No, the bannings aren't going overboard because I banned exactly one card this year. It just happened to be the one card that you cared about. And ONLY you, I must note (unless there's a large crowd of enraged Elf players that just don't say anything).
And I work for all the players, not the top dogs only — in fact, most players resent when I do things that seem to advantage mostly the top players. Exactly like unbanning powerful cards like Lackey, that you wouldn't have ever been able to play if it wasn't for me. At the same time, I have the duty to reflect on meta, constantly. Popularity gets things banned by DCI all the time, because popularity twists the meta, power in a vacuum doesn't (the Doomsday Effect).
You're fairly new to the event, so you maybe don't know that when I inherited it, and for a long while after that, there were about three times more banned cards. (And that doesn't even include the fact that until this year, entire tribes were banned in Underdog that aren't now.)
I agree with most of what you say, Paul, but it's weird to me that when I unbanned Lackey last year, there were many voices saying, "Are you crazy?! Lackey has always been banned for a reason!", and now it seems that simply considering to put Lackey back where it spent the previous 3 years of Tribal Apocalypse comes out of the blue.
There's something to say about critical mass, too. One more card that pushes towards situations where you either have a turn-1 answer or you're likely to lose can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Lackey probably isn't, but if there was one card like that in Goblin builds, it would be it, not any other 1-drop Goblins can use.
Your Merfolk didn't use all the lords they could, anyway, so Mutavault's chances of pumping were lower than they could have been in other builds.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about Khans myself. It started promising with the first few spoilers, then ended up being mostly focused on Limited again (it's probably an intended trend). The mechanics are more constructed playable than Theros's, though (devotion apart).
I'll watch what Goblins decks do, it doesn't seem likely Lackey will do much more than he already did so far since his unbanning. Or maybe Goblin players will pay more attention to him now, and he'll see more play. It's a 20-cent card, after all.
ML_Berlin had a deck focused on Lackey (this one), featuring 13 Goblins with CMC 4 or more, and Warren Instigator as a backup. Of course, the risk there is that you either pull off the turn-1 Lackey, or you end with a midrange Goblin deck that might be too slow vs. other aggros. In fact, Berlin's deck lost to arcbound's Delver and your more traditional build in the mirror.
In retrospect I like this kind of build, it plays like if it was Goblin reanimator. :)
Lackey punishes slow tribes hard. If you don't build your deck with the following cards you will likely lose to Lackey: Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, turn 1 drops (that can block), Mass removal that hits before turn 5 at the latest.
While I find that to be a repugnant sign of an op card, and it may induce people to play only with the above cards, it in itself is just but one threat that accomplishes this. That is the tension of playing aggro + removal vs not playing Aggro + Removal. If your op is playing lackey goblins and gets a decent start on the play you are going to game 2 at a disadvantage unless you are somehow countering that plan. Sadly Mental Misstep is missing from the format or you could literally do so at low cost. But the truth is tourney players who want to win play with the above cards.
Ban the lackey and another card will leap up to take its place as the slow deck hoser. That is the problem with banning cards. The bans are endless if you go down that road.
Goblin Lackey is a 1/1 creature that doesn't have any synergy with the rest of the deck, and in a format with ample blockers. I'd say it wins you about one game in fifty, whereas Goblin Matron/Ringleader wins you at least half your games.
I think the bannings are going overboard here. When something gets popular, people can respond to it. That's why the Mantle elves won a few times and then couldn't anymore. Once people figured out how to deal with it, it stopped winning.
All of these more combo type decks are going to require the same thing: removal or disruption of some kind. That's it. I know it's difficult to run mass removal in a deck full of creatures, but if you're not running your own strategy that can attempt to race something like goblins, elves, or merfolk, then you need some type of wrath. That's why my elementals, with eight board wipes, or the Living End deck that always has a wrath, work so well. They can put up pressure while stopping the opponent's plan.
This is a strange format, but the decks still fit into the aggro/combo/control schema.
I wouldn't ban Goblin Lackey. Maybe I have just been unlucky, but I don't remember any broken starts with it (surely partly due to the fact that I only play 1 Krenko and 0 Siege-Gang Commanders), so I am not convinced that it is really a consistent super threat.
Your guess about Mutavault is true. Yet, Mishra's Factory also managed to achive nearly the same role. There were only one game in four rounds, where Mutavault would matter for only 1 extra damage. Otherwise, Mishra's Factory is still a very good manland. Especially, against the aggressive decks with its pump ability.
Personally, I'm looking forward for your Khans of Tarkir Tribal review. Generally at my side, I'm so much disappointed from this new generation Orcs and Nagas. Their CMC curve is basically killing their chance to see moderate amount of Underdog play, like Centaurs did after Theros.
For Goblin Lackey: I have faced, 1st turn Lackey and 2nd turn Siege-Gang Commander (and Krenko in following turns) with an empty board during last week. And, I saw how bad the situation can be. Still, let's wait for another one month (4-5 weeks cycle) to see this picture more clear. And for the records, I won't be playing with any Goblin deck in foreseeable future.
As someone who play goblins in this event, with a couple of turn three victories, one of them against our host. I'd say hitting with the lacky and getting a seige gang in play is great. I had it done against me during the pure event and that's why made me want to give it a try. Even so, I only managed to go 2-2 in this event, so I can't say that the lacky is overpowered. It's a 1/1 for 1, it is answered by swords, bolt, a blocker or a turn four wrath most of the time.
A frequent enough situation is finding three lands on top when you need *anything at all* that isn't a land.
Putting two back leaves you in the psychological state of being three turns behind.
The same 3 top cards for preordain and ponder are only a single turn, or less, of a hindrance.
There just aren't as many good free shuffle effects as one sees in other formats where Brainstorm IS that strong.
Even your "ideal" play or turn 1 Delver turn 2 upkeep Brainstorm isn't usually the kind of play you want to make.
As short of a Daze you have no response to "I'll just kill your delver now, before brainstorm resolves."
Which leaves you down on tempo.
A stronger play would be to leave up two mana for a counter.
Or, even better, cloud of faeries/snap to set up a spellstutter.
Which you would then use a ninja of deep hours on.
So, excluding the use on your upkeep, brainstorm does far less for you in manipulating your draws.
Without the shuffle effects it is just a cantrip index.
Those are not bad investments. All planeswalkers seem to hold some sort of collectability and intrinsic value which means that they never really tank in price. Whether or not they will see competitive play is yet to be determined. I would like to see UW Control become a stronger force in modern and the reprinting of Flooded Strand might just be enough to do it.
It's the most reliable way to get a T2 flip. Only a strategy you want to do in quite an aggressive deck, because ponder/preordain are way better than brainstorm without fetches.
for me it's the same as the difference between buying a CD or MP3. When I buy paper cads or a CD, I have somethign physical that I can touch and exists in the real world.
The only good reason to play brainstorm in Pauper is if you want to flip delver at instant speed. If you aren't doing that, then you probably shouldn't be playing brainstorm.
I disagree. I think its a bad keep with any 1 drawer. Is Brainstorm slightly worse if you are already in a bad situation with no shuffle? Yes. Is it immensely better if you are in a neutral position? Yes. With a shuffler? Yes. Etc. The card has flaws and strengths and you build your deck accordingly. And you play it accordingly. Mulligan to X-1 is not always a bad decision. Being unwilling to do so is.
Yes, that's the point. It's one of the common examples of why brainstorm can be a problem. It's a bad keep with brainstorm, but far more reasonable with Ponder or Preordain.
That sounds like a bad keep decision. Not to criticize because I have had my fair share of bad keeps, but that is a skill that only gets better when you consider what the downsides of island brainstorm + 5 other non castable cards are.
Key example. I'll keep this mana short hand with a brainstorm, so I can go grab the land I need to get started rather than mulling. I see that there are no lands in the top 3, and get very sad indeed.
imho if your deck can give you the kind of draws that lower your morale after seeing them, it needs to be rethunk and not because of brainstorm either. :)
Aye, without the shuffle effects it just isn't as good as any of the other cantrip+filter options.
And has the added effect of lowering your moral in a game when you know your next two draws will be bad and you cannot do anything about it.
Which can potentially have a negative impact in the rest of your match.
No, the bannings aren't going overboard because I banned exactly one card this year. It just happened to be the one card that you cared about. And ONLY you, I must note (unless there's a large crowd of enraged Elf players that just don't say anything).
And I work for all the players, not the top dogs only — in fact, most players resent when I do things that seem to advantage mostly the top players. Exactly like unbanning powerful cards like Lackey, that you wouldn't have ever been able to play if it wasn't for me. At the same time, I have the duty to reflect on meta, constantly. Popularity gets things banned by DCI all the time, because popularity twists the meta, power in a vacuum doesn't (the Doomsday Effect).
You're fairly new to the event, so you maybe don't know that when I inherited it, and for a long while after that, there were about three times more banned cards. (And that doesn't even include the fact that until this year, entire tribes were banned in Underdog that aren't now.)
I'm the one who unbans.
I agree with most of what you say, Paul, but it's weird to me that when I unbanned Lackey last year, there were many voices saying, "Are you crazy?! Lackey has always been banned for a reason!", and now it seems that simply considering to put Lackey back where it spent the previous 3 years of Tribal Apocalypse comes out of the blue.
There's something to say about critical mass, too. One more card that pushes towards situations where you either have a turn-1 answer or you're likely to lose can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Lackey probably isn't, but if there was one card like that in Goblin builds, it would be it, not any other 1-drop Goblins can use.
Your Merfolk didn't use all the lords they could, anyway, so Mutavault's chances of pumping were lower than they could have been in other builds.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about Khans myself. It started promising with the first few spoilers, then ended up being mostly focused on Limited again (it's probably an intended trend). The mechanics are more constructed playable than Theros's, though (devotion apart).
I'll watch what Goblins decks do, it doesn't seem likely Lackey will do much more than he already did so far since his unbanning. Or maybe Goblin players will pay more attention to him now, and he'll see more play. It's a 20-cent card, after all.
ML_Berlin had a deck focused on Lackey (this one), featuring 13 Goblins with CMC 4 or more, and Warren Instigator as a backup. Of course, the risk there is that you either pull off the turn-1 Lackey, or you end with a midrange Goblin deck that might be too slow vs. other aggros. In fact, Berlin's deck lost to arcbound's Delver and your more traditional build in the mirror.
In retrospect I like this kind of build, it plays like if it was Goblin reanimator. :)
In response to the Lackey question:
Lackey punishes slow tribes hard. If you don't build your deck with the following cards you will likely lose to Lackey: Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, turn 1 drops (that can block), Mass removal that hits before turn 5 at the latest.
While I find that to be a repugnant sign of an op card, and it may induce people to play only with the above cards, it in itself is just but one threat that accomplishes this. That is the tension of playing aggro + removal vs not playing Aggro + Removal. If your op is playing lackey goblins and gets a decent start on the play you are going to game 2 at a disadvantage unless you are somehow countering that plan. Sadly Mental Misstep is missing from the format or you could literally do so at low cost. But the truth is tourney players who want to win play with the above cards.
Ban the lackey and another card will leap up to take its place as the slow deck hoser. That is the problem with banning cards. The bans are endless if you go down that road.
Hope that helps clarify it a little.
Goblin Lackey is a 1/1 creature that doesn't have any synergy with the rest of the deck, and in a format with ample blockers. I'd say it wins you about one game in fifty, whereas Goblin Matron/Ringleader wins you at least half your games.
I think the bannings are going overboard here. When something gets popular, people can respond to it. That's why the Mantle elves won a few times and then couldn't anymore. Once people figured out how to deal with it, it stopped winning.
All of these more combo type decks are going to require the same thing: removal or disruption of some kind. That's it. I know it's difficult to run mass removal in a deck full of creatures, but if you're not running your own strategy that can attempt to race something like goblins, elves, or merfolk, then you need some type of wrath. That's why my elementals, with eight board wipes, or the Living End deck that always has a wrath, work so well. They can put up pressure while stopping the opponent's plan.
This is a strange format, but the decks still fit into the aggro/combo/control schema.
I wouldn't ban Goblin Lackey. Maybe I have just been unlucky, but I don't remember any broken starts with it (surely partly due to the fact that I only play 1 Krenko and 0 Siege-Gang Commanders), so I am not convinced that it is really a consistent super threat.
Your guess about Mutavault is true. Yet, Mishra's Factory also managed to achive nearly the same role. There were only one game in four rounds, where Mutavault would matter for only 1 extra damage. Otherwise, Mishra's Factory is still a very good manland. Especially, against the aggressive decks with its pump ability.
Personally, I'm looking forward for your Khans of Tarkir Tribal review. Generally at my side, I'm so much disappointed from this new generation Orcs and Nagas. Their CMC curve is basically killing their chance to see moderate amount of Underdog play, like Centaurs did after Theros.
For Goblin Lackey: I have faced, 1st turn Lackey and 2nd turn Siege-Gang Commander (and Krenko in following turns) with an empty board during last week. And, I saw how bad the situation can be. Still, let's wait for another one month (4-5 weeks cycle) to see this picture more clear. And for the records, I won't be playing with any Goblin deck in foreseeable future.
As someone who play goblins in this event, with a couple of turn three victories, one of them against our host. I'd say hitting with the lacky and getting a seige gang in play is great. I had it done against me during the pure event and that's why made me want to give it a try. Even so, I only managed to go 2-2 in this event, so I can't say that the lacky is overpowered. It's a 1/1 for 1, it is answered by swords, bolt, a blocker or a turn four wrath most of the time.
Oh come on! My jokes are also terrible. :P
A frequent enough situation is finding three lands on top when you need *anything at all* that isn't a land.
Putting two back leaves you in the psychological state of being three turns behind.
The same 3 top cards for preordain and ponder are only a single turn, or less, of a hindrance.
There just aren't as many good free shuffle effects as one sees in other formats where Brainstorm IS that strong.
Even your "ideal" play or turn 1 Delver turn 2 upkeep Brainstorm isn't usually the kind of play you want to make.
As short of a Daze you have no response to "I'll just kill your delver now, before brainstorm resolves."
Which leaves you down on tempo.
A stronger play would be to leave up two mana for a counter.
Or, even better, cloud of faeries/snap to set up a spellstutter.
Which you would then use a ninja of deep hours on.
So, excluding the use on your upkeep, brainstorm does far less for you in manipulating your draws.
Without the shuffle effects it is just a cantrip index.
Those are not bad investments. All planeswalkers seem to hold some sort of collectability and intrinsic value which means that they never really tank in price. Whether or not they will see competitive play is yet to be determined. I would like to see UW Control become a stronger force in modern and the reprinting of Flooded Strand might just be enough to do it.
Good guide for the players that want to expand their collections with limited budget.
Humbly, I would like to also suggest few cards that you're missing:
Jace, Architect of Thought (invest at 2-2.5 tix range) for Modern.
Thespian's Stage for Modern, Legacy and Vintage.
Breaking/Entering as a cheap "Glimpse the Unthinkable" substitute for Modern mill decks.
And Ral Zarek; he is not that bad and 2 tix can't be that much risk to invest for an Izzet Planeswalker (this one is more optional).
It's the most reliable way to get a T2 flip. Only a strategy you want to do in quite an aggressive deck, because ponder/preordain are way better than brainstorm without fetches.
He means during your upkeep, play brainstorm so you can control the top card of your library.
Altar of the Brood is probably my favorite card in the set. There seem to be may ways to break the card too.
flipping at instant speed?
for me it's the same as the difference between buying a CD or MP3. When I buy paper cads or a CD, I have somethign physical that I can touch and exists in the real world.
The only good reason to play brainstorm in Pauper is if you want to flip delver at instant speed. If you aren't doing that, then you probably shouldn't be playing brainstorm.
I disagree. I think its a bad keep with any 1 drawer. Is Brainstorm slightly worse if you are already in a bad situation with no shuffle? Yes. Is it immensely better if you are in a neutral position? Yes. With a shuffler? Yes. Etc. The card has flaws and strengths and you build your deck accordingly. And you play it accordingly. Mulligan to X-1 is not always a bad decision. Being unwilling to do so is.
Yes, that's the point. It's one of the common examples of why brainstorm can be a problem. It's a bad keep with brainstorm, but far more reasonable with Ponder or Preordain.
That sounds like a bad keep decision. Not to criticize because I have had my fair share of bad keeps, but that is a skill that only gets better when you consider what the downsides of island brainstorm + 5 other non castable cards are.
These are the sorts that any deck can have. :)
Key example. I'll keep this mana short hand with a brainstorm, so I can go grab the land I need to get started rather than mulling. I see that there are no lands in the top 3, and get very sad indeed.
imho if your deck can give you the kind of draws that lower your morale after seeing them, it needs to be rethunk and not because of brainstorm either. :)
Aye, without the shuffle effects it just isn't as good as any of the other cantrip+filter options.
And has the added effect of lowering your moral in a game when you know your next two draws will be bad and you cannot do anything about it.
Which can potentially have a negative impact in the rest of your match.