Community Poll - Life from the Loam [Unban]

[ChristophO]

LFtL is a strong fixing card for all the GWxx decks to help fix their mana some more which is the most common archetype right now. LftL crushes Ponza strategies and also pushes control decks towards green, a color that is overrepresented in HL because of the powerful creature tutors, the powerful creatures, the best ramp cards (1 mana elves/birds) while also offering strong generic answers. LftL would push the format into a direction I strongly dislike, please leave it banned!

Edit:
I got curious what the old ban text for Life from the loam said and looked it up in the announcement forum
Here is the old ban announcement (1.07.2010) regarding Life from the Loam:
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This card was for a long time on the watch list. We havve decided to delete it from the list just to
put it on again. We do not ban it because of the power level but for the following reasons:
1:
LftL is dominating most of the control mirrors. Only if a player can answer a LftL
with some graveyard hate or hand disruption the match is going to focus on other
cards. The resource advantage which LftL is generating is way too much. A game can
simply end on turn 3 if a player can resolve a turn 2 Intuition which is finding
Wasteland, LftL and a cycle land. Dredging the LftL and wasting the nonbasic land of
an opponent on turn 3 is a very frustrating play. This monotone cycle is not healthy for
the format so we want to change that.
2:
Life from the Loam is destroying two Archetypes: Land Destruction and Discard
which are for the most part are not represented in the format because of this card.
3:
LftL is making Gifts Ungiven and Intuition way too powerful. We want to keep these
cards in the format. With the banning of LftL players need in the future more skill to
get the full value out of the cards. Some decks will not even play Intuition anymore
because the huge advantage LftL was generating is gone. Of course this will consume
more time to find the correct piles but we think it’s important that the cards can fulfill
their roles; to find answers or threats.
4:
We have a lot of powerful lands in the format: Bazaar of Baghdad, Volrath's
Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Karakas, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale,
Wasteland, Mishra's Workshop. LftL find these cards way to easy. With the banning
of LoA we took one very powerful land out of the format and with other cards like
Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary or Sylvan Scrying players can still find the
good lands. But Gifts Ungiven and Intuition find these lands en passant together with
Life from the Loam!

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I strongly believe that all 4 points are still true and good reasons to keep LftL banned. While
Gifts Ungiven has been gone for some time now, Intuition actually is the more troublesome card with
LftL because it is one mana cheaper enabling the dreaded T2 Intuition on wastelock which can only be
stopped using gravehate. If the council feels that an unban is in order I strongly feel that they
have to be able to compose an explanation why those 4 points are simply not true anymore.

[Tiggupiru]

I strongly believe that all 4 points are still true and good reasons to keep LftL banned.

I somewhat disagree.

1: LftL is dominating most of the control mirrors. Only if a player can answer a LftL with some graveyard hate or hand disruption the match is going to focus on other cards. The resource advantage which LftL is generating is way too much. A game can simply end on turn 3 if a player can resolve a turn 2 Intuition which is finding Wasteland, LftL and a cycle land. Dredging the LftL and wasting the nonbasic land of an opponent on turn 3 is a very frustrating play. This monotone cycle is not healthy for the format so we want to change that.

Control decks have since became more creature based. Adding board presence not only helps you win, but at the same time they allow you not to lose, so there is a very good reason for them to do so. Loam is very slow to get going and doesn't directly affect the board. Most of the problems listed here are either very slow or need Intuition (or Gifts) to get going.

2: Life from the Loam is destroying two Archetypes: Land Destruction and Discard which are for the most part are not represented in the format because of this card.

I haven't seen either of those since. They are not represented because they are not good enough. Unbanning Loam wouldn't push these out.

3: LftL is making Gifts Ungiven and Intuition way too powerful. We want to keep these cards in the format. With the banning of LftL players need in the future more skill to get the full value out of the cards. Some decks will not even play Intuition anymore because the huge advantage LftL was generating is gone. Of course this will consume more time to find the correct piles but we think it’s important that the cards can fulfill their roles; to find answers or threats.

This is still mostly true. Although, GU is gone and if it were up to me, Intuition and Loam would switch places.

4: We have a lot of powerful lands in the format: Bazaar of Baghdad, Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Karakas, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Wasteland, Mishra's Workshop. LftL find these cards way to easy. With the banning of LoA we took one very powerful land out of the format and with other cards like Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary or Sylvan Scrying players can still find the good lands. But Gifts Ungiven and Intuition find these lands en passant together with Life from the Loam!

This point is pretty much the same as the one before. Intuition is bonkers with Loam.

[LasH]

I strongly believe that all 4 points are still true and good reasons to keep LftL banned.

I somewhat disagree.

1: LftL is dominating most of the control mirrors. Only if a player can answer a LftL with some graveyard hate or hand disruption the match is going to focus on other cards. The resource advantage which LftL is generating is way too much. A game can simply end on turn 3 if a player can resolve a turn 2 Intuition which is finding Wasteland, LftL and a cycle land. Dredging the LftL and wasting the nonbasic land of an opponent on turn 3 is a very frustrating play. This monotone cycle is not healthy for the format so we want to change that.

Control decks have since became more creature based. Adding board presence not only helps you win, but at the same time they allow you not to lose, so there is a very good reason for them to do so. Loam is very slow to get going and doesn't directly affect the board. Most of the problems listed here are either very slow or need Intuition (or Gifts) to get going.

Its true that they are more creature based but that doesnt change the problem. The only thing that changed right now: There are nearly no control mirrors anymore and as christoph alrdy pointed out, it will mainly fix GWxx decks which are alrdy out of control considering top8 lists. The problem described will mainly affect the control decks, since the loam wasteland engine on turn 3 is as you alrdy pointed out, not a real problem for decks with alot of early bord prescence. Even if control decks run more creatures nowadays it will hurt them much more than any GWxx deck which runs elves/birds etc etc and they get the engine faster bc of the better acceleration.

2: Life from the Loam is destroying two Archetypes: Land Destruction and Discard which are for the most part are not represented in the format because of this card.

I haven't seen either of those since. They are not represented because they are not good enough. Unbanning Loam wouldn't push these out.

I've seen them ALOT. And i faced 2 players with LD at the grand prix. I talked to these ppl and they said that the combination of LD and strong beater works pretty succesfull vs the most common archetypes. Even if u cut a 4c deck to 3 colors down, it can be devastating. I want rather have this archetype possible (even if not tier1 yet) than pushed out by loam.

3: LftL is making Gifts Ungiven and Intuition way too powerful. We want to keep these cards in the format. With the banning of LftL players need in the future more skill to get the full value out of the cards. Some decks will not even play Intuition anymore because the huge advantage LftL was generating is gone. Of course this will consume more time to find the correct piles but we think it’s important that the cards can fulfill their roles; to find answers or threats.

This is still mostly true. Although, GU is gone and if it were up to me, Intuition and Loam would switch places.

Nothing to add to the council's statement.

4: We have a lot of powerful lands in the format: Bazaar of Baghdad, Volrath's Stronghold, Academy Ruins, Karakas, Maze of Ith, The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Wasteland, Mishra's Workshop. LftL find these cards way to easy. With the banning of LoA we took one very powerful land out of the format and with other cards like Crop Rotation, Knight of the Reliquary or Sylvan Scrying players can still find the good lands. But Gifts Ungiven and Intuition find these lands en passant together with Life from the Loam!

This point is pretty much the same as the one before. Intuition is bonkers with Loam.

But intution gives many possibilitys, for example (Intuition on  3 answers, Intution on flashback spells, intuition on creatures for reanimator, intuition on anger/wonder/xxx).

Intuition will see more play in the future and its a very cool - not broken card right now.

I agree on christoph's statement on each aspect.

Leave it as it is.

[Dreamer]

I would unban Loam. The format is a lot faster and generally more creature-based nowadays, which makes Loam worse. Loam seeing play in BGW Rock, Reanimator and BUG Control would be a plus - BUG is generally inferior to Bant but getting more benefit out of Loam would be great, as would be the pressure to 4-5c manabases.
Plus, as someone stated, card draw for nonblue decks sucks. This might help that issue a little too.

[Maqi]

Truth:

LFtL is a strong fixing card for all the GWxx decks to help fix their mana some more which is the most common archetype right now. LftL crushes Ponza strategies and also pushes control decks towards green, a color that is overrepresented in HL because of the powerful creature tutors, the powerful creatures, the best ramp cards (1 mana elves/birds) while also offering strong generic answers. LftL would push the format into a direction I strongly dislike, please leave it banned!

My opinion: Leave Loam banned.