I can agree with all this statement. I don't think they want to unban Preordain, that is why we got opt reprinted recently. We want better cantrips and they want to give us better cantrips, but if they wanted us to have Preordain, legacy level cantrips, they could have given it to us at any point in the past.
Just as a side note, I don't play Legacy, but based on what I've seen people playing and the Goldfish "Format Staples" page, it seems most decks are running 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, and/or 4 Gitaxian Probe before even considering Preordain (something that averages only about 2 and a half copies). So I don't know if "Legacy level cantrip" is what I'd personally call Preordain, considering it's only in decks after they've filled up on all the "good" cantrips. Preordain is like their Sleight of Hand. Sure, some people play it, but it's not the first (or second, or sometimes third) choice.
Just wanted to agree and add that storm plays zero (mostly) or one (sometimes) preordain, delver and miracles aren't playing it right now.
I actually think preordain is slipping down into 'modern' rather than 'legacy' power level cantrip.
If we take the results of the NBLM event to determine what is ok to unban, we would have to admit that Skullclamp is perfectly fine which is of course ridiculous.
This t32 does hint at the actual problem with Chrome Mox quite well though- as long as your deck can deal with the CA hit, and has enough colored cards, it speeds you up a turn. That is a really, really low opportunity cost for so powerful an ability. There is no justification to not running it for fair or unfair decks. It enables everything, basically. Anyone can run it, so in essence, almost every deck starts with 4 Chrome Mox. That is why it's never, ever coming off the list- every top 8 would have 28-32 Chrome Mox regardless of the archetype spread.
this same logic can be applied to legacy, and yet it doesnt hold true at all. fast mana throughout magics history has proven to be one of the most fundamentally broken concepts. however that doesnt mean it can be used equally by everyone. chrome mox is simply better used as an enabler for broken ****, the same way SSG is.
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I can agree with all this statement. I don't think they want to unban Preordain, that is why we got opt reprinted recently. We want better cantrips and they want to give us better cantrips, but if they wanted us to have Preordain, legacy level cantrips, they could have given it to us at any point in the past.
Just as a side note, I don't play Legacy, but based on what I've seen people playing and the Goldfish "Format Staples" page, it seems most decks are running 4 Brainstorm, 4 Ponder, and/or 4 Gitaxian Probe before even considering Preordain (something that averages only about 2 and a half copies). So I don't know if "Legacy level cantrip" is what I'd personally call Preordain, considering it's only in decks after they've filled up on all the "good" cantrips. Preordain is like their Sleight of Hand. Sure, some people play it, but it's not the first (or second, or sometimes third) choice.
Just wanted to agree and add that storm plays zero (mostly) or one (sometimes) preordain, delver and miracles aren't playing it right now.
I actually think preordain is slipping down into 'modern' rather than 'legacy' power level cantrip.
Thank you. It is actually a pet peeve of mine when someone says that Preordain is a "Legacy level cantrip." What makes it so? Because it is banned in Modern currently and sees somewhat rare play in Legacy? I've played Legacy quite a bit in the past and Preordain feels in Legacy how Sleight of Hand feels in Modern; it is not all that good, but it is serviceable.
There are so many Modern cards that are not banned in Modern that see Legacy play. I don't think I have to pull up a list, right?
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Outside of that, it's hard to extrapolate a lot of "so whats" back to Modern. Obviously, SFM continues to be laughably safe, but I think Wizards will still wait until 2019 to unban because Standard is another hot mess that demands their attention. Twin is probably safe, but I don't see Wizards backpedaling on that one: too much ego, bad blood, and entrenchedness on all sides of the argument.
I very much agree with this. Whether or not Twin is unbanned for Modern will have nothing to do with whether or not it's actually "safe," and everything to do with stubbornness, image, and perception. Which is a real shame, considering the rocky and controversial means by which it was originally banned.
It's also a shame that Wizards' inability to keep standard from being a garbage fire continues to draw attention and pull their resources. I thought Play Design was supposed to fix this? How in the world does a card like Goblin Chainwhirler get printed through that team?
Real fast about preordain, I just did a quick search for legacy decks using Preordain and I found sneak / show decks, miracles, different flavors of storm decks, some leovold decks and more. Preordain is not brainstorm or ponder, but I think it qualifies as a legacy cantrip. It deffenetly sees play in legacy and vintage, that is indisputable, but we can argue about how much play it sees.
This t32 does hint at the actual problem with Chrome Mox quite well though- as long as your deck can deal with the CA hit, and has enough colored cards, it speeds you up a turn. That is a really, really low opportunity cost for so powerful an ability. There is no justification to not running it for fair or unfair decks. It enables everything, basically. Anyone can run it, so in essence, almost every deck starts with 4 Chrome Mox. That is why it's never, ever coming off the list- every top 8 would have 28-32 Chrome Mox regardless of the archetype spread.
this same logic can be applied to legacy, and yet it doesnt hold true at all. fast mana throughout magics history has proven to be one of the most fundamentally broken concepts. however that doesnt mean it can be used equally by everyone. chrome mox is simply better used as an enabler for broken ****, the same way SSG is.
Sort of. The difference between legacy and NBLM is that it's much easier to be punished for overextending on cards early. FoW is the premier example of this, but cards like Therapy fall into this category as well. Good fast mana is a lot more common in Legacy, so Chrome Mox has actual competition.
Real fast about preordain, I just did a quick search for legacy decks using Preordain and I found sneak / show decks, miracles, different flavors of storm decks, some leovold decks and more. Preordain is not brainstorm or ponder, but I think it qualifies as a legacy cantrip. It deffenetly sees play in legacy and vintage, that is indisputable, but we can argue about how much play it sees.
I have played Legacy until just recently. Preordain sees play in Sneak and Show and ANT. It sees play in those decks because they already have 4 Brainstorm and 4 Ponder. If they were allowed to play 6 copies of each of those cards, you best believe they would be extremely happy to dump the mediocre Preordain. Those decks are just basically...cantrip cantrip cantrip kill you with a Combo. They would literally play Serum Visions, which most of us know is very mediocre in Modern, if Preordain was never printed.
I can't imagine people playing Preordain in Miracles, Leovold decks, or anything else, but honestly Legacy is a place for innovation and odd people try odd things. Did you know that people play Veteran Explorer in Legacy...and actually don't lose to everything?
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
i think preordain is in the same league as ponder and brainstorm. it just happens to be the worst of the three when shuffle effects are taken into account, and arguably the best when they arent.
i dont think this says anything about its unban candidacy though.
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I play legacy too, I have played with and against preordain. I mentioned the internet search to give more evidence than it's just my opinion or that of my play group to support it being a legacy cantrip.
If WOTC wanted us to have Preordain we could have had it at any point they wanted to unban it. I would love to have it because I am a combo player, but I really believe storm and twin being too consistent all those years ago when they first banned Preordain put it on the banned list for what was a good reason at the time. Since then twin was banned and so were other storm cards. Preordain could be unbanned imo, but I think that would drive a nail in twins coffin and I would rather have twin back than preordain.
It's not that Preordain doesn't see play in Legacy, it's just that it's usually the LAST choice people go to after literally every other better option is already included (usually as 4-ofs). It's the worst of their cantrips, much like Sleight of Hand is for us. We play it because we want more cantrips and can only run 4 each of Serum, Opt, and Scour already. Just like they can only run 4 each of Brainstorm, Ponder, and Probe.
Outside of that, it's hard to extrapolate a lot of "so whats" back to Modern. Obviously, SFM continues to be laughably safe, but I think Wizards will still wait until 2019 to unban because Standard is another hot mess that demands their attention. Twin is probably safe, but I don't see Wizards backpedaling on that one: too much ego, bad blood, and entrenchedness on all sides of the argument.
I very much agree with this. Whether or not Twin is unbanned for Modern will have nothing to do with whether or not it's actually "safe," and everything to do with stubbornness, image, and perception. Which is a real shame, considering the rocky and controversial means by which it was originally banned.
It's also a shame that Wizards' inability to keep standard from being a garbage fire continues to draw attention and pull their resources. I thought Play Design was supposed to fix this? How in the world does a card like Goblin Chainwhirler get printed through that team?
Play design started with Dominaria, I believe, but rotation may have been heavily weighted. Standard RDW loses a TON of stuff, including some heavy hitters like Hazoret.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure Sheridan's point about twin extended to the pro-twin types too. I totally will believe that WOTC is so spiteful it would keep a card banned just to not have to hear/read "it's about damn time the card was never a problem!" rants. There's a certain irony to your comment on the matter.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure Sheridan's point about twin extended to the pro-twin types too. I totally will believe that WOTC is so spiteful it would keep a card banned just to not have to hear/read "it's about damn time the card was never a problem!" rants. There's a certain irony to your comment on the matter.
I doubt that people who were upset by the Twin ban would be mad or rant about it being unbanned. If anything, those people would shower Forsythe with praise and happiness. I know I will shower him with kind words on Twitter.
i dont really include probe when comparing 1 mana cantrips because it...isnt 1 mana. context plays a pretty big role when comparing cantrip effects. for example i give opt a lot of crap for being a bad card, but its not like serum visions is strictly better than it. likewise thought scour is bad when you arent doing anything with your graveyard.
in a vacuum the effects of preordain and ponder are better than brainstorm. shuffle effects change that. ponder is better when you are digging to a specific card (it sees the most cards), but id say preordain is better at improving your chances of finding a subset of cards (scrying to the bottom incrementally improves your subsequent draws).
basically it is not as simple as 'x and y cantrips are best, and you fill out the other slots with z'.
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people are always worried about blue consistency with all the other non-blue decks in the format being superior. I think that even brainstorm would be awesome for modern to fight the dominance of thoughtseize and inquisition, and to help finding sideboard cards
my opinion is not the norm, but what makes blue so dominant in legacy is just not brainstorm, i think that in modern would be fine
i mean id welcome brainstorm with open arms and do a little happy dance afterwards, but the card is absurdly powerful with fetchlands. it would prompt a whole lot of decks to move into blue just for the effect.
wizards has outright said that brainstorm, by basically any metric, should be banned in legacy. they just wont ever take that step because its too deeply rooted in the formats identity at this point.
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Well we all know why Blue sucks in Modern...its cause WOTC doesn't let Blue do the stuff its good at ie Draw Cards (Red and Green have been muscling in on this turf) or effectively counter anything (cause WOTC hates answers especially unconditional answers). Ergo Blue is left nerfed cause it gets nothing to compensate in terms of better creatures or actual removal.
Similar story for White expect I don't even know what White is suppose to be the best at. I know it suppose to suck at finding answers and any sort of ramping....but what is suppose to be best at? Overcosted Angels? Overcosted Board Wipes? Crappy single target answers compared to Black? 2nd or Third best at everything is not really viable in a format where you can mix and match 2 to 3 colors.
laws, imposing order, unity, collective might, justice, retribution, self-righteousness, defending the weak, etc. those are the principles behind the color philosophy.
so you see white weenie, anthem effects, enchantments, wrath effects, exiling, pump/protection spells, and taxing effects. white will also generally have the second larges creatures to green, but more skewed towards toughness; and common keywords such as vigilance, flying, and first strike.
there are a bunch more, and there is an official breakdown of all the effects seen in any color.
if you look through it you will see most effects appear in all colors to some degree. i believe the only white exclusive mechanic is taxing, but i may have missed something.
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Thanks, I know what its strength is in theory...I meant practically what can white do that no one else can or very few can...looks like just taxing which again isn't something WOTC is going to push in the current design regime and Anthems which have more hope. Ergo White is usually "I do what Black Does But Worse In Every Way Possible." Green's exclusive access to ramp and fat creatures, Red near exclusive access to Haste and Direct Damage, Blue's card draw and counters, and Blacks anything for a cost usually saccing or life loss. White has anthems and taxing...
Weenies: Every Color Can do this practically with tokens. Is White really that much better then Green or Red?
Anthem: If bolted to creatures then yeah pretty much white exclusive.
Enchantments: Ugh most color get these but White does get more. Unless we mean getting rid of them which I think Green does better.
Wrath: Usually overcosted and/or overly specific. Good Answers are not in vogue so to speak.
Exile: Black has been muscling in on this forever. Especially since MARO says White is not allowed to better then Black at this.
PUMP/Protection: I think Green gets better options of this of late. Especially when you consider ramp from Green makes this easier to hit.
Creatures: Indeed hilariously overcosted Angels. Especially since again no native ramp like Green.
Cool link, I had not seen that. I'll have to go over it and vent about Green out drawing Blue later.
Now come its limited to mostly Lands and Creatures and sometimes Walkers and Enchantments since those are in Color Pie. Perfectly fair when combine with Green's Exclusive Ramp and Large Creatures.
Oh right and on Enchantments maybe I be more impressed if Artifacts weren't hilariously better on average.
yeah im not going to argue on white being lacking in some areas. ive said before that i believe that white is the weakest color in magic, largely due to the reasons you stated. the color dabbles in most everything, but with a slight twist; which makes it uniquely suited to being a strong support color.
that said, white still sees plenty of play across the formats. color balance gets blurry when its stupidly easy to play 3 colors and the pool of multicolored cards is so deep. stoneforge would be a nice tool in the colors arsenal, but its not like this format or any other needs a mono-white deck. it still has some of the best sideboard cards in the format, the 1st or 2nd strongest removal spell, and unconditional sweepers.
id also like to see more enchantment support in the game in general, but that isnt something specific to modern. artifacts have proven to be more powerful than they should be, and the colors that interact with them favorably gain a considerable edge.
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The color pie is outdated. NWO design was based around the premise that players, specifically casuals who make up the majority of the customers, prefer creatures and planeswalkers over other types of spells. WOTC never revamped the color pie to give everything good creatures or creature-related cards. That's how you end up with collected company or eldritch evolution. "oh, this is for creatures it'll be awesome in green!"
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Just wanted to agree and add that storm plays zero (mostly) or one (sometimes) preordain, delver and miracles aren't playing it right now.
I actually think preordain is slipping down into 'modern' rather than 'legacy' power level cantrip.
Legacy - LED Dredge, ANT & WDnT
this same logic can be applied to legacy, and yet it doesnt hold true at all. fast mana throughout magics history has proven to be one of the most fundamentally broken concepts. however that doesnt mean it can be used equally by everyone. chrome mox is simply better used as an enabler for broken ****, the same way SSG is.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Thank you. It is actually a pet peeve of mine when someone says that Preordain is a "Legacy level cantrip." What makes it so? Because it is banned in Modern currently and sees somewhat rare play in Legacy? I've played Legacy quite a bit in the past and Preordain feels in Legacy how Sleight of Hand feels in Modern; it is not all that good, but it is serviceable.
There are so many Modern cards that are not banned in Modern that see Legacy play. I don't think I have to pull up a list, right?
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)I very much agree with this. Whether or not Twin is unbanned for Modern will have nothing to do with whether or not it's actually "safe," and everything to do with stubbornness, image, and perception. Which is a real shame, considering the rocky and controversial means by which it was originally banned.
It's also a shame that Wizards' inability to keep standard from being a garbage fire continues to draw attention and pull their resources. I thought Play Design was supposed to fix this? How in the world does a card like Goblin Chainwhirler get printed through that team?
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Sort of. The difference between legacy and NBLM is that it's much easier to be punished for overextending on cards early. FoW is the premier example of this, but cards like Therapy fall into this category as well. Good fast mana is a lot more common in Legacy, so Chrome Mox has actual competition.
I have played Legacy until just recently. Preordain sees play in Sneak and Show and ANT. It sees play in those decks because they already have 4 Brainstorm and 4 Ponder. If they were allowed to play 6 copies of each of those cards, you best believe they would be extremely happy to dump the mediocre Preordain. Those decks are just basically...cantrip cantrip cantrip kill you with a Combo. They would literally play Serum Visions, which most of us know is very mediocre in Modern, if Preordain was never printed.
I can't imagine people playing Preordain in Miracles, Leovold decks, or anything else, but honestly Legacy is a place for innovation and odd people try odd things. Did you know that people play Veteran Explorer in Legacy...and actually don't lose to everything?
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Legacy: UWR Miracles [https://deckstats.net/decks/44442/1092831-uwr-miracles-2]
i dont think this says anything about its unban candidacy though.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)If WOTC wanted us to have Preordain we could have had it at any point they wanted to unban it. I would love to have it because I am a combo player, but I really believe storm and twin being too consistent all those years ago when they first banned Preordain put it on the banned list for what was a good reason at the time. Since then twin was banned and so were other storm cards. Preordain could be unbanned imo, but I think that would drive a nail in twins coffin and I would rather have twin back than preordain.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Play design started with Dominaria, I believe, but rotation may have been heavily weighted. Standard RDW loses a TON of stuff, including some heavy hitters like Hazoret.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure Sheridan's point about twin extended to the pro-twin types too. I totally will believe that WOTC is so spiteful it would keep a card banned just to not have to hear/read "it's about damn time the card was never a problem!" rants. There's a certain irony to your comment on the matter.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
in a vacuum the effects of preordain and ponder are better than brainstorm. shuffle effects change that. ponder is better when you are digging to a specific card (it sees the most cards), but id say preordain is better at improving your chances of finding a subset of cards (scrying to the bottom incrementally improves your subsequent draws).
basically it is not as simple as 'x and y cantrips are best, and you fill out the other slots with z'.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)my opinion is not the norm, but what makes blue so dominant in legacy is just not brainstorm, i think that in modern would be fine
wizards has outright said that brainstorm, by basically any metric, should be banned in legacy. they just wont ever take that step because its too deeply rooted in the formats identity at this point.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Similar story for White expect I don't even know what White is suppose to be the best at. I know it suppose to suck at finding answers and any sort of ramping....but what is suppose to be best at? Overcosted Angels? Overcosted Board Wipes? Crappy single target answers compared to Black? 2nd or Third best at everything is not really viable in a format where you can mix and match 2 to 3 colors.
so you see white weenie, anthem effects, enchantments, wrath effects, exiling, pump/protection spells, and taxing effects. white will also generally have the second larges creatures to green, but more skewed towards toughness; and common keywords such as vigilance, flying, and first strike.
there are a bunch more, and there is an official breakdown of all the effects seen in any color.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/mechanical-color-pie-2017-2017-06-05
if you look through it you will see most effects appear in all colors to some degree. i believe the only white exclusive mechanic is taxing, but i may have missed something.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Weenies: Every Color Can do this practically with tokens. Is White really that much better then Green or Red?
Anthem: If bolted to creatures then yeah pretty much white exclusive.
Enchantments: Ugh most color get these but White does get more. Unless we mean getting rid of them which I think Green does better.
Wrath: Usually overcosted and/or overly specific. Good Answers are not in vogue so to speak.
Exile: Black has been muscling in on this forever. Especially since MARO says White is not allowed to better then Black at this.
PUMP/Protection: I think Green gets better options of this of late. Especially when you consider ramp from Green makes this easier to hit.
Creatures: Indeed hilariously overcosted Angels. Especially since again no native ramp like Green.
Spirits
Now come its limited to mostly Lands and Creatures and sometimes Walkers and Enchantments since those are in Color Pie. Perfectly fair when combine with Green's Exclusive Ramp and Large Creatures.
Oh right and on Enchantments maybe I be more impressed if Artifacts weren't hilariously better on average.
that said, white still sees plenty of play across the formats. color balance gets blurry when its stupidly easy to play 3 colors and the pool of multicolored cards is so deep. stoneforge would be a nice tool in the colors arsenal, but its not like this format or any other needs a mono-white deck. it still has some of the best sideboard cards in the format, the 1st or 2nd strongest removal spell, and unconditional sweepers.
id also like to see more enchantment support in the game in general, but that isnt something specific to modern. artifacts have proven to be more powerful than they should be, and the colors that interact with them favorably gain a considerable edge.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)And Yeah multicolor does make ratings hard.