Well, zurgo is actually one of the worst examples to demonstrate force of will's power level. It's one of the few times it's not as good, especially if it was used on zurgo himself.
Is Mirri's Guile really good in this type of deck? Seems slow and card disadvantage in most games.
Ring of Kalonia is insanely slow and mana-intensive; seems horrible in this style of the deck.
I love the Miracle cards though; definitely adds to the all-in plan!
EDIT: having second thoughts already about miracles For a fast deck, you start with 7 cards in hand and are trying to win by say turn 5 at the latest. That really means turns 2-5 are the ones where drawing this would help. So that's 4/99. For your 7/99 in your opening hand, they're horrible. And on turn 1 as well (on the draw), you won't have a creature in play yet. Even on turn 2, you sometimes won't. So basically in 8 card instances, they're very bad, and 4 they're very good. Not sure that's a good tradeoff or ratio.
Like Modern Infect, it's high-risk, high-reward. They either have the answer, or not.
If we get a single bonus from Might of Old Krosa, however, we are still on the same turn 5 clock (11 life on turn 2, 6 life on turn 3, 1 life on turn 4, and -4 life on turn 5). It doesn't kill the opponent even one turn faster without additional support.
I do agree that these cards need to be cheap. Anything costing 3 or 4 mana is not worth it at all, in my opinion. But Giant Growth is a lightning bolt, and lightning bolts are absolutely efficient enough for the 20-life format.
I played Winter Orb in my old Kami of the Crescent Moon deck, and I had no hesitations about dropping it against monored, or anything else. It just breaks the rules of the game such that no deck, even a red deck with entirely 1cc-2cc cards, is immune. Even last night, I was playing a Teferi Planeswalker deck against Zurgo, and found myself casting Winter Orb on purpose, specifically because it would slow my opponent down and paired with a 30 life starting point, would give me a fighting change.
Then issue a decree that no cards will be banned or unbanned for the next 9 months so that people feel the need to brew and adapt instead of just not playing while they wait for the next ban update which is the situation we seem to be in right now with attendance being down everywhere for all 1v1 singleton formats.
...doesn't make much sense to me.
You're advocating for the unbanning of some pretty powerful cards (example: Hermit Druid, Edric)and then telling people to "adapt" for 9 months. The reason there are ban lists in the first place is because trying to adapt to way overpowered cards makes a format less fun for most people.
MTGCommander decided on a set of principles and stuck to them. This led to some unusual bannings, but the format had a mission statement and it stuck to it. Duel Commander has no mission statement, so the bannings seem random. And MTGO 1v1 Commander has a mission statement but it's making dumb decisions about how to enforce it. Until one or the other figures out how to fix their problem, neither will succeed.
I haven't personally played a game of Commander in 8 months because I've been waiting for one of these formats to get their act together and it looks like I'm going to be waiting another 8 months at least.
Elves ignore Tabernacle by making mana off themselves
That's not "ignoring" :/
It's all well and good to try to claim Tabernacle is amazing in Legacy, but the indisputable facts are:
- it's a 1-of...
- in a single deck...
- that makes up 4% of the metagame.
- And all of the decks that get "dominated" by it are the top decks in the format - both in results as well as just plain number of people playing them.
It's utterly baffling to me that this card hasn't ever seen the light of day in this format, as though it's a Mox or something. It's allowed 4x in Legacy and aggro dominates the format.
- Death and Taxes has been a tier 1 deck in the format for over a decade, and more than half its spells are creatures.
- Delver decks play "only" 14 creatures or so, and between 2-4 copies of Young Pyromancer. That card isn't in there because it's a 2/1 for 2 mana...
- Eldrazi Aggro plays ~24 creatures.
- And of course, Elves is a mainstay in the format and something you can count on seeing at most mid-sized tournaments.
Zurgo wins plenty of games being the only creature left on the battlefield too. So does Anafenza or Doran. That's the nature of aggro; you don't just get to play all your guys and let them swing every turn without obstacle.
The fact that a deck needs a lot of guys on the board to win is not something to be catered to, in my opinion. That just means the format is slow or lacking removal/answers. Needing lots of guys on the board is an obstacle that a combo deck like Elves or Animar must work around. Carving out special bans so that they can exist is favoritism for what is likely otherwise a subpar deck.
I think tabernacle is too much of a swingy card and a hindrance for creature decks, and shouldn't ever be allowed in our format, the high price is just an additional reason as to why I wouldn't allow it. Every single control deck can run expedition map, and every blue deck can run trinket mage to fetch said map, so there you have at least 2~3 copies of tabernacle in a control deck at least.
Best case, turn 1 Map, turn 2 activate it, turn 3 skip a land drop. You are pretty far behind at that point I think, having a whole 2 mana to spend to that point. And even that is miles better than spending your entire turn 3 and 4 worth of mana to get it on the board with Trinket Mage --> Map. If you're going to spend 3 mana and a land drop (or 6 mana and a land drop), why not just play Pendrell Mists?! Because 1/13 games you can just drop Tabernacle turn 1 and live the dream against Zurgo?
It's utterly baffling to me that this card hasn't ever seen the light of day in this format, as though it's a Mox or something. It's allowed 4x in Legacy and aggro dominates the format.
Humility and tarbernacle also seem crazy to me. Both cards are unbelievably oppressive tools against creature strategies. Tabernacle in particular would be completely bonkers given the amount of land tutoring the format has access to. Not to mention that I disagree in unbanning this particular card due to price considerations: every tier control deck would need a tabernacle, but do you know how much one of them cost?
I don't see why cost should be a factor in determining a banlist. I'm surprised at what these sites are listing Tabernacle at, but it's like 3 Revised dual lands, or one Timetwister, or two Candelabra, etc. The format is expensive, and no one seems in a rush to ban dual lands because 4-color decks need 9 of them.
Of the top control decks in the past few months, only Leovold can easily tutor for Tabernacle. Narset, Geist, and Baral can't really (Tolaria West seems like you're asking to die if that's how you spend turn 3 and then you want to "skip" a land drop on turn 4). Long-Term Plans? I dunno.
Both Humility and Tabernacle are key parts of lockdown strategies, which are really under-represented in the format, and I think a fun deckbuilding challenge. So I'd like to see them available for that reason in particular.
I don't think anyone actually knows for sure what Tabernacle would be like since it's essentially never been legal in the format. I don't know of any other card that is 4x legal in Legacy and has literally never even been available in this format.
Duel commander is still the dominant commander format on Cockatrice, but MTGO-style games aren't hard to come by.
Ring of Kalonia is insanely slow and mana-intensive; seems horrible in this style of the deck.
I love the Miracle cards though; definitely adds to the all-in plan!
EDIT: having second thoughts already about miracles
I do agree that these cards need to be cheap. Anything costing 3 or 4 mana is not worth it at all, in my opinion. But Giant Growth is a lightning bolt, and lightning bolts are absolutely efficient enough for the 20-life format.
Punctuation.
28% Partner Control
17% Breya, Etherium Shaper
11% Baral
6% Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4% Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Allows people to brew?!
...doesn't make much sense to me.
You're advocating for the unbanning of some pretty powerful cards (example: Hermit Druid, Edric)and then telling people to "adapt" for 9 months. The reason there are ban lists in the first place is because trying to adapt to way overpowered cards makes a format less fun for most people.
MTGCommander decided on a set of principles and stuck to them. This led to some unusual bannings, but the format had a mission statement and it stuck to it. Duel Commander has no mission statement, so the bannings seem random. And MTGO 1v1 Commander has a mission statement but it's making dumb decisions about how to enforce it. Until one or the other figures out how to fix their problem, neither will succeed.
I haven't personally played a game of Commander in 8 months because I've been waiting for one of these formats to get their act together and it looks like I'm going to be waiting another 8 months at least.
It's all well and good to try to claim Tabernacle is amazing in Legacy, but the indisputable facts are:
- it's a 1-of...
- in a single deck...
- that makes up 4% of the metagame.
- And all of the decks that get "dominated" by it are the top decks in the format - both in results as well as just plain number of people playing them.
This doesn't add up.
- Death and Taxes has been a tier 1 deck in the format for over a decade, and more than half its spells are creatures.
- Delver decks play "only" 14 creatures or so, and between 2-4 copies of Young Pyromancer. That card isn't in there because it's a 2/1 for 2 mana...
- Eldrazi Aggro plays ~24 creatures.
- And of course, Elves is a mainstay in the format and something you can count on seeing at most mid-sized tournaments.
Zurgo wins plenty of games being the only creature left on the battlefield too. So does Anafenza or Doran. That's the nature of aggro; you don't just get to play all your guys and let them swing every turn without obstacle.
The fact that a deck needs a lot of guys on the board to win is not something to be catered to, in my opinion. That just means the format is slow or lacking removal/answers. Needing lots of guys on the board is an obstacle that a combo deck like Elves or Animar must work around. Carving out special bans so that they can exist is favoritism for what is likely otherwise a subpar deck.
It's utterly baffling to me that this card hasn't ever seen the light of day in this format, as though it's a Mox or something. It's allowed 4x in Legacy and aggro dominates the format.
Of the top control decks in the past few months, only Leovold can easily tutor for Tabernacle. Narset, Geist, and Baral can't really (Tolaria West seems like you're asking to die if that's how you spend turn 3 and then you want to "skip" a land drop on turn 4). Long-Term Plans? I dunno.
Both Humility and Tabernacle are key parts of lockdown strategies, which are really under-represented in the format, and I think a fun deckbuilding challenge. So I'd like to see them available for that reason in particular.
I don't think anyone actually knows for sure what Tabernacle would be like since it's essentially never been legal in the format. I don't know of any other card that is 4x legal in Legacy and has literally never even been available in this format.