The end of the year is closing in and soon we’re also going to have a new set to enjoy. That also means another thing though: banned and restricted
announcements – and this time around there is more reason for the DCI to at least think about doing something than there has been in quite some time. The
dynamic duo of Delver of Secrets and Treasure Cruise are making waves in every format both cards are legal in, and Jeskai Ascendancy is allowing people to
go off in new and different ways, from just turning burn, token producers, and card-drawing spells into Overruns in Standard to looting Fatestitchers into
nigh-infinite spell-chains in the older formats.
Note that I’m not saying something needs to be done about these cards. From the looks of it, formats have been changed significantly but are
hardly dominated by what Khans of Tarkir has brought to the tournament tables. So if we want to reasonably think about what should happen when Fate
Reforged hits the shelves, we shouldn’t really wonder about dominance and the necessity of a ban* but about format power level as a whole.
*Please read “ban” in this article as “ban or restrict in case Vintage is concerned.” Same with “unban.” I think we can all agree that that little
convention should make things a lot more readable.
Treasure Cruise is the poster child of what I’m talking about here, however, Jeskai Ascendancy fills a very similar function in Modern simply by allowing
the (not-at-all-dominant-from-what-I-can-see) mana-accelerant based combo deck to exist. Neither card has produced a truly dominant archetype (yet?), but
the mere fact that they exist and see relevant amounts of play changes the texture of the Eternal formats as a whole – because they change the baseline of
what your deck needs to be able to compete with. Ascendancy in Modern suddenly allows a deck to exist that can quite consistently goldfish between turn 2
and 3. Treasure Cruise allows decks full of cheap spells and threats that we’d expect to run out of gas to continue competing once the opponent has
successfully reached the mid- to lategame. Put simply, the overall power level of both formats has been raised, the threshold a deck needs to clear to be a
reasonable contender.
That really leaves us (or rather the DCI) with three options: ban cards to bring the power level back down, accept the higher power level as is and do
nothing (because no archetype is dominant), or take advantage of this higher base power level to re-introduce cards into tournament play that were above
the line before but might be perfectly acceptable now that the format already necessitates more raw power in the first place. Essentially, that’d be
looking at the latest upheaval as an opportunity instead of a possible problem.
That latter option is what I’d like to explore today with a strong focus on Legacy (you know, the format for which I actually know what I’m talking about),
though I’m interested enough in both Vintage and Modern to have some ideas which I’ll share, not that I can claim enough competency in either format to
truly judge the impact of changes along the lines I’m thinking about (in Modern, in particular). Also, very importantly, note that I would propose these
cards for unbanning on a test-basis, one or two at a time
with the very clear understanding that they could end up back on the banned list in three months time if they actually prove to still be troublesome.
Before we start, note that I’m not going to discuss even close to the whole banned list today. There are cards on there I don’t even think would see play
and others that are so obviously over the line there is no point in discussing them. Instead, what I’m looking for are cards that fill the following two
criteria:
1) They’re likely to see play if unbanned because their potential power level is high.
2) Most people enjoy playing with them. I’ve talked about my
philosophy concerning B&R decisions
in the past, and it mainly boils down to the idea that a card should be banned or restricted if doing so makes the format more attractive
for the vast majority of players playing said format. The idea behind unbanning cards as a result of the higher baseline power level is the same – the
higher power level might allow us to get cards back into circulation that were too powerful to keep around in the past so as to allow players to have fun
with those cards again. If a card is going to make life miserable for the vast majority of players, there’s no point to unbanning it in my mind as long as
there’s a risk it will see major play (well, not much, shorter banned lists are always good admittedly).
With that clarified, let’s get going!
Legacy
I’m not sure how much this card fulfills the fun requirement – most of the uses I can think of for Earthcraft involve combo shenanigans – but most of the
decks it goes into are wonky enough to lead to a net gain in fun in my estimation. I’m also not sure this is actually good enough to see play. Sounds like
a strange card to suggest given the criteria I just elaborated, right?
Maybe so, but Earthcraft also happens to be a very open ended combo piece, one that has surprisingly severe limitations given how easy to get around
relying on creatures and only interacting with basic lands seems on first sight. Cards with these limitations generally lead to pretty interesting decks in
my opinion – think Aluren or Food Chain – and one thing I like about imagining Earthcraft unbanned is that I don’t think the card is particularly dangerous
but definitely has the potential to see play.
The only worrisome interaction I can think of with the card is how it turns Nettle Sentinel into a self-untapping, hasty Llanowar Elves, and given how
tight current Elves lists are, I’m not even sure the deck would want to play it (running out of creatures is bad, mmkay).
On the other hand, I remember a pretty sweet Enchantress deck from Vintage back in the day that made good use of Earthcraft – it allowed Argothian
Enchantress to tap for mana, and usually more than one, what with Wild Growth and friends – and Enchantress is one sweet deck that could use some help. The
Squirrel Nest combo seems extremely reasonable to have in Legacy too, yet powerful enough to actually be worth playing without being overwhelming in the
slightest (don’t forget going off costs effectively four mana starting with Earthcraft already in play because you need to have an untapped land to target
with Squirrel Nest), and it doesn’t even win the game on the spot, merely a turn later.
Earthcraft is one of the safest cards to unban in my opinion, but it also has the potential to lead to a very cool fringe deck getting a little boost. It
might spawn a deck of its own – sounds pretty decent to me. Also, who doesn’t love Squirrels?
Survival is actually the card that first made me think of the whole concept for this article. It’s absurdly powerful in the right deck but enough fun that
there are quite a few players that still bemoan its demise.
Don’t get me wrong, Survival is incredibly strong and narrows the spread of different midrange archetypes because its power level makes it extremely
enticing to be green-based and play a lot of creatures, resulting in a deck that can either play a fair midrange game or go off with ridiculous card-
and/or tempo advantage in the midgame thanks to the Vengevine-chain.
Realize something? That sounds a lot like how Treasure Cruise operates for blue-based tempo decks.
Now, I think an active Survival is actually significantly more powerful than resolving a Treasure Cruise due to the tutor-aspect of the card and the
inherent flexibility that results from that. Having Survival down means the opponent has to prepare for a swarm of hasty, flying 4/3s coming up in the near
future, a possible ridiculous legend due to Loyal Retainers, as well as an actual straight combo kill because of the Necrotic Ooze combo. That’s a lot of
different threats to contend with, especially given that an in-play Survival means its controller can search for answers to almost any hate card in
response to said hate card being cast.
At the same time though, Survival of the Fittest is an incredibly fun, skill-intensive card many players miss from the good old days before Vengevine
happened and also one that allows green creature decks to consistently implement their gameplan. I know the card is dangerous, but given how fast Legacy
has become and how high the general power level happens to be at the moment, the mana you have to invest into Survival in the first place before anything
actually starts happening might be good enough to keep it in check to the point where it ends up being just a major player in the format instead
of the major player.
After all, combo decks were doing fine against it even back when it was banned, and those only have gotten better in the meantime. The other fair decks
Survival pushed out last time it was around have either improved by leaps and bounds between Deathrite Shaman, Abrupt Decay, Treasure Cruise, and the whole
Miracles mechanic, or have been pushed out by Delver of Secrets, True-Name Nemesis, and Stoneforge Mystic anyway. I could see Survival being acceptable in
that format, and with a card this fun, we should get it back into the game as soon as the state of the format allows for it.
I’m not exactly sure where Goblin Recruiter falls on the annoyance spectrum given that I only played against it in Vintage in the past where even the Food
Chain combo seemed tame in comparison to what my Gifts Ungiven deck was pulling off. Yes, Recruiter can lead to early kills from an otherwise
creature-based midrange deck, but I have strong doubts it would be far beyond what Elves is doing with regularity. I would be worried if Goblins was still
a deck without Recruiter, but given that the format has quietly moved beyond the grasp of the little green men ever since True-Name Nemesis became a thing,
I’m quite open to the idea that a Goblin deck that occasionally wins on turn 3 is completely fine in Legacy at this point.
As for the time it takes to stack half your deck, from what I remember from the past, most of the stacking is actually reasonably straight forward once you
have experience with Food Chain Goblins, and for those players that need too much time to figure things out, well, the rules against stalling do in fact
exist. You don’t get ten minutes to set up your Doomsday pile either, and I don’t get to plan my Past in Flames Storm kill for five minutes before
starting, so I don’t see why anybody should be allowed to Recruiter for such an absurd period of time.
On the plus side, consistency and tutoring are effects that are powerful are fun to play with, and Goblins is one of the sweet grandfather decks in Legacy
that I’d love to see viable again. Recruiter might be the piece that makes that possible, and if it turns out to be a problem, heck, I mentioned above that
these cards should be unbanned on a “let’s see what happens” basis with the banhammer floating right over them, right?
Whenever I find myself talking about what makes Legacy fun, I end up mentioning that decks being able to consistently implement their gameplan is a huge
part of it. Blue obviously has the tools to make that a reality already and green has some ways to do the same; it’s the other colors that are lacking.
Black, in particular, is hamstrung by the fact that all its library manipulation simply tends to be too good, leading to it ending up on the
banned list. Straight up tutoring is a very powerful thing, after all, and has a history of causing trouble.
So how is Imperial Seal different from Vampiric Tutor, which I think would be a huge problem if unbanned? Well, there are two things that point to Imperial
Seal being a very different animal. First, I’ve tested Personal Tutor quite a bit in Legacy and the card is just terrible regardless of the fact I want to
make it good. Even when it seems like its effect should be just the same as that of Mystical Tutor (basically no instants you plan to get), being sorcery
speed always proves to be a huge deal-breaker for a topdeck tutor.
Second of all, there is a format in which both Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal are legal (admittedly as one-ofs) – Vintage. Vampiric Tutor is a staple
that almost every single deck that can cast it ends up running. Imperial Seal, on the other hand, is rarely seen and that likely isn’t because of its cost
given that people either get to play proxies or have access to a small car worth of cards in their deck anyway.
Having to show your opponent that you’re casting a tutor and being unable to adapt your choice in response to your opponent’s actions on their intervening
turn has proven to be a big enough problem to severely reduce the card’s power level to the point where it seems to simply not be good enough for the vast
majority of Vintage decks already – and in that format you get to grab Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Fastbond, and Yawgmoth’s Will with it.
These two things make the assumption that Imperial Seal would be good but not broken in Legacy at least believable to me. I could also totally see the fact
that this finds either half of a Show and Tell combo and Infernal Tutor, as well as Lion’s Eye Diamond in Storm being a dealbreaker, but to my mind the
facts before us from Vintage and Personal Tutor are convincing enough that a test-unban could make sense.
That just leaves one issue: that of price. While I don’t think cards should ever be banned for financial reasons, I also don’t think it would be good for
the format to introduce a card into it that is about as rare as any of the power nine and that already has a similar price tag seeing essentially no play.
The point of unbanning the card is to allow players to play with it as a consistency tool for non-blue decks, after all, so unbanning something that the
vast majority of players will never have access to seems not just pointless, but actually straight up hurtful. As such I’d hope that Imperial Seal would
make it into a Commander set or a From the Vault box before that kind of unbanning decision is made.
Full disclosure: I own one Imperial Seal already so I’d suffer some financial hit from it suddenly dropping in price, but I also would belong in the group
that would be hard-pressed to play additional copies without a reprint.
This is another card that is rare enough that the price jump of it suddenly being unbanned would probably make it prohibitive as an unban without a
concomitant reprint just like I talked about for Imperial Seal, so a similar assumption about From the Vault or Commander reprints hopefully happening
applies (the difference for me personally being that I already have four Mana Drains, meaning financially such a reprint would be nothing but downside for
me).
Just considering the card though, Mana Drain might actually be not-broken in Legacy. There are few control decks in Legacy and most of them won’t touch
Counterspell, the closest (much weaker, admittedly) equivalent. Legacy is so fast that two mana countermagic is actually hard to justify in the vast
majority of decks, and mana curves are low enough that the mana payout of successfully Draining something not game-breaking will often be negligible. In
fact, given how the one deck that commonly runs Counterspell (Miracles) operates, Mana Drain isn’t even all that good in it seeing as one spell that eats
more than two colorless mana usually can’t be cast on their main phase. In fact, any existing archetype would be reasonably hard-pressed to find enough
valid (not to mention truly problematic) mana sinks they actually want to have in their deck when they don’t manage to fire off a huge Drain that its power
level might well be self-correcting.
On the other hand, as someone who has played a lot of Mana Drains in the past, the card is a whole lot of fun to cast, and the simple threat of it leads to
very interesting decision making being forced on the opponent because just jamming spells willy-nilly suddenly has the potential to lead to a huge
blow-out. I don’t think this card would be okay in pre-Khans Legacy, but if the tempo-decks get to cast quasi-Ancestral with impunity, allowing the control
mages to cast Counterspell plus colorless Dark Ritual doesn’t seem that farfetched to me.
I’m pretty sure I’ve now managed to convince all of you that have already cast a Necropotence that I’m completely out of my mind, right? Please hear me out
though. I’m well aware Necropotence is totally busted. However, I’ve also actually played with the card in my experimenting with banned cards and was actually dumbfounded how much
weaker those Necro-decks were than I expected.
First, there is the issue of speed. With the clock and disruption Legacy decks currently apply, successfully resolving Necro in a time frame where passing
the turn after paying a bunch of life doesn’t actually kill you is much harder than it looks, even if doing so usually leads to a kill next turn,
especially because putting Force of Will into your deck makes that next turn kill plan really hard to consistently achieve.
Second, surprisingly enough, resolving Necro led to fewer next turn kills than I would have expected. Now, maybe that simply was an issue with the list I
built – I’m well aware I’m unable to match the whole hive mind of the format for deckbuilding prowess – but the card definitely felt less ridiculous than I
expected it to feel from past experiences with it.
Third, and probably the root cause for both problems mentioned so far, was constructing my whole gameplan around Necropotence simply wasn’t a viable
approach. If you think of Necro’s past brokeness, it’s easy to miss that the best Necro decks, those combo decks that led to it being feared as much as it
was, also had access to a ton of tutors to make sure they basically always found the means to cast Necro on turn 2. Extended Trix ran seven tutors
that could find either Dark Ritual or Necropotence (three copies of Vampiric Tutor and four copies of Demonic Consultation) and the Vintage version could
rely on Demonic Tutor and a bunch of broken cards to compensate for the missing Vampirics while also having access to four Consultations.
Legacy just doesn’t have that kind of tutoring (by the way, I in no way believe that having Necro and Imperial Seal unbanned at the same time
would even be remotely safe). Sure, we have the whole cantrip cartel to try and find those things, but that’s where the speed of the format and passing the
turn comes in. The cartel takes time to locate specific cards, and if your plan is to pay three mana and ten life before passing the turn, time
really isn’t something you have a lot of.
On the flip side, Necropotence is an incredible amount of fun to play with. There’s a reason Wizards reprinted the card in Fifth Edition in spite of Black
Summer and tried to ban the Necro-Trix deck out of Extended by curbing mana acceleration instead of Necro itself for two seasons in a row before finally
giving up and axing the Skull. The delayed drawing of the cards combined with the life payment makes for a very fun tension of what you should be doing,
and drawing a bunch of cards for little mana makes for exciting games with a lot of things going on. If there’s any chance at all that Necro doesn’t break
the format, it would definitely make for a brilliant addition, and if it still is broken in half, well, three months of playing with Necro seems like a
sweet interlude anyway.
We already have Past in Flames, so how much better can Yawgmoth’s Will really be, right? No, don’t worry, I haven’t gone off the deep end completely, just
checking if you actually read all those words I’m typing or just look at the shiny pictures. Yawgmoth’s Will is among the most fun you can have in Magic
for sure, but it’s also on a totally different level from almost any other card in the game. Saying Will should be safe because of Past in Flames being
fine is like saying Ancestral Recall is fine because Brainstorm is, or Black Lotus wouldn’t be a problem because we’re successfully weathering Lion’s Eye
Diamond. The only way to safely unban Will would be to ban anything and everything worth getting back with it, sadly.
Vintage
Vintage lives off broken things threatening to happen and (often) being stopped early in the game. In my experience with the format both pre- and
post-Brainstorm restriction (much less of the latter, admittedly) the powerful hand-fixing provided by Brainstorm in the early game actually led to fewer
blow-outs and less early game variance wins, not the opposite.
Brainstorm’s instant speed is actually a valid boon in Vintage because it makes using your library manipulation reactively to curb opposing broken draws a
more consistent occurrence compared to something like Ponder, which you’d often be more interested in using to set up your own power plays simply because
you don’t know yet how much of a response your opponent’s turn will require.
Sure, almost every deck that wasn’t Bazaar of Baghdad or Mishra’s Workshop-based ran the full four copies and was blue when Brainstorm was unrestricted,
but honestly, that’s still the case, just with fewer copies of Brainstorm and more games decided by the opening hands both players draw. Moving that
pendulum in the opposite direction doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me, and I don’t think anybody would argue that Brainstorm isn’t fun to play with.
While this card would be 100% busted in Legacy where everything is a four-off, it might be fine in Vintage where a lot of its broken targets are
restricted, and therefore, impossible to consistently plan on Consulting for. Yet if Consultation works in a deck, it’s powerful enough that it might
actually lead to a non-blue based archetype being able to contend (though I suspect that deck would probably still splash for Ancestral Recall and Time
Walk).
Consultation is still incredibly dangerous and might just push Gush or Oath of Druids decks over the top – they each have a four-of worth Consulting for
and Force of Will to use Consultation defensively – and there is a real risk that four copies of Consultation would make something like Ad Nauseam or
Belcher into a deck that much too consistently goldfishes on turn 1 so I’m quite ambivalent about the card in spite of suggesting it, but it might be fine and would provide a nice consistency tool for decks not hellbent on abusing specific restricted cards. There are a number of cases
from old Extended where the card was used to find answers in aggro-control decks, after all.
Gifts Ungiven in Vintage is, simply put, the most fun card in the entirety of Magic. The subtlety of having to figure out both the cards in your hand and
your opponent’s decision making process into resolving the card just makes for the most brilliant gameplay I’ve ever experienced, and in Vintage your cards
are powerful enough that there is actually a multitude of valid Gifts piles to come up with. Seeing how Gush and Fact or Fiction have proven quite
acceptable in current Vintage and with Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise being available as four-ofs that are arguable similarly powerful once we figure
in effective mana cost, Gifts Ungiven’s time of unbeatableness (no, that’s not a word, I know) might be over at this point. Given how fun the card is, it
should be unrestricted as early as safely possible.
On a more general note, when the DCI restricted Brainstorm and Ponder, one argument they made was that all the blue shells gravitated towards similar
non-restricted draw engines. Allowing a ton of different powerful draw engines to the point where players simply physically can’t cram all of them into
their deck seems like a decent alternative way to achieve that variety.
A lot of what I said in Legacy applies here, mainly though the fact that even the single copy isn’t run in decks already interested in casting Vampiric
Tutor suggests that Seal wouldn’t even come close to breaking the format. More Tutors means more decision making and more consistency, which in my
experience generally results in more fun games, especially as Imperial Seal is quite bad at enabling turn 1 kills.
We already have Preordain, and that card seems quite tame from my experience so far. I’d rather have Brainstorm back than Ponder honestly, just because of
how much more fun that card is, but not mentioning Ponder once I’ve already suggested Brainstorm felt wrong.
I already mentioned that just having an overload of viable draw engines to enforce variety might be a better approach than trying to restrict all of them,
and Thirst for Knowledge allows for fun Welder shenanigans in contrast to most of the other blue draw spells up for consideration. As to “but the blue
decks will be much too good” concerns, please look at your typical Vintage tournament. There are essentially three classes of deck seeing play: Workshops,
Dredge, and a wide variety of blue Force of Will decks.
Given the parameters these decks operate under, Workshops and Dredge could likely care less about most draw spells that cost three or more mana – if your
opponent is casting those you’re likely either losing quite badly already or you’re extremely thankful they spend their time drawing cards instead of
straight up killing you – and all the blue decks would clearly exhibit greater variety instead of less of it with more engines to choose from. The only
thing I’d dislike about Thirst coming back is that it would help out Tinker/Blightsteel Colossus by reducing the pain you feel when you draw your twelve
mana clunker.
Modern
This card just seems much worse than Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, though it’s a sweet draw engine for decks aiming to take things late. I’d be
more worried that this simply doesn’t see play than believe there’s any concern power level-wise with the card (remember I’m assuming we don’t have any
bannings incoming for this article, and I’m actually reasonably sure Vision would have been fine even in the pre-Khans format).
I liked how Willy Edel pointed out at this years’ World Championships that Siege Rhino is just a better Bloodbraid Elf. I don’t have the experience with
Modern to judge that for myself, but just looking at it as a Bloodbraid Elf with a much bigger body in a format full of Lightning Bolts that always happens
to cascade into Lightning Helix to the face makes his point sound quite reasonable. And if Bloodbraid Elf doesn’t make things worse, having another viable
color combination to fight back against Treasure Cruise fueled blue decks doesn’t sound bad.
I’m not sure how much fun Cloudpost actually would be, but given that some people clearly love the Urzatron and how sidelined that deck seems to be in the
format at this point, I can’t help but wonder if giving people a slightly better version to play with would really be a problem.
I tried to build Elves for Modern at some point when Beck//Call was spoiled, and man was I disappointed. Not having Wirewood Symbiote, Gaea’s Cradle, and
Birchlore Rangers made the Elves deck not only just look weak, but actually rather terrible. I guess we can discuss the fun factor of Glimpse-turns going
on, but in all honesty, I’d rather look at my opponent Glimpsing through their deck for a while than be Scapeshift’ed or Deceiver Exarch + Splinter
Twin’ed. At least their combo takes skill to execute (note: not saying Twin or Scapeshift aren’t hard to play, just that their combos aren’t).
I guess a copy of Llanowar Elves that upgrades to a real card later in the game might be too good for Modern – it looks like Deathrite Shaman is, after
all, at least from the outside looking in – but Green Sun’s Zenith with Dryad Arbor is exactly the kind of consistency tool that actually makes playing
green creature decks fun in Legacy. Maybe real consistency is just too much for Modern – see also: why Modern players don’t get to play good cantrips – but
Zenith is a fun enough card to be worth trying out with the power level going up in my opinion.
Unban or What?
Well, there you have it! My somewhat different proposal if we want to try adjusting the Eternal formats to the power level the Khans’ cards – Treasure
Cruise, in particular – are exhibiting. I’m aware these would probably cause pretty significant changes in format landscape, at least in some cases, and
also might end up needing to be re-banned for being over the line even with the power level we’re currently experiencing, but I believe the possible pay
off might well be worth it.
To me, the concept is quite interesting in spite of the risk, and some of these cards are fun enough to play with that I’d actually be fine if they toe the
line of being fair in the formats we’re introducing them into. There’s a reason I only played Vintage for long years after all – I love powerful things
happening in my games of Magic more than most people. I’m also a lot more tolerant of a few months of things being out of whack as long as there’s a
reasonable certainty that they’ll be fixed come the next B&R announcement. Or at least that’s my impression of my attitude compared to a lot of you out
there, though feel free to prove me wrong.
What do you think? Am I nuts? Are these cards just too good to be legal and allow things to be fun? Are any of them actually no fun at all to have around?
Do you prefer things to get banned to balance formats out power level-wise or does raising the floor as a response to new powerful effects excite you more?
Is there anything I missed that you think can be safely unbanned that doesn’t lead to games that would make most of us cry in frustration?
2015 seems as good a time to ponder these questions as any. Happy New Year everybody!