Wrong Move: Artifact Lands Banned/Restricted

D

DÛke

Guest
I was reading one of today's articles at Wizards, The Top 50 Artifacts of all time. Of course Ravager was in there, and so was Seat of the Synod. Here's what they had to say on these 2 cards, the bold text is of my own making.

On Seat of the Synod:

They are lands that count as artifacts, and they cause no end of trouble. Seat of the Synod is the king of the colored lands, because blue is the color that works best with artifacts, and Vault of Whispers is second because of Disciple of the Vault, but all of them have joined the fun at one point or another. Affinity becomes too powerful an ability when you get to count most of your lands, as do Arcbound Ravager and Disciple of the Vault, and there are also older effects like Goblin Welder that can make the situation even worse. It took a while to realize it, but these were probably the mistake that turned Affinity from a curiosity into the breaker of formats. They make you more vulnerable, letting opponents kill your lands, but modern mass removal spells were designed to avoid killing artifact lands, rendering the drawback far less dangerous than it would otherwise have been. In worlds with older cards like Energy Flux and Pernicious Deed, these become a true double-edged sword.
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Arcbound Ravager:

In Affinity, there's little question Arcbound Ravager is amazing, but will it ever go in anything else? Ravager depends on the artifact lands and the general overabundance of artifacts in Affinity for its absurd level of power. Without them, it's just another creature that doesn't have much appeal. Without Ravager, Affinity would survive, although it would probably just be one deck among many. The pure power of Arcbound Ravager in Affinity and the amount to which it warped the Magic world for a year are enough to get it this high.
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It's safe to conclude, more than ever before, that WotC is aiming at the lands comes the March "changes."

This is the wrong move for at least one good reason: banning or restricting artifact lands will harass many other deck types, including the slew of casual decks that I have seen depend on the artifact lands, but not to such a degenerate degree. It's affinity and Ravager, amongst few other things, that makes the artifact lands bad, not the other way around, that only seen from the fact that in dozens of other decks the artifact lands do simply what they are meant to do, more or less, and not to any degree that is hard to overcome or play around and against.

Yes, killing those precious lands will kill affinity and Ravager, but in all truth I would rather have affinity and Ravager and keep my artifact lands in my current Standard decks.

It is such an unfair decision that more than affects the target, but infects many others. It is almost a guilty-by-association strategy that they're using here, which is very unhealthy and rather restrictive, and even lazy.
 
J

jorael

Guest
The author of the article doesn't work for Wizards, so he may say such things, but whether the artifact lands or other cards will be banned still has to be seen.

See the thread about banning predictions: according to some rumor (and ony rumor) 4 cards will be banned.
 
D

DÛke

Guest
I know, I know. But it makes me that much more paranoid now...
 
J

jorael

Guest
One night of sleep and we'll know...

Exit ravager-deck as we knew it, that's for sure.
 
T

TheCasualOblivion

Guest
A lot of casual decks won't be affected, those being the extended based ones and the ones like mine that could care less about format. I still have no arguments with the lands. I agree with DUke, Ravager and Disciple break the lands, not the other way around. The lands themselves make too many different strategies work. Cards like Glimmervoid, Shrapnel Blast, Cranial Plating(some say this needs the axe, not me though), are only top-tier cards with the artifact lands.
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
jorael said:
See the thread about banning predictions: according to some rumor (and ony rumor) 4 cards will be banned.
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I don't play Standard, so what happens if they ban all but one of the artifact lands? I know that might look awkward, but wouldn't it be sufficient to weaken the decks that are based around them?

Edit: changed "restrict" to "ban"
 
D

DÛke

Guest
I've had quite few decks that use but that in no way depend on especially the Blue, White, and Red Artifact lands. The colorless artifact land is more or less important depending on the deck type. Banning all but one of the artifact lands (say, they keep the colorless one), it would still damage the environment and casual Standard play.

Although I do have to agree that as much as some people hate Islands, Seat of Synod (the blue artifact land) is so much more disgusting when played in the right deck. That said, I've seen it abused, but I've seen it played nicely too (fodder for Thirst For Knowledge, power for Machinate, nice with Overload and, duh, Assert Authority)...

Banning/Restricting them would deal a lot of damage to Standard. Which naturally can be a good thing because eventually new types might emerge and would give the slow CHK block a chance to compete with the fast nature of the Mirrodin block.

So in away I would be happy: it would almost give Standard a clean slate to start with and if anything, at least it will make everyone rethink their decks as well as the other potential decks that might become more competant.

Sigh...

Oh well...
 
N

Nightstalkers

Guest
I just wonder how long the good old Black Lotus will stay at #1
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, but Blacker Lotus is gone in one shot. Presumably you can get Black Lotus back somehow if you wanted to...

And who plays with Unglued? :p
 
Ferret

Ferret

Moderator
Staff member
I've always wondered if you proxied Blacker Lotus and had some tape on hand could you still use it? Or could you just keep ripping it up? "Behold the power of my confetti!"

Anyhoo, the list seemed pretty reasonable. The top three were no surprise as they all have one thing in common: They produce more mana than they cost and have no drawbacks (except for maybe having to sacrifce Black Lotus). The other cards that followed them (Mox Diamond, Lions Eye Diamond, and Chrome Mox) all had little things to keep them under control...okay, there was Lotus Petal, but no one could do anything w/ just one extra coloured mana, right? Yeah, I know...

Some of their other selections were a little out of order of what I would have thought. One of the ones that amazed me to be so high (in number) on the list was Jester's Cap. This card used to be about crippling in some of my casual games. If one of our guys was playing one of his fav combo decks he'd be about screwed. Lots of powere there...

-Ferret

"I noticed a lot of those cards did seem to fall into the 'what were they thinking?' category..."
 
S

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, Jester's Cap and Mask used to be the "chase rares" when Ice Age came out, but you don't see them much around anymore, even in casual games it seems.
 
J

jorael

Guest
After Ice Age I had 2 Jester's Caps: 1 from a pack, the other one I traded for with a friend of mine. The only person I played Magic with that time (just started). I played the caps in almost all my 100 card monstrosities (60 pfff!). My friend hated the cap and conceided the moment I played one and activated it, even if he was winning. He just hated the fact that his best cards got removed.

I acquired my 4th cap a few weeks ago and I put them in a R/W control deck. 4 caps, 4 nevinyrral's disks and 4 treasure hunters make sure I can do some nasty stuff. Fun, but players now know I play with the disks and start gunning for me the moment they realise I play that deck. Mission succeeded :)
 
Oversoul

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Many of the older cards were rated based on how good they used to be, it seems. The list was not perfect, of course, but in general I found myself agreeing with most of the choices. Mana Vault should have been higher on the list, and Mana Crypt should have been much higher. There were some other minor things, but on most of these lists, I find a lot more, so I would consider this list to be a good one...
 
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