What do you think are the most broken Mechanics/keywords?
General forum
Posted on Aug. 24, 2015, 9:43 p.m. by CheeseBro
There are many broken abilities or keywords out there. we all know it. Now, what would your top 3 most broken abilites/keywords be?
Mine:
3rd: STORM: Storm is just plain OP. many storm cards are banned in some formats. as seen in storm combo decks, casting multiple spells in one turn can be very easy. abusing Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens is very easing, just winning you the game very fast.
2nd: ANNIHILATOR: No, i did not put this as the most broken ability. It is an extremely powerful ability, but all of the annihilator cards are very expensive to cast (the cheapest being 
with Ulamog's Crusher.) Not many decks can afford to cast cards that cost 8-15 mana. the only deck that can consistently do it is Tron, which without the right lands, doesnt work.
MOST BROKEN ABILITY: INFECT: Infect is just plain broken. it basically cuts your opponents life in half, and at not to much cost (Im looking at you Glistener Elf). yes, sometimes some infect cards are very expensive for their power and toughness (Phyrexian Digester), but the good cards like Glistener Elf and Blighted Agent can easily be abused with buff spells such as Might of Old Krosa or Groundswell. Also, giving your opponents creatures -1/-1 counters instead of damage is just broken when combined with the poison counters. then proliferate was made to support it (like it needed any). Why did wizards make infect? nobody knows! but what we do know is that they do not want to print for infect cards because of their statement denying to print infect cards in Modern Master 2015. I am glad. I play against many friends with infect decks, and though i can usually win, it is a hard pressed game. say i am at poison, and i can swing for the game next turn. my opponents has nothing but a glistener elf, then topdecks a Vines of Vastwood and kills me. infect can do that kind of thing! Please wizards please. make infect go away!!!
Discuss!
I like infect and this is why.
I compare the impact of infect to the impact of Slivers a decade or so ago.
Infect was a kind of equalizer for poor mtg players to have suddenly a chance against experienced players. Slivers did the opposite. To play slivers required multiple multiple colors and that meant investing way more in your landbase at a time where mono and dual colored decks were the norm (such that"just basics" was basically "just fine" - except not any more).
In the end, both became eclipsed in power level by the ever inflating power curve of mtg.
August 24, 2015 9:53 p.m.
Man i wish they would bring banding back. One banding dude on defense letting me distribute the damage? fantastic. i multi-block and none of my stuff dies.
Infect doesn't bother me as much because in general I can run faster than them; proliferate sucks, but you can't proliferate nothing. That being said, Ichor Rats are a thing.Most broken keyword? Annihilator imo. Tron can hard cast them, but there are a ton of decks that can reanimate or Quicksilver Amulet-type effects to cheat it in. It's about as fun as turn one, Swamp, Entomb....turn two, Swamp, Animate Dead my Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.
August 24, 2015 9:58 p.m.
...Dredge should be on this list. Infect should definitely not be on this list. Maybe Annihilator, as well. Maybe absorb?
August 24, 2015 10:04 p.m. Edited.
FAMOUSWATERMELON says... #8
If we're talking about straight up power, Annihilator is first. Dredge, Storm, Infect, and others are all very solid abilities, but they don't even come close to destroying an entire board. Protection is pretty sweet as well.
abdulbaqr, that doesn't work since Ulamog auto-shuffles.
And CheeseBro, the arguments you make against Storm and Annihilator (you can only play them in X deck) apply to Infect too. You can't just throw a Glistener Elf into a build.
August 24, 2015 10:41 p.m. Edited.
AngryKitten says... #9
FAMOUSWATERMELON, he just forgot to mention he had a Leyline of Anticipation in his opening hand.
I honestly think landfall is pretty broken. A trigger that can happen in any deck from ~33% of the cards....seems good.
August 24, 2015 11:05 p.m. Edited.
I think that Protection has got to be one of the most insane abilities ever. Commander Eesha is a crazy good card - playing a monoblack deck with White Knight is basically an autowin.
August 24, 2015 11:30 p.m.
Annihilator is the most powerful to me and I'd also include Phyrexian Obliterator's forced sac, just such a powerful card with its only drawback being that it's very hard to include in anything other than mono black.
While it may not be a game winner, mill is hard to handle if you can't interact with your own graveyard and now they are coming out with ingest or xill as I've seen it called.. should be interesting.
August 24, 2015 11:40 p.m. Edited.
@FAMOUSWATERMELON you are correct. My first thought on that was over the weekend whena buddy dropped Iona, Shield of Emeria on me turn two (i was playing a mono-color deck). So it doesn't work for big eldrazi, but even with a Annihilator 2, on turn two, you are toast.
August 25, 2015 12:04 a.m.
Nothing is more broken than Storm. The only other mechanic even in the ballpark of Storm is Dredge. There's a reason Mark Rosewater has the Storm Scale.
August 25, 2015 12:46 a.m.
Unforgivn_II says... #14
Cascade? The value of cascade is so busted that they had to put it on bad cards, and even still Bloodbraid Elf was banned from Modern. Shardless Agent used to run Legacy (he may still, but I don't follow it closely)
I'm not saying its the most broken. But I think it's in the top 3 with Storm and Annihilator. Delve and Dredge are 4th and 5th
August 25, 2015 2:31 a.m. Edited.
Top 3 only?
1/ Storm - by far the least interactive way to win any game, it is a plague on any format it is in. The biggest problem with it is the cards you use to find your win condition actually are part of the win condition, facilitating deckbuilding a bit too much.
2/ Dredge - continuing on non-interactive decks, this is the bane of Vintage. You cannot even Stifle dredge, let alone Counterspell it. Incredibly uninteractive and powerful, but thankfully not very broken, just because matches are 2 out 3 games and there are sideboards. Just because of Bazaar of Baghdad, even Dredge Vintage decks dedicate more than half their SB to Dredge Hate.
2.5/ A sheer drop in power level to number 3.
3/ Affinity - god, I wish they made affinity for enchantments for Theros. Block would have been bonkers, sorry, misspelled broken. Reducing the costs of spells is always dangerous, but when you combine it with lands that give that ability, then your Standard looks like a tree after a car crashed into it. Development and probably even design errors are glaring in this mechanic.
A special note on infect:
it is far from broken, just because you have to severely limit your deck building - this is its greatest cost that nobody realizes (who does not play infect).
Saying it slashes the opponents life total in half is true, just as much as saying that when you play burn, you need no more than 7 non-land cards.
Granting Wither to infect also actually made infect viable - chumping is no longer an enticing option and as the infect player, you need to already need to pump your Glistener Elf before it can kill an effing Squire, which is terrible.
Not printing infect cards in MM2015 means absolutely nothing other than they do not want to put that into MM2015 limited.
Proliferate gives you the control Infect deck, Might of Old Krosa gives you the Combo deck; options are never bad.
Infect is very likely to return, given it has been placed fairly low (3 or 4) on the storm scale. So it is more of question when, rather than if :)
August 25, 2015 3:11 a.m.
Shadow and/or horsemanship.
Anyone that brings a deck revolving around those to the table should stop breathing my oxygen.
August 25, 2015 9:46 a.m.
Didgeridooda says... #19
Infect is a casual player's nightmare. It gets easier to deal with as the strength of your deck, and understanding of how infect decks play, grows.
August 25, 2015 2:16 p.m.
I got to be honest, I think Ante was pretty broken. To have the possibility of stealing people's cards after winning would be pretty devastating. If you happen to ante any of the Power 9 cards, you would lose your life savings.
August 29, 2015 8:27 p.m.
Unforgivn_II says... #21
The only time Ante was ever legal was when the P9 were still in print. So, very little demand from a low amount of players, and moderate supply. By the time we had Revised, Ante was gone, as were the P9.
August 30, 2015 4:32 a.m.
@SirFowler: They kind of overcompensated for that too. Contract from Below is arguably the strongest card in MtG (better than Black Lotus even!), just as an example.
Then there's the whole "Remove this card from the game if you're not playing for ante," which allows you to play with a deck that's under 60 cards.
Coinman1863 says... #2
For me the most broken keyword is banding. Not because it is OP but because it makes no sense/nearly unintelligible even to the most experienced players. Yay for dropping unusable abilities.
August 24, 2015 9:46 p.m.