10 Awesome Magic Cards I'm Thankful Are Banned

[eBusiness]

I stopped playing Magic around 15 years ago, and this article reminded me why.

Yeah, wallet always beat skill. It doesn't matter how many cards they ban, others just become the winning cards. The worst part is that top level play doesn't even seem very fun, a single overpowered card can win the game, the game is pretty much reduced to playing overpowered cards until you hit one your opponent can't counter or destroy.

Not actually true in the slightest. You have pros with win rates approaching 80% in premier tournaments where 90%+ of the contestants have all the cards they could want for their deck.

Of course there is skill in the game, but if you compare it to most other games, 80% is actually quite a low number for pros playing against a scrambled collection of mostly mid to high end hobbyists.

The average high level game is simply too short for skill to matter more than it does, in large part because the cards are so powerful.

 

[Scow2]

I stopped playing Magic around 15 years ago, and this article reminded me why.

Yeah, wallet always beat skill. It doesn't matter how many cards they ban, others just become the winning cards. The worst part is that top level play doesn't even seem very fun, a single overpowered card can win the game, the game is pretty much reduced to playing overpowered cards until you hit one your opponent can't counter or destroy.

Not actually true in the slightest. You have pros with win rates approaching 80% in premier tournaments where 90%+ of the contestants have all the cards they could want for their deck.

Of course there is skill in the game, but if you compare it to most other games, 80% is actually quite a low number for pros playing against a scrambled collection of mostly mid to high end hobbyists.

The average high level game is simply too short for skill to matter more than it does, in large part because the cards are so powerful.

The 'skill' comes into recognizing the power of the cards, and in building your deck to ensure you can get them out. The game begins with building the deck, not with sitting down against the opponent.

 

[Slycne]

Yeah, wallet always beat skill.

The 'skill' comes into recognizing the power of the cards, and in building your deck to ensure you can get them out. The game begins with building the deck, not with sitting down against the opponent.

Agreed. And to give a recent example, one of the decks doing well in Standard right now is UW Heroic. This isn't some flash in the pan list either or a streak of luck, it's routinely Top 8-ing large events, including a GP over the weekend. The deck does well because it's designed to prey on the slow green decks and expensive, but powerful, removal that's popular.

Except for the lands, the most expensive cards in the deck are the $2-3 [mtg_card=Hero of Iroas]. You can easily build the whole deck for less than $80-90. That's several times less than some of the other popular decks like Abzan Midrange, the recent Pro Tour winning deck.

 

[Joseph Hutzulak]

Going to have to disagree with this list by a lot:

Ancestral Recall is super effecient and expensive(Dollar Wise), but in itself doesnt lead to any degeneracy , to use ancedotal evidence as an example in the MTGO Vintage League and LSV was playing a U/R delver deck, the delver player resolved a Recall and Misdirected LSV's recall and LSV still won off of Yawgmoths Will. Id lump Recall and Black Lotus as both very powerful but what makes them broken is other "degenerate" cards.

Id put Yawgmoths Will and Oath of Druids above them in unhealthy for the format cards since both of those cards even as singletons make fair decks unplayable.

Emrakul being banned in Commander highlights how confused the format is, is it a casual format? Then why have a banned list? If its worried about tournament play then its not a "casual format" and Emrakul wasnt one of the dominating commanders.

Jace and Stoneforge were both legal in standard for a full cycle before they became an issue, BBE kept them in check. They had to be banned because standard has become less stable since the FFL was created, and the format was underpowered in comparison to Caw-Blade.

I dont know how you can say Memory Jar because it never got to see the light of day, how about necropotence which led to the infamous Black Summer and was reprinted in a core set even after it proved to be degenerate.

Shazarad, I mean how often was this card ever used, yet Sensei's Diving Top/Counterbalance are legal.

I do agree with Tinker though.

 

[Slycne]

snip

Keep in mind this list isn't about ranking the objectively most powerful cards. It's just a few cards that I thought were interesting to highlight for various reasons.

Ancestral Recall is super effecient and expensive(Dollar Wise), but in itself doesnt lead to any degeneracy , to use ancedotal evidence as an example in the MTGO Vintage League and LSV was playing a U/R delver deck, the delver player resolved a Recall and Misdirected LSV's recall and LSV still won off of Yawgmoths Will. Id lump Recall and Black Lotus as both very powerful but what makes them broken is other "degenerate" cards.

Agreed, I even said as much when talking about some of them. Many of the banned cards are banned because of their ability to generate fast mana, tutor, and/or cheat other powerful cards into play.

Emrakul being banned in Commander highlights how confused the format is, is it a casual format? Then why have a banned list? If its worried about tournament play then its not a "casual format" and Emrakul wasnt one of the dominating commanders.

Heh, the duplicity of the Commander format is an article all by itself - in some ways it's the formats greatest strength and weakness. Short answer, I view the Commander banned list as a helpful suggestion from the group that maintains it in an effort to reach a common ground environment where a diverse number of players can have enjoyable games.

I dont know how you can say Memory Jar because it never got to see the light of day, how about necropotence which led to the infamous Black Summer and was reprinted in a core set even after it proved to be degenerate.

As mentioned, I brought up [mtg_card=Memory Jar] because it was banned before seeing the light of day.

Shazarad, I mean how often was this card ever used, yet Sensei's Diving Top/Counterbalance are legal.

Not a ton of complaints there, at least with [mtg_card=Shazarad] you can simply concede out of the secondary game and just take the life loss.

 

[Vuliev]

As mentioned, I brought up [mtg_card=Memory Jar] because it was banned before seeing the light of day.

I think you should make that a little clearer in the article itself, because absent that qualifying statement, it's not the only card that's received an emergency ban:

916.10 [http://crystalkeep.com/magic/rules/summaries/indexes/rule-general-916.php#916.10] - Some cards are 'banned' (see Rule 910.4) for the Mirrodin/Darksteel/Fifth Dawn format. These cards are: [Update 2006/03/01]
AEther Vial, Disciple of the Vault, Skullclamp, Ancient Den, Great Furnace, Tree of Tales, Arcbound Ravager, Seat of the Synod, Vault of Whispers, Darksteel Citadel.

Those nine (Skullclamp in particular) were emergency banned shortly after Mirrodin rotated into Standard because they were what made Ravager into the "use-it-or-get-stomped" deck that it was.

Otherwise, solid article!

 

[cleric of the order]

Wait...if you stacked your deck with 4 Shahrazads, could you end up playing it within the subgame of magic, creating a sub-sub-game? How deep does that card go?

The first deck I ever played with used Stoneforge mystic to great effect, but that was commander, so it wasn't so overpowered.

Throw in enter the dungeon and shove them on isocron scepters/panopitic mirrors.
Duplicate them, copy them and watch has your opponent surrenders in annoyance

 

[Netface]

You can't put Shahrazad on an Isochron Scepter. It's a Sorcery.