10 Awesome Magic Cards I'm Thankful Are Banned

[Slycne]

10 Awesome Magic Cards I'm Thankful Are Banned

A few awesome Magic cards we can be thankful are banned.

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[Thunderous Cacophony]

Just as a note, the thumbnail on the main page titled correctly, but shows the Intermission logo and presents from this week's column.

 

[laggyteabag]

Reading these card descriptions makes me thankful as to how simple Hearthstone is.

 

[Something Amyss]

Having not played the full game in years, my first encounter with the Eldrazi was one of the Magic DotP decks. When I found out about that 15/15 I'm not even going to attempt spelling, I think I choked.

Ancestral Recall is even worse when you consider the set it was a part of: Lightning Bolt, Healing Salve, Giant Growth, and Dark Ritual all gave you three of something within the theme of their colour (black is kind of weird, comparatively). So those four are all pretty neat, until you compare 'em to the fifth one. Though Lightning Bolt was pulled for a while, and I think Dark Ritual was, too. I started playing at the tail end of Unlimited, and hooooleeee crap were things unbalanced in general. I used to play against decks with the Moxes and Black Lotus (not to mention cards like Ancestral Recall), and they didn't guarantee a win but they did stack the deck.

Stoneforge is another one I've only seen in DotP, and I can only imagine how freaking broken it is now.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Out of those 9 cards I've got 6 of them. Some may be later incarnations or different but similar cards.
I stopped playing years ago, so my latest cards are one or two sets after invasion.

I never played in specific formats so when we played we used a mix of all the cards we had.

MTG is still going strong after all these years, heh.

 

[Michael Tabbut]

Huh. I actually had Umezawa's Jitte for a time when I first started playing. Didn't think much about it until now. Wish I didn't get rid of that card.

captcha: Join the millions, NEVER!

 

[Furbyz]

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.

 

[Vigormortis]

I'm actually glad Skullclamp was banned in most formats.

In the right kind of aggro deck it was damn near an Ancestral Recall. And not even just a proactive one. You could slap it on your best critter and you left your opponent with the awkward choice of "leave the beasty in play or give it's controller a two card advantage".

I love the hell out of the card, but damn was it a balance tipper.

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?

Yep. You could have several sub-games going. A Magic-ception, if you will.

And worse still, you could do it for more than four instances at a time. If you used Burning Wish you could tutor up another Shahrazad from your collection or even from one of the other "upper-level" games that preceded the current sub-game.

Hypothetically, you could whittle the decks down through sub-games until each player's hand and library had too few cards to count as a playable state.

 

[Furbyz]

I'm actually glad Skullclamp was banned in most formats.

In the right kind of aggro deck it was damn near an Ancestral Recall. And not even just a proactive one. You could slap it on your best critter and you left your opponent with the awkward choice of "leave the beasty in play or give it's controller a two card advantage".

I love the hell out of the card, but damn was it a balance tipper.

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?

Yep. You could have several sub-games going. A Magic-ception, if you will.

And worse still, you could do it for more than four instances at a time. If you used Burning Wish you could tutor up another Shahrazad from your collection or even from one of the other "upper-level" games that preceded the current sub-game.

Hypothetically, you could whittle the decks down through sub-games until each player's hand and library had too few cards to count as a playable state.

That sounds completely terrible. I mean, I'll happily play 3-4 games of magic at a time, but 3-4 just to finish one actual game? No thank you.

 

[Vigormortis]

That sounds completely terrible. I mean, I'll happily play 3-4 games of magic at a time, but 3-4 just to finish one actual game? No thank you.

Oh, it is. It is horrible.

I knew someone who brought a deck built around Shahrazad and Wishes to a friendly, FFA multi-player game.

Nobody wanted to play with him by the end of the night.

 

[DeimosMasque]

I literally used to have a Memory Jar card, my friends let me play it in casual but no tourney's obviously.

But man I wish I had a Tinker for my old school Phyrexian Deck (before the Phyrexian expansion came out and made Phyrexian decks easier)

 

[RaikuFA]

They sort of remade Tinker in the form of a legendary. Muzzio is just greatness with the right cards.

 

[Torque2100]

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

 

[MrDumpkins]

Some cool history behind Memory jar and Tinker:

The reason the card was emergency banned was because of previous mechanics and cards that could generate a lot of mana, having a draw 7 and a search tool to get it meant it was statistically unlikely that you could NOT win the game by turn 2. Magic had a lot of interactivity problems in its early days.

 

[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.

 

[Rack]

One of the things that endlessly amuses me about Android Netrunner is that Diesel is a common card in the basic set that does the same thing as Ancestral Recall except for 0 cost and yet it's perfectly balanced.

 

[Cowabungaa]

From what I got about the rules you can't use stuff like Oblivion Ring and Venser, Shaper Savant against Emrakul because they're all coloured spells who target. From what I got during play, "protection from coloured spells" means you simply can't touch the damn thing with any coloured spell that targets something. And that means you can only get rid of the bloody thing by doing something that doesn't target, like a Mutilate or some other kind of WoG. And that just makes me even more glad Emrakul is banned.

 

[zerragonoss]

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.

From what I got about the rules you can't use stuff like Oblivion Ring and Venser, Shaper Savant against Emrakul because they're all coloured spells who target. From what I got during play, "protection from coloured spells" means you simply can't touch the damn thing with any coloured spell that targets something. And that means you can only get rid of the bloody thing by doing something that doesn't target, like a Mutilate or some other kind of WoG. And that just makes me even more glad Emrakul is banned.

They are only "spells" when they are on the stack, in play the are permanents which does allow them to target Emrakul.

 

[Cowabungaa]

They are only "spells" when they are on the stack, in play the are permanents which does allow them to target Emrakul.

That makes the fucker at least a little less scary, as I usually have enough exile nonsense available, or at least destruction stuff. Though I bet that any deck that would run that bozo (friend of mine just ignores the ban for instance, never played against her though) would just tutor him out of their deck and go hogwild again.

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.

Can't deny the game being at least in part being pay-to-win though. Sure, there's still a ton of luck and all that involved, but when I go against, say, a Bant or Trostani Commander deck that runs stuff like Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Elesh Norn and Craterhoof Behemoth I just know shit is going to get down.

 

[Slycne]

From what I got about the rules you can't use stuff like Oblivion Ring and Venser, Shaper Savant against Emrakul because they're all coloured spells who target. From what I got during play, "protection from coloured spells" means you simply can't touch the damn thing with any coloured spell that targets something. And that means you can only get rid of the bloody thing by doing something that doesn't target, like a Mutilate or some other kind of WoG. And that just makes me even more glad Emrakul is banned.

[mtg_card=Oblivion Ring] works because because it gets around the protection from colored spells. While it's easy to think that it's the [mtg_card=Oblivion Ring] that's getting rid of their card as it enters play it's actually an ability that triggers when it enters the battlefield. Because it's an ability not a spell it can legally choose Emrakul as a target.

As for Venser, Emrakul doesn't have it's protection from colored spell on the stack and it only can't be countered. So you could force it back to hand, granted they still get to have the extra turn for casting it.

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.

I would respectfully disagree. Playing the best deck is important for competitive play, but it're more about giving yourself the best tools and chances to win.