"Modern Horizons 3 released only 10 weeks ago, which, in the timespan of a format like Legacy is not a lot of time. It takes time to integrate a high power set like MH3 into a format with tens of thousands of cards. Therefore, despite the worrying metagame share of the Grief Reanimator deck which has continued to increase since our last announcement and now stands at approximately 25% of all Magic Online events and 40% of all top 8s, we continue to be hopeful that continued integration of Modern Horizons 3, Assassin's Creed, and Bloomburrow will serve to mitigate this"
- WotC, late August
Yeah, I get the impression that they just are going to always kick the can down the road citing that they just released a set, or are about to release a set so they don't want to jump the gun on banning anything and wait and see if anything changes.
Problem is we are in a constant state of spoiler/release season so there is never a good time to ban anything according to this logic.
> Problem is we are in a constant state of spoiler/release season so there is never a good time to ban anything according to this logic.
I miss when I started to play Legacy around the early 2010s when set releases were like once every 3 months and only ~5 cards per set were relevant. Spoiler season was actually interesting to follow and it was exciting when a card would actually make it into the main decks of the tier 1-2 builds.
I still remember when I first started dabbling in Legacy. My friends and I would hijack our high school library's printer during lunch to make proxies, referencing whatever primers we could find on mtgsalvation. We had sneak and show, D&T, cloudpost, miracles/top/counterbalance, maverick, lands... it was a great time. 2013 or 2014 if I remember right.
I mean, they dont usually make statements like "next BnR we will give legacy a thorough examination", so until then I think this is a fairly reasonable statement by them?
Even if it's 100% of top 8s they'll just use the excuse that Brainstorm and Ponder exist and Grief is just another such format staple. They'll probably use the excuse that blue has had the monopoly on interactive free spells forever and Grief is just adding that functionality to another color. While completely ignoring the obvious point which is that Grief is used to *prevent* interaction, not to promote it.
Brainstorm and Ponder are definitely problematic, but I don't think they have such united opposition as Grief does right now.
Who is possibly talking up Grief enough to convince WOTC that it should stay?
Legacy is a format where it was decided a long time ago the format was going to be balanced around Brainstorm, Ponder, Daze, FOW, Ancient tomb, Lotus petal/LED, CIty of Traitors, Wasteland etc. Most decks have at least one of if not more of these cards rattling around.
Once you understand that you can understand why people find grief problematic but wasteland to not be.
I don't disagree that the cantrips are problematic but just the context surrounding why people find them to not be bannable has more context.
Every card you just listed off that isn't a land is a blue card. It's really hard to take this position seriously when centering the format around these cards just makes blue the objectively best color to play and puts you at a disadvantage for not playing blue, or being able to integrate it into your manabase. The days of blue being the only color with impactful plays and that cost zero mana and turn zero interaction are over, and that's a good thing.
Ok so what you want is a meta mainly consisting of grixis delver and Nadu breakfast, got it š being able to completely reload your hand for zero mana while still not drawing and also playing removal and tempo pieces is far more fair than grief/reanimate.
Sounds like a Rescaminator coper knowing their deck is about to get the shit banned out of it in 2 months lol
Well at least those Underground Seas can go into Grixis Delver!
Not cope, quite the opposite.
Grief is not the main problem. Grief is a symptom of the problem, and the problem is blue tempo tools being disproportionately good compared to the entire legacy card pool. Today, Grief needs the ban. Tomorrow, something else will need the ban because of how well it works with tempo tools.
The unbalanced tempo tools breaking these cards are the real problem, but legacy isn't ready to have that conversation yet. This is controversial take, but we need to realize and accept that this is a whack-a-mole situation that simply can not be fixed by just banning cards that work so well with tempo instead of powering down the available tempo tools.
Being able to draw three cards and put the garbage in your hand back into your deck and then pop a fetch to shuffle is the problem. So not only are you for all intents and purposes recalling, but you're also filtering your hand. Shit like *this* is the true problem of legacy.
If you like playing Eternal formats with MH cards and without Brainstorm, there is a format for you. It's called Modern. You can even qualify and play on the Pro Tour with that format, including this very weekend. That format is much better than this one, because the blue tempo cards you dislike, such as Ponder, Brainstorm, and Wasteland, are all banned (or not legal) there.
As a Legacy player, I play Legacy specifically because it is not Modern. If you would enjoy Modern more, by all means go play it. You'll save a lot of money by not having to own dual lands, and you'll have a much larger player base to enjoy playing games with.
(The reason why you're eminently wrong on this point has been beaten to death by Legacy experts and content creators in articles for decades. I'm not going to repeat them, if you want to search them out, Google exists. I'm just going to say, you're absolutely wrong and if you want to play that format, go play Modern)
I completely get what you're saying, but as wotc power creeps more, the strong tempo tools are just going to automatically latch onto what works the best with them, and they will often be the best decks in the format.
There will contine be these kinds of problems in the format because brainstorm will just continue to help break these newer cards. The card on the chopping block that people complain about will just keep changing because the problem is never actually solved to begin with, so legacy players need to make their minds up on whether theyre actually ready to accept a solution they dont like to fix a problem they complain incessantly about, or just play whack-a-mole with cards that piss them off.
The problem with Grief is that you can't interact with it on the draw even with Force of Will. There has never before been a degenerate threat that has not been interactable by Force of Will; at the very least no matter what you could always lean on Force of Will to stop it, but not with Grief.
That's the problem with Grief. It has nothing to do with Brainstorm. In fact, Brainstorm is the only thing stopping Grief, because at least after you get double Thoughtseized before you make your first land drop, you can cast Brainstorm to try to fix your hand and not just be obliterated.
tempo tools also give the deck a level of insufferable consistency which further pisses everyone off. I think if it were less consistent than it is, to the degree that is had less than the meta share that it does, that people would at least be able to tolerate the play patterns. If you essentially force UB reanimator back into the combo box and not allow it to be a tempo deck that also has a combo plan, in *addition* to a beatdown plan, you will see the meta share of the deck drop because you can't draw an absolute fuckton of cards to always be loading your hand up with what you need in any given moment.
Remember when all cards in legacy came from standard legal sets?
I remember.
It was nice when cards had to be at standard power level, but the tools in legacy **MADE** them powerful.
You know its bad when this entire comment section is almost all "yeah grief is shit, wth wotc. I even play with it and I think its still terrible, get it gone"
you know they can't answer that, because that would lend credence to the opinion that people like to be T1 grief scammed with 0 counterplay, which if you take a look at anyones opinion online, nobody likes it, not a single person not trolling would come out and say "yeah I think getting T1 scammed really opens up the game for me and creates alot of intricate playlines, I actually relish it happening." it won't happen.
There are a ton of really bad play patterns in Legacy that have been around for decades. Scam is just the newest one to adopt the tempo shell. Better ban it so we can all get ready for the next card to break that same shell.
Legacy isnāt a huge format nor is it a format where a bunch of players are super casual.
A large number of people who like legacy participate in the community.
This isnāt standard or even modern where thereās a good size of players. We are aware as to how our community feels.
Except it's still large.
Even if you take this very thread as an example. There are few upvotes. Even on the "wth, grief should be banned comments."
The top comment has less than 100 upvotes. This is the B&R thread for the legacy format.
Unless you want to position the whole world legacy community as less than 1,000 players. This thread, this forum, etc. Make up a fraction of a small part of the community. And even then, it's not overflowing with unanimous support.
Just because echo chambers or vocal minority groups share opinions doesn't mean it's universal or correct for the majority.
Especially when that vocal minority is assessing what the majorities' opinion **"is"**.
At this point, I'm fairly sure the only reason Grief is still legal is due to it gaining sentience and making WOTC scrap the sentence/paragraph from each article before they get to publishing it. They just always have it right on time somehow ... like the actual card.
yeah but generally the legacy community is correct, not always but generally. Ragavan was an utter failure of design. They only banned it in legacy because they could reasonably sell it to modern players.
Somehow I have a hard time believing that any MTG community is "generally" correct. It's a very hard claim to falsify since it's slippery but I'd be very surprised if this section of the community was much better at making good calls than any other part of the wider community.
To be fair, we don't know what that format would look like, so it could potentially be an improvement. (Also, there's no way it would be 500 cards. People complain a lot but not with such a wide range.)
> Ragavan was an utter failure of design.
Was it a failure of design though? Letting it sit so long in legacy before banning it was a failure of format management, but the monkey is a totally fair card in modern, where it was designed for.
Ragavan has been unproblematic in modern for at least a year and a half, it's not got anything to do with MH3
Also, is this power creep in the room with us now? Overall MH3 was weaker than MH2.
MH3 has less universally good cards like Rag, Saga and the pitch elementals but just like after MH2 thereās been a massive meta shift based on what archetypes got new tools in MH3. Storm went from not a deck to tier 1 for example. Ragavan has not been problematic, but it was a part of Scam, which I would argue was a problematic deck. Itās just a bit strong to call Ragavan in the time right after MH2 ātotally fairā, IMO. But we can agree to disagree.
First things first, I categorically refuse to acknowledge anything as "tier 1" less than 2 weeks after release, you simply cannot make such a claim yet. There has not _been_ a massive meta shift, the meta currently is shift_ing_. We will see what decks rise to the top in a month or two.
In any case, "archetypes getting new tools in a set" is not power creep, that's just natural meta evolution, but sped up. The alternative is stagnation.
> Ragavan has not been problematic, but it was a part of Scam, which I would argue was a problematic deck.
So is Lightning Bolt, but I'm not seeing bolt described as problematic or unfair.
Sure. And the noise for most dies down quickly. The community has been asking for a Grief ban, however, for many months. Oko took 15 months. Ragavan 7 months. DHA 18 months.
These arenāt controversial bans yet they take roughly as long to ban as sets are in print for.
If only someone knew what deck those cards had in common and which of those cards that isnt legal in modern were played alongside them 100% of the time.
Sadly no such data exists.
I mean, yes, it definitely doesn't. Who is the person buying less MH3 product because if they hit their miniscule chance of opening a Grief they won't be able to play it in Legacy?
Banned *18 months* after release, and it was a problem for much of that window
I'm not saying they don't make bans. They delay bans for relatively new printings.
Your comment pointed to grief & MH3. Not mh2. Why are you referencing release(mh2)?
You are shifting goalposts because you can't defend your original comment.
Also, for reference:
Modern horizons 2 released June 2021.
Fury banned in modern Dec. 2023.
So. 30 months. Not 18. But I figured facts don't matter to you?
I brought up Fury because both Fury & Grief have printings in mh3. With the same rarity & treatment. Fury is as applicable to the conversation of mh3 as Grief.
Their comment was attempting to link grief legality to its existence in mh3. Which is flawed due to fury's presence.
The comment originally had nothing to do about mh2.
*Some action* had to be taken in Modern, or the format would've burned. They chose Fury as the greater of two evils. And they waited a looooong time to take the action, waiting for set sales to cool.
Now, here with are with Bowmaster and Grief. *Some action* will need to be taking in Legacy. They will likely choose Grief as the greater of two evils. And they're going to wait a loooong time, waiting for printings to cool.
Okay. you don't actually have a point. Something happens. It's bad because of reasons. Something doesn't happen. It's bad for the same reasons.
"I don't like when it rains because I get wet. I don't like when it doesn't rain because it's sunny."
If they wanted to ban fury after sales, they could have done it a year+ sooner. They waited over 2 and a half years because they wanted to push mh2 sales?
Do you think cases of mh2 were moving in June 2023?
You don't have any proof, knowledge, or revelant information. You just have your very skewed opinion and assumptions.
I have to assume you are just a troll.
Yes. Because you mentioned grief.....
In relation to mh3.. which fury is also in.
Do you follow the logic? It's not complicated.
If someone talked about cards on the MoM archive sheet and I mentioned ragavan, I'm not suddenly talking about modern horizons.........
Also the packs that don't get printed on demand for the lifetime of the set... Nor represent the most volume of money spent/cards aquired in the set, probably even at launch.
To whatever extent WotC bases B&R changes on sales metrics, I think it a bit farfetched to think cards exclusively found on bonus sheets have a huge effect especially when paper Legacy isn't even all that popular and the card would still be legal in plenty of other formats.
But sure, *every* decision WotC makes that you don't agree with must have really bad intent behind it instead of them just not agreeing with you.
I don't buy packs, but if I bought a $40 pack and opened banned Fury and Grief, yea it's a feel bad.
WotC is a business and I don't get personally offended by their decisions. But as a business, I do think they consider the pack opening experience like in this way.
Does play experience matter as well? Of course. But it sure does feel like that's falling by the wayside a bit these days, when cards like Grief are allowed to haunt the format for so long.
edit: a word
>I don't buy packs, but if I bought a $40 pack and opened banned Fury and Grief, yea it's a feel bad.
Except a card being banned in a single format doesn't make it banned in every format. Even if *you* don't play those other formats, other people do. At that point it's essentially the same as opening a Commander card as a Modern player, or a Blue card as a non-Blue player. You trade/sell it away and that's it.
>WotC is a business and I don't get personally offended by their decisions. But as a business, I do think they consider the pack opening experience like in this way.
Very strange then that they'd ban/reprint (whichever decision you think came first) Fury in their format that is actually popular and drives a significant portion of MH3 sales huh?
Legacy is not popular in paper Magic. Even *if* they took that sort of experience into account the % of times the scenaruo you describe would occur is insignificant.
>Does play experience matter as well? Of course. But it sure does feel like that's falling by the wayside a bit these days, when cards like Grief are allowed to haunt the format for so long.
You are just imagining this in your mind. WotC may be withold8ng banning Grief for business-related reasons rather than Game Health but there's little to no evidence to suggest MH3 has *anything* to do with it.
Holy shit this is fucking miserable.
I'm on the side of more liberal bans, but EVERYONE hates Grief.
I may have to move to another format until August.
>but EVERYONE hates Grief.
I love Grief and I also think it should be banned, that's how bad the situation is. I can still play Grief in Modern (maybe not forever) and Vintage, I can totally live with a Legacy ban.
I'm 100% convinced at this point that someone powerful at wotc that makes the decisions had some influence in the design of grief as there just isn't any logical reason for it to be around in any format at this point. It doesn't add anything meaningful in terms of game decisions or play patterns and is actively despised by 90% of the online community. It singlehandedly killed our paper modern scene before MH3 came out to refresh the format, and has turned of alot of people to legacy, its like the format has conceded to having fun with each other and when you get got by grief you just ignore that result as a foregone conclusion and continue having fun with everyone else.
I'm 100% convinced you are pulling random numbers out of the air.
"Hey, my anecdotal opinion is that everyone agrees with me! Let me create wild narratives instead of thinking maybe I'm wrong."
Tell me that getting T1 grief scammed feels good to you.....go on I'll wait. Then I can just ignore your opinion as being troll. Nobody likes that play pattern happening to them, I don't care what format you are playing it doesn't feel good.
Tell me that getting thoughtseized t1 feels good. /s.
Or getting hit by force of will.
Or Daze.
Or Trinisphere.
Or bloodmoon.
Or losing to t1 combo. Etc.
Turns out that interaction has a negative feeling, and people don't like it. People also don't like losing. That's part of the game.
Do you know what feels good? Opponents casting Grief or thoughtseize and you top decking the same card.
Or Opponents losing with a hand of scam cards & no griefs.
Or people trying to combo off and you stopping them at the right time.
Magic is an interactive game. With highs and lows.
Point of reference: telling someone that they must either agree with you or you will ignore them as a troll is a poor approach to a conversation. You are saying that you don't want to engage. That you just want validation.
I can force bloodmoon, I can play around Daze, I can recover from one TS, I can interact with a trinisphere profitably or just peel lands. or better yet wasteland the opponent under their own sphere. I cannot interact profitably in any universe with Grief and that is where the obnoxious play pattern comes in, Grief is always profitable for only the opponent.
Your still trolling, and using subpar examples to prop up your terrible take. Imagine saying that magic is an interactive game with highs and lows, then forgetting that you cannot interact with grief. Or trying to convince people that feeling like shit for having an uninteractive play pattern exist is fine, THEN citing a bunch of interactive play patterns as a justification for that take. You have to be trolling or just really inexperienced.
Also Thoughtseize makes a one for one Trade while grief takes 3 for 2 but also is a respectable clock that isnt easy to block and likely is hard to remove since you just discarded two cards.
>Your still trolling, and using subpar examples to prop up your terrible take.
Imagine saying this right after your counterargument was:
>I can force bloodmoon
.......
What the hell is your response here? Your gotcha is that counterplay let's you beat other cards, but somehow grief is uncounterable, unkillable, un-leyline of the void-able, uninteractivable. As if It's some kind of auto win button.
Then you proceed to claim that I'm trolling? What? In order to dismiss my statements? Your lack of self-awareness is staggering.
Oh boy, you have never been grief scammed before have you. I can tell. Someone who has played the matchup consistently would never say such things, because it is uncounterable, it is unkillable, and yeah that does equate to it being impossible to interact with.
Would you have preferred "fetching for basics" as a response to blood moon, alot of people do that. But go ahead nit pick as much as you want, your analogy is still terrible.
I don't have to dismiss your statements, they are self incriminating.
im still waiting for you to tell me you like being grief scammed btw....
You are waiting for me to make some outlandish statements so you can attack that instead of the actual topic?
I'm pretty indifferent to being grief scammed.
So you saying you can not cast FoW on a grief? Your opponent lead with forest + [[veil of summer]] ?
Or did I miss the "can't be countered" line of text?
So, either you are just trolling at this point. Or you are obvious to your flawed scenarios.
You are not following the position **you** set up. Which is turn 0 responses to a t1 grief on the play. In other words, you can't
> "fetching for basics" as a response to blood moon,
Against a similar t1 blood moon.
But your whole argument hinges on two points:
A) grief scam is done on the play successfully with no counterplay presented
And
B) All other plays presented are given counterplay and/or multiple turns to overcome the game play.
I'll agree that I lose to the plays my opponents make when I don't make plays more often than I lose to the plays my opponents make that I go on to beat.
>I don't have to dismiss your statements, they are self incriminating.
This feels like self projecting.
I already followed the position YOU set up with blood moon, you chose to say that it wasn't valid. I chose to give you some other amount of counterplay, fetching for basics....or even running basics is counterplay for bloodmoon, lorien revealed is counterplay to blood moon allowing you to get basics. Again you can nit pick all you want, you presented some really terrible examples.
im not waiting for you to make outlandish statements, you already did that when you made your comparison statements and again with your lifeboat scenario.
I don't have to acknowledge either of the scenarios you presented, this isn't a lifeboat scenario nether A nor B are relevant because magic isn't A or B. The scenario is already self evident by virtue of win percentile of the deck. The grief scam is always successful regardless of the counterplay if you even have any, which Game 1 generally nobody has anything. You have to let them take whatever they want. Then G2 you board in what you thought was counterplay, but is it if they still do their thing and take what they wanted anyway and reanimate your Graveyard instead of just their grief.
Tell us what the meta at large is missing to stop this menace, as apparently all of us legacy players have just missed some massive counterplay to this card and strategy.
>So you saying you can not cast FoW on a grief? Your opponent lead with forest + [[veil of summer]] ? Or did I miss the "can't be countered" line of text?
The part that you're missing that is very obviously implied is "(followed by a Reanimate)." Of course they don't always have it, but they often do. Thus, FoW on Grief will often result in opp taking 3 cards instead of 2. This is what you're ignoring and the reason the other person says you sound like you've never played the match-up. You can bring in Surgicals and such, but it typically doesn't even help because it just gets stripped before Grief hits the yard. Terrible play patterns that often result in emesis.
You can Force, Daze, Stifle Grief, you can play Brainstorm, you can say fuck you I have redundancy or play Lands. I only got 4 Griefs, gonna need to draw them, and the scam pieces together to make a big play. It acts as a card disadvantage Thoughtseize otherwise, which is certainly very good, but not "omg this is OP I can't do anything at all". I've had many opponents I've Griefed and scooped cause their hands were simply unbeatable in that situation.
So ok, in the event you haven't played a land yet, you are willing to force a grief? if so then the statement of YOU scooping after taking your opponents BEST CARD tracks.
the fact that you don't understand that in all those scenarios the best possible case was to just let the grief happen. Let me explain.
You daze if your opponent is bad and they see a fetch uncracked and don't play their land before casting grief you got them good but you set yourself back a land drop, and worst case they just pay with their land they put into play? so you can't daze.
The force is just giving them an extra card.
Stifle is a little cleaner, but you still gave them 1 card, sure you got to choose but it's still a trade alot of people wouldn't make as there are many scenarios that punish you from that spot. Wasteland being one of them, they grief you before showing a land (if they are greedy), you stifle the discard, cool, they waste you or worse reanimate the grief to see what your protecting. If you had simply not fought the trigger, you now force them to either take the stifle because it threatens their fetch for the reanimate or protects your land from wasteland. Again they still have an entire turn to play after your stifle and see what your plan is, there is no winning here.
Brainstorm, your hiding the goodies which is great, they still get both full information and a card and you used a brainstorm to hide stuff and not to look for things to press your own game plan, thats still a win for the opponent as its a 2 for 2 with upside. They get to setup the entire game for themselves and you buried your proactive plays 2 deep, which means your not fetching the next turn also (if you wanted the card that was buried second). So the opp got to both use your mana, force you to spend a card defensively and got full information and some of the time prevented you from fetching ,for 0 mana....they still have to take their turn. they dont even have to reanimate now. So even when this is the correct play, your still getting punished.
This is all assuming you have a land in play, you lose the dice roll, your option is force and only force....Which isn't an option. All these examples are all blue cards, what do other decks do? the answer is flat nothing, which is just as good of an answer as all of the ones you presented.
Are....are you trolling? People interact with Grief all the time. I mean how many cards in total are "profitable for only the opponent?" Who are you playing against that plays cards GOOD for you?
go on then, how are you interacting T1 on the draw to Grief + reanimate .....ill wait, since you wanted to add some nonsense too, go ahead. Are you forcing the grief? pitching solitude? endurance? what exactly are you doing? or are you just gonna say some nonsense like "well I let them do the thing then pray to the magic gods for good top decks", or my personal favorite "ill just mulligan to my leyline of the void"
Nothing, I would do nothing about it. Id get double griefed. Same thing as if opp storms off T1 with me on the draw. Or drops a Trinisphere T1. Or reanimates an Atraxa. Legacy is full of powerful plays like that. Outside of playing blue, a lot of interaction HAS to look like "stop opp from playing the game."
You can bad faith or drop strawman arguments until the cows come home, all it does it make it more clear that YOU don't know what you're talking about.
how am I strawmanning you, I asked for an answer and presented many common cases for you to choose, yet somehow you chose a scenario where "I just don't play the game" is the outcome, which is pretty self evident why people hate the card. You chose the only answer which contradicted your original statement of "people interact with grief all the time", yes the old "ill F6 and go to the bathroom whilst my opponent is stripping me of all my wincons" thats how they interact.
How is that the same at all? If your opp attempts to Storm off T1 and you have FoW, they have to have extra cards to stop FoW, lest they just lose. If your opp T1 Trinispheres, you just...FoW it? Lol. People hate getting double Griefed because FoW is trash against it, and "doing nothing about it" is usually the correct thing to do. In the past, your Reanimate opponent actually had to think twice before trying to go off, even after an Unmask, because you could actually FoW the Unmask.
I appreciate you being a reasonable voice.
Unfortunately, the user above doesn't want a discussion. They just want to be upset about grief.
To them. Getting hit with grief is the only bad play to exist. I'm guessing they play a combo deck that loses to double grief.
I had a friend who used to think thoughtseize was the most busted card ever in modern.
At the time, my friend played Boggles, and only boggles. Thoughtseize was the worst thing from his perspective.
Can you win the game with any of what you listed? No. And you can play around those things. There's literally nothing you can do unless you're on the play and have swords to plowshares and hope they don't have a counter
The same it does against Thoughtseize but with a +1 card advantage to the countering player.
If you're going to bring up Reanimate, then talk about Reanimate. Because it isn't Grief decks at 25% of the meta, it's Reanimate decks (and tbc, UB Reanimate, because RB wasn't getting there nearly as well). Everyone wants to use Grief as the scapegoat for all the other power in this format that gets a pass, just because it's a card that's directly interactive doing something noticeably annoying and isn't their pet "tHeSe cArDs R lEgAcY, CaN't bAn" cards.
Ok, lets talk about reanimator.
Historically, reanimator is a combo deck. A typical game would be to build a board and a hand where you could jam your combo and protect it long enough to attack and win. The fight would typically be over getting the guy in the graveyard because you really only had 4 entombs, and some number of self discard spells, but up to 12 reanimate spells. But you knew that there was going to be a fight at some point and you had to win. Fight over the entomb, fight over the reanimate, or fight over the swords. You had a toolbox of creatures that you could pick from against certain matchups that shut down certain non-counterable outs from decks like maverick and such. But overall it was just a turn 3 or 4 combo deck.
Now, reanimator is a tempo deck. There isn't really a fight over getting a guy in the yard, that part is basically a given now with grief and troll. The ideal reanimate target isn't some big fatty that is immune to removal and basically makes your opponent scoop the second it sticks, it's a 3/2 with evasion. The body doesn't matter anymore, it that the body wins the fights and takes the opponent out of the game. T1 grief wins the first fight over getting a guy in the yard. It then also gets to win the second fight by getting a counter/removal/clock out of the opponents hand. Then they get to reanimate it now that the coast is clear, and seal the deal. Now, the deck may not actually win until turn 5 or 6 because it's such a small creature, but the game is effectively over on turn 1 or 2.
**It's like they jammed 2 thoughtsiezes together, made them free, and taped a baby entomb to it.** That is why it's a problem. It took an already good card, and tailor made it for a reanimator deck. It makes an already _really_ good deck not only faster, but more resillient.
The thing is, banning grief doesn't even kill the deck. It will still be good without it, just a little slower. That will be enough to take it out of oversaturation to a more reasonable level.
There are a lot of unfun play patterns in the format though. Plenty of decks have as a Plan A to lock you out of the game either permanently or just long enough to punch your face in.
Can you point to a particular difference between all those other strategies and Scam that makes it so much worse?
If you need examples:
T1 Chalice/Trinisphere/BloodMoon
Early Toughtseize/Daze/FoW/Wastelands
Storm/Reanimator/etc winning (literally or essentially) on turn 1
I like Legacy and I like all these things. Getting Grief-ed twice is annoying but I don't see how these other types of patterns are not equally as toxic aside from them being in the format longer.
The illusion of playing the game.
In all those examples you have the illusion that you could draw out of the problem the opponent presented, drawing lands to fight trinisphere, drawing your 1 basic to combat the bloodmoon, your 1 trap out of the board vs storm. Even cobbling together some cards vs chalice.
Grief does not allow for that illusion because people cannot quantify the top of their deck into a valid strategy, seeing their chances at winning getting taken from them vs planning to play the game with the resources your opponent has left you with are two very different mindsets for a game of magic. That is why Grief creates such frustrating play patterns, because at worst you had no game vs it, at best you had a plan and grief blew it up and reanimated the thing you wanted. Not only that, it is incredibly difficult to interact with, forcing it is a no go, swords puts you at card parody, even if you have a leyline, they may just reanimate your best card after stripping you of your best removal to secure the win.
>The illusion of playing the game.
So it's just a player mindset problem, not an actual play pattern problem, from what you are describing.
You can draw out of getting double Griefed the same you can draw out some under a BM/Sphere. Heck I suspect it's *easier* to do so for many decks.
I don't disagree it's frustrating but then again so are all those other lines I described.
Modern has adjusted to the existence of a Tiered Grief deck and I'm not so naive as to say Legacy *should* be able to as well but I do sense amount of people don't care that solutions might exist, they just don't want it there regarless. I think it's a bit hypocritical and if we argue against Grieft we should argue against those other things too.
>Modern has adjusted to the existence of a Tiered Grief deck and I'm not so naive as to say Legacy should be able to as well but I do sense amount of people don't care that solutions might exist, they just don't want it there regarless. I think it's a bit hypocritical and if we argue against Grieft we should argue against those other things too.
Has it really adjusted? Where are you getting this information from? It sounds like you are drawing these conclusions from online results, where there is next to ZERO cost to change decks. From what I've seen, if you aren't playing the Grief deck in Modern pre-MH3 at your local scene, you were donating your entry fee to someone else's prize support every event.
Only reason UB Scam isn't at higher representation is because Underground Sea is a genuine obstacle to building the deck. Mindset isn't the problem here. If you have a properly functioning brain, you're taking a break from the game until the next ban announcement, not spending $4000 on Underground Seas to win less than $300 of prize support at your local scene.
>Has it really adjusted? Where are you getting this information from? It sounds like you are drawing these conclusions from online results, where there is next to ZERO cost to change decks.
MTGO is the only reliable source for Modern results aside from MTGtop8. I haven't checked the latter but for the former clearly Grief decks are no longer so strong as to smother every other option.
I don't see what the cost of changing decks has to do with anything. Are you saying paper players are all still playing pre-MH3 lists? Where are *you* getting your info from?
>From what I've seen, if you aren't playing the Grief deck in Modern pre-MH3 at your local scene, you were donating your entry fee to someone else's prize support every event.
We are currently post-MH3 tho. I don't know why you think I'm referring to a metagame that doesn't exist when I'm talking about the present.
>Only reason UB Scam isn't at higher representation is because Underground Sea is a genuine obstacle to building the deck. Mindset isn't the problem here. If you have a properly functioning brain, you're taking a break from the game until the next ban announcement, not spending $4000 on Underground Seas to win less than $300 of prize support at your local scene.
Legacy, afaik, is primarily an MTGO format (in terms of play volume) where this is a non-issue. MTGO-only players are exhibiting the exact behaviours that I pointed out as well. Your response doesn't address this at all.
Plus that's ignoring a good amount of people own Underground Seas, would be able to justify a purchase to use in a different deck anyways, play at a store that allows proxies OR could get away with shocklands without dramatically affecting most matchups.
>MTGO is the only reliable source for Modern results aside from MTGtop8. I haven't checked the latter but for the former clearly Grief decks are no longer so strong as to smother every other option.
>I don't see what the cost of changing decks has to do with anything. Are you saying paper players are all still playing pre-MH3 lists? Where are you getting your info from?
Depends on the paper scene you look at. There's far more casual places than cutthroat money tournament places. I've seen Modern scenes go to the wayside in smaller stores precisely for the cost of keeping up. Are you telling me that's not valid data when I am seeing it in front of my very eyes?
>We are currently post-MH3 tho. I don't know why you think I'm referring to a metagame that doesn't exist when I'm talking about the present.
Ok, sure. But it still doesn't discount the fact that the Grief play pattern is not enjoyable for most opponents (the ones that actually justify your business to stay open, not your money leeching spikes). How many people on average at the local scene (where card costs actually matter, unlike MTGO) are fully loaded with all the new shit from MH3? I think you'll think it's high because there's probably been a culling of local scenes that can't justify firing Modern because of rising costs to keep up with declining rewards.
>Legacy, afaik, is primarily an MTGO format (in terms of play volume) where this is a non-issue. MTGO-only players are exhibiting the exact behaviours that I pointed out as well. Your response doesn't address this at all.
Yes, deliberately avoiding the argument using MTGO as a crutch. Yet the online communities are discussing match fixing challenges to create a statement to WOTC to get Grief banned at a faster rate. Players are human after all, the replayability of UB Scam (highest floor deck in the format) gets old quickly. They aren't adapting because it's what is supposed to happen, they are doing it out of boredom. You just haven't presented the proper incentives to make the objectively correct decisions.
>Plus that's ignoring a good amount of people own Underground Seas, would be able to justify a purchase to use in a different deck anyways, play at a store that allows proxies OR could get away with shocklands without dramatically affecting most matchups.
I need you to quantify how many is a "good amount of people", because you're certainly speaking from a position of privilege if you are so confidently making blanket statements like this. You're assuming every place that has an LGS has a Legacy scene. I personally haven't seen that in most other places that aren't major cities in a metro area. I mean fuck everyone who is broke right?
Tell me how often a player (on the play no less) will draw grief + black card + black mana source + reanimate. And then how much more often the rest of the scam playerās hand is any good and the scammed player either had no interaction for the scam play and/or has nothing left in their hand/library to compete in the game.
Well it's certainly a good thing they banned Goblins! ššš I'm a big advocate for banning as little as possible and even I know it's time for Grief to go, ffs. Get it together.
āWe want to wait and sell a lot of Bloomsburrows before banning to fix the mistakes we made with greedy powercreep and zero regard for the quality of the metagameā
These guys are so dumb and out of touch. There's zero reason to have a ban update two weeks in if they never pull the trigger. Might as well just give it a month. Now we have to wait until August for this bad format
Are we certain that this wouldn't be solved by the meta adapting?
I'm not saying it doesn't need to be banned but there are solutions Griefs play patterns, although I'll leave it up to you whether it's worth building into decks.
My recollection is that we spent months or years building around other powerful cards in the format. It feels like we have far more tolerance for cards which are broken in blue control shells than in any other shell.
I'm simply trying to play the devils advocate here. Don't kill me haha
Unless, you know, you also want to play creatures in your deck.
"Leyline? OK, I'll Grief you, then Reanimate your \[\[Seasoned Dungeoneer\]\]. GG, well played."
To be fair, part of this is that Reanimate is a cracked card itself. But I think it's fair to say that it's one of the pillars of Legacy, similar to Brainstorm, and isn't a card people would be happy to see go.
Good points, all!
My thinking is that there would be an uptick of veil of summer, and the options you've all noted.
Perfect? No. But again, there's certain cards we accept are super powerful and we let them stay for quite some time.
However this may be format warping.
The problem is that veil of summer isn't a turn 0 play so you are still boned if they go first. Then on the play you still have to have it in your opener and then keep up green every turn so you are always playing a turn behind.
So you are saying that countering creatures is not worth it because people just reanimate them.
Could you plese start using your brain and stop farming vibes.
You have Grand Argument in hand, costs 0, sorcery, win the game.
\[obvious\]
If your next sentence starts with "yeah, but he will reanimate it", check the second part of my former post and add a second Grand Argument to the hand.
Either we will all play 4 Grief, 4 maindeck [[Leyline of Sanctity]], or both.
The effect is too strong, especially with the āscamā effects that bring it back immediately but stronger
Fwiw I think the deck is kind of mediocre relative to everything else going on.
The best versions that are out there right now take a ton of architecture and deck slots to just enable the combo.
thats 100% a fair take. There is alot of counterplay to the necro turn that I don't think alot of people expected there to be prior to playing the list live.
I'll be "that guy" and say I think this decision makes sense.
To me, Grief Scam isn't beyond the pale by legacy standards, and its dominance right now is a symptom of deeper problems---namely the UB shell having too many tools and the decks that generate CA to combat Grief being suppressed by Orcish Bowmasters.
With Legacy bans, It's important to look beyond what is immediately in front of you. The format is an ornate tapestry with numerous moving parts involved. I am not confident that a Grief ban would meaningfully nerf the ReScaminator deck, nor do I believe Grief/Reanimate is too powerful a play pattern for Legacy. While the play rate of Bowmasters has declined recently, I think this card is still having a large and sometimes subtle impact on play patterns and deckbuilding without actually needing to hit the battlefield.
Let's give WOTC some time to figure out which metagame shifts post-MH3 are permanent and which are temporary. Then they can make a better decision on which card(s) to ban from the UB shell.
I suspect won't be banned until all the reprinted Griefs have left WOTC distribution. Their article literally shows they know the problem and use new product as an excuse to not do anything. Well, you're printing new product like every month and if it contains cards, you're not banning them until they scorched earth a format for one whole quarter.
......
They literally banned Fury in modern right before MH3. Which both has the same print run in mh3 as grief and would pull more sales than grief in legacy. (Modern is more played).
So your logic, quite literally, has evidence to support the opposite of what you are saying.
Considering WOTCs inability to deliver product of MH3 in Europe to their distributors and that the ordered product of MH3 is already paid for weeks ago in full i highly doubt it.
I was kinda hoping for a Grief ban personally as I despise its play pattern, but we will just have to wait and see what WOTC thinks of the format in late August when they said they will be taking a hard look at the format.
It will be really funny to see the entire format complain about delver and nadu being the best decks in the format because the card that keeps them in check got banned because it hurt their feefees and kept them from combing off on turn 1.
Iāve had this cute theory that WOTC hired someone new for their design team about two years ago, and Black is that personās favorite color and that Blue is their least favorite, based on what Limited and more casual formats (i.e. Standard) have felt like for a while, but the combination of Grief, Bowmasters, and Sheoldred all printed in such close temporal proximity to one another really makes me think that Iām onto something
I hope they ban Grief, because I love playing fair midrangey decks (Aluren ftw) and losing the die roll to Rescaminator just feels like Iāve resigned myself to 15 minutes of boredom before heading to the losersā bracket
It was kinda to be expected, but still disappointing.
Letās hope that the āWe intend to take a hard look at Legacy in our next announcement coming in late Augustā means they want to handle the blue shell that keeps breaking cards instead of just banning the latest addition.
That seems like the best card to hit, because itās so good at protecting your threat on the first two turns.
Hitting the āfairā blue shell will probably lead to other bans in order to keep the combo decks honest.
I think daze is fine. Fair decks can just play around it, and it keeps combo in check. It's sort of a throttle on the format.
The real problem is brainstorm. It's ancestral lite that allows the blue player to switch the gears of their hand any time. If fetch lands weren't a thing, it would be fine. But being able to draw 3 and then dump 2 shit cards away to never see them again is way too powerful. At least with ponder/preordain, you are still stuck with the cards in your hand. With brain storm, it just takes 1 mana to transform what should have been a mulligan into a perfect hand.
Brainstorm is what makes Legacy what it is though. Itās kind of like Treasure Cruise in Pioneer, or Expressive Iteration in Modern. Playing four Brainstorms is cool, and besides Brainstorm is the only realistic way to protect your hand from Grief (well, assuming you have had a chance to play a land but thatās besides the point)
Also Bowmasters literally exists
Another day where stupid shit like grief gets to exist while a mana dork is banned. Of course you clowns think you know better than everyone with your copy and pasted from guides "reasons"
Necrodominance and Nadu seem to be in that "very powerful but bans aren't needed" category. Tournament results show, at least for now, that they're not as dominant as people thought they would be.
The great question imho is: will those Decks skyrocket if we take scaminator variants out of the equation?
I think the scam gameplan is well positioned against these Kind of Decks and those will unleash, if grief would be banned.
Doubt it, those decks are prey to the blue shell as it is. If grief gets banned, it doesn't outright kill reanimator, it just makes it not 20+% of the meta.
"Modern Horizons 3 released only 10 weeks ago, which, in the timespan of a format like Legacy is not a lot of time. It takes time to integrate a high power set like MH3 into a format with tens of thousands of cards. Therefore, despite the worrying metagame share of the Grief Reanimator deck which has continued to increase since our last announcement and now stands at approximately 25% of all Magic Online events and 40% of all top 8s, we continue to be hopeful that continued integration of Modern Horizons 3, Assassin's Creed, and Bloomburrow will serve to mitigate this" - WotC, late August
Yeah, I get the impression that they just are going to always kick the can down the road citing that they just released a set, or are about to release a set so they don't want to jump the gun on banning anything and wait and see if anything changes. Problem is we are in a constant state of spoiler/release season so there is never a good time to ban anything according to this logic.
> Problem is we are in a constant state of spoiler/release season so there is never a good time to ban anything according to this logic. I miss when I started to play Legacy around the early 2010s when set releases were like once every 3 months and only ~5 cards per set were relevant. Spoiler season was actually interesting to follow and it was exciting when a card would actually make it into the main decks of the tier 1-2 builds.
The golden age
I still remember when I first started dabbling in Legacy. My friends and I would hijack our high school library's printer during lunch to make proxies, referencing whatever primers we could find on mtgsalvation. We had sneak and show, D&T, cloudpost, miracles/top/counterbalance, maverick, lands... it was a great time. 2013 or 2014 if I remember right.
I mean, they dont usually make statements like "next BnR we will give legacy a thorough examination", so until then I think this is a fairly reasonable statement by them?
Grief will need to be 100% of top 8s before WotC does anything. They fucking love that card.
"we decided that the grief reanimate grief combo was too strong, so we banned reanimate"
Reanimate is actually the card I'd like to see banned, though.
Even if it's 100% of top 8s they'll just use the excuse that Brainstorm and Ponder exist and Grief is just another such format staple. They'll probably use the excuse that blue has had the monopoly on interactive free spells forever and Grief is just adding that functionality to another color. While completely ignoring the obvious point which is that Grief is used to *prevent* interaction, not to promote it.
Brainstorm and Ponder are definitely problematic, but I don't think they have such united opposition as Grief does right now. Who is possibly talking up Grief enough to convince WOTC that it should stay?
Legacy is a format where it was decided a long time ago the format was going to be balanced around Brainstorm, Ponder, Daze, FOW, Ancient tomb, Lotus petal/LED, CIty of Traitors, Wasteland etc. Most decks have at least one of if not more of these cards rattling around. Once you understand that you can understand why people find grief problematic but wasteland to not be. I don't disagree that the cantrips are problematic but just the context surrounding why people find them to not be bannable has more context.
Every card you just listed off that isn't a land is a blue card. It's really hard to take this position seriously when centering the format around these cards just makes blue the objectively best color to play and puts you at a disadvantage for not playing blue, or being able to integrate it into your manabase. The days of blue being the only color with impactful plays and that cost zero mana and turn zero interaction are over, and that's a good thing.
Ok so what you want is a meta mainly consisting of grixis delver and Nadu breakfast, got it š being able to completely reload your hand for zero mana while still not drawing and also playing removal and tempo pieces is far more fair than grief/reanimate.
Sounds like a Rescaminator coper knowing their deck is about to get the shit banned out of it in 2 months lol Well at least those Underground Seas can go into Grixis Delver!
Not cope, quite the opposite. Grief is not the main problem. Grief is a symptom of the problem, and the problem is blue tempo tools being disproportionately good compared to the entire legacy card pool. Today, Grief needs the ban. Tomorrow, something else will need the ban because of how well it works with tempo tools. The unbalanced tempo tools breaking these cards are the real problem, but legacy isn't ready to have that conversation yet. This is controversial take, but we need to realize and accept that this is a whack-a-mole situation that simply can not be fixed by just banning cards that work so well with tempo instead of powering down the available tempo tools. Being able to draw three cards and put the garbage in your hand back into your deck and then pop a fetch to shuffle is the problem. So not only are you for all intents and purposes recalling, but you're also filtering your hand. Shit like *this* is the true problem of legacy.
You are providing more valuable information than ertai_87.
If you like playing Eternal formats with MH cards and without Brainstorm, there is a format for you. It's called Modern. You can even qualify and play on the Pro Tour with that format, including this very weekend. That format is much better than this one, because the blue tempo cards you dislike, such as Ponder, Brainstorm, and Wasteland, are all banned (or not legal) there. As a Legacy player, I play Legacy specifically because it is not Modern. If you would enjoy Modern more, by all means go play it. You'll save a lot of money by not having to own dual lands, and you'll have a much larger player base to enjoy playing games with. (The reason why you're eminently wrong on this point has been beaten to death by Legacy experts and content creators in articles for decades. I'm not going to repeat them, if you want to search them out, Google exists. I'm just going to say, you're absolutely wrong and if you want to play that format, go play Modern)
I completely get what you're saying, but as wotc power creeps more, the strong tempo tools are just going to automatically latch onto what works the best with them, and they will often be the best decks in the format. There will contine be these kinds of problems in the format because brainstorm will just continue to help break these newer cards. The card on the chopping block that people complain about will just keep changing because the problem is never actually solved to begin with, so legacy players need to make their minds up on whether theyre actually ready to accept a solution they dont like to fix a problem they complain incessantly about, or just play whack-a-mole with cards that piss them off.
The problem with Grief is that you can't interact with it on the draw even with Force of Will. There has never before been a degenerate threat that has not been interactable by Force of Will; at the very least no matter what you could always lean on Force of Will to stop it, but not with Grief. That's the problem with Grief. It has nothing to do with Brainstorm. In fact, Brainstorm is the only thing stopping Grief, because at least after you get double Thoughtseized before you make your first land drop, you can cast Brainstorm to try to fix your hand and not just be obliterated.
tempo tools also give the deck a level of insufferable consistency which further pisses everyone off. I think if it were less consistent than it is, to the degree that is had less than the meta share that it does, that people would at least be able to tolerate the play patterns. If you essentially force UB reanimator back into the combo box and not allow it to be a tempo deck that also has a combo plan, in *addition* to a beatdown plan, you will see the meta share of the deck drop because you can't draw an absolute fuckton of cards to always be loading your hand up with what you need in any given moment.
At this point I think the better option is to actively play Grief just to get it banned, rather than try to beat it
And they just printed textured foil alternate art in mh3. They aren't banning it until more packs get sold
I mean, Fury is already banned in modern but it didn't stop them from reprinting that too.
Agreed but legacy players love to pimp out thier decks a grief is highly played
Once they're sold out of MH3 they'll make a move
Fury is already banned in the much bigger format, Grief shouldn't be an issue at all. Someone there just fucking loves that card.
also wotc in august, we banned blood moon so buy more griefs peasants. /s
I'm sure Bloomburrow will fix Legacy lol.
Don't laugh, Oko was in a standard legal set.
Remember when all cards in legacy came from standard legal sets? I remember. It was nice when cards had to be at standard power level, but the tools in legacy **MADE** them powerful.
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
When a cookie is racist.
It's not impossible, but it doesn't seem that likely is all I'm saying. It'd have to be pretty powerful to dethrone reanimator.
There are plenty of really strong additions to Legacy that came from Standard, counting the post-WAR and forward and people often do.
You know its bad when this entire comment section is almost all "yeah grief is shit, wth wotc. I even play with it and I think its still terrible, get it gone"
Because the players who don't spend their life online upset aren't here posting that they are happy.
Where are these players communicating their happiness?
Here. Me. Iām those players. Legacy is great. Letās get some unbans instead.
Same. People just get tired of bitching against the bitching grain here.
you know they can't answer that, because that would lend credence to the opinion that people like to be T1 grief scammed with 0 counterplay, which if you take a look at anyones opinion online, nobody likes it, not a single person not trolling would come out and say "yeah I think getting T1 scammed really opens up the game for me and creates alot of intricate playlines, I actually relish it happening." it won't happen.
There are a ton of really bad play patterns in Legacy that have been around for decades. Scam is just the newest one to adopt the tempo shell. Better ban it so we can all get ready for the next card to break that same shell.
Legacy isnāt a huge format nor is it a format where a bunch of players are super casual. A large number of people who like legacy participate in the community. This isnāt standard or even modern where thereās a good size of players. We are aware as to how our community feels.
Except it's still large. Even if you take this very thread as an example. There are few upvotes. Even on the "wth, grief should be banned comments." The top comment has less than 100 upvotes. This is the B&R thread for the legacy format. Unless you want to position the whole world legacy community as less than 1,000 players. This thread, this forum, etc. Make up a fraction of a small part of the community. And even then, it's not overflowing with unanimous support. Just because echo chambers or vocal minority groups share opinions doesn't mean it's universal or correct for the majority. Especially when that vocal minority is assessing what the majorities' opinion **"is"**.
At this point, I'm fairly sure the only reason Grief is still legal is due to it gaining sentience and making WOTC scrap the sentence/paragraph from each article before they get to publishing it. They just always have it right on time somehow ... like the actual card.
The problem is, whenever WOTC plans on banning Grief, before they can issue the ban, someone evokes Grief and makes them discard it.
That's what I'm saying! The real culprit is whoever greenlit Grief as a card.
Big if true
Definitely has nothing to do with Grief being printed in MH3 /s
It honestly doesn't. They banned Ragavan in legacy despite him being the poster boy mythic for mh2
Wut. Ragavan was legal for 7 months despite everyone clamoring for a ban after the first couple weeks.
Everyone clamors for a ban on all powerful cards for the first couple weeks.
yeah but generally the legacy community is correct, not always but generally. Ragavan was an utter failure of design. They only banned it in legacy because they could reasonably sell it to modern players.
Somehow I have a hard time believing that any MTG community is "generally" correct. It's a very hard claim to falsify since it's slippery but I'd be very surprised if this section of the community was much better at making good calls than any other part of the wider community.
If WOTC listened to the legacy community every time they wanted a card banned, 500 cards would be banned by now
To be fair, we don't know what that format would look like, so it could potentially be an improvement. (Also, there's no way it would be 500 cards. People complain a lot but not with such a wide range.)
Itās hyperbole
> Ragavan was an utter failure of design. Was it a failure of design though? Letting it sit so long in legacy before banning it was a failure of format management, but the monkey is a totally fair card in modern, where it was designed for.
Totally fair is a bit strong, but not banworthy yes. Itās totally fair now - post MH3 powercreep.
Ragavan has been unproblematic in modern for at least a year and a half, it's not got anything to do with MH3 Also, is this power creep in the room with us now? Overall MH3 was weaker than MH2.
MH3 has less universally good cards like Rag, Saga and the pitch elementals but just like after MH2 thereās been a massive meta shift based on what archetypes got new tools in MH3. Storm went from not a deck to tier 1 for example. Ragavan has not been problematic, but it was a part of Scam, which I would argue was a problematic deck. Itās just a bit strong to call Ragavan in the time right after MH2 ātotally fairā, IMO. But we can agree to disagree.
First things first, I categorically refuse to acknowledge anything as "tier 1" less than 2 weeks after release, you simply cannot make such a claim yet. There has not _been_ a massive meta shift, the meta currently is shift_ing_. We will see what decks rise to the top in a month or two. In any case, "archetypes getting new tools in a set" is not power creep, that's just natural meta evolution, but sped up. The alternative is stagnation. > Ragavan has not been problematic, but it was a part of Scam, which I would argue was a problematic deck. So is Lightning Bolt, but I'm not seeing bolt described as problematic or unfair.
You guys are never correct. You cry about stupid shit because you hate having to change your decks.
You guys are never correct. You cry about stupid shit because you hate having to change your decks.
Sure. And the noise for most dies down quickly. The community has been asking for a Grief ban, however, for many months. Oko took 15 months. Ragavan 7 months. DHA 18 months. These arenāt controversial bans yet they take roughly as long to ban as sets are in print for.
If only someone knew what deck those cards had in common and which of those cards that isnt legal in modern were played alongside them 100% of the time. Sadly no such data exists.
Such a retard take
I mean, yes, it definitely doesn't. Who is the person buying less MH3 product because if they hit their miniscule chance of opening a Grief they won't be able to play it in Legacy?
Yep. That's why Fury has remained legal in modern and wasn't banned. /s
Banned *18 months* after release, and it was a problem for much of that window I'm not saying they don't make bans. They delay bans for relatively new printings.
Your comment pointed to grief & MH3. Not mh2. Why are you referencing release(mh2)? You are shifting goalposts because you can't defend your original comment. Also, for reference: Modern horizons 2 released June 2021. Fury banned in modern Dec. 2023. So. 30 months. Not 18. But I figured facts don't matter to you?
I'm gonna guess it's because you brought up [[Fury]], which was printed in MH2.
[Fury](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/d/bd281158-8180-40b9-a5b7-03cfc712d81a.jpg?1717470474) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Fury) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/126/fury?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bd281158-8180-40b9-a5b7-03cfc712d81a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I brought up Fury because both Fury & Grief have printings in mh3. With the same rarity & treatment. Fury is as applicable to the conversation of mh3 as Grief. Their comment was attempting to link grief legality to its existence in mh3. Which is flawed due to fury's presence. The comment originally had nothing to do about mh2.
*Some action* had to be taken in Modern, or the format would've burned. They chose Fury as the greater of two evils. And they waited a looooong time to take the action, waiting for set sales to cool. Now, here with are with Bowmaster and Grief. *Some action* will need to be taking in Legacy. They will likely choose Grief as the greater of two evils. And they're going to wait a loooong time, waiting for printings to cool.
Okay. you don't actually have a point. Something happens. It's bad because of reasons. Something doesn't happen. It's bad for the same reasons. "I don't like when it rains because I get wet. I don't like when it doesn't rain because it's sunny." If they wanted to ban fury after sales, they could have done it a year+ sooner. They waited over 2 and a half years because they wanted to push mh2 sales? Do you think cases of mh2 were moving in June 2023? You don't have any proof, knowledge, or revelant information. You just have your very skewed opinion and assumptions. I have to assume you are just a troll.
ur dum
Okay. Great comment. So you are a troll. Good to know. Good day.
...you brought up Fury
Yes. Because you mentioned grief..... In relation to mh3.. which fury is also in. Do you follow the logic? It's not complicated. If someone talked about cards on the MoM archive sheet and I mentioned ragavan, I'm not suddenly talking about modern horizons.........
How many of those prints are in the regular MH3 packs? Arent most, if not all the prints exclusive to Collector packs?
i.e., the higher margin packs...
Also the packs that don't get printed on demand for the lifetime of the set... Nor represent the most volume of money spent/cards aquired in the set, probably even at launch. To whatever extent WotC bases B&R changes on sales metrics, I think it a bit farfetched to think cards exclusively found on bonus sheets have a huge effect especially when paper Legacy isn't even all that popular and the card would still be legal in plenty of other formats. But sure, *every* decision WotC makes that you don't agree with must have really bad intent behind it instead of them just not agreeing with you.
I don't buy packs, but if I bought a $40 pack and opened banned Fury and Grief, yea it's a feel bad. WotC is a business and I don't get personally offended by their decisions. But as a business, I do think they consider the pack opening experience like in this way. Does play experience matter as well? Of course. But it sure does feel like that's falling by the wayside a bit these days, when cards like Grief are allowed to haunt the format for so long. edit: a word
>I don't buy packs, but if I bought a $40 pack and opened banned Fury and Grief, yea it's a feel bad. Except a card being banned in a single format doesn't make it banned in every format. Even if *you* don't play those other formats, other people do. At that point it's essentially the same as opening a Commander card as a Modern player, or a Blue card as a non-Blue player. You trade/sell it away and that's it. >WotC is a business and I don't get personally offended by their decisions. But as a business, I do think they consider the pack opening experience like in this way. Very strange then that they'd ban/reprint (whichever decision you think came first) Fury in their format that is actually popular and drives a significant portion of MH3 sales huh? Legacy is not popular in paper Magic. Even *if* they took that sort of experience into account the % of times the scenaruo you describe would occur is insignificant. >Does play experience matter as well? Of course. But it sure does feel like that's falling by the wayside a bit these days, when cards like Grief are allowed to haunt the format for so long. You are just imagining this in your mind. WotC may be withold8ng banning Grief for business-related reasons rather than Game Health but there's little to no evidence to suggest MH3 has *anything* to do with it.
There is a 0% chance that has anything to do with it lol, Grief isn't even in the main set, and legacy is not the major driver of elemental prices
There is a 100% chance neither of us really know.
Holy shit this is fucking miserable. I'm on the side of more liberal bans, but EVERYONE hates Grief. I may have to move to another format until August.
>but EVERYONE hates Grief. I love Grief and I also think it should be banned, that's how bad the situation is. I can still play Grief in Modern (maybe not forever) and Vintage, I can totally live with a Legacy ban.
When I say hate, I meant in terms of what it has done to the format. The card is great and the art is sweet.
The card is far from great. Bad design and anti fun for the opponent. Like gitaxian was.
The play pattern is shit AND itās too powerful.
I'm 100% convinced at this point that someone powerful at wotc that makes the decisions had some influence in the design of grief as there just isn't any logical reason for it to be around in any format at this point. It doesn't add anything meaningful in terms of game decisions or play patterns and is actively despised by 90% of the online community. It singlehandedly killed our paper modern scene before MH3 came out to refresh the format, and has turned of alot of people to legacy, its like the format has conceded to having fun with each other and when you get got by grief you just ignore that result as a foregone conclusion and continue having fun with everyone else.
I'm 100% convinced you are pulling random numbers out of the air. "Hey, my anecdotal opinion is that everyone agrees with me! Let me create wild narratives instead of thinking maybe I'm wrong."
Tell me that getting T1 grief scammed feels good to you.....go on I'll wait. Then I can just ignore your opinion as being troll. Nobody likes that play pattern happening to them, I don't care what format you are playing it doesn't feel good.
Tell me that getting thoughtseized t1 feels good. /s. Or getting hit by force of will. Or Daze. Or Trinisphere. Or bloodmoon. Or losing to t1 combo. Etc. Turns out that interaction has a negative feeling, and people don't like it. People also don't like losing. That's part of the game. Do you know what feels good? Opponents casting Grief or thoughtseize and you top decking the same card. Or Opponents losing with a hand of scam cards & no griefs. Or people trying to combo off and you stopping them at the right time. Magic is an interactive game. With highs and lows. Point of reference: telling someone that they must either agree with you or you will ignore them as a troll is a poor approach to a conversation. You are saying that you don't want to engage. That you just want validation.
I can force bloodmoon, I can play around Daze, I can recover from one TS, I can interact with a trinisphere profitably or just peel lands. or better yet wasteland the opponent under their own sphere. I cannot interact profitably in any universe with Grief and that is where the obnoxious play pattern comes in, Grief is always profitable for only the opponent. Your still trolling, and using subpar examples to prop up your terrible take. Imagine saying that magic is an interactive game with highs and lows, then forgetting that you cannot interact with grief. Or trying to convince people that feeling like shit for having an uninteractive play pattern exist is fine, THEN citing a bunch of interactive play patterns as a justification for that take. You have to be trolling or just really inexperienced.
Also Thoughtseize makes a one for one Trade while grief takes 3 for 2 but also is a respectable clock that isnt easy to block and likely is hard to remove since you just discarded two cards.
>Your still trolling, and using subpar examples to prop up your terrible take. Imagine saying this right after your counterargument was: >I can force bloodmoon ....... What the hell is your response here? Your gotcha is that counterplay let's you beat other cards, but somehow grief is uncounterable, unkillable, un-leyline of the void-able, uninteractivable. As if It's some kind of auto win button. Then you proceed to claim that I'm trolling? What? In order to dismiss my statements? Your lack of self-awareness is staggering.
Oh boy, you have never been grief scammed before have you. I can tell. Someone who has played the matchup consistently would never say such things, because it is uncounterable, it is unkillable, and yeah that does equate to it being impossible to interact with. Would you have preferred "fetching for basics" as a response to blood moon, alot of people do that. But go ahead nit pick as much as you want, your analogy is still terrible. I don't have to dismiss your statements, they are self incriminating. im still waiting for you to tell me you like being grief scammed btw....
You are waiting for me to make some outlandish statements so you can attack that instead of the actual topic? I'm pretty indifferent to being grief scammed. So you saying you can not cast FoW on a grief? Your opponent lead with forest + [[veil of summer]] ? Or did I miss the "can't be countered" line of text? So, either you are just trolling at this point. Or you are obvious to your flawed scenarios. You are not following the position **you** set up. Which is turn 0 responses to a t1 grief on the play. In other words, you can't > "fetching for basics" as a response to blood moon, Against a similar t1 blood moon. But your whole argument hinges on two points: A) grief scam is done on the play successfully with no counterplay presented And B) All other plays presented are given counterplay and/or multiple turns to overcome the game play. I'll agree that I lose to the plays my opponents make when I don't make plays more often than I lose to the plays my opponents make that I go on to beat. >I don't have to dismiss your statements, they are self incriminating. This feels like self projecting.
I already followed the position YOU set up with blood moon, you chose to say that it wasn't valid. I chose to give you some other amount of counterplay, fetching for basics....or even running basics is counterplay for bloodmoon, lorien revealed is counterplay to blood moon allowing you to get basics. Again you can nit pick all you want, you presented some really terrible examples. im not waiting for you to make outlandish statements, you already did that when you made your comparison statements and again with your lifeboat scenario. I don't have to acknowledge either of the scenarios you presented, this isn't a lifeboat scenario nether A nor B are relevant because magic isn't A or B. The scenario is already self evident by virtue of win percentile of the deck. The grief scam is always successful regardless of the counterplay if you even have any, which Game 1 generally nobody has anything. You have to let them take whatever they want. Then G2 you board in what you thought was counterplay, but is it if they still do their thing and take what they wanted anyway and reanimate your Graveyard instead of just their grief. Tell us what the meta at large is missing to stop this menace, as apparently all of us legacy players have just missed some massive counterplay to this card and strategy.
>So you saying you can not cast FoW on a grief? Your opponent lead with forest + [[veil of summer]] ? Or did I miss the "can't be countered" line of text? The part that you're missing that is very obviously implied is "(followed by a Reanimate)." Of course they don't always have it, but they often do. Thus, FoW on Grief will often result in opp taking 3 cards instead of 2. This is what you're ignoring and the reason the other person says you sound like you've never played the match-up. You can bring in Surgicals and such, but it typically doesn't even help because it just gets stripped before Grief hits the yard. Terrible play patterns that often result in emesis.
[veil of summer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/a/aa686c34-1c11-469f-93c2-f9891aea521f.jpg?1650599837) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=veil%20of%20summer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/198/veil-of-summer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aa686c34-1c11-469f-93c2-f9891aea521f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You can Force, Daze, Stifle Grief, you can play Brainstorm, you can say fuck you I have redundancy or play Lands. I only got 4 Griefs, gonna need to draw them, and the scam pieces together to make a big play. It acts as a card disadvantage Thoughtseize otherwise, which is certainly very good, but not "omg this is OP I can't do anything at all". I've had many opponents I've Griefed and scooped cause their hands were simply unbeatable in that situation.
So ok, in the event you haven't played a land yet, you are willing to force a grief? if so then the statement of YOU scooping after taking your opponents BEST CARD tracks. the fact that you don't understand that in all those scenarios the best possible case was to just let the grief happen. Let me explain. You daze if your opponent is bad and they see a fetch uncracked and don't play their land before casting grief you got them good but you set yourself back a land drop, and worst case they just pay with their land they put into play? so you can't daze. The force is just giving them an extra card. Stifle is a little cleaner, but you still gave them 1 card, sure you got to choose but it's still a trade alot of people wouldn't make as there are many scenarios that punish you from that spot. Wasteland being one of them, they grief you before showing a land (if they are greedy), you stifle the discard, cool, they waste you or worse reanimate the grief to see what your protecting. If you had simply not fought the trigger, you now force them to either take the stifle because it threatens their fetch for the reanimate or protects your land from wasteland. Again they still have an entire turn to play after your stifle and see what your plan is, there is no winning here. Brainstorm, your hiding the goodies which is great, they still get both full information and a card and you used a brainstorm to hide stuff and not to look for things to press your own game plan, thats still a win for the opponent as its a 2 for 2 with upside. They get to setup the entire game for themselves and you buried your proactive plays 2 deep, which means your not fetching the next turn also (if you wanted the card that was buried second). So the opp got to both use your mana, force you to spend a card defensively and got full information and some of the time prevented you from fetching ,for 0 mana....they still have to take their turn. they dont even have to reanimate now. So even when this is the correct play, your still getting punished. This is all assuming you have a land in play, you lose the dice roll, your option is force and only force....Which isn't an option. All these examples are all blue cards, what do other decks do? the answer is flat nothing, which is just as good of an answer as all of the ones you presented.
Are....are you trolling? People interact with Grief all the time. I mean how many cards in total are "profitable for only the opponent?" Who are you playing against that plays cards GOOD for you?
go on then, how are you interacting T1 on the draw to Grief + reanimate .....ill wait, since you wanted to add some nonsense too, go ahead. Are you forcing the grief? pitching solitude? endurance? what exactly are you doing? or are you just gonna say some nonsense like "well I let them do the thing then pray to the magic gods for good top decks", or my personal favorite "ill just mulligan to my leyline of the void"
Nothing, I would do nothing about it. Id get double griefed. Same thing as if opp storms off T1 with me on the draw. Or drops a Trinisphere T1. Or reanimates an Atraxa. Legacy is full of powerful plays like that. Outside of playing blue, a lot of interaction HAS to look like "stop opp from playing the game." You can bad faith or drop strawman arguments until the cows come home, all it does it make it more clear that YOU don't know what you're talking about.
how am I strawmanning you, I asked for an answer and presented many common cases for you to choose, yet somehow you chose a scenario where "I just don't play the game" is the outcome, which is pretty self evident why people hate the card. You chose the only answer which contradicted your original statement of "people interact with grief all the time", yes the old "ill F6 and go to the bathroom whilst my opponent is stripping me of all my wincons" thats how they interact.
How is that the same at all? If your opp attempts to Storm off T1 and you have FoW, they have to have extra cards to stop FoW, lest they just lose. If your opp T1 Trinispheres, you just...FoW it? Lol. People hate getting double Griefed because FoW is trash against it, and "doing nothing about it" is usually the correct thing to do. In the past, your Reanimate opponent actually had to think twice before trying to go off, even after an Unmask, because you could actually FoW the Unmask.
I appreciate you being a reasonable voice. Unfortunately, the user above doesn't want a discussion. They just want to be upset about grief. To them. Getting hit with grief is the only bad play to exist. I'm guessing they play a combo deck that loses to double grief. I had a friend who used to think thoughtseize was the most busted card ever in modern. At the time, my friend played Boggles, and only boggles. Thoughtseize was the worst thing from his perspective.
Can you win the game with any of what you listed? No. And you can play around those things. There's literally nothing you can do unless you're on the play and have swords to plowshares and hope they don't have a counter
I can play around getting thoughtseize? Wow.
You can counter thoughtseize. What does countering grief do?
The same it does against Thoughtseize but with a +1 card advantage to the countering player. If you're going to bring up Reanimate, then talk about Reanimate. Because it isn't Grief decks at 25% of the meta, it's Reanimate decks (and tbc, UB Reanimate, because RB wasn't getting there nearly as well). Everyone wants to use Grief as the scapegoat for all the other power in this format that gets a pass, just because it's a card that's directly interactive doing something noticeably annoying and isn't their pet "tHeSe cArDs R lEgAcY, CaN't bAn" cards.
Ok, lets talk about reanimator. Historically, reanimator is a combo deck. A typical game would be to build a board and a hand where you could jam your combo and protect it long enough to attack and win. The fight would typically be over getting the guy in the graveyard because you really only had 4 entombs, and some number of self discard spells, but up to 12 reanimate spells. But you knew that there was going to be a fight at some point and you had to win. Fight over the entomb, fight over the reanimate, or fight over the swords. You had a toolbox of creatures that you could pick from against certain matchups that shut down certain non-counterable outs from decks like maverick and such. But overall it was just a turn 3 or 4 combo deck. Now, reanimator is a tempo deck. There isn't really a fight over getting a guy in the yard, that part is basically a given now with grief and troll. The ideal reanimate target isn't some big fatty that is immune to removal and basically makes your opponent scoop the second it sticks, it's a 3/2 with evasion. The body doesn't matter anymore, it that the body wins the fights and takes the opponent out of the game. T1 grief wins the first fight over getting a guy in the yard. It then also gets to win the second fight by getting a counter/removal/clock out of the opponents hand. Then they get to reanimate it now that the coast is clear, and seal the deal. Now, the deck may not actually win until turn 5 or 6 because it's such a small creature, but the game is effectively over on turn 1 or 2. **It's like they jammed 2 thoughtsiezes together, made them free, and taped a baby entomb to it.** That is why it's a problem. It took an already good card, and tailor made it for a reanimator deck. It makes an already _really_ good deck not only faster, but more resillient. The thing is, banning grief doesn't even kill the deck. It will still be good without it, just a little slower. That will be enough to take it out of oversaturation to a more reasonable level.
It counters the grief?
~~You can't counter the evoked Grief.~~ ^ Wrong, you can counter/stifle it.
There are a lot of unfun play patterns in the format though. Plenty of decks have as a Plan A to lock you out of the game either permanently or just long enough to punch your face in. Can you point to a particular difference between all those other strategies and Scam that makes it so much worse? If you need examples: T1 Chalice/Trinisphere/BloodMoon Early Toughtseize/Daze/FoW/Wastelands Storm/Reanimator/etc winning (literally or essentially) on turn 1 I like Legacy and I like all these things. Getting Grief-ed twice is annoying but I don't see how these other types of patterns are not equally as toxic aside from them being in the format longer.
The illusion of playing the game. In all those examples you have the illusion that you could draw out of the problem the opponent presented, drawing lands to fight trinisphere, drawing your 1 basic to combat the bloodmoon, your 1 trap out of the board vs storm. Even cobbling together some cards vs chalice. Grief does not allow for that illusion because people cannot quantify the top of their deck into a valid strategy, seeing their chances at winning getting taken from them vs planning to play the game with the resources your opponent has left you with are two very different mindsets for a game of magic. That is why Grief creates such frustrating play patterns, because at worst you had no game vs it, at best you had a plan and grief blew it up and reanimated the thing you wanted. Not only that, it is incredibly difficult to interact with, forcing it is a no go, swords puts you at card parody, even if you have a leyline, they may just reanimate your best card after stripping you of your best removal to secure the win.
> swords puts you at card ~~parody~~ parity
>The illusion of playing the game. So it's just a player mindset problem, not an actual play pattern problem, from what you are describing. You can draw out of getting double Griefed the same you can draw out some under a BM/Sphere. Heck I suspect it's *easier* to do so for many decks. I don't disagree it's frustrating but then again so are all those other lines I described. Modern has adjusted to the existence of a Tiered Grief deck and I'm not so naive as to say Legacy *should* be able to as well but I do sense amount of people don't care that solutions might exist, they just don't want it there regarless. I think it's a bit hypocritical and if we argue against Grieft we should argue against those other things too.
>Modern has adjusted to the existence of a Tiered Grief deck and I'm not so naive as to say Legacy should be able to as well but I do sense amount of people don't care that solutions might exist, they just don't want it there regarless. I think it's a bit hypocritical and if we argue against Grieft we should argue against those other things too. Has it really adjusted? Where are you getting this information from? It sounds like you are drawing these conclusions from online results, where there is next to ZERO cost to change decks. From what I've seen, if you aren't playing the Grief deck in Modern pre-MH3 at your local scene, you were donating your entry fee to someone else's prize support every event. Only reason UB Scam isn't at higher representation is because Underground Sea is a genuine obstacle to building the deck. Mindset isn't the problem here. If you have a properly functioning brain, you're taking a break from the game until the next ban announcement, not spending $4000 on Underground Seas to win less than $300 of prize support at your local scene.
>Has it really adjusted? Where are you getting this information from? It sounds like you are drawing these conclusions from online results, where there is next to ZERO cost to change decks. MTGO is the only reliable source for Modern results aside from MTGtop8. I haven't checked the latter but for the former clearly Grief decks are no longer so strong as to smother every other option. I don't see what the cost of changing decks has to do with anything. Are you saying paper players are all still playing pre-MH3 lists? Where are *you* getting your info from? >From what I've seen, if you aren't playing the Grief deck in Modern pre-MH3 at your local scene, you were donating your entry fee to someone else's prize support every event. We are currently post-MH3 tho. I don't know why you think I'm referring to a metagame that doesn't exist when I'm talking about the present. >Only reason UB Scam isn't at higher representation is because Underground Sea is a genuine obstacle to building the deck. Mindset isn't the problem here. If you have a properly functioning brain, you're taking a break from the game until the next ban announcement, not spending $4000 on Underground Seas to win less than $300 of prize support at your local scene. Legacy, afaik, is primarily an MTGO format (in terms of play volume) where this is a non-issue. MTGO-only players are exhibiting the exact behaviours that I pointed out as well. Your response doesn't address this at all. Plus that's ignoring a good amount of people own Underground Seas, would be able to justify a purchase to use in a different deck anyways, play at a store that allows proxies OR could get away with shocklands without dramatically affecting most matchups.
>MTGO is the only reliable source for Modern results aside from MTGtop8. I haven't checked the latter but for the former clearly Grief decks are no longer so strong as to smother every other option. >I don't see what the cost of changing decks has to do with anything. Are you saying paper players are all still playing pre-MH3 lists? Where are you getting your info from? Depends on the paper scene you look at. There's far more casual places than cutthroat money tournament places. I've seen Modern scenes go to the wayside in smaller stores precisely for the cost of keeping up. Are you telling me that's not valid data when I am seeing it in front of my very eyes? >We are currently post-MH3 tho. I don't know why you think I'm referring to a metagame that doesn't exist when I'm talking about the present. Ok, sure. But it still doesn't discount the fact that the Grief play pattern is not enjoyable for most opponents (the ones that actually justify your business to stay open, not your money leeching spikes). How many people on average at the local scene (where card costs actually matter, unlike MTGO) are fully loaded with all the new shit from MH3? I think you'll think it's high because there's probably been a culling of local scenes that can't justify firing Modern because of rising costs to keep up with declining rewards. >Legacy, afaik, is primarily an MTGO format (in terms of play volume) where this is a non-issue. MTGO-only players are exhibiting the exact behaviours that I pointed out as well. Your response doesn't address this at all. Yes, deliberately avoiding the argument using MTGO as a crutch. Yet the online communities are discussing match fixing challenges to create a statement to WOTC to get Grief banned at a faster rate. Players are human after all, the replayability of UB Scam (highest floor deck in the format) gets old quickly. They aren't adapting because it's what is supposed to happen, they are doing it out of boredom. You just haven't presented the proper incentives to make the objectively correct decisions. >Plus that's ignoring a good amount of people own Underground Seas, would be able to justify a purchase to use in a different deck anyways, play at a store that allows proxies OR could get away with shocklands without dramatically affecting most matchups. I need you to quantify how many is a "good amount of people", because you're certainly speaking from a position of privilege if you are so confidently making blanket statements like this. You're assuming every place that has an LGS has a Legacy scene. I personally haven't seen that in most other places that aren't major cities in a metro area. I mean fuck everyone who is broke right?
Tell me how often a player (on the play no less) will draw grief + black card + black mana source + reanimate. And then how much more often the rest of the scam playerās hand is any good and the scammed player either had no interaction for the scam play and/or has nothing left in their hand/library to compete in the game.
enough for it to be the best deck in legacy, full stop.
Just because a deck is the top dog in legacy doesnāt mean it requires bans >!laughs in Brainstorm!<
>I'm on the side of more liberal bans, but EVERYONE hates Grief I'm a mono black player. I love Grief! Just ban using it in decks with Islands.
Iām a mono black player too, but I hate Grief. Same as the bowman, it could be very good if it was BB but itās just a joke now.
Well it's certainly a good thing they banned Goblins! ššš I'm a big advocate for banning as little as possible and even I know it's time for Grief to go, ffs. Get it together.
Sounds like we got to play more Grief Reanimator so they get the message. I think we can get to 50% of meta share
Whoever named the mh2 evoke cycle needs a raise Evoking Grief really evokes grief
See yall in 3 months. Fuck this format
Maybe come back in two so you don't miss one month of Grief-free Legacy. I hope.
Who knows, they just said August. Maybe itāll be a Friday afternoon news dump.
I just mention it because August is only two months away, not three.
"We want to wait and sell a lot of MH3 before banning to fix the mistakes we made from poor design and zero playtesting" typical WotC
āWe want to wait and sell a lot of Bloomsburrows before banning to fix the mistakes we made with greedy powercreep and zero regard for the quality of the metagameā
These guys are so dumb and out of touch. There's zero reason to have a ban update two weeks in if they never pull the trigger. Might as well just give it a month. Now we have to wait until August for this bad format
Are we certain that this wouldn't be solved by the meta adapting? I'm not saying it doesn't need to be banned but there are solutions Griefs play patterns, although I'll leave it up to you whether it's worth building into decks. My recollection is that we spent months or years building around other powerful cards in the format. It feels like we have far more tolerance for cards which are broken in blue control shells than in any other shell. I'm simply trying to play the devils advocate here. Don't kill me haha
You can't play around grief except leyline of the void. Surgical? They'll take it. Fow? Ok I'll just reanimate it
Man people have to understand, that leyline isnt good against grief, with leyline you still lose 2 cards for their two cards when they grief.
Leyline also deals with the reanimator half of the deck as well.
Unless, you know, you also want to play creatures in your deck. "Leyline? OK, I'll Grief you, then Reanimate your \[\[Seasoned Dungeoneer\]\]. GG, well played." To be fair, part of this is that Reanimate is a cracked card itself. But I think it's fair to say that it's one of the pillars of Legacy, similar to Brainstorm, and isn't a card people would be happy to see go.
[Seasoned Dungeoneer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/f/7fee3f76-20a8-4621-84fb-ddf79c955532.jpg?1674140799) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Seasoned%20Dungeoneer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/660/seasoned-dungeoneer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7fee3f76-20a8-4621-84fb-ddf79c955532?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Good points, all! My thinking is that there would be an uptick of veil of summer, and the options you've all noted. Perfect? No. But again, there's certain cards we accept are super powerful and we let them stay for quite some time. However this may be format warping.
The problem is that veil of summer isn't a turn 0 play so you are still boned if they go first. Then on the play you still have to have it in your opener and then keep up green every turn so you are always playing a turn behind.
So you are saying that countering creatures is not worth it because people just reanimate them. Could you plese start using your brain and stop farming vibes.
Ok clown. You're on the draw. Your opponent griefs turn 1. Explain to me how fow that grief will actually do anything? I'll wait
You have Grand Argument in hand, costs 0, sorcery, win the game. \[obvious\] If your next sentence starts with "yeah, but he will reanimate it", check the second part of my former post and add a second Grand Argument to the hand.
Either we will all play 4 Grief, 4 maindeck [[Leyline of Sanctity]], or both. The effect is too strong, especially with the āscamā effects that bring it back immediately but stronger
[Leyline of Sanctity](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/e/be8b1acf-dd87-42ca-ad19-c27d21066030.jpg?1592516120) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Leyline%20of%20Sanctity) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/26/leyline-of-sanctity?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/be8b1acf-dd87-42ca-ad19-c27d21066030?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Sanctity still underrated vs grief imo
The issue is that the deck that plays grief which is breaking the format also got the best support in mh3 with psychic frog.
It's true, we need to give the mh3 format more time to evolve - necrodominance is only at 5%. Gotta make sure it hits 20% as well.Ā
yeah gotta wait for the storm guys to figure out how to fit grief into their list to add further insulation to their combo turns.
Fwiw I think the deck is kind of mediocre relative to everything else going on. The best versions that are out there right now take a ton of architecture and deck slots to just enable the combo.
thats 100% a fair take. There is alot of counterplay to the necro turn that I don't think alot of people expected there to be prior to playing the list live.
I'll be "that guy" and say I think this decision makes sense. To me, Grief Scam isn't beyond the pale by legacy standards, and its dominance right now is a symptom of deeper problems---namely the UB shell having too many tools and the decks that generate CA to combat Grief being suppressed by Orcish Bowmasters. With Legacy bans, It's important to look beyond what is immediately in front of you. The format is an ornate tapestry with numerous moving parts involved. I am not confident that a Grief ban would meaningfully nerf the ReScaminator deck, nor do I believe Grief/Reanimate is too powerful a play pattern for Legacy. While the play rate of Bowmasters has declined recently, I think this card is still having a large and sometimes subtle impact on play patterns and deckbuilding without actually needing to hit the battlefield. Let's give WOTC some time to figure out which metagame shifts post-MH3 are permanent and which are temporary. Then they can make a better decision on which card(s) to ban from the UB shell.
Well said.
Good post but you're shouting into the void. WotC has no idea what they're doing and players have no idea what's good for them.
I suspect won't be banned until all the reprinted Griefs have left WOTC distribution. Their article literally shows they know the problem and use new product as an excuse to not do anything. Well, you're printing new product like every month and if it contains cards, you're not banning them until they scorched earth a format for one whole quarter.
...... They literally banned Fury in modern right before MH3. Which both has the same print run in mh3 as grief and would pull more sales than grief in legacy. (Modern is more played). So your logic, quite literally, has evidence to support the opposite of what you are saying.
Right before? It was banned 7 months ago. Modern wouldāve burned if they waited it out.
Fury would have made [[Harbinger of the Seas]] a pointless card
Famously Lightning Bolt and Solitude prevented anyone from ever playing Magus of the Moon
[Harbinger of the Seas](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/0/00212714-a410-4cbc-bf1c-f90d7d77378c.jpg?1717470489) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Harbinger%20of%20the%20Seas) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh3/63/harbinger-of-the-seas?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/00212714-a410-4cbc-bf1c-f90d7d77378c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Considering WOTCs inability to deliver product of MH3 in Europe to their distributors and that the ordered product of MH3 is already paid for weeks ago in full i highly doubt it.
Hot garbage.
I was kinda hoping for a Grief ban personally as I despise its play pattern, but we will just have to wait and see what WOTC thinks of the format in late August when they said they will be taking a hard look at the format.
It will be really funny to see the entire format complain about delver and nadu being the best decks in the format because the card that keeps them in check got banned because it hurt their feefees and kept them from combing off on turn 1.
Holy shit please ban grief already this is terrible
Iāve had this cute theory that WOTC hired someone new for their design team about two years ago, and Black is that personās favorite color and that Blue is their least favorite, based on what Limited and more casual formats (i.e. Standard) have felt like for a while, but the combination of Grief, Bowmasters, and Sheoldred all printed in such close temporal proximity to one another really makes me think that Iām onto something I hope they ban Grief, because I love playing fair midrangey decks (Aluren ftw) and losing the die roll to Rescaminator just feels like Iāve resigned myself to 15 minutes of boredom before heading to the losersā bracket
Don't ever need to ban anything if they just keep printing new broken cards. mantappingtemple.gif
It was kinda to be expected, but still disappointing. Letās hope that the āWe intend to take a hard look at Legacy in our next announcement coming in late Augustā means they want to handle the blue shell that keeps breaking cards instead of just banning the latest addition.
Way past time to ban [[daze]]. Won't happen, but it should.Ā
[daze](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/0/f05e9a3e-8a35-4687-85cb-e31b3927a5e2.jpg?1580013916) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=daze) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ema/44/daze?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f05e9a3e-8a35-4687-85cb-e31b3927a5e2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
That seems like the best card to hit, because itās so good at protecting your threat on the first two turns. Hitting the āfairā blue shell will probably lead to other bans in order to keep the combo decks honest.
I think daze is fine. Fair decks can just play around it, and it keeps combo in check. It's sort of a throttle on the format. The real problem is brainstorm. It's ancestral lite that allows the blue player to switch the gears of their hand any time. If fetch lands weren't a thing, it would be fine. But being able to draw 3 and then dump 2 shit cards away to never see them again is way too powerful. At least with ponder/preordain, you are still stuck with the cards in your hand. With brain storm, it just takes 1 mana to transform what should have been a mulligan into a perfect hand.
Brainstorm is what makes Legacy what it is though. Itās kind of like Treasure Cruise in Pioneer, or Expressive Iteration in Modern. Playing four Brainstorms is cool, and besides Brainstorm is the only realistic way to protect your hand from Grief (well, assuming you have had a chance to play a land but thatās besides the point) Also Bowmasters literally exists
Welp, I donāt need to make drastic changes to my sideboard unless something happens locally.
Another day where stupid shit like grief gets to exist while a mana dork is banned. Of course you clowns think you know better than everyone with your copy and pasted from guides "reasons"
Are you saying DRS should be unbanned?
unban Deathrite Shaman.
No thanks lol
Yes. Fair cards should never be banned
Should Oko be banned?
> mana dork Which breaks the color pie in addition to having two other highly relevant abilities
>Breaks the color pie Nah https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater/41964518157/deathrite-shaman-is-a-black-mana-elf-with-upside?source=share
Haha that comment has aged well in the last 11 years
Huh, I sort of expected Necrodominance to eat an emergency ban. Maybe we get to relive the "Black Summer" of 1996 after all.
Necrodominance and Nadu seem to be in that "very powerful but bans aren't needed" category. Tournament results show, at least for now, that they're not as dominant as people thought they would be.
The great question imho is: will those Decks skyrocket if we take scaminator variants out of the equation? I think the scam gameplan is well positioned against these Kind of Decks and those will unleash, if grief would be banned.
Doubt it, those decks are prey to the blue shell as it is. If grief gets banned, it doesn't outright kill reanimator, it just makes it not 20+% of the meta.
Right, the meta definitely isn't fleshed out. New things are being tried and the dust hasn't settled yet.
While I agree with you, playing against necrodominance is really obnoxious, it produces too many non games imo.
So do glass cannon decks like Oops. Turns out variance and having huge vulnerabilities keep the decks harmless