheating and unsportsmanlike conduct when the billion dollar NFL/MLB/Olympics/Cycling events can't catch their cheaters with the most sophisticated drug labs and the FBI/CIA helping them? Wizards has to know that the more money is at stake the more someone will try to cheat.
And cheating at cards......is as old as playing cards.
After the mess of cheating last year why would anyone take MTG seriously as a "Pro" competition? Take a step back and objectively look at who wins the Pro Tours and SCG events. Many of them are cheaters. Wizards has revealed themselves to be amateurish with all of their competitive coverage and events running. Yet people keep watching Major League Baseball despite the steroid scandals. MTG is a fun game. But "Pro Tours" are becoming more and more pathetic and hard to watch.
It just shows how poor the judges really are and how bad coverage really is. They miss a player playing two lands on a single turn. The judges and commentators miss one of the most basic rules being violated. Chapin and his opponent have the excuse of missing it in that they are rushing through extra turns in an on-camera Pro Tour match. You could see that the players were literally rushing their plays physically. So there is great pressure on both of them to play hurriedly and makes mistakes. The commentators and judges have the luxury of not being in a high pressure playing situation. But keep in mind that this is Wizards commentary, where the commentators often aren't even familiar with format staple cards. So expecting them to pay attention to the match is probably unrealistic.
It's not just the commentators' fault it is also Wizards idiot producers who refused to cut to literally anything else. A Deck Tech, an interview, standings, behind the scenes? They literally could have cut to anything and it would have been better than seeing a Pro Tour Hall-of-Fame player arguing rules semantics and information with an obviously flustered judge. The announcers didn't go into the Pro Tour thinking that they'd be doing ten minutes on a judge ruling. But the producers essentially forced their hands by putting ten minutes of a Hall of Fame player and a top Judge on camera arguing over rules.
It makes ZERO sense. And Wizards HAS used video coverage to rewind games to a legal board state or clear up play issues before on Pro Tours. They did it in 2012 for a Pro Tour because they had video coverage and overrode their own rules. And they've done it other times as well. Listen to the Judge's explanation and then imagine he was trying to explain why video wasn't used in this case with Chapin.
https://youtu.be/jedseuxEvxk?t=41m11s
The coverage should focus on the cards and the decks. Not the players. Top players play boring awful decks. They are there to WIN and not there to entertain anyone. They team up and swarm a Pro Tour with the same exact deck. 25 players all on Abzan Midrange or Ascendancy Combo. Day one should feature rogue and unusual decks. Day two can have the undefeated players and famous players.
Looks like this is true. Gideon is from Theros and was a legendary creature who is famous on the plane. His Magic: Origins story is him as a child on Theros.
Wrong. Brainstorm has many uses other than the combined setup with a Fetchland. It's likely one of the most powerful cards in Legacy by a long shot. The value you can get out of the card is immeasurable by even the most seasoned players. You can:
- hide cards on top of your library from Thoughtseize or Hymn to Tourach to protect against discard
- hide information from your opponent's Gitaxian Probe or second guess what they take with Vendillion Clique
- set up a miracle from your hand right onto the top of your deck
- place the best cards from your hand to your library to float with a Counter-Top lock in place
- place a Natural Order or Tinker target or some other library target into your library from your hand
- Brainstorm and then shuffle without a Fetchland, like say with Stoneforge Mystic or even Ponder
- reorder and re-sequence your draws even if you are without a Fetchland or another shuffling card
- Thoughtscour away cards from the top of your library instead of shuffling them
- place cards on your library then mill them with Tasigur's ability, either milling good spells or only lands to force your opponent's choice
- hold open other spells because Brainstorm is an instant
- dig three cards into your library in response to something like Show and Tell to try to hit something better than what's in your hand
Do people just speculate on Brainstorm's power without playing the card? I've been playing Magic and Legacy for a long time. Brainstorm is easily one of the most ridiculous cards to ever have been printed. It's utility and power level is nearly unmatched. One of the best Magic cards ever printed. Period. Ponder and Preordain are closer to Serum Visions than Brainstorm.
Exactly, the problem is that blue does too much overall. Blue has the best card drawing abilities. The best card selection (for example, Brainstorm with Fetchlands). The best counterspells. The best Planeswalker in Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Some of the best creatures in the format such as Delver, Snapcaster, Clique, and True-Name Nemesis. And some of the best explosive spells in the game like Show and Tell or supremely powerful Enchantments like Counterbalance or Dream Halls.
You're always going to cheat a creature or enchantment in with Show and Tell, until something more powerful than Show and Tell is printed. So things like Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Omniscience will be played in Show and Tell decks. And the next Emrakul style creature will be in a Show and Tell deck. That deck will be Blue based....forever. Unless Wizards bans Show and Tell (something many Pros and SCG Open grinders were screaming for in 2003-2004), prints something even better and makes Show and Tell worthless (good god), or keeps printing hate cards like Containment Priest. It's the hate cards that seem the most preferable. Containment Priest is a great card. It hits Reanimation, Show and Tell, Natural Order, Kuldotha Forgemaster, and all those style effects.
That being said, sometimes Wizards just prints dumb Blue cards like True-Name without thinking. Or Treasure Cruise. But they printed Council's Judgement in response to True-Name (not fast enough) and we've seen that True-Name was ultimately contained within the format. And Wizards banned Treasure Cruise before the card had a chance to either be solved by the Legacy community and contained, or to get out of control and heavily warp and ruin the format. So Wizards isn't quite so deathly afraid of throwing some Blue draw spells in the abyss. And they've shown that powerful cards can be given specific Hate Cards or Banned.
But ultimately, banning one or two cards is not really addressing the issue of Blue's dominance in Legacy. And if Wizards starts banning Delver, Counterbalance, or Brainstorm then they are redefining Legacy as a format in an extreme lazy way. Banning cards is knee-jerk and sometimes just pure laziness. Or Wizards having no clue about how people actually play their game. The current Legacy Banned List is pathetic as it has a handful of weak cards that have no business being on the list. I'd rather see them take Legacy more seriously and start printing Legacy specific cards like Containment Priest and Council's Judgement. Than to freak out like they do with Modern every year and just ruin a bunch of decks and cards by banning the most powerful cards in the two or three most played decks.
Sometimes Wizards does an alright job. Like making Abrupt Decay to smash Counterbalance. Other times they print failures like Notion Thief and Spirit of the Labyrinth as over-hyped "Brainstorm killers" that are often so slow that they are useless. If Spirit of the Labyrinth cost just {W} and had Flash then you'd be talking. Or if Notion Thief didn't cost a ridiculous four mana and didn't die to almost every possible removal spell in Legacy. But Wizards has yet to actually print an Abrupt Decay or Council's Judgement style card to really attack the Blue canrtip and card draw spells. We know that Wizards won't ban Brainstorm in Legacy. So my guess is that they are hesitant to print a specific Containment Priest like hate card for the Blue card draw spells.
Where is the Council's Judgement level card for Brainstorm?
Dualcaster Mage? Spirit of the Labyrinth? Notion Thief? These cards aren't that good. We need something better. A Brainstorm Hate Card that is disgustingly effective.
Yes and no. I've been playing MTG for a long time. Especially Legacy. Why Delver decks are so powerful is their low curve. They stick you in the first few turns and then Wasteland/Counterspell you and ride just one creature like Delver, Mongoose, or Goyf to victory. It's the low curve that makes that deck, and essentially most Legacy decks, so powerful. They only need one or two mana at any time to win the game. That's what Blue-Red Delver had become....a deck almost entirely, and sometimes literally just, one and two drops with four copies of Treasure Cruise thrown in to push things over the top. Blue-Red Delver had 16-17 lands and then nothing but the best of the best spells and creatures printed in the each of their respective sets. Delver, Young Pyromancer, Treasure Cruise, Lightning Bolt, and so on. The greatest hits of one and two drops in Red and Blue with a painfully low curve. The deck was so absurdly low to the ground that someone beat a Stax/Prison Deck with Chalice of the Void on {1} by playing their one cost spells right into the Chalice just to create more Pyromancer tokens at Eternal Weekend.
And while Abrupt Decay can't be countered....they can Wasteland or Stifle your ability to actually cast that spell. So turn one Delver that can start disrupting your Lands before you hit Land number two can actually avoid being hit by a spell that can't be countered. So even Abrupt Decay can actually be too slow to stop someone riding a Delver all the way to victory.
It's taken years to get Legacy where it is at where you have an abundance of insanely powerful low curve decks. Each set you see one or two insane low curve spells. Thoughtseize, Ponder, Abrupt Decay, Dark Confidant, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Deathrite Shaman, Thalia, Delver, Noble Hierarch, Hymn to Tourach, Inquisition, V-Clique, Oppressive Rays, Snapcaster, Liliana, True-Name, Stoneforge, Goyf, Goblin Guide, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Gitaxian Probe and so on.
With a low curve you have less need for so many Lands. That means even more spells. Even more consistency and power. And Legacy never rotates out the best spells from Magic's history unless they are actively banned. The way for Wizards to stop this is to print more midrange and higher curve and expensive spells that have insane power. More cards like Grave Titan or Baneslayer Angel. Or Planeswalkers that are far more powerful than Jace ability wise, but cost five or six to play.
Until then Legacy will be the format where you want to curve out at three or less unless you're playing Control, have a way to generate huge mana (High Tide, Food Chain, Combo Elves, etc.), or relying on things like Sol Lands, Simian Spirit Guide, Gemstone Cavern, and Lotus Petal to have explosive but less consistent draws and lines. I've played a lot of the "Veteran Walkers" deck recently for fun, and I've found that getting good ramp in Legacy is brutally difficult compared to Standard and even Modern. I'm trying to chuck lands on the board to hardcast Karn and Nicol Bolas but my opponent just Show and Tells a Worldspine Wurm into play on turn one. Or I die to Goblin Guide hits before I can reach five or six mana to start going off with Karn.
Wizards just needs to print something to deal with Delver and other one drop creatures. Like a removal spell that kills Delver/Goblin Guide and then Surgical Extracts the creature as well. The Banned List is the wrong way to solve things. Better design, hiring Legacy experts, and printing Legacy specific Hate Cards and problem solving cards is more preferable in my opinion.
Miracles is an overrated deck. I think that it is the most overrated deck in Legacy. I pilot it frequently and watch Joe Lossett play it and I just don't see it being that amazing. The deck also has some matches that are just vicious to play against like MUD/12 Post that can be nauseating to try to beat. Counter/Top is played in a lot of Decks other than Miracles but many only play two and two copies respectively. I've seen BUG Control, Jeskai Stoneblade, High Tide, and UW Stoneblade use some sort of Counterbalance/Top package in the last year to varying degrees of success. Counter/Top is annoying to play against....but it's not really that oppressive. Needle, Revoker, Krosan Grip, Abrupt Decay, and lots of other cards can disrupt the Counter/Top plan just fine. The real secret of Miracles is Terminus....now that card is insane. I think that it is the best sweeper in all of Legacy. Better than Pyroclasm and Supreme Verdict or Toxic Deluge level cards.
Define "bigot"? You may see someone as bigoted but they might simply be proud of who they are. Are you offended by the Puerto Rican Day Parade? Or someone with a "Proud to be Irish!" shirt? Are they racist? Are you okay with someone mutilating their genitals in the name of "transgenderism"? Or are you happy that they can realize who they feel they are on the inside? How about forcing someone to pay $150,000 for not making a cake? There's no difference in "proud to be white" than "proud to be black" or "proud to be gay". Saying any of those things is going to anger and upset people that are sensitive and whiny.
Everything is now ultra-politicized. You can't watch a TV show without some agenda thrown in your face. MTG now has transgender characters. In a land of demons, wizards, orcs, dragons, and goblins....Wizards has chosen to politicize its lore with a transgender...a concept that has only been around in the last few decades....yet somehow found its way to Tarkir thousands of years in the past. Ridiculous. People play this game to escape the garbage media and politics that plagues society. Not have it thrown into our faces.
You "judge" transgenderism and you get called a "bigot" and "homophobic" if you don't immediately accept genital mutilation as a "lifestyle choice". There are easily as many people who play Magic that are offended about genital mutilation and transgenderism as there are that are offended by "white pride". Is there a right answer? No. The real answer is to not politicize the cards and the game. Leave the transgender and homosexual activism off of the cards. And not have KKK figures featured in the art. Unfortunately Wizards has made mistakes on both ends.
What's funny is that JRR Tolkien was fiercely anti-immigration and was a silent British Nationalist (basically the UK version of a white supremacist). People will lie through their teeth to deny it. But the truth is that if JRR Tolkien were alive today most people on this site would slam him as a bigot and a racist. He was supporter of a whites-only political party. And was against minority immigration into England because he felt that they didn't assimilate to Europe's superior culture.
But most people don't care and love to watch LOTR and The Hobbit films without knowing that their author clearly felt that European values were superior to all other political and social systems. His works aren't politicized. Most people read GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series and don't take away anything divisive on modern politics. But the idiots at HBO decided to put a dead George W Bush head in the show, angering a huge portion of their audience, without even asking GRRM if he wanted his art politicized like that.
I don't care if the person making the art is a hardcore liberal or conservative. I don't care. As long as their ignorant politics don't bleed into the actual game or into the lore or the art. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death? Invoke Prejudice? Two equally appalling and pathetic cards.
Hearthstone has 20 million registered accounts. How many people play once and then never again? How many are dead accounts? How many are duplicate or robot accounts? How many are counted as being someone who plays Battle.net and tried a Hearthstone trial but then went back to only playing Diablo? How many accounts have had no one log into the account for at least ten weeks? I'd love to see those stats.
You're not the first person and won't be the last. The newest batch of fake cards is highly difficult to spot when the cards are sleeved. Even the best players won't notice. Everyone should know by now that Pro Tours and SCG Invitationals have had players that used counterfeit cards.
It's hilarious that Pro Tour competitors can't afford the cards. It's been known for years now that many Pro Tour competitors need to borrow cards from major stores because they simply cannot afford a Modern deck for a Pro Tour or a Legacy deck for an SCG Invitational.
The fact that Tarmogoyf wasn't mass printed as an uncommon in something like Modern Masters or a Duel Deck is laughably stupid. "We want Modern to be more accessible". Sure, sure.
This Pro Tour is easily the worst commentary I've ever seen. A new low for Wizards. I suspect that they disabled their Twitch stream chat because all the chat would be is an endless bashing of the commentators' mistakes. If things don't pick up then I'm done watching PT coverage and going exclusively to SCG's events. Wizards can't find two or three top MTG players that aren't qualified for this PT to do some commentary? They have people who clearly don't even play Modern cover a Modern event? What a pathetic decision.
They can't fire anyone for at least this year because they are all under contract. But they should instead just hire new commentators and pay the current ones their fee but NEVER put them near a camera or microphone. This coverage makes Modern look like a horrible and not interesting format. It is painful to watch this PT.
People are more invested in Brainstorm as a card. It's a defining Legacy card and a format staple that has evaded a banning every time people have asked for it to be removed from the format. Treasure Cruise just entered into Legacy and it's much less of a card that people are used to seeing and playing. They aren't as attached to the card. Wizards knows that if they ban a card that has been legal for years that it could upset a sizable portion of its player base.
Treasure Cruise was banned before the next expansion even came out. Lots of people are rightfully complaining that the card was never given a chance in Legacy. And that there was more potential for the format to adjust to its presence and adapt. Compensating for the new most powerful card over the course of a few more weeks or months. We saw this with True-Name Nemesis. Where people screamed for it to be banned and eventually Legacy's resilience was realized and True-Name Nemesis remains a powerful, yet not dominant card. But if True-Name had been banned last year how many players would be fiercely calling for it to be legal again right now?
I think the REAL reason for banning Treasure Cruise was simply that Wizards got caught up in their Modern banned list. And decided to ban Treasure Cruise across two formats once they evaluated its power in Modern. If Legacy and Modern had months separated between ban announcements I highly doubt you'd see Treasure Cruise banned in Legacy.
Exactly. Wizards has tried twice now to print anti-Brainstorm cards in Notion Thief and Spirit of the Labyrinth rather than look at a Brainstorm ban. Of course Notion Thief and Spirit are generally horrible cards that take much more time to hit the board compared to Brainstorm. But you see that Wizards in the last few years has gone after draw spells though without much success. Maybe one day they'll make a good anti-Brainstorm card without it being ridiculous like Mental Misstep.
That shouldn't matter at all. Cards should only be banned based on their power in the hands of tournament winning players. Not beginners. Most beginners have no idea how to evaluate power level of competitive cards. If someone who is inexperienced plays Brainstorm 'improperly' it doesn't mean that Brainstorm isn't an incredibly powerful card. The banned list should be about maximum potential of a card in the hands of elite players only. Not about its average power as played by every player, good and bad.
This is the most likely explanation. It was to appease Modern players. Which means that the absurdity and insane decision making regarding the Modern banned list is now spilling over into Legacy. Wizards had to likely ban Pod or Delver/Treasure Cruise in Modern to open up the format before their Modern Pro Tour. It was either that or produce Fate Reforged so that it had an immediate and heavy impact on Modern to shake the format up (not a chance of that of course). A fresh Modern Pro Tour demanded some changes. So while they were 'balancing' Modern again they just arbitrarily picked two cards to ban and unban in Legacy to say "see we are paying attention to Legacy as well". I doubt anyone would have minded if they left Legacy alone rather than forced changes just to pretend like they were paying attention.
Hopefully Wizards isn't taking a new attitude in Legacy. With every couple of months just randomly banning whatever makes a Top8 two or three weeks in a row. "Hey Miracles won again...let's ban Divining Top. Burn one again...let's ban Eidolon of the Great Revel. Hey Delver won again...let's ban...uh...Ponder!".