Oversoul
The Tentacled One
August 7, 2023, Banned and Restricted Announcement
Announcing changes to Modern and Legacy effective August 7, 2023.
Modern:
Preordain is unbanned.
Legacy:
Mind's Desire is unbanned.
August 7, 2023 B&R Announcement
- Thread starter Oversoul
- Start date
Modern:
Preordain is unbanned.
Legacy:
Mind's Desire is unbanned.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
This is probably the first time all year that I've been excited for anything Legacy-related. And that's kind of sad. Well, it's been far too long and there are far too many other cards that are equally overdue for unbanning. I could rant all day about that, but I want to focus on the positive aspect of this.
I believe that I've already said as much somewhere at the CPA, but I can't recall exactly where and I don't mind repeating myself now. The unique pattern of gameplay that combo decks have access to when a deck has multiple copies of Mind's Desire is something I find appealing. Outside of strictly casual "kitchen table" decks, this gameplay pattern was only really possible in the Extended format, and its presence there was short-lived. For those who haven't seen that "TEPS" deck or a similar deck in action, the way that the deck works is by sculpting its own hand and endeavoring to monitor the opponent's plays, holding out for the perfect turn to sequence as many spells as possible into Mind's Desire. The hope is that the first Mind's Desire flips over enough cards that one can sequence more spells into a second Mind's Desire with higher storm count, and continue from there into a combo finish. Within the Extended environment, this was a precarious position to be in, because the randomness of Mind's Desire made comboing with the deck fickle, but waiting for too long meant opponents would reliably disrupt the combo or kill the combo player. In Vintage, a format defined by cheap and effective mana rocks that net more mana than was spent to cast them, Mind's Desire was flagged as a problem before the card's official release. WotC correctly realized that unrestricted Mind's Desire would have dominated the format at that time.
Mind's Desire was on the Legacy ban list from the beginning, and I think that a lot of Ad Nauseam enthusiasts would have happily taken up Mind's Desire as their specialty if the card was ever unbanned. Over the years, I even heard that exact sentiment expressed. And I concurred. A format where I can play with full playsets of Dark Ritual and Mind's Desire, while not quite my ultimate dream for how I want to play Magic, is pretty close. I don't know whether, after all this time, this is enough to drag be back into actually participating in Legacy tournaments. But if it's not enough, I don't know what would be!
I believe that I've already said as much somewhere at the CPA, but I can't recall exactly where and I don't mind repeating myself now. The unique pattern of gameplay that combo decks have access to when a deck has multiple copies of Mind's Desire is something I find appealing. Outside of strictly casual "kitchen table" decks, this gameplay pattern was only really possible in the Extended format, and its presence there was short-lived. For those who haven't seen that "TEPS" deck or a similar deck in action, the way that the deck works is by sculpting its own hand and endeavoring to monitor the opponent's plays, holding out for the perfect turn to sequence as many spells as possible into Mind's Desire. The hope is that the first Mind's Desire flips over enough cards that one can sequence more spells into a second Mind's Desire with higher storm count, and continue from there into a combo finish. Within the Extended environment, this was a precarious position to be in, because the randomness of Mind's Desire made comboing with the deck fickle, but waiting for too long meant opponents would reliably disrupt the combo or kill the combo player. In Vintage, a format defined by cheap and effective mana rocks that net more mana than was spent to cast them, Mind's Desire was flagged as a problem before the card's official release. WotC correctly realized that unrestricted Mind's Desire would have dominated the format at that time.
Mind's Desire was on the Legacy ban list from the beginning, and I think that a lot of Ad Nauseam enthusiasts would have happily taken up Mind's Desire as their specialty if the card was ever unbanned. Over the years, I even heard that exact sentiment expressed. And I concurred. A format where I can play with full playsets of Dark Ritual and Mind's Desire, while not quite my ultimate dream for how I want to play Magic, is pretty close. I don't know whether, after all this time, this is enough to drag be back into actually participating in Legacy tournaments. But if it's not enough, I don't know what would be!
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Translation: Storm used to be scary twenty years ago, then we kept printing a bunch of broken stuff that let's creature-based tempo decks beat up combo players and take their lunch money. We find this funny, so we're going to keep doing it. Seeing that we don't really make new tools for storm decks and plan to continue churning out new tools for their competition, it seems sporting to give them back this old card that we took away from them.
saprolingtoken
Member
Glad to see Desire back. A sweet card but definitely not a problem because it is so expensive and random (at lower levels of Storm at least). But it is hard to counter as well as not being contingent upon your life total so that's a pretty nice option to have for Storm based decks. I can sort of get the reticence on WotC's part for not unbanning it, it was decidedly broken even after it's restriction in Type 1 but that was also a function of a lot of other really broken surrounding cards. Just happy it's back though!