[M21] Eliminate
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https://scryfall.com/card/m21/97/dementors-prey
Dementor's Prey
1B
Instant
Destroy target creature or PW with CMC 3 or less.Decent removal. Doesn't require green, hit's almost every PW/Dude used. Can be used outside of BUG.
edit: This was posted before the name of the card was spoiled, now that it's been revealed I updated the thread title - Andy
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scryfall seems to be using a description of the picture as the placeholder name, which is funny. google translate gives the name as "disappear", which is already a card, but i doubt it would be this.
this does hit almost every PW, but the fact that it doesn't hit hollow one/vengevine is worth noting. or that delve whale, i guess.
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Smother! I used to play that in the sideboard in GAT. This would be pretty solid for Doomsday in order to destroy a Narset without splashing a third color. But Narset is restricted now its probably not worth it.
Another example of how the restriction list invalidates interesting and available counterplay.
Now you just acknowledge if they resolve Narset you just lose. You “play the odds”. If they have 4 Narset, you could justify having a strategy to deal with it. Similarly with Trinisphere: you’re far more incentivized to have a plan for it when there are 4. When there is only 1 Trinisphere, you’re just accepting random game losses.
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@desolutionist With 4x trinisphere, there is no planning for it. It's FoW or lose.
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@thewhitedragon69 You can play Ancient Tombs, I guess.
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@desolutionist It sounds good in theory but what happens is the opponent finds protection or a second Narset off of the -2. The format was filled with the best possible removal spell in Pyroblast and Narset still put up 7/8 decks in the top 8. Doomsday would be unviable with unrestricted Narset where it's now a good deck in the Vintage metagame, winning the Vintage Showcase.
The Narset restriction was one of the least controversial restrictions in Vintage with over 90% in favor of it in the Twitter poll I ran.
Edit: Just do the math here - the likelihood of having your "plan" in hand is 10-40% depending on the number of copies and then you have mulligans. And it's a bad plan. The Narset metagame was completely warped around Narset. Every Blue deck in the top 8 was running it, every deck had removal spells for it, and almost every deck was running a ton of creatures as the most optimal way of interacting. Restricting Narset changed the metagame completely. That was their plan. Not the inclusion a friggin Smother for planeswalkers.
The argument that "the unrestiction of cards would make them easier to plan for and deal with" ignores the math involved and the results we've had from metagames, pre- and post- restriction. When cards are problematic to the point of warping formats, there is a threat/answer imbalance that makes the answers impractical solutions. One can only look at the state of Standard where they keep having to ban cards because they think they have adequate answers to powerful, robust threats and they simply don't.
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@evouga said in [M21] Eliminate:
@thewhitedragon69 You can play Ancient Tombs, I guess.
Yeah or any land for the matter... as well as FoN. And then you can invalidate Shop's entire board state with 3 lands and 1 spell.
But we can just keep sweeping things under the carpet, play highlander decks, and chalk up losses to chance. It's cool. I'll continue to advocate for a small restriction list, but there isn't much point getting into the nitty gritty since there is no good evidence. I understand Narset puts up 7/8 in what I would describe a "lame-duck" format, but if the restriction list is what I imagine it to be, Narset probably isn't even a playable card in most decks. Once again, no evidence either way. There is an unleashed tournament next month though, but who cares? Vintage is already on the trajectory its on.
Restrictions necessitate more restrictions
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@desolutionist said in [M21] Eliminate:
But we can just keep sweeping things under the carpet, play highlander decks, and chalk up losses to chance.
There have been singleton formats in magic before, and no one would ever look at them and say "this was all luck". The most popular format in magic is Commander and there is plenty of skill involved in it.
If you lose to a singleton card that you KNOW your opponent on blue is likely playing because you didn't plan for it or just didn't accept that it is part of the match up possibilities that your deck has, that is on you. If I thought the format was going to be littered with main deck Graveyard hate I would not bring Dredge to an event. Hell Dredge has multiple cards that just ruin them that are colorless, cost 0, and they have managed to stick around.
Restrictions force players to not have mono-focused strategies so they don't get blown out. Either you make the conscious discussion to bring beltcher to a tourney knowing you win most games against fair decks and lose most games against counterspells, or you pick something else.
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@desolutionist Unless you are running a mono-colored deck or colorless lands, like darksteel citadel, that don't help your colored spells, there's no way you're beating a 4x Trinisphere shops deck without gunning for it specifically at the cost of all other matchups. With 4x trini in the meta, you either ran FoW or you died, end of story. Strip, Waste, Crucible, Smokestack, Tangle wire made sure you NEVER hit 3 mana.
We have FoN now, but that just means your option is to run an 8 FoW/FoN deck, the trinishops mirror, or don't play magic. MAYBE dredge, but that's because of the 8 main FoW/FoN again. Nothing else viable could compete in a 4x trini meta.
Not to make this a trinisphere thread, but to counter the argument that you can beat any card as a 4x, while remaining viable vs the rest of the field, if you "plan for it." Some cards are so warped, there's no possible plan but to play it yourself or be pidgeon-holed into an 8x FoW/FoN deck. What if you don't want to play blue?
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@desolutionist This really isn't the place to talk about B&R, but I would say that once you make balance a part of UX and subject it to the competitive pressures of MTGO, you will have to restrict cards. Just like what happened when Vintage hit online, the format will iterate rapidly and you will see the diverse metagame collapse in on itself - similar to what you saw with Pioneer. This doesn't keep people from having fun. This shouldn't keep the format from existing. But it's unrealistic to ignore what continually happens in large new formats regardless of initial card pools - there is never balance and broken things are discovered and optimized.
Regarding my analysis of this card, I like it. It definitely should exist as an option for Black decks. I would have played it in some Grixis decks where I literally was running Dreadbore as a card with a similar affect. The difference between 1-2 mana is considerable though and not many Black decks exist currently that would play this without also having access to Abrupt Decay.
