Ban List Disccusion
General forum
Posted on April 23, 2014, 12:50 p.m. by gufymike
tl;dr it's a rant... read on if you want.
I'm tired of the crappy speculating on it, personally. Every time a deck gets 15% of the meta, someone is "Oh We need to ban this it has too much of the meta". PLEASE STOP IT. The conversation is pointless and useless, because at the end of the day, that's not enough. Jund was around 75% of the meta when they banned things because of that. When you go to "Oh, but these 3 decks make up 50% of the meta, lets ban them" You're now just whining.
If you want to have a proper discussion on the ban list, please, stop naming decks and bring CARDS that are problems, that are just broken. and impossible to deal with. Regardless of the deck they are in, they are just powerful on their own.
/rant
Servo_Token says... #3
Ban DRS - Yes. This card dominates on its own rights.
Ban Gray Merchant in standard - No. This is a combo piece, in essence, that is really shit on its own. Sure, it helps the deck that its in, but it isn't good enough outside of that deck to even be considered.
Ban Birthing Pod - It's debatable. This card has a lot of potential, and only gets better as more cards are printed. However, it's also a pretty beatable combo piece. If you really wanted this deck to go away, I would whine about banning melira.
I agree that the whining needs to stop. "Oh no! I can plan on playing certain decks at this tournament!" Is pretty much all I hear out of these.
April 23, 2014 1:02 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #4
I see a lot of banlist discussions that are just asinine and opinionated. A large part of the problem is that some people post without understanding how the game actually works. Sometimes they're bitter about losing to a certain deck. Other times they're mad about netdeckers. Very rarely does a banlist discussion begin with a well-rounded argument that accounts for the entirety of the meta and the place of the given card(s) within it. There are so many critical factors that influence ban decisions, yet they seem to fly over many peoples' heads.
April 23, 2014 1:07 p.m.
Epochalyptik says... #5
And beyond that, what happens as a result of the proposed ban? People like to suggest banning card X or killing deck Y, but they stop there and don't anticipate how the meta will change in the wake of the ban.
April 23, 2014 1:09 p.m.
miracleHat says... #6
I don't care what wizards does and doesn't ban. If they feel the need to ban Deathrite Shaman , then go ahead. And anyways, if you keep losing to one specific deck, then just edit your sideboard to contain more answers to said deck. And I agree with banning standard /rant before it begins.
April 23, 2014 1:16 p.m.
mathimus55 says... #7
Why don't we ban ban-listing things? Then nobody would feel left out!
But seriously, people need to see the ripples/waves that would happen from banning even 1 card. It's all give and take, jund loses something, zoo gets something. Storm wins one thing, pod gets something else. I think wizards has done a fine job at regulating everything and making new sets with nonstandard formats in mind. Could it be better? Sure. But at least they're keeping an eye on it and trying to make just enough changes to keep it fresh without effecting the level of play or the secondary market too much.
April 23, 2014 1:33 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #8
There's never going to be a happy medium when it comes to the banlist. People are either going to feel oppressed or they're going to feel ignored. In the end, our fault is feeling we have any control over what someone else does, and instead we should be worrying about how we can adapt to the meta we're in.
The biggest unfortunate thing is some archetypes are simply dead in the water because of certain cards. Try playing a graveyard deck in a Deathrite Shaman dominated world and see how that goes. Graveyard based decks are strong though, so they should be policed...but when they're too strongly policed it eliminates a whole archetype from viability. This is the balance the DCI has to achieve, and they're working on it.
As far as the current state of whining...people will whine, we can't do anything about it. It reminds me of a visit to a hospital...somebody had scribbled on a whiteboard next to Triage;
"The squeaky wheel gets removed."
April 23, 2014 1:46 p.m.
Ohthenoises says... #9
"Embrace the suck" - My drill SGT in AIT. SFC Hernandez.
Seriously, people need to quit bitching and start brewing. Honestly, broken stuff gets the ban hammer. That simple. If you don't think that DRS fell into that category, too bad. He did. Like MindAblaze! said "but when they're too strongly policed it eliminates a whole archetype from viability" There's enough Grave hate out there, deal with it.
April 23, 2014 1:58 p.m.
Since magic was first played people have complained about banned cards. One of the first cards I remember being banned was Chaos Orb , then later Mind Twist . Sometimes I agree, most of the times I haven't. Personally, I dislike banning and only see it as appropriate if a printed card is so powerful it leads to the collapse (or near collapse) of an entire format irrespective of the efforts of other player to deal with the threat that a particular card. Personally, I don't see Deathrite Shaman in that category. Yes, it has powerful abilities for a one drop, but that's contained in a small creatures body, which means it's inherently fragile. Ok, admittedly I don't play modern, but that doesn't really matter. Decks should be able to adapt to Deathrite Shaman . As someone who likes to play control in standard do I like getting hit with Thoughtseize ? Not really. But you adapt or play something else that is more competitive. Formats and deck archetypes should be constantly evolving and changing to adapt to new cards that are introduced to that format. That's my $0.02 and all I have to say about that...
April 23, 2014 2:08 p.m.
NobodyPicksBulbasaur says... #11
Banning cards that ruin formats is fine with me, to a certain extent. Sometimes it needs to be done. But there is a downside. People will always kick and scream that a certain card or deck should be banned, but they never consider the consequences to the players. Not to the metagame. The players.
Magic decks cost money. In most cases, they cost at least several hundred dollars. When Jund was the big deck in Modern, it contained Liliana of the Veil ($70), Dark Confidant ($70) and Tarmogoyf ($all of them). The point is: Jund cost a lot of dollars to put together. As soon as Deathrite Shaman becamed banned, however, Jund stopped being a top-tier deck. Since the banning, Jund hasn't done a damn thing in any relevant tournament. The deck is dead.
So what happens to the players who invested in the deck? Are we supposed to tell them to just suck it up and make a new $1000 deck? I don't have that many $1000's to waste, and I don't know anybody who does. Sure, they still have a pile of Lilis and Goyfs, but cards are only useful if they're in decks, and that home just got smashed.
tl:dr: Getting all butthurt and calling for a banning is ignorant. The effects of banning even a single card can be debilitating for players who only have one deck to play.
Blakkhand says... #2
Standard decks make up 100% of the standard meta! Maybe if we banned standard the meta would become more balanced.
April 23, 2014 12:54 p.m.