Banned from Constructed play

[Oversoul]

This doesn't quite fit the theme of the "Memories" threads that I've been posting, but I've been thinking about an old post I saw when looking for one of my own old posts on Survival of the Fittest...

The next b/r announcement is coming up, and it seems as if Survival of the Fittest is getting the axe. That makes me sad, as it is the reason I started playing Legacy in the first place. What makes it especially sad is that the card has no place in Vintage, so basically I'm screwed. I've also concluded that WotC's view on eternal formats (well, Legacy) is different from mine: with such a large cardpool, broken things happen. It's okay to meddle a bit with stuff that's ruining everyone's fun because of rules loopholes (like Flash). If a card is too strong for Legacy, it should be strong enough to see play in Vintage (because otherwise banning a card in Legacy is basically banning the card from constructed play). This is why Oath is banned in Legacy, and why Brainstorm is restricted in Vintage. It'd make sense to ban Brainstorm in Legacy (because it's strong enough to restrict in Vintage), but to ban Survival in Legacy doesn't make sense at all. Sad panda.

I don't know how well that holds water, but I find it interesting. The idea seems to be a bit of a throwback to the old Type 1.5, where the only cards that were banned were the ones restricted in Vintage. These days, Vintage tournament play is such a small competitive environment that discussing it as a Magic format is a little weird. Sure, it's kind of the oldest format, but in some people's minds it's a dead format. Most Vintage results for which there is data are Magic Online, and it's a different game with a different setup. Trying to crunch numbers, though, just doesn't work as well as it does for other formats. With so many very small tournaments showing up it can seem like a very diverse, wild format. But focusing only on the (rare) larger tournaments doesn't give a clear story either. Longtime Vintage enthusiasts like Kevin Cron and Randy Buehler might try to provide analytical commentary, but the whole situation is just weird. Perhaps Vintage isn't dead, but it's kind of dead. Undead? A lot of players, myself included, are worried that Legacy is headed the same direction. But that's another topic.

Anyway, going with the idea that if a card is banned in Legacy, but not really playable in Vintage, there's no home for it and the card is essentially, if not actually, banned from Constructed play, what cards might this apply to? Sure, a lot of cards are just not strong enough to make the cut in Legacy. Some of those were once actively played in competitive Magic and no longer have a relevant niche, but that's different. If we think of Legacy as the "You can use your cards unless they're too powerful" format and Vintage as the "Even powerful cards are allowed" format, what cards are oddly left out? What gets banned out of Legacy, but is apparently not powerful enough to have its own niche in Vintage? Like I said, I don't really know about this concept holding water. If we identify the cards, what can we meaningfully say about them? Should they be unbanned in Legacy? I think most Legacy players are of the opinion that some more robust criteria should be used for making such decisions. But I find myself drawn to the idea anyway, and I'm curious enough to go through the list...

Firstly, I'll dismiss the cards that are banned in Vintage. That's a totally different category from Shabbaman's idea. Yes, one could say that Falling Star is "banned from Constructed play" but that is for totally different reasons. So yeah, cutting out the conspiracies, ante cards, manual dexterity cards, and white sorceries from Arabian Nights illustrated by Kaja Foglio. They're out of the picture. Moving on...

Let's also dismiss the cards that are demonstrable Vintage powerhouses. The format may be a kinda undead or whatever, but some cards are unquestionably strong to anyone familiar with Eternal formats. That these cards are banned in Legacy and not banned in Vintage is what separates formats from each other.

Ancestral Recall
Bazaar of Baghdad
Black Lotus
Fastbond
Mana Crypt
Mana Vault
Mishra’s Workshop
Mox Emerald
Mox Jet
Mox Pearl
Mox Ruby
Mox Sapphire
Oath of Druids
Sol Ring
Strip Mine
Time Vault
Time Walk
Tinker
Tolarian Academy
Yawgmoth’s Will

Close scrutiny might suggest that some cards are missing from that crossed off list. And I agree that there's a case for that. I wanted to first get rid of the cards that I'm basically 100% convinced are "Vintage and not Legacy." Some cards are played in Vintage, but the fact that they're banned in Legacy is more of a current circumstance than a defining feature. For example, Gush is an excellent card in Vintage. Does it need to be banned in Legacy? A case could easily be made that Brainstorm should be banned instead and that Gush should be unbanned. I'm not advocating for this. I'm just saying I want to be distinct in what I'm crossing off and why I'm doing it. The cards above are clearly, indisputably, beyond the power level of Legacy and are also very widely played in Vintage. I left them in alphabetical order. If they were prioritized, Fastbond would probably be at the bottom of the list. It doesn't appear in Vintage decks quite as often as it once did, but I still think it's a powerhouse.

With those out of the way, I'll also cross off some cards that are at least marginally played in Vintage and have or once had a very prominent role. For example, Memory Jar is used in Paradoxical Outcome decks and occasionally crops up elsewhere. It's not really a Vintage staple, but back in the days of Goblin Welder, it was seen all the time. Maybe Paradoxical Outcome is going to be a permanent fixture in Vintage, or maybe it's flash in the pan. I really don't know. But a card like Memory Jar has historically had a strong presence in Vintage, and still shows up on a regular basis in at least one major archetype. If Vintage were to continue to evolve, perhaps to thrive as a competitive format, perhaps some day Memory Jar wouldn't show up in decklists. And actually, I think that the card should be unbanned in Legacy, although I may be completely alone in the world on that point. But right now, I'm not focusing on whether cards should be banned or not. The point is that we've got some cards that are, at least currently, strong enough to have a significant role in Vintage, so banning them in Legacy doesn't leave them banned from Constructed play...

Demonic Tutor
Dig Through Time
Gush
Library of Alexandria
Mana Drain
Memory Jar
Mental Misstep
Mind’s Desire
Mystical Tutor
Necropotence
Skullclamp
Timetwister
Treasure Cruise
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
Yawgmoth’s Bargain

Some of those are close to marginal for Vintage. Traditional Storm decks aren't as prominent as they once were, and they're the main home for cards like Wheel of Fortune and Mind's Desire. But for now, I'm comfortable crossing those off as "Vintage playables." That does get rid of most of the list. Several of the remaining cards have still definitely had marginal Vintage appearances, but I don't want to go crazy. In some cases, a brief search shows that a card has made some appearances in Vintage tournament results over the years, but that almost all of them have been by the same player! Just because one guy manages to successfully use his pet card in a local metagame for a format that is played too sparsely to get good competitive data doesn't mean it should be crossed off, dismissed as "Vintage playable."

For the sake of trimming it a bit more, let's cross off the cards that are still here, but that are restricted in Vintage. My reasoning is that even if these cards are not played to a great degree in the format, the fact that they're restricted is an extenuating circumstance. I'm not commenting on whether they should be restricted, but it seems notable. The card I'm primarily thinking of is Flash. Yes, it is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage, and it doesn't show up in Vintage decklists these days. But a card that isn't played when it's only available as single copy might be played a lot more if it were available as a four-of. One could argue that such a card being restricted in Vintage is sort of banning that card from constructed play, but it's for a very different reason than what Shabbaman had in mind. Instead of "this card isn't good enough for Vintage and is banned in Legacy" it's more that the card is thought to be so powerful that it is too good to be unrestricted in Vintage, and it just doesn't have a niche while restricted...

Balance
Channel
Demonic Consultation
Flash
Imperial Seal
Windfall

 

[Oversoul]

That leaves us with this list of "banned from constructed play" cards...

Earthcraft
Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter
Hermit Druid
Mind Twist
Survival of the Fittest

Well, on the one hand, at least that isn't very many cards! One could potentially dispute some points. Some of the cards that I crossed off have historically had a Vintage presence but are too marginal now to warrant designation as "Vintage playable." That might raise the question of whether they should still be restricted in Vintage at all. And one could argue for crossing off some of the cards that I've left there, as they've seen at least a little Vintage play, but it's a bit of stretch. Notably, all six of the cards left on the list are ones that I've argued should probably be unbanned in Legacy. In fact, the list of cards that I want unbanned and the list of "banned from constructed play" that I've made from my interpretation of Shabbaman's idea are almost entirely overlap (I am very hesitant on Frantic Search with how prevalent cheap, blue card-drawing spells already are, given that they seem to have approached a sort of critical mass for taking over the format, although if Brainstorm were banned, that worry would go right out the window). Granted, the same person would be compiling both lists, so it could just be bias. But I do think that there's some merit here.

 

[Melkor]

Mind Twist continues to stick out like a sore thumb. It's just clearly not too powerful for Legacy and it doesn't go in any currently powerful deck. The only thing I really hear against it is that it isn't "fun" to have used against you. Of course, it's not very fun for the opponent when B/R Reanimator puts a Sire of Insanity into play on the first turn (with Chancellor of the Annex backup!) which isn't that unusual a play. I can at least envision the rest of those cards potentially being part of something degenerate.

 

[Oversoul]

Mind Twist continues to stick out like a sore thumb. It's just clearly not too powerful for Legacy and it doesn't go in any currently powerful deck.

I don't think that any of those cards slot very well into a currently powerful deck, except maybe Frantic Search because hey, free card-drawing. But I do agree that Mind Twist is probably the most egregious. Another one that's pretty weird to still have on there is Goblin Recruiter. Legacy had such an influx of players in the last few years of the 00's and first few of this decade, that on multiple occasions I've seen players who were experienced and well-versed in the format just assume that Goblin Recruiter is on the banned list due to logistical issues, akin to Shahrazad. They imagine that the library-stacking must have been too time-consuming for tournaments. And then someone who was actually around in the days of Food Chain Goblins informs them that no, the deck deck didn't really slow tournaments down nearly as badly as some of the other stuff that's been legal, and it was banned in Extended for power level and then the ban carried over when Legacy was created, just like several other cards that got their bans in Legacy lifted over the years. After that, they look at how the deck actually functions and at the lines of play. There's this sort of slow progression from, "Hey, Food Chain Goblins was a pretty cool deck" to "yeah, this probably would not fare any better in Legacy than existing Goblins decks."

The only thing I really hear against it is that it isn't "fun" to have used against you. Of course, it's not very fun for the opponent when B/R Reanimator puts a Sire of Insanity into play on the first turn (with Chancellor of the Annex backup!) which isn't that unusual a play.

The most fun thing in Legacy is probably, "In response I pay 1 to spin Top, OK, reveal the top card of my library for Counterbalance. Your spell is is countered. End of turn, tap Top. Untap, upkeep, draw, play Top, make another Monk token..." Everyone loves playing against that!

I can at least envision the rest of those cards potentially being part of something degenerate.

I think it's a mixed bag. Like I said, Frantic Search is more blue cantrip crap, which is already dominant in Legacy, but it's not like having Frantic Search banned and Brainstorm unbanned really makes sense at this point. Hermit Druid might be risky, and it's different enough from what's played now that I don't know how to gauge its potential. The other four all strike me as extremely safe unbans, but I could try to put on an imagination hat and picture a case where Survival of the Fittest or Earthcraft found some unexpected scenario and took over Legacy. I don't think it's plausible, but if I really squinted hard, maybe I could see it. Goblin Recruiter and Mind Twist being able to even compete with stuff like a Jitte-equipped "protection from you" creature, let alone dominate the format, is just plain silly.

 

[Shabbaman]

Wow, this is a very fun mental excercise! Thanks for doing this! It's also the first time anyone started a thread based on something I wrote, so yay.

One point you make that I think I've never considered is that Legacy has banned cards that were taken from the original Extended format. Like Hermit Druid (I assume... Angry Hermit was quite the powerhouse). At the time you could play it in type 1.5, although that wasn't a very popular format at the time.

 

[Oversoul]

Thread necromancy! Hey, this thread's corpse was practically still fresh...

So I've probably reopened the old wounds of the Legacy banning of Survival of the Fittest more than anyone else on the planet, even though I didn't originally set out to do that, but I keep circling back around to the topic in various places for various reasons. Anyway, in case there was any doubt, I still think I was right in 2010. And also, apparently, I think that this dead horse hasn't been beaten enough. Kind of. OK, maybe not really. The real reason I am digging this back up is that Survival of the Fittest is now "officially" Vintage-playable. Now, I already mentioned the occasional appearance of Madness-type decks in contemporary Vintage tournaments, but such appearances were rare. A lot of fringe stuff crops up in small Vintage events.

But now it looks like Survival has real staying power. The combination of Survival of the Fittest and Bazaar of Baghdad makes a graveyard-based aggro approach potent, and both cards make it easy to cast Hollow One. The "Survival Salad" concept has been gaining ground in Vintage on MTGO and seems to be here to stay. It isn't as powerful as Dredge, but has some advantages over the more extreme archetype, so the relative usage of the two will probably oscillate somewhat depending on the rest of the metagame. But anyway, it does appear that after ~7 years of being banned from Constructed play, Survival of the Fittest has become a thing again.

I'm happy about this development, but I also can't pretend that it presents no conceptual challenge to my own stance on these matters. Does this development vindicate the original 2010 Legacy banning of Survival of the Fittest? Does this deck's success mean that other "banned from Constructed play" cards are just waiting for the right new deck to emerge in Vintage? Is Survival of the Fittest now definitively too broken for Legacy? I'm tentatively tempted to say no on all counts, but it'd be foolish of me to dismiss the issue without serious trepidation.

 

[saprolingtoken]

That leaves us with this list of "banned from constructed play" cards...

Earthcraft
Frantic Search
Goblin Recruiter
Hermit Druid
Mind Twist
Survival of the Fittest

Well, on the one hand, at least that isn't very many cards! One could potentially dispute some points. Some of the cards that I crossed off have historically had a Vintage presence but are too marginal now to warrant designation as "Vintage playable." That might raise the question of whether they should still be restricted in Vintage at all. And one could argue for crossing off some of the cards that I've left there, as they've seen at least a little Vintage play, but it's a bit of stretch. Notably, all six of the cards left on the list are ones that I've argued should probably be unbanned in Legacy. In fact, the list of cards that I want unbanned and the list of "banned from constructed play" that I've made from my interpretation of Shabbaman's idea are almost entirely overlap (I am very hesitant on Frantic Search with how prevalent cheap, blue card-drawing spells already are, given that they seem to have approached a sort of critical mass for taking over the format, although if Brainstorm were banned, that worry would go right out the window). Granted, the same person would be compiling both lists, so it could just be bias. But I do think that there's some merit here.

I agree with your reasoning here. At least at the time of writing this I think you were spot on.


Earthcraft: It would see play in Enchantress as a compact win condition when combined with Squirrel Nest. It's even great by itself because you can produce mana with Argothian Enchantress. However, it's still Enchantress, enchantments aren't as safe these days, the combo itself is slow, the prevalence of Plague Engineer hurts it, etc. A fine addition to the format and it's silly it's still banned. Verdict: Niche card. Does help a fringe deck.

Frantic Search: Really the only deck that would want this would be High Tide which is pretty weak currently. Other decks that want discard outlets like Dredge or Reanimator use Careful Study or Faithless looting because it's much faster and they can't support/don't want three CMC cards. Most Blue decks don't want to even play three mana cards. High Tide really wont kill any earlier than turn three, which this does help facilitate but it's such an awkward card to use. Verdict: Really niche card, mostly just High Tide able to utilize the filtering and untapping. Good addition, helps a fringe deck.

Goblin Recruiter: Recruiter was fine when they forgot to print any good Goblins for over a decade but they have made up for lost time the last three years: Goblin Trashmaster, Goblin Chainwhirler, Goblin Cratermaker, Munitions Expert, Sling-Gang Lieutenant, Pashalik Mons, Conspicuous Snoop and Muxus, Goblin Grandee. The deck is really strong in Legacy at the moment. Adding a card like Goblin Recruiter lets you play the Snoop + Kiki combo whilst also being a completely unbeatable two mana card when people are trying to play a normal game letting you to change strategies easily, going from grind you out to make a million Snoops and kill you. Recruiter improves the combo matches significantly, where classic Goblins lists have struggled the most and even then those matchups aren't even that bad anymore because turn two Muxus is unbelievable. Good luck trying to interact with Recruiter too since all you need to do is resolve it and with Cavern, Vial and Lackey most interaction is blank cardboard. Verdict: Not safe anymore lol.

Hermit Druid: This card is really embarrassing. The kind of deck it would slot into would be something that's like Oops All Spells but just a lot worse since you are more vulnerable to Needle/Spyglass, need to untap, more vulnerable to removal, etc. The deck would just be a bad Oops or a bad Doomsday if you wanted to build a slower more Combo-Control style of deck. Also is bad against Plague Engineer too. Verdict: Not a good card. Would see no play, at least as a combo card.

Mind Twist: As far as disruption goes, Twist is worse than Duress/TS/IoK/Hymn. It takes too much mana to do anything. Ritting into it is whatever. Discard is relatively weak in Legacy compared to past formats because of the presence of cantrips, Brainstorm in particular. No deck wants to pay four mana for an upgraded Hymn except for maybe some of the Black Ancient Tomb decks like Curses. It could be good there. However it's really bad if you get it Dazed or Pierced and disastrous to get it Misdirected. Verdict: Niche.

Survival of the Fittest: Save the best for last. SotF probably shouldn't have been banned in 2010. I think your analysis in the SotF thread was correct: Survival decks were pretty bad against the combo decks, a lot of the decks played at the time were good matchups and while said decks were good then they were/are unplayable today, and the popularity of the card drove up people playing the deck. However, Survival is really unappealing as a combo card these days. Everything is much faster. Elves wouldn't even bother to play the card because it dilutes you deck with noncreatures and taxes you for 1GG to do anything. Spamming Vengevines is not a bad strategy but its just worse than Hogaak in that regard. Also not even mentioning that most Survival decks are pretty weak without their namesake, at least the combo oriented versions are. Copy/paste concerns about Needle and co. here and add in stuff like Surgical Extraction too. And it's even hard to resolve because of all the extra Forces in the format. Turn 2 Survival is not scary as a combo card. It can't even compare to early Griselbrands, Emrakuls or Marit Lage. It's not bad or unplayable. It's probably good somewhere. It would occupy space like the Heliod Company deck does in Modern: a midrange deck with a combo finish or vice versa. Verdict: Shouldn't have been banned in the first place. A strong card but pretty durdly.

Pretty sure there are more spicy cards that would be worth figuring out if they would be acceptable. Stuff like Jar is pretty safe I think because we don't have nearly as much mana as the old Jar decks did and as a card drawing engine it's worse than AN. Could be sweet in a MUD style deck with Metalworker. Ditto for stuff like Bargain and Windfall. Echo of Eons hasn't broke anything and Windfall is much worse though there is some concern that their could maybe be a critical mass of Draw-7's that could cause issues but it's hard to say. Also stuff like Necro or Clamp would be interesting, give them a trial period but I'm definitely not saying they're safe but they do offer interesting deckbuilding incentives, novel gameplay and a reason to not just play Blue decks.

 

[Oversoul]

I certainly didn't expect to see activity on this thread again unless it was because I got bored and found it again myself. Hello, and welcome to the forum.

I didn't really expect my weird thought experiment to age particularly well, and in some ways it probably hasn't. But your updated analysis is cogent. I don't really have any strong disagreement with anything you said. Earthcraft, Frantic Search, Hermit Druid, Mind Twist, Memory Jar, Yawgmoth's Bargain, and Windfall all seem like eminently safe unbans in Legacy, and for the reasons that you've presented. Necropotence and Skullclamp are tantalizing possibilities, but might be too dangerous. I see where you're coming from on Goblin Recruiter, and while I would like to see it unbanned, perhaps that's wishful thinking on my part. I'd like to think that Conspicuous Snoop and Goblin Recruiter in the same deck might push Goblins into Tier 1 status, but without totally taking over the format. Goblins was a top deck for years, and in all that time, it wasn't a deck that drew much controversy. It always had certain bad matchups and could generally be beaten with sideboard hate.

In the past few years, we've gotten some of the most powerful goblin cards ever. I wouldn't have thought that it would be possible for Goblins to go from a struggling archetype to one that would actually threaten the format if Goblin Recruiter were unbanned, but times have changed. Personally, I'd still like to give it a shot. But it's no longer the obvious call that it was in 2017. This raises another issue, by the way. If the combination of Goblin Recruiter + Conspicuous Snoop does turn out to be too strong for Legacy, why not ban Conspicuous Snoop instead of Goblin Recruiter? Yes, Goblin Recruiter is already the banned card between the two of them, but I contend that it should never have been banned in the first place. So, if it had been legal, and Conspicuous Snoop broke it, what then?

 

[saprolingtoken]

Hello! Good to be here.

You are correct. The early Legacy format had Goblins and it was one of the best decks, if not the best deck, and it wasn't a big deal. There was generic hate in Pyroclasm or more specialized cards like Tivadar's Crusade or Engineered Plague. However, things changed a bit recently. One of the things that used to happen was the deck could be tempo-ed out, that is to say that other Aggro-Control decks like Thresh(now Delver) or Burn could kill your stuff and dome you and then you'd die. Today, that issue has been mitigated by the presence of Expert and Sling-Gang. Sling + Pashalik is also really good against True-Name Nemesis which used to be a pain to deal with. Now you can kill stuff on curve while adding to board presence and SGL turns all your Goblins into Lightning Helixes which is incidentally really good against tempo decks trying to kill you as fast as possible. Goblins used to have issues with artifacts or being unable to interact with them favorably. Solved with Trashmaster/Cratermaker. Cratermaker also has the distinction of dumping on Emrakul which is right up there with 15 Squirrels vs Eldrazi in silliness. Stuff like Show and Tell which used to be really hard are much better because you draw or tutor into Muxus making S&T really bad. The biggest issue is the prevalence of Plague Engineer but even that is taken care of with Cratermaker or Pashalik. Goblins now possesses answers to a lot of problems against the fair and unfair decks that caused it issues in the past.

Regarding banning Snoop or Recruiter I think it's Recruiter that's the really broken one. Snoop is really good but is actually a bit awkward to get to work in practice, at least in Legacy due to heavy use of colorless lands like Port/Waste. In Modern some of the Snoop combo lists have seen some success but nothing oppressive. It's not that Snoop is bad, it's a great card but certainly not worth being banned. However, when paired with Recruiter is very easy to control the top of your deck to either enable a win with Recruiter or ensure a steady stream of Goblins.

I already typed out a wall-of-text but I guess I should state my philosophy regarding the Banned List in Legacy; WotC maybe arbitrary but I am not. This isn't meant to be exhaustive but just a general idea of what I'm thinking and some cards belong to multiple categories, etc. First, any cards that would be too format warping but don't produce a dominant deck should stay banned. So cards like Strip Mine or Mental Misstep. Cards that create non-games like Balance or Channel.

Cards that reduce metagame diversity are no-go as well. I think Recruiter falls into the latter category. To be more specific, the Goblins deck is already pretty good against most fair decks, either being favored or even. Some of the BUG Delver decks might be unfavorable due to Hymn and PE and fat creatures. The most popular Combo deck, Show and Tell is much better now because S&T is now much more symmetrical than they'd like and they have to have specific lines to get a kill against you. Crater v Emrakul is a no go, Muxuses presence looms large and even Griselbrand can be raced or nuked with Expert. Storm is tough especially preboard. Reanimator is really hard too but can be boarded against so it's much easier after board. Depths is a nightmare matchup. It's really fast and there isn't a lot of good hate outside of Blood Moon or Karakas. Dredge/Hogaak are actually about even but they can get pretty insane hands. However, they're vulnerable to Lackey, and Bridge from Below is easily hosed by half our deck since Goblins have a penchant for dying quite easily. Postboard hate makes them favorable, I'd say. Elves is another interesting one that is around 40/60 in their favor but postboard it's at the very least even. Pyrokinesis is absolutely bonkers in this matchup. Oops is extremely hard preboard but postboard you get a lot of hate and their deck can crap out on them a lot. Doomsday can be pretty hard but it depends on their hand. If it's slower you can just put a bunch of power on the board and with Sling-Gang it can make it impossible for them to combo at all because of the life loss from Doomsday.

The biggest problem against Combo decks is that the efficacy of any particular hate card is very matchup dependent. You'd rather play stuff like Relic of Progenitus against slower GY decks but there is a good chance it does literally nothing against Reanimator. Or there just isn't good hate cards available i.e. Depths.

However, what happens to Goblins matchup profile when you can just make a million dorks in your Combo matches and play normal games of magic against Delver, Death and Taxes and Blue midrange decks? Any by normal I mean the game of "Can you kill every single creature in my deck?"

It's also worth noting that Goblin Recruiter also changes the calculus on certain things. For example stuff like Chrome Mox is much more attractive when you have infinity cards. And sideboarding is usually a dance, trying not to bring in too many cards so you don't dilute your Ringleaders but that's not a problem with Recruiter.

I think the question of whether Goblin Recruiter should have been banned from the transition from 1.5 to Legacy is an interesting one. Food Chain Goblins was one of the best decks in Type 1.5 and had FCG had got Lackey and Recruiter banned Extended at the time as well as being a decent deck in Type 1. A lot of the tools we have now like Cavern of Souls wasn't available to really push it over the top... so maybe it would be OK? I think they were trying to limit obvious broken-ness whilst preserving most decks. I think they succeeded. Flash forward a few years and I think it would have been fine in 2012 Legacy, probably, because every deck was so much better. In 2021 Legacy I don't think Recruiter does much but make Legacy worse overall. I'd rather there be less non-games than not but this is an Eternal format where one of the goals, I presume, is to play with these old powerful cards and sometimes you get decks that operate an axes that some decks can't interact with and you're just goldfishing. Some of that is inevitable, maybe even good in a metagame balancing way but obviously too much turns Magic: the Gathering into Solitaire.

It should be said that I love Goblins and I especially love Goblin Recruiter. Now only is it really strong but its got that silly Goblin flavor text too. And the art is hilarious. I've played the deck for many, many years. But I think, fundamentally, Goblin Recruiter is too strong. Sure, there were formats or metagames where it could have been OK. But at that point all you're really doing is waiting for the other shoe to drop. So if Recruiter were legal and Snoop was printed then I would say they would have just banned Recruiter. But who knows? Maybe they would have banned around Recruiter a la Necro in the 90's or early 00's or like Brainstorm in current Legacy.

"1R: Stack your deck" has gotta some of the dumbest text in the game. It's barely even a creature spell anymore and can't be interacted with outside of some narrow cards like Torpor Orb or Stifle. Not only is a combo card but it completely eliminates any variance in games. Patrick Chapin even called it the second best Red card of all time:

"I had to give the nod to Inferno Titan for best real red creature, because Goblin Recruiter is just not a real red creature. It’s not even really a real Magic card.

“When Goblin Recruiter enters the battlefield, stack your entire deck.”

Yeah, that makes sense on a two-drop…

…Or it’s unbelievably stupid, ruining any hope of playing a game (to say nothing of being completely busted).

Goblin Recruiter was eventually banned from Legacy because of its interaction with Food Chain and Goblin Ringleader."

The entire series of articles he did was really interesting. (it is Patrick Chapin so of course it is!)

The Top 25 Red Cards Of All-Time: #5-1

Well, red mages. This is it. The best red spells ever put to print are here, and Patrick Chapin is happy to provide you with insight and historic decks! Which spells made it to the top of the Mountain?

articles.starcitygames.com

Anyway, just my .02 cents.

 

[saprolingtoken]

TL;DR: WotC is has no actual philosophy for managing the format and banned list and that makes me PLATINUM MAD.

Now that I think about it, at least regarding the current Legacy Banned List, I take umbrage with Brainstorm and Ponder. For whatever reason the DCI has decided to not ban those cards because, according to a tweet from Aaron Forsythe:

"It's one of the "pillars of the format" that makes it unique and players tolerate/love. It's like Brainstorm in Legacy. Every saturation metric we could ever invent would point to it being banned, but people love it. Transgressive stuff needs a place to live."

Of course this begs the question: why not any other card? Why specifically Brainstorm (and by extension Ponder)? Why not other "transgressive" cards? Because people love it? I'm sorry but people loving cantrips is a more recent phenomenon. The original Miracle Gro decks existed although Brainstorm played a part but Gush was the star of the show, having great synergy with Winter Orb as well as being card advantage. The current fascination with Brainstorm is, from the best of my memory, around in the early history of Legacy's life so around 2006-ish. Brainstorm wasn't an auto 4-of in every deck until fetchlands got printed in Onslaught but there wasn't a popular format until Legacy came around in late 2004 where you could play duals + fetches.

But I digress. Why not, for example, Necropotence, Skullclamp or Survival of the Fittest? Powerful cards in their own right, having been more or less staples since being printed as well as being really fun, usually. Even the Skullclamp three deck meta in ONS/MRD Standard of Goblins (with Clamp), Elf and Nail (with Clamp) and Affinity (with.......... Clamp) was actually really fun and much more interesting than the post ban meta which made things really bad. Afaik most people actually enjoyed the Clamp meta even thought the card is nutso busted because the gameplay was interesting and skillful.

The same goes for The Skull if not more so. Not only does it eclipse most cards in being "loved" or just being "(in)famous" but it creates interesting gameplay and decisions in deckbuilding too. If not for it's history as a pretty obscene Combo enabler I could create good arguments for it's unbanning. But why not just ban cards around Necro until we get rid of a few obnoxious Combo cards and then you could enable to play mono Black decks, like, legitimately and not as a meme? They did it before.

Why does a card like Brainstorm/Ponder elicit so much support from players and R&D when all it does is really cement the dominance of Blue decks, which are already going to be overrepresented due to countermagic being the only really good answer the various threats that are legal in Legacy? Is this just due to inertia?

I don't have a particular vendetta against cantrips in general, I love casting them, but the favoritism displayed to them is just baffling. Why are the non Blue deck card drawing/consistency engines banned while the best Blue ones aren't (not counting Ancestral Recall or Gush)? As a minor aside, I know that Skullclamp could be used in the Blue decks due to token makers like Young Pyromancer but it is awkward and mana intensive and I suspect they wouldn't be the best Clamp decks, not even close. Obviously, Necro and Survival have harsher deckbuilding restrictions that preclude form being used in Blue tempo decks.

This was more or less my original argument a few years ago for unbanning Goblin Recruiter but uh... I never could have foreseen something like Snoop, much less Muxus who continues the noble (hehehe) tradition of being a Goblin that does the same thing as a broken card from early in the game's history, in this case Mind's Desire or close to it at least.

This is to say nothing of the running joke of keeping bad or niche cards on the Banned List because....??????? Reasons? I have no clue. Earthcraft is just an Enchantress card, Druid is garbage and the refrain of "Survival gets better with each set because the creatures are getting better!" is just so myopic, its empty sloganeering. Sure it kind of gets better because there are more creatures to tutor up but it also gets worse because Survival is S L O W. The format has speed up a lot since then.

It's honestly really annoying. I actually playtested and goldfished a Memory Jar style MUD deck a couple years ago. And it was fun as shit. A five mana card is a lot to utilize as a Combo enabler especially if we don't have Will/Tinker/Mana Vault. It's often just worse than Ad Nauseum. But you know where it is good? A deck with Metalworker, probably how the designers envisioned the card to work in the first place. Not only does MW produce a buttload of mana by itself but it combos really well with Keys. Unfortunately, if you run out of cards to play it produces zero mana... but what if I told you you could refill your hand but you only get to keep it for that turn. If you produce a trillion mana you can really go nuts and replay that hand. Then if we talk about Goblin Welder and then Cavern of Souls and Wurmcoil Engine I mean things get really nuts. The deck was really strong. Of course this was even before stuff like Collector Ouphe and Karn. And Null Rod is even today a card sometimes seen in SBs. It was strong but a little fragile. But it was sweet. It was basically an artifact ramp style deck. But I can't play it because the Broken Jar decks were completely busted and that has colored everyone's perception of Jar as a mega broken Combo card.

Anyway, sorry for all the ranting. Wanted to get that out into the aether.

Edit: Also what do you think about Mana Drain? Obviously this is a really, really strong card but it does feel a bit like it is "banned from constructed" since it's usage in Blue decks in Vintage has gone down drastically in the last twenty years. It used to be ubiquitous back then, only Fish didn't play it. But it's not really a "pillar" of Vintage anymore and even something like Counterspell is rarely seen in Legacy. I don't think Mana Drain really makes it into current Legacy midrange/control decks because they just don't have anyway to spend the mana. But what if it opened up a new Big Blue style deck like Control Slaver from 2003-ish Type 1 or even XLU (Accelerated Blue) from even older formats. Now I know this seems strange because I'm writing this after a huge long crazy screed about cantrips but it does actually increase metagame diversity by offering a third, different kind of Blue deck to play IN ADDITION to giving Mana Drain a home in a format where it is appropriate. What if it enabled a Gifts Ungiven style deck too? Increased usage of Fact or Fiction and the Intuition/AK engine? Wouldn't this be a net positive if we are just sorta implicitly accepting this is a Blue dominated format? I don't think it would be unbeatable, not by a long shot. It is interesting to think about and something I've considered for awhile.

The only other card I was thinking about was Imperial Seal. Card availability issues aside, I wonder if it could pay a role similar to Vampiric Tutor in old Extended where it was, oddly enough, never banned until it rotated out. If it isn't super broken in Combo decks it seems like Seal would be really good for maybe some sorta Rock deck where you can just play a bunch of one-ofs and hosers and stuff and go nuts. THAT seems fun.

 

[Oversoul]

Regarding Goblin Recruiter, I'll say that while I don't entirely agree that it should remain banned, your points have swayed me somewhat. For so many years, it formed a kind of triad with Earthcraft and Mind Twist. Those three were so definitively safe as unbans that it was patently obvious to anyone familiar with the format at all, and a testament to how poor WotC's management of Legacy has been. I still want Goblin Recruiter to be unbanned, but it has has become much more dangerous than it used to be. Still, Goblin Recruiter sees no play in Vintage and Legacy Goblins decks aren't dominant. I'd like to see it unbanned, although I'd imagine it would be more of a high-risk unban now.

Pat Chapin is knowledgeable and insightful, but I've noticed that a lot of his commentary is colored by his mindset as a game designer. His complaints about Goblin Recruiter are more rooted in how he finds that concept objectionable as something that got greenlit in the development of Visions. It too easily does something by itself that has major implications for how how games play out and affects the potential design space for future cards. He may be right, but as someone who is thinking of Goblin Recruiter primarily in terms of whether it would actually dominate or distort Legacy tournament play, with no real regard for game design issues, a lot of that seems akin to crying over spilled milk. Sure, the idea of getting to go through your whole library and start setting cards aside to put on top of it with very little restriction is kind of a silly thing to have in the game. But no one is calling for a ban on Dwarven Recruiter, and that's not just because it costs 1 more mana.

I'd like to see Goblin Recruiter have a shot. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that it was a mistake, but I think it could be part of a healthy metagame. Make Goblins great again.

TL;DR: WotC is has no actual philosophy for managing the format and banned list and that makes me PLATINUM MAD.

I know! It's infuriating.

Now that I think about it, at least regarding the current Legacy Banned List, I take umbrage with Brainstorm and Ponder. For whatever reason the DCI has decided to not ban those cards because, according to a tweet from Aaron Forsythe:

"It's one of the "pillars of the format" that makes it unique and players tolerate/love. It's like Brainstorm in Legacy. Every saturation metric we could ever invent would point to it being banned, but people love it. Transgressive stuff needs a place to live."

Of course this begs the question: why not any other card? Why specifically Brainstorm (and by extension Ponder)? Why not other "transgressive" cards? Because people love it? I'm sorry but people loving cantrips is a more recent phenomenon. The original Miracle Gro decks existed although Brainstorm played a part but Gush was the star of the show, having great synergy with Winter Orb as well as being card advantage. The current fascination with Brainstorm is, from the best of my memory, around in the early history of Legacy's life so around 2006-ish. Brainstorm wasn't an auto 4-of in every deck until fetchlands got printed in Onslaught but there wasn't a popular format until Legacy came around in late 2004 where you could play duals + fetches.

You've pretty much captured my exact issue with Brainstorm in Legacy. I like Brainstorm as a card. I've used it a lot. I was playing with Brainstorm before the Onslaught fetchlands existed. But the long-term dominance of the Brainstorm + fetchlands engine in Legacy and the effect it has one shaping the competitive scope of the format is egregious. If that's allowed because "transgressive stuff needs a place to live" then the same could apply to so many other cards.

But I digress. Why not, for example, Necropotence, Skullclamp or Survival of the Fittest? Powerful cards in their own right, having been more or less staples since being printed as well as being really fun, usually. Even the Skullclamp three deck meta in ONS/MRD Standard of Goblins (with Clamp), Elf and Nail (with Clamp) and Affinity (with.......... Clamp) was actually really fun and much more interesting than the post ban meta which made things really bad. Afaik most people actually enjoyed the Clamp meta even thought the card is nutso busted because the gameplay was interesting and skillful.

The same goes for The Skull if not more so. Not only does it eclipse most cards in being "loved" or just being "(in)famous" but it creates interesting gameplay and decisions in deckbuilding too. If not for it's history as a pretty obscene Combo enabler I could create good arguments for it's unbanning. But why not just ban cards around Necro until we get rid of a few obnoxious Combo cards and then you could enable to play mono Black decks, like, legitimately and not as a meme? They did it before.

I don't know if you've perused any of my other posts around here over the years, but if you can't already tell, a robust format in which I can play 4 Dark Ritual and 4 Necropotence is basically everything I want.

Why does a card like Brainstorm/Ponder elicit so much support from players and R&D when all it does is really cement the dominance of Blue decks, which are already going to be overrepresented due to countermagic being the only really good answer the various threats that are legal in Legacy? Is this just due to inertia?

I don't have a particular vendetta against cantrips in general, I love casting them, but the favoritism displayed to them is just baffling. Why are the non Blue deck card drawing/consistency engines banned while the best Blue ones aren't (not counting Ancestral Recall or Gush)? As a minor aside, I know that Skullclamp could be used in the Blue decks due to token makers like Young Pyromancer but it is awkward and mana intensive and I suspect they wouldn't be the best Clamp decks, not even close. Obviously, Necro and Survival have harsher deckbuilding restrictions that preclude form being used in Blue tempo decks.

This was more or less my original argument a few years ago for unbanning Goblin Recruiter but uh... I never could have foreseen something like Snoop, much less Muxus who continues the noble (hehehe) tradition of being a Goblin that does the same thing as a broken card from early in the game's history, in this case Mind's Desire or close to it at least.

Blue decks were too easily splashing whatever colors they wanted and ignoring Wasteland because of Deathrite Shaman, so they banned Deathrite Shaman. Then Wasteland decks were actually doing well because of Wrenn and Six, so they banned Wrenn and Six. Like I said, I like Brainstorm. But when all these non-blue card start getting the axe for Brainstorm's sins, it's time to rethink this ideal of Legacy being the Brainstorm format.

This is to say nothing of the running joke of keeping bad or niche cards on the Banned List because....??????? Reasons? I have no clue. Earthcraft is just an Enchantress card, Druid is garbage and the refrain of "Survival gets better with each set because the creatures are getting better!" is just so myopic, its empty sloganeering. Sure it kind of gets better because there are more creatures to tutor up but it also gets worse because Survival is S L O W. The format has speed up a lot since then.

The only thing that gave me any trepidation with this was Hollow One. Survival would have gotten a boost there, but really, so what? I'm trying to picture the hypothetical Survival list that WotC would be so worried about, and it's like, Hollow One is a 4/4. A lot of things beat a 4/4.

It's honestly really annoying. I actually playtested and goldfished a Memory Jar style MUD deck a couple years ago. And it was fun as shit. A five mana card is a lot to utilize as a Combo enabler especially if we don't have Will/Tinker/Mana Vault. It's often just worse than Ad Nauseum. But you know where it is good? A deck with Metalworker, probably how the designers envisioned the card to work in the first place. Not only does MW produce a buttload of mana by itself but it combos really well with Keys. Unfortunately, if you run out of cards to play it produces zero mana... but what if I told you you could refill your hand but you only get to keep it for that turn. If you produce a trillion mana you can really go nuts and replay that hand. Then if we talk about Goblin Welder and then Cavern of Souls and Wurmcoil Engine I mean things get really nuts. The deck was really strong. Of course this was even before stuff like Collector Ouphe and Karn. And Null Rod is even today a card sometimes seen in SBs. It was strong but a little fragile. But it was sweet. It was basically an artifact ramp style deck. But I can't play it because the Broken Jar decks were completely busted and that has colored everyone's perception of Jar as a mega broken Combo card.

Broken Jar existed in an environment that allowed it to use unrestricted Mana Vault, unrestricted Yawgmoth's Will, unrestricted Tinker, unrestricted Mystical Tutor, unrestricted Vampiric Tutor, and LED pre-erratum under Sixth Edition rules (so you could place a spell on the stack and then activate LED to provide the mana to pay for it). All that in a format with a fraction of the card pool that Legacy has. Of course it was dominant! In that Extended format, anything that was a strong Tinker payload would easily have dominated.

Also what do you think about Mana Drain? Obviously this is a really, really strong card but it does feel a bit like it is "banned from constructed" since it's usage in Blue decks in Vintage has gone down drastically in the last twenty years. It used to be ubiquitous back then, only Fish didn't play it. But it's not really a "pillar" of Vintage anymore and even something like Counterspell is rarely seen in Legacy. I don't think Mana Drain really makes it into current Legacy midrange/control decks because they just don't have anyway to spend the mana. But what if it opened up a new Big Blue style deck like Control Slaver from 2003-ish Type 1 or even XLU (Accelerated Blue) from even older formats. Now I know this seems strange because I'm writing this after a huge long crazy screed about cantrips but it does actually increase metagame diversity by offering a third, different kind of Blue deck to play IN ADDITION to giving Mana Drain a home in a format where it is appropriate. What if it enabled a Gifts Ungiven style deck too? Increased usage of Fact or Fiction and the Intuition/AK engine? Wouldn't this be a net positive if we are just sorta implicitly accepting this is a Blue dominated format? I don't think it would be unbeatable, not by a long shot. It is interesting to think about and something I've considered for awhile.

Mana Drain strikes me as a bit like Goblin Recruiter or Skullclamp here. It's a very strong card and if it were unbanned, I wouldn't be terribly shocked to see that it needed to be banned again, but I'd like to see it get a chance, because it might provide something interesting for the format. I do not mean to say that my policy would be to just go crazy and unban everything in Legacy because we can always just re-ban it again later, but at least a little bit of experimentation like this should be acceptable. After all, Gush was restricted and unrestricted in Vintage so many times that everyone lost count. I suspect that Mana Drain would probably be a safe unban.

The only other card I was thinking about was Imperial Seal. Card availability issues aside, I wonder if it could pay a role similar to Vampiric Tutor in old Extended where it was, oddly enough, never banned until it rotated out. If it isn't super broken in Combo decks it seems like Seal would be really good for maybe some sorta Rock deck where you can just play a bunch of one-ofs and hosers and stuff and go nuts. THAT seems fun.

It's easy to underestimate how important instant speed is for Vampiric Tutor. Imperial Seal is really much, much weaker. My only issue with this one is that I think it's one of the least interesting unbans, and the availability of efficient tutors can exacerbate other problems. My preference would be to unban other cards first, and potentially save this one as one of the last unbans to try out, once the dust settled on other unbans. If the format evolved into a form where Imperial Seal looked safe after those other cards were unbanned, then great. If it looked like it might break combo decks, then leave it banned. But wait and see what the effects of other unbans would be without Imperial Seal.

 

[saprolingtoken]

I think I could get behind a trial period for Goblin Recruiter, Necropotence, Skullclamp, and Mana Drain. Of course all the other easy unbans should come off first. I mean we can just "Gush" them back. If it ends up working out well I could see taking off DRS, Astrolabe, Top, etc. depending on how the powerful the non-Blue decks are able to combat the Blue decks. It's absurd to have stuff like Dreadhorde Arcanist banned when it's clearly, and solely, the problem of flashing back broken cantrips. It's not Hyppie, it's Dark Ritual! Anyway, I too wish that Goblins reclaims its throne as one of the best decks in the format but I tend to err on the side of caution.

When you mentioned Hollow One in a Survival shell, I had the same sorta misgivings when I saw those SotF pop up in Vintage a year or two ago. But it still has the same problems. My thought process followed yours exactly "Wow thats a ton of fat on board that could be a problem, right?". However, you need to Time Walk yourself on turn two and then, best case, turn three you put 3 Vengevines in your GY and play two Hollow Ones and then bam twenty power for an incredible TURN FOUR KILL. Lemme tell you I played Fires in Type 2 a hundred years ago and people were really scared then of my Fires of Yavimaya into turn four Saproling Burst. On a slightly more serious note, I can Muxus players on turn two and put more power on board and my deck doesn't lose to Force of Will, Force of Negation, GY hate, Needle/Spyglass/Revoker, etc. Ditto for something like Elves which can play a grindy game and also have turn two or three kills. Allosaurus Shepperd also makes that deck even more resilient than ever, blanking countermagic and Chalice of the Void. This isn't even counting the other spooky combo decks.

It's hard to say what exactly what would happen if we let Necropotence free after two decades worth of printings, theory and development of the game. Still, I think we could expect a couple things. Even though we lack any of the busted tutors from Old Extended or Legacy we do have something they don't: The London Mulligan. It's probably correct, in some matchups, to mull aggressively for Necro (+Rit) since it very easily unmulls you. This is also probably true for any Aggro or Control decks that run it, not just Combo.

The deck probably needs some sort of lifegain(mini-Tendrils is probably the plan for Combo versions), ways to deal with Needle effects other resolved hate cards, a good plan to combat aggressive Red decks and also take into account of the absurd number of cards printed in the twenty year interim since it was banned. That's a tall order. And I don't know where to even start. I like B/G with Decay/Goyf but that's sorta it. Maybe U/B with Dreadnought + Stifle? Lot's of options.

Regarding Imperial Seal there is room for counterplay with Predict which has seen occasional play on it's own merit. But I could certainly wait till things shake out after all the other unbans, if they happened. You're 100% right about being cautious about tutors. Look at all the ridiculous stuff DT/DC/VT have enabled in various formats. Nothing fair, that's for sure!

Skullclamp I think the first place I would start is Affinity. My thinking is that with Ancient Tomb and Mox Opal that's a lot of extra mana to get Clamping fast. With Disciple of the Vault you get value from Clamp every time you use it. Clamp on Myr Enforcer trades very favorably with almost everything. Genesis Chamber might be good too as infinite food for Clamp. Lots of options here.

I did read your thread on Necropotence. Very thorough. I too have been frustrated looking for old threads, posts and websites of early Magic. It's tough to try and reasearch this stuff when you only have spotty records, at best. Couple that with formats like Type 1 which were unexplored at the time or Extended which didn't get a ton of development because it was seasonal and of course the playerbase was just so much smaller back then too. I feel like NecroDonate with everything probably is a complete dog to Gro but it doesn't pop up till Planeshift with Quirion Dryad and by then UB Trix has already ate a pile of bans. Anyway, good stuff.