MTG Salvation

I find it very strange there is no chatter on the ban announcement for pioneer. Also no pioneer forum or tag but that's besides the point.

Oath of Nissa
Felidar Guardian
Leyline of Abundance

With the announcements scheduled for every Monday for the forseeable future.

This bodes very well for the health of the format. They aren't shying away from aggressive bannings and after a few months the bannings will follow the normal format rather than weekly.

There has been a little discussion about it in the Ban Speculation thread. Since ban announcements are to happen every Monday for now, it seems the discussion is in that thread for now:

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/pioneer/814856-pioneer-banned-list-speculation

For the matter, the Felidar/Leyline/Oath ban announcement is in https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/november-4-2019-pioneer-banned-announcement.

I can't get behind the new format. Bannings or whatever.It really just feels like a lazy modern. Massive cop out to a easy fix of the modern format with $4 masters products and a few more bannings. meh.......... Feels like the junior league. They really should have just brought back extended. Their long term plan is to kill off modern. So we might not have much of a choice with the slow phase out. RIP Vintage, RIP Legacy, and now RIP Modern. Unless Pioneer is just terribly boring to play.

Quote from SpeedGrapher »

I can't get behind the new format. Bannings or whatever.It really just feels like a lazy modern. Massive cop out to a easy fix of the modern format with $4 masters products and a few more bannings. meh.......... Feels like the junior league. They really should have just brought back extended. Their long term plan is to kill off modern. So we might not have much of a choice with the slow phase out. RIP Vintage, RIP Legacy, and now RIP Modern. Unless Pioneer is just terribly boring to play.

This is almost literally what people said when Modern came out. While you can't say Legacy is thriving it would be equally wrong to say its dead. Magic has simply become so large that it needed this new format. And it will need another one in 10 more years. It's just the nature of the beast.

Quote from user_938036 »

This is almost literally what people said when Modern came out. While you can't say Legacy is thriving it would be equally wrong to say its dead. Magic has simply become so large that it needed this new format. And it will need another one in 10 more years. It's just the nature of the beast.

The supposed "fix" for this issue was to use a format thats simply an extended standard , literally called Extended.

But that introduces the issue that important cards leave a format and put it in inbalance, as a lot of hate cards for a specific dominating deck might be in a set that is leaving the format or something new gets introduced that pushes a deck over the top, that was otherwise fair.

----

With multiple formats they just produce more of these problems and more to manage, which they are already doomed to fail.


Having Vintage and Legacy is important to keep the old cards alive.
Competitive Commander is pretty much just Legacy, as all the strong stuff is as expensive as a Legacy deck.

Pioneer is just a "old standard" format, which is hardly a great place to be ; the real benefit would be to have new decks, instead of all the old ones returning.

Quote from TheOnlyOne652089 »

Quote from user_938036 »

This is almost literally what people said when Modern came out. While you can't say Legacy is thriving it would be equally wrong to say its dead. Magic has simply become so large that it needed this new format. And it will need another one in 10 more years. It's just the nature of the beast.

The supposed "fix" for this issue was to use a format thats simply an extended standard , literally called Extended.

But that introduces the issue that important cards leave a format and put it in inbalance, as a lot of hate cards for a specific dominating deck might be in a set that is leaving the format or something new gets introduced that pushes a deck over the top, that was otherwise fair.

----

With multiple formats they just produce more of these problems and more to manage, which they are already doomed to fail.


Having Vintage and Legacy is important to keep the old cards alive.
Competitive Commander is pretty much just Legacy, as all the strong stuff is as expensive as a Legacy deck.

Pioneer is just a "old standard" format, which is hardly a great place to be ; the real benefit would be to have new decks, instead of all the old ones returning.

Extended was a failure for the exact reason why they are now committed to making a new format every 10 years. The number one thing players hate about playing magic is when their cards rotate out of the format they were playing. This is why they axed the twice a year rotation. Pioneer will be a thing for a long time just like Modern is still a thing and to a lesser extent Legacy is still a thing.

Quote from user_938036 »

Extended was a failure for the exact reason why they are now committed to making a new format every 10 years. The number one thing players hate about playing magic is when their cards rotate out of the format they were playing. This is why they axed the twice a year rotation. Pioneer will be a thing for a long time just like Modern is still a thing and to a lesser extent Legacy is still a thing.

Very questionable, as it all depends on how many people actually invest into the format.

As it is right now, its simply "old standard" (and current standard).

If at least cards cross in the formats, you can play them in multiple decks ; something the fetchlands did (playable in every format they are legal in).

Buying into a Pioneer deck that then is garbage in legacy/modern and especially Commander is a potentially critical problem.

All the cards for legacy and almost all the Modern decks too provide cards that are also good in Commander decks, and great cards in general.
Pioneer cards are also subject to massive amounts of reprints we will see for sure in Commander products, so buying into them is also a risk of losing money (the expensive cards for legacy and even modern proof to be reasonable stable or go up even).
Cards that are not reprinted will go up in price even in Pioneer, so its questionable if it will be an actual alternative for "cheaper" decks if it becomes a format thats played in high enough numbers.

Pioneer might be something that keeps itself relevant as WotC forces it to be relevant (making tournaments for it) , so people will be forced to play it, no matter what (if they want to attend said tournaments).

At some point you simply get too many formats, question is at what number that point is reached.

All of it has a bunch of question marks looming over it.

veil of summer is ban number 4

The irony.

Back in the days BLUE was the oppressive OP color.

Now green is all over it in Pioneer.

Green is the new Blue in Pioneer.

actually this feels so random.
i can understand the banning of leyline and the cat, but oath of nissa and now veil of summer ?
you really have to question if these bannings solve "problematic" decks. i even question if the decks are really that problematic. the format is so new and it had not really a chance to evolve. sorry to say this, but the magic community is slow in adopting. for 1 creative person that can build decks you get 99 people that can only copy decklists of others. if they win, they keep playn the deck.
while i think veil of summer is more powerful than oath of nissa, it is also a niche card, good in just certain situations.

Quote from user-11102155 »

actually this feels so random.
i can understand the banning of leyline and the cat, but oath of nissa and now veil of summer ?
you really have to question if these bannings solve "problematic" decks. i even question if the decks are really that problematic. the format is so new and it had not really a chance to evolve. sorry to say this, but the magic community is slow in adopting. for 1 creative person that can build decks you get 99 people that can only copy decklists of others. if they win, they keep playn the deck.
while i think veil of summer is more powerful than oath of nissa, it is also a niche card, good in just certain situations.

I completely agree with you... but it is what it is... aa such a dominant deck will tend to stick to the top for longer than it should, but will be seen as warpingly so... thing is there will definitely be warping before answers come in... and even answers will be iterative and take time to stick... but it all takes too long for the average tournament goer... so bannings it is i like to think quick and fast bannings are fine... it might actually kill the secondary market since anything overtedly dominating or warping will be banned

The ban of Oath of Nissa is more in the tradition of no good cantrips in the modern era, nevertheless it is quite inconsistent they don't ban Once Upon a Time too which we could argue is even better.

As for Veil of summer, as more combo stuff is figured out this card would just be the all start combo protector: from discard, from pieces getting blown and from counterspells. Playing vs Nexus of fate decks which used Veil of summer was even more miserable in a match that is already boring and dull.

As for the data used, if you go and see the PTQ, challenge and leagues from MTGO you would see Mono green devotion was still dominating after the leyline ban, and one big reason was because you couldn't kill NIssa because Veil of summer was protecting her.

Nissa, who shakes the world, BTW might go on the watch list if she still runs rampant after Veil of summer ban, or maybe she will become the Planeswalker to beat in Pioneer

Quote from login »

The ban of Oath of Nissa is more in the tradition of no good cantrips in the modern era, nevertheless it is quite inconsistent they don't ban Once Upon a Time too which we could argue is even better.

As for Veil of summer, as more combo stuff is figured out this card would just be the all start combo protector: from discard, from pieces getting blown and from counterspells. Playing vs Nexus of fate decks which used Veil of summer was even more miserable in a match that is already boring and dull.

As for the data used, if you go and see the PTQ, challenge and leagues from MTGO you would see Mono green devotion was still dominating after the leyline ban, and one big reason was because you couldn't kill NIssa because Veil of summer was protecting her.

Nissa, who shakes the world, BTW might go on the watch list if she still runs rampant after Veil of summer ban, or maybe she will become the Planeswalker to beat in Pioneer

Once upon a time is "better" only on turn 1, and even then what's really pushing oath of nissa is that allows for 5colours superfriends