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Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Monastery Mentor is attracting quite a bit of attention already. I wouldn't be surprised to see big things from that little guy.
 
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Terentius

Guest
Is Dhagatar the first card that can move counters from one creature to another of a different controller?

And do you think they'll bring back Dragonstorm for this block?
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I touched on it a little bit in one of my articles. I forget exactly what I said there, but to elaborate here...

WotC introduced Storm in Scourge. Mind's Desire was broken and preemptively restricted in Vintage when WotC realized what it would do there. Tendrils of Agony was put into combo decks anyway, and created what was, at the time, the most broken deck in the game's history. So they restricted three more cards to stop that deck. Tendrils of Agony and Brain Freeze became popular kill conditions for combo decks (Tendrils being stronger, but Brain Freeze being useful in mono-blue decks), but those decks were usually not first tier tournament decks, except maybe in Extended when it had Mind's Desire anyway. None of the other storm cards were very popular, although things like Hunting Pack were great fun in casual play.

WotC brought back a bunch of mechanics in Time Spiral. This included Dragonstorm as a timeshifted card, but also included Enter the Warrens, Grapeshot, and Ignite Memories, all of which had more tournament success than the older storm cards except for Tendrils of Agony and Mind's Desire. The new storm cards gave Vintage and Legacy players some tools to work with and also made a big splash in Extended, and they even led to a good Standard deck, which really got WotC's attention. Nothing was banned as a result of this, and Dragonstorm wasn't even the best deck in the format, but it was flashy and got a lot of attention. But because Storm had temporarily taken over Vintage, and had produced competitive decks in Extended and Standard (and Legacy, although it was almost always second tier until Ad Nauseam was printed), and because when storm decks did go off, they tended to do so very explosively, the mechanic was seen as overpowered.

The last Storm card WotC printed was Flusterstorm, which uses the mechanic but is actually a hate card for use against Storm. Around this time, with Modern being a new format, they were careful to ban anything that would allow Storm to make for a strong deck, namely Ponder, Preordain, Rite of Flame, and Seething Song. Much of the community decided that Storm was inherently broken and Wizards of the Coast has deliberately reinforced this notion.

There's even the "Storm Scale." Mark Rosewater made a scale from 1 to Storm of how likely things are to be printed in future sets. Although actually, when he made a chart, he put "bands with others" at 11 and Storm at 10 alongside things like "Serra/Urza planeswalker card" and "auras that tap."

It's not hard to find players who are convinced that Storm is a broken mistake of the past. Of course, I don't see it that way. I really like Storm. What's frustrating about this "Storm is broken" mentality is that it flies in the face of the facts. Mind's Desire: yes, that was demonstrably broken. If it were unrestricted in Vintage, it would take over Vintage and if it were unbanned in Legacy, it would take over Legacy. But other than its initial reign of terror in Vintage, back when it was the deck best poised to exploit unrestricted Lion's Eye Diamond, Storm hasn't been a dominant mechanic in tournaments. It's had some good decks (and some mediocre ones), but they were generally outclassed by something else.

I think the heart of the matter is that a lot of people (including at WotC) believe that Storm is wrong, that it is a perversion, that Magic should be a game about summoning creatures and supporting them to defeat your opponents on the battlefield, so a deck that uses spells to play more spells and then uses those spells to play even more spells so that it can continue playing spells until it plays so many spells that it wins is practically the antithesis of what is right and proper in the game. To those people, it doesn't matter how well Storm decks actually compete: if they're competitive at all, that's an affront, because Storm isn't really playing Magic, but cheating at it somehow.
 
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Terentius

Guest
Yeah, I'm with you; what I got out of that is certain cards are broken with Storm, but not Storm itself. But I'm just a casual player.

Oversoul said:
Mark Rosewater made a scale from 1 to Storm of how likely things are to be printed in future sets. Although actually, when he made a chart, he put "bands with others" at 11 and Storm at 10 alongside things like "Serra/Urza planeswalker card" and "auras that tap."
So they're never going to bring back the planeswalkers from older sets? Super lame.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Yeah, I'm with you; what I got out of that is certain cards are broken with Storm, but not Storm itself. But I'm just a casual player.
I actually think that the haters are half right though. This isn't limited to Storm, but Storm is one pretty good example...

People have been attempting Storm decks in Legacy since the beginning of the format, and it's usually been a second tier strategy, but sometimes it's pretty good. Now, Delver decks have been dominating in Legacy far more than Storm ever did (Storm was around when the format was first created and Delver of Secrets wasn't printed until seven years later). If a Storm card were to do to the format what Delver of Secrets has, there would be massive outcry for a ban. And that isn't wrong. Delver of Secrets is a creature with no inherent means of protection. It's a very, very strong card (I'd call it broken), but all sorts of decks can deal with it. It can be blocked, killed, outraced, or countered. Storm decks are different. If a Storm deck is the top deck in a format, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem, but it's a very dangerous environment and if Storm is ahead by too much, many types of decks just aren't viable. Some extra caution is probably warranted in the case of a deck that, by its nature, can be harder to deal with.

So they're never going to bring back the planeswalkers from older sets? Super lame.
They did print planeswalker cards for two of the old planeswalkers: Teferi and Freyalise got planeswalker cards in Commander 2014. I don't know whether their stance on planeswalker cards for old planeswalkers has changed or what. Serra and Urza were brought up because they were two of the most iconic characters in the old sets, and neither one was actually printed as a card. I think Mark Rosewater got a lot of questions, especially after planeswalker cards became a thing, about Urza and/or Serra being printed as cards.
 
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