MTG Salvation

... Baneslayer still kicks its ass.

Baneslayer is barely playable these days anyway. It's too much of a dud against most decks where a 5 mana spell that trades awfully against a bounce by teferi or counterspell etc is too much tempo lost.

And many aggro decks can deal with it easily as well if they are just holding a removal for it.

This terror of the peaks is much better although I don't think it's that good either. It takes over a game just the same if unanswered but is more guaranteed damage. A potentially suitable topend for something like gruul. Baneslayer is mostly a sideboard card to punish players siding out too much removal.

Oh, I agree completely. I rarely play Constructed competitively for this exact reason. I'd much rather play my Dinosaur deck against my friend's Bear deck. Or my (Singleton, nothing newer than 5 years old) BW Human deck against my friend's Ooze deck. It's just more fun.

Honestly, I think your points here, which are valid, really highlight one of the biggest flaws of the game. Cool stuff is often unplayable. Iconic creatures like Dragons and Demons aren't often seen or used. Random stuff is jammed together to make the strongest deck, rather than having a unifying theme.

It's one of the things that greatly killed my interest in the game. You shouldn't have to sacrifice flavor for function, but the modern game makes that very difficult.

I've never understood the Baneslayer Angel hysteria. Yes, it's a very good card. Yes, it shuts down both Dragons and Demons.

But, when was the last time you saw a deck in Standard that used a Dragon? Demons are a little more likely to be seen, but not by much. And really, if you're playing a Dragon deck, you have burn. If you're playing a Demon deck, you've got targeted removal. Baneslayer is good, but it doesn't have Hexproof and Indestructible.

In fact, I don't think there's a single deck in the current Meta that uses a Dragon or a Demon, unless there's a Sprite Dragon deck that I don't know about.

At least they aren't responding to BSA frustration by making cards like Halo Hunter that utterly fail to deal with the issue. Still, It'd be nice to see a single demon or dragon that can survive BSA in this set even if it doesn't win the fight. Demons used to be 7/7 and up sometimes.

I get your frustration, but as Angels are my favorite, and Baneslayer is definitely one of my favorite cards ever made, I am happy to see her return.

Not every deck will be running white and/or have enough for Baneslayer, though.

Yeah I don't know why they bothered trying to make demons or dragons in this set with BSA making them invalid. You couldn't even race with this against the lifelink swings.

Quote from HolyProxyBatman »

But, when was the last time you saw a deck in Standard that used a Dragon? Demons are a little more likely to be seen, but not by much.
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In fact, I don't think there's a single deck in the current Meta that uses a Dragon or a Demon, unless there's a Sprite Dragon deck that I don't know about.

That's part of the problem. Putting on two kinds of protection that are so narrow doesn't benefit most games. But if they every did make a really good demon or dragon card that was significant enough for people to sideboard BSA it would be a harder shut-down than is deserved.

Protection is a bad mechanic. Its a good thing that it appears less than it used to. Until end of turn protection is fine if a resource was spent to give it, but no one enjoys games that are decided by one creature that is protected against everything that matters.

Lets say instead of Shock there was a card called "I hate Steve" which was a R instant that did 2 damage to any target, but if the target was a player named Steve it did 5 damage instead. This would not impact the metagame and most players would never notice the change, but it would be a middle finger to everyone named Steve and there would be no gain for the game in doing this.

There is no reason to fill a card's textbox with hate that kills design space, and that's what BSA does. And when evaluating every demon and dragon henceforth the question that needs to be asked is can you beat someone using Baneslayer.

If one player is using this dragon and the cards that support it and their opponent runs BSA and the cards that typically go with it, the BSA wins the damage race in a game that is not fun for either player. The only red deck hope is that they don't draw their BSA's or they get land screwed or other ways in which the white deck does not get to play the game.