I'm down with skullclamp just to watch it happen. I wouldn't play modern but I would certainly go to tournaments for the clamption.
Just no. flat out NO. I started playing when it was legal and the nightmares I had from those stupid affinity decks winning turn 2-3...ugh..no. and for those who want the artifact lands back in exchange for Opal and Plating I should say this affinity has always found a way to stay relevant and as for the past ten years of my playing experience it will always find a way to be relevant in any format. Obviously no where near as powerful in such a set limited environment as standard but it will always be around in some fashion. its just a solid deck which can be built to suit any color or archtype. that's my rant for the day:p
Just no. flat out NO. I started playing when it was legal and the nightmares I had from those stupid affinity decks winning turn 2-3...ugh..no. and for those who want the artifact lands back in exchange for Opal and Plating I should say this affinity has always found a way to stay relevant and as for the past ten years of my playing experience it will always find a way to be relevant in any format. Obviously no where near as powerful in such a set limited environment as standard but it will always be around in some fashion. its just a solid deck which can be built to suit any color or archtype. that's my rant for the day:p
people never know how to take a joke here. like, ever.
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I speak in sarcasm because calling people ******* ******** is not allowed.
people never know how to take a joke here. like, ever.
lol I was being facetious. literally I think this is the most broken card since Memory Jar and is easily the most powerful on this list. If Legacy can't have it then you know modern can't either.
Funny thing is I entered the game when, according to wizards, people were leaving the game during the standard Affinity mess.
Can someone briefly describe how Ancestral Visions was OP enough to ban? I wasn't playing Modern when it was not banned (if it ever was). Seems to me that it falls well within the "Turn 4" format Wiz is pushing; without manipulating time counters it gets cast at the earliest turn 5. Granted, it'll probably be in a control shell, guaranteeing that you'll most likely see turn 5. But like, why try to abuse it with Cascade when you could just play Living End?
Can someone briefly describe how Ancestral Visions was OP enough to ban? I wasn't playing Modern when it was not banned (if it ever was). Seems to me that it falls well within the "Turn 4" format Wiz is pushing; without manipulating time counters it gets cast at the earliest turn 5. Granted, it'll probably be in a control shell, guaranteeing that you'll most likely see turn 5. But like, why try to abuse it with Cascade when you could just play Living End?
It's always been banned. From the official article debuting the banned list:
The last Modern-legal card that has been making a huge splash in Legacy control decks is Ancestral Vision. While not every Jace, the Mind Sculptor deck in Legacy plays Ancestral Vision, a great many of them do. The combination of Ancestral Vision, Spell Snare, and other counterspells lets control decks draw cards very cheaply without getting behind early on, and that's powerful enough that we feel safer having it banned
Can someone briefly describe how Ancestral Visions was OP enough to ban?
Reason: At the time of its banning in Modern, Ancestral Vision was showing up in Legacy Stoneblade decks. The goal was to suspend AV on the first turn, then try to use 1-for-1 counters and removal to not fall behind while trying to stick Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If the move failed, you would get a free fistful of cards to recover from it, and if it succeeded, you'd push so far ahead the match was almost unloseable. Since WotC was (and still is?) determined to making Modern 'feel' different from Legacy, they banned it as a precaution. In the meantime, Ancestral Vision has been dropped from UW Stoneblade, and only sees play in the Shardless Agent based BUG control deck.
The concept of thwarting the opponent 1-for-1, then pulling far ahead when AV came off of suspend would have been "unfun" at the dawn of the format and might have tainted the format in the eyes of a certain demographic of players. That's a reasonable fear, but what ended up happening instead was a bunch of combo decks goldfishing past each other, so it was a moot point.
Question:
If its no longer part of the UW shell that defines one of Legacy's pillars, should it remain banned? Personally, I think the answer is no. And for the record, I think cross-format relevance is a stupid metric anyways. The notion that the two formats can't have some common ground is ridiculous, and if you go back to the initial announcement, its strongly implied that overlap between them is the intent. Modern Jund porting into Legacy and thriving without its entire core (ok, just BBE) being stripped by bans (like Modern UW) was proof WotC's thinking is changing. I wouldn't be surprised to see AV, Jace, and SFM back in the format someday. Maybe not soon, but the wind is changing.
Reason: At the time of its banning in Modern, Ancestral Vision was showing up in Legacy Stoneblade decks. The goal was to suspend AV on the first turn, then try to use 1-for-1 counters and removal to not fall behind while trying to stick Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If the move failed, you would get a free fistful of cards to recover from it, and if it succeeded, you'd push so far ahead the match was almost unloseable. Since WotC was (and still is?) determined to making Modern 'feel' different from Legacy, they banned it as a precaution. In the meantime, Ancestral Vision has been dropped from UW Stoneblade, and only sees play in the Shardless Agent based BUG control deck.
The concept of thwarting the opponent 1-for-1, then pulling far ahead when AV came off of suspend would have been "unfun" at the dawn of the format and might have tainted the format in the eyes of a certain demographic of players. That's a reasonable fear, but what ended up happening instead was a bunch of combo decks goldfishing past each other, so it was a moot point.
Question:
If its no longer part of the UW shell that defines one of Legacy's pillars, should it remain banned? Personally, I think the answer is no. And for the record, I think cross-format relevance is a stupid metric anyways. The notion that the two formats can't have some common ground is ridiculous, and if you go back to the initial announcement, its strongly implied that overlap between them is the intent. Modern Jund porting into Legacy and thriving without its entire core being stripped by a ban (like Modern UW) was proves WotC's thinking is changing. I wouldn't be surprised to see AV, Jace, and SFM back in the format someday. Maybe not soon, but the wind is changing.
From what I've heard about Stoneforge, it won't probably ever come back. It was so polarizing that the vast majority of decks in the meta were Esper Deathblade and hardly anything else. Ancestral visions is one thing, but Jace and SFM are way too OP.
From what I've heard about Stoneforge, it won't probably ever come back. It was so polarizing that the vast majority of decks in the meta were Esper Deathblade and hardly anything else. Ancestral visions is one thing, but Jace and SFM are way too OP.
What format are you talking about? It didn't break Legacy, it was never in Modern, and it was WU in Standard (also, DRS wasn't Standard legal).
From what I've heard about Stoneforge, it won't probably ever come back. It was so polarizing that the vast majority of decks in the meta were Esper Deathblade and hardly anything else. Ancestral visions is one thing, but Jace and SFM are way too OP.
I wouldn't rule it out in the future. It might have been traumatizing once upon a time, but so were Ravager, Delver, Jund, and Valakut. Jace isn't that much better than Liliana of the Veil, and both pale in comparison to a Turn 3 Karn or sneaked-in Emrakul or Griselbrand. SFM fetching anything less than a Batterskull isn't that far off from a Turn 2 Dark Confidant or rebuying Lightning Bolts with Snapcaster Mage. Modern is full of powerful interactions, so it makes little sense to keep some of them on the sidelines while equally crazy stuff runs rampant.
I wouldn't count it out in the future. It might have been traumatizing once upon a time, but so were Ravager, Delver, Jund, and Valakut.
...three of which have cards banned in their respective decks in Modern.
I suppose in Delver's case you can say Ponder/Preordain are for combo rather than for Delver, but still, appealing to decks that have stuff banned from them seems a bit odd, because that kinda indicates that they are still awfully "traumatizing" when at full strength, especially considering Affinity and Jund are currently Tier 1 decks with said cards banned.
...three of which have cards banned in their respective decks in Modern.
The sky didn't fall when Valakut was unbanned, and I haven't met a single player who quit modern because seeing a Valakut again triggered PTSD.
The initial point wasn't about Standard though...its that using Legacy relevance as a measuring stick doesn't make sense. All of those decks were comparably traumatizing in Standard and contributed heavily to Legacy.
Yet only the core of one of them (UW Stoneblade) is banned in Modern, while the others have a single card banned that reins them in without killing them altogether. Jund has BBE, Delver has Ponder/Preordain (but for other reasons), Faeries has Bitterblossom (even though Faeries is crap in Legacy) and Stoneblade has Batterskull Jace/SFM/AV and also Ponder and Jitte (for other reasons). One of these doesn't fit the pattern.
I would understand if Jund had seen bans to DRS, Lily, and BBE when it started to get successfully ported into Legacy with minimal change. Because we gotta keep the formats separated, right? But that's not what happened. So we're left with this weird situation where cross-format relevance is ok in one deck but not ok in another?
I don't think Stoneforge's problem has as much to do with power level (although it is certainly a powerful card) as it does with Wizards trying to make sure that unpopular, oppressive Standard decks don't find their way into Modern. Stone Forge and Bitterblossom probably wouldn't break the format, but they're on the list because Cawblade and Faeries left such a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
I think the reason they left a "bad taste" has little to do with their true power, but more thei relative power. They were the undisputed best decks around in their respective Standard formats and there weren't sufficient cards in the limited card pool to really give them a run for that title. I think that is really what turns people off about it, and in modern those cards have competition on the same power level.
Regardless of any of that, isn't "being unfun/players don't like it" a ridiculous sentiment for bannings in a competitive game?
Oh, I thought he was talking about playing a spell that is countering a spell with counters on it as it comes into play, but I see you guys were just discussing whether he was flashing a creature with flash in order to flash a flashback or just flashing a creature with flash but not needing flash in order to flashback a spell without flash.
I don't think Stoneforge's problem has as much to do with power level (although it is certainly a powerful card) as it does with Wizards trying to make sure that unpopular, oppressive Standard decks don't find their way into Modern. Stone Forge and Bitterblossom probably wouldn't break the format, but they're on the list because Cawblade and Faeries left such a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
Most Modern players didn't play against Faeries. With the game growing like it is now, most if them will only have heard stories about Caw-Blade in the near future.
I think the reason they left a "bad taste" has little to do with their true power, but more thei relative power. They were the undisputed best decks around in their respective Standard formats and there weren't sufficient cards in the limited card pool to really give them a run for that title. I think that is really what turns people off about it, and in modern those cards have competition on the same power level.
Regardless of any of that, isn't "being unfun/players don't like it" a ridiculous sentiment for bannings in a competitive game?
I agree with you 100%. I'm not defending WotC's choices, I was just trying to explain the reasoning behind them. I think they're far too liberal with the Modern banned list.
I'm guessing the same demographic that hates powerful counterspells. In my mind, they're all the same enigmatic strawman who is hellbent on making sure the things I like don't get made in modern magic
Reason: At the time of its banning in Modern, Ancestral Vision was showing up in Legacy Stoneblade decks. The goal was to suspend AV on the first turn, then try to use 1-for-1 counters and removal to not fall behind while trying to stick Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If the move failed, you would get a free fistful of cards to recover from it, and if it succeeded, you'd push so far ahead the match was almost unloseable. Since WotC was (and still is?) determined to making Modern 'feel' different from Legacy, they banned it as a precaution. In the meantime, Ancestral Vision has been dropped from UW Stoneblade, and only sees play in the Shardless Agent based BUG control deck.
The concept of thwarting the opponent 1-for-1, then pulling far ahead when AV came off of suspend would have been "unfun" at the dawn of the format and might have tainted the format in the eyes of a certain demographic of players. That's a reasonable fear, but what ended up happening instead was a bunch of combo decks goldfishing past each other, so it was a moot point.
I had to read your link on the Ancestral Vision ban because of the ridiculousness of the reasoning you summarized. I was shocked to find that you paraphrased it accurately.
That UW Stoneblade deck ran eight free counters in the form of Mental Misstep and Force of Will. The removal was Swords to Plowshares to give their opponent (in comparison to path) insignificant life. Stoneforge Mystic + Batterskull was an excellent board stabilizer. In this pile of cards, Brainstorm smoothed draws and found answers. Finally, Jace, the Mind Sculptor generated tremendous advantage and locked the game away. I hope people can notice the obvious: NONE OF THAT is in modern. Banning Ancestral Vision as a "precaution" due to a deck which is missing 90% of the shell in modern shows how terrible the banning policy was/is. Guilty until proven innocent, I suppose.
I had to read your link on the Ancestral Vision ban because of the ridiculousness of the reasoning you summarized. I was shocked to find that you paraphrased it accurately.
That UW Stoneblade deck ran eight free counters in the form of Mental Misstep and Force of Will. The removal was Swords to Plowshares to give their opponent (in comparison to path) insignificant life. Stoneforge Mystic + Batterskull was an excellent board stabilizer. In this pile of cards, Brainstorm smoothed draws and found answers. Finally, Jace, the Mind Sculptor generated tremendous advantage and locked the game away. I hope people can notice the obvious: NONE OF THAT is in modern. Banning Ancestral Vision as a "precaution" due to a deck which is missing 90% of the shell in modern shows how terrible the banning policy was/is. Guilty until proven innocent, I suppose.
What whas like playing against fully powered Bitterblossom faeries?? I've heard nightmarish stories about some of the most frustrating games ever, but wanted to know first hand
I started playing Magic with Mirrodin, at the infamous "Affinity - Skullclamp" era (then left and came back in RtR) so I'm no stranger to ridiculously overpowered and frustrating decks to play against, lol
What whas like playing against fully powered Bitterblossom faeries?? I've heard nightmarish stories about some of the most frustrating games ever, but wanted to know first hand
When AV was legal, almost every single game started with a turn 1 Thoughtseize or AV, except in post-board situations when the Faeries player would turn 1 Peppersmoke or Deathmark on the draw against aggro. If none of these things happened, the Faeries player was probably an idiot who didn't understand how to mulligan.
On turn 2, a large amount of the time a Bitterblossom would come down. There were decent counters in the format, but most of the time it would resolve anyways because there wasn't a Spell Snare, and because Mana Tithe was ridiculously hard to cast for a blue deck (the tribal duals were freaking random colors, and the UW dual lands at the time were the painland and Nimbus Maze). So if Blossom was on the play, it always resolved, and if Blossom was on the draw against countermagic, the Thoughtseize probably took away the Rune Snag on turn 1 anyways, so Blossom probably resolved. But even if there was no Blossom on turn 2, there probably was an AV on turn 1 so the Faeries player could just sit back and draw 3 cards.
Then you factor in that the deck was made from tricks and 2-for-1s, so if the opponent wasn't a very knowledgeable and experienced pilot who has played with Faeries a lot himself, he probably was going to run into Spellstutters for countering or into Mistbind Clique traps (upkeep or in combat) or into Scion traps, not to mention all the things that can always go wrong against Cryptic Command. And if you ever played a removal spell on a Faerie while the opponent has 4 mana open, he could hide it under a Clique and 2-for-1 you that way, too. So, with all of these tricks, and then the fact that ~7/25 of the manabase were manlands, the learning curve for facing Faeries was astronomically sloped.
And then, on top of that, Cryptic Command and Mistbind Clique were both full-blown Time Walks. So if the Faeries player had a clock on board and wanted to race, he probably could win the race very easily--anybody can win a race when their opponent's car is broken down on the side of the road.
Think about what it's like to die to a Snapcaster Mage and a Pestermite clocking you for a few turns each, from Splinter Twin. That's Faeries, every single game where it doesn't have a Bitterblossom. When it does have a Bitterblossom, they don't even have to cast other spells in many scenarios because Blossom already does so much to the game state. Want an example of how that works? Look at Standard. Pack Rat owns a large chunk of that format (before Born of the Gods changes things), and Pack Rat makes you pay more mana for each token. Blossom just does it for free. And in that Standard, the best enchantment removal was literally Wispmare. I'm not kidding. That was it. Eventually, the next block rotated out AV and brought in Esper Charm and Volcanic Fallout, but that still wasn't enough, so they printed Great Sable Stag for one core set only to end the reign of terror--but then Faeries still was an amazing deck. Oh, you have a 3/3 guy I can't counter, remove with my blue/black spells, or block with my blue/black creatures? I'll just race it, tap it with Cryptic, block with 2 Mutavaults, block with a Mutavault and then save it with Mistbind Clique (by the way, you don't get to cast spells in your second main phase now), or cast these Lightning Bolts that I easily splashed red for.
And then, in addition to everything else, if Faeries is a deck you can kiss planeswalkers goodbye. They never stick around. I'm actually a big fan of this effect; I hate the Hell out of planeswalkers, but for anyone who enjoys playing with them--well, most of them are going to get the tar beaten out of them within a turn or two of landing, if they even resolve.
Blossom at least has answers now, but if you don't have that answer quickly the card gets way out of hand. Even if it just makes 3 guys, gets removed, and the 3 guys get removed by a sweeper, that's a 2-for-1 that took less mana than whatever you used to clean it up. Even if you 1-for-1 with Blossom and the tokens chump 3 times, it's still probably going to put the Faeries player in a very safe position.
You guys know about how Stoneforge and Jace TMS got banned in Standard? Well, when Faeries was around, they tried the "let's print a bunch of hosers and see if they work" method, and that's how they learned that method doesn't work. (That, and Jund...whoever invented Cascade should be taken out back and shot by General Dreedle.) Sure, Stoneforge/Jace Standard had the lowest tournament attendance, but the game had been declining for a while because of Faeries and then Jund.
Maybe Bitterblossom could be fair in Modern. Or, maybe it could just ruin the format. Either way, I have a theory that the only people who want it back are old Faeries players.
All stated above is correct, except the third color part. Those were fringe situations at best.
The worst part would probably be that while cascade, as a mechanic, was quite good against faeries, the best cascade card in Modern is currently banned which means that Jund might not have it as easy as people believe.
One other point worthy of note is that it while AV was better at it, Jace Beleren worked pretty well as a card advantage source after rotation and for the rest of the Standard season, especially when you could protect it with an endless chump blocker parade.
I'm saying this because BB wouldn't be a "safer" unban if AV remained on the list. If anything, there might be even better cards for that job then Jace right now, since we're talking about a card pool that is roughly 5 times larger then the one while Bitterblossom was legal in Standard.
All this and more, but I still miss playing with it.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
.....Maybe Bitterblossom could be fair in Modern. Or, maybe it could just ruin the format. Either way, I have a theory that the only people who want it back are old Faeries players.
Well said, in reference to both cards.
I voted for Ancestral Visions to come off (but NOT Bitterblossom), and the more I think about the less sure I am that it would be a good idea. They both represent 1-card engines that are as powerful, if not more powerful, than existing engines in the format. I'm sure the world wouldn't end if they came off, but it would certainly change the format as we know it. I'm pretty confident after much reflection that wizards will leave these 2 alone, for now.
Wild Nacatl (Naya zoo is NOT faster than affinity)
Chrome Mox (some decent non-green mana acceleration should exist, and this card always risks a 2-for-1, ESPECIALLY with abrupt decay being so popular. Affinity should NOT be the only deck in the format with a mox... and one that has basically zero drawbacks in that deck, to boot)
Preordain (seriously. it's fine. I'd like to see ponder off the list also, but I'd settle for just the one)
sensei's divining top (the only reason this should be banned is because of counterbalance. I say bring the top back, and ban counterbalance instead).
I have some other pet cards on the list, but I get why they are there. And honestly, I wouldn't even be playing any of the cards I think should be unbanned.
Just no. flat out NO. I started playing when it was legal and the nightmares I had from those stupid affinity decks winning turn 2-3...ugh..no. and for those who want the artifact lands back in exchange for Opal and Plating I should say this affinity has always found a way to stay relevant and as for the past ten years of my playing experience it will always find a way to be relevant in any format. Obviously no where near as powerful in such a set limited environment as standard but it will always be around in some fashion. its just a solid deck which can be built to suit any color or archtype. that's my rant for the day:p
people never know how to take a joke here. like, ever.
lol I was being facetious. literally I think this is the most broken card since Memory Jar and is easily the most powerful on this list. If Legacy can't have it then you know modern can't either.
Funny thing is I entered the game when, according to wizards, people were leaving the game during the standard Affinity mess.
UWRUWR Midrange/GeistRWU
Retired
GWBMelira PodBWG
It's always been banned. From the official article debuting the banned list:
Reason:
At the time of its banning in Modern, Ancestral Vision was showing up in Legacy Stoneblade decks. The goal was to suspend AV on the first turn, then try to use 1-for-1 counters and removal to not fall behind while trying to stick Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. If the move failed, you would get a free fistful of cards to recover from it, and if it succeeded, you'd push so far ahead the match was almost unloseable. Since WotC was (and still is?) determined to making Modern 'feel' different from Legacy, they banned it as a precaution. In the meantime, Ancestral Vision has been dropped from UW Stoneblade, and only sees play in the Shardless Agent based BUG control deck.
The concept of thwarting the opponent 1-for-1, then pulling far ahead when AV came off of suspend would have been "unfun" at the dawn of the format and might have tainted the format in the eyes of a certain demographic of players. That's a reasonable fear, but what ended up happening instead was a bunch of combo decks goldfishing past each other, so it was a moot point.
Question:
If its no longer part of the UW shell that defines one of Legacy's pillars, should it remain banned? Personally, I think the answer is no. And for the record, I think cross-format relevance is a stupid metric anyways. The notion that the two formats can't have some common ground is ridiculous, and if you go back to the initial announcement, its strongly implied that overlap between them is the intent. Modern Jund porting into Legacy and thriving without its entire core (ok, just BBE) being stripped by bans (like Modern UW) was proof WotC's thinking is changing. I wouldn't be surprised to see AV, Jace, and SFM back in the format someday. Maybe not soon, but the wind is changing.
Speculate less. Test more.
From what I've heard about Stoneforge, it won't probably ever come back. It was so polarizing that the vast majority of decks in the meta were Esper Deathblade and hardly anything else. Ancestral visions is one thing, but Jace and SFM are way too OP.
UWRUWR Midrange/GeistRWU
Retired
GWBMelira PodBWG
What format are you talking about? It didn't break Legacy, it was never in Modern, and it was WU in Standard (also, DRS wasn't Standard legal).
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I wouldn't rule it out in the future. It might have been traumatizing once upon a time, but so were Ravager, Delver, Jund, and Valakut. Jace isn't that much better than Liliana of the Veil, and both pale in comparison to a Turn 3 Karn or sneaked-in Emrakul or Griselbrand. SFM fetching anything less than a Batterskull isn't that far off from a Turn 2 Dark Confidant or rebuying Lightning Bolts with Snapcaster Mage. Modern is full of powerful interactions, so it makes little sense to keep some of them on the sidelines while equally crazy stuff runs rampant.
Speculate less. Test more.
...three of which have cards banned in their respective decks in Modern.
I suppose in Delver's case you can say Ponder/Preordain are for combo rather than for Delver, but still, appealing to decks that have stuff banned from them seems a bit odd, because that kinda indicates that they are still awfully "traumatizing" when at full strength, especially considering Affinity and Jund are currently Tier 1 decks with said cards banned.
The sky didn't fall when Valakut was unbanned, and I haven't met a single player who quit modern because seeing a Valakut again triggered PTSD.
The initial point wasn't about Standard though...its that using Legacy relevance as a measuring stick doesn't make sense. All of those decks were comparably traumatizing in Standard and contributed heavily to Legacy.
Yet only the core of one of them (UW Stoneblade) is banned in Modern, while the others have a single card banned that reins them in without killing them altogether. Jund has BBE, Delver has Ponder/Preordain (but for other reasons), Faeries has Bitterblossom (even though Faeries is crap in Legacy) and Stoneblade has
BatterskullJace/SFM/AV and also Ponder and Jitte (for other reasons). One of these doesn't fit the pattern.I would understand if Jund had seen bans to DRS, Lily, and BBE when it started to get successfully ported into Legacy with minimal change. Because we gotta keep the formats separated, right? But that's not what happened. So we're left with this weird situation where cross-format relevance is ok in one deck but not ok in another?
Speculate less. Test more.
Regardless of any of that, isn't "being unfun/players don't like it" a ridiculous sentiment for bannings in a competitive game?
-regarding Snapcaster Mage.
Most Modern players didn't play against Faeries. With the game growing like it is now, most if them will only have heard stories about Caw-Blade in the near future.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I agree with you 100%. I'm not defending WotC's choices, I was just trying to explain the reasoning behind them. I think they're far too liberal with the Modern banned list.
I'm guessing the same demographic that hates powerful counterspells. In my mind, they're all the same enigmatic strawman who is hellbent on making sure the things I like don't get made in modern magic
I had to read your link on the Ancestral Vision ban because of the ridiculousness of the reasoning you summarized. I was shocked to find that you paraphrased it accurately.
That UW Stoneblade deck ran eight free counters in the form of Mental Misstep and Force of Will. The removal was Swords to Plowshares to give their opponent (in comparison to path) insignificant life. Stoneforge Mystic + Batterskull was an excellent board stabilizer. In this pile of cards, Brainstorm smoothed draws and found answers. Finally, Jace, the Mind Sculptor generated tremendous advantage and locked the game away. I hope people can notice the obvious: NONE OF THAT is in modern. Banning Ancestral Vision as a "precaution" due to a deck which is missing 90% of the shell in modern shows how terrible the banning policy was/is. Guilty until proven innocent, I suppose.
What whas like playing against fully powered Bitterblossom faeries?? I've heard nightmarish stories about some of the most frustrating games ever, but wanted to know first hand
I started playing Magic with Mirrodin, at the infamous "Affinity - Skullclamp" era (then left and came back in RtR) so I'm no stranger to ridiculously overpowered and frustrating decks to play against, lol
When AV was legal, almost every single game started with a turn 1 Thoughtseize or AV, except in post-board situations when the Faeries player would turn 1 Peppersmoke or Deathmark on the draw against aggro. If none of these things happened, the Faeries player was probably an idiot who didn't understand how to mulligan.
On turn 2, a large amount of the time a Bitterblossom would come down. There were decent counters in the format, but most of the time it would resolve anyways because there wasn't a Spell Snare, and because Mana Tithe was ridiculously hard to cast for a blue deck (the tribal duals were freaking random colors, and the UW dual lands at the time were the painland and Nimbus Maze). So if Blossom was on the play, it always resolved, and if Blossom was on the draw against countermagic, the Thoughtseize probably took away the Rune Snag on turn 1 anyways, so Blossom probably resolved. But even if there was no Blossom on turn 2, there probably was an AV on turn 1 so the Faeries player could just sit back and draw 3 cards.
Then you factor in that the deck was made from tricks and 2-for-1s, so if the opponent wasn't a very knowledgeable and experienced pilot who has played with Faeries a lot himself, he probably was going to run into Spellstutters for countering or into Mistbind Clique traps (upkeep or in combat) or into Scion traps, not to mention all the things that can always go wrong against Cryptic Command. And if you ever played a removal spell on a Faerie while the opponent has 4 mana open, he could hide it under a Clique and 2-for-1 you that way, too. So, with all of these tricks, and then the fact that ~7/25 of the manabase were manlands, the learning curve for facing Faeries was astronomically sloped.
And then, on top of that, Cryptic Command and Mistbind Clique were both full-blown Time Walks. So if the Faeries player had a clock on board and wanted to race, he probably could win the race very easily--anybody can win a race when their opponent's car is broken down on the side of the road.
Think about what it's like to die to a Snapcaster Mage and a Pestermite clocking you for a few turns each, from Splinter Twin. That's Faeries, every single game where it doesn't have a Bitterblossom. When it does have a Bitterblossom, they don't even have to cast other spells in many scenarios because Blossom already does so much to the game state. Want an example of how that works? Look at Standard. Pack Rat owns a large chunk of that format (before Born of the Gods changes things), and Pack Rat makes you pay more mana for each token. Blossom just does it for free. And in that Standard, the best enchantment removal was literally Wispmare. I'm not kidding. That was it. Eventually, the next block rotated out AV and brought in Esper Charm and Volcanic Fallout, but that still wasn't enough, so they printed Great Sable Stag for one core set only to end the reign of terror--but then Faeries still was an amazing deck. Oh, you have a 3/3 guy I can't counter, remove with my blue/black spells, or block with my blue/black creatures? I'll just race it, tap it with Cryptic, block with 2 Mutavaults, block with a Mutavault and then save it with Mistbind Clique (by the way, you don't get to cast spells in your second main phase now), or cast these Lightning Bolts that I easily splashed red for.
And then, in addition to everything else, if Faeries is a deck you can kiss planeswalkers goodbye. They never stick around. I'm actually a big fan of this effect; I hate the Hell out of planeswalkers, but for anyone who enjoys playing with them--well, most of them are going to get the tar beaten out of them within a turn or two of landing, if they even resolve.
Blossom at least has answers now, but if you don't have that answer quickly the card gets way out of hand. Even if it just makes 3 guys, gets removed, and the 3 guys get removed by a sweeper, that's a 2-for-1 that took less mana than whatever you used to clean it up. Even if you 1-for-1 with Blossom and the tokens chump 3 times, it's still probably going to put the Faeries player in a very safe position.
You guys know about how Stoneforge and Jace TMS got banned in Standard? Well, when Faeries was around, they tried the "let's print a bunch of hosers and see if they work" method, and that's how they learned that method doesn't work. (That, and Jund...whoever invented Cascade should be taken out back and shot by General Dreedle.) Sure, Stoneforge/Jace Standard had the lowest tournament attendance, but the game had been declining for a while because of Faeries and then Jund.
Maybe Bitterblossom could be fair in Modern. Or, maybe it could just ruin the format. Either way, I have a theory that the only people who want it back are old Faeries players.
The worst part would probably be that while cascade, as a mechanic, was quite good against faeries, the best cascade card in Modern is currently banned which means that Jund might not have it as easy as people believe.
One other point worthy of note is that it while AV was better at it, Jace Beleren worked pretty well as a card advantage source after rotation and for the rest of the Standard season, especially when you could protect it with an endless chump blocker parade.
I'm saying this because BB wouldn't be a "safer" unban if AV remained on the list. If anything, there might be even better cards for that job then Jace right now, since we're talking about a card pool that is roughly 5 times larger then the one while Bitterblossom was legal in Standard.
All this and more, but I still miss playing with it.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Personal preference: Unban Bloodbraid Elf and Punishing Fire.
It's time for Jund to be a deck again.
When did it stop being a deck?? I'm a Jund player and I'm still baffled by this logic.
Well said, in reference to both cards.
I voted for Ancestral Visions to come off (but NOT Bitterblossom), and the more I think about the less sure I am that it would be a good idea. They both represent 1-card engines that are as powerful, if not more powerful, than existing engines in the format. I'm sure the world wouldn't end if they came off, but it would certainly change the format as we know it. I'm pretty confident after much reflection that wizards will leave these 2 alone, for now.
RGB Jund BGR
WGB Junk/Abzan Company WGB
LEGACY
RUGB Delver GURB
EDH
UW Geist of Saint Traft Aggro-Control WU
RUG Riku of Two Reflections Combo GUR
BBB Skithiryx Control BB
Wild Nacatl (Naya zoo is NOT faster than affinity)
Chrome Mox (some decent non-green mana acceleration should exist, and this card always risks a 2-for-1, ESPECIALLY with abrupt decay being so popular. Affinity should NOT be the only deck in the format with a mox... and one that has basically zero drawbacks in that deck, to boot)
Preordain (seriously. it's fine. I'd like to see ponder off the list also, but I'd settle for just the one)
sensei's divining top (the only reason this should be banned is because of counterbalance. I say bring the top back, and ban counterbalance instead).
I have some other pet cards on the list, but I get why they are there. And honestly, I wouldn't even be playing any of the cards I think should be unbanned.