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fluffybunnypants
6 February 2014
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Fluffy’s Favorites: R&D Fell Asleep At the Wheel
6 February 2014
1687 views
Fluffy’s Favorites: R&D Fell Asleep At the Wheel
It’s important to note that the Power Nine will not be listed in this list because at that particular point in time, R&D really had no idea what the hell they were doing in the first place. This also includes leaving out those crappy “Banding with” lands from Legends.
“Hey, guys, I’ve got this killer idea. Let’s remake a card that’s already banned with the exact same mechanic but at a higher cmc!”:
That’s right, starting us off is the printing of Yawgmoth's Bargain. Does it look eerily familiar? Maybe like a certain card from Ice Age that everyone thought was trash at first? Say, just like Necropotence? Well, that’s because it’s basically Necropotence. Proof that it’s a bad idea? It’s banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage.
The Entire Urza’s Saga Block:
Yes, I said it. It plunged Magic as we know it into the period of time known as Combo Winter. You weren’t playing at the time? It’s probably better that way. How bad was it? Well, a nice long list of cards were banned in Standard during the Winter of ’98, when that proved to be ineffective, more cards were banned during the Spring of ‘99 and it even prompted a card to be banned just after it was announced (Memory Jar), so I’d say it was pretty damn bad.
Affinity:
Powered by Arcbound Ravager, artifact lands and Skullclamp, Affinity decks dominated Standard directly after the Darksteel set of the Mirrodin expansion. Both cards were subsequently banned, becoming the first cards banned in Standard in something like five years. Magic lost a lot of popularity during this time, so much in fact that there were reports suggesting that as much as 30% of players quit during this block. As a side note, artifact lands are currently banned in Modern, truly cementing the Affinity mechanic as a terrible idea.
Jace, the Car Payment, Misty and the Batskull, the Early Years:
I really have no idea what the hell they were thinking here, but I figured I would clump them all together since they were during Zendikar and Scars of Mirrodin blocks and still see play together in Stoneblade decks. Where to start? Jace, the Car Payment is about as broken as a Planeswalker gets. Let’s take a nice close look at this: Jace, the Mind Sculptor. +2 :scry 0:Brainstorm -1:Unsummon -12: Win. No, not broken at all. Stoneforge Mystic by herself wasn’t remarkably terrible for the format, but after the printing of the swords and Batterskull, it quickly became evident that it wasn’t such a good idea to allow them all in Standard together. Jace and Misty were both banned from Standard shortly thereafter and remain banned in Modern.
lolHomelands:
Okay, before I start talking about this stand alone set, it was relatively early in Magic and its flavor is beyond reproach, but it’s playability was terrible. The thing that really pushed it over the edge was the inclusion of the rule in Type 2 (now known as Standard) that made players include at least 5 cards from Homelands in their decks during the Pro Tour. Proof? Mark Rosewater himself called Homelands the lowest point in MtG. In reality, Homelands showed a lot of potential in terms of how a set could be sculpted to tell a story and without it, it’s unlikely that we would’ve ever reached sets that are as highly touted as Ravnica or Zendikar, but, man, did it have some shitty cards. When you have to force your players to use cards from a set in competitive play, it usually means you did something very wrong.
Honorable mention goes to Fallen Empires. I know you’re all going, “Fluffy, what about that awesome black card that sees play in Legacy, you know, Hymn to Tourach? That set couldn’t be all that bad.” Okay, okay, seriously though, no one would actually ever say that. This set was so crappy that it usually warrants honors as the second worst set in Magic: the Gathering (Homelands being the first almost universaly). What went wrong you ask? Well, they created a very small set of crappy cards that was packed with multiple versions of a decent number of the previously mentioned crappy cards (want 3 different versions of Goblin Spy? You got it!) and then printed a metric tonne (see what I did there?) of it. Sounds like a recipe for failure if I ever heard one.
Sorry 'bout the punctuation issues folks. Transition error, not sloppiness by Fluffy.
February 6, 2014 10:06 p.m.
miracleHat says... #4
About affinity, you totally forgot about AEther Vial ! It actually took people about 2 weeks before AEther Vial was used. Also, you forgot to mention that Yawgmoth's Bargain is BANNED (!!!) from edh as well. still had some laughs and overall enjoyed the article.
February 6, 2014 10:24 p.m.
Ohthenoises says... #5
I like how Necropotence isn't banned in EDH but Yawgmoth's Bargain is.
February 6, 2014 10:27 p.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #6
@ Ohthenoises: I was running a Necrodeck, I have no idea what you're talking about :P
February 6, 2014 10:28 p.m.
miracleHat says... #7
the different between Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain is that with the bargain, you get the cards immediately. But yeah, both cards are stupid and shouldn't exist.
February 6, 2014 10:29 p.m.
also Necropotence limits your hand size to 7, as you have to discard 1/2 your hand or so after paying the life, unless you have heaps of instants. In addition, edh is a format where getting 6 mana is no issue.
February 7, 2014 12:12 a.m.
Gidgetimer says... #9
I don't mean to be picky but JTMS +2 is Fateseal, not Scry.
February 7, 2014 7:21 a.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #10
@ Gidgetimer: I just noticed that I put scry there.
February 7, 2014 7:24 a.m.
For EDH, the difference (for me) between Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain has to do with graveyard interaction.
If you have Yawgmoth's Bargain on the field, you could draw 1/3 of your deck, ditch it all to the graveyard, then reanimate whatever big fat fatty you want. In the right deck, it's a harder to remove Hermit Druid .
However, if you try the same thing with Necropotence , all those discarded cards get exiled. This prevents graveyard shenanigans.
February 7, 2014 9:46 a.m.
Yeah, in a format where the mana cost isn't nearly as relevant, Yawgmoth's Bargain is WAAYYYY better than Necropotence
February 7, 2014 12:36 p.m.
Ohthenoises says... #13
You guys are missing the point. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, I'm just saying that I like the fact that Necropotence isn't banned.
February 7, 2014 1:13 p.m.
Usually when people say "I like how X is banned, but Y isn't," it's usually a sign of sarcasm and an implication that both should be banned. Sorry :)
February 7, 2014 1:27 p.m.
gnarlicide says... #15
Lol. Combo winter. I was in 7th grade. I totally quit for one year when that happened.
February 7, 2014 10:57 p.m.
I feel like more people I know quit during Masques than quit during Saga.
February 8, 2014 2:05 a.m.
This is a decent article but you need to put FE/H into better perspective for the period. I started collecting in FE/Homelands, and what people don't understand is that when it was released very few people held the idea if type 2 in high regard at the time. Plus, the perspective of a new player was back at all if those awesome cards that were in legends, Arabian knights, antiquities, and the dark (never mind the power 9 et al from unlimited). So... Yiure a brand new player looking to jump into magic and all of those folks who jumped in 1-2 years earlier were packing the power 9, but you don't care because you know that wizards will give you the answers in those news eye coming out so you could compete against the best... And you got Dallen Empires and then Homelands. It would have been less insulting if they had taken your money, then handed you a bag filled with dog shit. At least that wAy you would have had something to throw at your opponent after they pounded your deck into dust.
Ok, autocorrect butcher this post but fuck it, my rant mat be less intelligible but it's probably more interesting. Fuck the iPhone.
February 8, 2014 9:33 p.m.
I think Glenn Danzig predicted Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargain 's existence back in '92 when he wrote Dirty Black Summer.
February 9, 2014 2:31 a.m.
Apoptosis isn't wrong, but at the same time, he didn't mention that chronicles and 4th edition were printed with the failure that Fallen Empires was, was in mind. They printed chronicles as a way to help the new players get their hands on those cards from the older expansions. 4th ed also included a lot of them. The over printing part is not the issue here, which is what led them to be a failure. Ice Ages printing, reprinted many cards in the core set, with 'fixes'. I always felt as if Ice Age was the printing the original core set power is what they expected/wanted. Homelands and Alliances continued that tradition.
Personally, I don't know if I like this article or not. Mostly I don't like it because it's a common topic and this one holds no real value in information to me, read new information, new insight, or provides a different perspective. At the same time I also feel that this topic is so over abused, the horse has decomposed. For some reason, when talking magic or what not, these items are always discussed. Making it a great conversation piece, which probably deserves to be in the general forum than as a featured article. Not trying to be negative but hopefully inspire the author through constructive criticism.
February 10, 2014 8:58 a.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #20
@ gufymike: Fair enough. The piece is kind of a fluff piece (see what I did there?) and was admittedly a bit rushed. It was meant to be amusing and to get something out there while I work on other things and hold onto things that I can't post yet. Honestly, I'm not sure I've seen this topic (maybe I need to pay better attention to the forums). I tried to stay away from the topics of worst cards, worst set, best one drop, etc. because those have been beaten to death with a shovel Reanimate d, shot and then turned into soilent green a million times already. I figured this would kind of be a new take on that sort of idea. Maybe the list inhabitants are familiar because they're all pretty egregious errors and almost always find themselves brought up in conversations regarding such topics.
If you've got a suggestion for a topic, Iet me know and I'll be happy to give it a shot.
February 10, 2014 9:35 a.m.
fluffybunnypants The main one on my mind, mulligans. Alt the same time there is a lack of information on sideboarding. Both of these are really meta-topics, which is what makes them hard, but I believe there is enough room to come up with a general purpose article that encompasses the basic ideas and provides some general guidelines to help new players understand them. Also talking about how to use the rules to your advantage and why it's important to have a strong grasp of the rules, not to mention spotlights on how to use specific rules.
February 10, 2014 9:43 a.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #22
The issue with doing an article on sideboarding is that it's heavily dependent on the meta you expect to be playing in. For instance, I play in a meta where Living End is something I expect to see every week, I run Silence in the side specifically for that matchup. The Mulligan can be a mathy subject and is deck dependent. I'll be happy to give it a go though.
February 10, 2014 9:50 a.m.
It doesn't matter if it's very meta. The fact is you can teach without giving people the specific examples they want. You can explain how you build yours because your meta has this and this in it and how the sideboards are constructed in tournament lists by the same wya.. Then explain how they need to learn their meta and with that information, find cards that help them play against it better. Teaching them how to find the cards. what kind of cards to look out for in that search.
I also disagree that it is DECK dependent. Which seems to be the consensual idea on this site. I think it is more ARCHETYPE dependent, if you look at how people discuss it, you can apply the rules to many different decks that play the same.
I had a hard time distinguishing between what I need and the information I found because I didn't think abstractly, but in specifics.
February 10, 2014 10:16 a.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #24
I would disagree, I probably misworded it, but mulliganing is entirely dependent on how your deck stacks up against the other person's, unless you're running combo, because there is so much possible variation in formats like Modern and Legacy. You can get away with sideboarding based off archetype in Standard sometimes but that's it.
Like I said,I'll give it a go.
February 10, 2014 10:50 a.m.
I did miss word myself, The mulligans are about archetype, not deck. The second paragraph of my previous post, the first is about sideboards. In mulligans, it is about looking for what to play, not specific cards. So a kill spell can mean anything from Detention Sphere to Path to Exile to Lightning Bolt to Dismember to Azorius Charm . 'Early plays' can be used instead of 't1 Tormented Hero into a t2 Madcap Skills '. these also work for 1 drop/2 drop.. 2-3 lands in aggro is 10-20% of the land in your deck is also good for 3-4 lands used in control with 22-25 lands (10-20%). I think if you mentally lock yourself into "I play this deck this way, carry this over to another deck is a bad idea because it's a different deck." is locking yourself into a rut. The goal is to realize how to further your game plan and how to prepare to compete. These are things I did and didn't do that makes me realize I'm bad at mulligans. .
OpenFire says... #1
nice article
February 6, 2014 9:30 p.m.