Necropotence

D

Duel

Guest
Okay, maybe it's just me, but I have had several bad experiences from this card. Not playing against it, though. Talknig about it. You see, I LIKE necropotence.

Yes, I know wizards is famous for refusing to ban it, but that's not what I mean. I mean that Necropotence is blamed for trix, and now people are claiming that necropotence is broken, when it's only mildly bent. I've talked to too many people screaming for the banning of that card (Yes, let's castrate black even further than the dark ritual episode did!) the only 3 people I know who agree with me are an online frind of mine, my friend Ari, and Zadok (Who was mentioning that brainstorm should be banned).

So let's hear it:
Necropotence, black's savior or One-trix pony?
 
D

Deadman

Guest
Hmmm
I'd say neither.
Necropotence has never had that much of an impact in our local tourney's.
In our local tourney's, we vote on what we ban, restrict or leave alone.
Necropotence AND Dark Ritual are both left alone.
A Necropotence deck CAN be really scary to face at times, but so can most decks.
Necropotence is not too powerful, (according to local opinion) but has enough power to retain popularity in our games.
Therefore, I'd say it's neither Black's savior OR a one trix pony.
 
L

Landkiller

Guest
Quite simply, there are some cards that are just clearly broken.

Necropotence is one. It needs to go. It doesn't matter how you balance it out. It is just abusable. Seven or more extra cards at the price of three mana. It's broken beyond belief.

Now, Necropotence is broken, but, on it's own, it's damaging to play.
First, it seems to require mono black to achieve the mana. This is simply taken of with multi-lands, in most cases, and often Necropotence would be the heart of an aggressive mid-game strategy.
Second, it is vulnerable to enchantment destruction and countermagic.
Early Discard like Hymn can help here.
So, the traditional Necro-decks are good, but not broke as all hell.

But once too many cards entered the environment, it was bound to happen. Necro was abused. Easy life gain, 20 for four mana. That's good. But you lose it all in a turn or two. That's bad. So, there's a couple ways to do this...You could do some mad crazy Carnivorous Bloom or Stirge Familiar action, converting
life=cards=mana=drain life=cards=mana=drain life=win

That's probably the kind of deck I'd make out of this. But there was a simpler way. Donate the problem. Win next turn except versus Blue mana.
Now, the issue is, Necropotence is broken. The deck produces turn three kills. On average. Say they ban Necropotence. The combo is still there. Another drawing engine is required, but it could be done. I'm not sure a Illusion-Donate without Necro is gonna be competitive, but a controllish version, or a Replenish Version is possible.

So, another option : Ban Illusions of Grandeur. What happens now? Well, Illusions of Mediocrity does not a deck make. No upkeep means it's not an option. I'm not sure it would ever work, but if you really wanted, Donate-Forbidden Crypt is a combo deck. A version I constructed could average fifth turn kills. I'm sure a pro could improve on it. Although it really has a defiecency compared to Illusions, because twenty life gain is no joke. Generally, this is the best option in my opinion. Illusions of Grandeur was never played for itself. It was always Donate fodder.

The third option : Ban supporting cards. This could have been anything. Mana Vault, Ritual were the targets, but Demonic Consultation could have been a victim too. Now, the way I see it, Mana Vault was one of the most powerful cards ever, and should have gone the way of the Mox anyway. But Ritual, for a long time, in my eyes and I'm sure of others as well, WAS black. You simply did not play black without ritual. Broken ritual draws were part of the fun. I think that ritual IS too good. They shouldn't reprint it again. But they need to replace it with a strong replacement. A ritual with a compromise in some way. But the absence of a decent black in extended except for Trix, is the fault of Trix. The Trix archetype wasn't hurt enough, anyway. People still have to sideboard against it, and it is still quite strong. Combo decks, should, in my opinion, be the most dangerous decks to play. Difficult to survive beat-down, and easy for control to dissassemble, combo can only survive because of search cards. I think, to ban all search cards would end combo. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I don't know. But if Wizards hates combo, which I think is true, Wizards needs to get rid of searchers. Tutors, Consult, etc. More expensive searchers are actually okay. But it was the combination of speed mana and searchers that makes combo too powerful, and the actual combo is less relevant than the existence of combo support.









The question is : What is more damaging to an environment? The engine or the fuel? Necropotence or Ritual?
 
U

Ura

Guest
Necro has always been broken.
Right from black summer to its current home in trix. Its the engine behind the combo now where as before it was just the engine. It gives you a crap load of options really fast and for combo decks thats crippling for the opponent.
Sure, the old fashion necro decks don't stand up as well as they used to and are huge victims for WW, but when a total environment in one season is dominated by them then you have to ask if its just coincidence or cause it really is powerful.
I think taking out dark ritual was a bad idea because it didn't stop the deck, just slowed it down a tiny bit. Take out necro and the deck is crippled partially, still workable yes, but as effective, no.
 
A

Apollo

Guest
Necro is broken, for the reasons that everyone else has stated already. IMHO, they should bring back Ritual and nix Necro.

Necro isn't a "one-trix" pony, like someone else said. It fits in Trix, Cocoa Pebbles, Donate-Crypt, etc. In each incarnation, it fuels a combo deck. When 3 very different combo decks can be built around the same card, it's a definite sign the card should go. And there are probably even more plausible combo decks you could make around the engine.
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Necro is broken. I don't care if it seems like a balanced card - it ISN'T. You pay life (an expendable, and easily replaceable resource), and you draw an equivalent number of cards. For three mana. Over and over and over. That's abusive! Sorry, no other way about it.
 
C

Cateran Emperor

Guest
Speaking from a black Mage's perspective, of course I'm gonna say it's not broken. You've already taken away our Ritual, you take away Necro too....and I'm gonna stop playing Extended.

Trix is an idiotic deck. No two ways about it. But I will never forgive the DCI if they ban poor Necro. If you've ever played with it, you can see the power, yet also the risk. Against certain decks (RED), Necro can be more harm then help. It's all based on situation.

Bargain was broken (as the entire deck showed), Necro is not.
 
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Zadok001

Guest
Necro is broken. But it shouldn't be banned. Doing so would destroy black completely, and reduce Extended to a four color environment (three, if you consider how bad White is once Trix leaves).

Let's assume, shall we?

We know Trix is broken. We know it has to go. We cannot ban Necro. And Ritual is already gone. We also want to balance Blue a little bit (look at GP results, and tell me blue ain't broke). We could ban Force of Will. That would annihilate Blue, and probably Trix in the process. But it would also weaken blue, possibly to the point of unplayability.

So, ban something else. My vote? Ban the search engines. There are two choices: Ban Consultation/Tutor, or ban Brainstorm. I know it doesn't seem like a big effect, but banning Brainstorm _would_ hurt or kill Trix (it makes it dangerously vulnerable to Duress and Force of Will, as well as removing some search), and it would possibly damage Blue just enough to give some power back to everyone else. I'd like to find a card, other than FoW, that could be banned to damage TS and Trix badly enough to take them out of the game, and Brainstorm seems as close as I could get. FoW is an option, but I believe it would neuter Blue just a bit too much. Anything else?
 
D

Duel

Guest
How about seperate bans. Let's look at the environment:

1: Card engines (trix, ts, oath)
2: speed (stompy, sligh)
3: aggro-control (Sliver and, uh, um....)

and card engines involved are:
Necropotence, Survival of the fittest, and Oath of druids, respectively.
since Card engines are clearly the style to worry about, it makes sense to ban the cards that the 3 biggest decks have in common.

1. Force of Will. ALL decks but stompy and sligh play with that. It's obviously a great card.

2. Brainstorm. Used as an anti-duress, this card is in 2 of the top 3, and the biggest offenders, Trix and TS. problem? It wouldn't ruin trix, nor TS, just allow countersliver to win more often.


once we have decided not to ban those (And I hope niether are banned) we must decid whether we want to ban engine, or fuel:

Survival of the fittest: Used in Rec-sur, SGD, and many, many decks. too versatile to ban.

Necropotence: Used in EVERY serious black deck. Not gonna ban this baby, I'm WOTC incarnate.

so we ban fuel:
Tradewind rider: Sure, only.... why?
Illusions of grandeur: Aha! Why not? No other deck uses it. Rid the environment of a messy, stinky combo deck.
Donate: A less severe alternative. with illusions, a dark tide deck could, theoretically, still run. but not likely.

Okay, so illusions or donate would do the trick, or at least do in trix. So why aren't they banned?
Simple:
WOTC doesn't like to ban decks. They don't like to say "Don't play _____ any more." they want every deck to be viable.
So, how do you stop these decks: remove fuel. Do to mox diamond what you did to lotus petal. Eliminate FOW (though that helps trix a little, but not much). Make trix weak enough that a nonblue deck CAN win against it. As it is, it becomes "Counter or die" see?
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
with Duel about Illusions is probably the problem card and that it won't go also because of the reasons he stated: that WOTC doesn't like to neuter decks if they don't have to.

But it also seems to me that using Illusions in Trix is not what the intent behind the card was meant to be, kinda like Waylay before the rules change and errata. It seems to me that it was just meant as a "time-saver" card for yourself, not to do the funky tricks on the stack and whatever. Despite the result being Trix would no longer be Trix, I feel WOTC should have errata'd Illusions so that the intent was restored: controller loses 20 life when he loses control of it (like a lot of people have suggested before).

I'm still slightly baffled why such a ruling didn't occur (except for reasons stated above and by Duel).
 
N

Neil Rigby

Guest
I don't think that banning Necro is the answer to any of the problems that are raised by current deck types (Trix) because by itself it is not threatening end is easily dealt with and its overall effect is balanced (loss of draw phase,life cost), the casting cost is probably a little low but does require BBB which should limit a decks ability to play multiple colours. The reason decks are getting away with playing all the colours under the sun is DUAL LANDS, these have been the thorn in the side of extended for some time and the sooner they become no longer legal the better. The best card in extended by a long margin is FoW, this card gives several decks protection at times when they should not have any (trix being a prime example) and makes them the powerful decks they are. Trix would be far less scarey if you knew you could just disenchant/boomerang/emerald charm etc. etc. the Illusions if they are tapped out, but because the likelyhood is that they are holding FoW the game becomes much more depressing. Rant, Rant, Rant, Blah Blah Blah :)
 
L

Landkiller

Guest
If they DID ban Force of Will, Foil would step right in and do the same thing. Food for thought.
 
C

Chaos Turtle

Guest
Well, Foil requires the discard of two cards, one of which must be an Island. Force of Will only requires one blue card and one life.

Anyhow, I agree with Neil Rigby's assessment, that the Dual Lands have had their time and need to go on their merry ways.

(By the way, I'm glad Mana Vault is banned, merely indifferent to Dark Ritual's exile.)

Also, it's much too late, but a simple errata on Illusions of Grandeur could have prevented the whole Trix mess.

I think not having to worry about Trix would have kept many decks' options open against the potential terrors of the Tradewind / Survival / Oath / Sliver / etc decks.
 
S

sole specter

Guest
necor is not broken u do not get the cards untill the end of your turn and i have died for that many a time
 
D

Darsh

Guest
Necro broken? Depends.
With Extended being a combo-happpy environment Necro is more often than not just used accelerate the combo, it is not THE combo, just a way to get it into play faster.

The real problem is the speed of the environment, turn 3-5 kills are too fast for most non-combo decks to handle, therefore a deck needs to have one of three things; 1.A way to be faster than the combo deck(Not likely, unless with consistent great opening draws, which will not happen most of the time) 2.A way to disrupt the combo(Seems good in theory but with the combo deck entirely focused on getting the combo into play it has many ways to protect the combo from being delt with, counters and disruption of their own) 3.Become a combo deck(We're back to square one)

Quick Question: How many combo decks are more than one color?

Got your answer? Good, now it's been suggested that Dual lands be banned which I feel is not such a great idea, you are hurting more types of decks other than combo decks (Banning of Dark Ritual Anyone?)
As Duel said "Ban the fuel not the engine." after all, what good is an engine without fuel?

BTW: The only time I use Necro is in Necro-Suicide type decks as a way of refillin my hand.
 
T

Thallid Ice Cream Man

Guest
I really don't have any(!) experience in terms of Necro. However, sole specter raised a good point: you don't draw the cards immediately like you do with Bargain. What's more, you then have to discard down to 7 cards during your discard step. I agree that, considering that Necro allows a play like "turn one - Swamp, ritual, necro, draw until illusions, go" (although that was a "lucky" draw), it has considerable power, but it is more like a super brainstorm, in effect, because one gets a large amount of cards for a cheap mana cost but also another cost (for brainstorm, putting the cards back on top of the library, and for necro, the life payments, the wait until the end of the turn, and being forced to discard if too much was drawn). I support errata to illusions. Necropotence is still very powerful, and it approaches being too powerful. However, I'm not sure whether it should be banned.
 
D

Duel

Guest
It won't be banned. May be cycled out. and hell will freeze over before they make another necro reprint (bargain, for instance). Any card that doesn't require mana to run is BROKEN.

When you consider that necro would actually be worse if it's ability read "1: Draw a card duriong your discard phase" instead of paying life, then you realize how good it is. see?

They banned lotus petal for less (Zadok once used "when they ban lotus petal" in place of "when pigs fly". Boy, was I laughing when they did.)

(The DCI, not the pigs)

Anyways, Necro, is, sadly, broken. but it is still essential. It allows black to draw cards, which is black's weakness. Card advantage always has been. IF they take out necro, they need a black card-drawer (Greed doesn't cut it)
 
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